[mmsmatt]

This has got to be Taibbi click-baiting pro-Trump subscribers. He buries his admission that Trump's Biden/Burisma narrative is a lie so deep in the piece, you really have to trudge through a lot of hand-wringing drivel to find it. You can read 90% of this piece thinking that Taibbi is clearly sympathetic to the Republican narrative, and he gives no indication otherwise!

[kodah]

I didn't get that vibe at all. To me Taibbi sounds like someone like me: a resident of the Democratic party who is willing to criticize the ends as well as the means of both parties. This sort of conviction is not looked upon very highly by our "free" society.

[hackyhacky]

I think your reading of Taibbi is correct. Unfortunately, articles like this feed into the currently fashionable victim mentality of the Republican party, wherein they contend that big tech unfairly suppresses news from conservative sources, and that there's a grand conspiracy afoot to protect Biden. I don't think that's true, but that is how this will play out in that particular fever swamp.

[kodah]

"The other side is worse!" cannot be perpetually be the answer or response. Politics is not everything; at some point we have to understand that politics does not make a society, a society makes politics.

Ask yourself this: if these same mechanisms, that again are used by autocratic governments, get taken advantage of by a future administration and we somehow defeat them will you be willing to admit accountability and culpability for the outcome? If not, then walk cautiously, because this future is very real and discounting people that raise the flag does not age well.

[slimed]

It's not a surprise that you can't understand Taibbi if your only lens of analysis is Red Team vs. Blue Team.

[ed25519FUUU]

Unfortunately I think this really nails why the content of the laptop is so difficult for many people to come to terms with.

We all know corruption happens at all levels in Washington, but if the contents of the laptop are true, it means a serious loss of ground in the culture war (potentially game over). It can’t be true and must not be true. To keep the game going we need to shut our eyes and wait to be rescued by a comfortable escape hatch narrative.

[rashkov]

This is something he does in all of his recent political writing, to the point that I had to go and search for articles where he’s unambiguous about his political stances. Even after finding those, I never quite felt like I’m looking at the same political reality as him, and ended up unsubscribing. I’m sympathetic to the substance of his writing, so maybe that’s just what non-partisan writing looks like and it’s too strange to read in this media environment? I don’t know, but if anyone has more thoughts on this, then I’d like to hear them.

[rendall]

"maybe that’s just what non-partisan writing looks like and it’s too strange to read in this media environment"

This.

One must get beyond the idea that one team is unambiguously worse. In a way, Taibbi writes almost exclusively about the tendency of Americans to ignore the misbehavior of their own side and exaggerate that of the other.

There are lots and lots of articles informing the rank-and-file how to interpret contemporary events; how to discuss the Bidens' corruption, for instance (usually: bring up the Trumps' corruption, but often outright denial and shaming anyone who discusses it)

People who appreciate Taibbi are those who can hold at least two narratively contradictory facts in mind at the same time; eg that both the Bidens and the Trumps are corrupt; without leaping to defend one or the other.

[23B1]

I read the whole article, though.