In Which T. A. Frank Super-Glues Both Eyes Shut, Covers Them With Hands, And Encounters "Trouble" Seeing

Someone is suffering from a crippling inability to discriminate the relative plausibility of two different arguments. I think I can help. From T. A. Frank in TNR discussing speculation about whether right-wing rhetoric shares some culpability for the Jared Lee Loughner shooting:

There is of course one advantage to all such lines of argument, if argument is the word for it. They are entirely faith-based, which makes them pretty much irrefutable. But faith-based punditry works in more than one direction. Seven years after the massacre at Columbine High School—in which two senior students shot and killed twelve students and a teacher—CBS News invited Brian Rohrbough, who had lost his son Dan, to explain why he thought the shootings had happened. “The public school system has taught in a moral vacuum, expelling God from the school and from the government, replacing him with evolution, where the strong kill the weak, without moral consequences and life has no inherent value,” Rohrbough said. “And I assure you the murder of innocent children is always wrong, including by abortion. Abortion has diminished the value of children.” Most liberals (myself included) would disagree with Rohrbough’s explanation for the shooting, but they’d have trouble explaining why it’s any less plausible or substantive than explanations blaming Jared Loughner on rightwing hysteria.

Consider the title of this course “Explaining why it’s any less plausible or substantive” 101: because there is not a single instance of a pro-choice advocate or biology teacher suggesting that high school shootings might be resorted to as a resolution of their concerns or expression of their principles in contrast with, oh, let’s take an example “Well it's [the second amendment] to defend ourselves. And you know, I'm hoping that we're not getting to Second Amendment remedies. I hope the vote will be the cure for the Harry Reid problems.”

Not plausible. Plausible. Really, no trouble at all.