The title of this post might strike some readers as being odd, given that I hold a number of contrarian views—most notably the claim that the Fed caused the 2008 recession with a tight money policy.
When I say don’t be a contrarian, I mean don’t be someone whose entire identity is contrarianism. Don’t be a person who notices, “The elites say X, therefore I need to search out evidence that ‘not X’ is true.” Guess what, it is almost always possible to find at least some evidence that not X is true; that doesn’t make it wise to hold the view that not X is true.
Instead, I’d suggest that the best way to respond to the claim that X is true is to look for all sorts of evidence about X, both supportive and opposed. In most cases, you will discover that the elites are correct; X really is true. The moon landing was not faked. Oswald did kill JFK.
So by all means you should be willing to hold contrarian views. But don’t be a contrarian. Don’t adopt contrarianism as an identity in the way that a person might be a Cubs fan or a Yankee fan, rooting for their team.
This post was motivated by an Axios article that contained this tweet:
Imagine a pundit starts their career by making a bold contrarian claim, and achieves a certain degree of fame. Perhaps their initial bold claim actually turns out to be true. Over time, the pundit may begin to see him or herself as a contrarian, and feel pressure from their audience to supply increasingly contrarian takes. It’s at that point when the key mistake gets made, when a person moves from being someone that holds a particular contrarian view to someone whose stock and trade is contrarianism.
And this does not happen in a vacuum. Other pundits may be pursuing the same general career path. In the competition for readers, pundits are pressured to supply more and more edgy takes, to stand out from the crowd. This competition can only end in one place, dipping one’s toes into the most taboo political opinions of all. Just as all political debates eventually make the Nazi comparison, descents into contrarianism eventually soft peddle Nazi crimes.
(Or, if the contrarian pundit is on the left, they end up excusing communist crimes.)