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Friday, July 20, 2018

Politico End Zone Dance

The cover article of politico is a concession by Blake Hounshell that he was wrong and that I and many others were right.

I enjoy a little end zone dance in comments

The case is overwhelmingly convincing. Also none of the critical evidence is new. As you now are no longer a russiagate skeptic, you should concede that you were foolish in February. All the (100% convincing) arguments you present here were valid then and made by many many people (including me in a twitter tiff with you).

You still insist on your personal definition of the word collusion to mean ... well I don't know what but it has nothing to do with the dictionary definition "secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy to deceive others" or common usage.

Nothing in the definition or common usage implies that collusion must be competently executed to be collusion nor must it be well organized, effective or successful. The assertion that the Trump campaign was not competent enough to collude is a catagory error. It was convenient to Republicans some of whom are shameless enough to use a plainly invalid argument when they have no valid argument.

You should have stuck to the dictionary definition and note that collusion does not imply competent collusion. Alternatively, you could have avoided the word -- there is no need to use it except in the context of the Sherman antitrust act. In this, you (and many others) meekly followed Donald Trump who insists on inserting the word (written with a sharpie) whether or not it is relevant. It is not relevant to this article, but, you too, won't let it go.

As is often the case, a supposedly neutral journalist (you) allowed political operatives to redefine a word for their convenience. Now that you admit that you were wrong, you should also admit that you should have known (or seek another field of work) and that you shouldn't have allowed someone to redefine a word, and insist that no discussion of the topic can omit the conveniently redefined word.

Also, I told you so. You should have been able to understand my argument and should have been convinced back when I explained things to you in February.

1 comment:

dilbert dogbert said...

It struck me that one could consider criminals too incompetent to commit a crime if they get caught and therefore not guilty.