Tired Of Playing Whack-a-Mole

My mild obsessions can be annoying, but I can't actually fill this very fine blog with content every day without them, so I have to embrace them.

There's often some value in pointing out the fallacies in people's bad arguments, but with repeat offenders in The Discourse, it's enough to observe that they have a long track record of mendacity and/or stupidity. That their nametags suggests they are Very Important People, paid by Very Important Publications to write Very Important Things, does not mean I have to treat everything they write as if it were a very serious, thoughtful, argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care.

There is, as I have mentioned in the past, no fancy Latin term for the fallacy of "giving known liars the benefit of the doubt", but it is in my view a much greater source of avoidable error in the world.

I'm not interested in playing Whack-a-Mole with every dumb thing that comes from wingnuttia or The Sensible Centrists. That in itself is part of their strategy, just a neverending stream of shit to keep us occupied. Every day a new justification for some horror or bigotry.

No need to treat dumb liars as anything other than, even if the NYT and The Atlantic and New York Magazine pay them lots of money.

And here you can see @jonathanchait just lying without even having to leave the page. Hobbes’ criticism is clearly the opposite of what he’s saying here — it isn’t that Singal has “criticized the left on racism before,” it’s that he ONLY writes about racism to do so. pic.twitter.com/Y7nATlFJXH

— Jonathan M. Katz (@KatzOnEarth on Post & Mastodon) (@KatzOnEarth) February 5, 2023

Chait lies and some of his lies are along the lines of, "MY CRITICS ARE NOT ENGAGING WITH THE ARGUMENTS SERIOUSLY," a neat little debate trick which puts honest people (unlike Chait) on the defensive and encourages them to say, "yes, yes, I am, here's an example of it," but by then Chait, laughing, has moved onto the next bit of bullshit.  It's projection and a little trick that helps obscure the fact that he is the one not engaging honestly.  No you're not engaging with my very serious argument!!! Why won't you stop punching yourself!!!

It's just a game to these monsters. Chait cares about trans kids as much as he cared about Iraqis, which is, at best, not at all. "At best" is a generous interpretation given the number of deaths he encouraged.