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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.

Nobody's perfect, but Vance has been absolutely slaying hostile journalists the last few weeks.

Let's be real here. The other people in this race (Trump, Harris, and Walz) are dumb as bricks. On the other hand, Vance is everything the modal person on this forum would say they want. He's incredibly smart and also clued into the current meta.

But that's the thing about live interviews with hostile journalists. They are difficult. My guess is that a similar media tour would have the average Mottizen tying themselves in knots in a mush of self-contradiction. I know that for my own sake, I would not be able to maintain composure when faced by these prosecutors. But Vance does it effortlessly.

IMO, finding an example like this is kinda like criticizing Lebron for missing a shot in a game where he scored 50 points. Vance's ability to give off-the-cuff answers in these interviews is among the best I've ever seen for a politician. The guy can play. We'd be lucky to have him as President some day.

Trump, Harris, and Walz are all quite smart, as one would expect from people who've managed to get some of the most coveted positions in American politics. They're not particle physicists, but it's a strong selection effect. They sound dumb in public, just like Vance did in the OP, because the score they're optimizing for is the one from voters, and voters aren't smart and aren't noticing the things you are.

Vance is at least 1 standard deviation smarter than the others, probably more.

Kamala I'll concede does seem to be noticeably dumber than average, but Walz seems aggressively average and Trump clearly at least was smart-ish at one point, and he still doesn't come off as dumb.

Vance is smart, but he's also tied to Trump's jumble of inconsistencies and the 2020 election has been his weakpoint because of this- it was in the debate.

That is fair. He's certainly smarter than the other 3 by a whole league, which is why I found this error to be particularly galling.

It's more akin to Lebron missing a wide-open layup by tripping himself over his own feet.

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