If you hate intelligent discourse, you cringe at good faith dialectic, your attention span is too short to listen to nuance or expertise, and you’re the sort who shows your approval through whoops and snaps, this is the podcast for you. Designed to regurgitate tired platitudes that signal allegiance to the tribe rather than explore ideas beyond the Overton window of the ingroup for which the hosts are constantly waving their flags, the Majority Report comes complete with a predictable body of talking points that lack depth or any understanding of the issues being discussed. Understanding isn’t necessary when your objective is to deliver laugh lines to please a crowd of what must be fanatic high schoolers. Most of us older than high-school age refrain from forming strong opinions on things we don’t understand. The cast of the Majority Report do not share this reservation. They are emboldened by high school level rhetoric, by faith claims that supplant reality, by lazy thinking and the inability to engage seriously with important ideas. I haven’t seen anyone so oblivious to their own cluelessness since Malcolm Gladwell’s appearance in two Munk debates. The Majority Report exudes the same character as conservative talk radio, in both the delivery of its hosts and in the complexity of their thought. The show is great for fans of thought-terminating cliches, Motte and Baileys, idioms of non-argument, intimations of absurdity, and hosts who spend more time practicing their tonal inflection than developing substantive knowledge about anything. The final nail here is that Sam has explicitly stated that lying for the tribe and ideological purity is more important than telling the truth. The show’s listeners have to be a gullible, thoughtless sort.
Case in point: look at the positive reviews for this podcast. Everyone saying good things is mumbling simplistic partisan platitudes, waving tribal flags, and blathering bland unspecific praise. The audience can’t be any smarter than the hosts.
