Purgatory will do.

quantitative data makes certain people so stupid, istg. they lose track of the fact that they are representations.

So if reactionaries don’t really have an alternative set of values, and all conservatives are really reactionaries, does this mean that there’s no alternative set of values—or just that the only alternatives are all left-of-center?

Those of us who remember Yglesias’s early career know that he used to be much less pragmatic—that is, much less willing to make concessions to public opinion. He relished the role of being a voice crying out in the wilderness, a prophet of crude econometrics.

I think that model of politics oversimplifies, and I think it underestimates the importance of persuasion in a democracy. But it is no more “ideological” than rival models. And its appeal is that it at least *seems* less ideological.

Whatever you think of popularism, its rationale is pragmatic: you lead with the parts of your policy program that already enjoy the most public support rather than, say, the parts of your program that *you* consider most important. You take no satisfaction in being unelectably right.

Granted, he is not a philosophical pragmatist (he’s some kind of utilitarian). But “pragmatic” in the colloquial sense seems like a fair description of his politics—and certainly no worse than “reactionary centrist,” with its dubious suggestion that contrarians are all crypto-reactionaries.

“Pragmatism,“ too, can become an ideology, and one can be as inflexibly dogmatic about it as about anything else. Only, instead of banging on tediously about its ideals, it prefers to smuggle them in through the back door.

What makes such people morally contemptible isn’t their failures and frustrations, their general undesirability, or even their bitterness. It’s their refusal to draw from those things any kind of compassion or humility.

If the shame is genuine (and I have no reason to doubt that it is), then you might start with the word “loser.” It’s a useful word, because we all know exactly what you mean by it. But no one on the left should use it as a term of opprobrium. Its logic belongs to the right.

I can kill seafarers but can’t even tax my own subjects?!?!

Completely dead down here.

You will find plenty of people on this site who support Mamdani but not Platner, despite the fact that their politics are basically the same. But you will not find anyone who supports Platner but not Mamdani—because, again, their politics are basically the same.

Noted.

You will find plenty of people on this site who support Mamdani but not Platner, despite the fact that their politics are basically the same. But you will not find anyone who supports Platner but not Mamdani—because, again, their politics are basically the same.

I don’t know. When it comes to Platner’s antiracist bona fides, I think I’ll take word of this Somali-American activist in Lewiston over that of a white poli-sci professor in South Carolina.