Similar thoughts here. mailchi.mp/crooked.com/bi…
There’s another dimension to this, which is the creation of a false dichotomy between Bold Truth Telling and Lying, as if the craft of writing made it impossible not to engage in Epic Media Lab Leak Fiasco hyperbole without lying.
There’s another dimension to this, which is the creation of a false dichotomy between Bold Truth Telling and Lying, as if the craft of writing made it impossible not to engage in Epic Media Lab Leak Fiasco hyperbole without lying.
https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1403102481211658249
The lab-leak thing in particular is an example of a line of critique that has a grain of truth to it, but has been exaggerated by critics who are very invested in the appearance of rectitude and not at all invested in whether their overwrought criticisms will spark moral panic.
I’d say intelligent critics have an ethical obligation to consider how their word choices will be exploited by propagandists, which runs right alongside their ethical obligation to tell the truth. Refusing to consider the former is actually a kind of laziness in writing.
It’s much easier to sermonize than to write with nuances that capture precise thinking, and that don’t whip up frenzies that serve the interests of liars.
But rather than rise to that creative and ethical challenge many fall back on a version of ‘sorry, I’m just a bold truth teller, I’m not going to lie for political reasons.’ Ok, well, no one is demanding that of you.
It’s the same false dichotomy in which it’s impossible to convey “hey lab leak hasn’t been disproven so you shouldn’t write categorically that it didn’t happen, just because Trump said it did” without writing “THE LIBERAL MEDIA’S LAB LEAK FIASCO IS A PC CRISIS.”
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