It isn't so much what they missed... it is what they refused, and still refuse, to accept as reality.
There's is so much a cult of belonging... a belief that they are The Elect... the righteous... the higher status class. And so to accept reality means that all of that belief is rendered irrelevant... and their cult of belonging crumbles. The problem is that the reason they first joined this cult is that their self-worth was tenuous and they were ripe for picking.
It really is a cult... the same mechanisms and triggers for all cults... attracting those in need of something they cannot find themselves, and so the cult fills that need for a cost of fealty to the cult.
Breaking this cult will require breaking down people that then have to rebuild into true self-loving, self-fulfilled humans. It will take therapy and it might also take a lot of turns to God.
Who ever is with out sin, let them cast the first stone.
Journalists need to get out of the Tribal Stone Throwing business, and get back into the story telling business. How to make this happen? Not sure, but I can name story after story where the focus is on the maintaining the Narrative, not on seeking what is "True".
There is also a huge component of the story that is about wanting to be a part of the "In Crowd" which means not reporting things that will put you on the outs with the important people. Tara, Andy is still focused on what the people at the New York Times think. Personally, it has been 20 years since I gave the New York Times credibility. (Think Yellow cake, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the invasion of Iraq)
Additionally, there is the question of who is writing the pay checks of Journalists. We need a new way to fund Journalism, because publishing counter narrative stories that are true is a risk when it goes against the financial interests of those who are paying the Journalists salary.
If there was any soul-searching, it didn't cause the slightest change in attitude or thought. These fake soul searches happen sometimes in every big institution, including Big Science and Big Medicine and Big Education. A few editorials claim to ask why people don't trust us, but nothing changes after the soul-search. Big institutions don't WANT to be trusted. Being hated is the goal, not an accident.
Had to turn it off 1/2 hr in. Joe Rogan never said anything ‘demonstrably untrue’ about Ivermectin and I’m not going to listen to somebody still pushing MSM misinformation. And shame on you Tara for not pushing back on it. If you truly want to complicate the narrative (first stop saying that phrase so much), give your platform to people other than those still ensconced in said narrative. You’ve become a Journalism journalist; no new information, just giving ‘mainstream adjacent’ journalists a chance to spout off about themselves. So tiresome. It’s like you’re gunning to become the leading expert on how mainstream journalism navel-gazed itself to death, slowly and boringly. I keep giving you my time because I want so badly for you to be at the top of the heap in relevance, and although you get these impressive (I guess?) names on your show, the content is vapid and riddled with lies. There’s enough of that to go around already.
These interviews are not "riddled with lies". They're opinions you don't like.
Tara Henley is excited about left wing thought that is moderate on social issues and left on economics in my opinion from reading her work over the last several years.
She points out the excesses of the identitarian left beccause she would like the left to be responsive to the regular jane or joe.
Unortunately a pattern I've seen amongst many people mining this vein is that at the end of the day they dont' want to condemn the social jsutice types for what they've done becasue they're trying to play both sides or. One of the worst people that do this is Freddie DeBoer. He'll spend an entire column deriding something and then at the end he says actually I agree with said social justice out of control thing. Andy Mills can't being himself to condemn his persecutor. Tara often can't being herself to fully commit to savage said thing.
These are emotional topics because they almost always about identity politics and people get very worked up about them because it's personal. I often think Tara doesn't go far enough. Having to constantly say "I don't like Trump but.." get old. But I think she's doing terrific work and I am fully on board with what she is trying to achieve.
What he said about Rogan was a lie. Nothing opinion about it. Perhaps 'riddled with lies' is a bit hyperbolic, but not by much. The vast majority of her interviewees are journalists who generally push the mainstream narrative, and if they bring Covid into the discussion, there's a lot of misinformation baked right in. She generally stays away from any Covid retrospective, but has used the term 'conspiracy theorist' to describe writers for whom I have a lot of respect and are brave enough to tackle issues she's afraid of, and that's a huge disappointment.
I can see why Tara doesn't engage with comments (another failing; Substackers with much larger audiences do engage with comments, even just with some 'likes', and it's an excellent practice. She makes it a policy not to) as she always has a fan jump to her defence when I voice my criticism. I agree that she doesn't go far enough. She stays in a comfort zone that, while she may point out the excesses of the identitarian left, she does it from an angle that doesn't actually challenge what they're saying, and fails to find the common ground, which is the necessity for systemic change. She never plumbs the depths of what systemic change actually looks like; in fact she seems to think that systems will change themselves, which is a view that doesn't set her apart from the mainstream, it shows her to be a part of it. More importantly, she ignores corruption, which I believe is one of the central tenets of journalism: speaking truth to power. If she lets people spread misinformation on her platform, and continues to chew on low-hanging fruit like the US election instead of hot-button Canadian issues, of which there are many, she's doing her audience a grave disservice.
I’m a long-time supporter of your writing and interviews. While this is not directly related to this post, I read something today that addresses an earlier column by you on what to call wokeism.
The article below cross-references another writer’s term:
“This desire for consensus is higher among the far-left than other groups. Social Justice Fundamentalists (Tim Urban’s excellent term for woke folks) are notorious for cutting people out of their lives for even minor heresies.”
It isn't so much what they missed... it is what they refused, and still refuse, to accept as reality.
There's is so much a cult of belonging... a belief that they are The Elect... the righteous... the higher status class. And so to accept reality means that all of that belief is rendered irrelevant... and their cult of belonging crumbles. The problem is that the reason they first joined this cult is that their self-worth was tenuous and they were ripe for picking.
It really is a cult... the same mechanisms and triggers for all cults... attracting those in need of something they cannot find themselves, and so the cult fills that need for a cost of fealty to the cult.
Breaking this cult will require breaking down people that then have to rebuild into true self-loving, self-fulfilled humans. It will take therapy and it might also take a lot of turns to God.
Who ever is with out sin, let them cast the first stone.
Journalists need to get out of the Tribal Stone Throwing business, and get back into the story telling business. How to make this happen? Not sure, but I can name story after story where the focus is on the maintaining the Narrative, not on seeking what is "True".
There is also a huge component of the story that is about wanting to be a part of the "In Crowd" which means not reporting things that will put you on the outs with the important people. Tara, Andy is still focused on what the people at the New York Times think. Personally, it has been 20 years since I gave the New York Times credibility. (Think Yellow cake, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the invasion of Iraq)
Additionally, there is the question of who is writing the pay checks of Journalists. We need a new way to fund Journalism, because publishing counter narrative stories that are true is a risk when it goes against the financial interests of those who are paying the Journalists salary.
If there was any soul-searching, it didn't cause the slightest change in attitude or thought. These fake soul searches happen sometimes in every big institution, including Big Science and Big Medicine and Big Education. A few editorials claim to ask why people don't trust us, but nothing changes after the soul-search. Big institutions don't WANT to be trusted. Being hated is the goal, not an accident.
Had to turn it off 1/2 hr in. Joe Rogan never said anything ‘demonstrably untrue’ about Ivermectin and I’m not going to listen to somebody still pushing MSM misinformation. And shame on you Tara for not pushing back on it. If you truly want to complicate the narrative (first stop saying that phrase so much), give your platform to people other than those still ensconced in said narrative. You’ve become a Journalism journalist; no new information, just giving ‘mainstream adjacent’ journalists a chance to spout off about themselves. So tiresome. It’s like you’re gunning to become the leading expert on how mainstream journalism navel-gazed itself to death, slowly and boringly. I keep giving you my time because I want so badly for you to be at the top of the heap in relevance, and although you get these impressive (I guess?) names on your show, the content is vapid and riddled with lies. There’s enough of that to go around already.
These interviews are not "riddled with lies". They're opinions you don't like.
Tara Henley is excited about left wing thought that is moderate on social issues and left on economics in my opinion from reading her work over the last several years.
She points out the excesses of the identitarian left beccause she would like the left to be responsive to the regular jane or joe.
Unortunately a pattern I've seen amongst many people mining this vein is that at the end of the day they dont' want to condemn the social jsutice types for what they've done becasue they're trying to play both sides or. One of the worst people that do this is Freddie DeBoer. He'll spend an entire column deriding something and then at the end he says actually I agree with said social justice out of control thing. Andy Mills can't being himself to condemn his persecutor. Tara often can't being herself to fully commit to savage said thing.
These are emotional topics because they almost always about identity politics and people get very worked up about them because it's personal. I often think Tara doesn't go far enough. Having to constantly say "I don't like Trump but.." get old. But I think she's doing terrific work and I am fully on board with what she is trying to achieve.
What he said about Rogan was a lie. Nothing opinion about it. Perhaps 'riddled with lies' is a bit hyperbolic, but not by much. The vast majority of her interviewees are journalists who generally push the mainstream narrative, and if they bring Covid into the discussion, there's a lot of misinformation baked right in. She generally stays away from any Covid retrospective, but has used the term 'conspiracy theorist' to describe writers for whom I have a lot of respect and are brave enough to tackle issues she's afraid of, and that's a huge disappointment.
I can see why Tara doesn't engage with comments (another failing; Substackers with much larger audiences do engage with comments, even just with some 'likes', and it's an excellent practice. She makes it a policy not to) as she always has a fan jump to her defence when I voice my criticism. I agree that she doesn't go far enough. She stays in a comfort zone that, while she may point out the excesses of the identitarian left, she does it from an angle that doesn't actually challenge what they're saying, and fails to find the common ground, which is the necessity for systemic change. She never plumbs the depths of what systemic change actually looks like; in fact she seems to think that systems will change themselves, which is a view that doesn't set her apart from the mainstream, it shows her to be a part of it. More importantly, she ignores corruption, which I believe is one of the central tenets of journalism: speaking truth to power. If she lets people spread misinformation on her platform, and continues to chew on low-hanging fruit like the US election instead of hot-button Canadian issues, of which there are many, she's doing her audience a grave disservice.
same here😢
I agree!
Hi Tara,
I’m a long-time supporter of your writing and interviews. While this is not directly related to this post, I read something today that addresses an earlier column by you on what to call wokeism.
The article below cross-references another writer’s term:
“This desire for consensus is higher among the far-left than other groups. Social Justice Fundamentalists (Tim Urban’s excellent term for woke folks) are notorious for cutting people out of their lives for even minor heresies.”
https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/overcoming-the-politics-of-catastrophe?utm_campaign=email-post&r=v3ea&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Link to book is in article.