Blogging will of necessity be light today as I sit back and allow baseball and fresh air to act as a sort of mental sorbet, cleansing my brain of this bit of Atrios idiocy, in which the crowned prince of anti-Bush cant and his band of verbose cheerleaders manages to blame the shooting of a London terror suspect (who turned out to be nothing more than an illegal running from British police) on George W. Bush and “the Right”:
This issue is not those who are second-guessing cops who are frequently in horrible positions. I wasn’t there and I don’t know what they knew or what they thought they knew or what their orders were. Some of that will be revealed. The issue is the cheerleaders of the “shoot first ask questions later†attitude, and the critics of those who dare suggest that shooting someone the government has labelled “terrorist suspect†absent trial is problematic.
Bush and the Right generally have become masters of this rhetorical trick. Criticize the Bush policies in Iraq? You’re attacking the troops! Criticze the Bush policies in Gitmo? You’re attacking the troops! Criticize the 101st Fighting Keyboarders glee about the killing of “bad†brown people in London? You’re attacking London bobbies!
It’s long past time for the Right to take responsible for its own actions and rhetoric, and stop trying to pawn it off on those on the front lines.
As I noted in the comments at Cole’s place, if, as one of his supporters insists he is doing, Atrios is simply saying that “the Right fosters an atmosphere that makes it difficult to evaluate these situations because the very act of questioning what happened is portrayed as disloyalty,” then the easy rejoinder is that when your “evaluation†consistently begins from the premise that “BUSH LIED! ROVE MANIPULATED! CHENEY EATS BABIES WITH SHARON AND PISSES OIL!â€Â, it signals to your interlocutor that the “questioning†you’re interesting in engaging in springs from a well already so polluted by partisan hyperbole that any subsequent discussion is bound to be rancid.
So Atrios’ contention that it is the “Right†that is fostering the poisonous atmosphere is at best dubious, and at worst willfully blind.
Sadly, most of John’s commenters—committed partisan Democrats and progressives, the majority of them—are unwilling even to acknowledge that Atrios and his fellow travelers are beginning from such a premise (among other things, I’m accused of introducing a straw man, which I must say I am increasingly convinced is a rhetorical fallacy many on the Left misunderstand, especially when one takes time to consider the number of prominent Democrats who are actually on record making the very claims I attribute to them), and so the debate, such as it is, cannot even proceed beyond the initial premise.
Which, it seems to me, is a fairly apt summary of the current state of political discourse in this country.
What a load of crap. The Left’s trick is: call our troops at Gitmo torturers and claim it’s a Bush policy, call our troops incompetent in Iraq and claim it’s a Bush policy, call the UK police overly bloodthirsty and blame conservative bloggers for making them that way.
I posted something similar about poisonous atmospheres and how the media treats the troops vs. the insurgents today as well.
You’re so correct.
I’ve tried to enter into reasonable discussions with lefties and they base all of their reasoning on flawed assumptions taken as fact, e.g. there have been 125,000 civilians killed in Iraq by our forces, this is entirely about oil, Bush lied about WMD as a pretext for invading Iraq, there’s a plan afoot to build a pipeline through Afghanistan to bring oil out of the areas to its north for the sake of Halliburton, any and all anti Bush conspricies are taken as gospel.
Ofcourse, when you try to point out the mistakes or fallacies in the initial assumptions that they base all of their arguments (such as they are) upon, you are mistaken, misinformed and a tool of the vast right wing conspiricy. It’s hard to have a reasonable discussion. They’re always right, because they’re so much more insightful, sensitive and educated than you are and oh, did they tell you how much smarter they are than you?
Whether or not the London police were right to use deadly force (they were) or the Left is largely a useless cavillous harridan with nothing of substance to offer on the War on Terror (they are), one thing we can all agree on, Neil has no idea what a straw man argument is.
Considered an ignoratio elenchi fallacy, the straw man actually requires an argument by analogy or argument by either accident or composition. Jeff does none of these: he is, rather, offering a counterfactual premise that would lay blame for the poisonous atmosphere on the Left, as well as examing the amphibilous use of the word “evaluation” to identify it as not a measured consideration of policy but to mean simple partisan cant on their part.
Both effective.
Right on, Jeff, but what else do we expect from Atrios and his followers on the left?
Yeah, those guys are all cavernous, hairy amphibians all right!
Turing: “table.” My dictionary is way over there on the table, so I’ll just pretend I know those words.
It’s O.K. for the left to attack the right viscously because they are so morally superior to conservatives in their minds. They can say outrageous things because they are right, and good and those damn Repubs are wrong and, well really, really bad. There is no possibility of discourse with such people.
But “cavillous harridans”? C’mon dude, its Sunday night and I’m trying to relax with a beer.
I like stirring them up at John’s place, gives me a good laugh. One can’t debate them, they are always right and if you are on the right, you are a warmongering, advocater of torture and all living things. I wouldn’t worry about them too much, they are a black helicopter kind of crowd. I’ve been accused of being all kinds of stupid, and a supporter of the rape of women and children in Iraq. They think Bush has opened new rape rooms under US troop management, and everything bad in the world is Bush’s fault. But we are lowering the discourse? Mmmmkay.
Well done. And I like your comment to Glenn about push back. If we’re supposed to have all this power (see Jeff Jarvis’ post about Bernie Goldberg here) let’s start using it. A couple of really well aimed rhetorical blows to the head and gut would seem to be in order.
Maybe if, as I suggest here, we started to call them appeasers rather than traitors it might make a dent.
HOW DARE YOU QUESTION THEIR PATRIOTISM?!!
Mac, Eno,
Sorry.
Had to get that out before having a few beers myself.
Of course, what I meant was that the Left are largely self-loathing, feculent little soul-sucking pantyboys with the moral sense of a drunken weasel and the subtltey of a table dance.
Also, GAY PORN COCK OF LIES!!
I know, irrelevant, I just love that phrase.
Houston’s still in the wildcard chase for the NL, but it’s going to be far too close for comfort.
I’ve thought this for a long time. I think there’s a certain percentage of the Left that is, quite literally, beyond reason at this point. Their behavior really resembles that of historical cases of mass hysteria – often found in places like convents where the subjects are isolated from outside news. The Left has created its own media bubble, impervious to information from non-Left sources.
Which is why I think the only strategy that makes sense for other people is one of “containment.” Just let the leftists carry on with their giant puppets and whatnot, until eventually the fever will burn out and they’ll be receptive to reason again. Or not, but as long as there’s no danger of them getting power, it doesn’t really matter much.
You guys use words that make my head hurt.
The Straw Man Fallacy is, currently, the fave on the street the way amnesia is the favorite neurlogical disorder in sit-coms. It is a handy vessel that makes the inevitably following calumnies a bit more digestible. Really, it is a shift in the burden of evidence. If you assert I am making a straw man by, say, weighting the modern Democrats with the burdens of socialist experiments gone awry in history, the point shifts to one where I then have to justify that assertion. Cuz, we all agree that socialism has been proven murderously wrong, right?
No, no, you see, socialism has never been *tried*! All those people who claimed to were really just meanies, probably right-wing neocon thugs in disguise! *True* socialism is what *we* will bring you, and it means big world peace and everybody working together and fluffy bunnies and kitty-cats for everybody!
It’s O.K. for the left to attack the right viscously….
Personally, I prefer not to attack anyone viscously, as it only slows down my thought process.