Everyone Loses When Journalists Play Rhetorical Calvinball

Standards are slippin'

The philosophy professor Matt Lutz wrote a great post for Persuasion (Yascha Mounk’s new project which I interviewed him about here) describing a phenomenon he calls rhetorical Calvinball. 

You should read the whole essay, and the tweetstorm that birthed it, but the basic point is that in rhetorical Calvinball, all the usual rules dictating what are and …