House of Eratosthenes

Had an argument over on the Hello Kitty of Blogging about the Osama bin Laden post mortem picture not being released…of course, I completely eviscerated the opposition in every conceivable way. And yes, I know what you’re thinking. I thought it too: All smirking egotists think they’ve prevailed in all discussions whether they really did or not. But of course you can’t measure that!

In this case, though, you can. Because every single one of my opponent’s points packed a persuasive punch, but only for people who think things through emotionally, to those who make logic a loathed stranger to be kept at a distance. For those to whom logic is a welcome friend to be embraced, everything he said was impotent.

He deployed three of the best.

1. It won’t change minds, because whoever isn’t convinced in the moment I’m typing this, will never be convinced. This one did startle me, I must say. I would have thought the entire nation got its fill of this last week.
2. These other people over here are part of a formidable “brain trust,” they know better than you do even though I cannot name their names; so why don’t you just shut up and think what they tell you to think. (One of the many problems this creates is: If I’m so insignificant that my opinion shouldn’t have any effect on anything compared to these intellectual titans, then the exercise of convincing me of something must be completely meaningless; so why are we having this conversation?)
3. Prerationalism. You are to be banished from the village gates, sir! Ostracized, to whither and perish in the harsh winter, and I get your ration of milk and grain!

As I commented in there: My position is absolutely moderate with regard to the bin Laden death photograph, just as it was with regard to the birth certificate. I am steadfastly convinced of the opinion President Obama wants me to have. But I will not join in on this exercise of heckling, ridiculing, browbeating, cajoling and bludgeoning those who dissent. I regard their disagreement to be reasonable. That’s called, having the ability to intellectually engage people who have different opinions. Does our President have this ability?

Furthermore, the merits of the doubter’s arguments — the arguments of those who call President Obama a liar — although not sufficient to sway me toward their point of view, is in a state of ascension as more feeble excuses are produced in lieu of the actual documentation. And, my own certainty that the President’s statement of the facts is the correct one, is in a state of decline. All of this is only reasonable.

President Obama has made a career out of a favorite catchphrase of His, “We Must Reject The False Choice.” How ironic it is that He has made a favorite maneuver out of one such false choice: Take My word for it, and oh by the way, if you take My word for it I will count on your support to help defeat and disenfranchise those who are not taking My word for it. That is, in & of itself, a “false choice” is it not? It sounds so…Sith-like, so dealing-in-absolutes-ish. Doesn’t it? Doesn’t that sound like “you’re a friend of us or else you’re a friend of the terrorists”? Wasn’t Birther Zero elected to put a stop to that kind of intellectual simplicity?

But the reason I’m jotting down a memo-for-file on this is: It seems to me these three logical fallacies, historically, have been cellophaned together onto a common flat. In fact, it seems to me they have historically arrived in sequence. Goldilocks slept in a bed that was too hard, too soft, just right. The wolf blew down the house of straw, then the house of sticks, then made a play for the brick and the mortar. Scrooge was haunted by Christmas-past, Christmas-present, Christmas-yet-to-come. Brahma/Creator, Vishnu/Preserver, Shiva/Destroyer. Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, Revenge of the Jedi. Sine, Cosine, Tangent. Prue, Piper, Phoebe. Larry, Moe, Curly. That particular prime number seems to be a seed for the universe we know, and in which we are bound. Defined sequences seem to surround it at all times; this appears to be a cosmic constant.

Thus it is with dipshit liberal arguments: alpha, beta, gamma.

I often make much of the weak arguments, the arguments formulated for those who are lacking in a decent, working, long-term memory; those who, as mentioned above, treat logic as a loathed stranger to be kept away. I place pride in my ability to avoid these derelict arguments, to detect what is wrong with them — therefore I have pride in my own long-term memory. But I must admit to being a flawed ugly-bag-of-mostly-water, and my own memory is not infallible. I cannot rattle off a list of previous examples of this; I’m just picking up a vibe. A vibe of deja vu. I wish to crystallize this vibe into an article of reference that, later on, maybe I can use. That’s what memos-for-file are really all about.

I must say, though, I have a great deal more faith in the vibe than I have in most “vibes.” I think there is going to be a pattern detected from this. No point producing the smoking gun nobody will be convinced anyway; why don’t you just shut up and believe these nameless faceless demigod experts; you are to be banished from the village. I’ve gone into detail about each one of these feckless arguments. What is new here is the sequence. I think the sequence is something of a constant. I’ll test the theory in the time that stretches out before me, assuming The Lord sees fit to keep me on the planet for a suitable timeframe.

In the meantime, do I need to state the obvious? Those who are engaged in an attempt to present an argument that possesses real merit, should not need to make use of any of these techniques, or anything remotely like them. They are anti-logical. Like Jedi mind tricks, they only work on the weak minded. A healthy intellect won’t even lose track of a rhythm, should they appear, because if the powers of observation are working, recognition will be immediate. And it was.

Update: Somewhere in my archives, I had made a point of linking to blogger friend Phil…who, somewhere in his archives, summarized a favorite leftist argument as something like “Everyone who agrees with us, agrees with us!” The village-banishment ritual, which here is Installment Three of Three, seems to me to wrap up an instance of this argument. “Now that I have made a point of banishing everyone who won’t buy this argument from the ‘village,’ or at least from my own consciousness, I can continue to state that everybody* agrees with my point of view on this thing!”

In Anno Domini Twenty Eleven, being a liberal has a lot to do with arriving at custom definitions of that word — “everybody.” The liberals won’t say so, but they use that to describe “everybody…within a certain periphery…that I’ve drawn.” If they were too forthcoming about that, they wouldn’t look too “liberal.” But let’s cut the crap. That’s what they mean.

The village-banishment maneuver also has a lot to do with disagreement sliding down a short, steep, icy slippery slope into rancor and dysfunction. Which we then blame on “discussing politics in the workplace/at the party/in the bar.” The blame for which is to be cast to both sides, equally.

But since the liberals are becoming enamored of the prerational village-banishment maneuver, and rather exuberantly at that, isn’t it past high time the blame went to them? I can’t think of a better way to turn a jocular, jovial, light-hearted, family-friendly, fun-for-kids social occasion into a hotbed of rancor, than to pretend to be ready to engage these issues in a friendly, civilized, mutually respectful way — and then, as a direct result of the strategy that has been selected and rehearsed ahead of time, fail to deliver on this.

It’s bad faith. Shouldn’t we treat it like that’s what it is?

I’ve got a question for ’em.
- philmon | 05/05/2011 @ 19:08
You’re channeling Sonic.

My blog may not have the best writing, but it’s got the very best readers and the very best blog-buds, bar none. You two would have immediately figured out those were the droids you were looking for!
- mkfreeberg | 05/05/2011 @ 19:13
I agree with you completely. I’ve noticed at least two subroutines between 1 and 2 that I think are worth mentioning:

1) The “straw man” / “partisan politics” routine. In the left’s ever-increasing grab bag of custom definitions, “straw man” has to be among the biggest. It has a real definition (http://www.fallacyfiles.org/strawman.html), but in the leftist lexicon these days it really means “you’ve made a point that I can’t refute but refuse to acknowledge.” Similarly, “partisan politics” means “your side used the Constitution’s enumerated powers and the open, transparent political process to enact something I don’t like.” They hope to win the argument by calling both of these things bad, full stop (since 1) their arguments are never “straw men” but correct interpretations of what you’re really thinking, you racist you, and 2) goodness and sweetness and light by definition, no matter what the tactics, respectively).

2) Building off the first, we have the ol’ “I’d whomp you in this debate — I have at least ten thousand wonderful sources and ironclad arguments and facts and data out the wazoo — but I just don’t have time for straw men / partisan politics. Get a life, wingnut hater.”

This is the most annoying to me by far, because honest-to-god smart people use it. It’s one of liberalism’s enabling fantasies that they’re always and everywhere soooo much smarter than you, so they must believe that they’re in command of this vast reservoir of unimpeachable data…. so if you start hitting them with facts, the bright ones among them blow it off with “I don’t have time for that; I have a life (unlike you, you troglodyte political troll).” I’ve been arguing with a liberal friend — a very book-smart guy– for years and have yet to hear a single point acknowledged. I do get lots and lots of “go ahead, prove me wrong, I dare ya!!!”…. followed by lots and lots of “I don’t have the time to point out all the obvious errors in your links.”

The point, as always, is that they’re in every way better, smarter, and more wonderful than you.
- Severian | 05/06/2011 @ 05:05
Shalom,

I know you weighed in when Daphne asked about theories on the OBL killing. I don’t know if you read what I posted, but this seems a lot like what gedaliya pulled with me.

“I don’t have a single point that can actually refute anything you’ve said, so I’m going to accuse you of wearing a tin-foil hat. People who even come close to agreeing with me will then shift to thinking about that instead of any substantive rebuttal, since, if you don’t think like us, you must be a kook.”

I really do like the way you and Severian formulate words on these subjects. It helps me to think about all of it in somewhat more tangible terms, and you also remind me that there can be better ways to deal with such trolls, which is sometimes, not at all.
- Moshe Ben-David | 05/06/2011 @ 08:46
Moshe,

thanks for the compliment.

I think what it boils down to is that leftists just can’t see that many times, words like “bad” and “mainstream” and “biased” and “beneficial” have two separate senses — “bad” (“good,” “biased,” whatever) in a kind of absolute, Platonic sense, and bad for us. They assume that their opinions are the norm, and therefore everyone who doesn’t agree with their every pronouncement down to the last jot and tittle is in some way deviant. And since their opinions have the additional wonderful properties of being Right and True, the only real explanation must be that you’re eeeevil.

My book-smart liberal friend is a good example. We’ve actually gone back and forth on the subject of “media bias” for years, and I think I once got him to admit that Keith Olbermann had a slight fondness for the Democratic Party. But he’s still utterly convinced that the New York Times took its marching orders direct from George W. Bush in order to “lie us into war.”

The sticking point? He just can’t realize that because the NYT is to the right of him, that in no way makes it a “Republican,” let alone “conservative,” paper. He even failed to see it when I asked him to name one example of what leftward bias in the media would look like if it existed, and he failed to come up with an answer.

Personally, I blame the educational system. Back in sixth grade or so we did this big long unit on what’s a fact versus what’s an opinion and how to distinguish factual claims from glittering generalities and propaganda. Unfortunately, that’s been canceled — it takes too much time away from Heather Has Two Mommies and the proper method of unrolling a condom over a banana.
- Severian | 05/06/2011 @ 09:56
[…] Reactions The (Still Frozen) Campground Wasps Memo For File CXXXVII Tipping Point “You Can’t Put Bin Laden in Your Gas Tank” Our President, the […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 05/07/2011 @ 18:07
[…] President, that I was allowed to verify for myself. 9. Taking note, again and again and again, of a three-stanza-anthem that has emerged among Obama’s supporters: • a. Why should He release […]
- Reactions | News Patriot | 05/08/2011 @ 07:49
Wow. I really WAS channeling Sonic.

Had no idea. Well good. The question needs to be asked. A lot.
- philmon | 05/08/2011 @ 15:22

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

Memo For File CXXXVIIThursday, May 5th, 2011

Memo For File CXXXVII
Thursday, May 5th, 2011