Analogy to Factose

I’m curious as to what SAT Verbal scores were achieved by Sheila Dawan of the NYT and David Frum of the Atlantic, as this week they both formulate analogies which prove simultaneously false and weak.

Start with Ms. Dawan drawing a direct link between the Arbery and Rittenhouse cases.  For one thing, the racial angle in the Arbery case is obvious, as was the fact that the McMichaels were playing cop and trying to hide behind Stand Your Ground, while video showed they were under no threat from Arbery.  None of these factors come into play in the Rittenhouse case, least of the racial angle (of course the NYT neglects to mention the race of the three men Rittenhouse shot (all white)).  It might be possible that Ms. Dawan can be forgiven for simply parroting analogs drawn by the academics she quotes who all fit the current stereotype of progressive anti-2A professors peddling the usual intersectional pablum, so maybe the ultimate sin isn’t hers.

In the case of David Frum at The Atlantic, the sin is his; he certainly knows better especially as a former Republican Presidential speechwriter.  His piece falls apart immediately after the headlines—“Steve Bannon Knows Exactly What He’s Doing—The fight over January 6 is about much more than the law”—the salience of which he may not even get credit for, as usually editors compose those.  By employing the Chicago Seven as stand-ins for Bannon, Frum has it exactly backward: as reprehensible as the Chicago Eight were, their prosecution was both political and incompetent.  The outgoing Johnson administration—which in theory had much more a political grievance against the Seven, as their tactics likely cost the Democrats the White House in 1968—had no inclination to prosecute; the trial was a Nixon initiative designed to score political points, and the trial was so badly conducted by Judge Julius Hoffman that a federal appeals court overturned the conviction noting that "the demeanor of the judge and the prosecutors would require reversal even if errors did not."

Not to mention that Frum engages in a ton of projection on two fronts: lobbing accusations of logical inconsistency at the alleged January 6 trespassers, apparently forgetting the hallmark Orwellianism of the progressive fellow travellers he might deny aiding and abetting, as he likely still considers himself a conservative.  

Then he ridiculously asserts that “Trump partisans… are backed by this country’s most powerful media institutions, including the para-media of Facebook and other social platforms.”  That claim would not merit a response from any intelligent beings other than a series of mocking memes, if that.

Frum must really think no one is paying attention.

The same way he did when they were teaching analogies in grade school.