Yastreblyansky

Yastreblyansky @yastreblyansky.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 03:26 UTC

My feeling, in the terms of the Gettysburg analogy, is that we are in that Longstreet position; where it's not at all clear that we are really winning, but it's a hopeful situation. If we hold tight, rejecting unnecessary aggression (see: Sunzi), and if we order Picket to charge we're fucked forever

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Yastreblyansky @yastreblyansky.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 03:04 UTC

Another thing for which we don't have decent data is how voters feel, don't @ me with all your supposed exceptions. But there's also something that is *not* exactly data, which you might appeal to in a political argument, the *structural* position I was thinking of when I mentioned Gettysburg.

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Yastreblyansky @yastreblyansky.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 02:55 UTC

Oh yeah. Media are culpable in not pushing this forward. Then, having made an argument that it doesn't matter, they cite polls to say that proves they're right. I'm starting to get pretty angry about it.

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Yastreblyansky @yastreblyansky.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 02:52 UTC

Polls are data, and you definitely have to have data, but they aren't anything like *all* the data, and they mostly only tell you "How'm I doing?" in Ed Koch's language, not what you need to do. And they're overly focused on the person, the celebrity name, as opposed to how voters feel.

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Yastreblyansky @yastreblyansky.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 02:39 UTC

Trying to imagine some Civil War scientist proposing plans on the basis of who folks believe is most likely to prevail in the coming battle. Not that the polls are so bad, though they are unreliable, but that they aren't directly relevant to whether you *can* win.

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Yastreblyansky @yastreblyansky.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 02:33 UTC

Then there's a non-serious political journalism question, about the voters: not WHAT do they want, which would be politically significant, but WHO do they think is going to win? Which is some easy research, check out the polls, but you don't know what the polls mean. You really don't know!

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Yastreblyansky @yastreblyansky.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 02:24 UTC

Or should you divert your forces to an attack position where the enemy is uphill from you, as Lee's intuition demanded? And it's tremendously stressful, because the whole conduct of the war is at stake: will you be able to bring the battle to enemy territory or will you be driven back?

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Yastreblyansky @yastreblyansky.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 02:16 UTC

...What's the best approach? NOT who's the best guy, but what's the most effective action? What's strategic? If this is Gettysburg and you're the Confederate sources, should you fall back on your own best position and force the enemy to attack you, as Longstreet advised...

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Yastreblyansky @yastreblyansky.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 02:02 UTC

Look. There's a serious political question that's hard to answer: Given, as most of the audience mostly agrees, that reelecting Trump would be a really bad thing, probably worse than last time (I'm not sure what they come up with will inevitably be worse than Covid, but it certainly could)...

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Yastreblyansky @yastreblyansky.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 01:16 UTC

Even better than ever

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Yastreblyansky @yastreblyansky.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 01:14 UTC

He's not even slightly interested in that. Why should George have value to the voters? Voters must have value to George, by giving him something to be savvy about!

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