Wednesday Morning Rant [Joe Mannix]

The most pervasive theme in reporting about various topics is perhaps the automatic extension of the benefit of the doubt, at least in one direction. It is essentially impossible to read any article in the mainstream press on any topic that is even tangentially related to politics or culture and not see the benefit of the doubt being extended to any and all operators on the Left (though rarely in the other direction - odd, isn't it?). It is apparently impossible to do otherwise.

Pick any contentious topic - like transgenderism or the FBI's behavior or the climate lobby, for example - and the benefit of the doubt is always readily granted. When it turns out that studies about effects of transgender treatment were doctored (like Ace talked about yesterday), it isn't that anyone lied about anything, it's that they were wrong. It was a "misinterpretation" and not a deliberate deception. If the FBI perhaps did something wrong, it is because they were mistaken and nothing more. It certainly isn't that major intelligence and law enforcement organizations are corrupt partisans attacking political enemies. It is always a mistake, never a deliberate lie or malfeasance.

It seems odd to me that these mistakes seem to always go in one direction. I'd think that mistakes - actual honest mistakes - should probably be more or less evenly distributed. But I'm just a rube, so what do I know? I'm not some wizard journalist or academic or cop or spy, so clearly I'm just not sophisticated enough to understand the nuances that lead to all accidental, well-intentioned misbehavior aligning perfectly against one political or cultural faction. I suppose that could be.

Or not, of course. The far simpler and more reasonable answer is that they are corrupt, they are liars, they deceive and persecute and break the law with impunity and then they all mutually cover for each other. It's not that I'm a rube so I can't understand it - it's that they think I'm a rube who will buy that particular line of gaslighting crap.

I can't help but roll my eyes at the trick at this point. Their attempts at manipulation are transparent to the point of tedium. This particular tack has become so commonplace and so obvious and so consistent that it can now be elevated to an iron rule of media consumption or criticism:
If a journalist, academic, politician, bureaucrat or similar is extending the benefit of the doubt to another party, assume that party is guilty of deliberate misbehavior.

The trans academics are not wrong, they lied. The FBI was not wrong about Trump or mistakenly overzealous about Whitmer, they are lying partisans. The climate scientists didn't fail to predict X, Y or Z, they have no ability to predict. The green energy lobby isn't optimistic about their potential, they're lying about it. These people don't deserve the benefit of the doubt, and neither does anyone extending it to them. When you see someone extending the benefit of the doubt, just take the opposite position and you'll be right virtually 100% of the time.

It is now just another handy shortcut.

posted by Open Blogger at 11:00 AM

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