The Stupidest Article You'll Read This Week: Masha Gessen, "Why Are Some Journalists Afraid of 'Moral Clarity'?"

Funny how all the unquestionable moral facts about which we can have "moral clarity," according to Gessen, are those propositions accepted by the left. She quotes some Lowrey fellow:

For Lowery, moral clarity is, he wrote, “first and foremost, about objective facts. Nazis are bad—objective fact. Black lives matter—objective fact. Climate change is real—objective fact. President Trump is a liar—objective fact.” In his Times Op-Ed, Lowery added that moral clarity involves naming what we observe without resorting to euphemisms, which includes labelling the President a racist. Moral clarity can also describe the journalist’s own position in relationship to the subject matter. “So often the questions that get the best/most insightful answers are posed from a place of moral clarity,” Lowery tweeted. “Questioning someone powerful from a place of ‘neutrality’ often, in practice, results in journalism that is inappropriately soft in its framing.”

So...Nazis are bad alright. Who disputes that, exactly? Black lives matter--ambiguous. True proposition taken as such. But the intention is to refer to the BLM organization and its views--which views are generally misleading or outright false. After that, things go downhill fast. Climate change...well...the climate changes...but, then, that's not what he means. And what he means is probably not an objective fact at all. President Trump is a liar? Well, he has lied. And his opponents have lied about him at least as much. And he lied less than Joe Biden. And less than the NYT lied about him. So--is he a liar? By the standards of American politics and public life, I mean? I've often argued that he's more of a bullshitter than a liar. And, as Dave Chappell has put it: at last he's an honest liar. He may bullshit a lot, but he's also laying a lot of important truths on you that no one else in D.C. will say. 

   When lefty journalists like Gessen say they want "moral clarity" instead of objectivity, what they really mean is: We don't want to have to tell you what people to our right actually think, don't want to tell you their side of the story, don't want to have to take their arguments seriously nor even state them. We just want to be able to state our ideological dogmas. And then, apparently: say "objective fact" after them... 

   And Gessen isn't really talking about "moral clarity," anyway. She's talking about ideological dogmatism. She's obviously filled to the brim with certainty...but most of it seems to be wrong. Dogmatism is the order of the day on the left. The vanguard of the progressive left is nothing if not convicted. They think they are right about everything, and everyone to their right is evil and wrong about everything. They have no time for the suggestion that they might be wrong about anything. The ideas of fallibilism and fallibility have never, apparently, entered their blue-dyed little heads. 

   Dogmatists are dangerous. Radicals are dangerous. Idiots are dangerous. Idiotic radical dogmatists...they are off the scale dangerous.

   Gessen and her ilk are dangerous--and of a type known to be dangerous. They are the last people you ever want to be in positions of power, running the show.

   I don't have the time or the heart to slog through the rest of that vat of nonsense Gessen has assembled.