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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   28722 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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Anatomy of squandering an argument: JD Vance talks to the NYT and somehow manages to take the very valid point about media censorship and piss is out the window

But you're repeating a slogan rather than engaging with what I'm saying, which is that when our own technology firms engage in industrial scale censorship, by the way, backed up by the federal government in a way that independent studies suggest affect the votes, I'm worried about Americans who feel like there were problems in 2020. I'm not worried about this slogan that people throw. Well, every court case went this way. I'm talking about something very discreet, a problem of censorship in this country that I do think affected things in 2020. And more importantly, that led to Kamala Harris's governance, which has screwed this country up in a big way.

Senator, would you have certified the election in 2020, yes or no?

I've said that I would have voted against certification because of the concern that I just raised. I think that when you have technology companies.

The answer is no.

When you have technology companies censoring Americans at a mass scale in a way that, again, independent studies have suggested affect the vote, I think that it's right to protest against that, to criticize that that. And that's a totally reasonable thing.

I'm really trying to emphasize that I'm saying this as someone that agrees with the premise, but this is the most retarded and ahistorical possible conclusion. Can you imagine Ben Franklin telling politicians they don't have to accept the result of a vote because the Pennsylvania Gazette wrote absurd lies about the candidates? Even if it was true, it's completely bonkers.

Worse than being ridiculous, it's a blunder to take the cause about media censorship and then piss it away on election certification. Sure in the abstract sense drawing untenable conclusions from an argument does not weaken the premises, but in actual popular consciousness those things are all woven together.

I had really hoped Vance was smarter than this. If he was baited into it he shouldn't have bitten and if it was intentional then he should have known better.

I was darkly amused to see that moment, because it felt like a perfect example of something I'd just described.

Did technology companies and the overall media landscape skew public conversation and interest in a way that was generally to the benefit of one party, did this affect the election result, and was this bad? I'm inclined to answer yes, yes, and yes. I am in sympathy with Vance's point here.

But his point is also a dodge - he's retreating from a bailey ("Trump didn't lose the 2020 election") to a motte ("the 2020 election wasn't fair"). There's no rule or constitutional principle saying that elections don't count if newspapers are unfair, nor for if websites are unfair. Vance may be correct about tech firms, but that's beside the point.

I recognise that Vance is in an impossible position here - he can't say that Trump didn't lose without undermining all his efforts to appeal to moderates, and he can't say that Trump did lose without incurring his running mate's wrath, so he's got to deflect and distract. From his perspective, that's the correct strategic move. But I still feel rather sad for America that this is the situation they're in.

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