This was right around the time that "cancel culture" was crystallizing into something the mainstream was willing to weaponize as a talking point, and I think some of the Chapo group and their media orbit started getting clammy about getting cancelled around that time. That Harper's Ferry letter, and what have you. IMO, they were trying to contribute their stance to the "discourse" of the time, and their obvious-but-unstated worry about getting cancelled and losing their meal ticket caused them to hew towards views like this.
They seem to have mostly course-corrected in the last year ('they' being the main three of the show, Taibbi is off the deep end lmao), but there was definitely a time period between the BLM protests and the peak of pandemic fatigue in mid-to-late 2021 where they were really starting to lean into their distaste of liberals a bit too mindlessly, and they were popping out some weird fucking takes because of it. Felix all but explicitly turning into an anti-masker and having a meltdown on Twitter about having to wear a mask in the gym, and Christman having that phase where he was giga-braining his way into why lifting the lockdown and giving up on vaccine mandates was fine, actually, was a real fucking low point for the vibes of the show.
Didn't all that stuff come after this? This episode was fairly close to the start of the pandemic. The Riots happened, and they kind of stopped recording consistently for a bit and then ignored it. Then they came out with this take. They also were all offended that some fans wanted them to cover it. It kind of seemed like they too heavily invested in the Bernie thing and didn't really have any imagination left on what to do if it came to be or failed. I don't listen to them and was never a consistent listener.
I've listened to them since they did an episode making fun of the Chuds at Charlottesville and you are right in the respect that they had a lot of hope and faith place in the Bernie campaign. With no real game plan aside from that tbh
This was right around the time that "cancel culture" was crystallizing into something the mainstream was willing to weaponize as a talking point, and I think some of the Chapo group and their media orbit started getting clammy about getting cancelled around that time. That Harper's Ferry letter, and what have you. IMO, they were trying to contribute their stance to the "discourse" of the time, and their obvious-but-unstated worry about getting cancelled and losing their meal ticket caused them to hew towards views like this.
They seem to have mostly course-corrected in the last year ('they' being the main three of the show, Taibbi is off the deep end lmao), but there was definitely a time period between the BLM protests and the peak of pandemic fatigue in mid-to-late 2021 where they were really starting to lean into their distaste of liberals a bit too mindlessly, and they were popping out some weird fucking takes because of it. Felix all but explicitly turning into an anti-masker and having a meltdown on Twitter about having to wear a mask in the gym, and Christman having that phase where he was giga-braining his way into why lifting the lockdown and giving up on vaccine mandates was fine, actually, was a real fucking low point for the vibes of the show.
Didn't all that stuff come after this? This episode was fairly close to the start of the pandemic. The Riots happened, and they kind of stopped recording consistently for a bit and then ignored it. Then they came out with this take. They also were all offended that some fans wanted them to cover it. It kind of seemed like they too heavily invested in the Bernie thing and didn't really have any imagination left on what to do if it came to be or failed. I don't listen to them and was never a consistent listener.
I've listened to them since they did an episode making fun of the Chuds at Charlottesville and you are right in the respect that they had a lot of hope and faith place in the Bernie campaign. With no real game plan aside from that tbh