Beyond Left and Right: Choosing Intellectual Honesty Over Political Tribes

In a recent episode of The Capitalist Corner, Michael Liebowitz shared a deeply personal account of his political evolution - from devoted conservative to someone who blindly trusts neither side. His journey offers crucial lessons about the dangers of tribal thinking and the importance of intellectual independence in an era of sophisticated political propaganda.

The Conservative Years

Michael wasn't always skeptical of political movements. For years, he was exactly the kind of conservative that movement leaders dream of. He idolized Ronald Reagan, listened to Rush Limbaugh religiously, and watched Fox News Sunday every week with Brit Hume as his absolute favorite commentator. He even had the privilege of exchanging letters with William F. Buckley, who agreed to mentor him.

Like many conservatives, he completely distrusted mainstream media. He could see their left-wing bias clearly - the way they'd frame tax cuts as "giveaways for the rich" rather than "people keeping more of their money." He wasn't wrong about that bias, but he made the fatal error of assuming that meant conservative media was automatically more trustworthy.

"I totally distrusted and mistrusted the mainstream media. I knew they had a left wing bias," Michael explained. "It wasn't that I thought that they were necessarily lying, but the slant they would put on stories. It showed me where they stood."

Michael supported every Republican presidential candidate up until Donald Trump. When Trump ran in the primary, he first backed Rand Paul, then Ted Cruz. He would have happily supported either in a general election. This wasn't someone predisposed to hate Republicans or conservative ideas.

The First Crack: Iraq War Reality

His first real wake-up call came during the Iraq War. The mainstream media was reporting constant bad news about the war's progress, while Rush Limbaugh kept telling his audience that things were going much better than reported. The Weekly Standard ran articles comparing critics of the war to people who might have given up on the American Revolution in early 1776.

Michael bought into it completely. The mainstream media was lying, Rush had it right, and the war was going well.

Except it wasn't. There were no weapons of mass destruction. The war wasn't going well. The mainstream media, for all their bias, had been more accurate about the basic facts than the conservative sources he trusted.

"Turns out that wasn't the case. The war in Iraq wasn't going well. There weren't these weapons of mass destruction that we were told they, you know, they were gonna find," Michael reflected. "So that was my first hint. Well, something's off here. I trusted Rush, but you know, maybe he got this wrong. He, anybody can get one thing wrong."

The Second Crack: Hurricane Sandy

The second crack came during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Sean Hannity was so forceful in claiming this was "Obama's Katrina" that it felt like watching someone try to jam a square peg into a round hole. The comparison was strained beyond credibility, yet Hannity pushed it relentlessly.

"So that was my second sort of hint that I could not trust conservative media either,"  Michael noted.

Two strikes. But he still wasn't ready to abandon conservative media entirely.

The Trump Transformation

Then came 2016, and everything became crystal clear.

Michael’s views on Trump weren't shaped by mainstream media attacks. They came from Trump's own words about women, his clear patterns of lying, and his obvious character flaws that were visible to anyone paying attention. From watching The Apprentice, where Trump regularly criticized people for not throwing their teammates under the bus. 

"My viewpoint of Donald Trump has been shaped by him. His comments, watching The Apprentice, for instance, where he criticized people for not throwing their teammates under the bus," he explained.

Yet suddenly, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh were defending everything about Trump. Not just his policies - his character, his lies, his behavior. Anyone who opposed Trump, even solid conservatives like Ben Sasse, suddenly became "elites" in Hannity's telling.

The intellectual contortions were breathtaking. These same hosts had spent over a decade defending George W. Bush, but when Trump called Bush an outright liar about Iraq, there was no pushback. None. After years of promoting free trade, Trump's tariffs were suddenly fine too.

"Trump called George W. Bush a liar. Iraq, Iraq. Didn't say Bush was wrong. Called them an outright liar, but Hannity and Limbaugh had spent years and years defending Bush, but there was no pushback on that. Nothing," Liebowitz observed. 

"Then after I had listened to Limbaugh and Hannity, push free trade for over a decade now, here comes tariff man. That was okay."

The Great Conservative Reversal

What really sealed it for Michael was watching the wholesale reversal of conservative opinion leaders. Glenn Beck had called Trump supporters dangerous, comparing them to the French Revolution. Mark Levin called Trump a "New York City bully." JD Vance called him "America's Hitler." Politicians like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and others said he couldn't be trusted.

"There were talk show hosts like Glen Beck. And Mark Levin. Glenn Beck was saying that this was like the French Revolution. The Trump people were just out to destroy," Michael recalled. "Mark Levin called him a New York City bully and was criticizing him to no end. The politicians that said that Trump could not be trusted. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio... All said he could not be trusted."

Then, when it became financially and politically expedient, they all flipped. Trump went from being Hitler to being the savior of America.

"All of a sudden when it became financially and politically in their interest to do so, they all defend and support Trump. Trump went from being a Hitler to, to being, no, he's good," Liebowitz observed.

"So I started to, I really just said, okay, these guys just are not credible any longer. They're just in the tank for Trump," Michael concluded about conservative media at this point.

Either their initial judgment was catastrophically bad, making them useless as guides, or they abandoned their principles for personal benefit, making them untrustworthy as sources of information.

"Now then all of these people, either their judgment is just incredibly bad in the first place. When they assess Trump as this evil person that could not be president that we couldn't trust in the office, they were just horribly bad. In which case I have no use for them. But more likely they didn't just have a change of heart. What they did was saw, okay, I see which way the wind's blowing. Let me set my sail in that direction."

The Pattern Becomes Clear

The final piece fell into place when Michael looked at Trump's own personnel choices. He promised to hire "the best people." Then he chose Rex Tillerson, John Kelly, James Mattis, John Bolton, William Barr, and Mike Pence - all of whom later said he was unfit for office.

"Now, these were all people that Trump chose. After Trump told us all, he's gonna pick the best people. So he picked all these people who subsequently said he's no good. Now he says they're liars again. Either they are liars, in which case his judgment's horrible or they're telling the truth and he's unfit for office."

Michael also noted Trump's deliberate strategy for his second term: "We also know that heading in, this whole political season, that Trump was going to try to fill his cabinet and, you know, his advisors with yes men, people who were not going to push back on him, people who were going to go along with what he said."

Information Warfare in Real Time

Recent events perfectly illustrate how the propaganda machine works. Multiple high-profile MAGA figures shared a story claiming 274 FBI agents were "embedded" in the January 6th crowd - clearly implying they were there to instigate violence.

Michael had previously read claims about 24 FBI agents, so 274 seemed significant if true. He didn't know much about the author, John Solomon, so he looked him up: "He does have a right wing bias, but he's pretty accurate in his reporting."

Michael decided to check the original source himself: "So I actually went in and I read the article by John Solomon and sure enough, in the actual article written by the guy John Solomon, the article says that the uh, 274 FBI agents were deployed to the capitol after the violence began."

But then something strange happened. When Michael tried to discuss the article with Grok, the AI told him "the article doesn't state a timeline for when the FBI agents arrived."

"And I said, wait a second. What are you talking about? I've read the article numerous times. How are you saying that it, it's, there's no timeline."

Grok insisted there was no timeline. Michael went back, got the exact quote from the article, and posted it to Grok. The AI responded that it wasn't a quote from the article.

"So I'm like, what the hell is this thing talking about? So I actually shared the article with Grok and I said, look, here's the article."

The response from Grok was that "the article has been updated and changed from what it said originally."

The article Michael was reading - the one that clearly stated the agents were sent after the violence began - was the updated version. 

"Now, why would John Solomon change the article from what it said originally?" Liebowitz asked. "Could it be because there was pushback from people who knew, who came out and said, no, this is inaccurate. They were sent afterwards. They were sent there afterwards. So John Solomon changed the story."

The Responsibility of Independent Thinking

Michael’s journey reveals a crucial insight: the problem isn't that any particular side lies more than the other. The problem is tribal thinking itself.

When you commit to a political tribe, you inevitably start filtering information through the lens of what helps your team rather than what's actually true. You begin accepting claims without proper verification because they support your preferred narrative.

"These folks, and by folks I mean the MAGA influencers and MAGA politicians are liars. Over and over again. They lie to shape a narrative that they want people to believe. They are base, demagogues and propagandists."

Michael no longer cares if pointing out these patterns gets him labeled with "TDS" or called a liberal. He's never supported a single Democratic candidate in his life, but he refuses to let that history trap him into accepting lies from Republicans either.

The Freedom in Intellectual Independence

The lesson from Michael's evolution isn't about choosing different political sides. It's about rejecting the tribal framework entirely when it comes to evaluating truth claims.

"I am not gonna believe it because Trump says so, because Pam Bondi says so, because Kash Patel says so. Nor am I gonna believe it because Tucker Carlson, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, or the rest say so. I'm gonna need a hell of a lot more than that."

This isn't cynicism - it's intellectual freedom. And in an era of sophisticated propaganda from all sides, that freedom is more valuable than any tribal affiliation.

The truth is that most people who fall for obvious propaganda aren't stupid. They're tribal. They want their team to win more than they want to know what's actually happening. Michael understands that impulse, but refuses to indulge it anymore. He'd rather be intellectually honest and politically isolated than intellectually corrupted and politically accepted.

As Michael concluded in his Capitalist Thought of the Day: "It is on us, the American people, on you to pay attention to make sure your sources are good, to double check, recheck, and understand what it is you're reading. And do not fall for demagoguery and propaganda."

The Constitution will survive skepticism about political movements. Whether it will survive collective willingness to believe anything that makes our preferred team look good and the opposing team look bad remains an open question.

The price of intellectual freedom is eternal vigilance - not just against government overreach, but against our own tribal instincts that make us easy targets for those who profit from our prejudices.

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