Tag: rhetoric

Not that anyone with even half a brain trusts the FBI anymore, but the Portland office has now confirmed that the Bureau is loyal to the Color Revolution, not the American people:

Reports that extremists are setting wildfires in Oregon are untrue. Help us stop the spread of misinformation by only sharing information from trusted, official sources.

FBI Portland and local law enforcement agencies have been receiving reports that extremists are responsible for setting wildfires in Oregon. With our state and local partners, the FBI has investigated several such reports and found them to be untrue.

Special Agent In Charge Loren Cannon, Federal Bureau of Investigation

Remember, the children of the Devil always deceive through misdirection and redefinition. The key word here is “extremists”. Sure, various individuals are confirmed to have been observed and arrested for starting fires in Washington, in California, and in Oregon, and have even been caught red-handed with matches by armed property owners. But the FBI has investigated these reports and determined that none of them were committed by extremists. Therefore, Antifa has nothing to do with it, so stop paying attention and definitely don’t blame the death and destruction on the people who are fanning the flames, both literally and metaphorically. That would be antisemitic. And racist. And homophobic. And conspiracy theory misinformation crimethink. Definitely not meth.

Oregon officials are noting that no antifa members have been arrested in connection with the fires, but there have been some arsonists connected with some of the blazes.

This is why it is important to understand that the USA is presently experiencing an attempted Color Revolution of which Antifa is merely one collection of anti-government stormtroopers. BLM is another. NeverTrump is a third. Notice that mere “official sources” are not enough to avoid being deemed misinformation. Those “official sources” must also be “trusted”, which means “controlled by the Color Revolution.”

The West Coast wildfires are clearly being magnified by the arson attacks. The CoRevs are attempting to hide these attacks under the cover of the natural events, but their hand has already been exposed. And the attacks should serve as a warning to the Patriot community that has retreated from the cities and suburbs that even distance will not suffice to assure they will be left alone.

Watered-down rhetoric never works:

Google Trends data shows Trump’s “Sleepy Joe” name-calling isn’t generating nearly the buzz “Crooked Hillary” (or “Little Marco”) did in 2016. Base voters who relished doubting President Obama’s birth certificate aren’t questioning Biden’s.

Other factors are working against Trump’s playbook. Tech platforms are increasingly moving to shut down hate speech and flag misinformation, killing the sources of some of Trump’s favorite conspiratorial material. And search metrics suggest that, for the most part, a nation with more than 125,000 dead from the coronavirus has less patience for the president’s usual tactics.

The reason that “Sleepy Joe” is a failure is because it is poor rhetoric. It is poor rhetoric because it is not based on the truth and therefore misses the target. Hillary is crooked. Marco is a dwarf, both physically and politically. Joe Biden, for all his various flaws and shortcomings, is not a narcoleptic.

I suspect that the President’s original choice for Biden is “Creepy Joe”, but he was talked out of using it by his advisors, because they thought it was too harsh. Which, of course, is wormtongue-speak for “too effective”. But Biden is a confirmed creeper and women, especially young women and little girls, observably find him creepy.

Even “Sniffy Joe” would have worked, given Biden’s predilection for hair-sniffing. But “Creepy Joe” is the killer rhetoric that Trump should have used, and it won’t surprise me if he begins using it once his reelection campaign actually begins in earnest.

A reader discovers why rhetoric is no longer taught in schools and universities:

Thanks to your writings on the topic, I’ve started to understand much more about the role of rhetoric and dialectic in communication.  I’m currently reading The Ethics of Rhetoric by Richard Weaver and came across this brilliant passage about practitioners of “base rhetoric,” which he defines as “speech which influences us in the direction of what is evil.”

Examples of this kind of contrivance occur on every hand in the impassioned language of journalism and political pleading.  In the world of affairs which these seek to influence, the many are kept in a state of pupillage so that they will be most docile to their “lovers.”  The techniques of the base lover, especially as exemplified in modern journalism, would make a long catalogue, but in general it is accurate to say that he seeks to keep the understanding in a passive state by never permitting an honest examination of the alternatives.  Nothing is more feared by him than a true dialectic, for this not only endangers his favored alternative, but also gives the “beloved”…some training in intellectual independence.

What he does therefore is dress up one alternative in all the cheap finery of immediate hopes and fears, knowing that if he can thus prevent a masculine exercise of imagination and will he can have his way.  By discussing only one side of an issue, by mentioning cause without consequence or consequence without cause, acts without agents or agents without agency, he often successfully blocks definition and cause-and-effect reasoning.  In this way his choices are arrayed in such meretricious images that one can quickly infer the juvenile mind which they would attract.  Of course the base rhetorician today, with his vastly augmented power of propagation, has means of deluding which no ancient rhetor in forum or marketplace could have imagined.

It’s amazing how even a basic understanding of this subject allows one a much more precise and clear view of the world; frauds, charlatans, and wizards are readily identifiable.  I suppose that’s why it isn’t taught in public schools.

Actually, I tend to disagree with the assertion that the true dialectician is the base rhetorician’s greatest fear. Understanding and utilizing dialectic is good. But understanding and utilizing both dialectic and rhetoric is better, because while the dialectician has the ability to see through the base rhetoric, the true rhetorician has the ability to understand, confront, and publicly defeat it.

Conservatives and liberals alike are discovering that the Martin Luther King dream was never any more legitimate than any other Enlightenment lie:

Last week, a group of minority students emailed Professor Gordon Klein, asking him to let black students sit out this week’s exams in light of recent events. Klein refused. In an email supposedly from the professor, he explained his issues with the students’ racial grievances.

“Do you know the names of the classmates that are black?” he allegedly wrote. “How can I identify them, since we’ve been having online classes only? Are there any students that may be of mixed parentage, such as half black-half Asian? What do you suggest I do with respect to them? A full concession or just half? “One last thing strikes me: Remember that MLK famously said that people should not be evaluated based on the ‘color of their skin.’ Do you think that your request would run afoul of MLK’s admonition?”

The woke mob saw red, and a student named Preet Bains started a petition to have the professor fired. The petition, which describes Klein’s response as “woefully racist,” has attracted nearly 20,000 signatures, and UCLA has apparently sided with the aggrieved students. At some point since Friday, Klein was placed on leave.

Racial equality and content of character are not only the same sort of Enlightenment spells as free speech, free trade, and the labor theory of value, they are deep Promethean psyops that have successfully demoralized and paralyzed the Christian West for the last 60 years.

But sooner or later, the truth always exposes the lie hidden underneath the spell.

If you’re one of those self-deceivers who “doesn’t see color” or “looks at people as individuals” or “refuses to judge others by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”, then you have been spell-bound by the evil wizards who serve Satan.

Only God sees the human heart, so by accepting the foundational lie of this spell, you are acceding to the Promethean program of seeking to make yourself a god.

What you’re seeing, the “riots” and the “police abuse” is all a movie playing out on a large scale in real-time. The consequences are real, but the narrative being pushed is entirely false.

#Bellevue Mall is being looted. I watched it unfold. Well-organized white men with walkie talkies broke windows and breeched the mall. Others went in and took stuff. By the time the media arrived, the only thing they saw was the taking of stuff. They did not see who started it.

If you think that sounds incredible, try to remember, we’re dealing with a force that, in less than 60 years, somehow managed to convince the entire American nation that its flesh-and-blood people, the posterity and heirs of the American Revolution, were nothing more than an idea.

Even the conservative establishment tools are beginning to see through the charade. Whoever could have put that nice new stack of bricks in the middle of the street for the joggers? What an unfortunate coincidence!

Don’t ask questions of joggers or you might lose your job or even your lease:

A Minneapolis venture capitalist’s office lease has been terminated after a video went viral showing him asking a group of black entrepreneurs if they were tenants of the building and thus allowed to use its gym. In the video posted Tuesday night, Tom Austin, who is white, said he was going to call 911 on the group. He ended up calling the building’s property manager instead.

Meanwhile, Minneapolis enjoys more of its vibrant diversity, as “flames erupted” and “fires broke out” for absolutely no reason at all. This is an area I knew very well, as I graduated from a private school four blocks away from one of the liquor stores mentioned below.

For much of the night, the police radio squawked with call after call, as looting started first at the Target store across the street from the precinct, before spreading to other areas in the city. Dozens of businesses were either looted or torched, or both, mostly in the area of Minnehaha Avenue and E. Lake Street, but also along business corridors on the city’s North and South sides.

Firefighters raced from one blaze to the next, often with police in tow for crowd control. After someone started a fire at an AutoZone store at Minnehaha and Lake, firefighters worked to douse the flames, knocking down the majority of them. But within a matter of hours, the store was ablaze again, as was a half-built affordable housing development that caught fire, sending flames more than a hundred feet into the air.

Vandals broke into Chicago-Lake Liquor, and also shattered a few windows at the Midtown Market down the block. They also targeted businesses along W. Broadway Avenue, north Minneapolis’ main commercial drag, and in the Uptown area. Several pharmacies were reportedly burglarized, with suspects fleeing with handfuls of prescription pill bottles.

A Target and Cub Foods anchoring the corner of E. Lake Street and Hiawatha Avenue were looted, along with other small businesses, including Minnehaha Lake Wine & Spirits. Flames and smoke shot into the air when a nearby AutoZone auto parts store was set ablaze. As some protesters tried to put out the fire, others danced gleefully in front of it, snapping selfies.

Equalitarianism is the real problem here. This isn’t about “police brutality”. After all, how many stores were burned and looted when an African cop shot and killed Justine Damond at her Minneapolis home in 2017?

Anyhow, I won’t mind if the joggers burn all of South Minneapolis to the ground. It’s a vibrant hellhole of diversity, and perhaps a sufficiently large conflagration will shake at least some idiot Minnesota liberals out of their smug equalitarianism.

And as one socialgalactician noted, it won’t be long before the word “jogger” is banned.

Meanwhile, Rep. Ilhan Omar, who “represents” Minneapolis in Congress, said: “Our anger is just. Our anger is warranted.”

This is why you always sink the damn ships and pick your own damn cotton.

A socialgalactician observes scientistic rhetoric in action.

Me:“here is anecdotal evidence hcq works”
Scientist friend: “so we agree there’s no evidence hcq works”

The devotees of scientistry always, Always, ALWAYS rely upon on rhetoric, specifically, upon a false definition of “evidence”. Their rhetorical redefinition is limited, ironically enough, to “published, peer-reviewed scientific evidence”, which statistical analysis has proven to be less reliable than a coin flip.

Grandpa Lampshade has come around to the idea that there is more to the concept of the gamma behavioral pattern than the mere desire to devalue disagreement:

Just wanted to say that I thought that the whole “gamma” thing came off a bit like “Anyone who doesn’t agree with me = gamma”

I was wrong.

The patterns are like the “Well actually” meme; instead of simply pointing out where one could be incorrect about something, it always seems to be some form of semantics and always framed as a “gotcha” from a standpoint of superiority.

This is precisely why I no longer tolerate any mention of me, my motivations, my inclinations, or my objectives in the general discourse here. Because it’s not all about me and there isn’t a single idea that can be negated by my personal flaws and failings or proven by my positive attributes and accomplishments.

Argument ad hominem isn’t merely a logical fallacy, not infrequently it is utilized as a dishonest rhetorical attempt to distract, discredit, and derail.

A government employee who has been responsible for public outreach during the pandemic adds his two cents on how to distinguish between people who are legitimately asking questions and those who are there to argue:

If the questioner refuses to click on a link, call a number, or take any effort at all to read or know the answer, then they are there to argue. Many times they have already read the answer and simply want to gripe. Other times, the answer is irrelevant and they just want to argue. They may have already asked multiple people and are digging for the answer they want to hear in order to pit different groups against each, and once again, argue.

They waste everyone’s time and that is their actual goal.

No emotion, no victory:

The American media strategist Bill Knapp, who helped Obama into office in 2008, flies over to start preparing David for TV interviews. At the end of a long day, Bill takes me aside.

‘I gotta be honest with you,’ he says. ‘You’re never going to win this one unless you have an emotional argument for Remain. And you’ve gotta have a better answer on immigration.’

Of course, Bill has zoomed in straight away on our two core problems — problems we never resolve.

It’s true our message isn’t a very emotive one. No one is pretending the EU is a perfect institution. Quite the opposite. We’ve spent years arguing for reform. Securing our special status.

Essentially, we’re stuck arguing for a marriage we’ve just taken to mediation. Saying: ‘It’s about more than just the relationship; it’s about the kids — and their kids. The house, the car, the holidays, our social life. About our lifestyle.’

But still, at the core, we’re having to mount an argument for what appears to be a soured relationship – and this is hard.

All the emotional energy is with the other side, the side that chants for liberty, freedom, a fresh start.

Immigration is a losing issue everywhere, except in the United States. But soon, it will be here too. Because the immigration = economic growth = societal wealth argument is now as observably and objectively false as the free trade = economic growth = societal prosperity argument.