As an Oklahoman, I think it's a little strange when someone at a Canadian university writes an article funded by the Rockefeller Foundation about "failing" Oklahoma, and has written a book called You Dumb [Epithet that applies to me]. I don't see how the tone there is remotely reasonable.

The author explicitly links Oklahoma to Trump by describing it as having the third-largest margin of victory in the presidential election. Hence the red state comment.

I don't think you actually read the article, because you assumed that i was lobbing ad-hominem attacks instead of directly referencing what the author has written.

> As an Oklahoman, I think it's a little strange when someone at a Canadian university writes an article funded by the Rockefeller Foundation about "failing" Oklahoma, and has written a book called You Dumb [Epithet that applies to me]. I don't see how the tone there is remotely reasonable.

Three points:

One, your argument seems to be with the title and the tone of the author's book. I'm looking purely at the content of the article which seems reasonable to me.

Second, the response of Oklahoma's /governor/ to falling revenues is prayer: > “Our situation is dire,” Oklahoma finance director Preston Doerflinger said. “To use a pretty harsh word, our revenues are difficult at best. Maybe they fall into the category of somewhat pathetic.”

> Governor Mary Fallin had an answer: prayer. The governor issued an official proclamation making 13 October Oilfield Prayer Day.

Doesn't that seem mind boggling to you? That definitely seems /dumb/ to me.

Third, I don't think that epithet "dumb okie" necessarily applies to you. The author's argument -- without having read the book -- seems to apply to a subset of Oklahoma. For instance the author is clearly sympathetic to the victims of police brutality, the teachers of Oklahoma etc.

> The author explicitly links Oklahoma to Trump by describing it as having the third-largest margin of victory in the presidential election. Hence the red state comment.

That's fair. Sidepoint: how do you feel about Pruitt at EPA?

How is it black box? The OP posted a link to an article; in the discussion, I talk about how the tone of the article sounds reasonable to me.

And, then I even give examples from the article describing how they seem reasonable.

Look you clearly disagree with my criteria -- so go ahread and back that disagreement up with an example from the article.

It's totally impossible to debate your opinion of something being "reasonable." I think the tone of the article is not reasonable. You think it is. What is there to discuss if "reasonable" is your test of correctness? It can't be proven or disproven.

And you totally glossed over something from the article that I referenced, instead calling it an ad hominem attack against the author. He straight up linked Oklahoma to Trump as a glaringly high-margin-of-victory state. I'm not disputing the vote tally, but I'm simply saying that the mention of it in the article expressed an opinion on the relationship between red-state conservatism and allegedly bad government.

So your comments aren't actually connected to what the author is saying, and my larger criticism of his bias. I don't buy the idea that the funding and role of the speaker are irrelevant. You seem to be pushing that idea pretty hard. It just seems like you're selectively ignoring certain aspects of the discussion because they don't line up with what you want to believe.

Not only that, but if I say something is a "failing" government entity, then I am absolutely setting a critical tone, and perhaps a pejorative one. You can have efficient, good government among religious folks, or you can have ineffective government among religious folks. There isn't a causality demonstrated by the author, but he still implies that government administered by religious people is naturally ineffective.

You're going through the motions of discussing the article but you're arbitrarily ignoring the context of the article, the bias clearly represented by the author both in the text and in his other work, and the links the author draws between Oklahoma, Trump and religion as a way of disparaging the state.

If you can't see that the author is not cold and unbiased in his arguments, and would clearly prefer to live in a more secular and socialist (why else criticize his own mother for refusing government welfare money) place than Oklahoma, then I don't know how to say anything that is "reasonable" in your view.

I'm fairly certain that the author grew up in Oklahoma, which is why he writes about it. Note the anecdote about his mother, which doesn't make sense otherwise.