You might echo mainstream media too much if you say the following things

“Tucker Carlson is bad, he isn’t your friend, and you shouldn’t listen to him.”

“I’m not only going to say that Elon Musk is bad because he’s a billionaire and because he does business with the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon, and not only because Twitter still censors more than it ought to, but I’m also going to refuse to give Musk credit for doing anything right (such as releasing the Twitter Files) because I simply can’t bring myself to say anything positive about him.”

“Dave Chappelle is a bastard because he’s punching down at trans people and the things he said are just plain unforgivable. Also, I will push one of my audience’s hate buttons by mentioning he has lots and lots of money and hope that this will make them see him as the enemy instead of somebody who might actually be making some good points.”

It’s ironic that I started this thing in the first place because of Caitlin Johnstone, and that all of those are stances taken by Caitlin which have been grating on me for varying lengths of time, depending on when I first read them. Not her actual words, of course, but you can check her actual words for yourself if you’re curious.

Honestly seems like she’s straying into Kyle Kulinski territory, and I don’t mean that as a compliment. It might be interesting to look at her Twitter and Kyle’s and see which of them has the most “Look at what a hypocrite Musk is, he doesn’t REALLY believe in free speech!” tweets. Maybe I’ll do that one day when I’m really bored.

Since I’m not bored enough to do that right now, I’m going to vent to my two or three subscribers. Thanks for subscribing, btw, and I hope I’m not coming across like a dick to you here.

Now, in an attempt to be better than Caitlin is, I will acknowledge what she has done right in the way that she never acknowledges anything Musk has done right:

-Against proxy war in Ukraine

-Is willing to criticize the Squad

-Is anti-war in general

-Wants Assange to go free

-Points out how capitalism fucks people and ruins their lives

-Doesn’t believe in vaccine mandates

-Doesn’t believe in censorship

-Doesn’t believe that people like Rogan, Greenwald, Dore, Taibbi, etc are bad

And I could make this list longer because she IS right about a lot of things, but right now I want to focus on that last item.

Joe Rogan, Glenn Greenwald, Jimmy Dore, Matt Taibbi, and others aren’t people she’s called out by name…YET.

But if she’s decided to take the side of people who are like “boycott Netflix because they aired a special by a transphobe!” then she’s probably aware that the four people I just mentioned are willing to point out when they feel trans people are wrong. I think Taibbi’s done that the least of the four, but he did do a “Meet The Censored” piece on Abigail Schrier. I don’t know whether Caitlin gets that Schrier being censored is something that would deserve Matt’s attention and attention from other opponents of censorship no matter WHAT it was she wrote. I hope Caitlin gets that, but maybe she’ll disappoint me some more if she ever weighs in on this.

So I kind of wonder how long it’ll be before she starts calling out Rogan, followed by the others.

I don’t know why I’m taking this as badly as I am. It’s probably not normal. It’s probably an overreaction. And my being aware of those things probably doesn’t make it much better.

Nevertheless, it’s how I feel, and if I want to know what’s going on in the world then I can get my news from the people I mentioned, from Russell Brand, from Kim Iversen, etc.

This is far from the first time that I’ve had faith in somebody I got my news from, only for them to out themselves as being (in my opinion) really fucking wrong about things I care about a lot.

First, there was TYT. Used to trust them, eventually realized I was wrong to.

Later, there was Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti. It’s been a long time, but Fiorella Isabel used to follow me on Twitter and I’m *pretty* sure that she told me once not to trust them blindly. If I’m remembering correctly, then she has every right to tell me “I told you so.”

Then there was Kyle.

Later there were Ron Placone and Graham Elwood, formerly of The Jimmy Dore Show and probably never appearing there again because “Jimmy’s anti-vax!” or something.

Is one of the people I just listed as a better source of news than Caitlin going to make me eat crow somewhere down the line by having a shit opinion and making me unable to stand them too?

Definite possibility.

For now, though, they aren’t. But she is.

I’m not going to say that I’m ready to unsubscribe here, because I doubt she would ever bother to look at this space. I’m not going to say it in her comments section either, because I know that she has no reason to care; it’s not like I ever gave her any money, which I’m thankful for by now. I’d only be making a fool of myself. (Well, moreso than usual.)

If I do ever decide that she has too many terrible takes for me to stay subscribed, I plan to just leave quietly.

But when you have faith that you can trust somebody to have the right worldview and one day you find out that they don’t, it can be a real bitter pill to swallow. Especially if you’ve been admiring them for literally years of your life.