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Goat-Level’s Not Enough

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Political bloggers – left, right, libertarian, etc. – often find themselves critiquing the ill-considered proposals that government, business, labor groups, and a fawning press insist are for everyone’s good. 

That’s certainly true in Wisconsin – we have an active blogosphere running the whole political spectrum, and united (if in little else) at least in a commitment to something of better quality than what self-serving officials and their press pals say. 

For years, serious bloggers across this state have rebutted countless flimsy schemes of state and local governments, of the misuse of data and distortion of information, against a shifting clique of glad-handing boosters.  Come on kids, let’s put on a show is not a suitable justification for policy.

It’s not just a Wisconsin problem. Writing in The Altantic, Conor Friedersdorf quotes Ezra Klein (a policy analyst and journalist) on the scourge of poor analysis in the capital:

….are Washington, D.C., political journalists excessively beholden to so-called experts and their impenetrable jargon, people with no understanding of America beyond an insular bubble, whose track record of awful recommendations includes the Vietnam War, a conflict run by “the best and the brightest”?

….Drawing on nine years in the nation’s capital, Klein acknowledges one class of obstacles. “Washington is a cesspool of faux-experts who do bad research (or no research),” he explained, “but retain their standing by dint of affiliations, connections, or charisma.” Sweet validation! I’ve often suspected that official Washington is populated by enough disingenuous, misinformation-spreading hucksters to fill an underground container of organic waste. No one has better standing to render this judgment than Klein, whose earnest, tireless embrace of deep-in-the-weeds wonkery is unsurpassed in his generation. He wouldn’t assert a whole cesspool of intellectual waste product without having seen plenty of specific examples.

His jaded view is widely held, too.

Yet it’s rare for individual faux-experts who are getting by in Washington on affiliations, connections, or charisma to be identified and called out. Surely news consumers would benefit from a rigorous jeremiad demonstrating that particular people are trafficking in misinformation. In time, their influence would wane….

See, “Washington Is a Cesspool of Faux-Experts Who Do Bad Research.”

The bloggers in our state have not held themselves out as experts.  (I certainly never have.) On the contrary, they’ve battled and won debates against self-declared experts who are actually hucksters excelling mostly in grandiose statements and mediocre (or dishonest) work. 

In this regard, these bloggers are simply like so very many ordinary people who can see through goat-level contentions & claims

There may always be a few who won’t stop pitching poop; they’re not entitled to do so without encountering a rigorous critique, in Whitewater, in Wisconsin, or in Washington.

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