Where Was I Going With That?

This is a post with links

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I’ve been thinking about something I head Pete Buttigieg say.[1] It was in an interview on Pod Save America and he was talking about how Democrats could regain the midwest/white working class vote. This topic is litigated with some frequency and is pretty problematic seeing as there are a ton of non-white working class people that are constantly overlooked, but he made what I see as a broader point. He invoked a concept that gets bandied about by people who discuss this issue: the concept of “not talking down to them.”

He gave an example: a liberal lawyer[2] goes up to a Republican voting midwesterner, and complains that the midwesterner is voting against their own interest. This is another point that gets brought up when trying to crack the white code; how could these people act so illogically? The midwesterner replies to the lawyer: “Well so are you.” Anyways, I thought that his little anecdote was a good illustration of the potential for condescension and paternalism that can come with being a liberal.

Sportswriters Love Marriotts More Than You Love Anything Permalink
Joe Lemire

I have stayed at many a Marriott hotel. But compared to these people, I have never even seen a Marriott.

The Rise of the Pedantic Professor Permalink
Sam Fallon

I’m using this as a prop to reiterate an annoyance I have with the scientific community (and academic community writ large, I guess). My annoyance is essentially the thesis of this article, that oftentimes, academic types[3] focus too much on being “correct,” as opposed to “right,” or, like “making a cogent/coherent/convincing argument.” And I know that I am not innocent in all this, I have been a pedant in my life.

The most recognizable microcosm of this phenomenon about which I rant and rave is the “well actually” guy. It’s ignoring, intentionally or not, the broader point for the satisfaction of being able to point out a technical problem with an argument. And all this is not to say that being technically correct is per se pointless.[4] But it shouldn’t be the entire point of an argument. If the fulcrum of a debate or of an argument is a technical point, then the parties can just look it up and the debate will be settled; philosophical and moral disagreements are not settled so easily.

The Oppression of the Supermajority Permalink
Tim Wu

I read this dude’s book.[5] Antitrust laws should be enforced more rigorously.

The Making of the Fox News White House Permalink
Jane Meyer

The lack of surprise that I felt upon reading this article was probably the most disturbing part of it.

E Pluribus Unum? Permalink
Stacey Abrams

Yay Stacey Abrams.

Private Mossad for Hire Permalink
Adam Entous and Ronan Farrow

Unlike the Fox News article, this one had me kinda freaking out. And it’s one thing to interfere in a high profile national election, but to screw around in such a specific election seems almost sociopathic.[6]

  1. Yes, I did have to look up how to spell his name. ↩︎

  2. I’m pretty sure lawyer was essentially a stand in for “person of means.” ↩︎

  3. I’m including myself in that group, even though I am not currently in academia. ↩︎

  4. Again, relating this to my engineering education, I tend to get annoyed when efficiency is used as the ultimate benchmark for efficacy, but efficiency is, obviously, not in and of itself a vice. And a lot of the time efficiency is measured narrowly, i.e., in terms of dollars and/or time (the two are equivalent in a capitalist society). To take a contemporary example, A.I. is an efficient tool for classifying data, e.g., finding hate speech on Facebook or identifying obscenity on YouTube; there are great fiscal gains in not having to pay human beings to do things. But the built in biases to such a system are inefficient in a much different way. ↩︎

  5. The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age. Basically a pamphlet, just 150 pages. ↩︎

  6. Not that it’s okay to screw around in a higher profile election. ↩︎