Current Affairs

From a German, no less

There can be no better exemplification of the Fallacy of false dichotomy than the fallout from another report about an anti-abortion speech by pastor Matt Chandler.
The fans of the speech appear to start their analysis from the viewpoint that anybody who disagrees with them is “pro-abortion”. This therefore means (in their world) that their opponents are one or more of: monsters, immoral, murderers, Nazis, eugenicists….
This is lazy, intellectually risible claptrap.
I know of nobody that I have met in 60 years who has ever said to me “you know, I am in favour of abortion because I think it is a jolly good thing”. The idea that the world is full of evil people promoting abortion is a fabulist, dystopian invention.
What we are witnessing here is the end result of what George Lakoff terms Framing. The people and the organizations who oppose the use of abortion realized a long time ago that by describing themselves as “pro-life”, they could then claim that anybody arguing against them on any front or using any form of objection is “anti-life” and therefore their arguments, by inference, are unworthy. Ditto “anti-abortion” as a framing phrase.
Anybody who argues in favour of any abortions is therefore a person with unworthy arguments. Actually, it’s far worse than that. Not only are the arguments of opponents unworthy, the opponents are entirely unworthy as people. Hence the rapid or immediate jump to the use of emotive words like “monster” and “Nazi”.
I am pro-life and I am also (in some limited circumstances) pro-abortion. I reject the framing of the opponents of abortion, and I also reject their arguments, particularly their juvenile, intellectually risible attempts at ad hominem smears. I mostly refuse to engage with people who have that mindset. Their arguments are, in most cases, ridiculous, devoid of logical or intellectual depth, and therefore worthy of dismissal or ridicule.
As John Scalzi said, if you want me to respect your arguments, have a good one. Starting from a logical fallacy, then moving via framing to establish strawman caricatures of opponents in order to be able to insult them, doesn’t even begin to make those people into serious opponents or debaters. As far as I am concerned, until they start to show a good deal more maturity and pragmatism, they can go pound sand, and I will work to make sure that their censorious, crypto-fascist ideas do not prevail.

In the next 18 months, politicians will be proposing or promising all manner of stuff. Some of it will be sensible-sounding, some of it may sound utterly incomprehensible. In any political process, it helps a lot to adhere to two simple rules when trying to evaluate the logic and reasoning behind a proposed course of action.
1. Follow The Money
Many political proposals are not being floated to advance society. More correctly, they are usually being proposed because some person or group somewhere is going to make money from them, and that person or group has been lobbying to have the proposal appear in the political process. That lobbying process usually runs on cash. Lobbyists don’t do the job for all the fine wine they can drink…
Politicians who are at all interested in power (and most are) usually operate on the WIIFM principle when advancing ideas or legislation (What’s In It For Me?). That often involves the acquisition of cash as a quid pro quo for the advancement of proposals or legislation, because the US political process is expensive. There is always the next election to fund, especially if you are a member of the House of Representatives and always running for re-election.

2. Look Where The Votes Are
In peacetime, politicians usually try to appeal to groups who they think will deliver the maximum number of votes for their party. They may dress those appeals up in all forms of fine-sounding language, but ultimately, you cannot have any power unless you get elected and gain some form of majority. Politicians usually appeal to voting blocs by some form of pandering.
Sometimes the pandering takes the form of empathetic noises about the values of that voting bloc, accompanied by symbolic actions to show that empathy. Sometimes the actions become more substantive and blatant, even ensuring in some cases that the bloc will gain financially from the proposed actions. (In less polite company, we might call that bribery). By the way, don’t feel too virtuous while reading this – if you benefitted from any recent tax cuts, that was because somebody who was elected to political office was trying to bribe you.
While it would be nice to logically evaluate all political proposals without considering the motive, that is not possible most of the time. Most proposals will fall into one or both of the above primary categories, and therefore need to be reviewed via those two lenses. That will continue until We The People stop allowing ourselves to be pandered to, and start demanding logical, sustainable actions from politicians. I’m not holding my breath.

Folks, during this election season, you are unlikely to find me using outmoded and not very useful terms like “liberal”, “conservative”, “left wing” or “right wing”. They have been so debased and distorted over decades as to be meaningless. Quite often they are used as fallacious strawmen, sloganeering abuse that forms part of a disconnected word salad of vituperation aimed by partisans at real and perceived opponents. Just this week I was hit with word salad here on FB by an authoritarian nitwit trying the political equivalent of the Gish Gallop on me. Google “Gish Gallop” for details on that rhetorical or debating technique, more commonly used by crackpot Christian creationists. (It’s not that I am lazy, but it’s not a concise explanation).
The only distinction I find particularly useful is between authoritarian and libertarian modes of thinking. I find some use in the distinction between progressive and regressive modes of thinking, but that, too, has been hijacked to some extent by the strawman fallacy manufacturers.
So, if the response to discussions about politics doesn’t go much further than “I hate liberals” or “I hate conservatives”, that is going to get one of two reactions from me. Most likely, especially if I am busy, I will ignore it. Some of the time I may ask for a detailed explanation to support this viewpoint. And if i find that people are engaging in strawman fallacies or other defective rhetorical techniques, I am going to say so. For example. proposing a tax increase on some segment of the population does not automatically make somebody a Marxist, no matter what some internet web sites may claim. People making that claim need to read and understand a lot more about world political history.

Politically Correct.
A loaded multi-meaning phrase.
I am writing a longer blog posting about this topic. However here is one observation in advance.
When I hear and read some people complaining that they hate political correctness, it is rather easy to see, based on what they say and write, that what they are really saying is:
“I am butthurt because I am not able to make assholish or stupid comments without somebody pointing it out in public”
When I was growing up in the UK, I used to meet people from Yorkshire a lot, since I went to college in Manchester. A lot of people from Yorkshire pride themselves on being “plain speaking”, “telling it like it is” etc. etc. Some of them are refreshingly direct. However, I soon discovered that some of them were, in fact, tactless or boorish assholes. Their rationalization for the pathology was “plain speaking”. It was just that, a lame rationalization.
So. when you hear somebody complaining about political correctness, take some time out to observe what they say and how they say it. They might be direct, and not interested in euphemism, indirect speech or other forms of verbal evasion. On the other hand, they might just be behaving like a jerk.

I have determined that there are some terribly low-wattage individuals on Twitter.
A guy shows up on my timeline today claiming that Barack Obama is behaving like a King. So I asked him for evidence to back up that assertion.
He did the usual blustering blather on me, telling me I could Google it (which is the hallmark of laziness, if you have evidence you should have it to hand and be able to cite it), but then in the same Tweet said “look at his attempt to get Amnesty which he is still pushing”.
Well…I had to point out that he just tried a self-refuting argument. The Executive Order that he refers to is held up in the court system because a Federal District court ruled that it was an impermissible use of Executive power. (It may or may not survive further judicial scrutiny). I replied that if Obama was really a King, he would have already enacted the change and that would be that.
He responded by blocking me.
There is a technical term for people like this from the UK. A stupid tosser. The sad thing is that this tosser had 4,300 followers. I guess this is proof that you can spout utter nonsense and people will follow you.