Tag: rhetoric

A spade should always be called a spade. And those who engage in foolish behavior and make foolish choices are accurately described as fools. There is absolutely no excuse for getting not-vaxxed; the information is available and anyone who believes a single word of the mainstream media hasn’t been paying attention since William Randolph Hearst was lying about the Spanish sinking the USS Maine:

One way to confirm that a rhetorical device is a killshot is when the phrase is literally banned by the media:

Truth 3: Israel is committing the crime of apartheid against millions of Palestinians. Discrimination against Palestinians and confiscation of their land, including in East Jerusalem, is one of the triggers of this latest round of violence. One should not ignore this context.

– Mark Ruffalo Retweeted, 19 May

“Equality, human rights, and prosperity for all from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.” The fight for equality happening here in the USA should be the  guiding principle of our values in the Middle East and for our allies abroad.

– Mark Ruffalo, 20 May

Please watch @MehdiHasanShow special on the Middle East is the clarity we need in the fog or war. Why is this happening? How did we get here? What’s actually happened? Has it been fair? What about the children?  What can the USA do stop this ongoing conflict?

– Mark Ruffalo, 20 May

I have reflected & wanted to apologize for posts during the recent Israel/Hamas fighting that suggested Israel is committing “genocide”. It’s not accurate, it’s inflammatory, disrespectful & is being used to justify antisemitism here & abroad. 

-Mark Ruffalo, 25 May

Now, it is perfectly clear that Israel is not committing genocide, for the obvious reason that it isn’t. The 400-percent growth of the Palestinian population since 1950 is more than sufficient to disprove the accusation. That being said, I strongly suspect that if Americans were to require the Jews resident in the United States to live in a pair of large ghettos under conditions similar to those that the Israelis force the Palestinians to live in Gaza and the West Bank, such an action would be described as genocide too.

So remember, as always, there is no information content in rhetoric. Rhetoric concerns emotional manipulation, not factual accuracy or logical consistency, which is why the slaves of Hell always attempt to reserve the more effective rhetorical weapons for themselves while simultaneously denying the use of the same terms to others even when they are perfectly apposite.

The irony is that Israel is literally a national socialist state, as Zionism is a historical revision of the global socialism of the neoclowns now resident in the United States. It’s not very different than the post-Lenin conflict between Stalin’s national communism and Trotsky’s world revolution. But only those whose minds are firmly established in the dialectic are capable of reading that simple factual statement without spiralling immediately into cognitive dissonance, because the rhetorical antithesis between “Nazi” and “Jew” has been so firmly established that most people can’t even get their heads around the historical fact that the world’s first national socialist party was established in China prior to the founding of the Chinese Communist Party and had nothing whatsoever to do with the scattered remnants of a minor Middle Eastern tribe.

In fact, as it happens, explicitly national socialist parties were established in both China and Britain prior to the 1919 founding of the German National Socialist Workers Party.

But those who are engaged in rhetorical wars are always aggressively uninterested in the actual facts of history.

UPDATE: On the other hand, Ruffalo’s genuflection only rates a 4/10 on the cringe scale in comparison with John Cena’s 7/10 public self-flagellation:

“I have to say something very, very, very important now. I love and respect China and Chinese people. I’m very, very sorry about my mistake. I apologise, I apologise, I’m very sorry. You must understand that I really love, really respect China and the Chinese people. My apologies. See you.”

It’s surprising, but SNL can still pull it together when sufficiently motivated to break free of the ideological chains binding comedy these days. It’s fascinating to see that the one thing that transcends both politics and race at this point in the ongoing imperial collapse is the younger generations’ loathing for the generational behavior of the Baby Boomers.

“You can tell this hit close to home because my boomer parents complained about it the entire time…”

It just kills them that no one admires their g-g-generation.

“Since 1975, I never imagined an SNL skit so obnoxious that it actually made me angry… Today changed everything. ? Wow.”

See, now THAT is how you identify nuclear rhetoric. These Boomers are genuinely angry about one little song-skit on SNL.

North Face discovers that its converged marketing department doesn’t know anything about their own products or what goes into them.

It started with a nice gesture. Adam Anderson, the CEO of Innovex Downhole Solutions, wanted to buy his employees a Christmas gift. So he ordered 400 North Face jackets and asked that their corporate logo be included.

Then came the bad news. The North Face company would sell Innovex the jackets but wouldn’t include the energy company’s logo. The reason? Innovex was an oil and gas company, and it would be a bad thing for North Face’s public image to associate itself with the industry.

Not happy with that answer, Anderson struck back with some public relations of his own. It turns out the vast majority of North Face’s apparel—its hoodies, snow pants, coats and many other items in its product line, like backpacks and tents—are made with polyester, polyurethane and nylon, all of which come from petroleum. Even its fancy fleece jackets are made of polyester.

“The irony in this statement is that your jackets are made from oil and gas products the hardworking men and women of our industry produce,” Anderson noted in a letter he sent to Steve Rendle, CEO of VF Corp. (which includes the North Face brand), on LinkedIn. “I think this stance by your company is counter-productive virtue signaling, and I would appreciate you re-considering this stance.”

It would be even more Good, Beautiful, and True if the suppliers of the oil and gas products to North Face refused to ship them any products until Mr. Rendle backs down and sends Innovex the jackets with the logos on them. In fairness, though, I very much doubt that the denizens of North Face’s marketing department know where meat comes from.

Speaking of rhetoric, now that the rainbow freaks aren’t using it anymore, it would be useful to adopt the LGBT acronym for our own.

L = The Light of the World

G = The Good

B = The Beautiful

T = The True

The way to recognize whether rhetoric is effective or not is by the reaction of the targets. Rhetoric that inspires denials, protests, and wordy dialectical retorts is effective, but you can always recognize effective rhetoric by the attempts to ban it:

Conservatives chalked up a victory in the battleground of pejorative labels, concluding that the trending ‘Blue Anon’ branding of left-wing conspiracy theorists is sufficiently stinging after the term earned censorship bona fides.

The term made it into the online Urban Dictionary of slang words and phrases earlier this week, only to be removed by Sunday. A search of the term, a play on ‘QAnon’ that has been used increasingly in recent months to mock leftists, now comes up empty. Previously, the dictionary showed a definition for Blue Anon, noting that it’s “a loosely organized network of Democrat voters, politicians and media personalities who spread left-wing conspiracy theories, such as the Russia hoax, Jussie Smollett hoax, Ukraine hoax, Covington kids hoax and Brett Kavanaugh hoax.”

Conservatives interpreted the attempted disappearing of Blue Anon as a sign of success. “Wokies at Urban Dictionary zapped Blue Anon because it was too powerful,” journalist Jack Posobiec said Sunday on Twitter. Others predicted a ‘Streisand effect’, when attempts to hide something inadvertently bring more attention and interest to it.

Perhaps it would be worthwhile to define a seven-level Nicomachean Scale of Rhetoric, by which the effectiveness of various rhetoric can be judged.

• (7) Thermonuclear. Example: racist, pedo, you have to go back
• (6) Nuclear. Example: Holocaust denier, cuckservative, mudshark, superstraight
• (5) Highly effective. Example: SJW, sexist, BlueAnon, feminazi, judeo-christian, Proposition Nation
• (4) Effective. Example: tranny, slut, conspiracy theorist, anti-Semite, neoclown
• (3) Mostly Harmless. Example: global-warming denier, glowie, incel, quisling, extremist
• (2) Harmless. Example: truther, hypocrite, propagandist, agist, anti-science
• (1) Give it up. Example: Dems are the real racists, crybully, TERF, handicapable

Also, note that the more a rhetorical term ju-jitsus the other side’s rhetoric, the more effective it is. That’s why SJW and BlueAnon are far more effective than people with a dialectical inclination tend to understand, because it is simultaneously parrying the other side’s rhetoric while launching a rhetorical attack on the other side’s self-image.

A few people been slinging around the rhetorical term Boomerphobia. As with the term homophobia, it is denigrating rhetoric that does not point one at the truth. In both cases, disgust is a considerably more accurate description than fear, which means that a more accurate term should be based on one of the two primary Greek terms for the former: αηδία or σιχασιά.

The problem is that in English, Boomeraidia sounds more like someone who has drunk the Boomer Kool-aid or cheerfully contributes to the upkeep of a Boomer’s nursing home than someone who would prefer that the staff make productive use of the pillows there. So, the term Boomersichasia is the preferable neologism, as it anglicizes quite nicely to Boomersick.

So, if one wishes to describe the attitude of this blog and many of this blog’s younger readers with regards to the Baby Boomers, please have the courtesy to utilize the correct dialectical term, which is Boomersichasic, or, if you prefer rhetoric, Boomersick.

If you don’t understand how Rush Limbaugh was a gatekeeper and a deceiver rather than the fearless pursuer of truth that he publicly affected to be, consider this Clinton-era exchange from his radio program. Pay particular attention to the way he generates a way to extricate himself from the discussion in a manner designed to discredit the caller:

Larry: The point- well, I don’t know if he committed suicide or not, but I know we haven’t been told the truth, and you always say you’re in relentless pursuit of the truth, but not on the this issue you’re not. You ducked this issue. You do not pursue the truth here. That’s a fact. We’ve not been told the truth, and that’s the fact, too. You can read the Fiske report and see that it’s full of errors. Have you read the Fiske report?

Limbaugh: I- yeah- well, no, but I.

Larry: Well then, you’re not in pursuit of the truth.

Limbaugh: ..but, I-, I- so, what we have here, you are—

Larry: You’re not informed.

Limbaugh; …you are not, as- as Mr. Snerdley thought, a Clinton supporter.

Larry: Well, I think Clinton’s going to be re-elected.

Limbaugh: No, no, no. Did you tell him you were a Clinton supporter..

Larry Yes. I, yeah, I… (Limbaugh dumped his telephonic tormentor.)

Limbaugh: Well, so you lied, Larry. So, when you tell one lie, all of what you say is worthless. That’s the mantra, today. So sir, you’re not going to be rewarded by saying- you don’t have to lie to get on this program. If you are in the pursuit of Vince Foster being murdered, get your own show, and you go out and pursue it as best you- as best you can, but don’t lie to get on this program, to accuse me of malfeasance, or some- some sort of incompetence, as host.

If we are to judge Limbaugh by his own standard, everything he ever said was worthless. First, that’s a ridiculous standard. Second, how would Larry’s preference for Clinton or Dole make any difference whatsoever with regards to the subject being discussed? Limbaugh was merely casting about for an excuse to extricate himself from a position that was discrediting him, which is exactly what con men do. Notice how he suddenly becomes much more smooth and eloquent once he has established his rhetorical escape route.

Beware the man who always uses the word “because” to rationalize his words and deeds. An honest man is content to state his position. The dishonest man always has to sell you on whatever it happens to be at the moment.

Now, I don’t care about Rush Limbaugh and a perusal of the blog archives will demonstrate that I never have. But as Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson fans can confirm, one of the most effective ways to focus my baleful gaze on an individual or a concept about which I am otherwise indifferent is to dispute my casual comments on the subject. So, if you’re a big fan of Rush, I would recommend that you don’t try too hard to defend him here.

UPDATE: I am far too busy to even begin doing the research that would be necessary to write such a book. And Rush is no longer even potentially relevant, for obvious reasons. Therefore, I will happily leave the task to some other writer.

Clay Travis points out that all the doomsaying Karens terrified of Corona-chan are eventually going to deny they ever even wore a mask:

My hope is that as the immediacy of the COVID “threat” recedes that many people are going to realize how wildly we overreacted as a country and how indefensible it was to, for instance, shut down schools for a year and have the poorest in our country, whose jobs were the most likely to be lost, bear all the brunt of the cost of our ineffective lockdowns.

Already, with the coronabros slowly realizing schools should have never been shut down in the first place, there appears to be a dawning of reality setting in for much of the country. The data isn’t going to change. It’s just going to become more widely understood in the years ahead, and there will be less emotion attached to it as well.

So I think what you’ll see is many people who were ardent coronabros begin to deny they were ever coronabros in the years ahead.

In many ways, that’s akin to Vietnam.

Have you ever met anyone who argued that the Vietnam War was worth fighting? Of course not. Yet back in the days of the Vietnam War, there were many people, including many of the best and brightest “experts” in the country, who argued fighting the war was essential.

Now those people have all repudiated that opinion.

I suspect the same thing will end up being true of anyone who ever advocated for lockdowns in this country. They will just vanish in the years ahead.

This might point towards effective rhetoric. When faced with a mask cultist, take a picture of them. When they ask what you’re doing, point out that you just want a record of how stupid they were for the future. The tide is already beginning to turn. 

If you want to know why I hold all binary thinkers unable to grasp even a modicum of second-order reasoning in contempt, this is precisely why:

What part of never talk to the media is hard to understand?

Apparently the part where you want to do it yourself.

I’m sorry but as much as I like reading this blog this is just plain hypocrisy. You’re trying to shred the guy for talking to the media and say that you should never talk to the media. Then you try to justify you doing it yourself. That’s what liberals do.

I don’t agree with everything Peterson says but from what I’ve seen of him I like how he analyses some topics. Sure be critical of the guy if you disagree with something he says or does, just don’t expect people to let your own hypocrisy slide.

What midwits are simply incapable of understanding is the fact that a) legitimate exceptions to most rules exist in certain contexts and b) the fact that there are exceptions does not disprove the rule. They simply don’t grasp context. They have a total inability to read negative space.

“Never talk to the police” does not mean “don’t call 911 when someone is trying to break into your house.” “Never apologize” doesn’t mean “don’t say ‘I’m sorry’ to your wife when you forget to fill up the car with gas when you told her you would.” 

And “never talk to the media” doesn’t mean not issuing press releases or not talking to specialist media outlets about new products. Doing that is literally a necessary part of the job. It means “don’t talk to any member of the media that wants to talk to you because all they want is ammunition for the inevitable hit piece.” It means “don’t talk to the media about yourself, your ideas, or your books.” It is rhetoric, not dialectic, and it’s formulated strongly in order to keep all the special boys from concluding that the general rule doesn’t apply to them because the media is obviously going to give them a pass for being so special. 

The famous last words of a special boy: They even said they wanted to let me tell my side of the story! Because no one’s ever heard THAT one before….

Please note that I am still rejecting every media request and interview request sent to me by everyone from The New York Times to right-wing BitChute channels and high-school fans, and will continue to do so. Have you seen or read one anywhere? Nevertheless, I absolutely will be letting the relevant organizations know about Project Asteroid, because all of their audiences will be extremely interested in it and there are certain aspects that we want to be sure their audiences know about. And I will do it rather than permit any other member of the team to do so because if there is any unpleasant blowback that does happen to result from this, as there may well be, I am much better equipped to endure it than anyone else.

So if you genuinely consider that to be “plain hypocrisy” then by all means leave this blog, leave this community, and follow Jordan Peterson into his schizophrenic Hell.