DUMPSTER DIALOGUE

This is kind of an amazing post-and-comments read, between the Happy Tutor and his band of cunning post-post-Marxist philosopher/philanthropist/dramatists* on one side and that paragon of decent professorial liberalism Timothy Burke on the other (via Crumb Trail). It's a dense, engrossing argument about political strategy, a late and great classic liberals-vs-leftists quarrel. I dare say it's kind of roughly analogous to the much more primitive dust-ups that occasionally occur in the comment section here between me and Tom Berman (who sadly aborted his blog this week!), and I naturally felt a real connection to some of Tim's stances. It also really makes me feel incredibly distant from my school days - when I reach back I can remember feeling comfortable thinking and talking about this kind of stuff (anyone out there remember my Situ phase?), but I don't have the feel for the vocabulary anymore, barely remember the concepts, and have more or less abandoned the cause. Which makes Timothy's ecosystem perspective, in the comments, particularly resonate, in a way:

But if it's a toolkit or an ecosystem, then right tool for right job. Against a fool only foolery will suffice. The danger I saw in the essay is that it seems to categorically see fools everywhere and prescribe foolery and wit as the universal panacea. There are people on the right who I think have an intellectual authenticity, an earnestness, who are not there for instrumental reasons, who are not malevolent. Who are also reasonable, and who can be persuaded through the use of reason. There are whole populations of people who are swayed by the worst, most instrumental operators on the populist right but who cannot be reduced as populations to being the same as those operators, who have to be met in the authentic habitus they occupy. Respect must be paid to the spectators if not to those trying to play the game.

My solution is really not to write to or for Horowitz (or for that matter some of the fools of the far left). If I write as a literalist, with reason, with balanced locution, as a plodding analyst, it is for connection to other plodders, to those who stand inside the circle of reason even if (in my judgment) on the wrong side of that circle.

You'll have to read the whole thing for it to make much sense, I'm afraid.
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*NOT AN 'ACCURATE' CHARACTERIZATION