Kepler
Cornell Big Red
Re: Biden v Dump 1: If not now, when? If not us, who?
Agreed.
I don't think the cons were purged, however. I think a couple things happened:
1. We evolved a style of discourse cons aren't used to. It's academic rather than "in your face, soy boy!" If you look at the tenor of most political sites you'll see those patterns repeated in liberal and conservative forums respectively. There's a reason why every tier-1 university in the US skews left. Facts may not have a liberal bias but scientific method and methodical logic without recourse to the supernatural do. We have a couple liberal posters who attack like cons, but for the most part we've cleaned that out over the years. The level of argument and civility here has risen and this seems to catch cons wrong-footed. They're wrestlers playing chess.
2. The other thing, more broadly, is that cons have themselves evolved into a caricature of what they used to be. Even if Bob, Pio et al in the past were sometimes rhetorically dishonest they did at least maintain a Buckleyesque tone of intellectual inquiry. Since the cons lined up behind the indefensible, somewhat with Cheney and now balls deep with Dump, there's no more of that. You get the D-1 thread. Whereas cons once had at least an ostensible reasoned perspective, now they are nothing but malice and projection, like their standard-bearer. So former cons who stuck it out recoiled from the GOP in disgust, like Frum and Schmidt did in RealLife (tm).
Agreed.
I don't think the cons were purged, however. I think a couple things happened:
1. We evolved a style of discourse cons aren't used to. It's academic rather than "in your face, soy boy!" If you look at the tenor of most political sites you'll see those patterns repeated in liberal and conservative forums respectively. There's a reason why every tier-1 university in the US skews left. Facts may not have a liberal bias but scientific method and methodical logic without recourse to the supernatural do. We have a couple liberal posters who attack like cons, but for the most part we've cleaned that out over the years. The level of argument and civility here has risen and this seems to catch cons wrong-footed. They're wrestlers playing chess.
2. The other thing, more broadly, is that cons have themselves evolved into a caricature of what they used to be. Even if Bob, Pio et al in the past were sometimes rhetorically dishonest they did at least maintain a Buckleyesque tone of intellectual inquiry. Since the cons lined up behind the indefensible, somewhat with Cheney and now balls deep with Dump, there's no more of that. You get the D-1 thread. Whereas cons once had at least an ostensible reasoned perspective, now they are nothing but malice and projection, like their standard-bearer. So former cons who stuck it out recoiled from the GOP in disgust, like Frum and Schmidt did in RealLife (tm).
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(@JoshuaHol) <a href="https://twitter.com/JoshuaHol/status/1263823355590909952?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 22, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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