Oh, wait, now I see. M. Gessen is trans or something, refers to whatever he/she is as “they,” and the fact that “her”their” gender identity is non-traditional means that “their” opinion on political matters must have value. No, of course it makes no sense, but never mind. That’s the Times these days. It still doesn’t excuse letting someone who thinks like this have a platform in the most read newspaper in the country.

The Times provided a transcript to the podcast called “The Real Loser of the V.P. Debate.” Here are some representative quotes (in my view, the podcast isn’t worth listening to):

• On the earlier Trump-Harris debate: “And so, while there were some, I would say, halfhearted attempts at fact-checking Donald Trump, basically, it turned into a ‘he said, she said,’ where on the one side you had a lie and on the other side you had facts.”

This is routine Axis cant, and normally I would quit reading any piece that signals such deliberate misrepresentation as that. Harris made more a few major counter-factual assertions. It’s just that the ABC moderators let them go.

• “When you place lies and facts on an even footing, it basically creates a political sphere in which there’s no fact-based reality. That’s a pre-totalitarian condition. You can’t have politics if you don’t have a shared reality and if you don’t place an absolute value on the truth. I think that normalization degrades our political life and degrades our understanding of politics.”

Heavens to Betsy, who does “they” think “they” are talking about? (Supposedly it’s Vance and Trump.) “It isn’t what it is” has been the unofficial motto of the Biden Administration. Walz stating that the First Amendment doesn’t protect misrepresentations and hate speech is “fact-based reality”?

• “We, as journalists, do our absolute worst when we engage in a kind of false evenhandedness. What I think their thinking was — and I can only conjecture — but their thinking was probably: We have one candidate who is in the habit of lying, as is his running mate. Let’s find a way that we can show that we’re equally critical of both candidates.”

Again, who is “they” talking about? Walz appears to be a pathological liar, and when he’s caught, he says, “I misspoke.” Harris’s whole campaign is a lie, as Bernie Sanders told MSNBC: she’s pretending to be moderate so she can be elected.

• “Also, there is a predicament that we’re in, that we do have an election coming up in which one of the candidates is a liar and an aspiring autocrat and the other is not those things.”

And AGAIN, who is “they” talking about? Harris’s partner unilaterally pulled the troops out of Afghanistan. Biden has repeatedly tried to end around the Constitution, as with the student loan pay-off. He tried to use the pandemic emergency power after the pandemic was over. Harris is the Presidential nominee only because shady, faceless back-room power-brokers gave her the nomination without a single American having the chance to choose her out of a slate of competitors. If this isn’t a pre-totalitarian condition, what is?

• “I think we need a harm reduction philosophy of covering Trump and his party and the election. And these are some things to consider: One is to cut his or Vance’s mic when they start lying. And I know this is a hugely controversial idea, and it’s usually controversial because it will enable them to scream censorship, but there needs to be a philosophy of journalism that is oriented toward the public good.”

Really: hilarious. This is his “controversial idea: censorship, with biased, partisan journalists like “them” deciding what ideas and statements are “harmful.” It’s not controversial at all: it’s against the principles of journalism, fairness, and free speech. Self-anointed arbiters of the public good like “them” think they are qualified and trustworthy enough to do this. The fact that they embrace the fantasy proves that “they” and the other theys are not.

• “When I talk to my students about it, I always say: Imagine that information is water and some of the water is poisoned. And if you are tasked with conveying the water to the public, it would be a crime for you to convey poisoned water. And I think that political lies, lies in the public sphere, are just as poisonous to our politics as poisoned water is to humans. And if we think of ourselves as conveyors, as mediators, as media, who transport this information, this water, then we have this abiding responsibility to do something about it. We can’t just turn to one of the candidates and say, “I’d like to see you take a sip of that. And see what happens to you.”

Wait, somebody actually lets this censorious asshat teach students this crap? What a terrible analogy! Whether water is poison is something that can be objectively determined. Poison kills you. Ideas don’t kill; words don’t kill. Ideas can be countered with better ideas; words can be neutralized by different words. Ironically, that paragraph by Gessen is as “poisonous” they come, but he shouldn’t be stopped from expressing it. However, it is still irresponsible to present him as a respected teacher or a pundit worth listening to. Let him stand on a box on a street corner.

• “I think we also need to figure out ways to contextualize the candidates.”

Again, hilarious! Gessen’s Axis buddies have been “contexualizing” Trump for about a decade: he’s evil, a liar, Hitler redux, a threat to democracy. Vance is “weird.” Harris is young, joyful, brilliant. Walz is America’s Dad.

Gessen’s diatribe is a smoking gun endorsement of rigging elections and a rejection of free speech while advancing the horrible idea that “journalists” like “them” should be the arbiters of what news gets reported and what candidates are allowed to have the public hear.

The arrogance, hypocrisy, ignorance, self-delusion, bias and rejection of democratic values is breath-taking.