Great essay as always, however the deliberate withholding of examples is irritating me. I'm not looking for witches to burn, but names or examples of "grumpy, censorious people in a group — the ones who are always first to complain when something violates the current rules of propriety." would be helpful to identify the described mentality.
Vaguely gesticulating at your stated enemy instead of identifying them is a time-honored rhetorical technique: it allows the reader to insert their individual grievances into the shape of the argument rather than reflecting on whether their grievances are actually well-founded.
Edit: And to be absolutely clear: it's a lame technique. It works because it's emotive, not because it reveals any particular amount of truth.
> it allows the reader to insert their individual grievances into the shape of the argument rather than reflecting on whether their grievances are actually well-founded.
Given that it's specifically about the shape of these sorts of arguments, adding specific examples would produce tangents into the merits of the specific examples; omitting them encourages the reader to consider the pattern in the context of their own experience (as you say), but by removing the actual "grievance", this technique reduces emotion, and gives us more opportunity to consider the pattern dispassionately. This would actually be more "emotive" if it forced us to confront examples which we might violently agree or disagree with.
Providing specific instances of the pattern would only be necessary if the pattern itself has few enough examples that the typical reader hasn't encountered any. Given that Graham's entire point appears to be that this pattern is increasingly pervasive, by providing examples, he would undermine his own conclusions.
"The shape of an argument" is the polite way to say that an argument is imprecise. Less politely: it's a way to beat around the bush about what you actually believe while maintaining plausible agreeability.
Graham can't make the point that it's pervasive, because he won't provide any evidence to that effect. He won't do that because he knows that hand-wringing about "heresy" is much more agreeable than the interior position: that rich and powerful men like himself shouldn't be made to bear uncomfortable thoughts.
If someone extracts a pattern that, say, three arguments follow, which we can then call the "shape" of this kind of argument, which of the three arguments are you suggesting is imprecise? Or is your position that any actual argument which fits into any pattern at all is somehow imprecise? It's clear that we are miscommunicating regarding the meta vs object level of this essay, but I'm not sure exactly where the disconnect lies.
> Given that Graham's entire point appears to be that this pattern is increasingly pervasive, by providing examples, he would undermine his own conclusions.
If Graham wants to argue that "this pattern is increasingly pervasive" wouldn't it help to provide examples of how fast it is becoming more pervasive? He could do this with examples. If he's claiming it is becoming more pervasive I think he failed to present any evidence for that.
"All we have to do is keep pushing back, and the wave collapses"
Sounds like a political rallying cry. A rallying cry for those on the ramparts. The line assumes the reader knows they are part of the "we" and calls them to action. Who are they? Stop the steal?
It's straw man after straw man. Facile and reductive. Basically a long form version of "you can't say anything anymore!" Could have been written by Archie Bunker.
