Tag: rhetoric

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.

 A woman learns, with horror, that she voted for the man whose policies are going to have a negative impact on her family’s lifestyle, as her husband works in the oil industry.

Jeremy just called and yelled at me. He said that everyone on the job site are freaking out thinking they are going to lose their jobs. He’s blaming me for voting for Biden. You know I hated the way Trump acted. Is it true that Jeremy could lose his job?

Ok, first I’m sorry Jeremy is likely losing his job. I’m going to be honest with you though, YOU voted for this. I didn’t and neither did Jeremy, but we will be suffering…. I always knew people would regret voting for Biden, I didn’t think it would be Day 1. Biden probably won’t hurt your feelings as much as Trump, but he will take you husband’s job.

In fairness, Biden didn’t actually win the election, so she’s not genuinely culpable for the loss of her husband’s job. But it is a salient lesson. Fake elections have consequences.

ITEM:  Veteran talk show host Larry King, suffering from COVID-19, has been moved out of the intensive care unit at a Los Angeles hospital and is breathing on his own, a spokesman said on Monday. King was moved to the ICU on New Year’s Eve and was receiving oxygen but is now breathing on his own, said David Theall, a spokesman for Ora Media, a production company formed by King. The 87-year-old broadcasting legend shared a video phone call with his three sons.

ITEM: The latest suspicious death to occur days (or, in some cases, even hours) after a patient received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine has surfaced in Portugal, where a pediatric surgery assistant in Porto (who was reportedly in “perfect health” when she received her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine) has died suddenly. The patient was identified on Monday as Sonia Azevedo, 41, a mother of two who worked as a surgical assistant at the Instituto Portugues de Oncologia, a cancer hospital in Porto. She was among the 538 healthcare workers at IPO who received their first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine last Wednesday. Azevedo had dinner with her family on New Year’s Eve, but was found dead in her bed the following morning.

If a sickly 87-year-old man who has had multiple heart surgeries can survive the disease with the help of a little oxygen, is trying to inoculate oneself against it really worth a 0.18 percent chance of dropping dead for the middle-aged and healthy? To put it in perspective, the odds of dying from the vaccine are slightly worse than the risk of death while hang-gliding.

There is no chance this pandemic would be considered such a massive priority if it weren’t the Boomers in the genuine danger zone from the disease.

Your body, your choice. Never miss an opportunity to hurl their own rhetoric back in their faces.

I’ve been asked a few times by a couple different people how to respond when friends and family bring up the increasingly risible Fake Polls cited by the Fake News. Now, obviously the dialectic approach of citing the Norporth model and pointing to the 2016 polls is an option, but it’s not a good one, since the vast majority of people supporting Biden are limited to rhetoric.

So, I suggest simply saying: “You’re not trying to convince me, you’re trying to convince yourself.” 

Leave it at that and watch the wheels start spinning and the smoke start rising. Because the best rhetoric is always rooted in the truth.

It’s very hard not to laugh at the difficulty liberals have with the idea that people genuinely support Donald Trump’s presidency:

Let me start by saying, I get it. I understand the confusion. The anger. The heartbreak.

Someone you thought was a good and kind person has revealed themselves to be… something different. Someone you love has exposed their support for or tolerance of bigotry, hatred, selfishness, narcissism, bullying, racism, sexism, abuse and violence through their support of Trump.

Maybe you found out directly. Or maybe you always had a hunch but were never quite sure. Regardless of the way you find out, the realization is, quite simply, devastating. Horrifying. Confusing. Embarrassing. Maddening. Demoralizing.

I know. I get it. Truly, I do. And sadly, so do plenty of other people.

So here’s the reality you’re – that we’re – currently facing: someone we love is supporting Trump.

So what the hell do we do about it?

As always, I recommend responding to any friend or family member who tests the waters with a dismissive reference to “Trump” or “Drumpf” with “I think you mean the God-Emperor!” Stops them in their tracks and shuts them down every single time. Finish them off with a straightforward declaration of fact: Trump is the greatest U.S. President since Andrew Jackson.

I, for one, certainly don’t have any problem with their solutions.

Let me be very clear, just because someone is family, they do not get the privilege of being in your life. “But they’re family” isn’t a reason to give someone access to your life and jeopardize your wellbeing. What these boundaries look like are different for everyone. For some people, it might mean a shift, but you’re still able to maintain some kind of relationship. For others, it might be cutting them out completely. Believe me, it is not easy at all. It hurts bad when your MAGA-hat wearing cousin calls you all kinds of names on social media. But this is why the unfollow, unfriend, and block buttons were created. You do not need to subject yourself to bullies and toxic relationships just because someone is related to you.

If any friend or relative of mine ever decided to remove the privilege of being in their life and having access to them due to my outspoken support for the greatest U.S. President since Andrew Jackson, I would sincerely thank them. And then I would happily go about living the rest of my life without ever giving the moron another thought. I don’t waste my time on stupid people.

 Dave Bautista, who not only worked for alleged pedo James Gunn, but actually criticized his firing, is obviously alarmed that the God-Emperor is going after the sex traffickers and child molesters:

Dave Bautista wants to know what’s up with the pedo stuff. No, not in a Pete Townsend kind of way. He wants to know why marks for his arch-enemy, fellow WWE Hall-of-Famer President Donald Trump, believe anyone who doesn’t support the president is a pedophile.

Bautista took to Twitter to ask, “When did everyone who doesn’t support @realDonaldTrump become a pedophile? Is that like the craziest shit ever or what? Inbred Philosophy 101 ‘Don’t support fascism? Child molester!!!!’ yeah, makes perfect sense.”

Besides, everyone knows that the only reason not to support Donald Trump is systematic pedophilia. Even if you’re not abusing children yourself, you’re part of a system that systematically abuses children and that makes you a pedophile.

It’s like these idiots never imagined that anyone would ever use their own rhetorical tactics against them. Or understood that the reason the rhetoric is effective is because it is clearly rooted in truth.

They don’t care if they’re called communists. They don’t care if they’re called socialists. They don’t care if they’re called the real racists. But it is clear that they really, really, really care about being called a) Fake Americans, b) satanists, and c) pedos, or being (((identified))).

And remember, rhetoric is most effective when it is based on the truth:

PRESIDENT Donald Trump has shockingly shared a post claiming that rival Joe Biden is a pedophile along with a “misleading” video of the former VP whispering into a woman’s ear. 

Trump retweeted the GIF from a conservative Twitter user’s account on Tuesday morning that included the hashtag “#PedoBiden.”

The clip shows former Defense Secretary Ash Carter speaking at a podium during his swearing-in ceremony at the White House in 2015 while his wife, Stephanie Carter, and Biden stand nearby. Biden is seen standing behind Carter with his hands on her shoulders – and briefly whispers in the woman’s ear before she smiles and nods reassuringly. 

While her age is unclear, it’s very clear that Carter is a woman and not a child or underage female.

There’s no evidence to suggest that Biden is a pedophile and claims that he is are unfounded and have no basis in fact.

It’s always fascinating to see how the media tries to shift into pure dialectic mode with a higher standard of proof than is required in a court of law whenever it is trying to defend someone against an effective rhetorical attack. There is, after all, copious video and photo evidence that Creepy Joe is, at the very least, included to make females of every age more than a little uncomfortable.