In the 1960s, much like today, people with opposing viewpoints struggled to communicate with one another. Yet there was a civility to that era’s public debate that is nowhere to be found today, owing to liberal elites’ understanding that refusing to engage would only reinforce the “us versus them” mentality that fuels radicalism.
.. Dutschke tried to “unmask” Dahrendorf – the liberal establishment intellectual – as exploitative and undemocratic; Dahrendorf countered that Dutschke’s revolutionary rhetoric was naive, more hot air than substance, and ultimately dangerous... The debate began with Thadden detailing his political views, offering an unapologetic assessment of Germany’s role in WWII, and explaining the rise of the NPD. Dahrendorf, a sociology professor, followed with an analysis of the NPD’s diverse membership, which included old Nazis, disillusioned identity seekers, and opportunistic anti-modernists... Dahrendorf was adamant that the NPD’s fate should be decided by the voters, rather than the courts, which had declared the Communist Party illegal. Kaul reiterated this idea in a passionate statement (which had undoubtedly been agreed in advance by East German leaders) about the exclusion of West Germany’s Communists from the debate. Other panelists agreed. A liberal democracy, Dahrendorf concluded, cannot exclude radicals on one side, while tolerating those on the other... It is hard to imagine today’s mainstream politicians and public intellectuals engaging publicly in such profound and mutually respectful debates with today’s radicals and upstarts, whether populists, economic nationalists, Euroskeptics, or something else. Those on the far left and the far right certainly are not engaging one another in this manner. Each side would rather preach to its own audience, accessible within media bubbles where there is little demand for genuine discussion of opposing views... Many establishment leaders nowadays – the so-called elites who are the standard-bearers of the liberal democratic order – seem to believe that the risks of engaging with radical figures are too great: more exposure could mean more legitimacy. But this stance is itself highly risky, not least because it has translated into a willful blindness to the social changes that have fueled extremist ideologies – an approach that comes across to many as arrogant... Recall US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s flippant assertion that half of her rival Donald Trump’s supporters comprised a “basket of deplorables.”.. One cannot simply wish away extremists. Letting radical movements run their course, as some have suggested, is both reckless and dangerous, given the amount of damage they can do before they fail. To fulfill their responsibility as stewards of the public good, cultural and political “elites” must eschew elitism and find formats and formulas that enable more constructive engagement among diverse groups, including – as difficult as it may be – radical and populist movements... Dahrendorf rightly proclaimed that extremists’ success was a measure of democratic elites’ failings. Like the NPD in the 1960s, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) owes its success in last September’s federal election to the refusal of the country’s political, economic, and academic elites to engage constructively with the public, much less with those the public believed were willing to address their concerns... Defenders of liberal democracy must debate the populists not to change the populists’ minds, but to make the public understand what each party really stands for, not simply against. Yes, this could mean giving populists more airtime, and it risks normalizing extreme views. But the threats associated with an aggressively polarized public sphere – one that extremists have proved adept at exploiting – are much greater.
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Nancy Lebov: Input Junkie
Summary: Escolar (frequently sold as butterfish or white tuna) can make you pretty sick.
I bought some smoked butterfish at the Reading Terminal Market– it was only $5 for about a pound, and I like smoked fish.
I didn’t like it all that much– too salty and an odd flavor. I was trying to figure out whether rinsing it and cooking it with something was worth doing.
Then I got some diarrhea which seemed vaguely different than usual– some of the details are TMI (Too Much Information) and I started thinking about what I’d been eating lately.
I’d heard about white tuna (a sort of sushi) being hard on the digestive tract, so I was open to the possibility that fish might be a problem.
Well! White tuna isn’t related to tuna, it’s butterfish. So is escolar. I will say a thing or two to the people at Reading Terminal Market– they’ve got a big fish shop with a neon sign over it that says something like EAT FISH BE HEALTHY.
White tuna as sushi isn’t a hazard to me– the quantify in an assorted sushi plate isn’t enough to hit me, and it’s actually pretty tasty. It being labeled as white tuna is eroding my faith in humanity that little bit more, though.
Substantial article. I got off easy, some people get a lot sicker. If you read the comments, you’ll find that people getting sick from escolar happens all over the world, except Italy and Japan where the fish is illegal. Pricey restaurants sometimes sell escolar (mislabeled, often enough) as a main dish.
Teminology! There’s an English eel called butterfish.
Mercifully, “black cod” is at least has black scales, but many species of sable aren’t black.
I’m reminded of the bit in Stranger in a Strange Land which complains about English words having multiple meanings. The example was that red hair doesn’t resemble the color otherwise called red.
Butterfish, the red-tailed hawk and turkey vulture of the sea.
The Worst Argument In The World
I declare the Worst Argument In The World to be this: “If we can apply an emotionally charged word to something, we must judge it exactly the same as a typical instance of that emotionally charged word.”
Well, it sounds dumb when you put it like that. Who even does that, anyway?
I propose that an outright majority of the classic arguments in American politics, and no small number of arguments in religion, philosophy, et cetera, are in fact unmodified examples of the Worst Argument In The World. Before we get to those, let’s look at a concrete example.
Suppose someone wants to build a statue honoring Martin Luther King Jr. for his nonviolent resistance to racism. An opponent of the statue objects: “But Martin Luther King was a criminal! His policy of ignoring segregation restrictions clearly broke the Alabama laws of the time, and his protests violated a legally-obtained injunction against civil rights demonstrations. He was arrested and jailed, and although no doubt the judge had strong emotions the conviction was totally in keeping with the letter of the law.”
A criminal is defined as a person who breaks the law; Martin Luther King was objectively and incontrovertibly a criminal. But here the objector is making The Worst Argument In The World. She’s saying that because King was a criminal, we should treat him as a perfectly typical criminal. A typical criminal is someone like a bank robber; obviously we wouldn’t build a statue to the average bank robber. But King was not a typical criminal, and the unusual circumstances in his case exactly explain why he deserves a statue after all.
.. When the supporter says “King courageously violated the unjust segregation laws at great risk to himself,” and the opponent objects “But King was a criminal!” it sounds like the opponent is adding information. But she’s not: that King was a criminal is already implied by the supporter’s sentence. The opponent is actually urging us to subtract information; to ignore every facet of King’s actions except that they broke the law.
.. When the opponent says “King was a criminal!” you respond “Yes, so what?”
Notice how this is one hundred percent contrary to instinct; the urge is to respond “No he wasn’t! You take that back!”. This is why the Worst Argument In The World is so successful. As soon as you do that you’ve fallen into their trap. Your argument is no longer about whether you should build a statue, it’s about whether King was a criminal. And since King was a criminal, you’ve instantly lost.
.. “Taxation is theft!
.. I’m not trying to make a pro-choice argument here; there are several perspectives from which one could argue that despite the fetus’ lack of development killing it is still morally wrong. But saying “Abortion is murder!” doesn’t illuminate any of those perspectives. It just tries to get us to subtract the information
.. When somebody, let’s say, publishes a study that says minorities commit a disproportionate amount of crime, and somebody else responds by saying “That’s racist!”, they are taking something that no one could possibly object to on its own merits – a social science study, maybe a relatively well-conducted one – and telling us that our opinion of the study must be closely correlated with our opinion of Hitler killing ten million people. Yes, the study is racist, if by racist you mean “It says bad things about minority groups,” which seems like a reasonable definition. But it’s the okay kind of racism, just like taxation is an okay kind of theft and abortion is an okay kind of murder and Martin Luther King was an okay kind of criminal. The fact that you can’t even say the phrase “an okay kind of racism” without being torn to pieces so viciously it makes Bacchus’ death look merciful is exactly what gives The Worst Argument In The World its power.
.. suppose King told a group of racists “You should treat black people better; after all, we’re all human.” This seems on the face of it like an example of the Worst Argument In The World. King is using an emotionally charged word (“humans”) and asking the racists to ignore information about these particular humans (that they are black) and treat them exactly as typical humans (to the racists, presumably white people). But isn’t this a good argument?
It is a good argument, but it has one big difference from the Worst Argument examples above. King is using the argument to ask the racists for an explanation for their double standard; the examples above are using the argument to shout down an explanation for the double standard.