This is something awful. No one maybe except fiction writers could have dreamed this horror up. Fact is way more bizarre than fiction, at least from what normal humans can come up with.
A four and a half minute broadcast by PRI on The World today was mind-blowing.
PRI writes: “In China's Xinjiang region, being part of the Uyghur ethnic minority means facing mass surveillance or detention in an internment camp. And when men are detained, Uyghur women are often left to keep their families and households together on their own. But Chinese policies in the region are increasingly repressive. Take the "Pair up and become a family" program, which assigns male Chinese minders to live in the homes of Uyghur families. Zubayra Shamseden of the Chinese Outreach Coordinator for the Uyghur Human Rights Project tells Marco Werman how policies like "Pair Up" affect Uyghur women in Xinjiang.”
What the ruthless tyrants that rule China are doing is assigning Chinese men to live in Uyghur family homes after Uyghur men have been arrested. The assigned men can sleep in the same bed with the Uyghur wife and do who knows wherever else. The Chinese government says no hanky panky, e.g., rape or pedophilia, is occurring. The Chinese government lies and calls this a “cultural exchange” and says that the Uyghur women welcome the Chinese “minders” and “re-educators” into their beds. Obviously, this is not a cultural exchange. It is barbaric savagery designed to forcefully obliterate the Uyghur culture and language by making Uyghur women serve as sex slaves to horny Chinese men who cannot find a Chinese wife because there are none.
This makes a lot of sense in view of China’s years of female infanticide under the one child policy. Millions of Chinese men cannot find Chinese wives. So, they get shipped off to the Xinjiang region and they get to rape Uyghur wifes as sex slaves. That’s tyranny with a vengeance.
One can only wonder what proportion of the Chinese people outside the Uyghurs will see the propaganda about this and come to believe that this is only an innocent re-education effort by virtuous and patriotic Chinese minders (men) who have been generously provided by the generous Chinese people and government.
My guess is at least half. Probably at least about 65%. Maybe more. If so, that's what propaganda (dark free speech) in the hands of tyrants and demagogues can do to a society who does not have access to facts and truth. That is why facts and truth is so critically important for a civilized democracy and civil society, democracy or not. Crushing facts and truth is not merely important to tyrants and demagogues. It is critically necessary.
Wednesday, February 26, 2020
Tuesday, February 25, 2020
Logic Fallacies: Hypocrisy and Whataboutism
One thing that I used to assert when it seemed reasonable was an allegation that politicians and other players were hypocrites about blatantly doing the same things or worse variants they bitterly criticized their political opposition for doing.[1] By the time the president won the electoral college in 2016, political hypocrisy on the right was simply mind-boggling. What about hypocrisy on the left? It was still there, but it had not reached the quantity and quality of hypocrisy the right routinely practiced right out in the open. There was and still is very little moral, political or social equivalence on this point between the left and right.
A logical fallacy is reasoning mistake or error that makes an argument invalid. Logical fallacies are non-sequiturs, i.e., arguments where the conclusion doesn't follow logically from what preceded it. In essence, a logic fallacy is an invalid connection between a premise(s) (fact(s)) and the conclusion, because the conclusion does not necessarily flow from the premises. Often the facts are disputed as not facts. The human mind did not evolve to do precise logic. People make various kinds of mistakes unless they are aware of the errors and consciously try to avoid them. Instead of using formal logic, humans usually rely on informal logic, which is probably best called reasoning.
One source says this about appeals to hypocrisy: “Tu Quoque [an appeal to hypocrisy] is a very common fallacy in which one attempts to defend oneself or another from criticism by turning the critique back against the accuser. This is a classic Red Herring since whether the accuser is guilty of the same, or a similar, wrong is irrelevant to the truth of the original charge. However, as a diversionary tactic, Tu Quoque can be very effective, since the accuser is put on the defensive, and frequently feels compelled to defend against the accusation.”
Defending ones-self from a hypocrisy charge makes the rhetorical mistake called stepping into an opponent’s frame, as mentioned here yesterday. That's probably why charges of hypocrisy in politics are almost always ignored and not even denied. Even a short, simple denial steps into the opponent’s frame, thereby strengthening the opponent’s argument.
Footnotes:
1. One example is the president criticizing the Clintons for having conflicts of interest due to their charity, while the president operates with conflicts of interest by continuing to profit from his for-profit businesses. The degree of the conflict the president is subject to is 100-fold to 1000-fold bigger financially than anything the Clinton charity ever constituted. Assuming the Clinton charity constituted an unacceptable conflict of interest, and it did, the situation for the president is far worse both qualitatively and quantitatively, but both situations constituted actual conflicts of interest.
Another example is how the GOP treated the impeachment of Bill Clinton for perjury (lying under oath) and an alleged obstruction of justice. The GOP enthusiastically pursued investigations into Clinton’s bad acts. By contrast, the GOP rejected and/or ignored evidence of obstruction of justice by the president, including blatant obstruction of congress during the impeachment inquiry. The GOP opposed any investigation by the House, Senate and the Department of Justice. The two situations are vastly different. Clinton’s bad acts constituted instances of bad judgment in lying under oath and immoral personal sexual behavior. On the other hand, the president’s bad acts go straight to corrupting governance and betraying the trust people put in him to be an honest politician while in office. The two situations are different but both still focus on differences in how evidence of bad acts is treated.
2. Wikipedia cites this as an example of the fallacy: “In the trial of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, the controversial lawyer Jacques Vergès tried to present what was defined as a Tu Quoque Defence—i.e., that during the Algerian War, French officers such as General Jacques Massu had committed war crimes similar to those with which Barbie was being charged, and therefore the French state had no moral right to try Barbie. This defense was rejected by the court, which convicted Barbie.”
A logical fallacy is reasoning mistake or error that makes an argument invalid. Logical fallacies are non-sequiturs, i.e., arguments where the conclusion doesn't follow logically from what preceded it. In essence, a logic fallacy is an invalid connection between a premise(s) (fact(s)) and the conclusion, because the conclusion does not necessarily flow from the premises. Often the facts are disputed as not facts. The human mind did not evolve to do precise logic. People make various kinds of mistakes unless they are aware of the errors and consciously try to avoid them. Instead of using formal logic, humans usually rely on informal logic, which is probably best called reasoning.
One source says this about appeals to hypocrisy: “Tu Quoque [an appeal to hypocrisy] is a very common fallacy in which one attempts to defend oneself or another from criticism by turning the critique back against the accuser. This is a classic Red Herring since whether the accuser is guilty of the same, or a similar, wrong is irrelevant to the truth of the original charge. However, as a diversionary tactic, Tu Quoque can be very effective, since the accuser is put on the defensive, and frequently feels compelled to defend against the accusation.”
Defending ones-self from a hypocrisy charge makes the rhetorical mistake called stepping into an opponent’s frame, as mentioned here yesterday. That's probably why charges of hypocrisy in politics are almost always ignored and not even denied. Even a short, simple denial steps into the opponent’s frame, thereby strengthening the opponent’s argument.
Is alleging hypocrisy a logic fallacy?
Whataboutism or hypocrisy is a fallacy sometimes based on the argument that since someone or some group did something bad in the past, doing it now is justified. Sometimes that is true and sometimes it isn’t. An appeal to hypocrisy is an informal fallacy that intends to discredit an opponent’s argument by asserting the opponent’s failure to act consistently in accord with its conclusion(s). The logic looks like this:
1. Person A makes claim X, e.g., the president claims Hillary Clinton was sloppy about national security for using an unsecured personal server for official government business.
2. Person B asserts that A's actions or past claims are inconsistent with the truth of claim X, e.g., a critic claims the president is sloppy about national security for using an unsecured cell phone for official government business.
3. Therefore, X is false.
A Wikipedia article asserts that the conclusion, X is false, is “a fallacy because the moral character or actions of the opponent are generally irrelevant to the logic of the argument. It is often used as a red herring tactic and is a special case of the ad hominem [personal attack] fallacy, which is a category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of facts about the person presenting or supporting the claim or argument.”[2]
Is that true? Sometimes it is, but sometimes it doesn’t seem to be. Why? Because the moral character or actions of the opponent are clearly relevant to both the facts and the logic of the argument. In the national security sloppiness example above, X is true because the underlying facts and logic apply to the same concern, i.e., national security sloppiness. In Clinton’s server case, she was sloppy and X is clearly true. In the president’s cell phone case, he is still being sloppy. This particular appeal to hypocrisy therefore does not constitute seem to be a logic fallacy. It points out truth in two different situations.
Q: Does the foregoing analysis get it wrong? Is a charge of hypocrisy or whataboutism never logically sound because the underlying facts and logic always have to be evaluated independently?
1. Person A makes claim X, e.g., the president claims Hillary Clinton was sloppy about national security for using an unsecured personal server for official government business.
2. Person B asserts that A's actions or past claims are inconsistent with the truth of claim X, e.g., a critic claims the president is sloppy about national security for using an unsecured cell phone for official government business.
3. Therefore, X is false.
A Wikipedia article asserts that the conclusion, X is false, is “a fallacy because the moral character or actions of the opponent are generally irrelevant to the logic of the argument. It is often used as a red herring tactic and is a special case of the ad hominem [personal attack] fallacy, which is a category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of facts about the person presenting or supporting the claim or argument.”[2]
Is that true? Sometimes it is, but sometimes it doesn’t seem to be. Why? Because the moral character or actions of the opponent are clearly relevant to both the facts and the logic of the argument. In the national security sloppiness example above, X is true because the underlying facts and logic apply to the same concern, i.e., national security sloppiness. In Clinton’s server case, she was sloppy and X is clearly true. In the president’s cell phone case, he is still being sloppy. This particular appeal to hypocrisy therefore does not constitute seem to be a logic fallacy. It points out truth in two different situations.
Q: Does the foregoing analysis get it wrong? Is a charge of hypocrisy or whataboutism never logically sound because the underlying facts and logic always have to be evaluated independently?
Footnotes:
1. One example is the president criticizing the Clintons for having conflicts of interest due to their charity, while the president operates with conflicts of interest by continuing to profit from his for-profit businesses. The degree of the conflict the president is subject to is 100-fold to 1000-fold bigger financially than anything the Clinton charity ever constituted. Assuming the Clinton charity constituted an unacceptable conflict of interest, and it did, the situation for the president is far worse both qualitatively and quantitatively, but both situations constituted actual conflicts of interest.
Another example is how the GOP treated the impeachment of Bill Clinton for perjury (lying under oath) and an alleged obstruction of justice. The GOP enthusiastically pursued investigations into Clinton’s bad acts. By contrast, the GOP rejected and/or ignored evidence of obstruction of justice by the president, including blatant obstruction of congress during the impeachment inquiry. The GOP opposed any investigation by the House, Senate and the Department of Justice. The two situations are vastly different. Clinton’s bad acts constituted instances of bad judgment in lying under oath and immoral personal sexual behavior. On the other hand, the president’s bad acts go straight to corrupting governance and betraying the trust people put in him to be an honest politician while in office. The two situations are different but both still focus on differences in how evidence of bad acts is treated.
2. Wikipedia cites this as an example of the fallacy: “In the trial of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, the controversial lawyer Jacques Vergès tried to present what was defined as a Tu Quoque Defence—i.e., that during the Algerian War, French officers such as General Jacques Massu had committed war crimes similar to those with which Barbie was being charged, and therefore the French state had no moral right to try Barbie. This defense was rejected by the court, which convicted Barbie.”
Monday, February 24, 2020
Top 131 Conservative Websites
The Best Right Wing Sites In 2020
An updated and accurate rankings of the most popular conservative websites online.
Thanks to the freedom of the Internet, never before have right wing political thinkers had so many choices when it comes to news and editorials.
There are so many, it’s hard to know which are the top conservative websites worth your time, and which aren’t.
To make things easier for you, we’ve gathered the largest ordered list of best conservative websites online, sorted them by popularity, and added some of our own commentary.
The sites are sorted by Alexa Rank, a highly-reputable service which measures a site’s popularity and traffic. The lower the Alexa Ranking, the more popular the site.
1. FOX News
FOX News needs no explanation. It made its debut in 1996 and has been driving liberals bonkers ever since, dominating the ratings along the way.
Founded by the late, great Andrew Breitbart in 2007, Breitbart is one of the most controversial right wing sites in the world. Critics often smear the site as being all sorts of -ists (racist, sexist . . . you know the routine by now), but honest people know better.
The site prides itself on its honest content, which the site claims is grounded in traditional Christian ethics.
If you want a broad overview of what’s happening in politics, DRUDGE REPORT is what you’re looking for.
5. Daily Caller
The Daily Caller is the work of conservative megastar (and smartest man alive) Tucker Carlson.
THE REST OF THE LIST HERE:
WARNING:
THIS LIST MIGHT TRIGGER SOCIALIST and LEFTIST SNOWFLAKES.
PROCEED WITH CAUTION.
Yes, let’s DO play some “Whataboutism”
ICYMI:
“When Donald Trump was a
private business man in New York, he got millions of dollars in tax breaks and
subsidies to build luxury housing. That’s called
corporate socialism.“ –Bernie Sanders, 60-Minutes (02/23/20)
-Medicare for all (which, btw, probably won’t happen. Best case scenario, a building on the ACA. And if no Congress to back him, won’t happen at all; just pie-in-the-sky.)
-Tuition
free higher education (best case scenario, it will be cheaper)
-Free
childcare (best case scenario, some kind of voucher system to offset the costs)
-Taking
on corporate greed (pharmaceuticals, health insurance companies, jails for
profits, etc. You can expect all of these
groups to go kicking and screaming into that dark, profitless night.)
These
are some of the highlights of what Sanders advocates for, along with, as a potential
Sanders supporter, my personal opinions about them.
* * *
Now
let’s play the whataboutism game.
What
about America’s “corporate socialism”:
-Bank
and other corporate bailouts
-Farm subsidies and tariff offsets
-Tax
loopholes -Farm subsidies and tariff offsets
-Zero dollars paid in federal taxes companies
Like it or not, these are four examples of “corporate socialism.”
Correct
me if I’m wrong, but this leads me to wonder, why is one brand of “government
socialism” okay, yet Sander’s brand of “democratic socialism” not okay? Hold that thought.
Granted,
we have many socialized programs already in play (Medicare for seniors,
Medicaid and other safety nets for those at the poverty level, HUD, etc.). We also have many, and I mean MANY, social
institutions that operate on government budget tax allocations: Teachers,
libraries, fire depts., police depts., civil service jobs, etc., all looking
out for the betterment of the greater society.
Even the FBI, CIA, and the bloated Military Industrial Complex operate under
budgets provided by the government, via our taxes. A
society cannot function very well, indeed is destined to fail, without these basic-type
socially-oriented programs. These social institutions keep our greater society
afloat and competitive on the world stage.
Isn’t it time for America to rethink that scary word “socialism” that corporate America has, in the name of obscene profits, indoctrinated us to fear? Seems to me (and Bernie) that our “just socialism for the rich” is another version of corporate America's dreaded “just socialism for the poor.”
Your Challenge: Defend “socialism for the rich.”
Thanks for
posting and recommending.
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