Hey MOQers:
What kind of soap should a person use to wash a brain?
Rog opened a recent post with this...
Rod, Gav, Rasheed and others are dismissing views that contradict their own
as products of brainwashing, biased media, Orwellian distortion, etc. At
first I thought they were just adopting one of David's little social-level,
rhetorical tricks of winning the argument by undermining their opponents'
credibility.
DMB answers with...
This is astonishing, Roger. Thanks so much for including me. Some people
might wait until I expressed an opinion on the topic. Somehow you've managed
to be defensive and offensive within just two sentences. Wow. Way to go! But
the most amazing feat appears in the second sentence, where Roger uses
rhetorical tricks to undermine his opponents' credibility while
simultaneously charging his opponents with trying to undermine his
credibility with rhetorical tricks. The circularity of it is nearly perfect.
How DO you do it, Roger? How can you be so self-contradictory, so
unwittingly hypocritical, so obliviously ironic and so insulting all in one
breath? Its astonishing.
Further, the so-called "brainwashing" and "Orwellian distortions" are only a
small part of the argument. Anyone will be misled if their views are based
on information provided by a "biased media". But this fact was not used to
"dismiss" contradictory views. It just aims to point at the source of the
widely held, commonly known and often cited views you parrot. Its no big
mystery. The Wall Street Journal? Oh, please. Their editorial page is
nothing but a right-wing scandal sheet. But, as I said, such brainwashing is
only a small part of the argument. To help correct this affliction Lawry
offered a list of key documents. Darryl and others offered some of the most
pertinenet historical facts. Gav offered up some of Chomsky's work. This
kind of factual information was offered up as a remedy to the American
"conventional wisdom" on the topic. This is supposed to rinse off soapy
brains, but its usually rejected and dismissed by those who need it most.
Such was the case with our previous discussions about The foriegn polices of
the USA. Facts are countered with insults and hyperbole.
(If anyone mis-trusts Noam's scholarship, the United Nations' work and the
voting records on the issue are a matter of public record. But the fact that
one has to read a Chomsky book or otherwise "look it up" only shows the
media's true bias. I mean, why isn't it front-page news when the US and
Israel vote together against the whole world? Why is it not the top story on
every news channel when the US is condemned for human rights abuses in the
world court? Must be that liberal bias again, eh?)
DMB
P.S. Next time I hope to actually address the topic. Beasely, Bo and others
deserve posts too.
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