Your theory is that all social commentary is handwavey general remarks? If so, yes, let's invalidate it. I think effective social commentary is mostly grounded

Your theory is that all social commentary is handwavey general remarks? If so, yes, let's invalidate it. I think effective social commentary is mostly grounded in the personal, the specific, and the (thoughtfully) statistical. Otherwise it's very easy just to project one's biases onto a complicated picture. E.g., consider whatever it is that people think is "ruining the kids" these days. In the 1700s, you know what was ruining the kids? Novels: https://www.economist.com/1843/2020/01/20/an-18th-century-moral-panic-sounds-surprisingly-familiar https://www.economist.com/1843/2020/01/20/an-18th-century-mo... It's similar to how arguments about "what God wants" go wrong. Researchers showed that when people talk about what their god wants, they're unconsciously consulting their own preferences: https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/creating-god-in-ones-own-image https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/creating-god-i... With broad social argument, it's easy to introduce all sorts of fallacy. Humans aren't really equipped to reason intuitively about things at this scale. Especially if the point is to persuade and/or entertain, simplifying into broad "logical" arguments can paint false pictures. Andrew Gelman wrote about this today: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2022/04/24/the-perils-of-apparently-logical-thinking/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2022/04/24/the-perils...