By Conlan Salgado
I was recently introduced to a wonderful term by the political analyst Darren Beatty: “retail politics”. Appropriating only slightly, I thought of how “retail punditry” was a succinct phrase for describing how most Americans acquire their arguments, opinions, and slogans. The Republican and Democratic media establishments are full of retail pundits: these are people who offer cheap, relatively reliable, extremely uniform talking points and narratives according to the pundit’s particular bent.
I call these talking points cheap, because they are not purchased through intense intellectual labor, the interrogation of history, or a wealth of true information. One of the most famous retail phrases—“Love is Love”—is an actual philosophical fallacy (defining a thing by itself).
