Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
OK, so here's the main point I was trying to make about the piece: There's some preamble that I didn't quote about how the author used to have great conversations in the olden days when everyone was reasonable. Then there are the three paragraphs I quoted, which are a discursive mess but lay out something like an argument about what has changed. Let's leave alone for a second whether we agree or disagree with him there -- it's such a mess that, as you say, one can find something to like in it if one tries hard enough. But take those three paragraphs as his argument. My point to you is, there is *nothing* in the two paragraphs that follow about the 1619 Project that support his argument *at all.* If you are already familiar with the 1619 Project and you already share his views, you will nod out of tribal affinity, but only because he uses rhetorical tricks to sympathize with the eminent historians who weren't listened to, not because he actually shows anything about who said what to or about them. This from someone extolling the lost art of evidence-based argument! There's nothing in it at all. Is that what he thinks we lost? It's shite.
It doesn't mean that his larger argument, whatever it is, is right or wrong. It just means his writing is crap. He blows off anything the 1619 Project people said without considering it or them in any serious way. Isn't that exactly what he is complaining about?
|
Yes. I think the competition of ideas, the criticism of ideas, deserves the criticism you’ve applied to his essay. Which is a lacking essay in regards you’ve pinpointed.
I think there’s cheap argument and sophistry in his piece. And I think your approach to it, and my response to it, which will both agree and disagree with you (on different points) will be useful.
But I owe you a fair and thoughtful response in the morning, when I’m not in the gin with kin. (Mom insisted on a dinner today. It started early.)
I’ll reply in detail tomorrow.
