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David Roberts Profile picture
@drvolts
Jun 12 • 4 tweets • 1 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
I wrote a thread the other day about people wasting their time building reasoned counter-arguments to obvious bad-faith bullshit, which probably does more to raise the bullshit's profile than to refute it.

An exquisite example here.
Show me the human being, anywhere on the planet, who is gonna read "#actually garages have locks" and change their mind about any of this.
I honestly think liberals desperately *want* this to be an argument. They love arguments & are deeply acculturated to the idea that there's a "marketplace of ideas" in which the best info/arguments win.

"Fuck you & your rules, you can't stop us" just short-circuits them.
Everyone really needs to read that Stanley Fish essay.

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More from @drvolts

David Roberts Profile picture
Jun 12
One of the dumber aspects of the Trump era:
1. He quite obviously suffers from narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), but
2. some psychologists lectured us that we aren't allowed to diagnose him, so
3. that kind of talk/analysis was suppressed, which meant that ...
4. virtually everyone who dealt with Trump in the political realm went in with distorted expectations & made obvious mistakes -- *the very kind of expectations & mistakes that psychologists who understand NPD warn people against*.
In other words, if the frame that Trump has NPD had taken root, many, many people in politics -- both his allies & enemies -- would have been much better prepared. There would have been a *model*, both for how he behaves & the best way to deal with it. Instead: no model.
Read 4 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
Jun 12
To me the most damning part of the Trump scandal is the simple question *why*? He took all these files, clung to them, moved them around with him, lied about them repeatedly ... why? Why would he want so badly to have these files?

Once you ask, the answer is obvious.
Why did Trump want any of the perks, symbols, & accouterments of power? *To show them off.* He wanted to rub them in other people's faces, to flaunt what a big deal he is.

That's why he wanted these files, with all the nuclear & national security secrets: to show them to people.
It's not just that he wouldn't guard them well -- that much is thuddingly obvious. It's that he would actively spread them. Everything we know about him points in that direction. His possession of the files was a bona fide national security threat.
Read 4 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
Jun 10
The most painful thing on Twitter in the wake of a Big Thing happening is watching earnest liberals spend hours & hours crafting arguments & offering citations & cross-linking threads as though there is an actual good-faith debate happening.
Like JD Vance takes a dump on his feed and I've seen probably a hundred people arguing with the dump, as though Vance or anyone else in the cult is open to rational persuasion, as though they wouldn't, if this dump is discredited, just take some other dump.
Over 20 years of covering climate change I have, needless to say, become *very* familiar with all these dynamics. I've seen people of good faith pour so much time -- I mean 100s of 1000s of labor hours -- into crafting arguments trying to "persuade deniers."
Read 10 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
Jun 8
This is all so hilarious. washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/…
But on a serious note: it is worth contemplating how the parties' respective activist wings are coded & discussed. Here we have the "freedom caucus" acting exactly how centrists are constantly *claiming* progressives act -- petulant, unrealistic, "extreme" -- but ...
...is the freedom caucus constantly being lectured on op-ed pages? Are they being addressed as though they are children, the way VSPs talk to the squad?

Meanwhile, progressives have been loyal team players for Biden at almost every juncture & still get lectured as much as ever.
Read 4 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
Jun 7
🧵The east coast is choking on wildfire smoke. Here are a few things I hope east coasters (especially journalists) will ponder in connection with the misery they are experiencing:
1. Every bit of new science on particulate air pollution (what you're all breathing) in the last 100 years has pointed in the same direction: it's worse than we thought. The effects are more pervasive & long-lasting. There is no safe dosage.
volts.wtf/p/volts-podcas…
Even short-term exposure can cause lasting health problems. Children & people with compromised immune systems are terribly vulnerable.

Everyone on the east coast is being tangibly, enduringly harmed by this.
Read 12 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
Jun 6
Lots of good points in this @pbump post, but I would quibble slightly: "woke" is not just "whatever the left does," it is "anything that threatens the dominance of the white cis christian male power structure."

washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/…
They've finally found a way to oppose egalitarianism & equal rights & the redress of historical crimes -- *social progress* -- without saying so explicitly. It gives people uncomfortable with social progress permission to express that discomfort without feeling bad.
Eventually the RW will overreach & fall on its face again, just like all the previous cycles ("political correctness"), because a lot of people on board with "reformers have gone too far" will hop off once they realize it means "shove gays back in the closet" etc.
Read 4 tweets

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