Comments for Rhetorica

Comment on Journalism Needs More Dicks by John S. Allen

John S. Allen — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 03:57:41 +0000

So you think you had it bad outside the Boston area? Coverage from Boston-area news radio and particularly WBUR-FM (NPR affiliate) became unbearable, with announcers treading water endlessly for hours (radio people call this “fill”) and with multiple repeats of material already broadcast when there was no new news. This resulted in an almost complete blackout on other news from around the region, the country and the world. The fertilizer plant explosion in Texas got hardly any coverage, and less analysis — though it killed more people than the Boston bombings, and raises important issues of industrial safety, government regulation etc.

My peak annoyance level came when the Governor and police chiefs gave a press conference, and then immediately following the news conference, WBUR announcers regurgitated it — “the Governor said” — “The Boston police chief said.” Etc. This went on for as long as the press conference itself, followed by the hundredth (? — who kept count?) repetition of the entire sequence of events since Monday. Every new tidbit of information became the subject of tiresome analysis and speculation.

I don’t know how many dozens of times I was informed that bombs went off at the Marathon on Monday. Anyone who didn’t already know would have had to be returning from a different dimension…

Fortunately, there were still music stations playing music.

Comment on Social Media And The Damage Done by acline

acline — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 17:31:17 +0000

-V… Excellent point. I’m planning to pull this thread a bit more and will add the concept of timing to my criticism. Thanks!

Comment on Social Media And The Damage Done by Vardibidian

Vardibidian — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 16:42:09 +0000

Just to add to the issue… I will occasionally see outrage in my feeds about a news story that is perfectly accurate–but three or four years old. Usually so old that the outrage is misplaced, because the legislative bill or executive order died quietly shortly after the story was published.

Because the internet will (sometimes inadvertently) archive pages and articles for years and years, it’s not necessarily sufficient to know that an item is true; you need to know that it’s true now.

Thanks,
-V.

Comment on Rhetoric And The War Ten Years On by acline

acline — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 14:20:55 +0000

Thanks for the thoughtful comment, Jay. It’s nice to know someone is still reading.

I agree re: the performance of our military. Similar to Viet Nam, however (and when/where the lesson should have been learned), politicians can end up bungling it.

I’m still not convinced saving Iraqis from their dictator was a good reason to invade.

Comment on Rhetoric And The War Ten Years On by Jay Manifold

Jay Manifold — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 20:55:30 +0000

I enjoyed this immensely, largely because it was Rhetorica that helped me see that the war was very badly argued.
I also happen to believe that the Iraq war was very well fought and has resulted in irreversible gains, in sharpest contrast to what has happened in the AfPak theater – and no, we never took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan; we committed more troops there every single year from 2001 through 2009.
To be clear about what I mean by “well fought” and “irreversible gains”: we will of course never know how many people perished through misrule, domestic tyranny, and unprovoked war during Saddam’s regime, but the number is unlikely to be below 2 million and may be as high as 4 million. A reasonable guess would be an average of at least 100,000 per year for the 24-year span, 1979-2003. Iraq Body Count’s figures work out to an average of, at most, 12,000 per year since the invasion. An order-of-magnitude reduction in the state-sponsored death rate. Probably a million lives saved, net, since the spring of 2003.
There is very little chance of a police state like Saddam’s reappearing and no chance of Iraq meaningfully threatening its neighbors in the foreseeable future. My own best guess is the remnants of the Iraqi nuclear program were destroyed by the IAF in the raid on a nuclear reactor in far eastern Syria in early September 2007. Our own State Department created a program to re-employ Saddam’s WMD scientists and technicians after the invasion. So not much worry there, either.
I expect that your description of the ways in which the Iraq war was badly argued would differ from mine, mainly by being more subtle and complex. Mine has two elements: poor characterization of risk management, and the WMD distraction.
In project-management terms, the war was presented as a choice between two alternatives: risk avoidance and risk acceptance. That is, either do nothing and take the consequences, or wage total war and take the consequences.
I believe it was actually a choice between the other two risk-management techniques: risk transference and risk mitigation. That is, continue with the (to my mind, interminable and unproductive) UN resolution process and try to cobble together some kind of global force to eventually do something; or respond in a deliberate, targeted manner to remove the threat, but without assuming indefinite responsibility for, eg, governance. Which is sorta-kinda what we ended up doing. But we didn’t argue it that way.
For a pithy explanation of why arguing about WMD was nothing but a distraction, I can do no better than to quote Heinlein: “There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men.” Apparently it was not acceptable, a decade back, to simply say that we were removing a dangerous man from the global stage – notwithstanding that a US News & World Report cover story from sixteen years earlier had called Saddam “the most dangerous man in the world,” an assessment with which no serious observer disagreed.
But when push came to shove, we couldn’t discuss the obvious.

What remains in 2013 is, firstly, the AfPak disaster, which is by far the greatest defeat in American military history, and secondly and more subtly, the effect on our political health when our military capabilities runs so far ahead of our democratic decision-making abilities.
I support President Obama’s occasional, but highly effective, disregard for the fiction of Pakistani sovereignty over large portions of its claimed territory. I even support the drone campaign, although like many people I would like to see a bit more process wrapped around it; but even in its current making-it-up-as-we-go-along mode, it has taken at least an order of magnitude fewer lives than conventional bombing would. And make no mistake, conventional bombing is the only real-world alternative.
But we were not attacked by Afghans or Pakistanis on 9/11/2001; we were attacked by Saudis, fanatical adherents to a minor memetic mutation of the state religion of the KSA. (Which now financially controls nine-tenths of the Muslim institutions in the world, including, as far as I know, nine-tenths of the mosques in the US.)
The mismatch between limited rhetorical ability, and for that matter limited airing of truth, and superb military logistics seems likely to be a major root cause of the later (and almost certainly global warfighting) phase of Strauss and Howe’s “Crisis of 2020.”

Comment on Crisis Actors in the Twilight Zone by Shane

Shane — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 05:32:39 +0000

Great comments! Although I myself am considered an ‘anti-government gun nut’ by those that like to clasify people, I appreciate and agree with your points on ‘crisis actors’. I feel that this issue will be a point of discussion for a very long time, used by all those with an agenda on all sides. Hopefully this blog may help people to understand the delivery of the message instead of just hearing a headline.

Comment on Call His Bluff by Lorrie

Lorrie — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 19:48:14 +0000

Just when I thought I could not be more entertained the Don pulls this.If I were Obama I would have to take Don up on his offer.Perhaps it will resolve this issue for folks that cannot understand this was addressed a long time ago. Nothing like beating a dead horse.

Comment on Call His Bluff by acline

acline — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 20:00:34 +0000

It would be great. And so easy. Obama has people who could handle this in an afternoon. Only downside is dealing with Trump, but that can be mitigated with humor

Comment on Call His Bluff by Jason

Jason — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 19:40:18 +0000

Hey, it’s $5 mil for charity. The only reason I give a crud here.

Comment on Rhetoric of the Post-Fact World by Sven

Sven — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 16:59:18 +0000

My theory: it's a strategy to enhance intellectual entropy with the ultimate aim of returning mankind to the paradisiacal pre-Eve-ate-the-apple state of ignorance.