How political arguments work in practice.

Latest

Jan
05
Reactionary Centrism: a Response to Jonathan Chait

Reactionary Centrism: a Response to Jonathan Chait

Jonathan Chait recently criticized a 2018 essay I wrote about “reactionary centrism," a term that's picked up some steam over
7 min read
Aug
26
Welcome to the Era of Strategic Trolling

Welcome to the Era of Strategic Trolling

Trolling has a bad reputation. The term is usually used to describe bad faith arguments and the most annoying types
4 min read
Aug
01
Avoiding the Process Trap — A Few Notes on the Forward Party

Avoiding the Process Trap — A Few Notes on the Forward Party

The curious case of Andrew Yang's Forward Party is a stark example of shortcut thinking in politics. Rather than developing
4 min read
Jul
04
Stop Taking the Bait on Bad Faith Debates About Word Choices

Stop Taking the Bait on Bad Faith Debates About Word Choices

There are a lot of rolling debates about specific word choices in political discourse that have very little to do
4 min read
Jun
23

When It's Not Lying, It's Often Paltering

Recently, I was discussing some disinformation about the pandemic with a few colleagues who work in science communication. We were
3 min read
Apr
15
Participatory Vs. Transactional Politics

Participatory Vs. Transactional Politics

A lot of debates about how to win elections and Do Politics Good are grounded in different views of how
3 min read
Jan
05

On January 6th, Good Organizing Won

A year ago, a right wing mob, incited by a Republican president, stormed the U.S. Capitol in the hopes
4 min read
Dec
28

Movie Review: Don't Look Up is the Science Communication Film We Deserve

SPOILER NOTE: I'm going to assume that readers have seen Don't Look Up or don't care if they see spoilers.
9 min read
Dec
09

Invisible Messaging: the Power of Agnotology in Political Rhetoric

Several years ago, at an earth science conference, I learned a new word that would permanently change my understanding of
4 min read
Nov
10

Messaging Does Not Generate Attention, Action and Provocation Do

Every time Democrats lose or even just underperform in an election, we see a series of recriminations about their messaging,
8 min read

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