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I read somewhere that "butter side down" people write pieces easy for the "butter side up" crowd to dunk on. The dunks amplify the message well beyond the atte
by rmrfstar 6y ago
I read somewhere that "butter side down" people write pieces easy for the "butter side up" crowd to dunk on.
The dunks amplify the message well beyond the attention the original author could muster.
- jml7c5 6y agoI don't understand; are you saying the author doesn't actually want this, but just wants to be a strawman?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jessaustin 6y agoYglesias is a divisive enough figure who has been around for a long enough time that he could pull a thesis out of a hat, noodle around for 100 pages without ever building a recognizable argument, hire a couple of interns to pad it out to 300 pages (when extensive back matter is included), arrange for a well-orchestrated pay-for-review campaign to get some small fraction of the public excited or perturbed, and then just about pay for the advance (after extensive publishing-company accounting shenanigans). So, that's what he does. He doesn't actually give a hoot whether there are more or fewer Americans.
- damnyou 6y agoA simpler explanation: the guy sincerely believes there should be more Americans and is also decent at self-promotion (which is how he got where he is).
- rmrfstar 6y agoNot so sure about that, given his claim that "it’s worth emphasizing that while 1 billion Americans may be impossible and absurd, there’s actually nothing hard about it."
- damnyou 6y agoImpossible and absurd, politically perhaps? Everything I know about him leads me to believe he truly, sincerely believes in the thesis of the book.
- jessaustin 6y agoThe thesis is manifestly insane. Do you know him to be insane? This "explanation" is always "simple", but rarely accurate.