“Mary you must be a liberal. Only liberals are afraid of checks on voter Fraud. then you people can't vote numerous times and in different polling places or have your dead relatives vote,” argues Christine Possidente Bilello.
Letters reveal much about people. Mary eats potatoes; Christine knows instinctively they will never see eye-to-eye. Why? Because …
Liberals vote many times ... and have many dead relatives who also vote. Christine never knew a straw man she didn’t like … or a liberal she didn’t hate.
Mary prefers potatoes; Christine serves ad hominem grits tu quoque.
Look at all the lonely people. Where do they all come from? Do they act like, speak like, or think like you and me? Shall we smash their windows? Deport them to concentration camps? For Christine Possidente Bilello, liberals are la crème de la crème of the crematory.
Here’s how to build a straw man: Thought A collides with Exaggeration B which crashes into Defamation C and smashes into Fallacy D. Following this chain of illogic, Christine is a Nazi.
March 4, 2017: During a Trump rally in Maricopa County, Arizona, attendees chant “Kill Liberals” and “Deport Jews.” Another Trump supporter yells: “I can't wait for the liberal genocide to begin.”
June 13, 2017: Right wing broadcaster Michael Savage warns: “There’s going to be a civil war.”
June 23, 2017: Arch conspiracy theorist Alex Jones of InfoWars infamy says: “I don’t need some coming-of-age deal to kill a bunch of liberals.”
This is how all democracies end, Plato predicted 2,300 years ago. A democracy declines in decadence, succumbs to demagoguery, and ends in tyranny.
I hope these examples of magical thinking offend Christine, because this is how a Straw Man summons the Exterminating Angel.
I don't know how you can read that paper. It only suitable for wrapping fish, but it smells far worse. Hope is the ancestor of grief and suffering and I have given it up. Trump's administration resembles Stalin's with it's purges and scapegoats and show trials.
ReplyDeleteThere won't be a civil war - just a whimper.
Reading the rag is to know thy enemy, right Captain?
ReplyDeleteAnd to know nausea. I don't want to know them, I want to drown them in the swamp
ReplyDeleteWell, Gregor Samsa used to be my inspiration; but now I know that changing into a dung beetle can never fully mask the human rot. I'm sorely tempted to forgo cephalopod and try space alien. Maybe I'll get luckily and eventually end up somewhere on Proxima Centauri.
ReplyDelete