I hesitate to link to it because I don't think this writer should be encouraged, but I'll give you the link with the headline and tell you that the piece is intended to be a satire about Kyle Rittenhouse so you can understand my point without actually clicking. The piece is "Teen who showed up in operating room with scalpel had idolized doctors all his life." The author's name is in the tags.
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Alexandra Petri is quite a dish… of what, I do not know.
For decades the right has had leftist crap blared into their space. Every institution is dominated by a small loud vicious group of people that hates us.
And leftists have lived in a bubble.
But now their bubble is getting popped.
Their limited attempts at humor are so bad because they never face criticism.
Althouse said...
I hesitate to link... author's name is in the tags.
Althouse, not one to dish like that?
Wapoo(D) only hires hiveminders.
My experience has led me to the conclusion that analogies used as arguments to change minds will always fail. If the person you're trying to convince isn't convinced by the thing itself, they will not be convinced by the imperfect substitution. Analogies have some didactic value. A teacher can use an analogy to introduce a student to a new concept by means of a familiar concept. But it is understood and expected that as the student warms to the new concept, they will set aside the analogy and master the thing in its own terms. Indeed they must master it this way. The analogy is imperfect and does not actually represent the thing itself.
And that's just assuming an analogy in good faith. Even in good faith, it's patronizing. The columnist is not my teacher. I am not her student. We are peers of equal standing. There is no didactic hierarchy. Deploying an analogy between us is condescending, arrogant.
The problem is even worse when the analogist does not fully understand the thing itself, or the analogy. Or - worst of all - when they deploy the analogy dishonestly, knowing it's not properly analogous, and hoping to trick you into agreement with rhetorical sleights.
Democracy Dies in Darkness!
In this analogy, has the state governor prevented the doctor from performing the surgery?
Does the analogy explain who is in the Operating Room setting fires?
Thank God I can't read such crap behind a pay wall that isn't worth 2 cents.
shouldn't her great analogy have a comparison of two things based on their being alike in some way?
something like this?
The writer's mind grew stupid thoughts, like a Petri dish grew germs??
Did he stay at a Holiday Inn Express the night before?
More detritus from the WaPoop Petri dish.
Isn't there a saying that hard cases make bad law? Cases like Rittenhouse's or the Zimmerman-Martin case shouldn't be turned into simplistic hero-villain stories that illustrate simplistic political polarities.
And she went to Harvard.
The Left seems to operate at a low level of intelligence regarding any opposing views. Not sure about leftist views themselves because I find them almost impossible to follow due to their lack of basic logic as we normally understand the term.
Well, hey, Ann, it's Alexandra Petri. She is the one person I refuse to read on the WaPo op-ed page. I read about two of her columns -- the one about Lindsay Graham still confirming conservative judges hundreds of years hence, in a dead Capitol building, from a throne of skulls, was typical -- and then gave it up. She is the least funny person on the planet, and being funny is allegedly her job. Give it up!
NB I am not dissing the WaPo here; I read everyone else, including the people I never, even by chance, agree with, as well as those (Thiessen, Will, McArdle) that I know I probably will. But Petri really is in a thankfully-minimal class of her own. Avoid.
Democracy Dies In Utero…
There's a penumbra of truth to the analogy. Even some of you people admit Kyle was a piss poor example of a well regulated Militia. No rifleman training or discipline very poor judgement in over his head. It's his bad decisions and lack of high pressure dangerous and/or violent experience that led to the deaths and wounding. His parents obviously put out a defective, inferior product.
I'm with Crack and am willing to give him a bit of a break based on his juvenile lack of agency. He has the emotional intelligence of a tweener. Bottom line minimum he should lose all firearm rights for life and a long probation with a shit ton of community organizing service. I'm willing to say no jail because he drank the Trumper macho bullshit braggart civil war inciting loose talk Kool-Aide from the likes of many posters on Althouse and most all of the Instapundit commentators not to mention the rest of radright social media. That's my libtard empathy talking.
I always bring a flaming dumpster with me when I'm scheduled for surgery. Don't you?
Extra fun with all those bottles of oxygen and other gasses.
The proper analogy, without the color of a handmade tale, is of Rittenhouse to a doctor, not an abortionist, outperform many senior officers, actors, and illegal carries. In the midst of what was effectively a state-sanctioned event, he was not a hero, but served as an armed deterrence and to aid people affected by the burning, looting, and mayhem. Not only did he not wield his weapon or shoot carelessly with plausible, probable, or even imminent cause, but he offered a measured response to an immediate threat to his viability.
It's very clear that many people commenting on the Rittenhouse trial have watched none (or very little) of the trial.
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...
NB I am not dissing the WaPo here; I read everyone else, including the people I never, even by chance, agree with, as well as those (Thiessen, Will, McArdle) that I know I probably will. But Petri really is in a thankfully-minimal class of her own. Avoid.
People like you give the Wapo legitimacy.
It is sad.
Achilles,
No, the WaPo itself gives itself legitimacy -- by insisting on having conservative columnists despite 99% of the commenting readership (as distinct from the readership tout court, which I cannot believe is as deranged as the habitual commenters are) frothing at the mouth every time a column by any one of them is published, which is to say, daily.
To Thiessen, Will, and McArdle, I would add Olsen, Hewitt, and (sometimes) Wempel. There are dissenting voices at the WaPo; in this respect it's different from the NYT (though Douthat is OK, and McWhorter is a very welcome development). I would not scare them away from their "accommodation" of the other half of the population by encouraging everyone to think of their entire op-ed cast as dreck. Because it isn't.
Jake said...
It's very clear that many people commenting on the Rittenhouse trial have watched none (or very little) of the trial.
Democrats don't do that research/observation thing.
They know everything already. They just need to find the evidence for what they already know.
They suck up what their masters feed them and make themselves look stupid when confronted with actual evidence.
For example watch Grosskreatz on the stand when forced to admit he pointed his illegally carried and owned weapon at Rittenhouse before getting shot because the video was right fucking there and he had no choice.
He was back on CNN saying exactly the opposite thing the next day.
But in addition to not really caring about the truth, they also have no shame.
>>Even some of you people admit Kyle was a piss poor example of a well regulated Militia
Ahh, the telltale "you people," meaning you should probably just ignore anything Howard is saying as he starts putting everybody who disagrees with him into a box. Really, Howard, any time you start typing "you people," you as a person should probably take a deep breath and think about whether you really ought to publish that comment.
In that vein, who among the "you people" here is saying that Kyle was an example of a "well regulated Militia"?
>>It's his bad decisions and lack of high pressure dangerous and/or violent experience that led to the deaths and wounding.
Anything to say about the "bad decisions and lack of high pressure dangerous and/or violent experience" of any of the other people involved?
There's no factual basis whatsoever, certainly not from any of the trial testimony, for anything else in your rant. Care to cite any??? Even from the prosecution witnesses?
This is probably by far the most political thing I've ever posted at Althouse.
--gpm
gpm,
I think that at least some of the other people involved had plenty of "high pressure dangerous and/or violent experience." That would be the point, in fact. Rittenhouse was a tyro among people who were much more violent, and much more accustomed to violence, than he was.
Even just a few years ago if someone had suggested that Kyle was supposed to be the victim of a targeted assassination would have resulted in complete shunning of the idiot conspiracy theorist. But then it as only a few years ago that people saying that Russian collusion was invented and created out of thin air by Democrat operatives were shunned for spreading misinformation- and- IT WAS TRUE! And after that, stating on social media that Hunter Biden's laptop actually belonged to Hunter Biden was cause for suspension from Facebook or Twitter because over 100 intelligence official, OVER 100!, wrote an open letter signed by all stating unequivocally that the laptop was Russian disinformation. And, it turned out, it wasn't, the laptop belonged to_ HUNTER BIDEN!. They all, each and every one of them, lied to the American people. Which apparently is only a crime of done by Richard Nixon or another Republican. (Because everyone lies about sex!)
Dots are actually connected. Was Kyle was supposed to be the victim of a targeted assassination? At this point, it's a Schrödinger question- it might or might not be true. It will be days, weeks, or months before we know- if we ever actually do. But like I said, there's a good case for it- the dots are connected.
Michelle: Great point. That's why I think Kyle shouldn't do jail time. He was a boy playacting as a man in a reality violence horror show. I blame the parents mostly.
Gpm: protip... I use you people as a snowflake detector. Also I am not trying to win friends and influence people.
As for the others involved, only 1/3 we're able to tell their story. Murdering witnesses is an excellent proven preemptive defense.
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