“duels have been fought for less”

Erik Kain

Erik writes about video games at Forbes and politics at Mother Jones. He's the contributor of The League though he hasn't written much here lately. He can be found occasionally composing 140 character cultural analysis on Twitter.

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12 Responses

  1. That CS Lewis quote Hilzoy cites is pretty striking, though. I had never seen that before.Report

  2. Jaybird says:

    This is how one knows one is on the right side… because the other side is filled with people like that, no matter how much any one of them may deny it. They wouldn’t even be attracted to that side unless they wanted to be associated with those people.Report

    • Mark Thompson in reply to Jaybird says:

      Importantly, there are two, and only two, sides to every issue: the right side and the wrong side. Because only one side is populated with those people, the two sides are identical on each and every issue.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Mark Thompson says:

        Yeah, that’s even more insanity. Two weeks before 9/11, Bush’s economic policies polled low. Two weeks after, his economic policies polled high.

        Why?

        Well, you aren’t a terrorist sympathizer, are ya?Report

        • Mark Thompson in reply to Jaybird says:

          Really? I didn’t know about that stat.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Mark Thompson says:

            I’m trying to find it online but you may remember, way back when, people were complaining about such things as the steel tariffs… and then 9/11 happened.

            I believe this is called “bundling” in psychology. You agree with the guy very, very, very strongly on this one thing… so it’s assumed that you’ll agree with him on these other things. After 9/11, bundling skyrocketed. I mean, Bush had a 90ish% approval rating for a few months there. “Do you approve of his handling the economy” rode those coattails for a while.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Mark Thompson says:

            http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/Bush_poll_011609.pdf

            Okay, it’s not as wild a change as I had remembered.

            In March 2001, Bush had a 55% approval of how he was handling the economy (28% disapproval). In October, he went to 71% (15% disapproval).

            His handling of the economy changed… how much in that time period?

            How much more did Americans educate themselves on economic theory and measure Bush’s theories against what they had learned in that time?

            It was little more than people bundling their approval.Report

  3. Dave says:

    Hilzoy is a saint. I would never waste time trying to figure out what idiots like that think, but that’s probably because I have little interest in getting inside the head of and empathizing with an idiot.

    Then again, I may have an abnormally low level of patience when dealing with people like him.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Dave says:

      I spent a good few years on Redstate… mostly because, in my circle, I’m normally the most conservative guy in the room (seriously). I thought it would be educational for me to argue in a place where I was the leftmost guy in the room, relatively.

      Well, as it turns out (I eventually got banned), there were a great many ways in which I was more conservative than the folks there.

      The main things I gather from both sides is that they want a very strong executive, who happens to be on “their” side, who will impose their will on everybody.

      They’re all central planners. Nobody really believes in a right to privacy. Nobody really believes in a right to self-determination. Oh, this issue might be an exception or that one may be… but I can’t tell the difference between their approaches.

      Both of them want to rule the world and impose their will upon it and, finally, make things the way they ought to be.

      The arguments between “the right” and “the left” tend to be over the details of the plans they hope to implement… but not their scope.Report

  4. It would seem the Malkin Award motion has carried.Report