Epistemic closure is beginning to branch out, evidently.
Which means William Saletan and Julian Sanchez had better get to work expanding their descriptions of those who occupy the dingy canvas dullards’ tent.
Now, were I them, I’d probably just go with “those who don’t self-describe as ‘liberals’, have fired a gun on multiple occasions, and /or are given to eating ‘country-fried’ something or other without irony,” and be done with it. But then, I’m institutionally closed off to new ideas and can’t quite do nuance like they can, so they should probably avoid my suggestions on principle. Which, now that I think about it, creates a kind of “conservative” liar’s paradox for them to negotiate their way through.
— Though if anyone can do it, my money is on one of those two thoughtful geniuses.
So how does, “I won!”, and, “Elections have consequences”, reconcile with being open to other’s ideas? Don’t you have to actually, you know, consider them; instead of merely looking like you’re politely listening and punctuate the end of the conversation with pithy comments about winning, and mops and messes?
There’s nothing in the article what supports this. I think the phenomenon he’s describing is a lot more driven by Michael Steele’s complete failure at the RNC than by corporate monies.
“Third party groups” is not synonymous with “corporate”.
meya/RD/bdam is in one of its manic phases today. Hilarity ensues.
I’m going to risk being uncool and ask; “Epistemic closure” is just a fancy way of saying “My mind is made up”, yes?
Any confusion about an Independents (NOT third party) surge is likely due to denial about the make up of the Tea Parties. There are those that want to slap a label on them, but the truth is, they are a large spectrum grassroots movement with a much larger number of sympathizers than commonly described. They are organized as very local independent groups, no top down structure. Not only are federal congress critters being scrutinized, but State Reps and mayors. And, candidates are being judged by more than their promises and party these days.
I would love to see the more fiscally conservative Independent candidates take out the R’s and D’s everywhere, allowing them less than 30% of the popular vote each. They could use the humility.
I read “country fried” and felt hunger pangs. Mmmm.
lee – One of the leftist bloggers used that term in a post that someone accurately described as “Conservatives are bad. Discuss”. The smart and enlightened people now use it willy nilly, wherever they can fit it in, to show how fucking not-brilliant they are.
Lee, the term has been throttled to within an nanosecond of losing its life. Check out this article for a touchback to a time prior to Sanchez’ insertions.
I tried to post this at Julians – don’t know if it took:
epistemic closure:
Reality is defined by a multimedia array of interconnected and cross promoting conservative blogs, radio programs, magazines, and of course, Fox News. Whatever conflicts with that reality can be dismissed out of hand because it comes from the liberal media, and is therefore ipso facto not to be trusted. (How do you know they’re liberal? Well, they disagree with the conservative media!)
The same can easily be said of “Liberals”. But the truth is that anyone who thinks in this convenient a priori, logically and empirically challenged way is not dealing with reality – including the Author:
I mean, the knock against Dems and/or liberals is that they altogether to eager to at least consider, and possibly adopt, an idea or point of view, regardless of origin. Well, if I understand you correctly, that’s what you would consider ‘epistemically open’, that is to say the the converse of ‘epistemically closed’.
Julian, your neat little pre-fab’d stereotyping boxes – here filled by only two anecdotes which allege to be typical of “Conservatives”, and then an appeal to a self-serving definitional Platitude as to what is “Liberal”and also an alleged “knock against liberals” – make you epistemically closed.
Thanks guys.
I’ve also been noticing an interesting tactic in political ads. Claims that the candidates opponent is less conservative than they claim (against Jim Patterson, former mayor of Fresno and running for Senator, truly a fiscal conservative), or more liberal (Meg Whitman, who supported Babs Boxer and Feinstein, accusing Steve Poizner). It’s a kind of weird concern troll type of charge.
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