What Goes Around, Comes Around

I am (still) occupied with the Gawker post so here are a few Megan McArdle critiques to keep you entertained.

First, a letter to the Chicago Tribune, where McArdle is syndicated. The writer was piqued by McArdle's mocking of occupational licensing.

Next, a response from Damon Linker to McArdle's claim that the Republicans are not at all to blame for Trump's rise. The critique is very polite but damning. Linker:

From Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America through the spread of talk radio and Fox News to the rise of Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, and Donald Trump, the story of the Republican Party since the early 1990s is an abject lesson in the dangers of stoking populist anger and resentment — and the difficulty in controlling it once it is unleashed.

 McArdle and P. Suderman, boy anger-stoker, are knee deep in the Tea Party welfare circuit. McArdle praised Sarah Palin extravagantly, a point that was passed around the internet like a slam book after McArdle's post came out.

Perhaps these factors were all pressing on her mind when she poured out a fountain of blather in support of global warming denial. Linker also mentioned climate change and creationism as reasons to not take Republicans seriously.

McArdle:

The arguments about global warming too often sound more like theology than science. Oh, the word “science” gets thrown around a great deal, but it's cited as a sacred authority, not a fallible process that staggers only awkwardly and unevenly toward the truth, with frequent lurches in the wrong direction. I cannot count the number of times someone has told me that they believe in “the science,” as if that were the name of some omniscient god who had delivered us final answers written in stone. For those people, there can be only two categories in the debate: believers and unbelievers. Apostles and heretics.

As Mary McCarthy famously said, 'Every word she writes is a lie, including "and" and "the."'

McArdle also wrote another post on the inevitable downfall of Obamacare, which seems to be her blogging equivalent of stroking her blankie to self-soothe.

Finally, Kevin Drum responded to the Trump post as well, telling McArdle that her reasons for absolving Republicans to blame are mostly wrong or marginal. Like Linker, Drum explains how the Republicans created their own downfall.

Her familiar world is shifting beneath the feet of our princess. McArdle based her self-image on the belief that she is an elite success in a meritocracy. If her high-born place in the hierarchy is destroyed she has nothing.