Flashy Visual Aids = Bullshit

Link to Drum's summary.

Oh, the bullshit I've seen people get away with because they were good speakers, or because they used flashy visual aids...

I actually think that cartoons, diagrams, and written versions of central claims can help the audience a lot, and I use them. But I just don't like PowerPoint. My current compromise is to hand-write and hand-draw overheads. It takes a lot more time to do this, and that helps kill the urge to overdo it, to have too many slides and too much on the page. And since I print (I stopped even trying to do the cursive thing a long, long time ago...) and can only draw stick figures, there's no danger of dazzling anybody with fancy graphics.

Beyond The Pale: Tales From The White Privilege Conference

One long facepalm.

I've always thought that it was kind of funny that the favored insults of the two ends of the internet political spectrum actually fit so well. To web liberals, the wacky right is the fever swamp. To the right, the wacky left are barking moonbats.

This story is about a conference for barking moonbats.

It's an embarrassment to liberalism that people like this get a free pass. Conservatives half this loony would be absolutely savaged by the kinds of folks I normally find myself agreeing with. But for these people to get their due measure of ridicule, we've got to look to the damn Weekly Standard.

Saints preserve us.

Administration Completes Counterterrorism Playbook

At Think Progress.

Theo Pinson To Carolina

w00t!

Roy's got a monster 2014 class so far--Joel Barry, Justin Jackson, and now Pinson. And we're said to be in the lead for Rashad Vaughn (though I'm not sure how the Pinson decision might affect that).

Beware of Chemtrails...

...sheeple.

Marcotte Criticizes the Center for Inquiry

I know I never agree with Amanda Marcotte, but, so far as I can tell, she is mistaken again here.

I read the transcript of Ronald Lindsay's offending address, and I don't see anything wrong with it. Contra Marcotte, I certainly find nothing condescending about it.

But feminism of a certain fairly common type does not tolerate criticism, so I can't say that the dust-up surprises me.

The offending 'graphs:

This brings me to the concept of privilege, a concept much in use these days. Let me emphasize at the outset that I think it’s a concept that has some validity and utility; it’s also a concept that can be misused, misused as a way to try to silence critics. In what way does it have validity? I think there is sufficient evidence to indicate that there are socially embedded advantages that men have over women, in a very general sense. These advantages manifest in various ways, such as the persistent pay gap between men and women. Also, I’m not a believer in a priori arguments, but I will say that given the thousands of years that women were subordinated to men, it would be absolutely amazing if in the space of several decades all the social advantages that men had were promptly and completely eradicated. Legislation can be very effective for securing rights, but changing deeply engrained patterns of behavior can take some time.

That said, I am concerned the concept of privilege may be misapplied in some instances. First, some people think it has dispositive explanatory power in all situations, so, if for example, in a particular situation there are fewer women than men in a given managerial position, and intentional discrimination is ruled out, well, then privilege must be at work. But that’s not true; there may be other explanations. The concept of privilege can do some explanatory work at a general level, but in particular, individualized situations, other factors may be more significant. To bring this point home let’s consider an example of another broad generalization which is unquestionably true, namely that people with college degrees earn more over their lifetime than those who have only high school diplomas. As I said, as a general matter, this is unquestionably true as statistics have shown this to be the case. Nonetheless in any particular case, when comparing two individuals, one with a high school degree and one with a college degree, the generalization may not hold.

But it’s the second misapplication of the concept of privilege that troubles me most. I’m talking about the situation where the concept of privilege is used to try to silence others, as a justification for saying, “shut up and listen.” Shut up, because you’re a man and you cannot possibly know what it’s like to experience x, y, and z, and anything you say is bound to be mistaken in some way, but, of course, you’re too blinded by your privilege even to realize that.

This approach doesn’t work.  It certainly doesn’t work for me. It’s the approach that the dogmatist who wants to silence critics has always taken because it beats having to engage someone in a reasoned argument. It’s the approach that’s been taken by many religions. It’s the approach taken by ideologies such as Marxism. You pull your dogma off the shelf, take out the relevant category or classification, fit it snugly over the person you want to categorize, dismiss, and silence and ... poof, you’re done. End of discussion. You’re a heretic spreading the lies of Satan, and anything you say is wrong. You’re a member of the bourgeoisie, defending your ownership of the means of production, and everything you say is just a lie to justify your power. You’re a man; you have nothing to contribute to a discussion of how to achieve equality for women.
Now don’t get me wrong. I think the concept of privilege is useful; in fact it is too useful to have it ossified and turned into a dogma. 

 Lindsay is wrong here: the neveau lefty/Tumbleresque concept of privilege is deeply confused. It's a mess. As we've discussed before, the problems described as problems of privilege aren't problems of privilege at all. They are problems of discrimination. The old, standard, common-sense, liberal concept is better than the neveau lefty concept, yet again. The problem is not, for example, that cops treat white people with more respect than they deserve; the problem is that they often treat non-whites with less respect than they deserve. A problem of unearned privilege can be solved by taking away the privilege. But that's not true of the problems that the trendy left has begun describing as problems of privilege. We do not solve, say, voter discrimination problems by making it harder for whites to vote...

Anyway, though Lindsay is pretty clearly wrong on that point, he still doesn't live up to Marcottian standards of wrongness. It seems that he was wrong to point out that accusations of privilege are commonly used to dogmatically squash dissent. Which they are. Marcotte, however, didn't like his examples. They abound on the interwebs, though...they really aren't hard to find... Marcotte admits that "privilege" gets used that way, but denies that it is so used by "anyone with...real power in the world." Egad. Where to begin?...

Oh, hell, better to end it here. I've wasted too much time on this already...

Evidence of a Multiverse????

link (via Reddit)

There's an ambiguity in 'universe' and 'multiverse,' though.

Something causally connected to our "universe" wouldn't count as another universe on the most common conceptions of these things in philosophy. The info in the link would actually make me think: oh, the universe may be bigger than we thought it was, not multiverse!

Did De Facto Slavery Exist Long After the Civil War?

Jesus Christ.

Just part of the story:

In the first years after the Civil War, even as former slaves optimistically swarmed into new schools and lined up at courthouses at every whisper of a hope of economic independence, the Southern states began enacting an array of interlocking laws that would make all African Americans criminals, regardless of their conduct, and thereby making it legal to force them into chain gangs, labor camps, and other forms of involuntarily servitude. By the end of 1865, every Southern state except Arkansas and Tennessee had passed laws outlawing vagrancy and defining it so vaguely that virtually any freed slave not under the protection of a white man could be arrested for the crime. An 1865 Mississippi statute required black workers to enter into labor contracts with white farmers by January 1 of every year or risk arrest. Four other states legislated that African Americans could not legally be hired for work without a discharge paper from their previous employer—effectively preventing them from leaving the plantation of the white man they worked for.

Was Reid Right About Romney's Taxes?

Possibly...

Why It's Painful to Talk to Liberals About Race: Balloon Juice/IQ Edition

Ugh.

First: you can't have a serious conversation about anything if you are using the phrase 'social construction.' That is not a serious concept for use in serious conversations. If you find yourself having the urge to think or speak of things being "socially constructed," let me recommend Hacking's The Social Construction of What?
(Which is, IMO, a bit too kind to the locution...)

It's really unfortunate that this ridiculous term has taken root. It is so unclear that it barely means anything, it is ambiguous in pretty much exactly the way that it needs to not be ambiguous, and, it puts almost any conversation it appears in into a tailspin.

Do you mean to say that something is just a fiction? Then say that. Do you mean that something is a social institution ungrounded in anything natural? Then say that. Do you mean that the thing in question is something we built? Then say that. Do you mean that the relevant category is vague? Then bloody say that. But, for God's sake, don't use the ridiculous term "social construct" or it's cognates, I beseech thee...

Second: The left (including, sadly, liberals in this case) are often desperate to deny the reality of race. This is a favorite tactic of the left (including liberals): if you don't like something--e.g. if you find it oppressive--claim that it isn't real. (Better yet, claim that it's a "social construct"...then you've said something unclear enough that you may or may not be saying that it's unreal...but you can move your position around depending on what's convenient...) Race, however, does not seem to be a fiction. It may not be a terribly clear or important category, it may actually be a category we could easily do without, it's clearly vague as hell...but it doesn't seem to be a fiction. Biologists, however, tend to say that it's not an important biological category. So it's not a fiction, but it doesn't seem to be that important. But I'm inclined to want the category to go away, too, so I I might very well be cheating on that one...

Third: A category doesn't have to be fictive (nor "socially constructed") in order to be morally irrelevant. Liberals (broadly construed) are committed to the position that categories like race and sex are not morally significant. Only a few pretty far on the intellectual left claim that sex is unreal (or "socially constructed"), but that doesn't mean that males and females are morally unequal. The attempt to make every morally/politically troublesome category fictional betrays a loss of faith in the proposition that people can be different in prominent ways, yet morally equal.

Fourth: The persistent racial IQ gap is disappointing, but it does not seem to be made up. Nobody likes this. (Well, some people do, but they are assholes.) But this does not mean that you get to lash out at people who are willing to try to discuss it dispassionately. I want it to go away, and I think that it's still reasonable to think that it might. But if it doesn't, it doesn't mean that much. Say Asians turn out to be more intelligent than everybody else. Ok. Fine. So what? Higher IQ does not mean greater moral worth. We already know that people are unequal with respect to all sorts of abilities. Moral and political equality are not grounded in equality with respect to abilities and talents.

Finally, and more specifically: if you are going to accuse somebody of being a racist, as Tim F. seems to do here, you'd better not be making a bunch of stupid mistakes. Sullivan is no racist (nor "racialist"--a handy term if you want to accuse someone of racism without doing so in a completely honest fashion...). He may be wrong, but he's on firmer ground than Mr. F.

Though, really finally: Sullivan's move here is also confused, I think. Races are kinds like: Asian, black, white and so on. It's all terribly unclear. Jewish? Is that a race? Who knows. But if whatever phenomena we're interested in do not track those categories, we can't hypothesize new categories that they do track and just call those 'race'. That really would be evidence that race is a fiction--not that we need a new, more scientifically-respectable conception of race.

"Ex-Girlfriend" Target Bleeds When You Shoot It

link

I'm going to go with "not cool" here...and "creepy"...

I get the idea--it's a well-known joke template: I hate my ex-wife/gf (or, for that matter: ex-husband/bf...) I really really hate her.

Yeah, o.k., I get that. Honestly, I've never hated any of my ex-gfs. I don't have the best sense in the world, but I have always steered clear of relationships with people I might end up hating. I don't look upon all my exes with unalloyed fondness, and I've deeply regretted certain interactions, but I've never hated anybody I was significantly involved with in that way. But still: I get it. I've known plenty of people, male and female, who were entirely justified in hating some of their exes.

And I don't buy this:

The more you shoot the iconization of the woman you hate (a 'slut' with her large breasts bulging out of her tanktop) the more she bleeds and her body, once sexy, becomes mangled.  It is a startling reminder of the normalization of violence against women in America, and the latest in delegitimization of the pro-gun lobby's claims that firearms are an equalizer for women.

Er, the manikin is a slut? Wha...? That's largely...er...interpretive, to say the least. And it’s pretty speculative. Not only is this not a “startling reminder” of the “normalization” of violence against women, but it really doesn’t have anything we know of to actually do with real violence against non-plastic women. In fact, my guess is that the people making this, and most of the people shooting at this, aren’t taking this what you'd call seriously. You might accuse them of cluelessness, but it’s not transparently obvious that they can be accused of much else. (Though see below.)

And, of course, this in no way offers even the slightest refutation (or “delegitimization”) of the claim (not made only by the “pro-gun lobby," you’ll note) that firearms are an equalizer for women. They obviously can be, and there is absolutely nothing that could even conceivably be done with a manikin that could refute that. Do guns, in fact and on average, have that effect? My guess is in the negative, and I'd be willing to put some money on that…but the question can’t be answered without looking at the numbers. Uncharitable interpretations of people shooting at manikins simply isn’t going to do anything like the trick there.

All that having been said...

I think we could safely go with “uncool” here. And creepy. Very creepy. Violence against women remains a big problem. (Violence against men is a bigger problem in many ways…but if you bring up that point in a context like this, people freak out. So let’s ignore it… Even if it’s not the only problem, nor the worst problem, it’s a huge problem.) And making a bleeding dummy specifically to look female in order to take out your anger on it--anger about a real-life female…that’s creepy, dude. Really, really creepy.

Look, the left—though usually the lefter-than-Alternet left—likes to make up screwy theories, and loves to criticize (stupid buzzword “trigger warning”!!!111) “problematic” actions in terms of those screwy theories. First and foremost, that stuff’s bullshit. And Bullshit is bad. But—and this is, by far, the less important criticism—promulgating bullshit reasons “delegitimizes” (cough) good points. This freaking shoot-your-ex-girlfriend manikin is, to use the technical phrase, f*cked up. You might, say, fantasize about blowing up your ex’s house. A bit much, I’d say, but I can understand it. But taking out your actual firearm, and shooting a dummy that’s made to look realistic, and ostentatiously female, and made to bleed when you shoot it… Listen, man, if that sounds like a good time to you, it’s probably time to sit down and have a long talk with yourself about reasonable and unreasonable degrees of anger. Even if she done you really, really wrong, graphic fantasies--with bleeding props--about doing violence to her just aren't right--even if they do not make you in any way more disposed toward actual violence.

But, again: this is supposed to be a joke--it's a creepy joke, but it's simply not meant to be taken seriously. And that cannot be ignored.

Anyway, that's the way it seems to me after what is probably insufficient thought.

But sometimes you really need to just stick with moral categories like creepy instead of making up bogus nonsense like "normalizes violence against women." "Creepy" may not have the doomy, serious ring you'd like it to have, but it has the virtue of being accurate in cases like this... 

Republicans Lied About Benghazi Emails

Jesus, these people....

RadFem 101: What Happens When Feminism Becomes a Cult

Here's one of the loonier web pages you'll ever read.

Hint: if you find yourself seriously using terms like "patriarchy," "mansplaining," and "PIV-centric," it's time to step away from the vat of Kool-Aid... And that's not even to address the substance of the thing (where we find nuggest of wisdom like: "Under patriarchy, being male is the only thing one needs to gain access to the good things in life"...which, if true, would be still more evidence that we do not live in a patriarchy...)

I stopped categorizing myself as a feminists basically for two reasons. (a) I kept running into people like this, and (b) the liberal feminists I knew were not willing to call them on their nonsense. Though, being explicitly told by several feminists that men, liberals and analytic philosophers cannot be feminists also played some role...

I still think that the goals of egalitarian feminism are important and significantly unmet...but there's no way that I can be associated with a political position that happily embraces radicals of this stripe. Other liberals have a higher loony lefty tolerance than I have, but they shouldn't. These people are every bit as at odds with our principles and goals are conservatives.

(via /r/tumblerinaction)

Greenwald: U.S. Worse Than USSR and Maoist China?

He's rather a nut, but surely he can't really believe that.

Sullivan points out the obvious.

More Noonerpalooza: Crazy Cat Lady Goes to Harvard

What do you think that a study group run by Peggy Noonan would be like?

Yep. It's like that.

Stevens: Rationale for Bush v. Gore Was "Unacceptable"

link

Well, that makes two members of the courts, O'Connor and Stevens, who have admitted that.

Nooners On The Gipper

Wow. I thought she was in love with him, but:

"The battle for the mind of Ronald Reagan was like the trench warfare of WWI: never have so many fought so hard for such barren terrain."

Surprisingly, er, trenchant comment...

NYT: The GOP Scandal Machine

Currently, my view is that this is pretty much exactly right.

The AP telephone records craziness is real cause for concern about the administration. The IRS/Tea Party business doesn't have anything to do with the president, and Benghazi gate is pure D political theater.

Nooners Freaks Out

Looks like she's losing that last wee bit of a grip on reality.

Sullivan responds.

When a group of people thinks that every Democratic president deserves impeachment simply for being Democratic...well, imagine what they'll think when something genuinely goes wrong... Nooners and company were already in freak-out mode before any of this stuff happened, and were already trying to figure out some way to make Benghazi into a "scandal"...  Jesus, imagine the joy in crazyville when news of the IRS and AP stuff broke...

I'm eager to get the straight dope on the IRS business and the AP business...  But Nooners and the rest of the fever swamp loonies have been shrieking non-stop about Obama's fictive awfulness for five years now. Having cried "wolf" since before the election of 2008, do they really think anyone is going to give their words any weight?

Well, sadly, some people might...