If we can agree that calling Stephen Pinker right-wing is factually if not wildly incorrect, then are we not also intellectually obliged---in some part, at least---to look more carefully into other accusations of right-wing association or white-supremacy made by the same crowd? That their accusations are wrong in the case with which we are familiar should make us suspicious that their other accusations might also be incorrect or exaggerated---and that they are perhaps motivated to do so for reasons other than their expressed goals of justice and moral goodness. Any belief built upon a mendacious base is definitionally suspect. For example, when the NYT consistently comes out against SubStack as a home to right-wingers and anti-vaxxers and other ilk of nefarious nature, it’s no wonder: SubStack is a direct threat to their business model, their income stream, and their hiring pool. The NYT may wrap itself in high-minded and lofty rhetoric about wanting to protect the public from being misinformed<fn>, but that isn't the only reason for attacking SubStack. In this case, too, we should probably be suspicious of their motives---especially since doing something "for the good of the public" has nearly never been the real reason a larger company does anything. I know, I know, I’m an incorrigible cynic and free-speech absolutist. I just worry about constraining thought, especially when it's constrained by a self-elected holier-than-thou cabal. I worry about the level of acceptance for constraining thought. Who chooses who we get to listen to, who we get to read? Who draws the line between acceptable and not? How do we tell the difference between where we're headed and "real" totalitarianism? Is there one? Or are we only pretending there is, to make ourselves feel better about it? Do dissidents in other countries weigh the pros and cons of their own governments (essentially giving them the benefit of the doubt), while condemning the suppression they see in other countries as absolutely evil? I don't fool myself into thinking I can learn the capital-T truth, but I'm satisfied with approaching it asymptotically by eliminating things that can't be the truth. We have to be satisfied with that. There's nothing more suspicious than someone who knows all the answers and thinks that everything is simple. I am far from an identitarian, but whenever I read or hear something, I do think of the context---of the person or entity delivering the news. What is their motivation for getting me to believe this information? How much effort do I have to put into trying to disprove it? How much of my existing information does it purport to supplant? As another example, people who are doing well under a given status quo are extremely loath to accept any information where they would be morally obligated to support a large change to the status quo, very likely endangering their privileged position within it. It's the "tsar" problem, right? The Russian revolution made things better for pretty much everyone except the 1% of the nobility, for whom it made things much worse. If you'd asked them, the revolution was a mistake. If you only asked them, you'd start to believe it, too. If you're in a bubble, talking only to people who are very well-educated and relatively well-off, it doesn't matter that they're technically from some country or other, they don't really represent that country. I am, for example, not really representative of an American. The answers you get to questions about America from me are vastly different than those you would get from most other well-off, well-educated Americans (which are the ones you're most likely to meet, statistically). Those Americans will tell you about completely different things that are the problem, but they won't talk about the military budget or the two-party system. Instead, they'll most likely insinuate that we'd be better off with a one-party system. The people who cheer injustice when it's practiced against others simply can't conceive of how the same injustice may someday be used against them. Go ahead and cheer that oligarchs are getting their property seized, that countries are having their reserves impounded. It will bite them in the ass, of course, but they'll never put two and two together. They're banning people and censoring people now for what the elite and elite-adjacent consider to be "good" reasons, but what's to stop anyone from just coming up with other reasons? Maybe reasons that don't quite fit for you personally anymore? Nothing. Literally nothing is stopping them, once you've already accepted that all justice is vigilante justice and that no rules abide anymore. No rules of evidence, no trial, nothing. The world is in thrall to the greatest purveyor of violence, terrorism, and human misery (the U.S.) as it shines the spotlight on its sworn enemy. It demands that the world condemn and destroy this enemy for perpetrating crimes that it itself has perpetrated many, many times before, always without consequence. There is nothing wrong with asking yourself whether you want to help them do this. I was thinking today that it's ridiculous that the United States defense budget has gone from under $300B in 2001---already an obscenely high number---to the inconceivably obscene ~$800B it is in 2022. Not only that, but the U.S. sells well over half of the world its weapons. And this is the country that elects itself to the moral high ground <i>and people believe it</i>. My God, it's breathtaking. Domestically, it's even worse. They fight and dispute about everything under the sun but what would actually affect quality of life and justice and equality. The U.S. is maddening full of <i>distractions</i> that seem to be eagerly taken up as a welcome relief from the unrelenting misery of life, a misery that might be relieved were anyone to spare any attention to doing so. This graphic sums up how we should really take the exhortations of the U.S. with a grain of salt. It shows the U.S. forging its own path, with dropping life expectancy (before COVID!) while spending twice as much per-capita as other nations whose citizens enjoy at least five extra years of life. <img src="{att_link}life_expectancy_vs._health_expenditure_our_world.jpeg" href="{att_link}life_expectancy_vs._health_expenditure_our_world.jpeg" align="none" caption="Life expectancy vs. health expenditure Our World" scale="50%"> No nation has the moral high ground. We should be suspicious of anything any nation purports or any demand it makes of us, be it Russia, Ukraine, the U.S, or any of the other usual suspects who demand our attention, our loyalty, our unswerving faith. We can't know the truth, but we can stop unreservedly believing their untruths. <hr> <ft>I mean, if they did, they'd shut down, ammirite? 🥁</ft>