> He may have been a racist bigot, I sense an inner authoritarian coming out of their pupa here. > even the far right tends to have a little grudging respect

> He may have been a racist bigot, I sense an inner authoritarian coming out of their pupa here. > even the far right tends to have a little grudging respect for the ability of someone like Noam Chomsky The "far right" has about as much respect for Noam Chomsky as the "far left" has for John Birch. Which is to say, they view him as a peddler of hateful conspiracy theories that his low information followers unquestioningly believe. A dangerous person that should be silenced. If you think otherwise, you are fooling yourself about any supposed admiration there is for Chomsky. > It's about the gutter-level quality of the voices. Now are you talking about Chomsky again? Because you still think that the right is objectively worse than the left and that's just not the case. Some people are just natural authoritarians and any opposing views are "gutter discourse" whereas their own enlightened views have to be grudgingly admired. That's not how it works. And I would not recommend that anyone read Chomsky because the value of his political commentary really is the same as that of John Birch, IMO. There are some important nuggets of insight, but you have to be immunized against all the conspiracy theories and hate, and most readers don't have the appropriate background to handle it. They will come away with a feeling of faux-insight that is just a bubble of misinformation. And they tend to be very angry and militant. We need less of that. > but instead just use snark to try to make other people seem less funny There's no need to bring John Oliver into the discussion. There is lots of snark, but I agree it's not helpful to focus on it. > I'm not sure where this level of insight can come from? Yes, the snark is a real problem.