The video/podcast <a href="https://www.the-hinternet.com/p/talking-trump-rfk-jr-epistemic-collapse" author="Justin Smith-Ruiu & Olivia Ward-Jackson" source="Hinternet">Talking Trump, RFK Jr., Epistemic Collapse, &c.</a> was pretty good. I credit both participants but, if we're honest, Justin talks about 95% of the time. It was quite an interesting discussion, touching on several salient points. <h>Misinformed about Trump</h> I'm still somewhat surprised to hear how empire-tinged some of the Justin's information is, despite his conclusions being decidedly anti-empire. In particular, he completely mischaracterized Trump's comments about Liz Cheney, which were---especially for Trump---a surprisingly very well-reasoned argument against war hawks, who talk a big game about sending other people to war. Even taking our transcript from the execrable liberal talking-points site <a href="https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/nov/01/in-context-what-former-president-donald-trump-said/" source="Politifact">In Context: What former President Donald Trump said about Liz Cheney facing a firing squad</a>, we see that they admit to Trump having said, <bq>When asked about Liz Cheney campaigning for Harris, Trump said, "Well, I think it hurts Kamala a lot. Actually. Look, (Cheney is) a deranged person. The reason she doesn't like me is that she wanted to stay in Iraq." Trump covered many other topics, then said: <b>"I don't want to go to war. (Liz Cheney) wanted to go, she wanted to stay in Syria. I took (troops) out. She wanted to stay in Iraq. I took them out. I mean, if were up to her, we'd, we'd be in 50 different countries. And you know, number one, it's very dangerous. Number two, a lot of people get killed. And number three, I mean, it's very, very expensive."</b> Later, Trump added "I don’t blame (Dick Cheney) for sticking with his daughter, but his daughter is a very dumb individual, very dumb. <b>She is a radical war hawk. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let's see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face."</b></bq> Here, we hear Trump taking a very anti-war stance and calling out Liz Cheney for being a stupid war-hawk, ready to send other people into combat all over the world. You will note that Trump doesn't say anything about a firing squad. He doesn't even imply it. When I first heard him say this in a video (from Glenn Greenwald, I believe), I didn't even think of a firing squad. I just thought that he was talking about sending Liz Cheney into combat to see how much she likes it. In fact, if you read not even very carefully, Trump's hypothetical posits to <iq>put her with a rifle</iq>, which is an odd way of painting a scene with her facing a firing squad. These people make things up out of whole cloth. I'm ashamed for Justin that he chose to talk about this without even spending 45 seconds watching what Trump actually said. You don't even have to defend Trump's right to talk about sending Liz Cheney before a firing squad <i>because he never said anything like that</i>. He actually said that we have to stop fighting wars and that the psychos promoting all of these wars should have some empathy for the soldiers they send to fight and die for their causes. His hypothetical proposes to scare them straight. Feel free to debate the sense of that, but don't mischaracterize what he said. Furthermore, if you look at the quote, he cites three reasons: <ol> <iq>it's very dangerous</iq> <iq>a lot of people get killed</iq> <iq>it's very, very expensive.</iq> </ol> Since Justin didn't actually watch the clip, he's free to accuse Trump of focusing on the waste of money, even though that is absolutely not what Trump said. Sadly, Justin is just lazily promulgating liberal talking points, even as he purports to be disputing them. In the end, he's still buying some of the narrative---that Trump is only about the money---because his thinking is colored by the sources he continues to trust. Again It's possibly still true that Trump is only interested in the money! He might be lying! He lies about so many other things! You don't have to take Trump at his word but, if you are going to <i>cite</i> Trump, then you should at least cite him <i>accurately</i>. You are then free to to express doubts about the veracity of his comments rather than mixing the two and pretending that what we think he meant to say is what he actually said. You can still posit that he's being dishonest, based on nearly everything else he's ever done having been about making money, etc. etc. without diluting the point, I feel. <h>The danger of tainting science with politics</h> At <b>01:07:00</b>, Justin says that, <bq><img attachment="justin_smith-ruiu.jpeg" align="right" caption="Justin Smith-Ruiu">[...] and I haven't been thinking about that [COVID] so much over the past, say, year. We are to some extent now facing the fallout of the chaos of that period, right? And the perception, right or wrong, that <b>our important institutions' claims to a monopoly on knowledge and to scientific authority were being called into doubt</b>, right? Rightly or wrongly, but I think inevitably I have to concede to some extent, right? We were getting directives from one week to the next in some cases that just said A and not A about masks, about hand-washing and stuff. And that's okay. I mean, sometimes authorities just don't know, right? They do their best and there's nothing blameworthy in that. But the combination of those vacillations with <b>this strange new emerging discourse in the pandemic era that you must trust the science, smelled fishy to a lot of people.</b> I think rightly so. Like, I'm supposed to trust the science no matter what, even when it says A and not A? How can I do that? How could I possibly do that? Wouldn't it be better maybe to say trust the science with some reasonable degree of reserve or something like that? And <b>the insistence became so dogmatic that I think it's only natural that the populist movement at that time</b>, I mean, the populist movement pre-exists COVID, but that at that time the populist movement <b>started to kind of take up the baton of COVID skepticism</b>, right? And this follows the same dynamics as so many other things in American culture and politics, but <b>we would have done a lot better to tolerate and even encourage skepticism rather than pushing it out to the populist margins</b>, because now ... those are not the margins. Now we have a COVID skeptic who's positioned to head up the Department of Health and Human Services. So there again, <b>it's massive, massive blowback from the kind of reduction of authority to a kind of caricature or a zombie version of itself to leave us because we're in power and we told you so.</b> A lot of people are saying, well, no, I won't. I'll just take power instead, right? Yeah, and we spoke about sort of spirituality earlier. That almost felt like <b>a sort of religious reverence for the science</b> rather than sort of this is how you understand it and therefore... You have faith in it because you understand it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, you know, I teach history and philosophy of science. I think a lot about the epistemology of authority in this connection. And, you know, this is kind of my bailiwick long before and was long before the populist movement started gaining steam and I can affirm, as an expert, and you have to listen to me because i'm an expert. <b>Science never won its authority by command.</b> You know, by saying, believe us. And so <b>it was just such a distortion of the actual role of the institution of science in society that it's not surprising that many, many people smelled something fishy.</b></bq> I thought this was great and have no notes.