Okay. Last night I wrote a post complaining about what I saw as ‘epistemic closure’ on the left – on display here at Balloon Juice. Now I wrote this elsewhere and I wrote it because I was feeling a little defensive and worn down by a lot of the insults hurled my way over here. I have since taken down the post because this is something I should address here, not elsewhere. I wrote:
I never really considered that the whole epistemic closure thing (or the managed ignorance which Jason has written about in these pages) was something which plagued the left, but I was wrong. One thing I have learned is that if you don’t have any good argument all you need to do is call someone a glibertarian and be done with them. Problem solved. It’s almost as handy as the term ‘statist’. Oh – but wait – I just said that both sides had their own stupid tropes. High Broderism alert!
See, there is a straw man for every situation. I guess what surprised me about this was I was quite used to this sort of reaction from conservatives. Guess I wasn’t expecting it from liberals.
Now first of all, I want to apologize for A) writing this at my other blog, and B) for writing at all in a fit of pique. That’s bad form on my part. And yes, lots of commenters here have come to my defense in the combox and I appreciate that. Plenty of people argue with one another and disagree and there are no enforced political boundaries that can not be crossed.
In any case, I do think that the love/hate thing here toward me is a little weird. I think it’s weird that the moment I write anything critical of any government program suddenly I must just hate all government programs, or am suddenly a glibertarian or whatever. I write something people agree with and I must be a liberal. I write something people disagree with and I’m an evil libertarian.
Anyways, I’ve really enjoyed writing here but I also get frustrated at times by all the negativity. Maybe I’m must not used to it. Either way, this is a great blog and I like writing here and I like the constructive pushback I get from you all. I’m just also human and after a while some of the stuff gets me down. I should have thicker skin, but I don’t.
Update.
1. I did not mean for this to be a big hug or hate fest. I made a mistake (after having a couple drinks…) and am now apologizing for it. I overreacted to some of the negativity yesterday and to the apparent joy people took at reading John’s smackdown. I shouldn’t have. My bad, etc. etc. Take that however you like. I’m not looking for sympathy, I’m just saying I was wrong. It’s all much ado about nothing, I agree. I’ll get over it.
2. The number one complaint is certainly that I don’t engage in the comments enough. Ok. I hear you. I’ll post less and try to do it in a way that gets me in the combox more (and link more, etc. These are reasonable complaints). I have some thoughts and ideas on this. Obviously a lot of my posts get like 200 comments and I’m never going to be able to adequately respond to all of them. (To be honest, I always thought that spending too much time in the combox was sort of a waste – all the lurkers or people who just read and never comment or read comments are left out of the discussion. Perhaps the idea of posting follow-up posts to specific critiques is a better idea? Thoughts on this?)
3. I am aware that epistemic closure is not just ‘group think’. I am referring explicitly to the many calls for me to quit writing here or STFU as instances of epistemic closure. Not to peoples’ disagreements with what I’m saying, but rather to the hostility engendered by my writing it in the first place.
4. I still think people are misunderstanding my argument on C4C. All I was doing is pointing out a possible unintended consequence of that program on the availability of used vehicles. I think the best argument against this point was that well, it was only 680,000 cars out of 250 million – how could that really effect used car prices? Ok, good point, but if that’s the case, how much could it have really effected fleet fuel efficiency? If there were only minimal unintended price consequences, I suspect there were only minimal environmental gains as well. However there was a very large gain made (temporarily at least) by the big auto manufacturers and car dealerships. And that’s why I think this program was primarily about stimulating that industry, and used the environmental benefits more as a selling point.
5. Saying I write too often and too positively about Megan McArdle is just bizarre. I linked to her once and disagreed with her conclusions. Can anyone prove otherwise?
NobodySpecial
No worries, we’re all human. Well, except for future Glenn Reynolds. Anyways.
Going back to a few posts ago, though – WHAT would it take to get government to ‘earn your trust’? Government itself is basically trust that the guy above you in the government both knows what he’s doing and is generally not going to screw you.
EDIT – Secondary question. What makes Megan McArglebargle worth any kind of serious respect, given that her big scholarly moment is to economics what Liberal Fascism is to history, and the numerous and serious errors of scholarship she keeps repeating?
Redshirt
Everyone’s on edge, and I feel like many of us have forgotten how to argue/debate in a polite and respectful manner. For this, I blame, 1. The Internets, and 2. The Repuglicans/Fox/Wingnuts et al.
Not your fault though.
Mary
You must be new around these parts. Welcome to the Internets.
arguingwithsignposts
Nice post. But could you leave up that comment over at LOG by Leonidas:
Instant classic.
roshan
Hey Kid, much more coming your way, don’t duck, get your chin up.
Frank
@Redshirt:
I enjoy your postings. It is refreshing to find that at least one rightie who is reasonable. I still don’t know why you consider yourself a rightie. We agree on just about everything. Your party has been hijacked by scary hateful people who quite frankly do not share your opinions.
Bob
You are a stand-up guy.
But don’t delete post at least until we can delete comments.
morzer
You know, sometimes weird love is the best. Just sayin’. Also too, I know you are busy, but if you engaged more in the comments, people would cut you more slack for taking an active part in the debate, rather than slapping a post down on the table and saying take it or leave it. Overall, I am sure we all have our personal epistemic closures, they are simply part of the human condition, and it’s something to acknowledge and work through. Anyway, welcome back to the Bolshevik hordes, Comrade Kain.
Frank
I enjoy your postings. It is refreshing to find that at least one rightie who is reasonable. I still don’t know why you consider yourself a rightie. We agree on just about everything. Your party has been hijacked by scary hateful people who quite frankly do not share your opinions.
Midnight Marauder
You are definitely not used to it, and to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure you ever will.
Wiesman
Soap poisoning all better then?
Zifnab
Some of the stuff you say flies in the face of modern conservative wisdom. So when you say, “Let’s perhaps encourage green jobs and renewable energy rather than Drill, Baby, Drill” you don’t sound like a modern day conservative at all.
However, when you suggest that C4C was a waste or a failure because the used car market hasn’t been so hot recently, you commit a host of logical fallacies – C4C wasn’t just about helping poor people by cheaper cars, spending on solar power / supertrains and spending to cull low mileage vehicles from the roads shouldn’t have to be either/or decisions, to name a few – then you provoke a lot of backlash. Comparing cars to books, for instance, was a bit absurd.
So there was backlash, and after your second post when it seemed like you were ignoring a number of refutations from your own posts, the backlash became less structured and more name-calling-ish.
And you’re just one dude, not the legion of BJ followers, so that’s not unreasonable to miss a point or fail to address a refutation here or there. But you’re attacking the common wisdom on C4C, so you’ve got to be ready to answer a lot of retorts if you want your idea to get sold.
You won me over a lot more with the Carter-Deregulated-Beer story.
Just Some Fuckhead
You suck, Kain.
Rosalita
E.D., I enjoy your posts. And while we all don’t agree on everything you offer informed opinions that I think deserve consideration.
Keep up the good work.
some other guy
The argument:snark ratio in the responses to your posts is maybe 1:2 or 1:3. That’s actually pretty good for a comment section that doesn’t require registration, IMO.
But there’s only so many ways to factually dispute a single post. After that, all that’s left to do is snark. So if you’d actually, you know, respond to comments that would almost certainly push the signal to noise ratio even higher.
Xero
Aside from a few negative comments, I thought the post-fest yesterday was grand. It shows that there is still hope of saving Our Great Nation, that there still exists a faction on the right that is relatively sane and willing to work.
At least you’re not of the Rep Fleming camp;
Keep sane, ED, and keep posting.
NobodySpecial
Anyways, Kain hasn’t seen real hate yet. He has yet to criticize Obama from the left.
flukebucket
If you respond at all to those who simply hurl insults just tell them to eat a bag of dicks.
But it is better just to ignore that kind of thing.
Now tell me. Is it true that the only free market is a black market?
EFroh
@arguingwithsignposts:
I will never understand how McArdle became so prominent. Never. Shit floats, I guess.
General Stuck
Maybe you thought there was no such thing as liberal wingnuts? This is your education.
D. Mason
I don’t know your history here beyond when you started to make front page posts but this is truly a strange little blog. Once upon a time you couldn’t say anything even mildly critical of the right or sympathetic to the left without being labeled a troll or moonbat. Then it shifted a bit and for a while almost everyone was a troll, moonbat or wingnut. Then one day you couldn’t say anything sympathetic to the right or critical of the left (or Obama when hes doing his best W impersonation) without being a troll, wingnut or possibly a firebagger. That’s pretty much where it is now, left-wing fever swamp, and you’re a conservative minded front-pager with (allegedly) thin skin. Good luck with that.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
Really, Ed? I have been very clear and specific about why I don’t like your work.
You talk in circles. You speak in slogans and talking points. You equivocate. You leave so many intellectual doors open in your texts that you have no problem ducking through them as soon as you are challenged. You seem to just make things up and then try to figure out the facts and the sense of them later. You talk as if everything is a choice between two or eight different equally interesting, if not equally okay, alternatives. You waffle between conservative and liberal viewpoints as if it were not true that the advocates of the conservative ones are lying, are willfully ignorant of basic facts, are unfaithful themselves to even the most basic traditional conservative values, are based in bigotry, prejudice, nihilism, and foolish strains of libertarianism which have never proven to be useful as bases for policy or governance in any real life situation, in any modern liberal democracy, ever.
You are totally full of shit and as far as I am concerned an embarrassment and harmful to this blog.
You may not like what I said, but I think any reasonable person can see that there is nothing “weird” about my view, whether one agrees with it or not. And calling it “weird” is just classic you. Inspecific, rhetorical, a deflection, calling on sentiments or conceits that have nothing to do with the topic at hand. Like most of your work here.
mr. whipple
Ditto.
Maude
We are about to go into a group hug.
p.a.
you’ll never get anywhere in this world talking sense and moderation.
there has been a noticeable edge here lately, but i will admit ‘high broderist’, ‘a pox on both your houses’ style is completely inappropriate when one house at times espouses merely inefficient or unworkable ideas while the other house is batshit crazy.
Corpsicle
This seems pretty normal for a blog. You write something clever, lots of people stroke your ego. Write something stupid, lots of commenters let you know it’s stupid.
The first post about CFC was classic Libertarian bullshit though.
Intellectually dishonest for completely ignoring one of the main goals of the program (reducing pollution).
Factually dishonest (your CRV did not qualify).
Confusing fact and opinion (zero evidence that CFC seriously affected the used car market today)
Third Eye Open
No, you’re just a fucking whiner. Now suck it up and get on with life, you self-absorbed loser. How is that for Epistemic Closure?
Lynn
Although I’m a fierce Democrat, I do tear my hair out at the seeming lack of understanding that we would really serve the country best if we could figure out how to really govern well. I think our policies are generally right. But we don’t know how to implement them in a manner that provides the end-user with a good experience. If we could figure out a way to make interacting with government a pleasant experience and one that looks like it is making good use of our collective resources, i.e. our taxes, I’d be doing a happy dance.
And, interestingly, when I look at the generally incomprehensible Tea Party ravings, I think that might be a part of what they want as well.
WereBear
Good on ya for this post.
Assert, defend, and admit when your facts are wrong. Personally, I love the way all sorts of people can jump in and correct wrong assumptions online. We have plenty of people with varied expertise, and I love it.
LiberalSandlapper
Let me get this straight.
You feel free to post stuff on the front page that lacks facts or evidenced based arguments, rarely – if ever – come back to debate through comments and your skin is too thin to handle the angry response? And YOU’RE A BLOGGER?
Dude, maybe you should become a librarian or something.
Chuck Butcher
I’d get the hell off your back if you’d give a miss to the damn right wing talking points. I’m never surprised to see right ideologues or ignorant parrots of them use words like “free market,” but I’ll be damned if I’ll give it a pass here. If you’re going to use their words or terms maybe you could cough up with one single example of their concrete existance. You use that term as though it has some kind of meaning and it does not. It doesn’t because it never existed, not even Adam Smith proposed it in theory.
It is one of those catch all phrases used to justify virtually any right economic ideology from essentially capitalistic anarchy to plutocracy. Somebody around here will object. If you want to act surprised, that’s your look-out for your own doing.
I don’t care about agreeing with you, there are plenty of people I don’t agree with, but mindless bullshit irritates the hell out of me. You can say what you mean without using craptastic junk terms coined by the enemies of most of the populace’s economic interests.
Thunderlizard
“Epistemic closure” isn’t “consorting mainly with people with whom you agree most of the time.”
“Epistemic closure” is a group of people who take only one another to be valid sources. (This is closure in a sort of mathematical sense of the term, like the whole numbers being “closed over addition” because the addition of two whole numbers always gets another whole number)
Epistemic closure happens when you seal yourself off in such a way as to never CONSIDER the opposing side’s argument, either because you never even hear it (see: FOX Nudes) or because you’ve developed reflexes to eject foreign ideas without actually examining them.
This latter formulation is what juicers are being accused of by Kain, and, frankly, I challenge him to establish his argument. Developing a term–Broderism–for a fallacious both sides-ism, or another term–Glibertarianism–for self-serving arguments for why nobody should help people other than the speaker isn’t a shortcut to ejecting-without-thinking. It’s a DRINKING GAME we play when we read STUPID.
A case in point is the current C4C debate. Whether Cole or Kain is right (and, incidentally, they both have a point… but Kain is disingenuous since his suggested alternative policy isn’t on the table. SEE: Motion to Consider, filibuster of) but the fact that they’re publicly engaging each others’ argument. We’re RATIONALLY AWARE of the counterargument, whether we accept it or not.
A Tea-partygoer isn’t rationally aware, in any meaningful sense, of the arguments or evidence that undermine position. (SEE: TARP?, What President signed it into law)
Bella Q
Well, thanks for owning up to the bad form. It was. Apology accepted. But you might wish to take this to heart:
I think it was morzer’s point. But that’s just part of the way posters here are used to frontpagers behaving. So you might wish to observe that culture, and find a different kind of disagreement.
Dork
And we get frustrated by your common lack of adherence to fact.
c u n d gulag
I enjoy reading your post.
I don’t always come even close to agreeing, but I don’t choose to throw verbal bombs either.
Keep up the good work. You have interesting takes on things, and it’s always good to hear another voice offer another choice.
Xero
Previous comment in moderation.
Aside from a few negative comments, I thought the post-fest yesterday was grand. It shows that there is still hope of saving Our Great Nation, that there still exists a faction on the right that is relatively sane and willing to work.
Keep sane, ED, and keep posting.
BrklynLibrul
Although I’m a hardcore lefty, I haven’t had too many problems with your posts, but I have recognized that you’re not an especially good fit with the majority of John’s audience. While I don’t think you should be drummed out of the corps, I do think a little more reader engagement and a little less McArdle worship would serve you better if you intend to post here.
Tractarian
FREE ADVICE: Stick to your “other blog.”
Karmakin
When you use terms or labels that designate certain things…right now it’s the belief that we should actually increase unemployment as it lowers wages/pisses off the electorate against the people in power….
That really pisses people off. I mean can you blame them? When you self identify as a conservative, or harp about the free market, that’s what happens. It’s a pattern. You do X, you get Y.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think ED wants at all to increase poverty. But when he uses those terms, labels and tropes, that’s the first thing that pops into mine, and others minds.
dan
Whaaaaaaa…
Violet
Apologizing when one should is a sign of good character.
Erik, I know your work situation won’t allow you to comment on your posts, but that’s a problem that’s contributing to the tone. Setting aside the content of your posts for a moment, it feels like you post and run, which can come across as high handed and holier-than-thou. Is there no way you can get around the commenting restrictions imposed by your workplace so that you can join the fray in the comments? I think that might help things some.
ksmiami
E.D. People are harsh here because modern conservatism is a f**king failure of epidemic proportions and the modern Dems do not have the rhetorical guns to shoot the right’s crap down and it is incredibly frustrating. Sorry if we do not stroke your poor little ego, but most of your arguments are on thin ice and you use the language of the right “like pro-life” when you hold a lot of democratic ideas… if you do not understand that you are one of the tools the right uses to sound reasonable all the while removing union protections and safe drinking water rules, then I think your stay here will be pretty rough.
good luck with that
Nick
@Lynn:
In a country dominated by selfishness, greed and fear, the only way we can make people think we’re making good use of our collective resources is giving it directly to them (tax cuts). One would think healthcare, better infrastructure, etc, would be an example of making good use, but then you hear people bitch about freeloaders taking our tax dollars or wasting money on roads that don’t need to be fixed.
Besides the defense budget, and even that can be considered good depending on what its used for, a lot of what we use tax money for is good; Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid make a big chunk of tax money, that’s good stuff people like…for themselves, for everyone else they hate it.
Remember polling on HCR? People liked the public option, they just didn’t want their tax dollars to pay for it. Why?
Zandar
Meh, give the guy a break.
He has brass ones for even putting his shingle out here.
(Although yeah, a little less McMegan would go far.)
Bob
@Tractarian: that advise is worth every penny.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
EDK,
I enjoy your posts, and there’s nothing wrong with feeling a little bruised from the comment section, that’s just the way it goes. This blog brings to mind a saying of Vince Lombardi’s which was more recently echoed by Mike Ditka*:
This a collision blog, not a contact blog. You’ll get used to it if you hang around long enough.
*Interesting bit of political trivia: Mike Ditka in 2004 almost ran for the open senate seat in IL which was eventually won by some other guy you might have heard of by now.
mclaren
The relentless attacks on you here are incoherent and bizarre. For the most part you’re not saying anything different than most moderates.
Occasionally you say something that’s irrelevant (like the post of the cash for clunkers, which just went wide of the mark) or misconceived (your nitpicking critique of Glenn Greenwald’s substantively true point that America is in such dire shape right now that our counties and cities are shutting down basic services) but by and large the people here are over the top in their reactions to you.
I’m guessing it’s because conservatism has become such a toxic meme that when you identify yourself as a conservative, people here lose it. Personally, I don’t give a damn if a person identifies himself as a Martian — listen to what the person says, evaluate it based on logic and evidence, and then discuss. The people here seem incapable of that.
There’s massive knee-jerk reflexive epistemic closure on this forum. If you step out of the groupthink, people here suddenly become hysterical. They disintegrate into incoherent name-calling and personal attacks. For example: when I ruthlessly and savagely did some truth-telling about the way that Obama’s HCR reform wasn’t really reform and didn’t address most of the systemic problems, people here went berserk. They turned into Planet of the Apes. Now that those systemic problems like never-ending cost increases are still showing up, people are grudgingly starting to recognize that there might be something to discuss.
The epistemic closure on the left chokes off peoples’ blood supply to their brains and turns them into name-calling zombies when anyone suggests:
[1] Reducing the size of any part of government.
[2] Opposing any policies by current Democrats in power.
[3] Making government more efficient.
[4] Suggesting that solving social problems is not merely a matter of throwing cash at them.
[5] Proposing that self-identified conservatives might have something valuable to bring to the table. (True conservatives, not the wackos like Sharron Angle.)
All of these suggestions are things the lockstep group mind here is going to have to swallow and get used to, because unless we want this country to go down the tubes, we’re going to have to deal with all of these issues and we’re going to have to deal with ’em damn fast.
Reducing the size of parts of government is crucial. DHS should be shut down. Our military needs to be massively reduced. But there are other parts of the government that also need to be scaled back — the crazy levels of inspection and regulation, for instance. People are being put in federal prison for violating federal regulations on importing orchids, for cripes sake. That’s too much regulation of meaningless ferkakta nonsense. Nobody’s gong to die horribly if we lighten up on unnecessary regulation of orchids. SWAT teams raiding people for not properly pasteurizing milk, SWAT teams raiding orchid growers because their paperwork is wonky — that’s insane.
If we can never oppose polices by Obama or Pelosi, there’s no political debate possible and errors perpetuate. There must be freedom to criticize current policies from the left. Criticism is the only possible way of correcting errors. That’s just reality. Deal with it. It does no good to constantly scream “You’re enabling Boenher! You’re a fifth column teabagger!”
“Efficiency” has been used as a smoke screen to cut crucial government services and create tax cuts for the rich, but gross inefficiency in local and federal government is a big issue. We need to deal with it. Here’s one specific example: since 1970, the size of staff in the typical K12 school has doubled, yet K12 test scores have remained flat. California’s budget deficit would not exist today if ti weren’t for bloat in K12 school administration and staff (excluding teachers). The single biggest item in California’s budget is 34 billion to fund K12 schools, at least half of which is unnecessary and wasted because we did just as well with half the staff and half the school administrators back in 1970. No one on the left wants to talk about this. Well, we’re going to have to talk about it, because this is real problem and it’s growing and it’s not going away, and it’s killing states like California.
A lot of liberals seem to be stuck back in the Great Society days. If we just hurl money at the problem it’ll go away. WRONG. A lot of intractable problems like poverty and America’s addiction to freeways and cars can’t be solved by pissing money at ’em. This makes liberals uncomfortable because it focuses on a criticism sane conservatives have often made — some of America’s problem have social rather than class causes. We need to grapple with that issue. We have some serious problems in this country that we can’t solve merely by making the tax code more progressive.
People on the left have become incredibly closed-minded about even talking to self-identified conservatives. Once bitten, twice shy maybe, but at some point liberals are going to have make common cause with sane conservatives if we ever want to command a large enough voting bloc to force real change.
Matt in HB
@morzer:
Also too, I know you are busy, but if you engaged more in the comments, people would cut you more slack for taking an active part in the debate, rather than slapping a post down on the table and saying take it or leave it.
ding ding ding ding — winner!
Since you (EDK) choose not to defend your arguments in the comment threads, it’s a little hard to take you seriously. And, it’s hard to justify giving you much more than snark since you’re not interested in discussion. You’ve made your own bed, don’t bitch to us if you don’t find it comfortable enough.
Riggsveda
I don’t comment much here, but I like your work, even when I don’t agree with it. You’re fair and thoughtful and open to rational argument, and there’s far too little of that anywhere, internet or not, regardless of philosophic bent. Plus (also, too,) the nature of blogging is that each site attracts like minds and readers who mostly agree with the hosts, so very often you get this hive mind and mob mentality whenever anyone steps out of the party line or has an opinion that doesn’t jive with the reigning wisdom. It’s not pretty, but its human nature. The decent ones you can have a discussion with. The stupid ones are certifiable. You can tell the rest to go to hell. And I’m not aware of any blogging ethics that requires a writer to always be forbearing and reasonable. It’s the times when the blood rises to one’s face that can result in some of the best work (look at Charles Pierce!) Pulling a post seems way too harsh on yourself here.
Know, too, that as a lurker (mostly), I’m likely part of a population far greater than the number of commenters you read here, so be cheered by the thought that there are plenty of people reading who appreciate what you bring to this fine blog but don’t have the time, or whatever, to say so.
cmorenc
@Third Eye Open
It’s self-indulgently nasty people like you on both right and left who have toxically polluted political discourse in this country into a sewer of angry sewage.
At last we have in Kain a reasonable contributor of input that’s not always within the accepted bounds of conventional progressive wisdom, and to be sure there are flaws in some of his contributions that need articulate refutation, together with explanation of why more progressive perspectives on the given situation are much factually sounder. WE progressives are made much stronger for it, and more able to do battle against true right-wing bullshit because of it. It feels good and is cathartic to yell and mockingly scorn the irresponsible stupidity of the hard-right and GOP these days, but in here, we’re doing so in a sound-proof room only heard among ourselves, the already-convinced choir. We need the workout in here with Mr. Kain to be better prepared to be influential out there among the persuadable independents or less ideological edges of either party, who AREN’T tuned in to our discourse in here.
If you succeed in driving off Mr. Kain with your noxious bullying, you’re the “self-absorbed” loser here.
Trinity
I seriously could do without hearing about people’s hurt fee fees. EDK are you new to blogs or just new to people confronting your opinions? You had to know that posting here wouldn’t be a big kumbaya sing-a-long right?
I read your posts and I rarely agree but I appreciate that you wish to post here. This particular post though…is crap. If it wasn’t obvious that running to another blog to whine about the BJ commentariat was a punk move then I have no sympathy. Sorry.
And yes, I am having a particularly cranky morning.
morzer
@mclaren:
ED Kain identifies as a classic liberal. He said this very clearly in a longish post about his political views and allegiances.
Punchy
I would McEstimate that you have between 2-97% chance of surviving here.
You’re just shellshocked b/c you’re writing for people who adhere to fact and honesty, not your righty blogs whose readers accept whatever they’re told. And we’ll tell you bluntly when you’re full of shit.
Sack up and stay awhile, you’ll learn.
ChrisNYC
I haven’t had any strong dislike of you or your posts but I’ve got to say that your now-removed post at LOG seems to me not “bad form” but just dishonest. The criticisms of your CFC posts were not, in the main, “insults.” Your posts were challenged with arguments and facts. To write that the response was to yell, “glibertarian” is simply not true.
DecidedFenceSitter
Here’s my suggestion.
Write something on Monday. Post it in the AM. Specifically call out that you won’t be responding to any comments. Instead what you will be doing is reading all the comments, ignoring the flames and responding to the general themes of the counterpoints in a post on Tuesday/Wednesday.
At which point commenters can respond to your responses, so on and so forth.
No you won’t get to publish 4-5 articles a week this way, but you are coming into a hostile crowd. There is no benefit of the doubt for you if you come in attacking our ideas. Is it fair? Nope. But little is in a debate.
Some of us have been told by people who label themselves with the labels you have chosen to label, that we are traitors, that we hate our nation, that we are damned, so on and so forth. And to be fair, some of us push right back.
slag
You know, if you don’t want to be insulted on a regular basis at Balloon Juice, you’re going to have an uphill battle. Heck, John Cole owns the place–gives it up for free even–and I’m pretty sure he gets told to fuck off at least once a day here (and probably twice on Sundays). Just sayin.
Violet
@Matt in HB:
Apparently he can’t use the comments at work. Why he posts at times when he can’t comment is another story. I really think he needs to find a workaround to the comment problem if he’s going to post during the day. Or he needs to set aside time to post and comment at night. But the not-commenting thing definitely contributes to the problem.
spudvol
Well, I’ve seen a few “Goodbye Cruel World” posts on political blogs, now I’ve seen a “Hello Cruel World” post.
glynor
I just want to second what Riggsveda said above. I read this blog every day, but I rarely comment (except when I’m feeling particularly feisty).
I came in to address this issue, but Riggsveda said EXACTLY what I wanted to say, so I’ll leave it at that.
mattt
For my part, EDK, I slammed you too hard in my comment to your manifesto from yesterday. Wish I could blame the booze this time.
I think a lot of the hostility you’re feeling is due to the failure to engage in comments. I’ve read your reasons, but you are butting up against the culture here, the accessibility of the frontpagers is the reason why a lot of people read this blog. It does seem like you just toss out center-right or libertarian tropes to stir the pot – as with the truly substandard C4C post yesterday – and leave without defending yourself against criticism.
I like the idea of a center-right view on the front page here, and I’m glad to see you engaging comments – even if only to whine about them in a front page post. Baby steps.
morzer
@Riggsveda:
I like your post, but I have to say that every time I read a sentence starting “Know..” that I immediately think of Conan the Barbarian.
“Know, O prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis…” etc.
Jaybird
One of the things that I try (and often fail) to do is comment in such a way that I, Jay, am talking to you (whomever you are) as if we were actually talking and knew each other fairly well.
In most cases, this will result in me doing stuff like not automatically assuming that you hate minorities, hate the poor, hate women, hate the uneducated, or hate animals.
Dude. It’s me, Jay. Dude. You’re Erik.
The problem comes up when you stop seeing the other person as “Erik” (to use an example) and start seeing them as a representative of the side that exists in opposition to your side.
So when you say that you’re not a fan of, say, mandating those calorie posters next to the menus at Burger King, I don’t have to say “what? why?”, I can move straight to “well, obviously, you’re on the side of the corporations who have been exploiting the poor and framing the issue as easy food for those too lazy or too stupid to cook for themselves when not everybody lives in whiteworld with staff dedicated to instilling a work ethic and with the parenting skills to teach a child how to scramble an egg, you over-privileged neo-racist!”
Rants like that have nothing to do with you (and I mean *YOU*, Erik).
They all have to do with some weird shadowy conspiracy out there of which you are merely a representative. Your (hypothetical) arguments against those Calorie posters are irrelevant. You provide a handy face/target at which I can throw my proverbial shoes.
At that point, it ain’t about you. It’s about me.
Put crudely, we’re no longer making love. I’m jerkin’ it.
Now, of course, I’m not saying that there isn’t a place for such things. But if one is expecting the former and, instead, gets the latter…
Well, it can be an eyefull.
Elia
I really enjoy your contributions here, ED, and would be very sad to see you post less here or stop altogether. Please don’t and know that I’m sure many of us are thrilled to have an intelligent conservative participating here, and we’d be very disappointed if the meaner and simpler among the commentariat pushed you away.
mistermix
@mclaren:
I’ve got nothing against a good straw man burning (e.g., “A lot of liberals seem to be stuck back in the Great Society days”), but come on:
Yeah, who needs the Coast Guard?
Scuffletuffle
Negativity? Are you joking? I love this site because people actually disagree and call each other out. If you really want to experience negativity, go to any right-wing slanted blog and revel in it. Here, not so much. Also. Too.
Third Eye Open
@cmorenc:
Does the term, “Go fuck yourself with a rusty pitchfork, sideways” mean anything to you? If not, may I suggest that you go die in a fire.
You engage the knuckle-draggers and fence-sitters. I will be over here telling them all to fuck-off. If you don’t like it, then stop responding, mkay?
cgp
@Midnight Marauder:
See this is the sort of thing that should differentiate Balloon Juice from the rest. Why all the spite? Has your honor been defiled or something?
Laertes
Epistemic closure doesn’t mean that a bunch of people who disagree with you say mean things and don’t listen to you quite as attentively as you’d like.
Epistemic closure is about purging heretics. The fact that you’re a self-identified conservative writing on a liberal blog, and being engaged by the liberals on that liberal blog, is the exact opposite of epistemic closure.
The fact that you’re surprised that the further you stray from boilerplate liberalism, the warmer the environment gets, is weird but it’s not evidence of epistemic closure.
mr. whipple
Or better yet save your posts for a time when you can respond.
morzer
@Third Eye Open:
I lack your expertise with frottage and agricultural implements of a certain oxidization level and oblique tendency, but failure to achieve such expertise surely doesn’t require instant self-immolation, does it?
Alice Blue
EDK, you’re a good writer and you come across as thoughtful and intelligent, except for the C4C post. Really, you’re better than that.
cgp
@Punchy:
Internet Tough Guy syndrome? I guess you did say he had a “2-97%” percent chance of staying here….
Crashman
As others have said, I think not wading into the comments is kind of an issue. There’s got to be a way to work around it.
As a side note, I’ve liked a number of your posts ED, but the C4C one yesterday was badly off the mark.
norbizness
I would agree that there’s a lot of lazy parroting that passes for comments, as if everybody’s hoping for some validation with a thumbs-up sign (“If I could just get one person to THIS my comment, my day is made!”). If anybody thinks they’re immune from a LOLcats-strewn circle jerk featuring the same 4-5 jokes (did you know Douthat can be referred to as “Douche-hat”? HOLY SHIT!), just check any 100+ comment collection. Or use CTRL-F to find the terms “fee-fees” or “butthurt.”
That said, (a) libertarians really are a useless collection of assholes, and (b) I don’t know who the joker is who wrote this post, but if he praised Megan McArdle, hol-ee shit.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@DecidedFenceSitter: Great suggestion especially given his constraints with respect to posting responses from work.
Ecmnesiac Daddy Kain – welcome to Balloon Juice. Sorry, I couldn’t resist that label after reading your cash for clunkers post ;-).
Chad N Freude
@LikeableInMyOwnWay:
And Heaven knows this blog is very delicate and must be shielded from harm. Please don’t set yourself up as Protector of This Blog.
R. Johnston
The way I see things, E.D., you’re a recovering libertarian who’s not quite ready to shake the label and who’s subject to relapses. Sometimes your writing reads like you have an ideological commitment to reducing government intervention in the economy, and sometimes your writing reads like you’re skeptical of government intervention in the economy but that you remain open to the ideas that empirical results are, in the end, what matter and that transaction costs are real phenomena that the government may legitimately seek to minimize. Sometimes you’re a libertarian and sometimes you’re more of an economic liberal. A lot of people forget that there’s a distinction between the two, but there is, it’s a very significant one, and it’s one where you don’t seem to regularly come down on one side or the other.
Intellectually honest skepticism of government, even when it’s judged as undue, isn’t likely to draw the same kind of response as an ideological commitment to less government. Ideological commitment forecloses the possibility of meaningful discussion, while having someone around with an honest and open-minded skepticism of government adds considerably to the possibility of meaningful discussion even and perhaps especially if other discussants don’t share that skepticism.
mikefromArlington
You still failed to identify where your claim of hundreds of Honda CRV’s being turned in for exchange came from when I can’t find one source that has that on the accepted car trade in list.
Ya can’t just make things up and people will just go along with it.
shortstop
@Midnight Marauder:
I suspect you’re right, and that we’re doomed to many more “sorry I totally lost my head again, but you guys are so mean” posts in which E.D. works out his hurt feelings in the public square.
baldheadeddork
I don’t have a beef with you one way or another, but you’ve got a hell of a lot of nerve. You paint criticisms of you as strawmen – and totally ignore all of the very substantive critiques of your posts.
You’ve been taken apart more often than a third-hand set of Lego’s, but you run off to another blog and blatantly misrepresent the commenters on Balloon Juice. Being a thin-skinned glibertarian is the least of your problems. You’re a liar and a coward.
Linda Featheringill
Erik:
Instead of whining because people dog you out for the “post-and-run” style you use in the daytime,
WHY DON’T YOU POST IN THE EVENING?
lawnorder
Don’t take it personally ED. It is only human nature to like those posts who agree with us and dislike those posts who don’t.
Liberals are human too.
I hope you realize all the criticism is not about you, is about ideas, and sometimes it isn’t even about your ideas. Sometimes it is about all the battle scars we have from the libertarians that spills over to anyone that talks like them.
Hope you stick around. I like your stuff. May not agree with all of it but think it is worth reading :)
Church Lady
There is a reason I said the Juiceboxers were a snarling mass of vicious jackals. Now you know why.
morzer
@Chad N Freude:
Well, you know, ED Kain has been conspiring to trample the lilies under his iron heel for some time now.
drew42
I haven’t been commenting on E.D.’s posts, mainly because the first post I read (about Carter deregulating the beer industry) made me think he was just trying to get a rise out of liberals.
And to tell you the truth, I’m still not convinced otherwise.
catclub
@mistermix:
Speaking of strawmen: Mclaren writes:
“The epistemic closure on the left chokes off peoples’ blood supply to their brains and turns them into name-calling zombies when anyone suggests:
[1] Reducing the size of any part of government.
[2] Opposing any policies by current Democrats in power
…
All of these suggestions are things the lockstep group mind here is going to have to swallow and get used to, ….
Reducing the size of parts of government is crucial. DHS should be shut down. Our military needs to be massively reduced.”
I did not know that all the posters here turn into zombies when reducing the military is suggested. Am I reading a different blog?
I also did not know that HAMP and Tim Geithner’s approach to bank reform was uniformly supported here.
Chad N Freude
Let me see if I’ve got this right, fellow commenters. We abhor epistemic closure on the right, therefore we don’t want ED Kain posting his thoughts and opinions here because we need to keep our minds open and engaging Kain is Harmful to This Blog(c).
Matt in HB
@Violet:
Violet, I know his circumstances make responding to comments difficult. And I agree with you that some work around is necessary. Given how blogs and comments work, the situation he’s in is really not sustainable.
The irony for me is that I’m a reformed Republican, center-right, guy and I’m sympathetic to many of his positions. But, he does have a tendency to fall back on nonsensical talking points/memes that just don’t fly here and will get serious push-back. He can either engage with that discussion, or become a largely irrelevant voice that people dismiss.
Gin & Tonic
@mistermix:
The Coast Guard existed for over 200 years before the DHS came into being. I think it could survive the DHS’s demise.
roshan
Also, Kain, if you want a thicker skin, try evolution, meaning stay around and get it, or if you are a creationist then pray for it.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@Chad N Freude: Of course we want him posting his thoughts and opinions here, so we can mock them when needed and applaud them when warranted. I didn’t see anyone bashing his Jon Stewart post :-).
Chad N Freude
@lawnorder:
No, no, liberals are superior to humans.
J Smith
So, you gonna quit yet? Because your posts are about 50/50 decent/garbage and you can’t take the heat. Quitcher cryin’, Sally.
Violet
Erik, just for the record, I like having a different point of view represented on the front page here. It leads to really interesting discussions in the comments and I’ve learned stuff by reading them. Even if I think you are wrong (or you are factually wrong, like CRV’s being on the C4C list), it’s still interesting to watch people argue with your post and discuss why it’s wrong.
I just wish you could engage in comments because I think that would help the discussion process a lot.
scott charmin
I say.. in an environment in which ANYONE can easily comment, or the post is not moderated, take comments with a grain of salt. Hell take it with the whole salt shaker.
I believe there are some good people with good comments, but there’s a shitload of trolls out there that say crap just so they can get a rise out of people. In the years i’ve been reading politics blogs, there’s a LOT of them.
Case in point: the guy who commented above me, #90.
El Cid
FWIW, I think it’s getting kind of tiring to read a discussion once or twice a day on ‘how everyone’s reacting to EDK’ or ‘how EDK is being seen here’ or ‘you guys need to think a lot about how you’re saying X Y Z to EDK’ or ‘what do you guys think about bringing in more / less of the sorts of the points which EDK is making’ gaaaaaaaaaaah
Third Eye Open
@morzer:
There you go with those $11 words, coming out of your $3 mouth. But, frottage? Really? I was going more for full, bloody penetration, hopefully piercing the lower intestines, leading to a slow and painful death. The immolation was just sort of an afterthought.
Blue Neponset
I originally came to this blog because John was the only Republican blogger who chose to defend his arguments. My guess is many of the regulars here became regulars for similar reasons. IMO, that is what sets this blog apart from most other political blogs. (google balloon juice white phosphorus rounds if you want some examples) If you can’t defend your posts in a timely way then maybe balloon juice isn’t for you.
Brachiator
. I neither love you nor hate you. I don’t think you hate all government programs. But too often you appear to believe that a philosophical position on markets substitutes for actual knowledge about a specific business or industry and instead of considering how a government program or business decisions actually worked in the real world, instead selectively misread data as you seek to confirm your personal views about free markets and deregulation.
And when you yourself provide a link that not only fails to support one of your points but provides a reasonable explanation as to why your position is incorrect, and yet you continue to insist on holding your ground, then I have to wonder why you think that anyone should take you seriously.
So it’s not that you criticize a program, it’s that your criticisms focus on something that is either clearly wrong or simply irrelevant. It’s like someone writing, “I don’t like iPods because they don’t get 25 miles per gallon.”
And for the record, I’ve never described you as a glibertarian. Nor would I ever suggest that you don’t “belong” here. There are people who enjoy your posts and, better, people who use your posts as an occasion to bring clarity and insight to the issues you raise.
Josh James
Can I use a metaphor?
Contact sport, yo … if you don’t want to get hit in the face, don’t pull on gloves, climb into the ring, and start swinging.
If you decided to do the above, make sure you hit your target cleanly and fairly, with strength and precision. And protect yourself at all times.
As far as I can see, too often (but not all the time) you engage in logical fallacies (as pointed out by many) and easily dispensed arguments that fly in the face of facts … so you take shots for that. That’s not negativity. Really.
And you get shot down. And rather than defend yourself, you retreat and complain that the other guy is hitting you.
And take more shots.
It’s really that simple. Fight hard, fight clean and fight clear. You’ll be all right. Fight stupid and you’ll leave yourself wide open for easy shot (as yesterday with the ridiculous false equivalency of junking old cars and burning books, omg, what did you think would happen when you did that?) … this is a popular place, this blog, many of whom love it and learn how to debate by reading it … you’re a front pager, it’s competitive and you’ll have to prove your worth with reason, logic and solid arguments that hold up … slogans alone won’t work …
And be cognizant of your audience … the fallacies and dodges tick folks off, and they fight back, for example … describing yourself as “pro-life” … when asked to describe your position on abortion it’s obvious that politically you are actually pro-choice … describing yourself as pro-life conservative who is actually pro-choice, when it comes down to it, seems in itself glib and a tad disengenious (I know I spelled that wrong, but it sounds right) and so you’re going to take some serious shots for that.
And you should. You’ll deserve it.
But for the record, I appreciate that you’re against the death penalty.
PaulW
Everyone’s sitting around griping because noone knows how to actually get out there and do something. Protesting in the streets doesn’t get a blip unless you’re Teabaggers hoisting racist signs. Electing people we want into office doesn’t improve things because the political game is rigged toward lobbyist meddling and Senatorial obstruction. Worse of all, we can’t convince the other side how fucking wrong (TAX CUTS DON’T FUCKING WORK) they are and can’t do a damn thing about the lying they use to perpetuate their schemes.
I personally try not to snipe directly at a person: If I wrote anything that got on your bad side, Kain, it wasn’t meant that way. If I did, repeat it back to me so I know where the line is. As for anyone else here: Kain, this place has trollers aplenty to try to sneak in and shiv you first chance you get. Try to identify the real people and try your best to ignore or mock the fakers who are here to bully and intimidate us.
jinxtigr
LISTEN. Buddy. My friend.
I’ve been pretty patient, okay? I like quipping and posting smart comments that make a lot of people go ‘this!’. That’s how I get my blog-rocks off. I’ve had little reason to tee off on you for your beliefs.
But when you talk of people ‘coming to your defense’, of ‘negativity’, when you put up a blogpost that gets outed and then take it DOWN rather than standing by it, I get two impressions.
One, it’s a bitch move, and I’m all for honoring that if not for-
Two, you behave as if your point of view is not negotiable- that it is the rules of your game by which you’ll win or lose.
That does not FLY here, for anybody. For ANYBODY. We are here to sandblast out the gunky corners of our ideologies, drawn by the example of John confronting Terri Schiavo and beginning to question- to nag at the dogmas, and never stop.
We are fucking dialectic in action, my friend, and when you come around expecting to win or lose by your axioms you deserve the beatdown entirely apart from your beliefs’ merits.
DO NOT say ‘come to my defense’ as if we’re picking sides of a game where you set the ground rules. Some of your ground rules are crap. Let’s see which of your heartfelt beliefs we can topple. I’ll let you try and sway mine if you let me target yours.
Because right now, your whole behavior is that of a self-righteous person practicing his social politeness around people he despises, and it’s a little baby epistemic closure just for you. We are not asking for social politeness. We’re telling you we’ve picked out some of your axioms that are crap, and we’re wondering if any of your other axioms are worth adding to our synthesis.
Because that’s still possible, but you’re making it very difficult to stomach.
stickler
The problem isn’t “insults,” it’s facts. Assertions made without factual support (“Free markets are always best! Um, sure, I’ll have some scrambled eggs, why not?”) are going to get hammered here because people are sick to fncking death of fact-free rants which fly in the face of the last ten years of lived experience. We elected* a “compassionate conservative” in 2000, he rammed through a massive tax cut for the rich, and all we got was wage stagnation, zero job growth, and two excellent overseas adventures. This isn’t “opinion,” it’s fact.
This is also why McMegan generates so much spittle-flecked rage: she’s impervious to evidence, and she has a GOD-DAMNED POSITION AT THE GOD-DAMNED _ATLANTIC_. Noodling on about libertarian ideals in 2010, with the country reeling from the worst economy since 1937, is tiresome.
* = As I am the undead corpse of William Rehnquist, by “we” of course I mean myself and my four favorite Supreme Court Justices.
Violet
@Matt in HB:
Yeah, this is the danger (to him) of not engaging in comments. People will just roll their eyes and skip his posts. While that doesn’t hurt the blog (OMG! T3h poor blog’s fee-fees!) or people who skip the posts, it will hurt him, if he’s looking for challenging discussions.
Trinity
@El Cid: THIS.
Josh James
Oh, and respond to the arguments in the comments, too. If you don’t, folks won’t take you seriously and they’ll immediately set phasers to “ridicule” as a defense.
Kiril
Mr. Kain, I happened to be at my computer all day yesterday doing boring things, so every now and then I would check a few blogs for a break, so I caught the whole C4C debacle as it evolved throughout the day. I also read the post at LOG that inspired you, and the post at Balko’s place that inspired that one. And pretty much everything about it was wrong, wrong, wrong.
For instance, the C4C program was responsible for removing 0.7 million cars from the road, but the depressed economy reduced new car sales by 5 million, reducing the supply 7 times as much as the C4C program. And there was a recession going on last year, increasing demand for this reduced supply. So of course prices went up.
And when I clicked through the links in the piece you linked to (how’s that for epistemic closure?), I found that the article was pointing out that with incentives, people in the market for used cars were going ahead and buying new cars instead, which I guess makes them wealthier because only stuff is wealth or something. (See? I can do it too!)
I could keep going if you want, but the entire argument was based upon faulty premises and a misuse of data (more accurately, the spinning of a faulty argument from a single data point without context), and was undeniably glib. Basically, Balko saw a chance to make a snarky comment, LOG jumped on it, and you thought you would just shuffle it along over here. Why not? It sounded good, until you looked at the data, and the stated goals of the program, and the effects of its implementation.
It was the very definition of glibertarianism, a failed attempt to be clever by ignoring the context of reality. And when I went and checked out your argument, I felt cheated. I felt like you were basically insulting me by presenting such an incoherent and dishonest argument.
But don’t worry–I won’t insult you back.
mike in dc
Everyone(or almost everyone) is for “what works”, the debate is over to what extent confirmation bias(kind of a broader concept than epistemic closure) distorts our perceptions of what actually fits that criteria. I don’t pretend to not have biases, I just believe that these biases developed at least partly for perfectly rational and experiential reasons. If someone asserts something challenging my preconceptions, bring the facts and reasoning along too, or you may get nothing but snark in response.
Chad N Freude
Kain: The philosophy of this blog is “I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to STFU.”
jaleh
I wish I could discuss politics without getting excited. When I start talking with a Republican, my heart beats faster and, I am sure, my blood pressure goes up! If I could discuss politics with a cool temper I’d be Obama, but I’m not. I try though! I don’t know how that man does it.
Mnemosyne
I have to go with the majority and point out that it’s a BIG problem that you don’t respond to commenters’ arguments. People presented you with facts and statistics about CFC that showed you had grabbed hold of the wrong end of the stick, and your response was … to claim that destroying polluting cars is the same as burning unsold books.
If you can read comments but not post comments, it’s not unheard of for the front-pagers to quote representative comments on the front page and address them there — that may be a reasonable workaround.
Oh, and people here don’t respect Megan McArdle because she makes up fake statistics to argue her point and gets huffy when people ask her for the source. If your thought experiment depends on made-up and easily disproven “statistics” that you pulled out of your butt, it’s a bad experiment.
Trinity
@jinxtigr: Okay….THIS.
Also. too.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
EDK,
One more thing – and maybe this is another cultural difference between LOG and BJ that you need to adapt to – if you write a crappy post that the next day (or sometime later) you wish had never gone out onto the tubes and find to be an embarrassment, don’t delete it. Sanitizing the past is not the right way to fix your mistakes. Update it, apologize for it, do whatever you feel you need to do to man up – but don’t delete the original post. Just deleting something after you’ve left it out there long enough for somebody else to read it and react to it is a bush-league move. Take a hint from John, who has very graciously left all the stuff he wrote back in 2003-4 right there in the BJ archives for anybody to see. That is how we make progress, not by being perfect, but by being human and owning our mistakes.
morzer
@Third Eye Open:
I think I get a better deal on words from a $3 dollar mouth than you do from a two-bit asshole. But your mileage may vary….
Chad N Freude
@jinxtigr: I agree with what you’re saying here, but I don’t agree with what seems to me to be a condescending tone. If Kain needs an attitude adjustment or an education in fact-checking, rhetoric, and debate, this isn’t going to be persuasive.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“I never really considered that the whole epistemic closure thing (or the managed ignorance which Jason has written about in these pages) was something which plagued the left, but I was wrong.”
You’re just Jonesing for David Broder’s job, c’mon.
[I do think of LoG of being Broderistic.]
Violet
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Yep. Don’t delete the post even if you regret it. Explain why you regret it, learn, move on.
Third Eye Open
@morzer:
You spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about my asshole and its going exchange rate. Perhaps you should get out more.
Chad N Freude
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Cue Beavis and Butthead snicker.
kwAwk
Kane – I personally give Cole a lot of props for bringing you on here and I’ve enjoyed your posting so far, though my reading has been limited due to the fun with margins game that this site has become.
I used to blog on a site with people of mixed political persuasions and I can tell you that when the conversation degrades to the point of repeated epitaths it generally means that the person your dealing with knows their losing the arguement and doesn’t have ammunition to fight back.
Between you, DougJ, Anne, Mr. Mixtypedude, and Tim, Cole has assembled quite a cast of characters that make this place fun to visit.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Some simple rules:
1. Don’t start any sentence with “Liberals think/believe that.” There are too many of us actual liberals here that do know what we think.
2. If you are going to post something like your C4C post, either find the facts out before you post, or be prepared to respond to the facts. I love a good argument with facts.
3. You’ve posted a number of things, like your Carter posts, where most of us here agree with you, except where they sounded like you were trying to prove how wrong liberals are. Most of us have come to BJ because, even though we are liberal, we don’t buy the “if you aren’t for us, you’re against us” mentality (and John’s pets, and nude mopping). Win your argument. Don’t try to convert us, cause it won’t work.
someguy
Wow. Wrong, dumb, and a thin-skinned right wing pussy.
Where’d Cole get you from – Redstate?
morzer
@Third Eye Open:
C’mon, kid, This is the “witty” insults part of the program. You almost had one earlier. Don’t get all soft and mushy on me now.
p.a.
@roshan:
I like that.
The main point I see about interacting with this ‘Kain’ fellow (if that is your real fake internet name, sir and/or madam), is that in a world with ‘Kains’ or even ‘Sullys’ on one side and your stereotypical libero-progressive (as exemplified by the lockstep prog-left Balloon Juicer ;-) )on the other, society would work. There’s basic agreement on what constitutes civil society, reasonable discourse on the role of markets, gvt intervention etc.
All this ‘Go Fuck Yourself’ stuff should be reserved for the Limbaugh-istas of society and their Republican/Teatard enablers. They don’t want/can’t have reasoned discourse. They believe Mao: politics is war by other means.
ChrisS
Epistemic closure should be another entry on the banned phrase list.
Whatever. If you have commentors that take Megan fucking Suderman-McCardle seriously, then I’m not sure what you’re posting on that other blog. 80%, that I can tell, of what you write would have you drummed out of the GOP so fast you’d think you were standing next to Neil Peart.
Libertarianism isn’t embraced by a lot of intelligent people on the left, because it’s an abstract ideal with no real-world (except Somalia), analogue.
Chad N Freude
@kwAwk: It’s not all just the frontpagers, you know. Don’t forget the intellectually astute and witty commenters. If not for them, the blog would be bo-o-oring.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“This is also why McMegan generates so much spittle-flecked rage: she’s impervious to evidence, and she has a GOD-DAMNED POSITION AT THE GOD-DAMNED ATLANTIC. ”
Because she’s an innumerate English major and somehow squeaked U.Chicago MBA, and can hence wrap badly thought out right-wing ideas in decent prose. Hence the Atlantic gig.
I used to comment on her blog back when she was still Jane Galt. One time me and Daniel Davies of Crooked Timber of couldn’t make her understand why labor costs of government track income growth , not inflation. She reverted to complaining that she didn’t want to pay for local government salaries, I threw in the towel. If someone’s understanding of economics is so shallow that they doing think a market-clearing price applies to the market for government labor because they think paying civil servant’s salaries is icky, they’re too dense for words and an MBA was wasted on them.
morzer
@ChrisS:
And perhaps Wyoming? j/k
debbie
I like reading differing opinions, but it seems to me that if you post and then never respond, all you’re really looking to do is pontificate and lecture. Thanks, but Newt’s already taken that job.
Where’s the back-and-forth that leads to new understandings and maybe even better ideas?
mattt
@Chad N Freude: LOL – Where was this during the Identity Crisis of last week? JCole, please put this in the header rotation!
mattt
@Chad N Freude: LOL – Where was this during the Identity Crisis of last week? JCole, please put this in the header rotation!
Nick
@PaulW:
I think many of us have tried and found ourselves failing and not exactly sure as to why.
At the end of the day, the reason nothing is working is likely because this country is hopelessly conservative and any attempt to convince them they’re wrong using facts is rejected as a “Don’t tell me I’km wrong, who the hell do you think you are?” attitude and this country won’t want to change until it gets it good and hard for a nice long time.
I have a hard time feeling bad for the country and its economic turmoil right now because we honestly did it to ourselves. We deserved what happened to us.
Chad N Freude
@ChrisS:
And could we add the numerous variants of McArdle?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Chad N Freude:
…and that would be why multiple commenters have suggested, badgered, nay pleaded with EDK to engage more in the comments section – because they want to read less of what he has to say. WTF? I think the phrase you are looking for is:
the food here is terrible, and the portions are too small
slag
@kwAwk:
Repeated epitaphs? Is that like berating a dead horse?
Chad N Freude
@mattt: I’ve posted that before, but I don’t get no recognition around here.
Chad N Freude
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Your assignment: Review the comments and pick out those that convey the message “We don’t want to hear you. Get lost.” Hint: There are more than one.
b-psycho
@NobodySpecial:
I’m not sure how Kain would answer this, but IMO it’d take a miracle…
How did the guy that’s “above” you get there? What are his qualifications that show he knows what he’s doing? What was his reason for getting into government in the first place? Since he’s “above” you, how do you keep him from using his authority for his own benefit? Even if he somehow knows your interests, does that mean he cares?
This setup has way too much “just trust them” involved.
morzer
@Chad N Freude:
You are truly the hanging chad de nos jours.
Alwhite
I may have judged you too quickly but your first couple of posts really got under my skin because they were premised on bullshit and I am sick and tired of trying to reason with bullshitters. I did not however call you names I merely posted that I would no longer read anything under your byline.
Since then I have read and comment on several of your posts either disagreeing or agreeing as I thought was helpful. The vitriol of BJ comments has always annoyed me but there it is, people let their passions get the better of them.
ChrisS
even though we are liberal, we don’t buy the “if you aren’t for us, you’re against us” mentality
Try criticizing Obama sometimes. I keed I keed.
But I think the most salient point in your post is:
“There are too many of us actual liberals here that do know what we think.”
Which is a little bit of everything.
I like realclimate and how the front pagers engage in the comments, especially because they know what the fuck they are talking about and they shut shit down real quick. It seems like every week there’s a new set of trolls that demand to know why this or that tired talking point isn’t addressed. Gavin usually responds, “it has, and here it is. your next comment not on topic will be deleted.”
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@slag: LOL!
Chad N Freude
@morzer: “Hanging Chad.” Is that a threat?
Chad N Freude
@Alwhite: I try to skip over the vitriolic comments. Unless, of course, they’re mine.
morzer
@Chad N Freude:
No, just acknowledging your unrecognized status. “Hanging chad” as in Florida 2000. Anyway, a “hanging chad” would be one who hangs, not is hanged.
Jack Bauer
@DecidedFenceSitter:
Frankly, that understates it.
I’m from socialist Europe and if ED thinks his ideas are met with less than chocolates and flowers, try discussing nationalizing domestic energy production. Man up ED and welcome to the internets.
Hugin & Munin
slag: Snicker, chortle, guffaw. Win.
Violet
@Alwhite:
This is funny.
Comrade Dread
Speaking as a former conservative who is about 98% anti-war, I suggest spending a few weeks posting comments on right-wing blogs. Some folks here try really hard, but they never quite get to the level of hatred needed to be a truly great internet troll.
A couple weeks of having sub-literate trolls calling you names will make you realize that you just don’t give a damn what anonymous people on the internet think about you and your opinions.
Billy K
E.D.,
I don’t know how many times it’s been said that if you were to take a more active role in conversing with the community and defending your thoughts, you would be taken more seriously and cut some slack.
Yet here you are again, playing the seagull – dropping a load of crap and flying away – on a post where you’re apologizing and a lot of people are trying to support you!
You will never be taken seriously until you stop being a seagull. The onus is on you because your views are markedly different than the majority here. That may be unfair, but it’s also true.
The Moar You Know
Being on Balloon Juice means you’re gonna get the shit kicked out of you. You’re a front pager. You’re going to get kicked even more. Commenters here (you’d know this if you read them consistently, and I’m not certain that you do) beat the shit out of each other all the time.
And it’s a good thing. Trolls, in general, save for the REALLY stupid ones tend to stay away and we don’t get that echo chamber horseshit, drama mama crap, and favored commenter clique that I see at so many other blogs. That which does not kill you makes you stronger, etc, and I’ve had to tighten up my act and my arguments from getting a beatdown more than a few times here.
You have the additional burden of bringing in a lot of ideas that we’ve already examined and found wanting. We’re not stupid, nor uneducated about the fine points and arguments of conservative philosophy, or uninformed (I might add that, conversely, a lot of liberals assume that people are conservative because they are “not educated” – which is a deadly mistake). My point, and I do have one, is this; if you’re going to go out on a limb, post here, and pimp your crap to a bunch of people who’ve heard it all before and found it to be bullshit, you’ve going to have to sell the fuck out of it to get any traction. Sell it and be prepared to back it to the wall. And if you can’t or won’t do that, maybe the product/idea you’re selling isn’t so good, and can’t stand on its own merits. You might want to think about that.
I hope you stay. We’ve got some lazy cats here that don’t like to expend the effort to sharpen their claws. They suck. We’ve got a lot who do like to expend the effort – I’m one of them – and you’re a good scratching post. Keep it up. If you can successfully defend your ideas here, you can do it anywhere.
EDIT: One more thing; you will HAVE to wade into the comments section and engage the commenters if you want to be taken seriously at all here. You will absolutely have to. If you don’t, no one will pay any attention to what you have to say, and they will be right in ignoring you. Get a gun and go over the top of the trench, my friend.
tkogrumpy
@LikeableInMyOwnWay: E.D., I have to sign on to most if not all of the first paragraph here, while refudiating the rest as unnecessarily harsh. The comments here run the gamut and are in my opinion very helpful. THere is also a certain amount of useless chaff. All commenters have their own agenda. For some it’s sharing some tidbit or point of view that will be useful to the group. For others it’s shooting down the house conservative in the most snarky and abusive manner. if a comment is ad hominem note the handle and ignore it.
gnomedad
@Linda Featheringill:
@mr. whipple:
Advice enthusiastically endorsed. Commenting is so vigorous around here that threads more than 2 or 3 hours old are all but dead.
cmorenc
@Third Eye Open:
GROW UP. Schoolyards have been plagued by people like you since way back before the internet or even personal computers, and the relative anonymity of the internet is an even more ideal playground for your kind of immature verbal bullying.
Kids like you didn’t impess or intimidate me back in 7th grade, and you don’t now.
Bob
EDK does not hesitate to mix-it-up in the comments, IMO. The exchanges at LOOG, between original poster and those commenting, can go on and on. LOOG has a much smaller, tiny, core group of commenters so the back and forth there is much easier. Even if Erik had 24/7 to respond to the comments here it would be difficult. I’m willing to defend him on that front, but the C for C post was weak, hell, misleading.
Spencer
my problem with you isn’t that you cross political boundries, it’s that you write really stupid stuff sometimes. : D
Stillwater
I will concede to you that the left can be reflexively opposed to so-called ‘free-market’, or ‘market oriented’ policies, and dismiss such ideas out of hand. From your point of view, that looks like epistemic closure. But I think it’s almost exactly the opposite: there is a long, documented history of ‘free-market solutions’ fucking things up pretty badly. Lefties reflexive rejection of market-based policy instruments, is based on evidence – a track record of failure – rather than anything ideological.
Given this, the burden is on you (the free market advocate) to do more than simply say ‘hey, I have a good idea, let’s get government out of X’. You have to offer a pretty compelling argument in order for that idea to be taken seriously, and in most cases you don’t do this.
Chad N Freude
@morzer: I got it the first time. I’m not completely dense you know. And Hanging swings both ways, e.g., hanging judge vs. hanging Saddam Hussein.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Chad N Freude:
I was told there would be no math.
Violet
@Bob:
He doesn’t do it HERE, which is the point. I don’t think it’s going to work if he posts here, then responds in comments at LOG. He needs to figure out a way to respond to comments here, even if it means editing his original post with responses.
Chad N Freude
@The Moar You Know:
Pancake being the exception that proves the rule.
ChrisNYC
Just one more point, ED — if you’re really interested in writing and particularly in writing about ideas, you might want to cultivate a bit more gratitude toward engaged readers, whether they agree with you or not.
The whole point of the thing — getting out a piece of paper and writing, “I think blahblahblah” and then publishing it somewhere — is to communicate with other people. To have people take time to read a piece that you’ve thought about and put together and, indeed, to be familiar enough with it to say, “This I like. This makes no sense, and this here, please explain because it seems inconsistent with this that you said 17 days ago,” is not something to take offense at. It’s the ENTIRE point of the exercise. That’s why most writers yearn for engaged readers.
MattR
Apparently I am the only one who does not find the lack of comments to be a huge problem. It is not ideal, but it is what it is and complaining about it is not going to change anything. John knew the score and still invited E.D. to blog here so rather than bitch about something that is not going to change I think I’ll adapt.
I’d also kinda like to do an experiment where E.D.’s article are posted under a different byline to see how different the reaction is.
hilzoy
OK: part of the long comment I wrote on another thread went like this:
It’s human nature that ED should feel that this place is excessively negative. This is something that was a constant issue for the conservatives at ObWi: even if every single commenter is completely polite and reasonable, the mere fact that liberals outnumbered conservatives by at least 20 to 1 means that any conservative would feel jumped on when liberals responded to their points. It can feel as though there’s just one being, “the commenter”, who is repeating him- or herself over and over and over. (If you think this is unfair, consider how easy it is to react similarly when some conservative comes on this site and makes some point that you think has been decisively disproved on some earlier thread. It’s easy to think: But I’ve explained this to you a hundred times; why should I explain it again! — as though there were just one being, “some random conservative”, to whom all the explanations had been addressed, rather than a series of individuals who should not be expected to read the entire archive of comment threads before daring to post.)
Even more so when not all the commenters are *entirely* polite and reasonable: it’s also human nature to take negative comments more to heart than supportive ones.
That said, I agree about showing up in comments, if at all possible. No easier way to change this than to show your willingness to actually engage with people’s arguments. If it’s not possible, then it’s not, but it would (imho) be worth trying.
Chad N Freude
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Funny. Really. I laughed out loud.
Violet
@ChrisNYC:
Good point. There are countless bloggers out there who are beyond thrilled when their first commenter shows up. You’re getting over 100 comments per post. You are lucky, sir.
Sam Hutcheson
@Stillwater:
It’s probably more of a reflexive distrust of the sources than of “free market solutions.” It’s not that we’re against free market solutions. We just don’t trust the nutjobs at Cato to come up with actually relevant, free market solutions.
morzer
@Chad N Freude:
Well, swinging both ways isn’t all about hanging, you know. Some people tell me it’s rather fun.
Third Eye Open
@cmorenc:
If you feel bullied by some anonymous person on the internet, perhaps you should check to make sure you’re not 12. Otherwise, fuck off, I don’t care, and many other not-very-nice things. Are you going to cry now?
Nylund
This is an open comments forum requiring no registration. That is a recipe for a lot of “dumb” comments on any website. I’ll take this format over the very closed off comment policies on most sights on the right though (for those sites that even allow comments at all).
All the racist, homophobic, anti-science, and intolerant behavior of “conservatism” in general has left liberals with a very short fuse when dealing with conservatism, even when such subjects aren’t the topic of discussion.
You may write “cash for clunkers is bad,” but for some, it’ll always read like, “Although I am not a racist, homophobic, xenophobe, I will still vote for people who are because I think cash for clunkers is bad.” Similarly the responses are not just about cash for clunkers, but to point out that your cash for clunkers analysis is not nearly strong enough to justify voting for a lot of evil people.
If voting for “reasonable” conservatives was an option, this may not be the case, but as the recent GOP primary results show, this is increasingly less and less an option and no matter how much you try to separate policy debates from elections, in the end, politics is just about who gets the most votes and we’re all left wondering who you pull the lever for when you’re finally alone in that voting booth. If it comes down to Obama and Palin in 2012, are you going to let something like cash for clunkers justify a vote for a Palin presidency?
Yes, this is the same “pick a side” debate you hate, but in the end, unfortunately, that is what elections come down to.
Riggsveda
So many people seem to take issue with Kain failing to engage with them in comments that I wanted to jump in once more to mention that the web is full of bloggers who never say word one to their commenters–more of them than not.
When a post is doing more than just allowing a writer to blow off steam, the post IS the argument, for Christ’s sake; it can stand alone, or if you don’t agree with it, it’s the starting point for a debate and the commenters can take it from there. Bloggers may want to respond to comments, may even make a point of always wading in, but there is no goddamn law that says they have to, or that it somehow invalidates the post if they don’t. And more important, it doesn’t invalidate the commenters’ arguments if they don’t. People, you don’t need a pushback from someone else to make a valid point. Voltaire was a great debater, but he didn’t require a foil to make his argument solid.
Oh, and morzer? Know this: I did all Robert E. Howard’s ghosting while the lazy prat lolled about the wine-dark sea consorting with undines and naiads, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt. And immortality!
NobodySpecial
@b-psycho: Name another setup that doesn’t. Name another setup that can’t be abused. With all it’s flaws, I like the idea that the guys who run things can be run out of town on a virtual rail if they screw up too much without needing actual pitchforks and torches.
We may not have much, but it’s a helluva lot better than the Divine Right of Kings.
@Nick:
YOU are as full of shit as a Christmas Goose, and why anyone gives any of your deep thoughts more than a picosecond of consideration is beyond rational speculation. Take your emo shit to some ACTUAL conservative country, like one of the Western democracies that can’t get it’s shit together enough to vote for a minority over a war “hero”.
Chad N Freude
The Education of E D Kain:
1. Respond to comments that challenge something you wrote on grounds of accuracy or debatability.
2. Ignore ad hominem attacks and insults.
Can we go on to something else now?
Violet
@MattR:
Maybe neither of them knew until he started blogging here. It hasn’t been explained at all. Someone upthread says he engages in comments at LOG, so perhaps its a software problem they weren’t aware of until it was too late.
Chad N Freude
@morzer: I hear it’s a testable proposition. (And my choice of words is almost always thought out in advance.)
Alwhite
@Violet:
I should have noted I did that because his arguments were such that they deserved a comment – I’ll admit I only read the first few because I didn’t see them as his until after :)
Remember November
With regards to negativity- it’s genesis is rooted in a stolen election from 2000, carried forth by wingnuts and chickenhawks in 2003, and has been enflamed by the right’s unconscionable lies by omission, birtherism and racism.. The negativity is not directed at ED, specifically, but he has a big target on his back which was self-applied. Here’s a tip. Learn to duck, or wear better armor. No thin skins allowed here.
Chad N Freude
@NobodySpecial: What we have is the Divine Right of Heavily Financed Self-Interested Demagogic Legislators.
morzer
@Riggsveda:
Know, O Riggsveda, that in the years after the fall of Enron, the wine-dark seas of Texas, Nebraska with its glittering tombs, Utah with its ancient temples, all were as nothing when the sons of Wyoming commenced their rise, vast of girth, sullen-eyed, destined to tread environmental regulations and welfare queens beneath their sandaled feet”.
DecidedFenceSitter
@Riggsveda:
They can choose to not respond. HELL, they can choose not to allow comments.
In the first case, I can choose to call them on it, I can request it. They can still ignore me.
In the second case, I can email them, or not, and fume.
Or I can not read them.
There are two blogs that I check frequently – Balloon Juice and Obsidian Wings; both of which is for the commentators. All the other blogs that I have RSS fed into my Google Reader (approximately 20) I read, and rarely return to because I don’t need to read the comments.
If ED Kain doesn’t want to engage the commenters directly, that’s fine. I think he’ll not be long to fit in with the culture/social contract of this blog and will thus continue to but up against our (in a general sense) expectations, but that’s his choice.
cleek
next
Third Eye Open
@morzer: Have you ever wondered what it would have been like if you had received the proper amount of oxygen at birth?
Enjoy
Alwhite
Here is probably the worst example of an post where vitriol was the only correct response. ED never came even close to this so this is only to serve as the worst example I can think of.
A guy posted a youtube link to an oh so clever video about Obama titled “The Great Reneger”. The idea that you could have a rational discussion with that as a starting point is ridiculous. I responded “I’d really like to have a deep discussion of politics and the success and failures of the current President but this post really only deserves a single response – fuck you”
I do not view that as closure, just battle fatigue from dealing with bullshit for 30 years when facts don’t matter.
Violet
@Alwhite:
I get it. It just cracked me up the way it was worded.
@Riggsveda:
But they don’t post on the front page here. That is not the culture of Balloon-Juice. Readers here are accustomed to a back and forth style. He can post elsewhere if he doesn’t want to engage in comments. But he’s going to get pushback here for not doing so. Extra pushback, probably, because he’s of a different political persuasion than the majority of posters here.
El Cid
Maybe we need that GEICO ex-drill-sergeant therapist to sit in.
morzer
@Third Eye Open:
No, lad, no. Banter with me. No, not like that. Use your mind. That’s why it’s renting the vast empty space between your ears. Banter, don’t bunt!
BruceFromOhio
No one is going to agree with everything. Hell, Cole, mistermix and that scurrilous bastard Arkon DougJ get their detractors, too. If you believe something and are willing to hold it up to scrutiny, let the poo-flingers and vertically fornicated commenters rot in the dust. Cole gave you the keys, drive where you will. Us mutts in the backseat can enjoy the ride, or jump off.
I recommend drinking heavily, and getting the Cthulu/chicken/pentagram/candle sequence worked out. The rest will take care of itself.
tomjones
Since your direct exposure to the progressive blogosphere before now was probably limited, it is unsurprising that you were unaware that progressives can be as rigid and closed off as the right.
If you think this place is bad, though, try posting a diary at Daily Kos or one of their ilk. That will curdle your toes.
MattR
@Violet: Yeah. You may be right about that. But either way, it is not going to change so why focus on it.
jfxgillis
Erik:
Like many, you misapprehend the concept of epistemic closure as it has come to be applied to the current American civil discourse in the last few months.
It’s not a synonym for “rigidly ideological” nor is it a synonym for “unconsidered positions taken mostly out of partisan interest or coalition loyalty.”
Epistemic closure is about a closed system of discourse and information distribution devoted to reinforcing an established ideological posture and an unwillingness to engage or even acknowledge discourse outside that system. It’s dispositively non-dialectic.
The very fact that you’re on this front page writing about liberals who engage and acknowledge you through this front page proves against “epistemic closure of the left.”
This is not to say that some segment of the left does not experience epistemic closure, but, frankly, the left has to work for it. The right can just wake up of a morning and cozy themselves into their closed system. We on the left can only watch three hours of cable news a night, it’s very hard to find a radio station when commuting and depending on the day, we might be barred from clicking 95% of the discussion links on memeorandum.
What I am saying is that what you’re experiencing here isn’t that.
Alex S.
You’re a centrist in a bipolar world.
I enjoy your posts, by the way.
me
@El Cid: That’s R Lee Emrey.
Tsulagi
Sorry, got no love for you. Nor any hate.
Not real bright are you? Groupthink is alive and well on both sides of the aisle. One of the reasons I’ve never been a registered Republican or Democrat.
Oh, and welcome to the front page.
Chad N Freude
@Violet:
There is one?
danimal
ED–I find you to be a reasonable and thoughtful person, so I’m not sure why you are identified as a conservative given the makeup of today’s conservatism. You are a good fit for this blog, IMHO.
You’ve tapped into a raging controversy on this blog from an alternate angle. Far from epistemic closure, liberals have been very attentive to conservative thinking and critiques on almost all of our policy proposals. The frustration you are tapping into is that conservatives ignore liberal thinking almost entirely, leaving most policy discussions quite unbalanced.
There has been a lot of bickering here because liberal-minded people are in conflict over whether ( and how much) credence liberals should give to conservatives. For example, Obama critics contend that Obama incorporated conservative policy priorities into Health Care Reform without gaining any votes in return. Conservatives, to the detriment of the country, have responded to liberal efforts at compromise by hardening their positions. It’s a truly maddening and unpatriotic response. Which makes us pissed and ready to lash out.
Third Eye Open
@morzer: Banter is reserved for those with whom I am having beers. Vitriol is reserved for the interwebs.
Shinobi
People not agreeing with you because your arguments aren’t very convincing is not the same as epistemic closure.
Martin
Sorry you’re feeling beat up, ED, but this isn’t an easy room.
Two additional things to keep in mind with this crowd:
1) Actions matter. If conservatives believe that government has a proper place in the markets, then they need to back that up with both words *and* actions. It’s hard to take any positive position on government from conservatives seriously when the guys you elected vote against everything. If conservatives really believe in something then they should vote for it, and if they aren’t, then the voters should be putting pressure on them to do so. They aren’t. In fact, it seems conservatives are primarying out the people most likely to do so.
Trying to make a case that flies 100% in the face of any recent evidence is going to get a pretty strong backlash here.
2) You won’t find many generous debaters here. In most cases, if you take a position, the folks here are going to test the extreme side of that position to see what it yields. That’s not a bad thing. Too often our political ideas revolve around rosy visions of a too-perfect future, and not enough attention is paid to the reality of what is likely to happen. That’s a lot more common at GOS and FDL and other sites. This place is actively hostile to rosy visions. Make sure you’re clear on the shitty side of your idea, because every idea has a shitty side and that’s what you’ll be asked to defend here.
Midnight Marauder
@cgp:
Looks like we have a perspective problem here. There was nothing spiteful about my comment; it was just a blunt, honest assessment of E.D. Kain’s tenure here thus far and in the future. And it’s not just because he continues to be unresponsive and obtuse to the primary criticism of him by the commentariat of this blog. It’s not because he runs to his “home blog” to denigrate the readership of this blog when he is once again confronted for posting specious analysis. It’s because I really don’t think he is cut out for the kind of conversations we have here.
Hell, even his fellow Ordinary Gentlemen recognize this. One of them even discussed as much in a post the other day.
“Drawing hard lines in soft sand.” Definitely tag worthy, I think. But also too, something to consider.
Joe Bauers
Not to be an authoritarian suck-up, but if John invited ED to post here I figure he’s got something to say that’s worth listening to, even if I end up vehemently disagreeing with it.
This is my favorite blog, and frankly if ED’s libertarian viewpoint became the majority opinion of the frontpagers I’d probably quit reading it. Been there, done that, let the Reason subscription expire a few years back. But as it is I’m glad he’s here to provide some dissenting perspective.
morzer
@Third Eye Open:
Teetotal as well. My sympathy.
Wordsmith
Jesus! I’m still stuck at epistemic closure …..
Reading all the shit out there this morning, I feel like I’m marooned on an island with a bunch of fucking idiots. Or – in some cases – moraned.
Chad N Freude
If Kain hasn’t OD’d on comments by now, he should recognize that threads that are actually about something other than cats, dogs, and/or food almost never get this long. There must be some significance to that. Or not.
Violet
@MattR:
It might change. If Cole and Kain know there are enough people who really feel that if he engaged in comments it would improve the blog, or at least his posts, they might work harder to find a way to make it work, perhaps with a software workaround. Alternatively, Erik could cull a few comments and comment on them on the front page, perhaps as an edit to the post, as several people have suggested.
Erik has explained why he can’t comment (problems at work with comment software so can’t comment during the day, plus new baby at home so limited time at night), but he hasn’t addressed any of the suggestions for how to work around those problems (edit post with comment/response, new post with comments, post only at times he can comment, etc.). Maybe he’ll do that after seeing the numbers of people who seems to want him to engage in the comments.
It’s a problem. People addressing it can help find a solution. Why not do that?
Chad N Freude
@Chad N Freude: And I win a prize for hitting 200.
some other guy
@Riggsveda:
If Kain doesn’t want to engage with rabble, fine. But then the front page post whining about how the commenters are mean to him seems a bit silly. Either he gives a shit about what we think or he doesn’t…
Or maybe he thinks the only proper role of the commenter is simply to praise the wise and all-knowing front-pager, which wouldn’t surprise me since that’s basically all that’s allowed on right-wing blogs (the small minority that even have comment sections, anyway).
gnomedad
@Stillwater:
Really? Seems to me more like a track record of “not being tried”. That’s what drives me crazy — for years I’ve favored market-based policy instruments such as emission taxes or permit trading (oh noes, license to pollute!) over across-the-board limits (shut the bastards down!). Now we have a market-based proposal in cap and trade, and the right is all “ZOMG, Shosulizum!!!”
brent
I would add my vote to those who don’t really care much about whether you specifically choose to engage in the comments and I really have neither love nor hate for you, E.D. I think that you have made some good points in your time here and, on the other hand, I think that some of your arguments have been extraordinarily weak. It would be nice if you at least tried to defend these weaker arguments but the fact that you don’t is not really a reason to get angry IMO. It just means that your thoughts carry less credibility going forward. Its really no different than with any other pundit anywhere else.
I don’t get angry that Krauthammer doesn’t bother to respond much to criticism of his hackish arguments. It just means I will be less likely to give his arguments any serious consideration.
Trinity
Pet pix pls.
kthnxbai!
Svensker
Keep at it, kid. You’re doing OK. I do think some of your posts are not always well thought out, but the corrections in the comments are always interesting and you seem capable of learning, which is a good thing. Which is to say you are a net asset to the blog (not that you should give a shit about what I think).
I’m not overly fond of posts that react to everything you say with “fuck off, libtard”. Not all of us are geniuses like those folks and we need to have it explained to us why you should fuck off.
Since I’m a boomer I’ll just say, keep on truckin.
some other guy
@Midnight Marauder:
I’d be more willing to buy into the “dumb catagorical vs intelligent conversationalist” argument if Kain actually engaged in conversation here. Instead, he simply posts an argument on the front page and… that’s it. The commenters rip the argument to shreds and we hear not a peep from Kain in response. That’s not a conversation. That’s a failed attempt at a lecture.
freelancer
Got about halfway down the thread.
The only sure thing to expect next is a rant from Cole telling us to Go Fuck Ourselves.
@some other guy:
In fairness, EDK is behind a firewall at his day job. He cannot comment during business hours. This was a major point of contention during his first few days here.
Nick
@NobodySpecial:
Oh no, NobodySpecial didn’t like the truth, so he decided to show how wrong I was with facts…oh wait.
Right, because the country elected a black man (who I’ve been told is a corporatist sellout who is just like Bush), with 52.8% of the vote in the middle of a complete economic collapse, this indeed means anyone who thinks we’re a conservative country is full of shit. Clearly if the economy was going well in 2008, Obama still would’ve won 52.8% of the vote, right?
Stillwater
@Sam Hutcheson: actually relevant, free market solutions.
Are there any? There was a time when the libertarian wet-dream existed in this country. Because everyone was so happy, laborers fought bloody battles for unionization, 40 hour work weeks, 8 hour days, occupational safety, minimum wages, retirement packages, health benefits, etc. More recently, the Reagan Revolation ‘solutions’ contributed to destroying the middle class, undermining unions, limiting tort claims, exporting manufacturing (which began the inversion of the US from leading exporter of manufactured goods to leading exporter of raw materials), etc. Under CLinton’s free market ‘solutions’ we got NAFTA and other extensions of GATT and the WTO. Bush II’s free market ‘solutions’ encouraged the real estate bubble, contributed to the investment bank collapse (which transferred billions in pension and retirement funds into the hands of a few tricky bankers), etc.
The solutions are designed to correct only a single problem: that government intervention in markets doesn’t go the right way. They have never been solutions for actually existing problems, tho maybe Cato can come up with one that doesn’t accomplish the opposite of what it is nominally designed to do.
Allan
I would call this self-indulgent orgy of scalding tears adolescent, except for the fact that actual adolescents have already developed thicker skins for interacting with others over the Internet than has Mr. Kain.
So far you’ve been judged guilty of posting a worthless piece of crap that was universally reviled as fact-avoiding glibertarianism, and you’ve responded by complaining to your clique about how mean the BJ girls are, and how they’re all big sluts who give oral on the first date.
Color me unimpressed.
Bob
@Violet:
He DOES do it here. But if he does not do it here enough for your, or my, liking, I’m willing, gullible, enough to believe it is because of time restraints, not an unwillingness to engage.
Gee, I sure would have liked used a few more commas.
Pat
If you had done this in Old Media you would be bounced and black-listed so fast your ears would wilt.
DecidedFenceSitter
@some other guy:
I’ve been debating whether to bring up that point over at LOG – the idea that conversational requires that “there are negotiations that need to take place. Ideas that need to be batted back and forth.”
Right now we have one pitch from Kain, and then lots of us commenters ripping it apart, followed up by lots of people ripping him apart. There’s no where for that to go but be frustrating, especially if you want to have a discussion.
As Hilzoy notes, being outnumbered isn’t fun. You post something, and then you have 20+ people ripping it apart. And you have few allies. At least here, when we eat our own there’s generally a couple of sides with support to take up the discussion.
BJ is NOT nice. It is NOT polite. If Kain wants polite and nice, I can suggest other sites where the discussion will be as fierce, but far more polite – like Obsidian Wings (damn I’m sounding like a paid promoter.)
ChrisS
@Chad N Freude:
Nah. People aren’t incorrectly using the variants of McArdle. Her internet writings really are as vapid as they would lead you to believe. And she still has a job at a Very Serious (TM) lefty magazine that use to pride itself on thoughtful articles and intelligent discourse.
But the floor is certain open for any other words you’d like to see removed.
b-psycho
@NobodySpecial:
Then our breaking point is just ridiculously lenient. As deeply embedded as corporatism is in “our” system, there should’ve damn near been another revolution by now.
John Cole
Looks like I missed all the fun.
FormerSwingVoter
Y’know, I enjoy seeing different points of view on Balloon Juice… but this might not be the best place to post if you’ve got thin skin.
I appreciate seeing some conservative takes on things, but lets face it: we’re assholes to people we like, let alone the new guy.
(Wait… does that mean the comment threads here are just Wonkette with fewer penis jokes?)
Stillwater
@gnomedad: I’ve favored market-based policy instruments such as emission taxes
Hmmm. So your saying that imposing a new tax is a market-based solution. Interesting.
Michael
When it comes to Kain posts, if I want to watch somebody flog themselves, I’ll punch up YouPorn instead – the time spent is more constructive.
No offense.
someguy
Kain, should we send you some Kleenex or something? I feel bad, like I was making fun of a retarded kid or something and he goes all snivelly.
Just do us a favor and let us know when you’re ready to stop weeping, turn off Lifetime, and bring some intelligent ideas into the discussion.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
Dude, DougJ got no end of shit when he started posting here. I remember umpteen million comments to the effect of “get this fucking dkos-acolyte off the blog”.
slag
@DecidedFenceSitter:
Mostly true. Not always true. People are nice and polite from time to time. But what they are mostly NOT is boring. Which is NOT true of a lot of places of perpetual wankery where no one stands for anything beyond being nice and polite.
agorabum
@mclaren: I’ve seen some compelling info that a lot of that administrative increase comes from educated special needs kids (mandated by various “constitutional” amendments). So it’s one thing to talk about the evil administrators, but to get back to 1970 level spending, we need to do less (mandated) monitoring of things and to expel all special needs kids.
Now go sell that to the California electorate. Oh, they won’t vote for it? Ok, looks like we’ll have to try something else. You say that pissing away resources at a problem sometimes doesn’t help. Usually, allocating nothing to a problem doesn’t help much either. But I would like to see reductions in public salaries and pensions on the higher end (no City of Bell type issues and local responsibility for costs to create better accountability) and way less on prisons. 3 strikes was just a sop to the prison construction and staffing racket.
Kain: Keep it up, respond more to (to the substantive ones) in comments, and be warned that the snark flies fast and heavy here.
danimal
And another thing….
Cash for Clunkers IS a free market alternative to simply banning inefficient autos from the roadways. Cap and Trade IS a conservative alternative to imposing a carbon tax. While every conservative bigwig out there is debating whether liberals are statist, soshalist or sharia-loving, actual liberals are trying to pass moderate legislation with bipartisan credentials and getting pissed on in return.
gnomedad
@Stillwater:
You read me correctly. Taxes are a way of bringing “externalities” into the market. “Market-based” because decisions about trade-offs are pushed down to individual circumstances. Exactly what markets are for.
Midnight Marauder
@John Cole:
Oh, you’ll get your chance, John Cole.
You.will.get.your.chance.
Xenos
This is not epistemic closure. This is more like fight club, where most steady commenters know each other and enjoy abusing each other. It may sound like bullying, but if you throw some well aimed punches we will respect you for it. The whiny ones, like Church Lady, can’t be bothered to fight back but hang around being pissy. Don’t ask me why.
Also, there is a very wide range of people with a wide range of experience and expertise. Whatever facts you use are likely to get acid responses by people who know that narrow corner of factoids.
And a thick skin helps. Think of it as epidermic closure.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“you’ve responded by complaining to your clique about how mean the BJ girls are, and how they’re all big sluts who give oral on the first date.”
They do?
I didn’t know that’s what “epistemic closure” meant.
roshan
Kain had his Helen Thomas moment with his now deleted post and can still front-page here. What else can he want?
Jayackroyd
@mistermix:
What @maclaren obviously meant by that short comment was that the various components of DHS that actually serve some kind of security purpose should be spun back out again, while the components that serve no actual security purpose should end, and the administration of those programs that remain should return to the status quo ex ante.
Trinity
@Xenos:
FTW!
SiubhanDuinne
I enjoy reading your posts, although I rarely comment. I would say I agree with you at least as much as I disagree, maybe more — and even when I don’t reach your conclusions, I can and do admire your thoughtful approach.
I think John Cole did a good thing in inviting you to play in his sandbox. I hope you continue to come by and contribute.
scott charmin
@scott charmin:
btw, i meant #93. J Smith.
sorry #90, roshan, i apologize.
parsimon
Haven’t read the entirety of the thread by a long shot, and hopefully this has been said by now, but:
To the OP and several of the early comments here: this blog should not be considered a stand-in for “the left.” Please don’t make that generalization.
To whatever extent there may be epistemic closure here, it does not indicate the same on the left in general.
batgirl
Okay, I didn’t read through the 236 comments, and I missed your post on the other blog about ‘epistemic closure’ but I think this needs to be mentioned, so I apologize in advance if someone has already said it.
The fact that you are posting here and people are reading you (even if they are commenting negatively) is already so far above what happens on right-wing websites where no other viewpoint is allowed and any comment not approved is deleted.
Nice try, anyways, with the Broderism.
Also, too, you never seem to respond in the comments so it makes it sort of hard to have a dialog with those that would be willing here. And, yes, there are many who would be willing.
Xenos
@agorabum:
Bnut
@Chad N Freude:
There’s a Michael Jordan baseball joke in there somewhere.
gnomedad
@danimal:
THIS! THIS! THIS!
snarkypsice
@cmorenc:
Amen. It’s always amazing to me how nasty some people feel they can be just because no one can see their face. Or I don’t know, maybe they go around talking like that to people in real life, in which case getting punched in the face seems a distinct possibility in the not too distant future.
ED, I don’t agree with you a lot of the time but I enjoy your posts and I also enjoy the (smart) rebuttals and arguments. I don’t blame you for being upset about the others, but I recommend ignoring them as much as you can.
You add something valuable to the blog and I hope you stick around.
matoko_chan
@Allan:
.
hai guys.
great thread.
i’d just like to point out that many juicers hated meh, but Cole never banned meh.
ED not only banned me from the League, but he threatened to ban me here.
who is the epistemic closer here?
ramadan mubarak!
Stillwater
@gnomedad: No I understand what you meant. It’s just that increasing taxes, or imposing new ones, is normally viewed as the opposite of a ‘market-based solution’. Pollution is a tricky problem (as are other externalities), and even serious libertarians (eg, lots of people not named Megan) concede that gov. intervention is quite likely necessary (apparently the invisible hand doesn’t feel the pollutants). I think this is a unique case where everyone agrees – to some extent – that correcting the problem would require big gov to get involved.
I would also add the following prediction: if an emission tax were implemented, large industrial polluters will be effectively exempt for quite a long time.
HyperIon
@Thunderlizard wrote :
Thanks for a definition i can understand. Goggle was not my friend when I searched on that phrase. Wiki is incomprehensible on the topic.
As for ED surely he is aware of all Internet traditions. Piling on might be the oldest.
morzer
@matoko_chan:
Moved on to strawberry pie, I see. Probably for the best.
Bill Murray
I’d like to also see an actual leftist post on the front page. Not sure who would be good, but a rhetorical street fight between the commies and the fishes would add even more spicey heat to the already hot air taking BJ to the top
matoko_chan
(((morzer)))
nah, ive just moved on from Tir tairn giri to Tir na nOg.
i wish you all the best.
<3
brantl
This is exactly right. E.D. Kaine brought his B- game here, and a bunch of A rated arguers WHO ACTUALLY CHECK THEIR FACTS
gex
When the stated goal in the bill for C4C is not the standard you are using to judge the success of the program, but rather some benchmark you pulled out of your ass two years later to proclaim it a failure, you can expect a bit of heated responses.
When a whole host of comments raising this point or others (such as the number of cars is so small as to have a minute effect on car prices) and John has a response post, you just dug in deeper. Absolutely no acknowledgment of the arguments made. No explanation why used car prices are now the standard to judge C4C by. It was as though you didn’t bother to read any of the replies. And then yes, you take it to the ridiculous level of comparing retiring cars to burning books.
I don’t see how you claim this is epistemic closure. First, Cole may be a Democrat, but he’s not a liberal per se. Second, YOU ARE A FRONT PAGE POSTER here. It seems to me that your idea of epistemic closure is that we are unwilling to change our minds based on flimsy arguments you can’t defend from the first round of rebuttals.
Is it too mean to point out that this is a very typical conservative maneuver? You could engage in the arguments readers made. Or you could focus on the name calling. You chose the latter like all the self-proclaimed victims on the right.
Scott de B.
@mistermix:
While we’re on the topic of self-criticism, this is another thing that happens on the Internet all the time (and which, I admit, I am also guilty of), namely willfully misinterpreting what others say because it’s easier to nitpick than to engage.
Did you really think mclaren was proposing abolishing the Coast Guard? Because I’d bet $100 that he/she wasn’t. Assuming the worst about another person isn’t conducive to dialogue.
The proper response, if you are uncertain what is meant, is to ask “when you propose abolishing the DHS, what exactly does that mean? The cabinet office, or all of the subordinate agencies?” But then that’s less fun.
morzer
@matoko_chan:
Yes, strawberry pie is better than boysenberry.
MattR
@morzer: Not cherry?
THE
@matoko_chan:
OT, but seeing you here,
I was wondering if you noticed Spengler’s recent book review at Asia Times.
I thought the topic might interest you.
Bob
@matoko_chan:
Really!? I’d appreciate more information on that. Was this “private” communication or a public exchange somewhere?
I know about the situation at LOOG, I bitched to Erik the very evening it took place. He was wrong to ban you and I believe he took steps to correct that error.
brantl
Because right now, your whole behavior is that of a self-righteous person practicing his social politeness around people he despises, and it’s a little baby epistemic closure just for you. We are not asking for social politeness. We’re telling you we’ve picked out some of your axioms that are crap, and we’re wondering if any of your other axioms are worth adding to our synthesis.
Because that’s still possible, but you’re making it very difficult to stomach.
This is exactly right. E.D. Kaine brought his B- game here, and a bunch of A rated arguers WHO ACTUALLY CHECK THEIR and HIS FACTS , gets his ass handed to him, and complains about getting waxed. What a load of horseshit.
“Epistemic cloture”? You’ve been caught repeatedly quoting facts that someone pulled out of their ass, you’ve been shown that somebody pulled them out of someone’s ass, and then you do these little tangential segues trying to defend a central point when your essential facts have been blown out of the water. And I guess you’re being center right when you stop trying to defend the BS that’s just been shown to be BS (that would be the ‘center’ part) and then when you try to come up with some other halfassed argument to back up the original, since-eviscerated argument, that would be the adhering to the ‘right” part of that “center-right” schtick.
Sack up, and bring an argument or idea that you’ve actually VETTED, here, why don’t you?
gex
It is interesting to note how generous people are about the inability to comment. So you can post during the day but not comment? Maybe you should post later and save a few minutes to respond to the counter arguments.
It is a flimsy excuse for not being able to really engage in a back and forth with us. If you want to just shout things from the front page and engage in any arguments maybe you should point that epistemic closure finger at yourself.
arguingwithsignposts
I have to say, Kain may be bringing his B- game, but he’s pulled in more comments on his posts lately than anyone else. It’s not epistemic closure when people are responding to your posts, OP.
Jayackroyd
@danimal:
[Sigh]
My comment over at the League was attached to the now deleted post.
The real problem lies in “libertarian” philosophy itself. It is inherently incoherent. As with Erik’s post, it tries to create two entities, a “government” and a “market” that are distinct. But there is no market in the sense they mean market that cannot exist apart from a government set up to regulate it.
For example, when I was living in the Sudan, there was a marketplace in largest town in the area. Trade was primarily by barter, with units of measure that were observable: jerricans for volume of sorghum and individual animals (goats usually) as the form of saved production.
That’s about as far as you can go without a government, by which I mean a central authority that does things like certify a currency, serve as the banker of last resort, provide infrastructure and provide regulations so that consumers and producers can interact productively.
This government is already a large and intrusive collectivist organization, and exists largely to make a market driven by a medium of exchange operate. You cannot really separate the “government” from the “market.” So when you write as if you can, you are engaging in fantasy, which is why people sometimes sneer at “free market fairies.”
We know for sure that libertarians really do want a state that is characterized by a great deal of collectivism because they do not advocate states which lack collectivist mechanism necessary for capitalism, such as a real property system with the government as the owner of last resort and the certifier of current ownership.
Usufruct states represent a much more minimal government than any that supports capitalist systems. Capitalism is deeply dependent on collective process, which is the ultimate source of the incoherence of libertarian thought, and why you see so much cognitive dissonance in the stuff they write, as with Erik’s post that started all this.
Stillwater
@danimal: Cash for Clunkers IS a free market alternative to simply banning inefficient autos from the roadways
This is a case where freedom isn’t free. C4C was a solution consistent with the existence of markets, but it cannot be construed in any plausible way as a ‘free market alternative’. Public subsidies to increase demand for privately owned supply is not freedom, baby. But it was still a good program.
morzer
@MattR:
Well, with cherry pie you really need some damn fine coffee….
Allan
@Jayackroyd: And as usual with EDK’s posts, I learn more and am more impressed with the insights of the commenters than the OP. Well said.
YellowJournalism
And I guess the moral of the story is: If you shit in the sandbox, claim the turd. Don’t cover it up and walk away.
arguingwithsignposts
@Stillwater:
I like whoever it was who used the term “market-based alternative” without the useless RW talking point adjective “free” attached to it.
birthmarker
@EFroh: DougJ perhaps??
MadamZorba
I never comment here or on any of the other blogs I read, but I just wanted to say, that although I don’t always agree with your post, you put it forth in a way that makes me think about why I don’t agree with them and that’s very important. I hope you keep it up.
morzer
@YellowJournalism:
You mean that EDK is not a cat?
gnomedad
@Stillwater:
Fortunately, we know that “problems” like global warming are just made up by conspiracies of smarty-pants freedom-hating “scientists”. Dodged a bullet there.
Jayackroyd
@Allan:
When you point this out in conversation, you rapidly discover that what the person you are speaking to means by minimal government includes everything he thinks should be regulated or funded collectively, and nothing more.
I had this one conversation with a guy who insisted that copyright and patents were obviously part of the free market, and enforcement didn’t represent any governmental intrusion.
That’s a laughable example, but people who believe this stuff really haven’t thought it through logically or historically. Take, for example, anti-choice libertarians. There is no way to make a coherent case for that, but they still proudly self label themselves.
They get positively cross eyed when you point out just how big and intrusive the government has to be in order to have a working real property cadastre, including, just by the way, killing or driving off the previous occupants of the land that is owned by the collectivist state that replaces the usufruct societies that preceded it.
MattR
@morzer: And a cigarette afterwards.
YellowJournalism
@morzer: He might possibly be Tunch messing with us.
Of course, Tunch strikes me as the type of cat that does his business, looks up at John with an expression that says, “Clean it, bitch.”
morzer
@YellowJournalism:
I don’t know whether Tunch does apologies or not, but I am damn sure he wouldn’t link to McArdle EVEN ONCE! Cats are just too intelligent to embarrass themselves that way.
fraught
Oh Jeez, next week Kain is going to go crying to John again and then John is going to put up his Jesus giving us the finger picture again and call us all fuckers and tell us to STFU. And then two days later John will say he’s sorry for being cranky and we’ll have a group hug while Kain stands off to the side smirking and playing with all his new toys.
How many times is Kain going to interrupt the momentum of this blog with his whining self absorption with his sleep deprivation and child rearing chores which I personally couldn’t give a shit about?
arguingwithsignposts
Having just seen the updates, I feel the need to respond to this:
I reacted to the LoOG commenter who said McArdle was one of the best the libertarians had. Perhaps there is some confusion there.
Also, minor quibble, but if an FPer updates a post, would someone please mention it in the comments? If you’re refreshing a thread, you won’t get to see the updates.
gex
Christ amighty, no one expects you to respond to all the posts. Address the counter arguments, and don’t worry that the rest of us are using the comments to have conversations with each other.
Does each update come with some sort of hidden accusation about our actions or expectations?
mistermix
@Scott de B.: I think that’s a fair point, in general. I try to take the most charitable view of what people post. But it goes both ways. If you’re going to make a comment, try to keep it down to a couple of points so others can respond.
So, when someone posts a rant with a couple of dozen different points in it, and just tosses out “close DHS” along with a bunch of other questionable stuff, I think it’s a fair response to just take a couple of the most unreasonable things in the rant and point out that they’re unreasonable. And the bare statement about DHS is unreasonable. If you’re going to make that statement, why should I guess at which parts would you keep and what parts would you throw away?
Jayackroyd
@arguingwithsignposts:
“market-based alternative”
is a publicity term, not a policy description.
Look, people (and firms) respond to incentives. That’s true whether the incentives that are created were intentional or not. To say that C4C is a “market based alternative” doesn’t add anything to the discussion, because all government action changes incentives, which get expressed in the form of price changes. This one happened to combine two policy goals–subsidizing car producers and dealers with reducing effluence from old cars–that worked out reasonably well. The incentives matched up to the policy goal.
Banning marijuana sales is also a “market based alternative.” The policy goal (reducing marijuana use) has also been attained, but the attendant incentives for supplying consumers illicitly anyway have had effects more deleterious than the reduction in use.
This attempt to label a government action as based on markets vs not based on markets creates confusion, because the incentives for the folks involved are always affected by a policy act. The idea that there is something inherently good about explicitly using tax incentives rather than command and control approaches leads to confusion. While it’s true that when you can use taxes rather than regulations to achieve a policy goal, that tends to work better, you can’t always use taxes, user fees or other methods to directly change the prices faced by the agents you seek to influence.
Reducing the tax breaks given to BP probably would not have been sufficient to prevent the company from drilling, and it is really hard to come up with a tax/fee regime that would make them do that drilling safely, or not at all.
Adam Lang
Not that you’ll ever get far enough down to see this post, but…
This is partly because your posts are too big. Thus they get lots of comments responding to a variety of different parts, and you feel overwhelmed trying to respond to all of them.
Pick a damn point, write a short post, people will respond to the post. In general those responses will break down into four, or five, or ten different general themes. Respond to each of these themes.
Horrible idea. Because that lets you much more easily pick the exact critiques that you feel you can best address. Everyone does this: you see a critique and you think, ‘but he’s wrong, it doesn’t work like that, it works like THIS!’ and you’re fired up to post about it. You see another one and you think, ‘I’ll have to think about that, hmm, I’ll come back to that one’ and you never do. And since it’s no longer hanging around in the new thread, there’s no reminders, etc.
Look, I like you, and you seem to be sane about a lot of things. But I’d say your biggest problem is that you keep asserting things that are factually untrue, but which take work to dispute (and, in fairness to you, work to originally discover) and by the time someone can dispute them, there are already 200 comments in the thread, and nobody gets far enough to even read the disputation, let alone respond to it. (One example: you said in a post that per pupil funding, adjusted for inflation, was continually increasing and that there was no end in sight to the trend. This is simply utterly false: per pupil school funding, adjusted for inflation, has gone down by more than 10% in the last ten years. Period. This was central to your point, and it was simply utterly false. But because you have to find per-pupil numbers, for the past ten years, and they have to be inflation-adjusted, it takes a fair bit of work to disprove it, and by that time nobody’s inclined to bother to read.
Given this, you tend to reach faulty conclusions. It’s no surprise, given faulty data. But when people don’t have the time or knowledge to discover that the facts you so blithely assert are simply mistaken, arguments can end up looking pretty strange.
Bah. Nobody’s going to read this anyway.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
comment #281 to say:
If this post, and its update, prove nothing else, they prove that you, sir, are a good egg.
There! I said it! And I will not back down.
gex
Really? In the title you called C4C a failure. You didn’t come trying to point out unintended consequences. You came in trying to make the point that C4C failed. That you are using a different benchmark to make that judgment is what some people took issue with. You came looking for a fight with that assertion and then got all sad when people fought back. Avoiding the inflammatory title might have set the tone better.
And really, you still haven’t addressed any of the arguments that point out that the amount of cars that were removed due to C4C is a very small part of the used car market and how all the other factors (bad economy anyone?) might play in.
So, like a typical libertarian, you want to call a government program a failure because there *could* be possible negative consequences. Color me surprised.
shortstop
“Left out of” more one-way communication, you mean?
Think of all the engagement you could be doing if you didn’t spend so much time trying to end run what BJ is or rationalize that you don’t/shouldn’t have to do what other FPers do.
The comments are where the discussion and debate take place on this blog. Why are you fighting so hard against that?
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
I’m sorry, I don’t usually respond like this to people on the internets (because it generally gets one nowhere), but:
@fraught: What the fuck is wrong with you?
I will admit that as soon as I see that a thread has gotten crazy, I stop reading, so I have not followed many of the apparently insane threads with Mr. Kain’s name at the top, but God Almighty, son, did you mother teach you no manners whatsoever?
Is this what it’s been like in the Kain threads? If so: E.D, dude, you are an even better egg than I thought. I would have tossed in the towel and walked away from the nasty ages ago.
roshan
NOOOOOOOOO!
Don’t do follow up posts responding to critiques, stick with updates to the same post. Add time line to updates.
MattR
@arguingwithsignposts:
I second this.
gnomedad
@Jayackroyd:
You say that like it’s a bad thing. I like it because it exposes “conservatives” for the frauds they are: “Look, here’s a market-based alternative, and you still don’t want it?!?”
jacy
@Adam Lang:
I read it, not that that means anything. But I think you make a great point about the time it takes commenters to run down the exact facts to refute assertions that are made seemingly off-the-cuff, anecdote-supported, or based on faulty or incomplete data.
By the time you have this great set of data points, it’s devolved into a melee and everyone has ceased to care about addressing the underlying points.
Also, the long-ass posts. I think EDK is used to the essay-style posts at his other haunts, and that’s just not a good BJ fit. Any writer knows you have to adjust your presentation to your audience. This is an active place with lots of very sharp people who will pick things apart. Brevity and clarity is important.
As many people have pointed out, this ain’t a lecture hall, it’s more akin to a neighborhood bar. We are the way we are, and that’s why we like it here.
gex
@gex: By the way, that quote just sounds like an inability to say “I was wrong.”
Jayackroyd
@gnomedad:
You have then allowed them to set the narrative frame, that a market based solution is preferable, regardless of whether it is actually the best approach to a problem. Moreover, you feed the broad, false narrative that “the market” exists.
And, worst of all, they don’t care, at all, about being hypocritical, or lying. If you say “But this is the market based approach you wanted,” they will either ignore you, or say, “No it’s not.”
A case in point is the federal deficit. Clinton erased it. The republicans dramatically increased it. And now they are against it. In fact, they always were against it.
If I were still willing to cut Obama some slack, I would say that the administration has been sucked into thinking that the GOP would respond to sincere attempts to incorporate “market based” elements in their proposals. They have not. Because they don’t really care about this.
Keith G
I’m glad this is still going, as my sleep and work sched leave this as my first real chance to opine.
E.D., I value your posts as I have learned from all of them. Quite often the learning content was commentary from others correcting (or sometimes berating) your assertions. Being the B-J pinata, may not be the highpoint of your day/week, but if this is among your most serious problems, you are a lucky man indeed.
While some are undoubtedly making sport of this, if you follow up on what I see as the main themes of the criticism, you will end up a stronger writer. If you do not want to learn and grow, then maybe a mistake was made.
Last point. You said:
That’s a weird thing to say about the post that was titled by you:
“A possible unintended consequence”? Really? Seems like a bit of revisionism. Doing that is just an engraved invite for even more swings at the pinata.
Violet
@MadamZorba:
Yes you do. You just did.
@Adam Lang: I read it and agree that shorter posts would benefit Erik. Like jacy said above, you have to tailor your writing to your audience. Shorter posts, at least for awhile, might help him get his footing a bit better.
Erik, thanks for taking the time to update. And also for finding a way to address the comments. I agree with others who said shorter posts would help. Your arguments would be more focused and you could address the comments more effectively.
Not a waste. Lurkers aren’t in the discussion anyway. If they want to join in, it’s very easy to do so here. Basing any decision on whether or not to participate on what lurkers do is just silly.
Some of the best part of BJ is the comment section. Maybe other blogs are different, but the comments are part of what make this blog worth reading. You joining in would help your posts immensely, imho.
Stillwater
@gnomedad: Fortunately, we know that “problems” like global warming are just made up by conspiracies of smarty-pants freedom-hating “scientists”. Dodged a bullet there.
Are you deliberately misinterpreting me? I was saying pollution is an externality which even libertarians agree requires government intervention to correct. The consensus view is that there are no ‘free market solutions’ to fix this. At that point, pick your policy, advocate for the more ‘market friendly’ alternative, but don’t pretend that it’s a ‘free-market solution’, or a ‘market-based policy instrument’. An emissions tax is a coercive intrusion by the government into specific markets, justified (or not) by what that tax intends to accomplish.
General Stuck
Mr. E D Kain
For as long as you post here, please do not begin to write in a manner to appease anyone but yourself. Do not apologize unless you firmly believe an apology is warranted. There is no “rhythm” to this blog, and I would submit never was, and imo, never should be. This blog does now have factions, I believe, and that is a little sad, but is part of the dem MO when in power. We call them circular firing squads, but that may be a little harsh, and most likely are more part of the cacophony of democracy that is sorely lacking from our counterparts on the right. It is frustrating, and must be doubly so for folks like you and Cole, trying to find some nuance in the give and take on the left. Do not try to control it or herd it, or even make sense of it. You can’t, as it is a force unto it’s self for the most part. Just say what you believe, with as little talking point terms as possible, and respond when you want.
And remember, if you do nuance, you are bound to make unfriends regardless of your base ideology. Especially within the activist blogosphere. People don’t like having there myths exploded with details that often hold the truth of misbelief/
gnomedad
@Stillwater:
I thought I was agreeing with you and mocking the global warming denialists.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Adam Lang:
Actually in this specific example the counter argument based on adjusting for inflation and normalizing spending to a per-pupil basis was right there in the very source which he linked to in his top post. He skimmed the source and just regurgitated the subsection heading without reading the detail (which was all of about 4 sentences) below it.
Now if I were into this whole epistemic closure mudflinging contest thingee that we keep hearing so much about, then I’d say that was a pretty glibertarian thing to do. But being the generous sort that I am, I blame the sleep deprivation.
FFrank
all I ask is you back your content up with genuine content not crap.
Decent writer but still feel you are too much of a generalist that can’t back his facts up.
LINKs Please…
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Xenos:
Must.have.tagline
Put it in the lexicon.
Put it in the rotation.
Want it
Need it
Gotta have it.
Stillwater
@gnomedad: OOOOOps. Sorry.
jinxtigr
I don’t trust Kain to correctly identify ad hominem.
les
You post a poorly researched, factually incorrect, lame argument; you receive hundreds of responses, the majority of which (at least until it became obvious you weren’t going to address corrections, information or honest questions) were substantive (if not always polite–it’s a fucking blog). And your takeaway is the above?
I don’t know if you’re too tired, you’re too used to being able to blat anything out and be praised for it, or you just fucking suck at reading comprehension, logic, argument and rhetoric.
But there sure doesn’t appear to be much point in trying to interact with you.
Tax Analyst
As many others have said, outside of yesterday’s really weak & whiney C4C post and your even more feeble “C4C – burn books” follow-up fiasco your posts haven’t been all that unreasonable. There have been several I don’t at all agree with, but I didn’t perceive the thinking behind them to be lazy, self-serving, foolish or condescending. Wrong maybe, but “You’re right/wrong – here’s why” is part of a healthy discussion. Reading and considering posts and comments that dissect and then discuss reasonably stated good-faith arguments can occasionally even serve to broaden ones perspective on particular issues (although you’ll probably not see too many comments like “Wow! I was so certain about that, but now you’ve shown me the light! Oh, Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!). But if you toss out a weak, tone-deaf, unsupportable bowl of sloppy gruel (C4C, for instance), don’t respond (it appears now that your work duties or rules prevent this) to the inevitable wave of comments that note it’s deficiencies, and then serve up a nonsensical non sequitur shit souffle (C4C-burn books) for dessert you really shouldn’t be all that surprised that your ass is getting kicked to the curb and generally trashed.
BTW – telling you to go eat a bag of dicks is really a term of endearment around here.
And if you believe that I’ve got some sure-fire stock derivative offerings that absolutely can’t miss for you to consider.
jenniebee
I’ve just been lurking for a while, but I have to say I’ve liked Kain’s posts, long as they are, especially the one where he said (to sum up) that he’s a conservative because he agrees with liberals about basically everything but, I guess, likes the taste of kool-aid.
Cheer up, E.D. – you’re just on the road to realizing that those actually were the droids you were looking for.
les
Ya know, maybe the problem was ED’s introduction here. Maybe if, instead of being presented as a thoughtful, reasonable conservative willing to engage different opinions, he’d been introduced as a kinda fuzzy libertarian/”classical liberal” with a good command of the english language, specializing in libertarian tone poems with no particular connection to reality, he wouldn’t get such pushback.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
Logic fail.
The small number of cars (relative to the total number of used cars on the road) were the High Emission, low MPG cars. You are taking the worst of the worst and replacing them with good, efficient, ecological cars.
It’s kinda like health care. The majority of health care costs are coming from something like 10% of patients (the numbers are fuzzy, it’s been a while since we’ve discussed it). If you had a magic wand that replaced those 10% with healthier people, you’d end up reducing health care costs by ~50%. The same concept applies here to these cars.
arguingwithsignposts
@les:
Pretty much sums up their entire philosophy. I like it.
Morbo
Is that what you did? Hmmm, Let’s go to the tape.
Personally I would say that you’re agreeing with her conclusions while quibbling with her over whom to point the finger at, unless you’re calling that one of her conclusions. To be fair, it is rarely clear what her conclusions are.
Jewish Steel
I agree with everyone on this thread who has suggested that you are on a leftward journey.
I think you are honest enough to lay out some of the philosophical foundations for your political opinions. That they are consistently specious is another testament to your honesty. You’re saying these things even though, perhaps, you are beginning to suspect that they are wrong.
I for one am willing to be as patient as it takes. You’ve stopped watching the shadows on the wall, turned around and seen the fire that creates them. Now you just need to step outside the cave.
We’ll be out here waiting for you.
Cerberus
Conservatives don’t understand epistemic closure. Epistemic closure is a function of privilege, being blind and deaf to the life experiences and actual arguments of the other side and instead listening and experiencing only a closed world. It’s impossible (or at least really fucking difficult) to achieve in liberal circles because liberalism is a collection of minority voices and experiences.
Minorities have to understand two worlds, that of their own experiences and that of the dominant group because culture defines itself from the experiences of the dominant group. They can’t be closed to those experiences of the dominant group because they can’t escape them.
Conservatism holds that position as well directly rather than indirectly with Teabaggers and the like given prominent voice in our media, right-wing culture and lies given precedence in the news media, and many people’s bosses being of this culture thus needing to be understood to survive the corporate culture.
As can be seen by 90% of posts liberals make on the internet, it’s impossible for liberals to be closed to conservative worldviews and that of privileged people in general. Whereas it is really easy for liberal voices to get lost. Look at Erik’s complete lack of understanding or will to understand liberal viewpoints on anything. Look at most anyone’s understanding of the life experiences of stark minority groups like a black woman on welfare, a trans person trying to survive another day, or a girl seeking an abortion for a pregnancy she can’t carry to term.
These viewpoints are buried as are the voices of out and out liberals or leftists on our TV machines. Rachel Maddow may be awesome, but she’s not leftist and there is no possible way any leftist would be given a platform in the same way as many far-right-wingers have.
It’s quite obvious that the right learning of the accusation has done what it has always done and turned to their expert projection and tried to seek idiotic and dumb ways to sling it at their “enemies” to “get back at them”.
As such it’s understandable that Erik, unaccustomed to being called out as wrong when he’s you know, stating factual inaccuracies, would go running screaming to the response.
I do acknowledge that at least he had the humanity left in him to notice that it just made him look like a childish bag of privilege throwing a tantrum and appreciate it, but the trope is a tired one.
The way things are structured, the left just can’t easily have the problem of epistemic closure, because epistemic closure is simply a manifestation of power and privilege, something life-long liberal activists all too often lack.
Cerberus
@Jewish Steel:
He’s not, but I guess it’s the core of liberalism to dream and hope and reach out to those who’ll smack our hands away.
I tried that reaching out already by the means he had requested and it became quickly obvious that he has no interest in ever changing his mind even when he is inaccurate and will only react like this, a caged animal, if we dare persist in calling out his factual inaccuracies and sly lies. There is no human core in there, he’s a professional “reasonable conservative” whose sole desire is to try and sell Beltway Wisdom style that conservatives are aw shucks just one of the guys and can totally be debated with.
He argues in bad faith, he accepts zero new input, he provides no real defense for the facts he pulls out of his ass and the contritions he regularly shows and the promises he makes to “respond” are all lies. I followed his protocol, emailed him with nothing but a simple correction to something he got wrong, tried to engage him like the “reasonable conservative” he is supposed to be.
What I found is there is no such thing as a reasonable conservative.
eyepaddle
@arguingwithsignposts:
I am pretty sure Leonidas is the guy who ran the spoofiest spoof-fest of all Scrutator.
I, however wouldn’t be the first person to point out how hard it is to tell right wng spoof from right wing reality.
As I typed that I thought y’kno, I should probably put quotes around right wing “reality.”
Morbo
Oh, and excellent work with the lampshade hanging there.
brantl
“I am aware that epistemic closure is not just ‘group think’. I am referring explicitly to the many calls for me to quit writing here or STFU as instances of epistemic closure. Not to peoples’ disagreements with what I’m saying, but rather to the hostility engendered by my writing it in the first place.”
Those are only examples of epistemic closure if they are objecting to your writing here because the want to avoid the ideas that you present, because they don’t wish to hear them, here; if they object because you’re full of shit, that’s entirley different, then they just don’t want you to be able to waste their time.
This captures my attitude on your writing in a nutshell. Your “facts” typically aren’t facts. They have either been stretched, twisted or simply misunderstood to suit your purpose. Since you base your “theories” and “arguments” on those “facts”, your “arguments” and “theories” are usually crap, too.
Face it, Kain, what you’ve written here, so far, is full of holes. Muster it up, or lay back down.
Cerberus
@brantl:
Also important to note, because I’ve run across it a lot with regards to privileged people.
Privileged people think that what they are spewing is one of a kind liquid gold that no one has ever heard of. And they get pissed, angry, and think their “enemies” are being closed-minded when their enemies wave it off like the bullshit it is.
But thing is, being in the minority, you hear the same shit a lot. Having some conservative wank about “governments bad” is something we hear all the time. Someone repeating the same old talking points of fear about this or that government service? We hear it all the time. We’ve heard the arguments, we’ve gotten into epic flame wars where we researched reams of evidence pointing out it’s all bunk. And you know what? We have lives and we don’t always feel like getting into the same old arguments, especially when it looks like our opponent is arguing in bad faith or an emotional need to believe things that are factually inaccurate.
So yeah, we get dismissive, we point out that it’s wrong and we’re tired of hearing it, that we’ve heard it all day and now we just want to relax and bitch in the few pockets we get as minority groups.
And then there’s the same old crap, the same shit as on the Conventional Airwaves media, the same shit in the glibertarian mailer your coworker sent, the same shit you keep correcting for relatives who don’t pay attention to politics the same way you do and here it is in your escape hole, thinking it’s fresh and brilliant and wonderful.
Yeah, some people are going to treat that like a giant ball of shit, some people are going to wonder why it’s here, fouling up the place they go to escape this shit crowding out their regular day, some people are going to be short or even openly hostile.
It’s not epistemic closure, it’s simple exhaustion. We’re polite to the coworker or the boss or the family member spouting this tired privileged shit because we have to be. We don’t have to be polite to random guy on the internet, especially when he’s sold as something he’s not.
Listen to this guy because he’s a reasonable conservative who’s amenable to reason and what we get is a sometimes lucid version of that annoying libertarian coworker who seems to mostly get it but devolves into country-destroying idiocy and a love of factually incorrect information and right-wing lie campaigns at the drop of the hat?
Yeah, some people are going to go, why the fuck is this here, what benefit does this serve, ugh, this is kinda annoying.
It’s because it isn’t fresh. It isn’t novel. Despite what Erik and his ilk might think.
asiangrrlMN
@arguingwithsignposts: This is something that I have been pondering for awhile. I have come to the conclusion that Cole did, indeed, invite E.D. to the site to get more page hits.
@Third Eye Open: I thank you for keeping the phrase, ‘fuck you with a rusty pitchfork’ and its variants in circulation. My greatest dream is that it will some day make the Balloon Juice Lexicon.
E.D., here’s the thing. 1/3 of the commentariat will be needlessly insulting and won’t give you the time of day. That’s the nature of the blog, and one I actually like. However, from what I’ve read, most of the commentariat are attacking your arguments and not you as a person. The fact that we are so willing to engage with you is evidence that we are not circling the wagons. Do we use insults? Yes. That, too, is the nature of the blog.
Benen posted this bit about conservative ideology v. liberal ideology, and I think it holds here. Even though you are not a conservative, you do seem to look at things from an ideological point of view rather than from a practical one. As others have pointed out, liberals have heard the ideology time and time again and have debunked many aspects of it time and time again. We are not going to let anyone pull a fast one.
Finally, I will say that I prefer your late-night posts because you engage in the comments there. I understand that you can’t do that during the day, though.
Finally finally, keep posting. You’ll find your groove.
HyperIon
@eyepaddle wrote: I am pretty sure Leonidas is the guy who ran the spoofiest spoof-fest of all Scrutator.
so you’re saying it was DougJ?
maus
@brantl:
That’s the thing, I WANT to have my ideas challenged and torn apart, but I don’t want to hear the same tropes and catchphrases used to do so.
What we’re looking for is a fresh opinion, not just a conservative speaking to us directly. Something we’re not going to see so much of elsewhere. Hell, I can even appreciate some stuff from Little Green Footballs these days. I’d rather see them posting things they believe and are fairly logical more than pseudoliberal conservatives like Sullivan.
GeneJockey
Hell, ED – you think this is bad, try being the only poster on a bowhunting forum who isn’t a card-carrying Teabagger!
Have you been told yet that you’re ‘worse than Hitler’?
Been called a Communist? Dhimmicrat? Terrorist-enabler? America-hating slime?
This is what happens to those of us who venture beyond the circle of people who think like we do – we get the living shit kicked out of us. Welcome to the party.
suzanne
@Cerberus:
Word. Bingo. Nail on the head, and all that.
I am a liberal/progressive first and foremost, though not exclusively, because I am interested in social justice issues. So Kain will hear less from me on economic posts like the C4C debacle, because that’s not my area of expertise, and I don’t have much to offer the discussion. So I read the comments and learn. I am REALLY disappointed in Kain for leaping to the “epistemic closure” argument. Guess what, dude? Those of us that live with the reality of being in a marginalized class (or two or three) DO NOT HAVE THE LUXURY of sealing ourselves off from an ideology we don’t agree with. Quite frankly, that is offensive in the extreme, and reeks of the unearned social capital of unexamined privilege.
JGabriel
E.D. Kain @ Top:
Yes: lose the attitude towards the comments section.
The comments section is where people engage with your ideas. It is the place where your commenters spend most of the blog time. It is the only place where they can publicly respond.
If you think the comments section is a waste, why should they think any better of your posts?
And if you treat it as a waste, why should they treat your posts any better?
.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@Adam Lang: I did. Links please to inflation-adjusted per pupil funding numbers :).
Ken Lovell
Mindless “If you’re not with us you’re against us” tribalism is just as prevalent on the left as elsewhere. There’s a lot to be said for bloggers having their say in the post and then leaving the discussion to commenters. Trying to defend the post in comments, often against abusive or irrational arguments, soon becomes exhausting and has led to many bloggers burning out after a few years (me for example).
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people):
Here’s the U.S. Department of Education site that EDK linked to in his Krugman fisking post which generated so much heat. See point #5. Overall spending is up 105 percent from 1991/92 to 2004/05, but adjusted for inflation per pupil spending is up only 25 percent over that same period.
I’m guessing that increased energy costs (heating and cooling schools, running buses) and increased healthcare costs (staff benefits) may account for much of that 25 percent increase.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Thanks!
Batocchio
I thought we had already been over this before. FWIW, you gain some points with me for the mea culpa, but your accusation of “epistemic closure on the left” struck me as whiny, defensive and largely inaccurate. An open mind means giving someone a fair hearing, not accepting inaccuracies. Liberals ain’t infallible, but (on the better liberal-ish blogs at least) they tend to be members of the reality-based community – and sadly, modern conservatives have largely abandoned that. This is one of those blogs where the comment threads are very active, and some folks are pretty damn sharp. You’ve been smacked around more than you deserve, it’s true. You’re getting more scrutiny than other front-pagers. However, you’ve also been critiqued fairly and substantively (when you’ve said something dodgy). You’ve acknowledge that before. You’ve also been given credit when you’ve said something thoughtful. So why the whiny false equivalency about “epistemic closure on the left” now? As folks have said before, you just need to bring your “A” game and make your case. I think you should keep posting (not that it’s my blog), but the only way you’re going to get respect is to earn it. (Realistically, you’ll still get some undeserved shit, but not the, uh, deserved shit.)
I think your posts have been much better when explain your views on a specific issue rather than trying to go large and critique liberals or legitimize conservatism. You’re an atypical conservative. The Republican Party believes and/or shills many things that are factually false. You seem to be aware of this in some cases, but perhaps not in others. At times, you’ve gone in for some Broderific false equivalency that “both sides have something to learn,” or the Rand Paul self-regard fallacy that you’ve given this much more thought than other people. In some cases that may be true, but as those fair, substantive critiques have shown, not in others. Make your case and it should be apparent, neh? (But again, not my blog…)
A Ghost To Most
@JGabriel:
This.
All I asked for was less posts, and more responding to comments. Sounds like you heard that.
Otherwise, no problems, although I disagree with your premise that, if I don’t comment on a particular thread, I’m not part of the conversation. On the contrary; often someone else says what I am thinking, often much better than I could. Nods don’t show up in the comments, but there is memory (shared and individual) of who said what, and those memories inform our later interactions. Or I may be full of shit; YMMV.
mnpundit
A big part of the reason is that Cole up front said we could all fuck off and die if we didn’t like you. That kind of stuff makes it rather fun to stab at you repeatedly for things you do that are wrong. That said I haven’t been around much to stick shivs in you other than to say that you are in fact, pro-choice.
I will say that I don’t think there is and kind of E.C. on the left. As was pointed out elsewhere, liberals and progressives are arguing from facts and figures at each other. To the extent that I think Obama has been a rightist sycophant, it’s because I believe left leaning policies would have improved the economy not because left leaning policies are an end in themselves.
Left leaning policies aren’t always right, but they’re USUALLY correct and the problem is you just keep running into them. After all, how many times have the Dirty Fucking Hippies been wrong since Inauguration Day 2001? Not many.
E.D. Kain
Thanks everyone. Look – I want to say again: I was wrong. I was just in a bad mood and under the influence a bit and wanted to bitch. Ended up putting my foot in my mouth. My apologies. You guys are right to push back.
E.D. Kain
@GeneJockey: Yeah the folks on the right tend to hurl insults at me as well. Whatever. I’ll adapt. Grow some thicker skin…
arguingwithsignposts
@E.D. Kain:
Bob Lobsterclaw has his answer, because that sounds about like a perfect encapsulation of the raison d’etre of this here blog.
Protip: you need to learn the + system, dude. :)
Corner Stone
@E.D. Kain:
You indulging has nothing to do with it.
Some are right to push back because you start with false premise, false equivalence, false data and wrong conclusions.
Thought experiment – if FP poster Tim F. had posted your C4C post under his name, what would everyone here expect to happen?
He would have got his fucking ass ripped. Roundly, loudly, and full of ugly.
Ruthless
For the record, I like your posts quite a bit. I don’t agree with you all the time, but you make interesting observations such as with C4C that there are other effects of the policy; in that case, I think JC was more right in the sense that, well, the cost of used cars possibly going up is a good trade for getting s***ty cars off the road (helping the environment, stimulating the auto industry when it needed it.) The perfect-world solution would have been after the 1970’s, our legislators and presidents would have mandated really high fuel standards and invested a lot more in urbanization and public transportation. That didn’t happen, so it’s pointless to talk about it.
I will say, though, that when you stated that it’s a question whether the courts striking down a ban on gay marriage (rather than it being done by popular will), you deserved the angry responses and I think you probably realize that now.
Also, if it makes you feel better, JC and other posters on this site also get a lot of flack (see what people wrote about JC chastizing the “left” for not being enthusiastic enough about Obama’s/Democrats’ accomplishments.)
Ruthless
One more: I think the C4C frackus (which I think begat this tirade) occurred because:
(1) People know you are ideologically to the right, even if you happen to be rational
(2) Due to (1) and the nature of your criticisms of C4C, your criticism of the program came off as nitpicking in order to show that gubment can’t do stuff.
I have no idea if (2) is fair, but that’s how it seemed to me and probably why you got roundly criticized.
Batocchio
Okay, that’s bipartisanship I can get behind! That should be added to the banner blurbs. Moving on… (Blogging should be fun, remember!)
LindaH
@LiberalSandlapper:
Okay, for the record, a librarian’s life is dedicated to finding facts and evidence be it for school reports or answers to questions about how to file for unemployment. Any reference librarian who didn’t help someone do a thorough search for information would be a disgrace to librarians. And most librarians have suffered the wrath of patron if the question they ask isn’t answered immediately. Not to mention, if a patron comes in and wants to know how to do something that involves the law, they get furious when all the librarian can do is say “Here are the books and forms that deal with your issue, but I can’t tell you how to fill things out, because that is illegally practicing law”.
I’ve been a librarian for almost 39 years, and believe me, it is not a job for the faint of heart or anyone with a thin skin.
LindaH
@LiberalSandlapper:
Okay, for the record, a librarian’s life is dedicated to finding facts and evidence be it for school reports or answers to questions about how to file for unemployment. Any reference librarian who didn’t help someone do a thorough search for information would be a disgrace to librarians. And most librarians have suffered the wrath of patron if the question they ask isn’t answered immediately. Not to mention, if a patron comes in and wants to know how to do something that involves the law, they get furious when all the librarian can do is say “Here are the books and forms that deal with your issue, but I can’t tell you how to fill things out, because that is illegally practicing law”.
I’ve been a librarian for almost 39 years, and believe me, it is not a job for the faint of heart or anyone with a thin skin.
mclaren
@morzer:
I don’t care what Kain calls himself, he’s a classic Eisenhower conservative. A classic liberal is Abbie Hoffman. Kain ain’t no Abbie Hoffman.
mclaren
@Mnemosyne:
That’s horseshit and it’s easy to prove it’s horseshit.
Dougj almost never responds to comments. Neither does John Cole. Out of 10 posts by these people, you might get one where either of ’em makes even one response.
The issue isn’t that Kain doesn’t respond to comments, it’s that some people disagree with what he says and thinks Kain should personally argue with them and personally respond to their haggling and quibbling.
Just because you can type a comment doesn’t mean anyone has an obligation to respond to it. Get over it. Glenn Greenwald doesn’t argue with commenters in his blog, Marcy Wheeler doesn’t debate with her commenters, Markos Moulitsos doesn’t wade into the comments and respond to name-calling commenters, Digby doesn’t engage in long debates with people who comment on her blog. Why should Kain?
This is a classic example of intellectual dishonesty on this forum. People are whining “Kain never responds to comments” when they really mean “I agree with Dougj and John Cole so when they hardly ever respond to comments that’s fine. But I disagree with Kain, so when he hardly ever responds to comments, oooohhh, oooooohhh, ooooohhh, it’s so tewwwwwwwwible!”
mclaren
@Thunderlizard:
There’s enormous amounts of evidence to establish and support and prove Kain’s argument that the people on the left in this forum exhibit just as much epistemic closure as the people on the right in sinkholes of deluded craziness like National Review Online and Red State — just different kinds of epistemic closure, about different issues.
Here are 3 specific examples:
Whenever someone posts about police abuses, the authoritarian kneejerks on this forum rise up en masse and start frantically trying to make failed excuses for brutal thug cops. We hear the same bullshit lies over and over again: “Only a few bad apples,” “Cops have a tough jobs,” the same canards, and they never deal with the real issues. The real issue is that there’s a general sense among reasonable people that there are so many gross examples of police abuse now that are so flagrant and that go so obviously unpunished (maybe for beating someone to death a cop might get a week of unpaid leave), that something has gone terribly horribly wrong with policing in America.
But the authoritarian bootlickers on Balloon Juice will not admit that evidence for this exists. I’ve linked to literally dozens of specific news reports of grotesque police abuses, and you know what the response is? Sociopaths like Mnemosyne have actually accused me of being “innumerate” because she calculated the total number of police in America and then pointed out that I hadn’t linked to enough police reports to show that all those cops were abusive. Think about that for a minute. Let your mind boggle at the level of illogic. According to Mnemosyne, you must post online hundreds of thousands of specific reports of police abuse in order to believe there’s any problem with policing in America, because there are hundreds of thousands of police.
That’s a willful refusal to consider documented evidence that’s so monumental, the mind boggles. It’s fully equivalent to the way right wingers dismiss evidence for global warming out of hand. “Only a few data points,” they say. “The earth has been around for millions of years. Where are the temperature measurements for all those millions of years? Global warming doesn’t have enough data to support it. Can’t be taken seriously.”
In both cases, people are using bogus arguments to rationalize ignoring overwhelming amounts of evidence. In both cases people simply flat-out ignore whatever facts they don’t like, using the most infantile and absurd possible arguments — arguments that those same people never ever use to justify policies they agree with.
Example 2: When I cited literally dozens of studies and CBO estimates and projections by economists showing that Obama’s HCR non-reform bill does nothing to control the underlying costs of U.S. health care, people became hysterical and accused me of everything from being a teabagger to a Palin supporter to a flat-earther.
People on this forum just flat-out ignored the evidence. They listened only to people who support current health care non-reform, like Matt Yglesias, and quoted only people who supported the HCR non-reform bill. People like Yves Smith and Umair Haque and Robert Rich and Bob Herbert were all dismissed out of hand with hysterical name-calling, their numbers ridiculed, their arguments disregarded, their projection of costs based on past CBO estimates nitpicked and sneered at and hand-wave out of existence.
This is a perfect example of exactly how the left wing on this forum listens only to its own narrow sources and cites only its preferred pundits and systematically ignores all authorities and all evidence which does not line up with its narrow-minded groupthink prejudices.
Just as the far right cites only the Watt blog “Watts up” on global warming and refuses to acknowledge evidence like the IPCC report on global warming, the left wing on this blog cites only Matt Yglesias and a handful of other HCR suporters and refuses to acknowledge that any other economists who talk about the gross failure of this HCR non-reform bill, like Umair Haque or Robert Reich, could have any validity or have anything to say on the issue. In fact, the left-wing Obots on this blog refuse to admit that economists who cite inconvenient facts about Obama’s HCR non-reform bill even exist.
Example 3: Whenever I point out that the U.S. military has lowered recruiting standards until it’s now got gang members and rapists in its ranks, and as a consequence the U.S. military today has a chronic problem with rape, people on this blog go berserk. They spout the same lame talking points: “Support the troops,” “Not all enlisted men are rapists,” “Yeah, right, the military is full of gang members,” utterly ignoring the documented facts.
The documented facts show that one out of three women who enlists in the Army gets raped. That’s a problem. If you don’t think that’s a problem, I suggest you try imagining your reaction if one out of three of the girls in your local high school were getting raped by their classmates. You’d have such a riot by parents, they’d burn the school down. But somehow, one out of three women in the army getting raped is totally acceptable and “just boys being boys.”
You can’t get any sicker than this, people.
The robotic lockstep groupthinkers on the left deny, deny, deny there’s any problem with the U.S. army except at the highest levels — but the truth is, the American army is a degenerate group of misfits led by incompetent cowards and commanded no the civilian side by corrupt kooks and ignorant fools. The rot in the U.S. military goes all the way down, from the top to the bottom. The left-wing epistemic closure on this issue is so intense that members of this forum will eagerly excuse their own daughters getting savagely raped in order to hand-wave this fact out of existence. That’s beyond bizarre. It’s into the level of epistemic closure you find with flat earthers and evolution denialists.
Every time I cite the massive evidence that the army has lowered its standards today to the point that they’re enlisting misfits and criminals, the same bogus argument pop up: “Only a few bad apples,” “Not everyone in the army is a rapist,” and on and on. Exactly the same bogus talking points and fallacious illogic and cherry-picking of the evidence used to deny global warming on the right and deny evolution and deny the overwhelming evidence that shows trickle-down economics doesn’t work.
No matter how much evidence you provide to people on this forum that army recruiting standards have collapsed and women in the army are in massive danger of sexual assault and that suicides have skyrocketed to the point where today more soldiers kill themselves than are killed by the enemy, the people on this simply ignore, ignore, ignore. “That’s only one case,” they shout. “That’s an exception!” Absolutely blind denial of the documented facts.
You cannot get better examples of massive epistemic closure on the left than this. Balloon Juice is the home of people who get their info only from a narrow range of preferred sources (Matt Yglesias, Kevin Drum, a handful of others) and when you bring up economists like Umair Haque or military analysts like William S. Lind, people in Balloon-Juice just stonewall and deny, ingore and disregard, ridicules and dismiss.
The epistemtic closure on this forum is massive. And anyone who steps out of line with the groupthink here and cites “forbidden” sources not in the approved canon or who cites inconvenient facts not part of the Obot party line gets savaged and howled at and name-called and screamed into oblivion.