The words-next-to-each-other argument hops to a new low.

Ben Shapiro's fully embracing the words-close-to-each-other mode of argument, but he's doing so without any indication that it's not actually a serious mode of argumentation. Let me break it down for Ben: when Scott and I make that "argument," we're actually mocking the person making it. For example, you write:

We can see the clear footprint of CRT [Critical Race Theory] all over the Obama Administration.

That's an admirable job of putting the words "Critical Race Theory" and "Obama Administration" in the same sentence, but your Cheney-esque decision to hire yourself as your own editor fails you on two fronts here. First, there are words between yours words. Did Jonah Goldberg write "Liberals are all over fascism"? Of course he didn't: he wanted nothing to interfere with the backward flow of negativity from "Fascism" to "Liberal." Which brings me to my second point:

Not only do you add pointless words between your words, your filler is in the service of a metaphor that doesn't mean what you think it does. You're saying that CRT's mark upon the Obama Administration is a "clear footprint," one which can only have been left by an invisible one-legged giant. Are you claiming that CRT is an invisible one-legged giant which hopped -- one and one time only -- on the Obama Administration? At the very least, you want that thing in the plural and the present tense. You want your readers to imagine themselves being unable to see a one-legged giant hopping on the White House forever -- an animated gif which in its infinite loop resembles nothing so much as a static image of the White House.

Because that's the reality of it. The invisible one-legged giant?

That's all in your head.

Comments

[Gary Farber]

I gotcher one-legged invisible creatures right here.

Moneypuds, Pomonods, Poddymons. Dufflepuds.

[Ahistoricality]

I recently learned that a member of our PoliSci dept. uses JG's LF as a teaching text, and apparently considers it an authoritative source (at least according to the student we share; I take student reportage of faculty attitudes with big doses of skepticism), which says pretty much all there is to say about the science of PoliSci.....

Shapiro can't tell his foot from his finger, which is pretty much par for the course with these guys. The failure to recognize real distinctions, the failure to notice real similarities..... of course, they say it the other way around, but they're wrong.