It's pretty clear the author of that article just has an issue with Peterson, and made several dishonest points to get there. Not really anything of value in your work if you have to lie to get there.
The point he made was fair enough, and I can even stand for a bit of lying to get there. In a sense, Peterson's ascension does signal a sense of desperation, to have somewhat intelligent-sounding people speaking in our stead. But I wouldn't necessarily bring up Peterson as an example of intellectual corrosion in the modern day.
Who was the most prominent intellectual before Peterson got on the scene? Joe Rogan? Bill Maher? John Oliver? In that sense, I think Peterson represents an upwards movement. Atleast he's an academic of some merit. Not just a random guy with a podcast and a huge audience. Or a part-comedian/part-political commentary. He's a man that actually attempts to take himself, and what he says, seriously.
This opens up possibilities for other academics to potentially even upstage Peterson's success, as long as they're willing to put in the work to become part of the public debate. Regardless of whether they reside on the right, or the left. With enough wits and rhetoric, the scene is wide open. The hacks that mostly populate it, aren't going to serve as obstacles, unless you lower yourself to their level.
I would say that it is preferable that Peterson is there, than if he wasn't. Because what if he wasn't? Do people want Donald Trump to be the sole representative of right-wing, conservative thought? Perhaps that would make things easier on the left, I suppose. But sometimes you need to worry about more than just having it "easy".
The left in America has had it plenty easy with mostly having to argue against religious nutjobs, Fox News and the Bush regime, for the past decades. Those people discredited themselves long before they got into any arguments. Peterson, at the very least, offers the kind of competition that the left has clearly not readied themselves for, because of the low level of ideological rivals. That's why we often see people resorting to misrepresentation, spinning, deflecting, because they've become used to that being the norm, with the Fox News/neo-con types. It's as if they've assumed the platform they used to fight against, for themselves.
Their own intellectual corrosion, is what they ought to be worried about.
