It Gets Worse

Terms like "False Dichotomy" and "Manichean" just don't capture the full fucked-up-ed-ness of what's going on over there on the "far right" - which isn't really all that "far" anymore.

r/terriblefacebookmemes

The Middle Ground Fallacy

TED stuff from Elizabeth Cox

• Compromise is not always in itself a virtue
• Some things can't be resolved by compromise

Mind Your Logical Fallacies

David Pakman - Jen Psaki takes a Newsmax "reporter" out for a little ride.

Today's Fallacy

Along the same lines, I gotta ask myself - how come we've seen the First Lady's tits, but not the president's tax records?

Some jagoff wrote an OpEd piece for WSJ that said, basically, Jill Biden should stop being so gosh darn smart with her high-falutin' credentials and all.

Of course the False Equivalence fallacy comes in, because corporate media need desperately to keep us convinced that it's all the same - both sides - if the left can slam Melania for being an apparent gold-digging, mail order sex doll dressed up as a fashion model when actually she's most likely a Kremlin plant to help them wrangle Donald Trump, then the right gets to bash a woman of real substance, and OK, we'll call it a draw.

It's just such bullshit. All day every day.

First:

Maybe the guy isn't someone to be referred to as "some jagoff", but sorry not sorry - you pull the kinda shit that guy pulled, and you demote yourself to the status of "some jagoff". That's not on me.

The Cut:

Today in unasked-for opinions offered apropos of nothing: One man is so agitated over Jill Biden’s designation as a doctor of education that he recently wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed advising her to “forthwith drop the doc.” Entitled, “Is There a Doctor in the White House? Not If You Need an M.D.,” the essay’s author — Joseph Epstein, formerly the editor of the American Scholar — argues that Biden’s title “sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic.” By his own admission, Epstein lacks “a doctorate or any advanced degree,” but seems to consider himself an expert on the matter nonetheless.

“Madame First Lady — Mrs. Biden — Jill — kiddo,” he opens his address to Biden, a 69-year-old woman. In short, Epstein believes “no one should call himself ‘Dr.’ unless he has delivered a child.” He also suggests that Biden’s Ed.D. inherently holds less prestige than a Ph.D., a degree that has in turn been “diminished by the erosion of seriousness and the relaxation of standards in university education generally.” (At least in Epstein’s eyes.) And don’t even get him started on the purported farce that is the honorary doctorate!

To be clear, though, Biden’s doctorate is not honorary. She earned it, along with two Master’s Degrees, and plans to continue working as a community college professor during her time as First Lady, just as she did when she was Second Lady. No other FLOTUS has continued her pre-existing career while in office, and critics of the op-ed have decried it as emblematic of sexism in academia. On Twitter, where the piece has been trending after its publication on Friday, soon-to-be First Gentleman Doug Emhoff speculated that “this story would never have been written about a man.”

Second:

"In this world, a woman has to be two things - 

who & what she wants."

Beau's store

Doctorate:

A doctorate (from Latin docere, "to teach") or doctor's degree (from Latin doctor, "teacher") or doctoral degree, is an academic degree awarded by universities, derived from the ancient formalism licentia docendi ("licence to teach"). In most countries, it is a research degree that qualifies the holder to teach at university level in the degree's field, or to work in a specific profession. There are a number of doctoral degrees; the most common is the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), which is awarded in many different fields, ranging from the humanities to scientific disciplines.

What Matters

It doesn't matter whether a fetus is a person if it doesn't matter that a pregnant woman is a person.

What matters is that a woman be granted the full compliment of rights.

Without the right to bodily autonomy - the right of an autonomous person to self-determination - there's not much point to any of the other rights.

Falsifying The Null Hypothesis

Vox:

...Volume 2 is all about the possibility that President Trump engaged in the criminal act of obstruction of justice during the investigation about his campaign.

The maneuver that Mueller uses in Volume 2 is extraordinary. It’s a social scientist‘s delight and should be used as a case example in research methods classes. Special counsel Mueller uses the logic and procedure of the scientific method to arrive at his conclusion in his investigation about the possibility of obstruction of justice. This is unusual because it is not the typical route that an attorney would use in building a case or preparing an investigatory report. In short, rather than providing evidence to support a claim of obstruction, Mueller essentially sets out to falsify a null hypothesis that obstruction did not occur.

The double-negative language that describes this procedure can be confusing. Here’s how it works. The scientific method that all scientists, natural or social, use involves a process called falsification. The method was popularized by a philosopher named Karl Popper, who in the mid 20th century wrote a book called The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Popper argues that in science it is not possible to “prove” anything; rather, scientists seek to theorize all the possible explanations for a phenomenon, and then seek evidence to disprove as many of those explanations as possible.

It’s a process of elimination. And this is exactly what Mueller does in his report. Mueller does not set out to prove that the president engaged in obstruction of justice; rather, Mueller recognizes that he is bound by the Attorney General’s interpretation of the law, which says the sitting president cannot be charged with a crime. In light of this legal interpretation, it would be futile for Mueller to build a case and demonstrate that the president should be charged with the crime of obstruction. So Mueller does something incredibly clever: He falsifies all of the alternative explanations.

In his report, special counsel Mueller walks through at least 10 specific instances in which the president or his staff may have engaged in obstruction of justice. Because his intent is not to frame the president or prove his wrongdoing, Mueller lays out all the possible explanations for what the president and his allies did. Then, one by one, Mueller provides the evidence showing that each of Trump’s associates who may have aided in obstructing justice in fact did not do so. The report exonerates these actors on this charge.

- but -

The report does not exonerate the president. But it goes much further than that. The report falsifies all of the possible reasons the president should be exonerated, and shows each one of these claims to be false.

Not that anybody is going to be convinced on this - we Americans are not famous for our canny ability to grasp nuance.

And when it comes to our willingness to accept the science of it all - well, uhh - Evolution, Flat Earth, Angels, Climate Change, UFOs, Bigfoot, Elvis - we're a big steaming pile of Personal Incredulity Fallacies.

Recap - Logical Fallacies

Your Logical Fallacy Is

Lessons

There can be no debate without a reliable partner.

Remember this as we try to navigate the political bullshit being foist on us by Daddy State Plutocrats.

Via YouTube Jill Bearup with a nice roundup of Logical Fallacies:

0:33 Fallacy of Composition 0:42 Fallacy of Division 0:52 The Gambler's Fallacy 1:00 Tu Quoque (Who Are You To Talk?) 1:19 Strawman 1:32 Ad hominem 1:49 Genetic Fallacy 1:56 Fallacious Appeal To Authority 2:15 Red Herring 2:34 Appeal to Emotion 2:48 Appeal to Popularity (Bandwagon) 2:52 Appeal to Tradition 2:56 Appeal to Nature 3:04 Appeal to Ignorance 3:16 Begging the Question 3:32 Equivocation 3:50 False Dichotomy (Black or White) 4:00 Middle Ground Fallacy 4:09 Decision Point Fallacy (Sorites Paradox) 4:29 Slippery Slope Fallacy 4:46 Hasty Generalisations (Anecdotes) 5:05 Faulty Analogy 5:14 Burden of Proof 5:43 Affirming the Consequent 6:10 Denying the Antecedent 6:22 Moving the Goalposts 6:35 False Cause (and Texas Sharpshooter) 6:54 Loaded Question 7:01 No True Scotsman 7:10 Personal Incredulity 7:18 The Fallacy Fallacy

Your Logical Fallacy Is

Rhetological Errors

The Logic Circle

First we make it all but impossible for American farmers to sell their goods to China. Then we borrow money from China to rescue American farmers because they can't sell their goods to China. Then Wall Street collects a percentage of the interest on the loans, paid by American farmers.

Trumponomics

Both Sides My Ass

Balance is definitely the name of the game, but Press Poodles blindly insisting that there's always a middle ground is part of the whole "Tribalism" problem they love to bitch about.

What's Your Logical Fallacy?

Remember, Poodles: When one guy says it's raining, it's not your job to go find another guy who says it isn't, and then just report that they have differing views on the weather - it's your job to go look out the fucking window and tell us what's actually going on.

2 + 2 = 4. It's not 3; it's not 5 - it's not green flapjacks on a fucking doghouse - and we're not going to "compromise" at 12½.

Eric Alterman, The Nation:

As President Trump and his Republican quislings continue to undermine our democracy, the punditocracy obsesses over another apparent threat to the nation: liberal intolerance. When New Yorkereditor David Remnick disinvited former Trump strategist Steve Bannon from his magazine’s annual festival, The Wall Street Journal ran an article bemoaning the “growing list of news organizations that have reversed their decision to engage with conservatives after a public outcry.” On The New York Times’ op-ed page, ex–Journal opinion editor Bret Stephens crossed into Crazytown when he concluded that “what this really means is that Remnick is no longer the editor of The New Yorker. Twitter is.” He added that the magazine was “on the road to [becoming a] left-wing version of Fox & Friends.”

Alterman's point seems to be that the regime of "Liberal Intolerance" seems to be pretty inclusive, and that there are plenty of platforms and opportunities for the wingnuts to barf up their Daddy State bullshit, but that's a bit defensive, and ineffective - cuz, when you're explaining, you're losing

I think the point needs to be that nobody's obliged to tolerate that Daddy State bullshit.

And, of course, he kicker is that there's solid evidence that the real threat to free speech is coming from the "conservatives". 

This comes as no surprise to anyone who knows Daddy State Awareness Rule 1:

Every accusation is a confession

Let's Review

Examine almost any "argument" from almost any Republican, and there's a better than even chance you're going to find a logical fallacy.

Listen to 45* - notice how often he prefaces the stoopid shit that falls out of his face with "Many people are saying".

Or when practically any given "conservative" tries to make his case by starting with "the American people want / believe / are with me...".

The Bandwagon Fallacy (aka: Appeal To Popularity) is what an awful lot of these clowns think of as a bedrock principle. Their position is the right one because everybody says so.

(Try to remember these 2 things. 1: The Ford Pinto was once the most popular car in America. And 2: Those nice fat sales numbers didn't keep the gas tanks from exploding)

Here's the one our "Christian" friends love to use:

...which ties in nicely with:

...and way too often leads right into:

...or:

A sub-heading under Tu Quoque is False Equivalence (aka: What-About-ism)

One of the big ones is:

The Anecdotal Fallacy is enshrined forever in The Myth Of The Welfare Queen. The new iteration shows up all the time now in the crap about "Illegal Immigrants Are Murdering White Girls".

It goes on and on and on.

Get 'em all: Your Logical Fallacy Is

Or: Information Is Beautiful

Podcast

The Professional Left with driftglass and Blue Gal.

Don't stand aghast at nothingness - a pretty good Bible Bitch segment.

And today's stats, illustrative of the root problem we're starting to understand a bit better:

61% of Americans believe 45* lies regularly.

76% of Republicans believe he tells the truth all or most of the time.

And we continue to go along with the Press Poodles as they work hard to placate us with bullshit tropes like "tribalism" - which is little more than a new(ish) version of Both-Sides.

Fight back.

There's nothing wrong with looking for ways to meet somewhere in between when there's reason to think we can find some commonality. Compromise is a good thing when it moves us towards "a more perfect union".

Just be careful not to get caught up in the Fallacy of The Middle Ground.

eg: There's nothing ideological about the fact of AGW-Driven Climate Change. We can compromise on what we think is a good approach to dealing with it, but the fact of it is not in doubt and we're wasting time if that's what we continue to allow to be at the center of the debate.

As the Press Poodles and their handlers continue to pimp the Both Sides nonsense, we have to turn up the heat and do everything within reason to make that Forever-In-The-Middle position as uncomfortable as possible.

Today's Tweet

A kid murders both of his parents and then pleads for mercy because he's an orphan.

We must cut back on health care to pay for the repairs to the house I just purposefully burned down. https://t.co/h8BP1ZuR5h

— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) December 7, 2017

 

Arguing The Real Shit

We need an honest debate, and we need to know how to conduct ourselves in an honest debate - a debate that stands a chance of moving things forward - we can expand a little on the rules and the weird shit we need to watch out for.

Here's a taste:

 

Get the whole infographic here (it's a beaut).

About That False Equivalence

The Daily Beast, Dean Obeidallah: 

Let’s put it bluntly: Antifa is not part of the Democratic Party, while white supremacists are part of the GOP. 

But that hasn’t stopped some on the right from peddling the false narrative that antifa is part of the Democratic Party and somehow Democrats have to answer for the movement. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson recently declared that Antifa “is a political militia that is doing the bidding, in effect, of Nancy Pelosi and Governor Jerry Brown and the mayor of Berkeley and all these supposedly mainstream Democratic politicians.”

- snip -

Sean Hannity added his voice to this chorus of false equivalency throwing a temper tantrum about antifa while asking: “When are the Democrats in this country going to condemn this out of control left-wing hate and violence?” And the list goes on with people like Laura Ingraham parroting this talking point.

You get the idea. The right wants people to believe that antifa is a wing of the Democratic Party and that Democrats must answer for its violent actions. This couldn’t be more wrong and the right knows it. 

Let’s be clear about who antifa is and isn’t. It’s a decentralized anti-fascist group. Experts make it clear that antifa members are “self-described revolutionaries” who are “anarchists and communists who are way outside the traditional conservative-liberal spectrum.”

You Know What They Say

"Well, y'know [insert any compliment about anybody here], but he cheats at golf, so...yeah - fuck that guy"

Starting with Dana Milbank at WaPo:

Golf is a game of humility: Even the best players are brought low by nature and chance. And it’s a game of honor: You keep your own score and are often unseen by other players.

Then there is Trump golf. He breaks rules, exaggerates scores and ignores the game’s decorum. Sound familiar? He is, Sports Illustrated asserted, “easily the best golfer” ever to occupy the White House. Likewise, he is an enormously talented politician, with a genius for marketing. Yet in golf, as in life, he doesn’t leave it at that. He gilds the lily with dishonesty.
Golf.com - With special reporting by Michael Bamberger, Ben Baskin and Pete Madden.

[This article appears in the Aug. 7, 2017, edition of Sports Illustrated.]

Trump will sometimes respond to a shot he duffed by simply playing a second ball and carrying on as if the first shot never happened. In the parlance of the game, Trump takes floating mulligans, usually more than one during a round. Because of them it is impossible to say what he has actually shot on any given day, according to 18 people who have teed it up with Trump over the last decade, including SI senior writer Michael Bamberger, who has done so nine times. In 2007, Trump called Bamberger to brag about a 68 he had shot at Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles. Trump's handicap index is officially 2.8, but he has posted only three scores since '14. Els, a South Florida resident who has known Trump for many years, estimates he is "an eight or a nine." For Trump to shoot 68 on a tough course like Bel-Air would require him to play nearly perfectly from tee to green while making a number of substantial putts. One of his playing partners that day confirmed that Trump played "good," but that he took all the usual liberties common among everyday golfers: mulligans, gimmes, improved lies, etc. There was no mention of the 68 in a subsequent story, and Bamberger heard about it from Trump.

-and-

In a 2013 tweet aimed at entrepreneur Mark Cuban, Trump wrote, "Golf match? I've won 18 Club Championships including this weekend. @mcuban swings like a little girl with no power or talent. Mark's a loser." Trump has never made public a list of his club titles, and fact-checking calls to all of the Trump properties on this subject went universally un-returned. Winged Foot is the one non-Trump club at which the President is a member, and his name does not appear on any of the honor boards in the old clubhouse.

It seems the guy is simply not capable of telling the truth abut anything.

Bonus BTW:

Here Trump interjected, "It's a crazy—no, I actually I said I was the best golfer of all the rich people, to be exact, and then I got a hole in one. So it was sort of cool."

That little slice of a story is probably not totally untrue - it's likely as close to "the truth" as 45* will ever get - but the point here is that I'll bet you dollars to dingleberries he's said exactly the same thing on many many occasions just before stepping up and shanking one into the lake.

But it paid off that one time, so he throws up a little variation on a Logical Fallacy called The Texas Sharpshooter.

Something To Watch For

I've posted some links to Logical Fallacies, hoping to keep myself up with debate tactics that're less than honest - so I can avoid using them, but to remind myself to look out for them being used against me so I can counter them.

Here's the big one that Cult45 trots out almost every time:

And then this popped up for me on Wikipedia today:

What-About-ism

Usage by Donald Trump[edit]

U.S. President Donald Trump has been accused of employing whataboutism in response to criticism leveled at him, his policies, or his support of controversial world leaders.^[80][81][82] During the 2016 presidential election, Trump was accused of using the technique to defend his support of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has been accused of human rights violations. When The New York Times asked about Erdoğan's treatment of journalists, teachers, and dissidents, Trump replied, "When the world looks at how bad the United States is, and then we go and talk about civil liberties, I don't think we're a very good messenger."^[83]

When criticized or asked to defend his behavior, Trump has frequently changed the subject by criticizing Hillary Clinton, the Obama Administration,^[81] and the Affordable Care Act.^[1] When asked about Russian human rights violations, Trump has shifted focus to the U.S. itself,^[80][20] employing whataboutism tactics similar to those used by Russian President Vladimir Putin.^[19][82]

After Fox News host Bill O'Reilly and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough called Putin a killer, Trump responded by saying that the U.S. government was also guilty of killing people.^[20][84][85] U.S. Senator Marco Rubio also criticized Trump for his use of the technique.^[86] Gary Kasparov commented to Columbia Journalism Review on Trump's use of whataboutism: "Moral relativism, 'whataboutism,' has always been a favorite weapon of illiberal regimes. For a US president to employ it against his own country is tragic. Trump repeating Putin’s words—and nearly Stalin’s—by calling the press the enemy of the people, has repercussions around the world."^[36] In addition to Trump, other Republicans, including Dana Rohrabacher, have utilized whataboutism in response to criticism of Russia.^[87]

I followed a link from the citations on the Wikipedia page and found these on YouTube (part 2 has the What-About-ism thing):

And oh yeah - here's Olbermann from Oct 2016:

Pleasant dreams, kids.