Confront, cow, destroy

At times, even people who agree with me wonder why I have a tendency to utilize my superior intelligence as if it were a hammer to be applied to an interlocutor’s fragile teeth. What they fail to understand that this has nothing to do with any personal insecurities or internal need to advertise the readily apparent, it is simply that it happens to be the rhetorical method I have found to be most effective. That doesn’t mean I prefer it to the dialectical method when that is a legitimate option, but here is an example of the costs of eschewing any such technique:

What happened next is what happens every time you depart from orthodoxy: group panic. We’ve all been there. You don’t want to wreck everyone’s good time and you wish everyone could keep cool, but allowing their hysteria to censor you is ridiculous, so you open your big mouth. “I’m dubious,” I said. He didn’t believe me. I assured him I wasn’t kidding. He remained skeptical. I finally convinced him I wasn’t playing devil’s advocate.

Bang! Tony is up on his feet and his finger is in my face. (They always do that.) “Do you realize that 60% of this country believes in creationism? That’s who you’re associating yourself with. Do you believe in creationism, too?” I stood up and tried to explain the logical fallacy of guilt by association, but now his wife and two other people were standing and finger-pointing, too. “Don’t you think it’s strange that the science against global warming is all funded by oil companies?” Then they did this thing liberals do where they make a sarcastic idiot face with their finger on their chin and say, “Hmm, I wonder why that could be? Gee, I guess they care about science. Yeah, that’s it.” I had to yell to be heard at this point and kept saying, “I don’t care who’s saying it or what anyone’s motive is to say anything. John Wayne Gacy can tell me murder is wrong, and it’s still wrong. All I care about is the facts.” I told them Hitler used toilet paper but that doesn’t mean we’re tied in with his shit just because we use it, too. I even yelled, “All cats are mammals. All dogs are mammals. All cats are not dogs.” But I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. This screaming match wasn’t meant to get to the truth. It was meant to wake me up from being an ignorant heretic who’d chosen the Dark Side. They allowed zero possibility I knew what I was talking about. I disagreed with them and therefore I was ignorant.

In his Rhetoric, Aristotle noted that for some audiences, “not even the possession of the exactest knowledge will make it easy for what we say to produce conviction.” I would go even further and suggest that for some audiences, conviction remains impossible. The behavior that McInnes is describing is indicative of precisely such an audience. Appeals to Aristotelian dialectic – otherwise known as logic – is useless and will accomplish absolutely nothing, as McInnes recounts in his story. If you are reduced to explaining “all dogs are not cats”, you are most certainly dealing with an audience of the sort that Aristotle deemed susceptible only to rhetoric.

The rhetorical audience relies heavily, indeed, almost entirely, upon appeals to authority and emotion. That is why they usually drift toward tangents concerning motivations, because they are attempting to impugn the authority to which they believe their opponent is appealing. (The alternative is emotional appeals, which are self-evident.) This makes little sense when the “authority” is mere factual reality, but since facts rely upon sources, any such sources provided can always be attacked, which in the eye of the rhetorical audience is somehow tantamount to refutation. “I have rebutted it because I said it was wrong” is a commonly heard formulation.

The thing that must be kept in mind when dealing with a rhetorical audience is that it doesn’t know very much and isn’t very intelligent. That’s why rhetoricians usually rely upon others to do their thinking for them. Establish that you are not only more intelligent than they are, but more intelligent than their precious authorities as well, and they have literally no recourse beyond the usual game of evasion and aspersion.

The first step is confrontation. Being accustomed to groupthink, this throws them immediately off-kilter. They will respond with all the sarcasm and heated emotion that McInnes describes. This is where many conservatives make a mistake and back down for fear of social disruption, but the important thing to remember is that you have not caused it and you are not responsible for it. Barring job interviews, there is no situation wherein etiquette that demands mindless acquiescence to every provocative assertion. But don’t meet heat with heat, meet it with ice, although calm words combined with a slight half-smile can be useful if you wish to entirely emotionally discombobulate the rhetorician.

The next step is to cow them. This is best used through application of the Socratic method. Don’t make any assertions, simply ask questions that will reveal, to them and everyone else, how devoid of actual knowledge they are. This is frightfully easy because most rhetoricians are prone to instinctive lying. If you are sufficiently well-informed, you can simply methodically expose each of their lies as they are presented. Credentials can be useful at this point; remember, you’re not dealing with a dialectical audience here that is capable of recognizing logical fallacies. I occasionally find it more amusing to “win” an argument using an argument I know to be fallacious because my interlocutor is too inept to spot the flaw in it than by using a correct one, but then, I am an Award-Winning Cruelty Artist so I don’t recommend this to the average dialectician.

Finally, once they have been sufficiently cowed, it is time to destroy them. This comes in three forms, the Implosion, the Submission, or the Run Away Run Away. I am always impressed when a rhetorical crowd is able to submit, because it indicates that they have at least understood that their position is wrong and they are theoretically capable of learning. The Implosion is probably the most satisfying, simply because it is funny. I enjoy few things more than watching an arrogant and overmatched individual publicly go into a complete emotional meltdown because he simply cannot bear to admit that he was wrong. Of course, the point isn’t the pleasure one might take in it, but rather, that everyone who witnesses the Implosion will recognize that the position was untenable.

And then there is the response we see so often on this blog, which is the Run Away Run Away response, which in its Internet form is better described as the Retreat Into Silence. PZ Myers is a good example of this response, which involves leaving your stunned well-wishers grasping at ever increasingly improbable explanations for your failure to even attempt to defend your position.

Anyhow, the next time a clueless member of the rhetorical crowd is emitting sarcastic commentaries, casting aspersions about your motivations, or showing signs of wanting to wave a finger in your face, just remember the acronym CCD. Confront, Cow, Destroy. The additional benefit, in addition to peace of mind, is that not only will rhetoricians soon become reluctant to so much as cluck any absurdities in your direction, but women also tend to view everyone else’s intellectual fear of you as social dominance, which naturally enhances your attractiveness to them.

Sure, they may well complain to all and sundry that you’re a jerk and so forth. But remember, translated from chickspeak, all that means is that they wish you’d hit on them.

Here is your immigration integration

Courtesy of a half second-generation immigrant speaking with The National Council of The Race:

After running through his talking points on the debt negotiations, Obama turned his attention to a subject just as thorny: immigration reform. Acknowledging that some civil rights activists have criticized his administration for deporting 1 million undocumented residents, Obama said: “I share your concerns; I understand them. We are responding. We are enforcing flawed laws in the most humane way possible.”

With a nod toward the deadlocked debt talks, he added: “Some want me to bypass Congress and change laws on my own.”

The audience began chanting “Yes, you can!” a play off the president’s 2008 campaign slogan.

Note that these are the very Hispanics that Karl Rove and George W. Bush were sure would vote Republican because they’re so Catholic and traditional. How utterly astonishing that the magic of a geographic relocation has not caused these Mexican, South and Central American immigrants to suddenly develop a due respect for the concepts of limited government and the separation of powers developed by English Protestants two centuries ago!

On his way out

Even the mainstream media is beginning to bang the drum for Obama’s retirement from the 2012 campaign:

New polls confirm Obama’s Democratic base crumbles

With all of the spotlights on the high-stakes debt maneuverings by President Obama and Speaker John Boehner the last few days, few people noticed what Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders said: “I think it would be a good idea if President Obama faced some primary opposition.”

At this point, I expect the main question isn’t whether Obama will step aside, but rather, if a health issue or the ever-popular need to spend more time with his family will be the excuse provided. The publicity given Sanders’s comments is yet another shot across Team Obama’s bow.

Not quite nobody

I believe I have pointed the connection between reduced government spending and reduced GDP on occasion as well:

The entire premise of the alleged “recovery”, in the words of Ben Bernanke, has been about pumping asset prices. But they won’t remain “pumped” when we take our medicine. They’ll go down.

A lot.

How much? Oh that’s easy – we know for a fact what the minimum contraction will be. It’s right here: That’s about 12% of GDP or about $1.8 trillion dollars. Why? Because GDP is simply defined as “C + I + G + (x – i)”, and “G” is government spending. Decrease it by that 12% of GDP and GDP falls by (at least) 12%. This is simple math – subtraction.

Yes, we need to do this. Yes, people will raise hell. But it will make, at least for a short time, unemployment worse and pain will increase among Americans. We will not buy those iPhones and cable TV and nights out at the bistro, and the follow-on effects cannot be avoided.

The problem with everyone pontificating on this is that nobody – other than I – is talking about what happens when, not if, we take our medicine. See, we must at some point. But as the chart makes clear up above we’ve been in an economic Depression we have refused to admit to for the last three years, just as someone on a monstrous multi-year bender will refuse to admit they’re addicted to some substance.

Of course, Karl is leaving out the so-called “multiplier effect”, for the very good reason that it does not exist despite the Keynesian myth-making. This is probably just as well because if it did, GDP would decrease even more than the 12% contraction in G(overnment spending).

In RGD, I anticipated that the decline in GDP would ultimately approach 35%: Utilizing total credit market debt as a proxy for the relative size of the contractions, I estimate that Great Depression 2.0 will be approximately one-third worse than the Great Depression. This indicates a 35 percent decline in real GDP over a five-year period, indicating a nadir of 9,455 sometime between the end of 2012 and the middle of 2013.

Now, obviously the time frames are off given the reckless decision by the Washington elite to stave off the inevitable declines in total debt outstanding and GDP by the gargantuan increase in Federal borrowing and spending over the last three years. But, once those efforts end, whenever that might be, there is no question that a statistically visible contraction will begin. It is mathematically assured. In light of Karl Denninger’s 12% figure, I think it may be worth noting that the contraction of private debt already amounts to 9.7% of its Q3-2008 peak.

2012 Republican candidate poll

Since Instapundit is asking the question, I thought it would be interesting to see the difference in candidate preferences between our readerships.

Who would you support for GOP 2012 Presidential nominee?
Michele Bachman
Herman Cain
Thaddeus McCotter
Sarah Palin
Rick Perry
Ron Paul
Tim Pawlenty
Newt Gingrich
John Huntsman
Mitt Romney
  
pollcode.com free polls

Sam Harris on “Christian Terrorism”

Mr. Harris weighs in with what some will likely consider to be a surprising, (and disappointing), conclusion. But it speaks well for his integrity and actually approaches an intelligent response. It also explains why the “Christian fundamentalist” theme is rapidly disappearing from the media:

It has been widely reported that Breivik is a “Christian fundamentalist.” Having read parts of his 1500-page manifesto (2083: A European Declaration of Independence), I must say that I have my doubts…. As I have only read parts of this document, I cannot say whether signs of a deeper religious motive appear elsewhere in it. Nevertheless, the above passages would seem to undermine any claim that Breivik is a Christian fundamentalist in the usual sense. What cannot be doubted, however, is that Breivik’s explicit goal was to punish European liberals for their timidity in the face of Islam.

I have written a fair amount about the threat that Islam poses to open societies, but I am happy to say that Breivik appears never to have heard of me. He has, however, digested the opinions of many writers who share my general concerns—Theodore Dalrymple, Robert D. Kaplan, Lee Harris, Ibn Warraq, Bernard Lewis, Andrew Bostom, Robert Spencer, Walid Shoebat, Daniel Pipes, Bat Ye’or, Mark Steyn, Samuel Huntington, et al. He even singles out my friend and colleague Ayaan Hirsi Ali for special praise, repeatedly quoting a blogger who thinks she deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. With a friend like Breivik, one will never want for enemies.

One can only hope that the horror and outrage provoked by Breivik’s behavior will temper the growing enthusiasm for right-wing, racist nationalism in Europe. However, one now fears the swing of another pendulum: We are bound to hear a lot of deluded talk about the dangers of “Islamophobia” and about the need to address the threat of “terrorism” in purely generic terms.

First, it’s quite clear that Breivik was a Christian in the sense of Christendom, not Jesus Christ. As The Perfect Aryan Male, who is a lawyer occasionally required to do work with Saudi visas, explained it, when you go to Saudi Arabia you have to choose between checking “Christian” or “Muslim” on your application. The Saudis couldn’t care less about personal beliefs, your self-identification, or if you pretend to worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster, they simply want to know if you are a member of the Umma or the Dar al-Harb.

Second, Harris has recognized what so many people seem to find inexplicable. Breivik targeted the future politicians of the Labour Youth because the quislings of the Labour Party are responsible for Norway’s open borders and the subsequent Islamic immigration. While Breivik may or may not have been a bigot, it is clear that his murderous attack was not a bigoted act, but rather, an explicitly political one. This is something he addresses directly in the manifesto when he writes about how it is not the wild animals who are to blame for entering the zoo, but the zookeepers who hold the gates open and permit them to enter.

(That being said, given the pictures of the Labour Youth that have been released, it wouldn’t be surprising if a significant percentage of the victims were not, in fact, ethnic Norwegians.)

Third, I believe Harris is incorrect with regards to his analysis of the probable consequences. Contra the blithe assumptions of the media, I suspect that Breivik’s mass murder will tend to increase the enthusiasm for nationalism on both the European Right and Left because it has increased and underlined what were already the extraordinarily heavy costs being imposed upon European societies by the multiculturalists and immigration enthusiasts within it. As Harris notes, many people, of various creeds, already harbor serious concerns about the incompatibility of Islam and secular society.

There are national elections approaching in Switzerland and France. We should be able to determine if Breivik will have any discernable effect upon the political situation by seeing if the anti-immigrant, anti-Islam People’s Party (CH) and National Front (FR) perform better or worse than they did in the previous elections.

Of course, as Kevin Williamson noted, it is self-evident that Breivik is a lunatic of the sort defined by Umberto Eco in Foucault’s Pendulum.

A lunatic is easily recognized. He is a moron who doesn’t know the ropes. The moron proves his thesis; he has a logic, however twisted it may be. The lunatic, on the other hand, doesn’t concern himself at all with logic; he works by short circuits. For him, everything proves everything else. The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars.

Those well-educated atheists

There goes another atheist claim. It turns out that the areligious in Britain are the least likely to go to to college:

A study of more than 13,000 young people found that 77 per cent of those who described themself as Hindu at the age of 15 went on to higher education, compared with 45 per cent of Christians. Some 63 per cent of Sikh teenagers and 53 per cent of Muslims went on to study at university, but just 32 per cent of those who had no religion at 15 undertook higher education.

This is, of course, further evidence in my point about the two churches of atheism. I expect that the college attendance rate of High Church self-identified atheists will be higher than the Christian rate, and perhaps even as high as the Hindu rate. It’s all about the restrictions on the group selected. No doubt the rate of Hindu college attendance is rather lower in India, where most Hindus actually live, than in Britain, where the Hindus are a small and self-selected group.

This is why it’s always necessary to pay attention to the Atheist Dance. When they want to talk up their numbers, they refer to Low Church “no religion”. When they want to talk up their objective qualities, they refer to High Church self-identified atheism. It’s rather like making a distinction between Christians and Catholics. The latter is a subset of the former.

WND column

The Death of Diversity

Throughout history, nations have taken violent exception to being invaded by large masses of foreigners. The Canaanites did not take kindly to Israelite immigration into the Promised Land, nor did the Israelites later welcome the arrival of Philistine immigrants from the Aegean Sea. The Arabs, who immigrated to Palestine in the centuries that followed Hadrian’s destruction of Judea after the Third Jewish War, are still actively resisting the return of the Jews to their ancient ancestral lands 63 years after the Israeli war of independence.

In Spain, the Reconquista took 770 years, from King Pelagius’ defeat of the Umayyad Caliphate at the Battle of Covadinga in 722 to the last European sultan’s capitulation to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in 1492.

People value their cultures, their traditions, their religion, their land and their blood. They always have and they always will.

A Dance with Dragons review – no spoilers

It was interesting to read George R.R. Martin’s latest so soon after seeing HBO’s A Game of Thrones and reading two fantasy series that some have attempted to compare to Martin’s epic, The First Law by Joe Abercrombie and The Prince of Nothing by R. Scott Bakker. My first thought upon simply viewing the size of the tome was that Martin is clearly suffering from the same disease that inflicted Stephen King and JK Rowling before him. It would appear that some time in between A Storm of Swords and A Feast For Crows, Martin came down with a bad case of morbus nemendatorus. This is the illness which strikes an author after he has become so prodigiously successful that he no longer sees any need to pay heed to an editor. It can be diagnosed on sight by the simple measurement of the thickness of the first book in the series and comparing it with that of the last book in the series. After reading A Dance with Dragons, it is abundantly clear that Mr. Martin has not yet recovered from it.

Read the rest at the Black Gate.

UPDATE – Matthew David Surridge, who is one of the best critics in the SF/F genre, offers a substantially different take on the novel.

More Republican lies

The interesting thing about the Republican white flag is that it wasn’t even a real flag. Karl Denninger went through the details and broke it down:

NO domestic spending cuts whatsoever.

NO material changes to entitlement spending ($25 billion/year on Medicare is pointless.)

NO other mandatory spending cuts. Anywhere.

Remember, the deal was supposed to be about $2 trillion in total – $1.2 as outlined above, and then $800 billion in “revenue increases” (tax hikes.) The deal “blew up” when Obama wanted another $400 billion in taxes. We’re talking about chicken**** here folks – these “cuts” are not real, they are all “reductions in planned spending increases.

In other words, the Republicans were offering real tax increases and nonexistent spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. Boehner and Cantor are shameless liars whose only goal is to raise the debt ceiling without letting the Tea Party and fiscal conservatives know that they have done so without any significant spending cuts.

Moreover, there is no chance of forced default. In August, there will be a projected $150 billion in tax revenue. Interest payments will only be $29 billion. That leaves more than $120 billion to spend on everything else. So, anyone who claims that default is unavoidable as of August third or anytime in August is blatantly lying.