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Notes -
There's the saying that you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. I don't 100% buy that because I myself have disproved it on major beliefs at least three times, but it is often true in practice.
The point of the essay was to, as much as possible, list clear facts that I don't think reasonable people can disagree with on an object level. Using much rhetoric would defeat the style of trying to list clear facts. (To my knowledge, there isn't such a list of these facts all in one place [or a current one, at least]. If there were, I'd have written something different.)
There's no one single way to convince a particular person of any given thing at any given time. I acknowledge my approach has the tradeoffs it does. (Part of my worldview is acknowledging tradeoffs.) Plus, rhetoric is typically more words and my list was already pretty dang long, practically speaking.
Also, if we're debating the metalevel relative merits of persuasive strategies using the written word, rhetoric is a symmetric weapon. For example, Marxists can wax poetic about solving inequality just us much as I can lovingly describe personal liberty. I think you could call both Adam Smith and Karl Marx talented writers in terms of style. But as soon as we start talking about facts I get to beat Marxists to death with empirical results and basic math.
One thing I will say for Trump is that he does seem to be restrained by "numba go down." That doesn't help avoid the subtler long term damage to growth, but if certain other presidents had cared about market reactions we'd be a richer country. Shame about DOGE being mostly a clown show.
It would be excellent if SCOTUS is able to overturn certain very bad no good decisions that led to significant government intervention.
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