Ordinarily, I like to focus on good writing and ignore the bad. But this WaPo op-ed is such a classic illustration of how to reinforce closed minds on your own side that I am willing to violate my own rule. Adam Laats writes,
At moments when American culture has taken some progressive turn, conservatives have consistently blamed a single culprit for indoctrinating vulnerable youth with radical ideas: public schools. Local school board meetings offer an attractively close-to-hand target — a place to vent frustrations and feel some measure of control, instead of admitting defeat.
The theme is that conservatives are trying to “turn back the clock.” This is classic asymmetric insight–claiming to understand the other side’s motives better than they do, and not taking their concerns at face value. At no point in his piece does Laats try to articulate what conservatives are saying about critical race theory in schools, much less steel-man their argument.
I should note that it would take only a few minutes to find an equally bad column written by a conservative. In fact, here is Victor Davis Hanson on why he left National Review. Hanson is another master of asymmetric insight. In this case, he claims that the true motives of those on the right who oppose Donald Trump are:
that’s kind of a virtue signal to the left. .. a lot of them felt it was their duty as Republican establishmentarians to tell the world they didn’t approve of Donald Trump’s tweets or his crudity.
I think that a lot of never-Trumpers genuinely believe that U.S. foreign interventions are necessary and that cutting entitlement spending is necessary. And they dislike Mr. Trump’s style because they think it damages the conservative cause.
That is the way to charitable to never-Trumpers, and those are the positions you should argue against. Just to be clear, I was not a never-Trumper, although his post-election complaints are making me one.
VDH is doing the opposite of being charitable. And he does it with the left even more. So you can like him for being on your team, but I don’t think he earns many FIT points.
I wrote The Three Languages of Politics to try to get people to reject this sort of writing and to demand better. To no avail.
Loudoun County made national news over its school board protests, including the arrest of a man for disorderly conduct. Such arrests have now been used to appeal to the FBI to declare unruly parents “domestic terrorists”.
https://twitchy.com/sarahd-313035/2021/10/11/daily-wires-luke-rosiak-has-harrowing-and-disturbing-story-of-lcps-crusade-against-father-whose-daughter-was-allegedly-raped-by-gender-fluid-student/?fbclid=IwAR3YKTmbDS9IWw5aSw8SN0rg38GzdAjIE1ZFJytSPeWAUkoOReAvkHNMRxY
https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-county-schools-tried-to-conceal-sexual-assault-against-daughter-in-bathroom-father-says
Well, it turns out that the man’s daughter had been assaulted in the high school girls room by a man claiming to be a woman. During the school board meeting in question the board denied that any sexual assaults had ever taken place in bathrooms, despite the man’s daughter having been assaulted just three weeks prior. The boy who committed the assault was transferred to another school and the matter was covered up. Now it has come out that the boy has committed another sexual assault in his new school.
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Sometimes, there is no steel manning the other side. They are just wrong and evil and should be destroyed. This “both sides-ism” gets tiring. These people deserve no charity and no understanding, only defeat and punishment.
These people deserve no charity and no understanding, when they systematically resort to the opposite of charity and understanding.
Writing a book “to try to get people to reject this sort of writing and to demand better” relies on people being capable, of anything other than shilling for their tribe.
Most of those with any power today have no such capability.
If you judge Trump by his character and personality, he may the the worst President ever, or since LBJ and Nixon.
If you judge Trump by his policies, he had some good ones, regarding China and immigration. Remember, before Trump the establishment chorus was that “China is liberalizing.”
If you judge Trump by his enemies, he may be the best President since Eisenhower.
Characterwise, Biden seems quite a lot worse, actually. The deep state had to manufacture crimes all day long to persecute Trump, while they steadfastly refuse to look at ole Biden. Seems Trump was remarkably clean. Biden is a well-known plagiarist.
However, one has to admit that Biden got a lot more ballots. A genius politician who won his campaign masked, from his basement. But the numbers defeated Trump and crushed his former boss, Obama. Super popular!
Asymmetric insight is a euphemism for the ability to read minds. When confronting such reasoning I usually tell the person. ” I never took mind reading in college. What course did you take?” Not nice but effective. If I’m familiar with the person, I start my answer with “As the Shadow, how do you ……” Also not nice but effective. For those who don’t know the Shadow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMlRpN8ANrU
The Shadow knows Alfred E Neuman.
Do you have a link for Victor Hanson’s article on why he left NR?
I think this is the link.
Was the phrase “That is the way to charitable to never-Trumpers”
meant to be “That is the way to BE charitable to never-Trumpers”?
Why should the Left change their tone? They are winning and have been winning with bad arguments for the last 50 years. All the while “pouncing” on any transgression from the Right. They have made common cause with many on the Left who are far more noxious than Trump including the Marxist leaders of BLM, antifa, and all those who supported communist regimes from Cuba to Maoist China or the Soviet Union at different points in time. Mostly it hasn’t hurt them.
The less thoughtful they are, the more successful. The less accurate, the more team spirited and tightly bound to each other. The less insightful and the less philosophical, the more powerful they get. Bad arguments don’t hurt them, except intellectually. But what matters is to keep the permanent emergency going, to hunt down the anti-American traitors and the Russian agents, to expose the domestic terrorists and to lock them up, get them fired, to comfort the comfortable and to silence the scientists. They failed to silence Dorian Abbot. But you can imagine the anger at Princeton. The mob’s going to want revenge.
I agree on cutting entitlement spending. Let’s consider that issue.
A slightly less charitable but more reasonable view is Never Trumpers don’t care about the right-wing issues they once claimed to care about and are trying to confuse, frustrate, and demotivate people from voting or supporting Republicans. And they are backed, funded, promoted, and circulated by left-wing interests who want to see Republicans lose elections.
This was just published today, by a leading Never Trumper, Jonah Goldberg, featured by Kling:
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-10-12/republican-party-trump-captive
The author of that essay doesn’t sound at all concerned about cutting entitlement spending. He sounds passionate about electing Democrats and punishing and humiliating and demotivating Republicans. I’d take him at his word. That’s not just Goldberg, most Never Trump pundits express similar views.
Never-Trumpers are the same people who spent years carping and complaining and not achieving anything except winning elections in red states and staying (barely) respectable. Then disrespectable Trump comes along and one-ups them without even noticing them. Of course they’re livid.
The uncharitable, speculative, mind-reading, but politically realistic explanation is that the NeverTrump-establishment-Republicans (loosely correlates with “neocon”) lost their seats at the table and are really, really angry about it and determined to recapture the spoils of the presidency or deny it to any other Republican sub-faction. A cool-headed political analysis simply should not end up at “yield power to the Democrats until my candidates occupy practically all of the ballots”.
Consider who is advocating “if I can’t have it, neither can you”, and what kind of influence they had during the Bush administration (2000-2008). Prior to 2016 election night, they were resigned to at least another 4 years out of the presidency, but could optimistically expect the public to eject Clinton after 4 years of her and 12 years of Democratic control. Then Trump won. Suddenly, that 12 year dead zone was extended to minimum 16 (end of Trump’s second term or perhaps first term of another Democratic administration), and conceivably 24 years (2 terms Trump, 2 terms Democratic). Not really another turn at the trough within (most of) their lifetimes. So, very bitter.
I listen to Goldberg’s podcast from time to time. I’m very confident that he is not passionate “about electing Democrats and punishing and humiliating and demotivating Republicans”.
You just can’t imagine how someone would dislike Trump’s crude personality and his anti-market rust-belt-Democrat political positions.
Please try harder.
“You just *can’t imagine* how someone would dislike Trump’s crude personality….
Please try harder.”
Nice straw-man troll-job.
You evidently “can’t imagine” that folks could have trouble with Trump’s crude personality, etc., but can see him as still better than his foes.
Please try harder.
The title of Goldberg’s op-ed from this week is “A third party to impose some pain on the Trumpified GOP”. Is that not punishing Republicans and electing Democrats? Yes, it is. And saying otherwise is just being unreasonable.
“A third party to impose some pain on the Trumpified GOP”, as if a woke Dem party isn’t a far greater danger, once gets into the weeds of what each side has been doing in the last 6-8 years.
Until NeverTrumpers start to *honestly* address the real evidence, in e.g. the Horowitz Report, they just aren’t worth talking to.
Time to move on and ignore the Trump haters (which kinda includes myself)? Who cares at this point?
#DeSantis2024
#letsgobrandon
I’ll ignore the Trump haters, when I *know* that the GOP brass (e.g. Mitch) have made clear, that *they* are ignoring the Trump haters.
It should be obvious in hindsight, but a lot of prominent pundits and news is paid to manipulate public opinion; they are deliberately dishonest. Kling’s site turned me on to Andrey Mir who says this.
The prominent “Never Trump” pundits of the last five years or so were deliberately trying to mislead and discourage Republican voters from supporting Republican politicians. They were deliberately dishonest.
I respect Kling for turning me on to people like Andrey Mir. I don’t respect Kling for endorsing what to me are obviously charlatans and liars like these particular Never Trump types. That’s not to say you can’t criticize Trump, of course you can, but that particular group was rather deliberately dishonest about it.
I’d also reiterate that a pundit or activist who was really serious about entitlement reform, as Kling claims, would ignore the political noise, and simply support the best viable candidate. Pundits and thinkers would rather complain about politicians “style” rather than stick to issues, that tells me they aren’t serious or they are trying to mislead you.