> In this case, his both-siderist argument is that liberal leaning journalists and commentators are just as guilty as those on the right, because they (according to him) feel pressured to use the word "coup" rather than the more accurate term "insurrection".
This is a beautifully constructed strawman argument. Taibbi's claim is there a unified underlying incentive structure that has manifested in emergent behavior across all of the media. Your mental model about tribes is purely incidental: it is tribeless, so the idea of "sides" even coming into it is your own construction. The reason Taibbi uses the tribalist framing to articulate arguments is because it helps readers understand the alternative sub-incentives that lead to different emergent phenomena grounded in the same root incentives.
The reason Taibbi's explanation should be taken seriously at this point, beyond it's intuitive explanatory power and first-principles oriented construction, is because it's proven itself quite predictive in the broad strokes of this march towards a civil war, even if it cannot predict the specifics.
"Taibbi's claim is there a unified underlying incentive structure that has manifested in emergent behavior across all of the media."
There are really two underlying incentive structures.
1) The media as a whole is incentivized by news which provokes an emotional reaction.
2) Fox "News" and other right-wing news and opinion sources operate as a disinformation/propaganda arm, formerly for the Republican Party, and now on behalf of Trump.
In the first case, people are given news which is generally true, but tending toward the inflammatory and not necessarily newsworthy.
In the second case, there is a campaign of falsehoods and attempts to discredit perceived enemies.
You're behind the times. Fox News (and specifically people like Karl Rove and Frank Luntz) invented this weapon around the time of 9/11, but it's now commoditized technology and the Nash equilibrium seems to be that it just eats the entire media, at least when it comes to mainstream newspapers and television news networks.
A sure sign you are probably under its influence is if you see a clean partition in the way you mention. Those of us who see the propaganda for what it is, will try to convince you that you've lost the ability to recognize it in the narratives you agree with. It's hard to do, certainly, and nobody's perfect. And you don't have to believe us. I would say to apply Occam's Razor: could it be the case that the outlets you disagree with are transparent liars, but the ones you do agree with are the ones still applying, at least in general, journalistic standards? Or could it be that the incentives point in one direction, and the Fox News model has in fact eaten the world, but you haven't yet woken up to it? If one were brainwashed, seeing the world the way you do is exactly what you should expect. It doesn't mean you are, but you can't rule it out. It's a lot easier for me to rule it out when I can point to transparent lies from both sides, regularly, and dispassionately.
We're going to keep trying to explain it to you since if we don't become critical thinkers again we're fucked.
This is a beautifully constructed strawman argument. Taibbi's claim is there a unified underlying incentive structure that has manifested in emergent behavior across all of the media. Your mental model about tribes is purely incidental: it is tribeless, so the idea of "sides" even coming into it is your own construction. The reason Taibbi uses the tribalist framing to articulate arguments is because it helps readers understand the alternative sub-incentives that lead to different emergent phenomena grounded in the same root incentives.
The reason Taibbi's explanation should be taken seriously at this point, beyond it's intuitive explanatory power and first-principles oriented construction, is because it's proven itself quite predictive in the broad strokes of this march towards a civil war, even if it cannot predict the specifics.