I just get tired, I guess, of a certain kind of concern trolling. Say, for example, that I genuinely agree that there’s a certain kind of concern for evidence or rigor that should be important in making any kind of intellectual or academic argument. If someone rolls up to my door and say, “Hey, look, aren’t you concerned by this academic who is making very strong claims in a public dispute but whose command of evidence is very slipshod”, I might take a look and say, hm, why yes. But if the person rolling up to my door is someone with a record that’s equally slipshod, my major irritation at that point is with the guy who approached me.

Partisans hope to win the news cycle by mobilizing an engaged public who hope for something else from the news cycle besides winning that day’s spin contest. Partisans hope to win today’s blog bickering in the same way. But once the day’s contest is over, partisans in both group go right back to bitching first and foremost not about their opposite numbers but about that engaged middle that looks to the public sphere as something other than a prize to be won.

I think it’s human nature for you to see the flaws in your opponent’s gameplay more clearly than you see those of your allies. But the loud complainers on each side of the debate actually represent a fairly small slice of the population, one that’s both ideologically committed and really engaged in the grind of day-to-day news-cycle-winning politics. The large middle can decide whether their arguments make sense, or not, but adding another layer of distraction and making the debate about whether people have a right to make certain arguments, based on previous ideological or tactical positions, seems not useful.