Worth highlighting

D. Aristophanes' brilliant smackdown of Michelle Malkin and her ilk has already received some attention today. But I'll take a moment to point out the post as well, if only to point out how we in the progressive Canadian blogosphere - whatever our partisan stripe - tend to have enough respect for our readers not to pass off like-minded bloggers' idle speculation as fact through a self-congratulatory feedback loop.

That is, most of us, if not quite all.

Update: Since Saskboy seems to have completely missed the point (in taking the Malkin comparison to refer to Shae as well), let's look at this in a bit more detail.

Shae's original post was explicitly based on a thought experiment predicated, among other things, on the future actions of the NDP. The logical structure would look something like this:

If A (you are a progressive voter who is disillusioned with the Libs over their lack of principle and drift to the right), and B (the NDP winds up striking a deal which results in the Cons staying in government until 2008, representing a triumph of politics over principle), then C (you should vote Green instead of NDP in order to be more true to progressive principles). While C is more implicit than explicit in Shae's post, it's hard to see what sense the post would make with any other conclusion.

For the reasons pointed out by Jamey Heath among others, that pattern of thinking is itself highly questionable. But let's assume it to be accurate for the moment.

Even if one agrees entirely with Shae's analysis, it depends completely on the truth of A and B. Indeed, it could be argued that by implication, if B proves to be untrue, then the opposite of C would be true: the NDP would have refused to engage in the action defined to consist of putting politics ahead of principle, leading the voter in question to have another reason to vote for the NDP on principle.

So what does Saskboy's post do? It cuts B out of the equation entirely, implicitly claiming that Shae's analysis, which is predicated on a future action of the NDP, offers a valid reason to switch one's support from the NDP to the Greens before that action ever occurs. Or in other words, "I'm prepared to pretend that B is true whether or not it is or ever will be, and therefore C is true now".

Which naturally serves two goals for Saskboy: it presents a (however flawed) push toward C (the ultimate end goal), and the act of eliminating the "if" related to B could help convince others to believe B to be true if they're not paying close attention to the sleight-of-hand.

To the extent any responsibility lies with Shae, it's in constructing a thought experiment on hypothetical future premises which are at best speculative, and at worst directly contrary to the evidence available to date. And that's exactly what I noted in the comments to that post. But it takes another step to try to turn that speculation into a state of fact intended to justify changes of action in the present - and it's Saskboy alone who escalated the problem that way.

Let's tie this back to the Malkin example surrounding Jamil Hussein. There, the logical structure in question would look something like this:

If A (the AP's credibility varies directly with the accuracy of reports including those cited by a source named Jamil Hussein), and B (the source named Jamil Hussein does not exist), then C (the AP lacks credibility).

In the Hussein case, the truth or non-truth of B was based on past facts rather than future actions. But the wishful thinking and speculation underlying B were similarly elevated to the level of fact for the purposes of supporting C. And when B was eventually proven to be false, that led only to a change of subject rather than an admission of error - hence the switch to "well, that was just one example of the AP's lack of credibility, we'll make up another A and B if necessary" for the sake of preserving the ultimate conclusion.

Which, unfortunately, would seem entirely likely to be the response from Saskboy as well if the NDP in fact continues to be the only opposition party to vote consistently against the Cons' confidence issues.

Thankfully, that type of mangling of logical structure in the name of partisanship is indeed a rarity in Canada's progressive blogosphere. And I only hope that by pointing out such problems when they do appear, we can keep from falling into the same fact-free black hole which the American right so happily occupies.

Edit: fixed typo & wording.