Many years ago, debating after church with an Iowa State Senator friend named Murray, I argued that only some kind of lottery system could restore to the United States any true semblance of democracy. Bystanders roundly hooted my preposterous idea, as did the senator.
Recently, however, it seems that I’ve acquired allies (probably, matter of fact, some of the hooters – they now have said it all along), one none other than famed attorney Gerry Spence. Great minds (wink) think alike.
Of course, after that last sally, I can hear all my usual detractors say, “Oh, my god – another thing he claims to have invented!” And all I can say in response to that is to note that one downside of truth is things like this. However it comes out, you’re “stuck” with it, the reason that I never – that’s never – say anything I can’t prove with paper record or the testimony of people who were witnesses. Mine has been a long life, one parts of which I still find incredible myself, and there are many things which occurred to me while alone, things I will never tell, and have never told, to anyone. They’re just “incredible,” that’s all.
That my contention concerning election of officials – including most eminently the U.S. President – has now proven to be what perhaps may be the only way to save our nation is to me a matter of logical thought process. “When you have considered all the possibilities,” said Sherlock Holmes, “whatever remains must be the truth.”
And that’s how I do it. Matter after matter, issue after issue (and they are not the same, incidentally) in the national news, I have called the turn correctly. That months before Operation Iraqi Freedom (man, the irony of that “floors” me) I argued that what has happened would happen (and exactly) is a matter of fact that was observed by a number of responsible people.
In fact, and on the record – much of it available here in my archives – I have not been entirely or significantly wrong once in my comments and predictions concerning national affairs in the news. That is a fact that has not been lost on a number of people, matter of fact - all of them persons in positions and fields wherein “intelligence” and foresight are often critical. I now offer counsel on matters ranging from vehicular speed in security detail convoys in Iraq to choice of weapons and tactics for certain kinds of operations. One of the men from whom I hear often is a major general in the U.S. Army, another an international security specialist, and still another an analyst whose name most here would recognize immediately.
Okay, I’ve blown my own horn enough for one session. My point is that since boyhood, I’ve been the individual a wife would one day call “Spock,” that for the character portrayed by Leonard Nimoy in the famed television series, “Star Trek.” I apply logic, mathematics, forensic, and epistemological method to everything. As emotional an individual as I am, I have learned to be absolutely unemotional in my thought processes.
And therein lies my topic here. As I’ve related already, wife Rita and I are teachers, she still and finishing forty years in the profession. We are therefore aware, almost certainly more than most, of the truly enormous decline in the ability of our country’s people to think productively and conclusively. School-children today seem by something, some force or condition, to be stultified, stunned, unable to grasp even simple concepts or do the simplest of reasoning. Faced with the hideous portent of such a thing, Rita and I are carefully trying to discover the cause, even prescribe a cure.
There remain to our scrutiny several possibilities. First among these – and almost certainly the case – is the indisputable fact of the individual citizen’s mind having been isolated and insolated by technology from the real physical world and its reality. Living far more often and longer in climate controlled, almost hermetically sealed off from the planet and locality’s environment, experienced in virtually nothing physically demanding and requiring physical solution, protected by modern systems, medicine, clothing, and the like from everything even their grandparents were obliged to survive, we live in a world become almost totally conceptual and linguistic.
With divorce from association with the real world has come loss of touch with the physical world. And with reality. Examples abound – far, far too much so – but even one chosen as serendipitously as that being reported on the television this morning will do. Recently, television personality and talk show host Rosie O’Donnell asseverated that never had there been a time when fire could melt steel. Sometime ago, discussing the World Trade Center attack with members of the Truthout and similar sites, I heard dozens of people make the same assertion; and recently, the media reported that as many as thirty percent of people interviewed agreed.
The news this morning will doubtlessly upset all of these good folks, inasmuch as it was that of a fire resulted from the crash of a tanker truck having melted steel beams in a California overpass, causing its collapse. Oops!
I note, parenthetically, that it will be great fun to hear the defensive explanations put forward by Ros1e and the conspiracy folks. Maybe, for once, even, O’Donnell will simply shut up. Not likely, of course. It amazes me that people like her are actually paid – and voluntarily - for their mindless nonsense, but that’s another matter.
And I digress. Only one who has never watched, again for instance, a blacksmith make horseshoes, or actually – as I have – constructed a bellows-intensified fire would make such an absurd contention concerning iron or steel. No one - a farmer or rancher who has used fire perhaps countless times to bend steel in making repairs or shaping tools – would make such a mistake, either. Certainly, no one who has worked in a steel mill would. In fact, and as another example of language, “that sound logical” (anybody remember Baby Huey?) reality, no one who has ever used explosives to blast rock or demolish things like buildings – as I, again, have – believes that the World Trade Center was brought down by controlled demolition. It’s absurd, and the total absence from any of the discussion (except mine) of the tremendous amount of physical work necessary to put everything necessary for such an operation is not only conspicuous by its absence, but indicative of the effect of detachment from the necessities imposed by the physical and real world on the individuals arguing the matter
In a world of concepts and ideas only, the world where all but few citizens of the United States now live, virtually – that word again – anything is possible. Maybe it was mice.
That I was first aware of what was happening while still a boy, as a matter of significant fact, had much to do with my unusual bringing up. A kid who first started making his own explosives while a sophomore in high school, I watched with cynical amusement as movie heroes like John Wayne exploded dynamite by firing a bullet into it. Bullets thrown into a campfire went off, wounding and killing people. Time and again, I heard adults explain that an engine had been sabotaged and ruined by pouring sugar into its gas tank. I knew better, having both watched my father fire a bullet by hitting where it lay on the floor with a hammer and later duplicated the stunt with a blow-torch, and once having run a lawnmower engine an entire summer and without damage on sugared gasoline.
Still, in the later case, it wasn’t until actual tests by the insurance industry decades later that the myth was finally dispelled. All these absurd ideas, the “everybody knows” kind, incidentally, were created in Hollywood. I could fill these pages with examples of more, each as utterly wrong as the 9-11, controlled demolition, foolishness.
Nevertheless, the condition has grown eminently worse. Recently, the incident having to do with Don Imus, erstwhile television talk show host, has demonstrated the pernicious effect of this kind of stupidity. All heat and no light, the verbal battle still rages, instances of it right here, with there being hardly a single logical fallacy that hasn’t been put forward as probative of something. Confident at least in some degree that many of the principals will recognize in what follows here their own arguments, I will forego use of any of these as examples of my topic today.
Suffice it to say that the Imus Affair further demonstrates the cancerous effect of new-age doublethink. With the “dumbing down” effect of isolation from the real world, together with the behavioral effect of both federal propaganda disseminated by massive media effort and equally massive production and promulgation of Hollywood, Disneyland virtual reality for entertainment purposes, our national discourse and deliberation has entered a death spiral.
What to do? Well, for openers let’s learn to think again. There are rules, you know, and the rules, those of epistemology and formal logic, have not only been known for centuries, they have formed the bed-rock foundation for all over man’s scientific progress. We know how to distinguish right from wrong, valid from invalid.
So, let’s begin with basics. Generally, the most conclusive proof or disproof of any proposition is to be found in logic or mathematics. That’s what this will be, and eventually, I will turn it into a webpage on my www.judoknighterrant.com site.
From time to time, moreover, I will also refer to websites where effective discussion and demonstration has already been made. Generally, I will offer examples and elucidate, using wherever possible current event for illustration. To begin, this will be a list of logical mistakes made repeatedly and, to me, at nauseum, by the media, advertisers, and reporters, by politicians, activists, and people in general. These come from many sources, which, wherever appropriate, will appear in parenthesis. For the purpose of learning, I’ll try to find an actual example of each in current events and news.
I mentioned logic first a minute ago, so let’s begin with it here. Straight from Operation Mockingbird and Goebbels-ian propaganda theory, if you want to bamboozle and bewilder the vast majority of people today, use fallacious reasoning. Always, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda said, speak to the stupidest person in our audience. It is fair, and statistically defensible, moreover, to say that little the public hears and sees on television today is logical. There’s little doubt that they’re following the instructions of their mentor. See for yourself – there are has been no doubt about these for centuries:
The first is so because I consider it to be the king of them all (at least where the media and fully eighty percent of the people with whom I have been debating during the course of this study), Petitio Principii – begging the question. Also known as assuming the answer, circular reasoning, or simply tautology, it argues something like – picking one from the news and talks shows – “We have to have the death penalty because it discourages murder.” The fallacy, of course, is that the “because” assumes that the possibility of being executed discourages murder.
There are many more like it – try “We have to stay in Iraq because when we come home, the enemy there will follow us home.” (‘Splain dat one to me, Luci!”)
How about, “We shouldn’t talk about pulling the troops from Iraq (or Afghanistan) because it will hurt the troops” morale.” (It will hurt the troops' morale to know they’re coming home to their families? Sure. When I was in the military, I was crushed to learn that I would be given military leave or a three day pass.) A near relative of begging the question, a fallacy that FoxNews has just about made their own – Sean Hannity is its master - is that of Stolen Concept. Hannity will use science – take the global warming issue, for instance – to prove that science is wrong. (D-u-u-u-h – dat sounds logical; and the fact that scientists say the earth has warmed up before means that it’s fine for it to warm up now; talked to any dinosaurs lately, Sean?)
Another (still) Spin City forte is what I’ve come to call the FoxNews Question, a variation on the old “when did you stop beating your wife.” “Is it possible that John Kerry (or whomever they’re after tonight) hates little kids?” Hannity says, looking down his nose. (Duh – Is it possible that you guys have the objectivity of a sex maniac? A starving shark?)
Often, a good way to defeat many of the fallacies I spotlight here, especially this one, is call Reduction ad Absurdum. “Reduce to absurdity” means to assume what the “expert” or “analyst” says is true, then carry the contention to its logical result. If, for instance, we assume that no human being (to be selfish as hell, and ignore everything else breathing like us) can live by breathing only carbon dioxide, and we know that cars are filling the air we breathe with the stuff, such that at some point in time (reductio in itself) the air will be all carbon dioxide, that means incontrovertibly that at some point we will all die. (Yeah, I know, folks, you’ll wait until we’re all gasping for breath before you want to do anything.)
Or, another example of reductio, if the population of the earth were to continue growing in the next one thousand years at the pace it grew in the last one thousand, the weight of human beings on the planet would equal that of the planet. What does that tell you?
Next, let’s try another famous one (since the time of Plato), that of Disputandum ad Verecundiam, or Argument from Authority. It has a partner in crime, too, Argument from False Authority. The former says that because Watchamacallit is and expert – they’ll wave a PhD, general’s rank, or the like at you every time – he must be right. Sure. Great.
Great, except there are exponentially many degrees of expertise – which only means more knowledgeable than the broad mass of people (Abraham Lincoln once used a kid who fished on the river in question a lot as an expert witness – because the kid fished there a lot, he knew where the currents would carry things) – to say nothing of areas of expertise. The guy is in reality claiming only to know more about the subject than his audience, which is pretty stupid when you think about it and realize that his audience is a nation. Time and time again, when you “Google” the guy you learn that his PhD is in something only remotely or not at all related to the subject (but he IS Dr. Watchamacallit).
Without this guy and his kind, FoxNews would go dead silent. Or Gretchen would have to cross and uncross her legs a whole lot.
A few years ago, one pseudo expert in one of those execrable commercials that riddle today’s programming and take everything of entertainment value from it read the lines – that’s all this means, you know – “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.” (Huh? – what does that do for me?).
The Appeal to False Authority, as it’s also called, is the “experts agree,” or “scientists say” “report.” Think about it – how do you check that? Who these guys are you’ll never know, and maybe you should stop and consider whether even the guy talking – or the channel, or the network, or the producer, or the . . . oh, never mind! – knows who the “experts” and “scientists” are. (Hey, guys - is this really any more than a rumor? Gretchen, one more time, please – and could you hike your mini-skirt just a tad higher?)
The last for the day is the fallacious argument known to logicians as Ignoratio Elenchi, or Irrelevant Conclusion. If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times, and it’s simply proving one thing and believing you’ve proved another. Declaiming for weeks now, and just the other day, on the subject of global warming, Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe argues vehemently that he could and has proved over and over that there is no proof the automobile and fossil-fuel emissions are contributing to global warming. That, he says, proves we should go on as we are. (Uh, Senator – does that mean we should just wait to see what happens? I’m sure as hell glad you’re not my doctor!)
That, incidentally, is an example of the way some of these genius types often make a witches brew of several fallacious arguments, this one including not only irrelevant conclusion, but proof by absence of proof. (Remember Pat Robertson: “There must be missiles in Cuba because nobody can prove there aren’t? Do you wonder where President Bush got the idea to use the same brilliant reasoning with Iraq?)
That last one, the Pat Robertson gaffe, is called Argument ad Ignoratium – argument from ignorance. A variation is to argue that something is true because it hasn’t (or can’t be) been shown to be false.
That’s got to be enough for this time, but don’t worry – every night’s television gives me a recorder full of examples. The only trouble fro someone writing as I am here is that people like the media’s propagandists repeat the same fallacies over and over (Goebbels, remember – make it simple and say it over and over; talk to the stupidest persons in your audience?). The topics are different, though, so we can still have some fun.
Oh, yeah – you want to know what the fallacy is when the network argues with former Miss America’s nifty legs. My knightly code of honor requires that I draw a veil over that one. Suffice it to say that watching Gretchen, you tend to pay little attention to what every body else – her included - is saying. That is called non-verbal communication, and it’s FoxNews all over again.
You get to see a whole lot, in other words, but nothing you can . . . be sure of, shall we say?
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