The argument rests on an absurdly uncharitable construal of Rawls’s use of an analogy. You don’t like the analogy. Fine. There’s nothing more to say.

Not merely "uncharitable," but "absurdly uncharitable." And "there's nothing more to say," i.e., shut up, this ends here. And to think Rawlsians consider people like me "unreasonable."

They’d only consider you unreasonable if you were unwilling to abide by mutually agreed rules & wanted to force a conception of the good life upon them, so I’m a bit puzzled by this claim. Or is there another definition of reasonableness you’re using?

No, I'm using the Rawlsian definition of reasonableness. Since I don't accept a "political" conception of justice, Rawlsians consider me - and many others, from Kant to Mill to Berlin and Williams, to say nothing of Marx - as "unreasonable." Of course, according to some, I'm also absurd!

R uses an analogy to explain his views. You dislike the analogy and think its use reflects a trivialization of politics. I don’t think that’s the case at all. How could I possibly convince you that you’re wrong? I just don’t understand how someone could interpret an analogy in the way you do.

People argue about whether a given analogy is appropriate or not all the time. For example, you could point out something about Rawlsian justice that's extremely different from fairness in game playing.

Arguing about whether an analogy is appropriate is not the same as attributing beliefs based on the analogy, & then concluding that a theory should be rejected because of those beliefs. It looks like that’s what’s going on in the piece.

You're right that I'm attributing beliefs to Rawls (especially since, in the longer version, I argue that Rawlsian justice is more than merely analogous to a game). But if someone could show why the analogy's inappropriate, this would also contribute to undermining the attribution of beliefs.

Regardless, in the longer version, I argue that Rawlsian justice is not merely analogous to a game, but is in fact a kind of game. philpapers.org/rec/BLATPS-4

"By all accounts, however, Rawls took political philosophy seriously. " what way is that to write for fucks sake, I stopped reading right there

More ad hominem from the "reasonable" brigade. Please say *why* you think that is so ridiculous. I'm genuinely open to learning why I'm wrong about Rawls. But I need reasons.

The piece seems to treat a metaphor literally, whilst also acknowledging that it’s a metaphor. I think that’s probably why it’s received negatively. It certainly read as an unfair attribution of attitudes & beliefs to me: ‘Ah, you used a game metaphor so you must be treating the matter lightly’.

I'm not a member of any brigade and I can recognize the difference between a sneer and and argument

That wasn't a sneer. I had mentioned Socrates' apology for his having "forgot that we were playing," and so that he seems to be ironic about his "city in speech"(a question long debated). So I was merely pointing out that Rawls, by contrast, is clearly not being ironic at all.