Poisoning þe message by scorning þe messenger; inflation month-by-month; Peter Heather on Christianity's élite capture; & Wolf, Lynley, Levine, & Howes on global north global warming hypocrisy, LLM...
The left-wing version is "trade-off denial" and problems with cognitive dissonance. You have San Francisco socialists like Dean Preston who want to say that housing is expensive in SF because BlackRock, or whatever other billionaire villain, not because _people like Dean Preston_ have spent fifty years making sure nothing can possibly get built. They'll loudly proclaim they want to build lots of affordable / public housing, just, you know, not near any of the nice upper middle class people who elect them.
Addison del Maestro's discovery was also reported, in a somewhat less-politicized context, by Bob Frank in "Under the Influence" (2020). Frank notes that, in his discussions with opponents of the mandatory-enrollment aspect of Obamacare (as they invariably called the ACA), could be led to reconsider their position through a technique he called "Ask, don't tell." By leading with the question, "What if you didn't have to buy buy insurance until after you had a fire?", his conversation partners could be led to understand the problem of adverse selection and to the realization that completely voluntary health insurance would be absurdly expensive.
But, Brad, I think your broader point that "identity binding" being a unique strategy of the right is questionable. Perhaps it is so today (though I have some doubts), but the strategy itself is as old as the hills, has always and everywhere been employed by propagandists of all stripes, and differs only in effectiveness, not in intent, from the everyday type of ad hominem style of argument that associates one's opponent with a supposedly bad group: left-winger, right-winger, extremist (useful from the "center"), racist, woke...
The left-wing version is "trade-off denial" and problems with cognitive dissonance. You have San Francisco socialists like Dean Preston who want to say that housing is expensive in SF because BlackRock, or whatever other billionaire villain, not because _people like Dean Preston_ have spent fifty years making sure nothing can possibly get built. They'll loudly proclaim they want to build lots of affordable / public housing, just, you know, not near any of the nice upper middle class people who elect them.
n.b.: I picked up "trade-off denial" from this new Ezra Klein piece: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/16/opinion/climate-change-biden-building-investment.html
Addison del Maestro's discovery was also reported, in a somewhat less-politicized context, by Bob Frank in "Under the Influence" (2020). Frank notes that, in his discussions with opponents of the mandatory-enrollment aspect of Obamacare (as they invariably called the ACA), could be led to reconsider their position through a technique he called "Ask, don't tell." By leading with the question, "What if you didn't have to buy buy insurance until after you had a fire?", his conversation partners could be led to understand the problem of adverse selection and to the realization that completely voluntary health insurance would be absurdly expensive.
But, Brad, I think your broader point that "identity binding" being a unique strategy of the right is questionable. Perhaps it is so today (though I have some doubts), but the strategy itself is as old as the hills, has always and everywhere been employed by propagandists of all stripes, and differs only in effectiveness, not in intent, from the everyday type of ad hominem style of argument that associates one's opponent with a supposedly bad group: left-winger, right-winger, extremist (useful from the "center"), racist, woke...