Dionne: "No One Is An Animal"
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Counterpoint: everyone is an animal.*
*Why is this niggling response permissible? If it is... (It's not mine...I was oblivious to it, because I'm not too bright. But lots of commenters at the Post made it.)
It's ok because Dionne's bullshit op-ed is such bullshit. The main flaws in his "argument":
[1] Dionne pretends that Trump was talking about all illegal immigrants when there is no doubt whatsoever that he was talking about MS-13.
[1a] Dionne then pretends that the slight unclarity, exploited by the progressive press as a thin excuse for lying about what Trump said, was a subtle tactical ambiguity. That is: the inconsequential ambiguity, unfairly and irrationally exploited by the left to support a false accusation against Trump, is turned into a nefarious "dog whistle" by Trump. In lefty parlance this is "blaming the victim"...
[2] Then the really disgusting move: Dionne declares, ad hoc, that it is NOT OK, ever, to call people animals!!!!111 This is the thing about political correctness--or one of many things: the prohibitions are largely ad hoc and impressionistic. Things that are actually fine, and have always been fine, and would have continued to be fine are declared verboten on a whim and/or on account of expediency. Trump called some animalistic shitbags animals. We hate Trump. Ergo we have just now realized that it is NOT OK to ever call people animals ever!
(Of course: if Obama had said what Trump said, it would have either been ignored by the media or held up as a sign of his great humanity. Rightly so.)
So...the counterpoint above is a kind of a cheat. We're all animals, literally speaking. But the real question is: is it ever permissible to call people animals when the term is used...I dunno...in some non-literal way? It's not a metaphor, is it? I don't know what it is. Anyway, the response at top is a cheat. But as an answer to the cheating of the REEEEEsistance, I'm inclined to allow it. Because they've just gone nuts, and I'm sick of them. That's the bad reason it comes down to, I think.
Finally: this is yet another perfectly clear case of the seeming madness of the non-academic, mainstream left. The media, anyway. This is on par with, for example, McEnroe's comment about Venus Williams. It's absolutely, 100%, perfectly clear. And yet mainstream progressives--not just academic weirdos--are either pretending (with every sign of sincerity) to believe something crazy...or they actually believe it. Or they're in a superposition of epistemic errors. But, again: if the media can't be trusted in the simplest, clearest cases...cases in which their duplicity is sure to be caught out...why should we think that they can be trusted with respect to anything even moderately complicated? (I'm not exactly gesturing at a "Gell-Mann effect"...but it's related, I guess.) The urge to cheat is so damn common when our passions are in play, that it afflicts even people who have professional obligations to be objective, and it afflicts them even in the simplest cases, ergo even when they are sure to be busted. This is, I think, worth meditating on.
Counterpoint: everyone is an animal.*
*Why is this niggling response permissible? If it is... (It's not mine...I was oblivious to it, because I'm not too bright. But lots of commenters at the Post made it.)
It's ok because Dionne's bullshit op-ed is such bullshit. The main flaws in his "argument":
[1] Dionne pretends that Trump was talking about all illegal immigrants when there is no doubt whatsoever that he was talking about MS-13.
[1a] Dionne then pretends that the slight unclarity, exploited by the progressive press as a thin excuse for lying about what Trump said, was a subtle tactical ambiguity. That is: the inconsequential ambiguity, unfairly and irrationally exploited by the left to support a false accusation against Trump, is turned into a nefarious "dog whistle" by Trump. In lefty parlance this is "blaming the victim"...
[2] Then the really disgusting move: Dionne declares, ad hoc, that it is NOT OK, ever, to call people animals!!!!111 This is the thing about political correctness--or one of many things: the prohibitions are largely ad hoc and impressionistic. Things that are actually fine, and have always been fine, and would have continued to be fine are declared verboten on a whim and/or on account of expediency. Trump called some animalistic shitbags animals. We hate Trump. Ergo we have just now realized that it is NOT OK to ever call people animals ever!
(Of course: if Obama had said what Trump said, it would have either been ignored by the media or held up as a sign of his great humanity. Rightly so.)
So...the counterpoint above is a kind of a cheat. We're all animals, literally speaking. But the real question is: is it ever permissible to call people animals when the term is used...I dunno...in some non-literal way? It's not a metaphor, is it? I don't know what it is. Anyway, the response at top is a cheat. But as an answer to the cheating of the REEEEEsistance, I'm inclined to allow it. Because they've just gone nuts, and I'm sick of them. That's the bad reason it comes down to, I think.
Finally: this is yet another perfectly clear case of the seeming madness of the non-academic, mainstream left. The media, anyway. This is on par with, for example, McEnroe's comment about Venus Williams. It's absolutely, 100%, perfectly clear. And yet mainstream progressives--not just academic weirdos--are either pretending (with every sign of sincerity) to believe something crazy...or they actually believe it. Or they're in a superposition of epistemic errors. But, again: if the media can't be trusted in the simplest, clearest cases...cases in which their duplicity is sure to be caught out...why should we think that they can be trusted with respect to anything even moderately complicated? (I'm not exactly gesturing at a "Gell-Mann effect"...but it's related, I guess.) The urge to cheat is so damn common when our passions are in play, that it afflicts even people who have professional obligations to be objective, and it afflicts them even in the simplest cases, ergo even when they are sure to be busted. This is, I think, worth meditating on.
posted by Winston Smith at
7:54 AM
4 Comments:
"This is the thing about political correctness--or one of many things: the prohibitions are largely ad hoc and impressionistic. Things that are actually fine, and have always been fine, and would have continued to be fine are declared verboten on a whim and/or on account of expediency."
I don't think they are truly ad hoc, they are just not dispensed in a way intended to be logically consistent. Instead, the operative principle is basically who/whom. PCs will aggressively police those they do not believe desire to conform to Leftist norms and projects (obviously Trump qualifies in a massive way), but those who tend to show proper fealty, or who have earned some degree of sainthood to the Left, will get an easy pass.
Ta-Nehisi Coates could quite easily call an MS-13 member an animal, and I would bet quite comfortably no PC would call him on it. Because they know he's on their side.
Half of me wants to say that...but what about the well-known phenomenon of PC cannibalism? They turn on each other at the drop of a hat, and seem to gain status by "calling out" heterodoxy within the cult.
"Half of me wants to say that...but what about the well-known phenomenon of PC cannibalism? They turn on each other at the drop of a hat, and seem to gain status by "calling out" heterodoxy within the cult."
Which is basically rabid boundary policing. They cannibalize people for being insufficiently pro-otherkin ,POC, or whatever other category. You can't be willing to pull any punches to enforce conformity and expect it never to be applied to presumed in-group members. It's the old Puritan instinct.
Also, are the actions actually equivalent? How often do PC cannibalist excesses involve the sort of career destruction you see against more non-lefty individuals? My understanding is they normally go after ingroup reputation, which is different. PC tactics against centrist or right of center types are meant to completely truncate the right side of the overton window, to destroy opposition.
I think the Tuvel affair was an attempt by the PC left to destroy someone's career. It would have been different if she had tenure, but if she doesn't get tenure at Rhodes, I think she'll need to look at Liberty. Luckily, it appears as if she survived that attack intact, even if her persecutors have largely come out unscathed. What needs to happen is some sort of consequence to be endured for these kinds of actions. I don't see how that happens though.
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