I watched 30m of a Peterson lecture a co-worker recommended to me. It kind of opened my eyes. Peterson is basically a ‘motivational speaker’ that presents himself as an academic well enough to fool people that only understand academic aesthetics. He doesn’t even try to back up his claims or references, he just makes wildly abstract and generalized claims about human civilization and draws analogies that support that perspective. They sound right enough to people that want to believe that there is an expression of their culture that is inherently ‘good’ and all of civilization’s problems are based on corruptions of that culture. But in the minds of his fans he’s offering ‘proof’ of this perspective by appearing academic, even though he offers none.

I highly recommend watching his debates with Sam Harris

It really shines a light on what a fake sophist charlatan Peterson is. Harris is so clear and plainspoken in comparison.

People don’t actually like the smart and capable. They like bombastic, big mouth bullies who deliver sound bites and agree with them, or worse yet just a guy they recognize.

Everyone complains about how we only have old guys running for President, when we had several other options in the last primaries. We just picked the worst ones because the others seemed “boring” or people didn’t know them