Tag: rhetoric

China Holds the USA Accountable

For all that it makes Americans extremely uncomfortable and quick to cite a panoply of irrelevant tangential facts that don’t excuse their ancestors’ actions, the absolute historical fact is that the European colonists – English and Spanish – committed imperialist genocide against the various American Indian tribes. And China is now utilizing these historical facts to great rhetorical effect to undermine the USA’s false claim to the moral high ground; for all the horrific crimes of the Mao era, at least the Chinese only victimized their own people.

CRI: We noticed that a report from the US Department of the Interior last month said a large number of Native American children died at Indian boarding schools. After that, more and more survivors and their descendants have spoken out and accused the US government of genocide against American Indians. Do you have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: We are deeply sympathetic to the tragic experience of the Native American children. Those so-called boarding schools that carried the motto “Kill the Indian, save the man” were in essence crime scenes of the US cultural genocide against Native Americans. What happened at these schools is also important evidence of the racial genocide committed by the US against Native Americans. More and more facts have come to light and shown that the US committed systemic genocide against Native Americans in three dimensions, which has lasted hundreds of years and continues to this day. 

First, the US has committed physical genocide against the Native American population. Statistics show that since its independence in 1776, the US government has launched over 1,500 attacks on Indian tribes to slaughter the Indians. Before the arrival of white settlers in 1492, there were five million Indians, yet the number plummeted to 600,000 by 1800 and only 237,000 in 1900. Among them, more than a dozen tribes, such as the Pequot, Mohegan, and Massachusetts, were completely extinct. The US government also applied forced sterilization to Indians. Between 1930 and 1976, the US Bureau of Indian Affairs forcibly sterilized approximately 70,000 Indian women through the “Indian Health Service program”. In early 1970s, more than 42% of Indian women of childbearing age were sterilized.

Second, the US has committed spiritual and cultural genocide against Native Americans. They have long suffered hostility, discrimination and oblivion. The inter-generational inheritance of indigenous spirits and culture of Native Americans have long been hindered. In the 1870s and ’80s, the US government adopted a policy of “forced assimilation” to obliterate the social fabric and culture of Indian tribes and destroy the ethnic and tribal identity of the Indians. To attain the dual goal of cultural assimilation and taking Indian lands for itself, the US government began with forcing Native American children into the Indian boarding schools, banning them from speaking their native language, wearing their traditional clothes, or carrying out traditional activities. The children also suffered serious abuse and torment. US-based scholar Preston McBride estimates that the total number of deaths could be as high as 40,000, adding that “basically every school had a graveyard.” Even today, the US is still trying to deliberately obliterate the historical memory and information of the indigenous people in education and media reports. According to a report by National Indian Education Association, 87% of state-level US history textbooks do not mention the post-1900 history of indigenous people. 

Third, the US has committed deprivation of the rights of Native Americans. The US has systematically deprived Native Americans and other ethnic minorities of a wide range of their rights, leaving them mired in a crisis of survival and scarcity of rights. A report by the Indian Health Service shows that Native Americans born today have a life expectancy that is 5.5 years less than the national average, and they have the highest infant mortality rate. The suicide rate of Native American adolescents is 1.9 times that of the national average. By June 2022, the COVID-19 mortality rate among Native Americans is about 2.1 times that of the White population. From 1969 to 2009, the US government conducted 928 nuclear tests in the Shoshone tribal region, resulting in nuclear fallout of around 620 kilotons. Cancer incidence rate in Native Americans’ reservations is far higher than other areas. High levels of radioactive substance has been detected in the systems of about a quarter of Navajo women and infants. According to 2018 US Census Data, the poverty rate among Native Americans was 25.4%, far higher than 8.1% among the White population.

Genocide against Native Americans is an original sin of the US that can never be erased. The untold tragedies of Native Americans should never be forgotten. The US government has every reason to admit its crimes of genocide against Native Americans, and offer sincere apologies and repentance to the victims and their descendants. The US government should also credibly make up for the trauma Native Americans are suffering, and seriously face up to grave human rights issues and crimes of racism that exist within the US.

Zhao Lijian, Foreign Ministry, 29 June 2022

Before you react like a Pavlovian dog hearing a dinner bell, please remember this, White American: YOU ARE THE INDIAN NOW.

All of the lies and twisted truths you repeated in order to try to rationalize the sins of the past are now being told to justify your dispossession. The only difference is that the replacement peoples are unlikely to treat your great-great-grandchildren quite as kindly as your great-great-great-grandfather treated some of my ancestors. Imagine the lies and twisted truths that will be accepted as historical fact by the Post-Americans once Americans are a statistical minority similar to the American Indian population today.

Contemplate how many of your Asian and African great-grandchildren will be in my position, with most of their Asian and African peers refusing to believe that they have any European ancestors. After all, they won’t LOOK white…

What is happening today is directly traceable to the sins of the founding fathers and their abominable behavior toward “the merciless Indian Savages”, as the Declaration of Independence described them. Note in particular that the very concept of racism, upon which the entire American population has been condemned and crucified, was specifically coined by an American in order to destroy the American Indian. It is, therefore, both ironic and fitting that “racism” has been the primary weapon utilized in the rhetorical demolition of America.

I don’t remind you of these historical wrongs because I want revenge for my Indian ancestors or because I dream of Chung Kuo. What is done is done, and nothing is going to change that. To the contrary, I remind you of them because I do not wish for the American to go the way of the American Indian.

Perhaps, unlike the American Indian tribes, Americans can put all their ideological and individual differences aside in time to unite against the foreign peoples invading their lands and prevent their replacement. But most likely, as Sitting Bull and the Ghost Dancers learned to their dismay, it is already too late. It may be worth noting, in this regard, that while in 1890, the population of the United States, excluding the Indian and Negro minorities, was around 55 million, the post-1965 foreign population resident in the USA is presently about twice that number.

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The Inversion Identifier

As I’ve observed in the past, you can accurately identify the wicked by their inevitable inversions. Even more usefully, you can reliably identify the evil position that the wicked have taken, and thereby make better decisions with regards to related matters, in light of those inversions. Consider Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s two contradictory positions on bodily autonomy.

Vaccines are the best way to finish the fight against COVID-19. That’s why we will make vaccines mandatory for anyone boarding a plane or train, or any federally-regulated worker. This is how we will keep everyone, including our kids, safe and healthy.

  • Justin Trudeau, 27 August 2021

No government, politician, or many should tell a woman what she can or cannot do with her body. I want women in Canada to know that we will always stand up for your right to choose.

  • Justin Trudeau, 24 June 2022

The “My Body, My Choice” rhetoric in support of a nonexistent right to abortion has always been nonsensical. In most legal jurisdictions, a woman has no right to put certain substances inside her body, drive with certain quantities of legal substances inside her body, place her body in certain specified locations, or charge other individuals for hourly access to her body. This has been true for decades, if not centuries, and with the occasional exception of the latter example, no one seriously attempts to dispute these laws on the grounds of bodily autonomy.

But the obvious contrast with the vaccine mandates is simply too recent and too stark for the pro-choice advocates to get any traction at all with a resort to their historical rhetoric. I suspect that’s why we’re mostly hearing it from female entertainers and a few low-wattage politicians like Trudeau rather than the narrative-reinforcing propaganda corps, because the massive government invasion of bodily autonomy inherent in the vaccine mandates has had the unintended effect of auto-neutralizing the abortion rhetoric.

As Ian Miller notes on Outkick:

It’s nothing new for politicians and public health authorities to be hypocritical. But their ability to blatantly disregard the principles of bodily autonomy and personal control over health decisions just a few months ago means it’s impossible to take them seriously now.

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RHETORIC by Castalia Library

Castalia vs Franklin: A Tale of Two Libraries

RHETORIC by Aristlotle is now available from Castalia Library in both Castalia Library and Libraria Castalia editions. It’s one of our fastest-selling books, as we’d already be sold out if we hadn’t boosted the print run to 850. There are currently just 93 79 53 30 copies left in stock. In addition to featuring our most Franklinesque spine – which you can see above in between SUMMA ELVETICA and HEIDI on the left – it also features a preface by yours truly.

Preface to Rhetoric

Aristotle’s Rhetoric is one of the most useful and important analyses of human communication ever written. It is also one of the great philosopher’s least appreciated works, as it is easily mistaken for a mere technical breakdown of the various forms of persuasion rather than what it truly is, a brilliant conceptual guide to understanding and anticipating human behavior.

While a considerable portion of the text is devoted to the mechanics of the syllogism and the enthymeme, as well as the presentation of the inevitable lists which Aristotle characteristically constructs, by far the most important element of this little book is the philosopher’s division of humanity into two fundamental classes: those who are capable of learning through information and those who are not.

This is such an important distinction that it is remarkable for its complete absence from the schools and universities today. The distinction calls into question everything from modern pedagogical systems to personal conversations while simultaneously explaining the mystery that has confounded every intelligent individual who has ever tried, and failed, to explain the obvious to another person.

Indeed, it is comforting to have one’s long-held suspicions about the intrinsic limitations of one’s fellow man confirmed so comprehensively. More importantly, Aristotle’s rhetorical framework provides those who understand and apply it the ability to effectively communicate to the full spectrum of humanity, in effect permitting the reader to transcend his natural psycho-linguistic instincts and attain true intellectual polylingualism.

It must be admitted that Rhetoric would be considerably more accessible if the terminology utilized was a little more expansive and a little less imitated. Even though his definition makes sense when the relevant terms are analyzed in detail, it is not exactly conducive to comprehension for Aristotle to define the two subsets of rhetoric to be dialectic and rhetoric, therein requiring a casual distinction between rhetoric and rhetoric-rhetoric, or capital-R Rhetoric and lowercase-r rhetoric. Adding to the confusion is the fact that both Hegel and Marx subsequently attempted to redefine the term dialectic, although there is precious little in common between Aristotelian dialectic, Hegelian dialectic, Marxian dialectic, and the current dictionary term.

However, once the reader grasps that in this context, Rhetoric simply means persuasion, which is divided into a) fact-and-reason based persuasion, or dialectic, and b) emotion-based persuasion, or rhetoric, the basic framework becomes clear. The philosopher explains that while some people can be persuaded by information and logical demonstrations, people are most readily persuaded by emotional manipulation. Moreover, some people can only be persuaded by emotional manipulation, as Aristotle observes in what may be the most important sentence in the book.

Before some audiences not even the possession of the exactest knowledge will make it easy for what we say to produce conviction. For argument based on knowledge implies instruction, and there are people whom one cannot instruct.

What Aristotle is observing is that some of those who are limited to rhetoric are immune to dialectic. Such individuals cannot be swayed by facts or reason, no matter how exact the knowledge provided, no matter how impeccable the logic presented. Those who are immune to dialectic can only be reached through rhetoric, which is to say by manipulation that plays upon their emotions more effectively than whatever feelings inspired them to be convicted of their current beliefs.

While this manipulation may strike some readers as unethical, it is justified by necessity, as the duty of rhetoric requires addressing those “who cannot take in at a glance a complicated argument, or follow a long chain of reasoning.” While the enthymeme resembles the logical syllogism, it is not, in fact, logic, and the truths that it proves are only apparent truths.

Which, of course, is another way of saying that they are literal untruths.

This is why people whose natural preferences incline toward dialectic have a strong tendency to regard rhetoric as being fundamentally dishonest, and to consider the emotional manipulation involved in utilizing rhetoric to be intrinsically wrong. This distaste for rhetoric among those capable of utilizing dialectic is common, but it is nevertheless false. First, because even the most logically correct dialectic can be entirely false if the premises upon which the syllogisms are constructed are false. Second, because the more that the rhetoric incorporates and points toward the truth, the more effective it tends to be.

Neither dialectic nor rhetoric are inherently true or false; the very attempt to distinguish them in this manner is to make a category error. It might help to think of them as languages; just as one could not reasonably describe English as honest while insisting that German is deceptive and morally wrong, one should not assign morality to either of the two subsets of Rhetoric.

It is more correct, more practical, and more effective to apply the principle of utilizing the form of communication best understood by the listener. Just as one would not speak Chinese to an individual who only understands English, one should not rely upon rhetoric when speaking to a dialectic-speaker, or expect a rhetoric-speaker to be persuaded by dialectical arguments.

Aristotle himself believed it was vital for a man to be able to employ both arts, not so much for the purposes of persuasion, but rather, to avoid being deceived.

We must be able to employ persuasion, just as strict reasoning can be employed, on opposite sides of a question, not in order that we may in practice employ it in both ways (for we must not make people believe what is wrong), but in order that we may see clearly what the facts are, and that, if another man argues unfairly, we on our part may be able to confute him. No other of the arts draws opposite conclusions: dialectic and rhetoric alone do this. Both these arts draw opposite conclusions impartially. Nevertheless, the underlying facts do not lend themselves equally well to the contrary views. No; things that are true and things that are better are, by their nature, practically always easier to prove and easier to believe in.

Aristotle’s Rhetoric is every bit as useful and valid today as it was when it was first written more than 2,300 years ago. It is less a work of philosophy than a treasure chest of practical information for the individual who seeks to pursue the Good, the Beautiful, and the True.

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China Signals its Side

The specific choice of rhetoric utilized in this Global Times article is extremely significant.

Last year, several “anonymous US officials” have told the media either “the Chinese military has three times rejected requests for calls from the US defense secretary,” “researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick and sought hospital care before COVID-19 outbreak disclosed,” or “China has no intention of engaging in serious or substantive talks with the US.” All of these have later been proven to be utter disinformation, which only serves as “cannonballs” for attacking China.

When looking back at his past as CIA director, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo once said publicly, “We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses.” So how does the US lie and deceive people? It is easier for Washington and the US media to quote “anonymous officials” to spread lies as shocking “exclusive news.” The cooperation between US propaganda machines and diplomatic and intelligence services has greatly increased the deceptiveness of those lies. Moreover, the US’ alliance system and hegemony in public opinion can make sure that even though Washington is a habitual liar, it can obtain a certain amount of assentation and support. This has become the bases for the US to play politics as it wants.

While US media maliciously falsifies the truth, Washington deliberately pretends to know nothing. These two to some extent have even formed an integral production, supply and distribution chain of fake news. This is unprofessional, immoral, and irresponsible, and will only further discredit the US in front of the world. As some comments pointed out, whenever people see the news reports that include sentences like “anonymous officials revealed…” and “US intelligence agencies claimed…,” they should in their minds replace everything in those sentences with “They may be lying.”

Therefore, unsurprisingly, as Washington is changing its foreign strategy to “great power competition,” it will use its hegemony in public opinion and media to spread false information and launch a “public opinion warfare.” Of course, we can also be sure that such a “double act” will sooner or later fail to work as the deficit in the US’ account of credibility rises.

Right now, when the military conflict in Ukraine is getting increasingly serious under Washington’s provocation, and when the energy and refugee crises become more and more severe in Europe, the US’ smear campaign will only unmask it as the initiator. More and more people will see the true face of the US – an “empire of lies.”

The Chinese may not believe in Satan or the spiritual side of Babelism, but they are nevertheless opposed to the forces of globalist satanry for their own materialistic and nationalistic reasons.

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Cracks in the Narrative

The globalist media begins to prepare the great mass of NPCs that the Ukrainians are not winning the war, Putin is not going to be overthrown, and jaw-jaw does not trump war-war. While globohomo clearly won the information war, Russia is winning the actual boots-on-the-ground war.

As Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine grinds on into its fourth week, the physical war rages in the cities and countryside, while an information war is waged over the airwaves and on the internet and social media.

On the actual battlefield, the Russian offensive has undoubtedly slowed over the past week. But what is being described as a ‘stalled’ takeover may be the result of the Russians taking time to reorganize their forces and improve their logistics.

On the Western side of the information war, we were told from the opening days of the conflict that the Russian military would break due to high casualties and defections, loss of tanks, armored vehicles, artillery and aircraft, and domestic opposition.

Videos of Russian battlefield setbacks abound in the media, and strangely there is little reporting on Ukrainian losses.

And yet, over three weeks into the war, Vladimir Putin remains president and the Russian war machine has not collapsed but in fact continues its plodding, imperfect, and messy advance.

Ukraine certainly has won the war on social media and in the press. This gives the average Western viewer the impression of a lopsided victory in favor of Ukraine.

Additionally, the Pentagon has taken the unprecedented step of conducting daily briefings on the war, even though the U.S. is not at war.

The Pentagon assessments often track closely with assessments given by the Ukrainian government.

The Russian military has used a mix of maneuver and siege warfare in an effort to achieve its goal of breaking the Ukrainian military and government and conquering vast regions of the country.

This is not a condemnation of the West’s use of information and disinformation.

These tactics play a role in the management of conflicts. But the West should not delude itself into believing that the Ukrainians will be saved by wishful thinking.

Optics are not everything. Propaganda is not power. And no amount of wishing and wordspelling is sufficient to defeat air, sea, and ground superiority combined with the will to complete the mission.

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The Least of the Charges

Hypocrisy is arguably among the least of the charges that can be accurately lodged against The Empire That Never Ended. Given that its influence rests entirely on lies, redefinitions, and sophistic rhetorical manipulation, it’s hardly a surprise that an institution also known as The Empire of Lies should be shamelessly hypocritical. But it is worth observing nevertheless, if only to disarm its rhetoric.

Since people insist on bringing up the moral principles of self-determination and freedom of association, I insist that those principles be equally and fairly applied. That is a thing that human beings do, when it comes to questions of morality, to demand that they be universally invoked if they are to be invoked at all. I don’t know what kind of weird moral world people are living in where they think it’s some irrelevant dodge to maintain the essential notion of universalism. Those who use the term “whataboutism” are alleging that their targets are avoiding hard conversations and real engagement through distraction, but that is in fact precisely the function that the term uses in our discourse, to allow people to wriggle out of considering America’s terrible history of crimes abroad. And to the extent that this dynamic is identified at all, it’s never matched with an attendant focus on the stuff that was disallowed from the conversation. People don’t say “that’s whataboutism” at 2:00 and then say “OK let’s get serious about what America’s drug war has done to Mexico” at 2:30.

The people who say “whataboutism” don’t want to talk about carpet bombing in Cambodia. They don’t want to talk about death squads in El Salvador. They don’t want to talk about reinstalling the Shah in Iran. They don’t want to talk about the murder of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. They don’t want to talk about giving a hit list to rampaging anti-Communists in Indonesia. They don’t want to talk about the US’s role in installing a far-right government in Honduras. They don’t want to talk about US support for apartheid in South Africa. They don’t want to talk about unexploded ordnance that still kills and maims in Laos. They don’t want to talk about supporting the hideously corrupt drug lord post-Taliban regime in Afghanistan. They don’t want to talk about aiding literal Nazis and Italian fascists in taking over the government in Albania. They don’t want to talk about giving support to the far-right government’s “dirty war” in Argentina. They don’t want to talk about the US-instigated far-right coup in Ghana. They don’t want to talk about our illegal bombing of Yugoslavia. They don’t want to talk about centuries of mistreatment of Haiti, such as sponsoring the coup against Aristide. They don’t want to talk about sparking 36 years of ruinous civil war, and attendant slaughters of indigenous people, in Guatemala. They don’t want to talk about our drone war in Pakistan. They don’t want to talk about how much longer this list could go on….

I asked some really basic questions in this post – do you really think the United States operates under the principle of self-determination for other nations? Do Cuba or any other disfavored countries enjoy self-determination from the influence of the United States? Why are we allowed to dictate who neighbors ally with, where Russia is not? Are you all really so blind to your country’s history? And not one comment, among hundreds, has credibly provided a coherent answer to the basic moral questions at hand.

Those limited to the rhetoric should never be expected to directly answer dialectical questions. Because they can’t. All they have is emotion, and emotion is intrinsically irrational and incoherent.

And liars will never be troubled by their inconsistency. It’s the least of their concerns.

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Rhetorical Overload

The Ukrainian PR department is out of control:

Russia is stockpiling the bodies of dead Ukrainians to stage a false flag attack at Chernobyl, releasing radioactive waste in a ‘man-made catastrophe’ that would amount to a ‘terrorist attack’, Ukraine has warned.

Vladimir Putin has ordered his troops to release radioactive waste at the nuclear site which he plans to blame on Ukrainian ‘saboteurs’ in order to justify further escalating his barbaric war against the ex-Soviet country, officials fear.

Kyiv’s Military Intelligence Directorate said Kremlin forces have been collecting ‘fake evidence’ for the planned operation at the power plant which was captured by Russian forces on the first day of the invasion, and has since been manned by staffers at gunpoint.

They said in a statement: ‘Russian car refrigerators collecting the bodies of dead Ukrainian defenders were spotted near the Antonov airport in Hostomel. There is a possibility that they will be presented as killed saboteurs in the Chernobyl zone.’

The disaster – which would almost certainly cause radioactive fallout to land on Russia – would be used to justify the use of further force against Ukraine and ‘blackmail the global community’ for sanctioning Russia and providing weapons to Ukraine.

But there are fears there could also be an accidental leak at the nuclear site because the Russians manning it have ‘no clue about nuclear security protocols’, the daughter of a overnight staffer warned.

Who writes these things, the descendants of Rube Goldberg? It’s pretty clear that the same sort of fiction writers who produced with ridiculous implausibilities like the Rollercoaster of Death at Auschwitz and the Smashed Incubators of Kuwait have been commissioned to create the rhetoric intended to demonize the Russians presently liberating Ukraine from The Empire That Never Ended.

And, of course, it may be intended as cover for what the imperial troops tried, and failed, to do, just as material evidence of US bioweaponry labs is being somehow cited as conclusive proof of Russian devilries.

Whenever you see this sort of inversion, you know Satan’s little servitors are hard at work. And the clumsier and the more complicated it is, the more certain you can be that the opposite is much closer to the truth.

At this rate, we should be seeing breathless news stories about how Russian techno-necromancers are saving radioactive ice-covered Ukrainian corpses in order to turn them into glowing battle zombies and send them into Kiev to devour women and children at night in about two weeks.

Oh, the outrage! Shelling maternity hospitals was bad enough, but atomic cannibal war zombies is simply too much. Tell it to the Marines!

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We Don’t Know it’s the Vaxx

But it’s the vaxx:

Victorian Labor senator Kimberley Kitching dies suddenly in Melbourne aged 52

The ABC understands Senator Kitching, 52, died of a suspected heart attack this afternoon. Labor Leader Anthony Albanese says the party is “in shock” over the passing of their friend and colleague.

Victorian Labor senator Kimberley Kitching has died suddenly in the Melbourne suburb of Strathmore. She began feeling unwell while driving between two meetings and pulled over before calling her husband, Andrew Landeryou. An ambulance was called but she died of a suspected heart attack near to where her vehicle was parked.

Two weeks ago, one of my family members, double-vaxxed and boosted, died of a “pulmonary edema” at the age of 42.

I’m genuinely curious how many members of my extended social circle are going to die suddenly, unexpectedly, and at a relatively young age before everyone understands and is willing to admit that it is the vaccinations that are primarily responsible for those deaths. One is easily dismissed. Two is just an unfortunate coincidence. Three is just an agglomeration of people with unhealthy lifestyles. At four, I suspect those who have been vaccinated will start to get nervous and begin asking serious questions for the first time in two years.

But I anticipate that it will take at least five statistically-improbable deaths in an extended social circle before the idea that the Covid vaccines were responsible for them is accepted as the general consensus. Perhaps some unlikely health emergencies, such as a teenager’s stroke or heart attack, that don’t prove fatal, would also count as an input factor, but I think it will require five improbable events per social circle before the consensus changes, because it appears to take at least five undeniable dialectical narrative violations to penetrate the average individual’s rhetorical shield.

As one of my brothers recently noted, “dies suddenly” is not an actual cause of death.

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