Today the Antiplanner is in Washington, DC, giving testimony to the Senate Banking Committee’s Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development on whether public transit can play a significant role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. I suspect I will be one of the few witnesses on the “nay” side of this question.
Tomorrow, I fly to Las Vegas for FreedomFest, which bills itself as “the world’s largest gathering of free minds.” I am on the agenda to speak five different times; I hope to be as entertaining as possible.
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If you are in DC today or at FreedomFest this weekend, I look forward to seeing you.
Why are you flying?
Why aren’t you going by bus or have you forgotten that already?
Happy travels.
“The Antiplanner. Dedicated to the Sunset of Government Planning… Today the Antiplanner is in Washington, DC, giving testimony to the Senate Banking Committee’s Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development on whether public transit can play a significant role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”
Isn’t it ironic?
Bennett: That is not irony. Irony is the incongruity between what is said and what is meant, particularly when context renders what is meant to be the opposite of the literal meaning of what is said. A general might order his soldiers to charge, saying, “I know you men will meet glory today.” The soldiers might hear this as encouragement that they will win the battle. If we were shown in the previous scene that the general knows that the battle is unwinnable and the war is a lost cause, we know from the context that the general means the soldiers are going to die (their “glory” will come from death, not victory), and that makes his statement to the soldiers ironic.
The AP’s testimony is, however, ironic in the Alanis Morissette sense, in that it is any kind of coincidence or happenstance you might happen to encounter. 🙂 I sometimes wonder if that usage and that song have actually contributed to a change in the colloquial meaning of “ironic” — after all, how else does language change but through usage? Before much longer, knowledge of what “irony” means will be prefaced by “irony, in the classic sense” or something like that, similarly to how “tragedy” means something different in classic literature than modern usage.
irony. noun. the expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite.
For example the antiplanner whose motto is “dedicated to the sunset of government planning,” stating is a blog post that he is going to advise the most powerful government planners in America to help the plan American transportation is ironic. It’s been noted here by many others, that Antiplanners, Mr. O’Toole in particular, is not against government planning per se. He is against planning that doesn’t produce the outcomes that he likes the best.
Put it this way. For the AP motto to NOT be ironic it would have to say…
The Antiplanner: Dedicated to the Sunset of Government Planning the Results in Subsides to Rail Transit, Increased Density in Urban Cores, and Zoning. Government Planning that Results in Toll Roads, and Single Family Housing Development is Okay.
I suppose that doesn’t roll of the tung as well.
Mike, your comment makes zero sense. After you take your prereqs, you may want to take an English class at community college, one past the basic sentence structure that does Lit-lite or something. Not sure what is needed to fix that. Nevertheless,
I’m actually going to defend Randal on this one, and I see no irony here; if he can, somehow, convince the Senate that planning is not needed (albeit this is in the wake of the failure of The Market), then is actions are consistent with his desire to sunset gummint plannin’. There is nothing inconsistent in his actions. I would rather read his stuff than the CEI-AEI axis of shills, because they are as consistent as their orders from their industry sponsors state.
DS
Bennett, irony is not read as a collection of context that creates that incongruity. Irony depends on an assertion; a declaration; a statement. If AP had made a statement that said “I will help those muckety-mucks with their planning in ways they never expected” and we knew he meant he would undermine them, then yes, that would be irony. Instead, you’ll note his blog post indicates that “[he] suspect[s] [he] will be one of the few witnesses on the “nay†side of this question.” Not irony, because no incongruity of meaning. He has said exactly what was expected.
Dan: I don’t blame you for not comprehending what I wrote. You’re a government planner. Understanding things that are clearly written is not really within your bailiwick.
I’m leaning more towards Mike’s definition of irony, though I might restrict it further: irony is a literary technique. As such, like Mike wrote, when such a thing occurs in reality, it is a coincidence, not irony. Now if someone wrote a novel about Randal, or a movie, then it would be irony.
(Side note: though he often comes across as passionate and even irascible in print, from the video footage of Randal he actually seems a rather eloquent speaker and calm figure. So he could star in his own movie.)
Dan said: I’m actually going to defend Randal on this one, and I see no irony here; if he can, somehow, convince the Senate that planning is not needed (albeit this is in the wake of the failure of The Market),
THWM: Yes, social engineer a market, then complain about it, sheesh!
Dan: then is actions are consistent with his desire to sunset gummint plannin’. There is nothing inconsistent in his actions. I would rather read his stuff than the CEI-AEI axis of shills, because they are as consistent as their orders from their industry sponsors state.
THWM: Though this just lobbying.
Hopefully I can clear something up: It’s not irony, it’s hypocrisy.
Example: ROT (aka the antiplanner) opens his testimony up by giving praise to EPA standards (government top-down ordinance) at reducing car pollution and increasing mileage standards/ However, this goes against the grain of his free enterprise, no regulation attitude towards industry (libertarian).
That is not irony, that is severe contradiction (also known as hypocrisy).
Okay Mike,
I’ll let you spilt hairs. It’s not literal irony, although what is “Dedicated to the sunset of government planning” but “an assertion; a declaration; a statement.” But you win. I with WS now. It’s not irony. It’s hypocrisy.
ROT:“Today, Portland has four lightrail routes and a streetcar line, yet the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey says only 6.5 percent of Portland commuters take transit to work.”
ws:Portland has three light rail lines. I assume you’re counting the newest line which is not up and running yet? Or maybe counting eastside/westside as two different routes because they were built at different times?
ACS survey reveals 12.5% city of Portland mass transit ridership. This is confusing language you have used, because you’re using (I presume) MSA statistics. Plenty of people in the MSA boundary are not “Portland commuters”, and you should denote this.
Dan: I don’t blame you for not comprehending what I wrote. You’re a government planner. Understanding things that are clearly written is not really within your bailiwick.
No, Mike, you can’t rely on vaingloriously pushing your ideological “haydurz” button in rhetoric; that is: simply asserting something doesn’t make it so. The comment doesn’t make sense as it wasn’t clearly written, due to the ‘Morissette’ being undefined, unnecessary sprinkling of polysyllaby, and the situation you described is not ‘ironic’ as your parenthetical isn’t an incongruent expectation to a soldier, nor is it contradictory (it does not convey the message you wish to convey, and is an unfortunate metaphor in that it brings defeat to the mind of the reader, and Randal wishes for victory in his endeavor [as presumably does the amen choir here]).
But I will hand it to you: the italicized is completely congruent and consistent with the expected level of cognition and rhetorical ability. You can indeed deliver to that low bar!
—–
THWM: Though this just lobbying.
Yes – this is how access is currently gained in our representative democracy, controlled by corporate interests. This is how it works here. There is no inconsistency here.
DS
Dan, I’m sorry for you that you find my vocabulary too advanced for your comprehension. Notwithstanding your difficulties, I will continue endeavoring to choose the word that communicates most precisely the meaning that I intend to convey. And you can always Google for definitions the next time I use a word or phrase that you don’t understand, such as “colloquial,” “prefaced,” “bailiwick,” or “laissez-faire capitalism.”
And I reference that last in response to your interesting characterization of the market as having failed. Failed by what definition? We haven’t had a truly free market in over a century; if you are claiming that the thoroughly-corrupted-by-governmental-interference mixed market of today has failed, then I have no quarrel with that.
Bennett: I didn’t think I was splitting hairs with you, but that’s OK if you want to call it that. I would have said that the blog motto and AP’s statement that he expects to be on the “nay” side of the equation are substantively consistent with one another, and are therefore neither irony nor hypocrisy. If the AP had claimed otherwise, then I think you’d be on target there — clearly, his position is not in favor of the further development and expansion of government-planned transit, and it would have been disingenuous for him to imply that he was in favor. I certainly won’t argue with you there.
Sweet, devastating retort of highest eloquence! Golly! Keep up the cherry-picking and selective attention, Mike, and the misreading of what I wrote if you wish to keep the small-minority ideology’s ideation out of the view of people – for you’re right: such eloquence is too…erm…eloquent for the ineloquent masses and is best eloquently left to the 4-6% who will see a few eloquent key phrases, nod, and eloquently move on.
DS
Dan said:
THWM: Though this just lobbying.
Yes – this is how access is currently gained in our representative democracy, controlled by corporate interests. This is how it works here. There is no inconsistency here.
THWM: Dan you’re right, ROT is just there to adavance some one else’s political & financial agendas. Cherry pick stats for a planned out come.