Jonah Goldberg recently claimed to be interested in arguments–real arguments. But nope. You can’t really be interested in real arguments when the backdrop of your analysis is this:
>Maybe I’m remembering this wrong. But I could have sworn we spent the last seven years talking about how the Republican Party is the party of backward red states–where hate is a family value, fluffy animals are shot, and God is everyone’s co-pilot–and how the Democratic Party is the avant-garde of the peace-loving, Europe-copycatting blue states, where Christianity is a troubling “lifestyle choice,” animals are for hugging, and hate is never, ever a family value.
You’re remembering it wrong indeed. What’s weirder is the paragraph which follows the above:
>Admittedly, over time the red state-blue state thing was eclipsed by other cliches about how the GOP had been hijacked by “theocrats” or by K Street corporate lickspittles, warmongers, immigrant-haters, hurricane-ignoring nincompoops and, for a moment during the Mark Foley scandal, cybersex offenders. I can dredge up all the relevant quotes, but if you’ve been paying attention, I shouldn’t have to.
Cliches? Perhaps someone can remind Goldberg that facts are not cliches.
Category mistake? It looks like a straight-up straw man to me, i.e. cherry-pick your talking points from nameless unknown sources, use that to represent the counter position, then whine like a nattering ninny. Presto, a righty op ed is born.
I’m thinking of his listing a series of facts (and not disputing them) and calling them cliches. It’s not literature–I know the distinction is difficult–it’s reality.
I can see your point Nevyn, however. And perhaps I was a bit sloppy. Not perhaps, was. I suppose the straw man consists in the claim that “the Republican party has been hijacked by” those things. If we read that strictly, then it’s a straw man–this really isn’t a serious argument offered by anyone. But the fact of the matter is all of those things have happened under the Republican watch, and some of them arise from the party’s base. For that reason they’re not “cliches” at all. Perhaps they’re merely partial representations of the Republican party, but many of them are undeniably true.
Speaking tangentially, this appears related to a previous post about political correctness. Of course, we could simply cataorize this as an extreme strawman or a false-dichotomy, but there is something else in this piece that I have been stuggling to articulate for quite some time. Instead of confronting the content of one’s criticism, they take a strange sort of pride in ascribing to a party that is so relentlessly attacked. Sort of the W. Bush, “warrior mentallity”. Because there are people (right wing columnists) that refuse to “flip-flop” inspite of copious amounts of contradictory evidence, somehow that justifies their false position. This isn’t an argument as much as a testement to right-wing aminmal masculinity. Its a strategy that permeates so much of political discouse, that I feel that we need some sort new term within this politcal framework, to describe this practice.
there is a name for it, steven. it’s called stupidity. you’ll often see it described as “stick-to-it-iveness,” or “warrior mentality,” or “courage to stay the course,” but it’s all really just a stupidity so blinding in its force that one’s opinoins cannot even be distinguished from cold, hard facts.
That is unsatisfactory. This site is devoted to a logical analysis of political media. Lumping together all fallacies and the people who commit them as “stupid”, is hardly effective. “its all really stupidity so blinding in its force that one’s opinions cannot be distinguished from cold hard facts”. That most certainly isn’t the problem here. I am referring to someone avoiding an argument in order to determine the validity of a criticism, instead, as someone who possesses the courage to stick to his positions in spite of the criticisms. They appear as victims of overly-agressive, name-calling foes. They position themselves as victims of undue criticism. Its not stupid either- its incredibly effective. Remember the Bush-Gore debates of 2000. President Bush was utterly ripped apart by Gore. The polls, disagreed with that assessment, because they thought that Gore had behaved like a Bully. This tactic is used repeatedly by Ann Coulter. Just watch her face as her opponents respond to her claims. She acts as though she’s been manhandled off the stage. Usually, she threatens to leave. She continues to be one of the most powerful political voices in America.
steven–
here’s where we need to make a distinction between what i actually said and what you wish i would have said. to hold a patently false opinion, as goldberg does, in the face of obviously contradictory evidence doesn’t need a fancy philo-tag–it’s plain stupid. i don’t chalk the discourse advocated on this site as stupid, nor have ever posted on this site stating such a position. don’t f–king strawman my position. goldeberg’s position is stupid. it’s asserting a position that is flawed from the beginning. sometimes the best analysis we can offer of such a position is to ridicule it. i am not a juvenile dart-thrower. jonah goldberg is an idiot. he argues agaisnt non-existent enemies and defeats positions that no one holds. don’t lecture me on the mission of this site. the type of op pundit exemplified by mr. goldberg fits neatly under one title: stupid. if you intended a critique of my claim, you could have offered it to me in class today rather than luxuriating in the distance and finality afforded by e-criticism.
one more thing: the efficacious nature of claim has no bearing on it’s validity, nor its stupidity. just ask michel foucault. even stupid claims, totally ignorant ( and that’s the verb form of the word, referring to a willful ignoring of facts) of the facts of the matter may be effective, but that’s an indictment of society at large, not of my claim. The way to prevent their efficacy is to call them what they are—stupid. it’s not an ad hominem, it’s truth. jonah goldberg is stupid to maintain an argument that is demonstrated false by the FACTS OF THE SITUATION.
I am not criticizing the more than obvious point that dogmatically sticking to a position without evidence is a bad thing. Nor am I defending Mr. Goldberg. I don’t disagree with your analysis of this article. I was just trying to define a certain strategy I saw permeating conservative media. “there is a name for it, steven. it’s called stupidity. ” How was I strawmaning your position? I feel the need for a new term for this sort of “warrior mentality”. You obviously don’t.
there are too many terms already. we clog our minds and prevent dialogue by constantly parsing terms and redfining things that we already have adequate expressions for–for instance, in goldberg’s case: drivel, blind stupidity, and arrogance. no new term need be added here to further assess the utter failure of his claims.
you said:
“How was I strawmaning your position?”
fair question. you also said:
“This site is devoted to a logical analysis of political media. Lumping together all fallacies and the people who commit them as “stupid”, is hardly effective.”
this, sir, is a man made of straw (not to mention a handy use of the site’s subtitle), which you argued against in place of my actual claim, which was that no new term is needed to appraise commentary of goldberg’s ilk. furthermore, it is the problem that goldberg cannot, in fact, distinguish what he holds as an opinion from what actually obtains as a matter of fact. he thinks he is right, that this “warrior ethos” the right has constructed for itself by watching “24” and the Mel Gibson library is the way things are, when, in point of fact, this is not the way things are, nor is this the way war works. yet, he is so blind in his arrogance that he trots out these opinions to masquerade as facts of the matter, when they are, actually, just stupidity in action.
“Goldberg cannot, in fact, distinguish what he holds as an opinion from what actually obtains as a matter of fact”, if that were true, than I most certainly would concur with your assessment of this article. Goldberg, knows very well that those aren’t actual opinions people actually hold of the party. He is doing this intentionally. He’s used rhetoric to turn criticism into a verbal assault on his party. He’s created a bully from his enemy. Its a very effectice strategy. I see this sort of stalwart defender (from liberal bullies) tactic in conservative circles; O’Reiley, Coulter…etc. These people know full well of what they are doing. Its tremendously effective. People see these fictional criticisms and wonder how so many millions of people can still (including the columnist) adhere to such a party. It must be that they have misrepresented the party. Golberg certainly might be wrong- but he’s not stupid.
You just telling me that my observations can by summed up by the word stupid is insufficient. Read your first response to my claim. The issue in contention is whether or not this “Warrior mentality” is a stupid strategy. “but it’s all really just a stupidity so blinding in its force that one’s opinoins cannot even be distinguished from cold, hard facts”. Where, I wonder is the argument?
How was I strawmanning your three line response?
You’re really talking about different things as I see it. Phil is claiming–rightly–that some views about reality expressed by Goldberg warrant the appellation “stupid” insofar as they reflect a fundamental confusion of the cinematic with the actual. I’d tend to agree with that view, of course stressing that the view is stupid, not the thinker. Steve seems to be taking Phil to be claiming that the person is stupid, when it takes a lot of guile to come up with a strategy as apparently asinine as theirs. That may be the case. But motive analysis is best left to psychologist and psychiatrists. I assume they believe the tripe they say. The ones who are completely dishonest in this regard (Rush Limbaugh perhaps) don’t deserve rational analysis or comment from anyone.
“Steve seems to be taking Phil to be claiming that the person is stupid, when it takes a lot of guile to come up with a strategy as apparently asinine as theirs. ”
By misrepresenting his opponent’s viewpoints, he is guilty of creating a false dichotomy. This fallacy eliminates any point he was trying to make in the article. That being the case, I would move to have this article filed away under that heading. There is, however, more to what he is doing here. Generally, in those sorts of articles, a columnist misrepresents the position of an opponent, and tries with argument to defeat that. We then would say, that his analysis was not incorrect, but that he was attacking a posision that no one holds. Notice, how Golberg never actually refutes anything here. Look, though, at the tone of those first few lines. Not only are they verbal assauts on his party’s platform, they seem to be really mean. His opponents may not come accross as wrong, but they are understood as a “pack of bullies”. Surprisingly enough, that is sufficient for many Americans. I point again to Bush’s second debate with Gore. Bush simply restated many of Gore’s positions with meaner rhetoric, without ever actually refuting them. The majority of Americans believed Mr. Bush won that debate. What Mr. Bush did was certainly not stupid. He knew, as most people did, image in a Presidential debate was everything. Mr. Golberg is certainly not an idiot. It is my position, that is strategy here is not stupid either. Its remarkably effective.
steven, i trust that when you cannot find my argument, you will supply one of your own liking.
dr. casey, i think you’re right; we’re just talking past one another and not really getting anywhere. i did not mean to imply that i was arguing against the person, but against that person’s apparent inability to distinguish fact from fiction, agaisnt the holding of any propositions on that basis is, i believe, stupid. i agree that it might be an ingenious strategy, but i don’t want to give goldberg any credit for that–rove, frank luntz and that whole crew of sophists deserve the credit for the creation of the cult of pseudo-masculinity that surrounds this administration.
steven, i think you have a lot more faith in jonah goldberg than he deserves.
this:
“agaisnt the holding of any propositions on that basis is, i believe, stupid.”
should read:
“against the holding of propositions on that basis, a position which is, i believe, stupid.”
Go back to your original post. “there is a name for it, steven. it’s called stupidity. you’ll often see it described as “stick-to-it-iveness,” or “warrior mentality,” or “courage to stay the course,” but it’s all really just a stupidity so blinding in its force that one’s opinoins cannot even be distinguished from cold, hard facts.” That was your entire post. Where is the argument? Maybe you can help me. I couldn’t find it. I was not providing a strawman of your argument, in order to refute it later. I was simply clarifying my own position.
My position, to state it again, is that this sort of reverse-bully strategy is an effective tactic found in many forms throughout conservative discourse. I add that it is both an effective and dangerous strategy that undermines serious discourse. I move that this tactic be defined and incorperated into the framework of analysis on this page.
In the absence of a counter-argument for my initial position, I will begin to search for a term that aptly defines the strategy on full display here. When I have it, I can only hope that it can find a heading here on the nonsequitur.
QED.
Steven,
Might I say again that your interest in strategic considerations misses the point of the analysis. You’re probably right about the stupid-like-a-fox strategy of some of these people. But that’s not really something I care to analyze here (as I am not equipped with that kind of knowledge and insight). Many of those writers I discuss on this site seem at times to hold positions that offend the conscience. While that may be effective for some, that’s not my interest. Effective rhetorical strategies might be discussed elsewhere. I’m interested in facts and in inferences. These are hardly the only things that feature into any single op-ed, but they’re minimum necessary requirements.
Finally–a quick note–above you mentioned something about a false dichotomy. I think you mean straw man by that.
I prefaced my first response with, “Speaking tangentially”, with the understanding I was going to be off topic, but it was something I had been thinking about ever since you posted that item about political correctness. While “Rhetorical Analysis” might not be your cup-o-tea on this site, this community is home to some of the smartest bloggers that I’ve come accross, and I was hoping that someone might want to take a crack at it.