Linky Friday: Unassailable Facts, and Other Fabrications

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his food writing website Yonder and Home. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast.

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28 Responses

  1. Pinky says:

    LF11: There’s a difference between a sycophant and a true believer. I don’t know Bill Mitchell, but he really sounds like the latter.Report

  2. Jaybird says:

    LF13: Charlamagne had a surprisingly hard-hitting interview. If I were trying to argue that the Democrats have come to take the African-American vote for granted, I’m pretty sure that people would think that it would be unfair that I keep quoting Biden instead of, you know, talking about policy or something like that.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:

      Okay, allow me to try to defend what Biden said for a second.

      Did you see what Trump said about Henry Ford?Report

    • Stillwater in reply to Jaybird says:

      The upside of his “you’re not black” snafu is that it might simplify the VP selection process. Now he *has* to pick a black person woman.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Stillwater says:

        You know what’d be really funny? If it was Klobuchar anyway.Report

        • InMD in reply to Jaybird says:

          If he’s smart he will. The decision of the party is centrist/retake the blue wall and he should double down on it. The black vote is much less important outside of the South which will be mostly red regardless. The only argument I could see for putting race above all else is if the election rests on turnout in Detroit.Report

          • Stillwater in reply to InMD says:

            Klobuchar seems like the right pick to me as well. But we’re talking about Democrats here….Report

          • InMD in reply to InMD says:

            And to clarify, by less important, I don’t mean unimportant, but the game remains win electoral votes, not run up the score in urban/regional strongholds regardless of whether the state is in play.Report

            • Jaybird in reply to InMD says:

              Yeah, I see Harris as more likely because of this too.Report

              • Stillwater in reply to Jaybird says:

                I really don’t understand all the hullabaloo about Harris. Even black voters didn’t like her in the primary. Seems to me that putting her on the ticket won’t GOTblackV, won’t GOTprogV, and will scare off moderates (given the very high likelihood the VP becomes P during the term).Report

              • InMD in reply to Stillwater says:

                I think it’s important that the pick has a record of success where winning isn’t a given for Democrats. Minnesota is blue but not so blue that victory doesn’t have to be earned.

                Harris has a sheltered quality to her that reminds me a bit of HRC. She’s the wrong way to go.Report

  3. DensityDuck says:

    [LF13] I remember people dunking on Sanders supporters because Biden said that he’d very definitely select a black woman for his running mate, and Sanders wouldn’t match that.

    As of yesterday evening, Biden’s campaign has asked Amy Klobuchar to “submit to vetting for selection as a Vice-Presidential candidate”.

    So, not a black woman after all, then.Report

  4. Pinky says:

    LF10: I hadn’t read the Zacharias thread until now. I adore that it was mostly a discussion of Blackberries, although I can’t explain why. We’re a funny crowd here.

    I think it’s extremely rare for any kind of debate to persuade people, at least immediately. I remember hearing Ben Shapiro talk about how if you’re debating someone who is persuadable, try to persuade him, but if you’re debating someone who is unpersuadable, try to make him look bad. I hate that. Most every substantive exchange I have online, I’m aiming at the participant 5 years from now.

    I don’t remember who it was who said that the job of a judge is to be 100% certain when he’s 51% right. I think we all tend to do that, or at least if we’re about 60% sure of something we’ll act the same if the percentage shifts around a little. We only formally change our minds when we notice the thing we used to be 60% sure of, we’re now close to 40%. The impact of many discussions, articles, and life lessons can sneak up on us.

    Evangelicals are in a more intense position, though. As a Catholic, I believe that a person has to turn his soul over to Jesus and begin a long road toward perfection. An Evangelical sees it more as a light switch, on or off. Anyone he convinces will have eternal life from that moment on. The Evangelical perspective is “I once was lost but now am found / was blind but now I see”. The Catholic perspective can be seen in the last line of the Act of Spiritual Communion, a prayer that a lot of us have been praying because we can’t get to Mass: “Never permit me to be separated from Thee.” It’s not that Catholics don’t care about conversion; it’s that we see it as a lifelong experience.Report

    • George Turner in reply to Pinky says:

      Perhaps you could compare the different approaches to video games. There’s one model where you try to sell a hot game once, and there’s another online-RPG model where you make money with continuing subscriptions and selling lots of nifty power-ups.Report

  5. [LF11] Remember when the Right used to call Obama “the one” to accuse us of worshipping him?

    Good times.Report

  6. Saul Degraw says:

    I just don’t get Christian apologetics. Not at all. Christianity is the world’s largest religion, 29 percent of the world is Christian, or around 2.3 billion people. Jews, by contrast, the core population was only 14.6 million in 2018. We are a tiny, tiny group but it is Christians, especially protestant evangelicals, who seem to devout huge amounts of times and energy to stating Christianity is the only logical way to view the world.

    Seems kind of insecure, no? Like Burt says, it is really suppose to be effective towards me.Report

    • Brandon Berg in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      Look at it the other way around. Thirty percent of the world is Christian because Christians try so hard to convince others that Christianity is true.Report

    • James K in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      It’s the nature of an evangelical faith. Christianity teaches that everyone should be Christian, and Christians have an obligation to try and make that happen. Therefore 30% is not enough, they’ll keep going so long as the proportion of Christians is below 100%.Report

    • Pinky in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      As insecure as doctors and nurses fawning all over you after an accident. It’s like they’re craving attention. Hint: they’re not fawning, and they’re convinced your life is at stake.Report

      • Chip Daniels in reply to Pinky says:

        “You’re broken, and I am here to fix you” isn’t as appealing as one might think.Report

        • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

          If you’re viewing it as a sales pitch, I can understand your point. If you’re viewing it as a diagnosis, then the question is whether it’s correct.Report

        • I have reached an age where they are guaranteed to find “broken” things if they look. I’d like them to fix my hearing, which — once Kaiser starts doing non-essential close-contact stuff again — they can only try, replacing one set of hearing impairments with a different (possibly more appealing) set. OTOH, the kidney stone is symptom-free, has always been symptom-free, and I’m not letting them poke at it. Sleeping dogs, and all that.Report

  7. PD Shaw says:

    LF-1: I think the about-face on masks probably has some relevance, particularly as things began loosening, mask requirements were the main restriction going the other way. But it seems to have taken a large life of its own.

    In Illinois, we now have opinions from the Illinois Attorney General’s Office (2x), the US Attorney’s Office yesterdayand a Democratic trial judge, that the mask requirement exceeds the Governor’s emergency powers which are bound by thirty days without further legislative approval. And I still see no sign that the legislature is going to act; they convene at the end of today.

    (The Governor tried to remove the challenges to his emergency orders into federal court on the grounds that there are federal constitutional issues involved; the US Attorney’s Office filed a statement of interest that asked the cases to be returned, there are clear state statutory limitations on the Governor that would obviate the need to address any federal constitutional issues)Report

  8. Marchmaine says:

    [LF9] Let me first signal that in the midst of a pandemic, I think it makes perfect prudential sense to look at voting In Absentia. But In Absentia is the key political philosophical point.

    But then, as a full fledged member of the Patriarchy, I should… I already get 5 votes now that I have three eligible children to vote. That will probably double the Solidarity party vote in Virginia this year alone. Of course in past years I had to assume my authority with regards proper voting was obeyed when they were alone in the booth… but this year, I can either do it myself or make sure they vote correctly under my benevolent eye.

    In our mad obsession with technology and efficiency, we forget the importance of the physical space afforded by secret ballot voting. There are very good reasons… perhaps much *better* reasons to oppose click/mail voting than concerns about fraud. Or perhaps a better way to put it, there are more aspects to fraud than many seem to consider.
    Or, like surveys from our pastors on “which Mass schedule we would prefer” we can assume that our votes are purely pro-forma anyway. In the end it doesn’t matter at all; all that matters is we think we were heard. I don’t think we’re there yet, but I think we’re trending that way faster than folks acknowledge.

    I suppose I’m making a GKC Gate kinda argument… we think technology solves one problem, but we’ve forgotten the real problem we’re trying to solve: undue influence and the idea that each vote is measured, free and uncoerced.Report

    • George Turner in reply to Marchmaine says:

      You don’t make your family members wear GoPro cameras in the voting booth? I thought that was pretty standard, and how husbands and boyfriends made sure women didn’t vote for Hillary in 2016.Report