Generalizations And The Peril Thereof

Glenn Greenwald has a new book (congrats) and a new post titled "The Importance of Speaking In Inflated, Absurd Generalities" (note to self - might want to double-check that).

Like every other idea Greenwald has ever written, uttered, or thought, his latest post is long on generalizations and short on evidence.  I have noticed that this propensity to leap past facts to untenable conclusions is typical of all lefties with a "G" in their name - it has something to do with "Generalizations" and "G", or at least, that is my current theory until I think of a new one.

Do you suspect me of having a pre-disposition in this tussle?  My own ghastly history with Greenwald started with his notion that Bush followers are Authoritarian Cultists.

I mocked it, mocked it again, finally got a reply, and mocked that.  We do have our fun around here!  Greenwald scaled the comic heights when he explained that James Taranto and myself were engaged in "intellectual cowardice" by deferring judgment until we saw some evidence.  Evidently in Greenwald's corner of the Reality Based Community, facts are for cowards.

As to the "Authoritarian Cultist" theme itself - the Republican Dubai rebellion overtook it, and it became clear that the cult in question couldn't extend much beyond George, Karl, Laura, and *maybe* the twins.

As to the broader question - sure, generalizations are inevitable.  Hyperbolic generalizations are optional.  But for a certain type of market appeal, they are a great option.

Decision '08 has similar thoughts on Greenwald's screedifying.  For folks who have not been following the links, here is a proto-typical bit of Greenwaldian "analysis":

As much as anything else, Bush defenders are characterized by an increasingly absolutist refusal to recognize any facts which conflict with their political desires, and conversely, by a borderline-religious embrace of any assertions which bolster those desires. It’s a world-view which conflates desire with reality, disregards all facts and evidence that conflict with the decreed beliefs, and faithfully embraces any assertions and fantasies, no matter how baseless and flagrantly false, provided that they bolster the mythology.

Yeah, yeah, yeah - when that is set to music, it will go to Number One - wth a bullet.

Comments

[Sue]

We do have our fun around here!

Yes, we do!!

facts are for cowards

Facts? They don't need no stinkin' facts.

[cathyf]

Laura?!? Laura?!?!? Dreamski onski, as they say in vodka commercials!

cathy :-)

[Tom Maguire]

Since he is back anyway, this thread should prove the perfect opportuity for AB/JayDee/Katrina to demonstrate that Greenwald is not the only lefty who psychoanalyzes the entire right in every post.

[Tom Bowler]

As much as anything else, Bush defenders are characterized by an increasingly absolutist refusal to recognize any facts which conflict with their political desires...

I think they call that "projection".

So, Joe! Tell us again what you didn't find in Africa and what it all means!

[Epphan]

P R O J E C T I O N !

[JJ]

Just reading the title maybe about as far as I'll get with the latest Glenn.

Because it certainly probably has the entire weight and substance already instantly in the title. Like instant Cup O Noodles, just add water and it tastes like flavored water.

"...by deferring judgment until we saw some evidence."

^ which is why it Greenwald's stuff has the substance of water. Low nutritional content.

[noah]

Greenwald...isn't he the one that launched the "left angle to reality" meme?

[Barney Frank]

Tom
"Since he is back anyway, this thread should prove the perfect opportuity for AB/JayDee/Katrina to demonstrate that Greenwald is not the only lefty who psychoanalyzes the entire right in every post."

Hasn't the Three Faces of AB already demonstrated that already on every other thread?

[BumperStickerist]

I'm trying to figure out how Greenwald types his posts while keeping his fingers in both ears and his eyes shut.

[Seixon]

I'd say that paragraph describes the DailyKos crowd more than anyone else. Or Firedoglake. Or ThinkProgress. If you dare question "the story", then you are banned, harassed, or censored. Simple facts and history are completely left out of the picture so as to let "the story" continue without scrutiny.

If the liberal bloggers' treatment of Chris Matthews is any indication, I'd say, and have said, that Greenwald had his theory exactly backwards. We've seen Katie Couric, Chris Matthews, the Washington Post, and many others embraced by the liberal bloggers when they say what they want them to, and thrown under the bus once they dare say anything not pre-scripted by them.

A community which defaces a TV host as "conservatively biased" while simultaneously using and praising his own commentary to attack Bush and conservatives really need to check themselves into a medical facility.

Greenwald is a hack. He couldn't even figure out why we were treating Iran and China differently. The size of their countries' populations and armies apparently never made its way into Greenwald's "analysis".

[Tom Grey - Liberty Dad]

I don't think facts are the main issues, but rather values. For instance, the idea that Iraq is huge mess/ failure/ proof of incompetence.

Yet I've long claimed that if Bush gets a functioning democracy in Iraq with less than 2500 casualties (while he's in office), that's an "A" performance. Up to 5000 is "B"; 10 000 is "C". Of course, everybody says they don't like body bag calculus -- but what's this body bag counting, then? Around 2400 now (looks like B+ coming).

My point is that Leftist will have no standard by which to judge competence, or success, or most good things. Anything Bush does that's less than pefect -- is terrible.

When we can agree on a fact, but not on what the fact means, there's a loss of communication possibility.

[Lew Clark]

Generally speaking, Greenwald is an idiot. And I've come to that truth without reading anything he has written. If I read that stuff, I'd have an even lower opinion of him, generally speaking.

[lyle]

We can all take a lesson from Mr Greenwald. When you dispense with facts, it gives you more space to be windy and redundant.

[sad]

Somerby will take a lot of heat for pointing out a lack of facts.

http://dailyhowler.com/dh042806.shtml

[Dave Schuler]

Tom, Tom, Tom. It's not that facts are for cowards. It's that facts are irrelevant. The truth or falsity of a proposition is determined by the intensity of one's feelings about it.

If you hate Bush, enough then he is, in fact, the worst president ever. If we believe intensely enough that Iran is not a threat, then, of course, it isn't.

Clap if you believe in fairies! Clap!

[marvls]

Simple correction...just change "defenders" to "haters" in the final quote and you've got it just right.

[Neo]

Reading the post, the first thing that came to mind was the alternate form of "Speaking In Inflated, Absurd Generalities". Then I realized that this included bickering of the book count of Kos' latest masterpiece and I thought .. why doesn't Kos tell us just how many he thinks he already sold ?

More bits of storage on servers worldwide are consumed by baseless allegations with no factual basis to back them up. I'm sure (ya sure) that Kos can come forward with numbers to show that Drudge has the count wrong because .. [fill in the blank]. And this is always the problem. The blank, more usually than not, never gets filled in. (Just for the record I think Kos sold more, but how many more?)

For three years now we have had to listen over and over and over again about how Smokin' Joe Wilson proved George W. Bush was wrong about those SOTU 16 words. The British say he is wrong.
Let's fill in that blank.

For more that two weeks now, there has been an offer of $5 for the first person to name one thing, anything, Joseph Wilson found in Niger in 2002 that would prove "false" President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union statement, "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

To date there have been no offers to fill in that blank. Maybe Glenn and his team of forensic experts don't know about this offer. Well here is a chance to fill in that blank and not with useless hot air or generalizations. Just real facts for those who claim they really want a debate.

We will be waiting. And maybe, just maybe, we will find out what kind of smoke Joe was making.

[Jim Miller]

It may be unfair to Greenwald to introduce a fact into this rousing discussion, but here's one I find of interest: As David Brooks pointed out before the 2004 election, Bush drew disproportionate support from people who make their living with numbers, while Kerry drew disproportionate support from people who make their living with words.

In my experience, the first group is more likely to make arguments based on facts than the second group. Think about engineers and lawyers for a bit if your experience has been different from mine.

And there's a second fact that anyone can verify for themselves in an hour or so on the net. In general, Bush supporters on the net are much less likely to use profanity than Bush opponents. Typically, profanity is used to shock, to appeal to emotion rather than to reason.

My apologies to Mr. Greenwald for bringing up those two unpleasant facts. I do enjoy his mauve prose and am not sure I want to spoil it for others.

[JM Hanes]

"The Importance of Speaking In Inflated, Absurd Generalities"

A Memoir, we presume. Hopefully your "note to self" retrieval rate is a dismal as mine!

Noah: IIRC, Larwyn (with an assist from Cecil?) generated the perpendicular/left angle to reality meme which was applied to the Greenwald crowd, not by them.

[larwyn]

JMH,
Think I found that at OneCosmos.

Robert Godwin has a great one up tonight, I'll put part of it here and the wonderful comments he's pulled from Huff's site in the Flight 93 post.

The subject is Envy & Spoiling which drives the Left, all their policies and beliefs.

United 93:No Heroic Deed Goes Unspoiled by the Left

This is typical. One could be cynical and say that this is just “spin,” but I don’t think it’s generally conscious. Rather, I think it’s unconscious envy and spoiling.

Even the liberal movie reviewer cannot help himself from getting envious little digs into almost all of his reviews, including today’s for United 93. Although he liked the movie, in seeing it, “It’s impossible not to think of the image of George W. Bush reading the pet goat story in Michael Moore’s ‘Farenheit 9/11.” This same idiot would never review Farenheit 9/11 and write, “it’s impossible to look at this shrill leftist propaganda without thinking of the image of a stewardess having her throat slashed with a box cutter by a Muslim barbarian that Moore would call a freedom fighter.”

Past hour and half should qualify for combat pay. I listened to the entire Bill Maher show. He didn't even have a token conservative other than a remote interview with Victor Davis Hanson with Mahr doing all the talking and overtalking. Definite theses material for poli sci/historian/psych/econ majors decades from now.

Barney Frank and Bill solved the entire energy crisis by capping oil company profits. Think we should cap entertainment co and their "employees" profits.

If movies were only $3.00 vs $10.00 as family of 3 would have $21.00 extra dollars to spend on gas.%) And how about iPod downloads for $ .05?

Then paused at Olberman, reporter Mark Potter on Rush story captioned by:

Rush COPS A Deal!

Doubt Orwell could keep up with them today.

[Tom Maguire]

In general, Bush supporters on the net are much less likely to use profanity than Bush opponents.

If I were David Brooks, I would have a brilliant sociological theory (abbreviated as "so-logical" theory) that incorporated the following elements:

1 - Lenny Bruce (lefty) versus Bob Newhart (righty, by apperances);

2 - all lefties want to be college kids; all righties want to be grown-ups. (Why leave all the absurd generalizing to GG?)

3 - role models: Rush Limbaugh always mainatins a patina of politeness; the top righty bloggers include folks like Glenn Reynodls and Eugene Volokh.

The lefties have plenty of politeness in, e.g., The New Republic or Matt Yglesias, but their real market seems to be for Atrios and his Wanker du Jour.

I don't know - the bad language may be necessary to show commitment and passion (lesser writers would try to communicate that without profanity), or to show they are hip, or whatever.

[clarice]

Might as well blame it on disposal diapers which has made it easier for Americans to postpone potty training resulting in lots of youngsters who are anal expulsives .LOL

Though I googled and found there is just such a theory.http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/sbrowder/psychology/intro/workbook/exercise10.htm.

[cdm]

Tom Grey: Yet I've long claimed that if Bush gets a functioning democracy in Iraq with less than 2500 casualties (while he's in office), that's an "A" performance. Up to 5000 is "B"; 10 000 is "C".
[...]
When we can agree on a fact, but not on what the fact means, there's a loss of communication possibility.

Can we first agree on the fact that the casualty count in Iraq numbers at least in the tens of thousands, and possibly in the hundreds of thousands? Then we can discuss the grade.

[Foo Bar]

Bob Newhart (righty, by apperances);

Well, TM, I guess appearances can be deceiving (unless a bit of money to McCain in 2000, outweighed by more money to Leahy, qualifies one as a righty).

Or is it that political contributions can be deceiving when one attempts to discern motivations and loyalties?

[kim]

Perhaps they can be deceiving, but leaving them out of the story so we can't judge whether they are or not, is deceiving.
=================================

[kim]

So with millions dead under Saddam, what's his grade?
==============================

[kim]

It's quite simple, the bad language is hate speech. Righties now have less reason to hate.

One might also add, parenthetically, that righties have ideas to advance their arguments, lefties are left with invective; the idea machine is overdrawn, dawn approaches and they're in bed with authoritarian, theocratic fascists.
=============================

[boris]

the casualty count in Iraq

So, who got the passengers of Flight 93 killed ? Mark and Todd or the terrorists ?

How could anybody be sure they were part of the big hijack?

Maybe they were just going to land and demand ... whatever ...

Maybe the suicide bomb wasn't real ... maybe it was ...

What should we think about those who would stay in their seats and curse the effort to retake the plane because it just got them all killed?

[Forbes]

TM:
The Greenwald quote is priceless! Replace Bush with:
Kyoto Treaty, or
abortion, or
SSM, or
Social Security,
and it becomes an all-pupose, and all-weather "analysis"!

However did he manage to fill 146 pages in his paperback pamphlet?

[Jake - but not the one]

TM, this post is pandering of the not quite vile variety. I think Glenn must have gored your ox a little.

Or gotten your goat, one or the other.

tsk, tsk, tsk.

Jake

PS - the bit about number folks and word folks seems weird to me. The ACTUAL number folks I know keep their mouth shut for the most part, so no one actually knows where they stand. Excluding me, of course. Y'all know where I stand. :)