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the basic logic of bigotry
This is a topic about which I will reliably lose my temper, so let me try to stay in control. It’s an undeniable fact that there’s a level of casual bigotry against Muslims that is permissible in our...
View Articletrue vs good, again
As time goes on, I’m more and more convinced that the fundamental contemporary political failing is the inability or the refusal to sort “this is true” statements from “this is good” statements. So...
View Articledefining exploitation up
A point and then a meta-point. Got into a bit of a debate with a friend of mine recently. I was saying that the working conditions of a lot of online writers out there are unambiguously exploitative —...
View Articlestop calling everything a strawman
Sometimes I think the slippery slope fallacy and the strawman fallacy are in a war to be the most misused. Here’s where a claim of a strawman argument is useful. You and I are arguing. I refute a point...
View Articleround and round the trigger warning maypole
I got into another discussion of trigger warnings last night that really crystallized why that discussion is so immensely frustrating for me. First is the now-ubiquitous claim that trigger warnings are...
View Articleone rule
Over the years I’ve become used to (and associated with) a certain style of pugilistic political argument. That style is fine by me, and I think indicative of a healthy political culture. For as much...
View ArticleDo you want to call out privilege, or do you want to fight the police state?
As you know, I’m part of a nascent but growing movement within the left to question the efficacy of current left political and rhetorical tactics, particularly concerning the privilege frame that now...
View Articledon’t play into the conservative frame!
The recent student protests at Yale University and the University of Missouri have provoked many fundamental questions about our universities and our political values, and rightly so. Students have...
View Articleso woke I passed right through into being unconscious again
Pause and consider this line in a very short post from Jeet Heer, sharing some videos of an interview with Vladimir Nabokov: “Parts of the show are dated: three white men sitting around a fake living...
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everybody gets to use the same tools, again
Purdue has an active pro-life movement on campus, which is not surprising anywhere and certainly not in a heavily-Christian red state like Indiana. Today this was chalked on the landing leading to my...
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