Dr Arlene Unfiltered

'These rabbits who claim to have the second sight—I've known one or two in my time. But it's not usually advisable to take much notice of them. For one thing, many are just plain mischievous. A weak rabbit who can't hope to get far by fighting sometimes tries to make himself important by other means and prophecy is a favorite. The curious thing is that when he turns out to be wrong, his friends seldom seem to notice, as long as he puts on a good act and keeps talking.' The Threarah, Watership Down, as quoted by Captain Holly.*

I think of this quote whenever someone makes a prediction that goes badly wrong, but seems to still have an audience.  We can all point to religious groups where this has happened. Sometimes the "prophet" has enough honor that he goes away and so does the movement.  Yet it is surprising how many double down.

Over at Grim's Hall Texan99 put up a post from Hot Air that included video predictions of an obvious Kamala victory in condescending tones by semi-prominent Democrats who have media channels. I feel like I have met both of these prophets many times before. They seriously annoy me.  Yet after these shamefully wrong predictions, they have soldiered on in at least some venues.  Dr. Arlene, a former political science professor and current political analyst, has memory-holed this particular video but gone on to rapidly put up more explaining how this terrible vote came about.  I watched two, and they are even more condescending and irritating.

I don't usually follow Hot Air.  It is often correct and the reporting is pretty good, but they are in that niche of being unnecessarily inflammatory.  The headline for the story talks about the "Lamestream Media," for example. But they very clearly point out the bias of the legacy media on the weekend before the election.  It's not in their op-eds, it's in their news text, and David Strom gives specific examples, exact quotes, and contrasts it to how Trump is usually quoted, with phrases or half-sentences yanked out and frog-marched onto the front page unwillingly, made to confess to things they did not actually say - because Trump didn't exactly say them either.

I don't recommend sending these to liberal friends.  They will get irritated and stop hearing.  But if you choose to take that risk, point out that this is exactly how MSNBC, the Washington Post, or even the AP appear to us. Watching things like this is our normal everyday experience when we are in a place where this is all that is on offer. All of us tend to not see and not hear what we dislike.  It takes some effort.  It takes thinking "If I were going to answer that claim in some sort of refereed or mediated situation, what would I say? What would be my strongest points, what would easily be dismissed as mere name-calling or cliche?"  It is called steelmanning an argument, a clever twist on strawman. 

You have to want it. It doesn't happen naturally when you are harvesting meme-farms for cleverly vicious things that will impress the people in your group. The humor there is usually not actually funny, just mean in the way a particular audience likes. They eat it up and tell you how wonderful you are, and your place in the category is reinforced again. 

*Ross Douhat has called Watership Down the greatest political novel of the late 20th C.

********

(Unnecessary rant, that happened because I got overheated.)

Here is where I get especially upset, and I have seen a lot of it post election. How can you say such things about people who have shown you nothing but affection? "Oh, I didn't mean you, AVI.  I wasn't thinking of you at all when I posted that.  But surely you must know that there are lots of people like that out there." 

No, I don't know that.  I've met some and have upbraided some on my own side. But there actually aren't a lot of Christian Nationalists out there.  There are lots of articles "well, 60% of Republicans say they support A, which is darn close to saying B, and what they really mean but don't say out loud is H, as in 'Heil Hitler.' I've seen them online myself." They are almost but not quite bogeymen. They are few. You are overinterpreting Gadsden Flags or purely defensive expressions of 2A rights as threatened attacks. If they don't want illegal aliens you refuse to hear that because you won't use the word, considering it an attack on all immigrants.