Meanwhile, over at redstate, 1/18/2021

 I have a feeling I will be writing a bunch of these.  In an article criticizing Ben Sasse for crtiticizing Qanon, Jeff Charles ends with this line.

"On the right, we must ensure that this asinine fairy tale doesn’t give the left enough ammo to paint us all as conspiracy lunatics. Still, most of us know that this fringe element by no means represents the conservative movement or the Republican Party."

The irony here is that so many articles at redstate do exactly this:  they take the actions of one "leftist" and use it to prove that the left is the "thought police" or whatever the latest attack is.  Just today, there were articles using what is known as the fallacy of composition, which Charles says is unfair:

Looks Like We Got Another 'Winner': New 'Squad' Member Opens Her Mouth & PROVES IT

 GOP Committed CHEMICAL WARFARE by Not Wearing Masks Says Clueless Elected Official 

Ever Had a Hard Time Understanding Someone's Accent? A Professor Says You're Guilty of 'Linguistic Racism' 

The list goes on and on.  And if you read daily (which is really difficult to do) and you dive into the comments from readers, this tactic is very effective.  The comments on these articles are often "see, this is how the left....", ie drawing a general conclusion from a specific case.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My response to yet another misleading editorial on Direct Cash Payments from the WaPo board

 Please show me your magic wand of "targeting."  This is the 4th article you have published, second from the editorial board against Direct Cash Payments.  And the 4th time that your "targeting" has remained vague at best.  Until you explain exactly how you plan to "target" AND get the relief to people as soon as possible, you are wrong.  Direct cash transfers are the most progressive idea out there, in general. Your arguments: 1. People who don't need it will get it.  Mine: people who DO need it won't unless your "targeting" is 100% efficient. 2. Unemployment benefits would be better.  Mine: that misses a large swath of people, including gig workers and stay at home parents (who are staying at homer to educate their children).  AND it is a drag on employment. 3. It's expensive.  Mine: So is giving everyone a free vaccine which I assume we both support.  At what price is a human life not worthy of being saved.  The tax code
Read more

Envision a new premise

There are some foundational, yet quite simple and elegant, ideas that inform my consciousness.  I have already touched on a few but let me be more specific. "There is no one right way to live"  Daniel Quinn in Ishmael . I have greatly enjoyed Quinn's books for they forced me out of the ineffective spiral that is issue based politics into a more holistic approach to what has been going on here.  The idea above is so simple yet if you lived by it, so meaningful.  What does "there is no one right way to live" imply? If there is no one right way then most of the folly of the world is put into a different focus - as attempts to make people live what one group deemed the "one right way".  Timely is the disintegration of the Iraqi "state".  Josh Marshall nailed it when he said the long term causes lie at the feet of the map drawers in 1917 in Paris and London, but nonetheless, the basic premise of the Iraq war was the Unites States trying to m
Read more

Economic Inequality is the problem; Our politics needs to address it

Image
A Single Chart that Everyone Needs to See Trip Powers How is this chart not a part of every Democratic candidates campaign? I found this video on YouTube years ago and it still shocks me every time I see it. Entitled simply, Wealth Inequality in America , it provides such a clear answer to the root causes of our problems. Yet, I am convinced that the vast majority of Americans are ignorant to the dramatic extent of inequality in our country. As this video shows, what we believe is the actual distribution of wealth is far removed from reality. Screenshot from Wealth Inequality in America video on YouTube. Reuse allowed. This truth i s also shown in a Princeton Study that warns that America is no longer a democracy, but is now an oligarchy. In short, this study finds that the wealthy always win, and the people only sometimes win in the political process. However, making people aware of the depth of the problem is just the first step. Public opinion polling finds that people are
Read more