Sullivan Misses Mark

Writer Andrew Sullivan recently penned an article on intersectionality in NY Mag. He did a great job a wonderful job of exposing the stupidity and anti-intellectualism of intersectionality while arguing it exhibits traits of a religion.

But there's a flaw in this as well as another more grating one as we shall see later.

It assumes religion is irrational to which I would counter it is not. Christianity, for example, laid the intellectual and scientific groundwork of Western civilization. It is within the bosom of the Catholic church did it flourish.

Rather, in keeping with how he describes intersectionality,  it operates more as a cult.

I know among progressives, who claim to be rational, it's popular to equate a cult with religion since they share common traits. If anything, modern progressivism, in all its illiberal darkness, is closer to a cult than organized religion. There's far more tolerance for opposing views and a reference for discourse among the Judeo-Christian religions than you find on campuses where progressives lurk.

It's really a tale of two articles. It went off the rails when he started on Trump. It's almost as if they accord themselves the right to think critically where he is concerned. The mere mention of Trump - America's real life Mr. Burns apparently - turns people's minds to mush.

The article was doing fine until he exhibited his own version of the very logical fallacies he accused protesters of. For example:

"The overwhelming conclusion of climate scientists — that carbon is warming the Earth irreversibly — is simply denied by the new head of the EPA."

Is that a fact. He just set up his argument as though there are not legitimate positions challenging this. Of course, there is more than enough evidence to suggest the militant position of climate change. There are plenty of reputable scientists who are skeptics.

He just pulled out his own 'with hunt' card. All he missed was to call them 'deniers'.

"The judiciary can have no legitimate, independent stance if it too counters the president’s interests."

Which is precisely how Obama behaved whenever he bullied judges; particularly when it came to the ACA.

"Equally, intelligence-gathering can have no validity if it undermines Trump’s interests. It suddenly becomes “intelligence.” It can be ignored. Worse, the intelligence agencies are maligned as inherently political, rather than empirical. "

I wouldn't characterize, again, Obama's presidency has being a bastion of preserving the sanctity of 'empirical' evidence as he himself engaged in dubious statistical gibberish on issues of, say, rape on campus and economics so long as it suited his agenda.

"Last week, Trump went even further, claiming, with no evidence, that the Justice Department colluded in a criminal wiretap with the previous president to target Trump’s candidacy in the last election."

And yet, it's recently been reported declassified NSA documents showing the Obama did indeed spy on Americans and most likely did in fact wiretap Trump's campaign.

Sullivan couldn't resist being partisan and the second part of the article was irrelevant to the subject. In fact, it weakened his entire premise. Some fine editing work there at NY Mag.

Sullivan sullied and sabotaged his own article by going from reason to screeching in sixty seconds.