This
is not desirable as it then leaves the enforcement agencies unable to
track the percentage of those in the population who always resist
attempts for control against them. Many other techniques can be utilized
and developed by the individual and as you develop further techniques of
infiltration and control it is imperative to share then with HQ.
25
February 2014. Related: GCHQ Full-Spectrum Cyber Effects:
24
February 2014. Related: GCHQ Online Deception:
29
January 2014. Related: GCHQ Squeaky Dolphin Psychological Operations:
4
March 2012. Precursor to this sabotage, OSS Sabotage of Organizations:
COINTELPRO
Techniques for dilution, misdirection and control of a internet forum:
Avoidance.
Selectivity.
Coincidental.
Teamwork.
Anti-conspiratorial.
Artificial
Emotions.
Inconsistent.
Time
Constant.
Dummy
up.
Wax
indignant.
Knock
down straw men.
Impugn
motives.
Invoke
authority.
Come
half-clean.
Characterize
the crimes as impossibly complex and the truth as ultimately unknowable.
Require
the skeptics to solve the crime completely.
Change
the subject.
Lightly
report incriminating facts, and then make nothing of them.
Baldly
and brazenly lie.
Expanding
further on numbers 4 and 5, have your own stooges "expose" scandals and
champion popular causes.
Flood
the Internet with agents.
Hear
no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.
Become
incredulous and indignant.
Create
rumor mongers.
Use
a straw man.
Sidetrack
opponents with name calling and ridicule.
Hit
and Run.
Question
motives.
Invoke
authority.
Play
Dumb.
Associate
opponent charges with old news.
Establish
and rely upon fall-back positions.
Enigmas
have no solution.
Alice
in Wonderland Logic.
Demand
complete solutions.
Fit
the facts to alternate conclusions.
Vanish
evidence and witnesses.
Change
the subject.
Emotionalize,
Antagonize, and Goad Opponents.
Ignore
proof presented, demand impossible proofs.
False
evidence.
Call
a Grand Jury, Special Prosecutor, or other empowered investigative body.
Manufacture
a new truth.
Create
bigger distractions.
Silence
critics.
Vanish.
You
probably already know a lot about this, whether you realize it or not,
because politicians pull many of these standard stunts on you every
election year, and you have grown immune to some of them. And modern
advertising uses a lot of them, too, and you just tune them out.
Nevertheless, let's just do a quick over-view of propaganda techniques.
Bear
in mind that "propaganda" is not inherently a dirty word — it just
usually is. Any time you are trying to convince anyone of something, you
are using some kind of persuasion, debating, or propaganda technique.
Just telling the whole truth about something is one simple propaganda
technique, and a highly effective one. But lying often works better, at
least with some audiences...
Master
these propaganda techniques, and you too will be able to proselytize and
promote cult religion and radical politics just like a battle-hardened
old-timer.
- Tell The
Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But The Truth.
This can be highly effective, and very convincing, if you know your
subject material well, and are a good speaker.
... And IF the truth is
really what you want your audience to hear and believe.
The Truth, as a matter of habit, has some
disadvantages: You have to learn and remember a whole lot of facts,
and keep them straight in your head. The facts might not always be
what you wish them to be. And, alas, the truth is sometimes very
boring...
- Lie
This one is simple, straight-forward, and obvious. Just lie and say
whatever you want to. It has the advantages that you don't need to
memorize so many facts, and you can make up new facts when the
currently-existing ones don't suit your purposes. The disadvantages
are that you might get caught in a lie, and that would destroy your
credibility.
"You're
never going to make it in politics. You just don't know how to
lie."
Richard M. Nixon
Secret
Lives of the U.S. Presidents, Cormac O'Brien, page 228.
- Lie By
Omission and Half-Truths
This is also known as Suppressed
Evidence.
This one is more subtle. It has the
advantage that you can't get caught in a lie, because everything
that you say is true. You just happily fail to mention all of those
bothersome little facts that do not support your point of view.
Should a critic point out one of those annoying undesired facts, you
can at least feign innocent ignorance, or claim that the fact is
really just an unimportant, trivial detail, not worth mentioning.
For example: In 1908, the Lutheran
minister Dr. Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman got into
a squabble over money with the trustee committee of their hospice
for young men in Philadelphia, and in an angry huff, Buchman
resigned and got on a boat for Europe. He ended up at a large
religious convention in Keswick, England, where he felt that he had
a spiritual transformation. He felt moved to write letters of
apology to all six of the trustees with whom he had squabbled,
humbly asking their forgiveness. Buchman said that none of them even
bothered to answer his letters.
That was rather unkind of them, wasn't
it? No wonder Buchman had a disagreement with them, if they were
really so haughty and so inconsiderate that they would not even
acknowledge a man's humble apology and request for forgiveness...
There is just one small detail that Frank
Buchman left out in his telling of that story: Buchman didn't
put any return address on the envelopes that he
mailed back to Philadelphia.
Vice President Dick Cheney told CNN on
May 8, 2001, that nuclear energy "doesn't emit any carbon dioxide at
all."
(CNN, 8 May 2001. Also see http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/KYOTONUC.html)
That is lying by omission. It is true that nuclear reactors do not
create carbon dioxide while burning their nuclear fuel, but the
process of mining the uranium is done by machines like bulldozers
that create lots of carbon dioxide and air pollution as they burn
diesel fuel. And so does the process of refining the ore and
converting it into usable nuclear fuel, and transporting it to the
reactor. And then there is the problem of disposal of the nuclear
waste. That's another giant hole to be dug with diesel-powered
machines. If the whole fuel cycle is taken into account, then
nuclear power creates several times as much CO2 as
renewable energy sources. (The Party's Over: Oil,
War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies, Richard Heinberg,
page 135.)
Bill Wilson gave us lots of good examples of that technique. In
chapter 8 of the Big Book,
"To Wives", the wives of the recovering alcoholics seem to give
advice to the wives of other alcoholics:
As
wives of Alcoholics Anonymous, we would like you to feel that we
understand as perhaps few can. We want to analyze mistakes we have
made.
A.A. Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G.
Wilson, Chapter 8, To
Wives, page 104.
Sometimes
there were other women. How heartbreaking was this discovery; how
cruel to be told that they understood our men as we did not!
A.A. Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G.
Wilson, Chapter 8, To
Wives, page 106.
We
wives found that, like everybody else, we were afflicted with
pride, self-pity, vanity and all the things which go to make up
the self-centered person; and we were not above selfishness or
dishonesty. As our husbands began to apply spiritual principles in
their lives, we began to see the desirability of doing so too.
At first, some of us thought we did not need this help. We
thought, on the whole, we were pretty good women, capable of being
nicer if our husbands stopped drinking. But it was a silly idea
that we were too good to need God. Now we try to put spiritual
principles to work in every department of our lives. ... We urge
you to try our program, for nothing will be so helpful to your
husband as the radically changed attitude toward him which God
will show you how to have. Go along with your husband if you
possibly can.
A.A. Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G.
Wilson, Chapter 8, To
Wives, page 116.
Yes, Bill Wilson really would like you to
feel that the wives understand as perhaps few can.
The big problem with those quotes is that
the To Wives chapter
of the Big Book was
not written by Lois Wilson or any of the other wives of the
alcoholics — Bill Wilson
wrote it all. Lois wanted to write it, but Bill didn't trust
his wife to say the right things, or to get the "style" the way he
wanted it, he said, so he wrote the whole chapter himself, while
pretending to be his own wife.
What a huge difference that one tiny
little fact makes. That chapter reads entirely differently, it
becomes a sick twisted joke, when you know who the real author was.
Bill Wilson perceptively analyzed his
wife's many mistakes for her, and confessed all of Lois' sins for
her (in print), and honestly admitted her many failings: her moral
shortcomings and dishonesty and selfishness and her silly thinking
that she was too good to need God (page 116). (She was "selfish"
while she worked in Loesser's department store to support his unemployed
thieving philandering drunken ass for years and
years.)
Then Bill the housewife even lectured
"the other girls" not to nag their husbands about their drinking, or
else those guys will get mad and go
sleep with their mistresses (page 111)... Like Bill did.
Bill Wilson gave us many more examples of that Lie
By Omission technique. Here, he is talking about
doing Step Five, where we confess all of our sins and moral
shortcomings to someone else:
This
is perhaps difficult, especially discussing our defects with
another person. We think we have done well enough in admitting
these things to ourselves. There is doubt about that. In actual practice, we
usually find a solitary self-appraisal insufficient. Many
of us thought it necessary to go much further. We will be more
reconciled to discussing ourselves with another person when we see
good reasons why we should do so. The best reason first: If we skip this vital
step, we may not overcome drinking. Time
after time newcomers have tried to keep to themselves certain
facts about their lives. Trying to avoid this humbling experience,
they have turned to easier
methods. Almost invariably they got drunk.
Having persevered with the rest of the program, they wondered why
they fell. We
think the reason is that they never
completed their housecleaning. They took inventory all right, but
hung on to some of the worst items in stock. They only thought
they had lost their egoism and fear; they only thought they had
humbled themselves. But they had not learned enough of humility,
fearlessness and honesty, in the sense we find it necessary, until
they told someone else all their life story.
A.A. Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G.
Wilson, Chapter 6, Into
Action, pages 72-73.
Wow. That's really impressive. I guess we
had better get down on our knees right now, and start confessing
everything, holding
nothing back!
Right?
Wrong.
Notice that the rest of the logic is
missing. That is, where do we see the report on the other people, who did confess everything, and then
successfully abstained from drinking? There is no such report,
because they all relapsed too. The early New York group that Bill
Wilson was writing about had a very high
relapse rate. Fully fifty percent of the original Big Book authors
relapsed and returned to a life of drinking. In
Akron, Bill Wilson and Doctor Bob calculated that they had only a 5%
success rate in sobering up alcoholics (which is the same as the
success rate of people who quit on their own). Bill Wilson couldn't
keep 'em sober not for nuthin'. The cult religion routine didn't
work at all.
But Bill didn't want to talk about that,
because he was a faithful Buchmanite who
believed that you must confess your sins to everyone else in your
group if you are to be holy. So Bill was doing everything in his
power to make everyone holy, even if it didn't make them sober.
And note how Bill also gave us
illustrations of a few other propaganda techniques:
- The
Straw Man Tactic:
"We think we have
done well enough in admitting these things to ourselves."
"They only thought they had lost their egoism and fear; they
only thought they had humbled themselves. But they had not
learned enough of humility, fearlessness and honesty..."
Those
people who think that they don't really need to do all of Bill
Wilson's wonderful 12 Steps are really stupid egotistical
dishonest cowards, aren't they?
- Hiding
Behind Others:
The use of "We" to create the false impression that it was more
than just the opinion of Bill Wilson — that many people had done a
whole lot of research on the subject, and had gained a lot of
valuable experience in what really works to keep people sober: "We
think... We usually find..." The truth
is, when Bill wrote that paragraph in December of 1938 and January
of 1939, there were
only 60 or 70 sober A.A. members in the whole world, and
they didn't all agree with him. Their major experience was in
watching Bill Wilson's religious program fail to keep
them sober, with most of the early A.A. members relapsing
and leaving. Here, Bill Wilson was really just pushing his own
strange Buchmanite religious beliefs, and trying to convince
others that his ideas were the only things that work.
- Lying by
Omission (some more):
Half of those few sober A.A. members didn't like or do Bill
Wilson's Twelve Steps. They were the members who demanded that
Bill's 12 religious steps be called "suggestions", not
requirements, because they saw clearly that Bill's dogmatic
religiosity would drive away many of the alcoholics whom the
program was supposed to help. See page 59 of the Big
Book — the steps are only "suggested
as a program of recovery". But here, Bill wants to fool you
into thinking that all of the sober members did Step Five
thoroughly, holding nothing back, and that's why they were sober.
- Post
Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc: "It
happened after 'X', so it was caused by 'X'."
"Time after time
newcomers have tried to keep to themselves certain facts about
their lives. ... Almost invariably they got drunk."
Bill Wilson doesn't really give us any evidence that
withholding embarrassing personal secrets makes people drink
alcohol, just like he doesn't give us any evidence that confessing
sins to other A.A. members makes people get sober. He just wants
to fool us into thinking it. I can with equal validity argue that
they all relapsed because they wore clothes to the meetings:
Time after time, we have seen newcomers make the
stupid mistake of wearing clothes to A.A. meetings. Almost all of the
newcomers who relapsed wore clothes. (What sins and bodily
imperfections were they trying to hide?) Almost invariably,
they got drunk. And almost all of the people who wore clothes
to A.A. meetings eventually
dropped out.
Conclusion:
Obviously, wearing clothes to A.A. meetings causes people to
drink alcohol.
- Sly
Suggestions, Fear
Mongering, and Creating
Phobias:
"If
we skip this vital step, we may not overcome
drinking."
Then again, we might. (I did.)
Notice how Wilson lies to you obliquely, by hints and
suggestions, to lead you to an erroneous conclusion: "...we may not overcome
drinking."
And Wilson does it again, here:
"... they
wondered why they fell. We think the reason is that they never
completed their housecleaning."
"We think"? It's hard to
prove that Wilson is lying when he plants a suggestion like
that. He might actually think that all of that crazy stuff is
really true.
And we can again use the clothes
clause:
"We think the
reason that they relapsed is because they never completed the
task of taking off all of their clothes and fully exposing
themselves to the whole group."
- And who says that Step Five is a "vital" step?
Well, Bill Wilson does. That's assuming facts not in evidence,
assuming facts yet to be proven, the trick called petitio
principii. We have absolutely no evidence, other than
Bill Wilson's deceitful declarations, that Step Five is in any way
necessary, or even helpful, for quitting drinking.
- Sarcasm,
Condescension, and Patronizing Attitudes:
"Trying to avoid
this humbling experience, they have turned to easier methods."
If you won't do what Bill Wilson says, and humbly grovel
before your sponsor and confess all of your sins, then you are
just a weak, wimpy, unspiritual lazy bum who is guilty of seeking "an easier, softer way."
(You couldn't possibly be seeking a saner way to
recover.)
Real men are proud to masochistically grovel on their knees and
wallow in guilt.
For
another example of lying by omission, look closely at this text:
Despite four decades of AA research, no clear picture has
emerged as to which patient characteristics can predict a positive
outcome with AA and, therefore, can be used as criteria for
matching patients to AA. ...
To
date, only three randomized clinical trials have examined the
efficacy of AA participation, either with or without
additional simultaneous treatment approaches (Ditman et
al. 1967; Brandsma et
al. 1980; Walsh et
al. 1991). The vast majority of AA studies, however, have focused
on two narrower questions: Which factors predict whether a person
will join AA? And how does involvement in AA predict outcome? In
an attempt to answer these two questions, Emrick and colleagues
(1993) reviewed 107 previously published AA studies.
Tonigan, J. Scott,
Hiller-Sturmhofel, Susanne, Alcohol Health & Research World,
0090838X, 1994, Vol. 18, Issue 4.
- The authors almost accurately stated
that there have only been three good randomized clinical trials of
the effectiveness of Alcoholics Anonymous treatment ever done.
(Actually, they ignored two of the best tests of all, the very
large test done by Drs. Orford
and Edwards in England, and also Dr. George E.
Vaillant's clinical trial, which also had merit.)
- But the authors did not tell us what
those three good clinical trials actually found. They did not say
one word about what Doctors Ditman, Brandsma and Walsh reported.
- Instead, the authors did a quick
tap-dance towards "the vast majority of A.A. studies" that were
not properly done and are not scientifically or medically valid.
Then they cited a survey done by Emrick where he examined 107 of
those less-reliable "studies", essays, opinions, and propaganda
articles.
So what did those three valid clinical
trails find? They found that Alcoholics Anonymous was a disaster:
- Dr. Ditman
found that participation in A.A. increased the
alcoholics' rate of rearrest for public drunkeness.
- Dr. Brandsma
found that A.A. increased the rate of binge
drinking. After several months of indoctrination with A.A. 12-Step
dogma, the alcoholics in A.A. were doing five
times as much binge drinking as a control group
that got no treatment at all, and nine
times as much binge drinking as another group
that got Rational Behavior Therapy.
Teaching people
that they are alcoholics who are powerless over alcohol yields
very bad results. It becomes a self-fulfilling prediction — they
relapse and binge drink as if they really are powerless over
alcohol.
- And Dr. Walsh
found that the so-called "free" A.A. program
was actually very expensive — it messed up patients so that they
required longer periods of costly hospitalization later on.
- And the authors could have mentioned
that Doctors
Edwards and Orford found that A.A. was
completely ineffective, and that having a doctor talk to the
alcoholic for just one hour, telling him to quit drinking or else
he would likely die, worked just as well as a whole year of A.A.
meetings.
- And the authors could have mentioned
that Dr. George E. Vaillant, member of the Board of Trustees of
Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., found in his
8-year-long test that A.A. was
completely ineffective, and just raised the death rate in
alcoholics. His A.A.-based treatment program had the highest death
rate of all of the treatment programs that he studied.
But the authors mentioned none of that.
They just started talking about matching patients to A.A. without
ever having established whether A.A. works or helps alcoholics even
a little bit, or that we even
should try to match alcoholics to Alcoholics
Anonymous. What is the point of sending patients to A.A. when it
just makes them worse, and makes them binge drink and die? (So that also makes it an
example of the propaganda trick Assume The
Major Premise.)
- Hide the
Truth
Hide the truth by erasing it, or rewriting it, or destroying evidence,
or stashing it someplace out of sight. Don't let people see the truth.
Such dishonest behavior is often
rationalized by saying, "We don't want people to get the wrong idea."
Which really means: "We don't want people to get the right idea."
The Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was
famous for this. He massively rewrote Russian history. His agents
actually went into libraries and cut pages out of books, and
replaced them with other pages that said what Stalin wanted the
people to read. People whom Stalin did not like and had killed —
particularly other old Communists who could compete with Stalin for
leadership — were simply erased from history. They became
"non-persons" (which was the official term for someone who was
erased from existence). They supposedly had no part in the
Revolution. Their pictures were airbrushed out of historical
photographs. All records of their existence were erased. They were
never born. They simply never existed.
Bill
Wilson taught hiding the truth as a standard recruiting trick. In
his history of Alcoholics Anonymous, Alcoholics
Anonymous Comes Of Age, Bill Wilson wrote:
When
first contacted, most alcoholics just wanted to find sobriety,
nothing else. They clung to their other defects, letting go only
little by little. They simply did not want to get "too good too
soon." The Oxford
Groups' absolute concepts — absolute purity,
absolute honesty, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love — were
frequently too much for the drunks. These ideas had to be fed with
teaspoons rather than by buckets.
Besides, the Oxford Groups' "absolutes" were expressions
peculiar to them. This was a terminology which might continue to
identify us in the public mind with the Oxford Groupers, even
though we had completely withdrawn from their fellowship.
Alcoholics
Anonymous Comes Of Age, William G. Wilson, pages 74-75.
The alcoholics (whom Bill
Wilson deprecatingly called "drunks" who didn't want to be good)
just wanted to quit drinking; they didn't want to join Bill's crazy
Buchmanite cult religion with its ridiculous Absolutes. So Bill
Wilson's answer to that problem was to deceive the newcomers, and
hide the intense religiosity of A.A., and to also hide the Buchmanite
Oxford Group cult religion roots of Alcoholics
Anonymous, until after the newcomers had been indoctrinated and
brainwashed enough... Mr. Wilson candidly admitted that he was
practicing deceptive
recruiting, not honestly telling the newcomers what membership
in his group would really entail. And now, the A.A. slogan "Teaspoons,
Not Buckets" teaches standard A.A.
recruiting procedure.
The Alcoholics Anonymous shrine called
"Stepping Stones", that was Bill Wilson's house in Bedford Hills,
has been similarly cleansed of undesired information and unwanted
history. There used to be a "spook room", downstairs to the left,
where Bill Wilson would conduct séances each day, and play with a
Ouija board and talk to ghosts and the spirits of dead people. Bill Wilson
routinely practiced necromancy and spirit-rapping and channeling
of spirits, and fancied himself a skilled medium. The
bookshelf in the room was full of spiritual and occult books. All of
that is gone. The room has been "refurbished" to the point that
nothing original is left, not even the wallpaper. Now the room
features new furniture and a clear plastic bookshelf that contains
only A.A. council-approved books (which are for sale in the
bookstore). All documents pertaining to Bill Wilson's "spook
sessions" have been removed and locked up in the sealed A.A.
historical archives, where no one may see them.
For that matter, those historical
archives are loaded with documents and history that you are not
supposed to see (and probably never will see). There are the early
financial records where Bill Wilson
stole the Big Book publishing
fund and the copyright
of the Big Book.
There are the letters where Clarence Snyder
complained about Bill Wilson's financial dishonesty. There are
accounts of Bill Wilson's
misbehavior, like philandering and LSD consumption.
There is so much interesting stuff in that archive that the leaders
of A.A. will not even release a list of what all is really in there.
- Lie With
Qualifiers
Make sweeping statements to give the impression you want, but insert
so many qualifiers that the statements are meaningless, or downright
dishonest. This is also known as "insert loopholes" into statements.
You get bombarded with advertisements
that say,
"Make up to $6000
per month working from home."
Up
to? Why the upper limit? Why not a lower
limit? Why don't they advertise,
"Make at least $3000
per month working from home"?
And Qwest says, "You get free long distance (except for a 10 cents
per minute surcharge)."
If
you have to pay 10 cents per minute, then it isn't free at all.
A bank advertises: "We can close your loan in as little as two weeks.
Guaranteed."
That
isn't a guarantee. That open-ended qualifier. "In
as little as" means that they might close
your loan in two weeks, or two months, or two years, or
whenever...
2010-05-24: BP (British Petroleum) says
that it "will pay all legitimate claims for damage" from their
immense oil spill. What is "legitimate", and who gets to decide
which claims are "legitimate"? Is BP really going to pay much at
all? After the Exxon-Valdez ran aground and dumped its load, Exxon
delayed payments for the Prince William Sound disaster for 20 years
and then got the Supreme Court to reduce the payments to nearly
nothing.
And then of course there is the recent
example of the crazy Republican politician Rep. Todd Aiken who
ranted about "legitimate rape", and claimed that women wouldn't get
pregnant from "legitimate rape". (I guess only insincere rape gets a
girl pregnant.)
And A.A. gives us numerous examples:
"It works, if you
work it."
"It works, if you make it work."
Yes, and eating vanilla
ice cream works, if
you make it work.
Dancing in a ballerina's tutu works, if you make it work.
Likewise,
"The
Alcoholics Anonymous program works great for the rare few people
for whom it works great."
In The
Promises, Bill Wilson wrote:
If
we are painstaking about this phase of our development [Step 9],
we will be amazed before we are halfway through.
The A.A. Big Book, Alcoholics
Anonymous, 3rd Edition, page 83.
So of course if we are not amazed, then
we were not painstaking enough...
Another example: the A.A. faithful read
this statement out loud at the start of every A.A. meeting:
RARELY HAVE we seen a
person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.
The A.A. Big Book, Alcoholics
Anonymous, 3rd Edition, Chapter 5, "How It Works", page 58.
How could Bill Wilson write such a line
when A.A. had a horrendously
high failure rate?
Simple: the A.A. program requires people to abstain from drinking
alcohol, so if they relapse and drink, then they aren't "thoroughly
following our path", are they?
With that qualifier, Bill Wilson could
have written,
"NEVER have we
seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path".
For another example, in the Foreword to
the Second Edition of the Big
Book, page XX, Bill Wilson wrote:
Of
alcoholics who came to A.A. and really tried, 50% got sober at once
and remained that way; 25% sobered up after some relapses, and
among the remainder, those who stayed on with A.A. showed
improvement. Other thousands came to a few A.A. meetings and at
first decided they didn't want the program. But great numbers of
these — about two out of three — began to return as time passed.
The impression we get is that A.A. worked
great, and sobered up 75% of the alcoholics pretty fast, and that
all of the alcoholics benefited at least a little bit, if they just
tried. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Later, Bill Wilson told the truth:
You
have no conception these days of how much failure we had. You had
to cull over hundreds of these drunks to get a handful to take the
bait.
Bill
Wilson, at the memorial service for Dr. Bob, Nov. 15, 1952;
file available here.
This quote gives us the impression that
A.A. had about a one or two percent recruiting success rate: You have to "cull over hundreds of these
drunks to get a handful to take
the bait." But that "handful" is people who
just "take the bait" and join Bill's club. How many of those
gullible joiners actually stayed sober for a year or more? Even less, for sure. So the real
long-term A.A. success rate was under
one percent, even by Bill Wilson's own reckoning.
So how do we reconcile the vastly
different numbers in those two statements? Easy. We use qualifiers:
- First off, Bill Wilson began the first
quote with a major qualifier about those alcoholics "who came to A.A. and really tried".
If they didn't join A.A., or they didn't "really
try", then they weren't counted.
- And who decided whether they had really tried?
Well, Bill Wilson,
of course.
Heck, with that qualifier, Bill Wilson could make the
numbers into anything he wanted them to be.
- The last qualifier counted only "those
who stayed on with A.A.", so those who relapsed and left A.A. and
didn't "Keep Coming Back" didn't count either. That conveniently
eliminated all of the drop-outs, deaths, and failures from the
statistics. So there wasn't a single case "of those who stayed on"
that didn't "show improvement" in the statistics that Bill
manufactured.
- So we can have the reality that less
than one percent of the alcoholics were actually success stories,
joining A.A., quitting drinking and staying quit for many years,
while, in the Big Book, after Bill Wilson
prettied up the numbers with those qualifiers, it looked like at
least 50% of the alcoholics were eventually getting sobered up by
A.A. (75% of the two thirds who kept coming back).
Cute, huh? Now that's lying with
qualifiers.
(And it's also a fair example of lying with
statistics.)
"Keep Coming Back! It Works! (...If
you work it...)"
- Lie With
Statistics
Speaking of which, there is the time-honored method of lying called Statistics.
Both Mark Twain and Desraeli said that
there are three kinds of lies:
- Little White Lies,
- Damned Lies,
- and Statistics.
You can have all kinds of fun with
statistics:
- Ninety-nine percent of all of the
people who ate carrots between 1800 and 1900 are dead, so carrots
are obviously very hazardous to your health. If you eat carrots
long enough, you will certainly die.
- President Eisenhower expressed
astonishment and alarm when he was told that fully half of all
Americans had below-average intelligence.
- Likewise, fifty percent of all
Americans have below-average income, or savings, or beauty, or
housing, or education. It's no wonder why the politicians don't
want to associate with all of those stupid, ugly, poor people, but
guess who elects the politicians? If 80% of the stupid people, and
75% of the poor people, and 65% of the ugly people voted for a
politician, then 220% of the poor, stupid, ugly people voted for
the politician. No wonder that bozo got elected.
- Another good one: Statistically, men
who have survived two heart attacks almost never die from lung
cancer or cirrhosis of the liver. There is just something about
having heart attacks that protects people from death by cancer or
cirrhosis. So, after you have had two heart attacks, you can smoke
and drink all you want.
- Ninety-three percent of the people who
use statistics in their arguments just make them up, and the rest
get the numbers wrong.
- Fifty percent of all marriages end in
divorce.
If you think that's bad, consider that the other fifty percent end
in death.
- If you don't buy a lottery ticket,
then your chances of winning are zero. If you do buy a ticket
(Powerball), your chances of winning are only 0.00000002 — 1 in 50
million. Both numbers are so close to zero that there is little
point in your actually handing over your two dollars and buying a
ticket — you still aren't going to win.
On the other hand, if you do buy a ticket, then your chances of
winning are infinitely higher than if you don't.
- Public service announcements on TV and
radio declare:
"2
out of every 5 fatal automobile accidents was due to drinking.
33% of the drivers involved in fatal accidents had been
drinking. 24% of the pedestrians involved in fatal accidents
had been drinking. Therefore, alcohol intoxication is a major
cause of automobile accidents, and drunk driving must be dealt
with harshly."
That logic sounds impressive, but
it's completely wrong. Consider the reverse logic:
"3
out of every 5 fatal automobile accidents did not involve
drinking. 67% of the drivers involved in fatal accidents had
not been drinking. And 76% of the pedestrians involved in
accidents had not been drinking. Therefore, sobriety is
undoubtedly the major cause of fatal automobile accidents, and
sober driving must be outlawed immediately, and punished
harshly."
- And we could really have fun, starting
a big war with statements like, "Forty-five percent of the drivers
in fatal automobile accidents were women, therefore women
shouldn't be allowed to drive."
(But if we did that, then 100% of the accidents would be caused by
men. So men shouldn't be allowed to drive.)
- Some people often cite statistics
like,
"95%
of all heroin addicts smoked marijuana before they graduated
to the hard stuff. Therefore, marijuana is a gateway drug that
leads to heroin."
That is also false logic. Consider
this:
"Further
research has revealed that 99.8% of all heroin addicts
consumed the white drug called milk for years before they
graduated to the white powder called heroin. Therefore, giving
children milk at school turns them into heroin addicts."
Or:
"99%
of all heroin addicts, cocaine addicts, amphetamine addicts,
and marijuana users drank alcohol before they graduated to the
harder stuff. Therefore alcohol is the universal gateway
drug."
(Actually, there is a lot of evidence
that alcohol really IS the
universal gateway drug, but the cigar-smoking, whisky-guzzling
Senators and Congressmen in Washington don't want to hear that.
They never tolerate hearing something bad about their own
favorite drugs; they just want to hear bad stuff about other
people's favorite drugs — preferably other people who are poor,
a different color or subcultural type, and not registered to
vote.)
- Another piece of propaganda on TV now
says,
"In roadside tests of reckless
drivers after auto accidents, one out of three drivers
tested positive for marijuana. Marijuana: It's more harmful
than we thought."
- They fail to establish any
connection between having smoked marijuana some time in the
previous 30 days (which is what the drug test detects) and
driving recklessly or being in an auto accident today. They
could just as well have tested for coffee, and then found that "Coffee!
It's more harmful than we thought."
- And
more harmful than who thought?
The anti-drug lunatics have been swearing that
marijuana produces instant insanity and addiction ever since
they made that Reefer
Madness movie back in the 'thirties. They
have never said that marijuana was harmless. So they are also
using the Sly
Suggestions propaganda technique, implying
that we thought it was less harmful than it really is.
- Also note that two thirds of those
reckless drivers managed to get into their accidents without
any help from pot. Logically, we must conclude that NOT smoking pot
causes more reckless drivers to get into auto accidents than
smoking it.
- That propaganda also did not say
that the pot-smoking drivers actually caused any of the car
accidents — they were just involved in the accidents. For all
we know, they might have been hit from behind by drunk
drivers.
- Which brings up, how many of the
drivers involved in the accidents were drunk?
They didn't tell us anything about that, did they? Why weren't
they saying,
"Alcohol
— it's more harmful than we thought"?
The propagandists appear to be hiding all evidence of drunk
driving (lying
by omission) and just trying to blame all of the
auto accidents on marijuana. But we know from other
propaganda, especially that disseminated by Mothers Against Drunk Driving,
that alcohol is the major cause of fatal auto accidents. (But
that's a different TV commercial.)
- One of the factors that really
biases such a test is the fact that traces of marijuana will
linger in body fat for up to a month, while the evidence of
any use of alcohol, speed, cocaine, or heroin disappears
within a day or two. That can make it look like there is a lot
more pot smoking going on than there really is, while it fails
to detect the chronic abuse of other drugs.
- Speaking of which, they didn't
even say that they tested for those other drugs, did they?
They only told us that they tested for marijuana. What else
were the drivers on?
Obviously, such propaganda is not
designed to tell anyone the truth about drugs. It is just more
lying politics as usual.
- Scream
Accusations of Lies and Lying
This is just the opposite of telling a lot of lies: When your opponent
tells some unpleasant truths that you don't want to hear, scream
accusations of lies and lying. Dismiss everything he says as a lie, no
matter how true it is.
Alcoholics Anonymous members use this
technique often. Whenever they are presented with really undesired
facts, like the fact that A.A. Trustee
and Harvard Professor Dr. George E. Vaillant found
from eight years of testing A.A. as a treatment for alcoholism, that
A.A. was completely ineffective and just produced an appalling death
rate, A.A. defenders
simply complain that that is a lie.
- Observational
Selection
Observational selection, also known as "cherry-picking", is a tactic
like counting the hits and forgetting the misses. See only what you
wish to see. Overlook and ignore evidence you don't wish to see. And
encourage your audience to be equally blind. Observational selection
will destroy the validity of any statistical study.
All
lies and jest,
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest.
Ooh-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.
The Boxer,
by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkle. |
The classic example of this is: Something
very unusual happens, and it turns out that a tabloid "psychic"
predicted it. So the "psychic" must be the real thing, able to see
the future, right? Wrong. It turns out that the self-proclaimed
"psychic" made many hundreds of screwy, off-beat "predictions", and
just by chance, one of them came true. The "psychic" just doesn't
bother to tell you about all of the wrong guesses that didn't come
true... Fans of Nostradamus still do this for him.
That "psychic's" stunt can be staged in
very convincing ways, like:
- The "psychic" writes his prediction on
a piece of paper.
- The paper is put into an envelope,
which is sealed by several witnesses who put their seals on the
envelope, and sign it and date it, and even add code numbers to
later verify that it's the envelope they sealed.
- The envelope is kept locked in a safe
or bank vault for a long time, until after The Big Event has
happened.
- Then, in a big showy ceremony, in
front of hundreds of witnesses and many TV cameras, the safe is
opened and the envelope is removed from the safe and opened, and
there it is for all to see: unquestionable
proof that the "psychic" predicted the event.
You guessed it: the safe is also full of failed
predictions, which the con artists happily ignore. (There may even
be another envelope in the safe that contains a prediction that is
the exact opposite of what just happened... The code numbers on the
envelopes tell the con artists which prediction is in which
envelope.)
Another way to use observational
selection to get desired results is to do many studies or tests, and
only report the results that you like. For example, suppose you are
a P.R. firm hired to make Buzz Cola look better than Fizz Cola. You
could get 1000 people to do a taste test, to see which they liked
better, but you don't. You do 100 "tests", each of which have only
10 people in them. In 95 of the tests, the people liked Fizz Cola
better. But by random chance, in the other 5 tests, a majority of
the people liked Buzz better. So you report,
"In test after test,
a majority of the people chose Buzz Cola over Fizz."
Technically, that statement is true, even if it is deceptive
as can be. You just don't bother to mention all of the other tests
where the people liked Fizz better.
I didn't
mean to pick on any real cola brand names there. I wrote that
paragraph many years ago, and just made up the names "Buzz"
and "Fizz" to avoid using names like "Coke"® and "Pepsi"®.
That was years before I ever heard of any Buzz or Fizz Cola.
Years later, I was really surprised to find that somebody used both of those
names for actual brands of soft drinks. Sometimes, reality
mimicks satire.
And obviously, another way to rig any
test or study is to cherry-pick the
people who will be in the test. If you want 'Group A' to look better
than 'Group B', then put all of the promising candidates in Group A,
and put all of the losers in Group B. (That is why real valid tests
must be randomized. You must throw dice, or pick names out of a hat,
or something like that, to choose which people go into which group.)
The government uses a subtle form of
observational selection and cherry-picking in reporting the national
unemployment rate: They only report those people who are actively
looking for work at the
unemployment office. People who have despaired and given up
looking for work, or who are still looking but have simply stopped
asking at the unemployment office, are erased from the rolls of "the
unemployed", and are not counted when the government calculates the
national unemployment rate. (Likewise, someone who accepts a menial
job for minimal wages out of sheer desperation — even a part-time
minimum-wage job — is considered no longer unemployed.) The real
unemployment rate is always much higher than the government reports,
no matter which political party controls the government. They all
misreport the facts.
Another example of observational
selection:
Smith: "I have here 29 files that describe cases where
people went to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and quit drinking. So
we have a demonstrated
relationship between people going to meetings
and quitting drinking."
Jones: "How many cases of failure were there, where the
people went to A.A. meetings but didn't quit drinking?"
Smith: "I didn't study them. They weren't interesting,
because they were just failures. I'm more interested in what
works. Besides, those other people don't count because they didn't
keep coming back."
That is just like Bill Wilson only
printing selected success stories in the Big
Book.
And that is just like how Alcoholics
Anonymous claims a great success rate today. The people who
relapse and leave are not counted — A.A. says
that they didn't "work the program" right, or they didn't "keep
coming back", so they don't count. Only the people who stay in A.A.
and attend many meetings (usually because they quit drinking) get
counted.
Some treatment facilities use a variation
on Observational Selection —
they cherry-pick their patients, drafting into their program as many
of the most promising prospective patients as they can get, in order
to improve their "success rate":
"You have
someone who just quit drinking two weeks ago? You say that he quit
once before, and stayed sober for three years, all on his own,
without any treatment or A.A. or anything — just going it alone?
Quick! Shove him into our treatment program, so that we can
'treat' him, and teach him how to stay sober for six months. Then
we can score him as one of our 'success stories'."
(That story is 100%
autobiographical — that's my own personal
experience with a "treatment program".)
Likewise, most all treatment centers are
very deceptive when they advertize their success rates — they only
reveal what percentage of the program
graduates are sober shortly after the end of the
program. They ignore all of the people who drop out, flunk out, and
relapse and disappear, and do not include them in the reported
statistics. (They rationalize that
deception by saying, "Well,
they didn't finish the program, so they don't count.")
If 100 people start a program, and ten of
them last until graduation, and 8 of them are still clean and sober
a month later, then the treatment center advertizes an 80% success
rate. That is obviously false. A mere 8% success rate is obviously
closer to the truth. But then the treatment centers do not do a
follow-up a year later, to see what the real long-term success rate
is. That would reveal even more failures. In the final analysis, the
success rate of the treatment programs is little or nothing more
than the normal rate
of spontaneous remission — the success rate of
people who get no treatment at all (approximately 5% per year).
And I know of a drug treatment program
that rejects, and will not even try to treat, any and all people who
have been treated before and then relapsed — even their own
graduates — because the program managers are afraid that those
relapsers will relapse again and pull down the program's average
"success rate". That program also discounts all of their dropouts
and relapsers. When someone "goes out" and uses drugs, or gets
arrested for something, the counselors simply erase that person's
name from the list of patients, and they do not count him in
computing their success rate. Then they claim that their program is
very successful and greatly reduces the crime rate of their patients
(those few remaining patients who are not currently out stealing to
get a fix).
When such a treatment center announces
that it has reduced crime in its patients by a certain amount, it is
lying with statistics. It is not revealing the resulting average
crime rate of all of the clients who started treatment; the T.C. is
only revealing the average crime rate of those few successful
patients who are still sticking with the program and still
abstaining from drugs and alcohol.
| Another
kind of observational selection is interpreting data in a
biased manner, seeing what you wish to see. That is
illustrated in this story:
A drug and alcohol
treatment center that used acupuncture on its clients (PAAC)
wanted to show that acupuncture reduced cravings for
drugs and alcohol in patients who were in recovery, so
that the treatment center could produce a report that
justified continuing to bill health insurance companies
and state agencies for more acupuncture treatments. So
they conducted a survey where they questioned their
patients to see how the acupuncture treatment was
affecting them:
Counselor: "How are you doing with cravings for
alcohol?"
Patient: "No problem. I don't have any."
Counselor: "That's because of the acupuncture."
Patient: "No, it's because I don't have any
cravings for alcohol. I am craving cigarettes like mad,
because I also quit smoking, but I'm not craving
alcohol."
Counselor: "That's because of the acupuncture.
I'll write down that acupuncture has reduced your
cravings for alcohol."
Patient: "No, actually it hasn't. I just don't
have a problem with cravings for alcohol. I didn't have
any cravings the last time I quit drinking, all on my
own, without any treatment or acupuncture, and I don't
have any this time either. I am too busy crawling the
walls for a cigarette to crave alcohol."
The counselor wrote "acupuncture reduced cravings"
anyway.
That story
is also autobiographical, and 100% true.
Later, the city and state
agencies received a report that declared that a survey
of the patients found that acupuncture was very helpful
for reducing their cravings for drugs and alcohol, so
the city agencies and the state health plan should
continue to fund acupuncture treatment of patients in
recovery.
Notice
that there was also no control group. That is, there
should have been another group of patients who
received no acupuncture, who were also surveyed to
find out how much they were bothered by cravings.
Then you compare the results from the two groups to
determine what effect, if any, the acupuncture
actually had on cravings for drugs or alcohol.
Unfortunately,
such properly-conducted research is almost never
done by substance-abuse treatment centers. Their
findings are usually just as
phony as their claimed
success rates.
|
Another good stunt is to take surveys at
A.A. or N.A. meetings. Only the faithful members who Keep Coming Back will
be there to answer the questions. Asking,
"Is there anyone
here for whom the Twelve Steps did not work?"
is the same stupid thing as asking,
"Will everyone who
isn't here please raise your hand?"
(Never mind the fact that it also immediately leads to an
"Emperor's New Clothes" situation where no one wants to confess that
he is the only unspiritual one for whom the Steps are not
working...)
Observational selection does not have to
be deliberate. One of the ever-present dangers to a researcher is
accidental or unconscious bias in making observations. In a study of the
use of LSD in therapy for alcoholism, the authors also studied
the methods that other studies had used. Their observations were
disconcerting — it seems that people have an unfortunate tendency to
see whatever they wish to see whenever tests are not rigidly
controlled. The various psychiatric treatments and medications being
tested were successful in 83 percent of the uncontrolled studies,
but only in 25 percent of the controlledstudies.
How curious. It would seem that looking too closely, and measuring
too carefully, makes the medicines or treatments suddenly stop
working.
That's a good example of researcher bias. The researchers
just really wanted their experiments to be sucesses, so that's what
they tended to see. But when their studies were rigorously
controlled, then the researchers were forced to be more objective,
and the observed success rate dropped sharply. (That is also why the
FDA prefers double-blind studies,
where neither the patients nor the doctors know whether the patients
are getting the real medicine or a placebo.)
A variation on the theme of Observational
Selection is getting biased data even when you don't wish to. In one
survey, researchers sent out questionaires that essentially asked
people to honestly reveal their racist attitudes. Not surprisingly,
a lot of the questionaires were simply never returned, and lots more
reported that the respondents just didn't have any racist attitudes
at all. As you can imagine, the resulting statistics showed that
racism and racist attitudes were almost non-existent.
- The
Statistics of Small Numbers
Also beware of The
Statistics of Small Numbers, which is a different kind of
observational selection. It is an error caused by looking at too small
of a sample. For instance, "They say that one out of every five people on Earth
is Chinese. That can't be true. I know hundreds and hundreds of
people, and only three of them are Chinese. So Chinese people must
be pretty rare, really..."
A variation of that is: A wildlife
program on Public Television says: "One out of every four mammals is a bat."
Well, let's see... "I
know I'm not a bat, and my wife isn't a bat, and Joe isn't a bat,
so Harry must be a bat." Variations on The statistics of small numbers include:
- Hasty Generalization: Generalizing
from too-small a sample.
- Inductive Generalization
- Insufficient Sample
- Insufficient Statistics
- Leaping to Conclusion
- Lonely Fact
- Statistical Generalization
- Converse Accident
The statistics of small numbers problem
appears in discussions of A.A. often. People will say things like, "We don't have any nasty
thirteenth-stepping sexual predators in our
group," and imagine that every other group in
the whole country must be just the same, and that it doesn't happen
anywhere else either. Unfortunately, it does.
Likewise, "Nobody in our group has committed suicide, so
those stories about A.A. Suicides are
ridiculous."
How can you be
sure, unless you know every member of your group very well,
and keep track of all of them, and check up on them, and know what
shape each drop-out, quitter, or disappearance is really in? You
don't really expect them to commit suicide at
the A.A. meetings, do you? And again, you have no idea what is
happening in the other A.A. groups that you don't visit. They sure
aren't going to email you to broadcast the news about their
suicides.
And again, "No sponsors
in our group tell the newcomers to quit taking
their doctor-prescribed medications, so those stories must
be untrue."
I wish they
were. (And how do you know what some sponsor is telling his
sponsee, if you aren't listening in?)
- Bury The Lead
Burying the lead (pronounced, "leed") is a newspaper term. It means
that you hide the most important fact in the story down at the bottom
of the article.
For example, a recent newspaper article
about the soaring price of oil tried to explain the price increases
in terms of speculators buying oil futures, and political
instability in foreign countries causing uncertainty in the market.
Then they gradually got around to mentioning that India and China
have booming economies that want ever more oil. And then finally, in
the last sentence of the article, someone said, "Oil is getting
harder to find."
Historically, one of the best examples of Burying The Lead was
when the New York Times casually mentioned in a small article on
page 9 of an issue, many months after the 2000 election, that if we
had counted all of the votes (which is, after all, what you are
supposed to do in a democracy), that Al Gore actually won the
election.
- The Big Lie
The Big Lie is
a technique that Adolf Hitler used with great success. The idea is
that you just keep repeating the same lie over and over, in spite of
all arguments or evidence to the contrary, until people believe it.
Massive repetition is essential. (Think: "Why do they keep running the
same stupid commercials on TV, over and over and over again, ad nauseum?")
"Tell
a lie enough times and it will become the truth."
— Heinrich Himmler |
"A
big lie is more plausible than truth."
— Ernest Hemingway |
Hitler explained his Big
Lie technique in Mein
Kampf,
The
greatness of the lie is always a certain factor in being believed;
at the bottom of their hearts, the great masses of a people are
more likely to be misled than to be consciously and deliberately
bad, and in the primitive simplicity of their minds, they are more
easily victimized by a large than by a small lie.... Some part of
even the boldest lie is sure to stick.
It's a strange fact of human psychology
that giant, totally outrageous lies are sometimes more believable
than small lies, just by virtue of their bodaciousness. People feel
that there must be something to
it, because the claims are so extreme. People can't help but feel
that "Where there is so
much smoke, there must be some fire."
In using the Big
Lie technique, Hitler said, essentially,
The Jews are an inferior race. The Jews have
always been the thieving greedy bankers and money-lenders,
bleeding the lifeblood out of our country. Everybody knows that
the Jews are the cause of all of our problems, and now that we are
imposing the Final Solution, we will soon be much better off
without them.
Today, the fascist rap is,
Drug users and dealers are inferior people. They
are really low, dirty and disgusting bums who deserve to die
because they are drug users and dealers, and they don't care about
anything but getting high. Everybody knows that they are the major
cause of all of our problems. When we impose the death sentence
for more and more drug offenses, we will finally get rid of those
dopers, and we will be much better off without them.
And:
Those poor, long-suffering rich people desperately
need a tax cut. They have been treated so badly by the government
for so long, it's the least we can do to make it up to them.
(Heck, some of them are down to their last billion.) Giving the
rich people a tax cut will stimulate the economy so much that soon
the wealth will trickle down, and we will all benefit from it.
[Just like happened under Ronald
Reagan and George Bush — Remember: "It's the economy, stupid!"]
And
Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, said, in speaking
of the "Shock
and Awe" bombing war that he was waging
against Iraq (March 21, 2003):
"You don't understand how
compassionate our bombing is."
I'm sure that the children
whose heads were blown off by malfunctioning smart bombs
really thought that it was compassionate.
On Jan. 27, 2004, NBC Evening News
reported that the death toll of civilians killed in
Iraq in the Bush vs. Saddam War had reached 10,000.
That is a lot more than the 2900 Americans who died on
September 11, so that's a lot of pay-back. And Saddam
Hussein of Iraq wasn't even the guy who attacked
America; it was Osama bin Laden from Saudi Arabia,
remember? (The guy whom the CIA armed and funded
during the Russia-Afghanistan War.)
A few months later the score was
13,000 dead, and by April 16 it was up to 14,000,
because of the battle in Fallujah That's a lot of
pay-back to a country that didn't attack us.
In just the two-week period from April 1
to April 15, 90 Americans and 900 Iraqis died, mostly
in Fallujah, most of them civilians (punishment for
the killing of four American civilian contractors in
Fallujah).
| If
reminds me of the Nazi reprisals during WWII.
If one German soldier was killed by The
Resistance in an occupied town, the Nazis
would get their revenge by randomly shooting
hundreds of civilians in that town, just
making sure that somebody was always punished,
even if it wasn't the people who did it.
When the German
S.S. Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich was
assassinated in Czechoslovakia by the Czech
underground, the Germans simply totally
annihilated a nearby town — Lidice — in
reprisal. They immediately shot all of the
men, and sent the women and children to
concentration camps, where most of them
eventually died. Then they burned and
blasted and bull-dozed the town until
nothing was left but rubble, and then the
Germans erased the name of the town from the
maps.
When the war
ended, the Allies assembled at the Geneva
Convention and wrote up the Geneva Accords,
which made such group punishment a war
crime. (But then Donald Rumsfeld, G. W.
Bush's Secretary of Defense, announced that
the Geneva Convention was obsolete and that
he did not wish to be limited by it.)
So after four Blackwater
contractors were killed in Fallujah, 900
residents of Fallujah were killed in
reprisals — the vast majority of them being
civilians, including plenty of women and
children.
|
On March 19, 2004, on the anniversary
of the start of the war, it was revealed by major
news networks that the U.S. forces had used cluster
bombs against targets located in civilian areas of
Bagdad during "Shock And Awe". Such cluster bombing
of civilians is a violation of international law.
It's a war crime. A U.S. military spokesmen said
that the American commanding officers felt that such
usage was "appropriate".
As of December, 2004: Now the city
of Fallujah has been destroyed to eliminate the
resistance, with a loss of Iraqi lives so high that
the American officials won't count them and release
the count. They will not tell us how many civilians
were killed by American firepower. The best study to
date estimates that the total Iraqi death toll in
the war is now over 100,000 — with most of them
being civilians, including many, many children.
As of 4 August 2005, the score was:
- 1825+ U.S. military
people dead in Iraq.
- 43,000+ U.S. wounded,
maimed, and crippled for life.
- 113,000+ dead Iraqis,
most of them civilians, including 30,000 children.
And still, the Bush
administration constantly repeats the chant that the
war is a good thing. "Freedom is on the march." That's
the Big Lie technique.
UPDATE: July 2007: Now, of course,
the war has gone on for two more years, and all of
the body counts are much higher. The British medical
journal Lancet reported
last year that their estimation of Iraqi deaths was
600,000. The American deaths were 3546 as of 22 June
2007. And the people wounded, maimed, and crippled
are uncountable.
And still, George W. Bush prattles
on about "victory in Iraq", and "establishing
democracy", and "creating a stable government
there", and "when they stand up, we will stand
down."
That's
the Big
Lie technique.
|
And A.A. says:
- Alcoholics Anonymous is the best — the only — way to recover
from alcoholism.
- Nobody can do it alone.
- Everybody
knows that The Twelve Step programs work, and keep millions
of people sober.
- Alcoholics Anonymous is an enormously
successful program.
- "RARELY have we seen a person fail,
who has thoroughly followed our path..." (The Big Book, 3rd & 4th Editions, William Wilson,
page 58.)
- Everybody
knows that A.A. is spiritual, not religious.
- If you are having a problem with
drinking too much alcohol, then you have a disease which only a
spiritual experience will conquer. (The Big Book, 3rd & 4th Editions, William Wilson,
page 44.)
- Alcoholism is an incurable,
progressive disease, often caused by an inherited gene, and a
disease is respectable, not a moral stigma. (The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Marty Mann, Page 227.)
- Nobody can quit drinking until they
hit bottom and are ready to surrender to the A.A. program.
- The best thing you can do for a loved
one is force him to go to A.A. meetings, for his own good.
- In A.A., nobody has any power over
anyone else. In A.A., everybody is equal (but some people are more
equal than others).
- So Keep Coming Back! It Works if you
work it... You die if you don't. So work it, you're worth it!
In an official A.A. history book, A.A.
co-founder Dr. Robert Smith said,
He
said, "Duke, I think this A.A. program will appeal to you, because
it's psychologically sound and religiously sane."
Dr.
Bob and the Good Oldtimers, Alcoholics Anonymous World
Services, Inc., 1980, page 253.
That statement is the exact opposite of
the truth:
And still, A.A. prints and distributes large quantities of propaganda
that claims just the opposite.
That's the Big
Lie technique.
Here, Bill Wilson quoted Dr. Harry M.
Tiebout quoting Bill Wilson, as if that would add
authority to Bill's faked numbers:
"Alcoholics
Anonymous claims a recovery rate of 75 percent of those who really
try their methods. This figure, coupled with their mushroom
growth, commands respect and demands explanation."
[Reprinted from The
American Journal of Psychiatry, January 1944, "Therapeutic
Mechanism of Alcoholics Anonymous".]
Alcoholics
Anonymous Comes Of Age, William G. Wilson, page 310.
Actually, such a figure commands contempt
and derision, because it is a bare-faced lie. Alcoholics Anonymous
never had a success rate anything like 75%; they didn't even get a
tenth of that. Notice how Tiebout repeated Bill Wilson's
grossly inflated and exaggerated claims of success as
if they were true facts, and even cited them in professional
journals. That is the Big
Lietechnique, one more time again.
[Also
notice how cleverly Tiebout covered his own ass: He started off by
saying that A.A. merely claimed
to have a 75% success rate — a rate which
Tiebout had to know was totally untrue, because Tiebout was Bill's
psychiatrist, and Tiebout had a number of other patients in A.A.,
too, so he could see what was going on. But then Tiebout just
accepted Bill's grossly exaggerated claims as correct, and
declared that they "commanded respect and demanded explanation".
If anyone called Tiebout on it later by pointing out just how
inaccurate those numbers really were, Tiebout could always just
pass the buck to A.A., and say that he was just using their
numbers.
And the
psychiatrist Dr. Tiebout accepted those inflated numbers as
valid, in spite of his own
diagnosis of Bill Wilson's mental state as "immature
and grandiose", and stating that Bill Wilson was trying to
live out "the infantilely grandiose demands" of "His Majesty the
Baby."]
Since then, numerous A.A. shills have
parrotted those false numbers without doing any research of their
own. The West Baltimore Group of A.A. has a web page on the A.A.
success rate that declares:
Q
- What is the success rate of Alcoholics Anonymous?
A - Of those sincerely willing to stop drinking about 50 per cent
have done so at once, 25 per cent after a few relapses and most of
the remainder have improved. (N.Y. State J. Med., Vol. 44, Aug.,
1944)
...
Of those alcoholics who wish to get well and are emotionally
capable of trying our method, 50 per cent recover immediately, 25
per cent after a few backslides. The remainder are improved if
they continue active in A.A. ... (N.Y. State J. Med., Vol. 50,
July 1950)
What
is A.A.'s Success Rate?, http://www.voai.org/Success%20Rate.htm
| Notice
how the West Baltimore Group of A.A. quoted the New York
State Journal of Medicine as if it were endorsing
Alcoholics Anonymous, and reporting the A.A. success rate.
But that Journal was actually just publishing a piece of
propaganda that was written by Bill Wilson, an article
that Wilson got into the Journal with a letter of
endorsement by Dr.
Harry M. Tiebout — "Basic
Concepts of Alcoholics Anonymous" by William G.
Wilson. (So much for anonymity.) That article contained
the same false claims as Bill Wilson wrote in the foreword
to the second edition of the "Big Book" — lines which were
blatant lies when they were written, and which are still
lies.
Of
alcoholics who came to A.A. and really tried,
50% got sober at once and remained that way; 25%
sobered up after some relapses, and among the
remainder, those who stayed on with A.A. showed
improvement.
William
G. Wilson, in the Foreword to the Second Edition of Alcoholics Anonymous,
page XX, 1955.
Those numbers were not even
vaguely true, and still aren't. You can read an analysis
of those false claims here.
|
Likewise, Bill Wilson
wrote that an A.A. newcomer said:
"Then
I woke up. I had to admit that A.A. showed results, prodigious
results. I saw that my attitude regarding these had been anything
but scientific. It wasn't A.A. that had the closed mind, it was
me."
Twelve
Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 27.
- Alcoholics Anonymous does not produce "prodigious results" —
not unless you consider
to be "prodigious
results".
- And it is A.A.'s attitude that is
extremely anti-scientific — A.A. claims that its program works in some
mystical, magical way that cannot be
scientifically tested or logically explained.
- When Bill Wilson wrote that paragraph
of "12X12" (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions),
he was just lying again. Bill Wilson
habitually lied about the A.A. failure rate,
and routinely covered it up and declared that his program was
immensely successful in saving alcoholics. And A.A. is still doing
that today.
That's the Big
Lie technique.
And they have been doing that for a very long time, too. This
phony "review" of the "Big Book" Alcoholics
Anonymouswas published in The
New York Times in 1939. It was actually written
by a hidden A.A. true believer — Percy Hutchison, the New York Times poetry editor — who was
scheming with Bill Wilson and the other early A.A. members to help
sell the new A.A. book, not by any neutral observer or dispassionate
critic, or by anybody who knew anything about treating alcoholism:
Lest this title should arouse the risibles in any reader let
me state that the general thesis of "Alcoholics Anonymous" is more
soundly based psychologically than any other treatment of the
subject I have ever come upon.
...
"Alcoholics Anonymous" is unlike any other book ever before
published. No reviewer can say how many have contributed to its
pages. But the list of writers should include addicts and doctors,
psychiatrists and clergymen.
...
Here, then, is the key to "Alcoholics Anonymous," the great
and indisputable lesson this extraordinary book would convey. The
alcoholic addict ... cannot, by any effort of what he calls his
"will," insure himself against taking his "first dose." We saw how
the chap with his whiskey in milk missed out. There is one way for
our authors, and but one way. The utter suffusion of the mind by
an idea which shall exclude any idea of alcohol or of drugs.
...
The thesis of the book is, if we read it aright, that this
all-embracing and all-commanding idea must be religious. ... There
is no suggestion advanced in the book that an addict should
embrace one faith rather than another. He may fall back upon an
"absolute," or "A Power which makes for righteousness" if he
chooses. The point of the book is that he is unlikely to win
through unless he floods his mind with the idea of a force outside
himself. So doing, his individual problem resolves into thin air.
In last analysis, it is the resigning word: Not my will, but
Thine, be done, said in the full knowledge of the fact that the
decision will be against further addiction.
...
The argument, as we have said, has a deep psychological
foundation.
BOOK
REVIEW, NEW YORK TIMES, June 25, 1939. ALCOHOLIC EXPERIENCE,
By Percy Hutchison
Percy Hutchison was actually prescribing religiomania —
maniacal obsession with religion — and faith healing as the best
cure for alcoholism. Religiomania and faith healing are not "soundly
based psychologically", and they do not have "a deep psychological
foundation". Nevertheless, the A.A. true believers persistently
claim that A.A. does, even while they simultaneously brag that A.A.
is not based on science. And they have been doing that for 76
years now.
That's the Big
Lie technique. Just never stop telling the lie,
no matter how absurd and contradictory it is..
|
Percy Hutchison was the poetry
editor of The
New York Times.
- What does a poetry editor
know about medicine, alcoholism, or human psychology?
- How could he claim that
A.A. was the best cure for alcoholism that he had ever
seen? How many others had he seen?
- How could Hutchison claim
to know that the problem of alcoholism would just
"resolve into thin air" if an alcoholic followed Bill
Wilson's instructions?
- What was Hutchison doing
reviewing a book about a new cure for alcoholism, and
recommending one treatment program over another?
- When did Percy Hutchison
become qualified to advise the public about critical
life-or-death medical conditions like alcohol
addiction? Isn't that the job of the medical editor or
the science editor or an actual doctor?
Let me guess — Hutchison
suggested the book to the newspaper's editors, and
volunteered to review it, because he really wanted
people to hear about a "wonderful new fellowship that
had a magical new treatment program for alcoholism..."
The
June 1940 financial report of "Works Publishing" says
that the original New York A.A. group used the New York
Times Book Review and several other media outlets to
publicize and tout the newly-printed Big
Book for free. Obviously, that
so-called "book review" was a fraud — a very biased
piece of promotional propaganda, a commercial for the
book, not a fair objective analysis of the Alcoholics
Anonymous program.
That's the Big
Lie technique — just keep saying it,
over and over and over again, as often as you can, and
in as many places as you can, no matter what, until
people believe it.
|
And here another long-time true believer
parrots the lie:
It
is probable that more contemporary alcoholics have found sobriety
through the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous than through all
other agencies combined.
Alcoholics
Anonymous, an interpretation, by Milton A. Maxwell, Ph.D.,
contained in Chapter 33 of Society,
Culture, and Drinking Patterns, David J. Pittman and Charles
R. Snyder,editors, page 577.
(Note that
Milton A. Maxwell was a member of the Board of Trustees of
Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc..)
Actually, it isn't "probable" at all. The
truth is that the Harvard
Medical School says that 80% of those alcoholics
who successfully quit drinking for a year or more do it alone, on
their own. That only leaves 20% who could possibly have recovered
through Alcoholics Anonymous, and lots of those 20% did it in other
ways too, like in Christian brotherhoods or monasteries, the
Veterans' Administration program, the Salvation Army, the Catholic
DePaul program, Rational Recovery, SMART, SOS, WFS, etc...
Considering the immense
A.A. dropout rate and high A.A.
failure rate, it is "probable" that
very few of the successful sober alcoholics actually recovered
through Alcoholics Anonymous.
Today, the A.A. campaign of
misinformation continues even in the halls of Congress:
As
the fabulously successful twelve-step program pioneered by
Alcoholics Anonymous has conclusively demonstrated, one cannot
tackle a crisis until acknowledging the reality of a genuine
problem.
Statement of John
C. Hulsman, Ph..D. Research Fellow for European Affairs, the Davis
Institute for International Studies, The Heritage Foundation. Committee on House International
Relations Europe Subcommittee June 11, 2003.
I sincerely hope Mr. Hulsman knows more
about foreign affairs than he knows about alcoholism treatment
programs, or else we are liable to find ourselves trapped in a
quagmire of unwinnable foreign wars...
[P.S.:
A year later: Let's see
now, how did that premonition work out?
Afghanistan? Iraq? The so-called "War on Terrorism"?
"Fabulously successful" easy victories, or quagmires?]
[P.S.:
Two years later: Let's
see now, how did that premonition work out?
"Fabulously successful" easy victories, or quagmires?]
[P.S.:
Three years later... Four years later... Ten years later? Need I
continue?]
- Reversal Of
Reality, and Counter-attack
by Reversal of Reality
Have the nerve to completely reverse reality, and say the exact
opposite of the truth.
A young woman wrote: "My roommate
'borrows' my clothes without my permission and she leaves them
sweat-stained and stretched out. They are ruined. When I complain
about it, she says that I am selfish."
When white women comprise the majority of
the women receiving welfare, say that Black women comprise the
majority of the women on welfare.
As evidence accumulated that the Bush
administration had lied, fabricated evidence, distorted other
evidence, and hidden contradictory facts about the Weapons of Mass
Destruction in Iraq in order to manufacture an excuse to go to war,
Vice President Dick Cheney declared:
"The
President and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing
their memory or their backbone, but we're not going to sit by and
let them rewrite history."
(TIME, Nov
21-27, 2005)
Likewise, when CIA agent Valerie Plame's
cover was blown, Bush declared: "We are going to find those leakers and take care
of them."
Of course, George Bush and Dick Cheney and their White House
Chiefs of Staff turned out to be the leakers, but that's okay, Scott
McClellan said, because George had already declassified the secret
information and approved of the leaks before they leaked it — so
George knew who the leakers were even as he swore on TV that he
would catch the leakers.
2011.01.10: In the past few years, political rhetoric has become
increasingly hostile and vicious. Sarah Palin's web site showed
pictures of Democrats' districts with rifle cross-hairs on them, and
Palin repeatedly instructed followers to "lock and load" and
"reload". And the Tea Party language was even worse, with
barely-veiled death threats, and appeals for "Second-Amendment (gun)
solutions" to problems.
In the debate following the attempted
assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, the local sheriff
in Tucson, Arizona, denounced the language of violence, and said
that he felt that it had contributed to the shooting. Republican
talking heads immediately responded by saying that his criticism of
Right-wing inflamatory speech was "over the top" and "rhetoric", and
"inappropriate for an elected official". That is reversal of
reality.
2011.01.12: Sarah Palin released a video
where she complained about how she had suffered from attacks ever
since the shooting, and that she was the victim of a "blood libel".
As if she suffered from a bullet through the head, or had lost a
daughter or husband in the shooting. That is reversal of reality.
That is also a good example of the Prima Donna Ploy, making it all
about The Drama Queen.
Another reversal of reality: A company
that wants to set up a non-Indian casino (a new precedent for
Oregon) advertises on TV that they will create millions of dollars —
declaring that they will give the community millions of dollars in
new taxes, and create thousands of new jobs with health care, and
raise millions of dollars for education. The truth is, casinos never
create money. They take money from people. Casinos do not
manufacture anything of value; they just take money from the
mathematically challenged customers. Ultimately, in the long run,
casinos make states poorer, not richer. The end product of casinos
is more impoverished citizens.
Worse yet, the market for casinos is
saturated. Now almost every state has legalized gambling in some
form or another, and gamblers no longer need to drive to Las Vegas
or Atlantic City to gamble. There is another casino just down the
road, or just across the state line. Now the casinos are just
fighting over market share, with one casino stealing customers from
another. The casino business has become a zero-sum game, where one
casino's gain is another's loss. Another casino doesn't make more
money for the community; it just makes some for the occasional lucky
casino owner while reducing the profits of a neighboring casino.
In another reversal of reality, a
political commercial declares that the Democrats are hurting America
by raising the debt ceiling and spending money on welfare programs,
and that we should "put families first" instead. That is a reversal
of reality. Not raising the debt ceiling has resulted in cutting
funding for food stamps, which is just the opposite of "putting
families first." That is putting families last by taking food out of
the mouths of children, and putting billionaires who don't want to
pay taxes first.
- Projection
Projection is a psychological technique where someone accuses other
people of the sins and crimes of which he himself is guilty.
Projection is also a kind of reversal of reality.
For example, Adolf Hitler cited the
forged document called The
Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as
proving that the Jews had a secret program to take over the world by
using deceit, lies, murder, planned wars, and all sorts of evil
conspiracies, but it was actually Adolf Hitler himself who was
carrying out such a plan for world domination. Hitler was doing all
of the things for which he denounced the Jews.
Similarly, cult leaders routinely accuse
their followers and also outsiders of greed and lust while they
steal all of the money and pretty women for themselves. And
politicians are notorious for loudly denouncing the decline in
national morals while they take bribes, drink like fish, and use
their secretarial staff as a stable of mistresses. Some of the most
vocal anti-homosexual Congressmen turned out to be closetted
homosexuals who were screwing boys in the Congressional gymnasium.
- Make a Virtue
out of a Fault
Advertise and promote a shortcoming or a fault as a virtue.
For example, ultra-cheap single-use film
cameras are advertised as "No Focusing Required." The truth is, no
focusing is possible, because those cameras have cheap plastic
fixed-focus lenses that won't move and can't be focused. What is a
serious shortcoming for a camera — the inability to properly focus
on the subject — is sold as a convenience: "You don't have to bother with focusing."
Alcoholics Anonymous uses this technique
too. When the founder Bill Wilson is shown to have been a fraud, a
liar, a felonious thief,
a certified
nutcase, a philandering
sexual predator, and a con artist who sold cult religion as a
quack cure for alcoholism, the true believers proclaim,
"Isn't
it wonderful? It just goes to show that Bill Wilson was human. And
if he could get sober, then so can we. God wanted Bill to be less
than perfect so that he could be a good example for us all."
- Unsupported
Claims
Make any grand claims you wish, supported by no facts at all.
The
Red-baiter Senator Joseph McCarthy did it in his speeches in the
1950s like this:
"I
have in my hand a list of 205 Communists working in the State
Department",
as he waved a piece of paper that had no names on it. (He never,
ever, revealed that list of names, or any other list of names of
Communists, either. McCarthy just went on to make more and more
outrageous claims, also supported by no evidence, until the U.S.
Senate got fed up with the routine, and censured him.14)
| On June 1, 2004,
while talking about the high prices of gasoline, acting
President G. W. Bush declared, "Had we had drilled in Anwar [National
Wildlife Refuge], back in the mid nineties, we would
be producing an additional million barrels a day by
now."
He doesn't know that. They
might have drilled a bunch of dry holes while
destroying the wildlife refuge. They might have had
technical difficulties. Things might have frozen up.
Eco-terrorists or foreign terrorists might have bombed
the pipeline. A lot of things could have happened.
Predicting alternative futures is always guesswork.
Besides, that is all a
smoke screen — a
diversion of attention from the truth. The real
bottleneck in producing more gasoline now is
refineries — there have been almost no new refineries
built in the USA in the last 30 years. Even worse, the
oil companies are actually shutting down refineries to
force gasoline prices even higher — so of course the
supply of gasoline is tight.
And the Republicans are notorious for
killing alternative energy projects. President Carter
started a lot of them, and then President Reagan shut
them all down. Why don't we talk about what kind of a
world we would have today if Reagan had not killed
alternative energy?
|
Bill Wilson did it like this:
The
alcoholic, realizing what his wife has endured, and now fully
understanding how much he himself did to damage her and his
children, nearly always takes up his marriage responsibilities
with a willingness to repair what he can and to accept what he
can't. He persistently tries all of A.A.'s Twelve Steps in his
home, often with fine results. At this point he firmly but
lovingly commences to behave like a partner instead of a bad boy.
And above all he is finally convinced that reckless romancing is
not a way of life for him.
Twelve
Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, Page 119.
- Where is the evidence that some
unnamed stereotypical alcoholic reformed himself in that manner?
- Where is the evidence that he got
"fine results" from working the Twelve Steps?
(And it says that he "often" got "fine results". So did he get
miserable results the rest of the time?)
- Where is the evidence that the unnamed
alcoholic stopped philandering and hurting his wife? Bill Wilson
never did.
- Imaginary
Evidence
Notice the lack of hard evidence in this
article:
Two
recent studies support the potential effectiveness of this
[12-Step] treatment when carried out by mental health
professionals. The first studied alcohol-dependent outpatients.
The group of subjects that received 12-step treatment improved
substantially. The second study focused on VA inpatients with
alcohol and/or other substance use disorders. At the one-year
follow up, the group of subjects that had received 12-step
treatment improved significantly in many life areas.
...
A recent award-winning study conducted at SUNY-Albany lends
support to this notion.
Better
Treatment for the MICA (Mentally Ill Chemically Addicted)
Patient, Mark Lazarus, Coordinator, Partial Hospitalization
Program, The Holliswood Hospital, NEW YORK CITYVOICES: April/May
2002
Just try to figure out what studies the
author is citing. It is impossible. (There was no bibliography.) You
have no way of knowing whether the studies were valid or faked or
improperly conducted, or whether the author interpreted the results
correctly. While such grand statements sound good, they are actually
meaningless because they are completely unverifiable, and hence,
unreliable.
Also notice the strange contradiction where 12-Step
treatment programs are supposedly effective IF they
are "carried out by mental health professionals." But an
often-repeated Alcoholics Anonymous boast is that they don't use
professional healers, because the non-professional A.A. sponsors
are supposedly much better than professional therapists:
Here
was a book that said that I could do something that all these
doctors and priests and ministers and psychiatrists that I'd
been going to for years couldn't do!
The Alcoholics
Anonymous Big Book,
3rd Edition, page 473.
- Use
Association
Association is just linking together two unrelated things. Often, it
creates an emotional reaction in the intended audience. It can be
anything like Guilt by Association, Honor by Association, or
Desirability by Association, depending on what somebody or something
is associated with.
Advertisers routinely associate beautiful
women in skimpy clothes with new cars, cigarettes, alcoholic
beverages, clothes, and diamond jewelry. TV commercials teach us
that we can get laid if we use the right toothpaste and the right
under-arm deodorant. So we have been programmed to consciously or
unconsciously associate sex with all kinds of strange things.
Likewise, many commercials teach us to
associate sugar consumption with happiness. Children are taught by
TV commercials that eating gobs of sugar is really a lot of fun, and
parents are taught that giving sugar to children is how they show
the children love.
Politicians also routinely kiss babies,
hug children, and hobnob with other, more popular and powerful
politicians, to look good by association. They also love to rub
elbows with the the rich, the famous, and the beautiful people, like
movie stars and sports heroes, for the same reason. And of course
they want to be photographed with a good selection of wise men like
university professors, Nobel prize winners, and high-ranking
religious leaders, to look good by association.
Politicians will also, occasionally,
associate their opponents with some villainous characters, perhaps
Adolf Hitler, Mao Tse Tung, Joseph Stalin, or Ghengis Khan, to make
their opponents look dangerous and evil. (Sometimes the comparison
is unfair, and sometimes it isn't. It all depends.)
The Scientology propaganda book "What Is
Scientology" devotes 16 pages (xiv to xxix)
to showing you pictures of beautiful, palatial buildings that the
organization owns around the world, and the last "building" is
really a large ship, the Freewinds.
What do those beautiful buildings and that beautiful ship have to do
with whether Scientology is a good organization, or whether it can
help you with your mental problems, or with whether you should give
all of your money to Scientology? Absolutely nothing. They are just
trying to impress you, to make you think that Scientology is really
a big, high-class outfit, not the sleazy, low, money-grubbing con
that it actually is.
A powerful association that I find in my
own mind is that, ever since September 11, every time I see a
photograph of an American Airlines jet, I see it crashing into a
skyscraper, or blowing up as it comes out through the wall of a
skyscraper. There is no skyscraper in the picture; my mind just
fills it in because of those televised images that were burned into
my mind on September 11. That is totally unfair to American
Airlines, of course. It wasn't their fault that some terrorists
chose to hijack some of their flights. Nevertheless, American
Airlines has a real problem with that association that has been
planted in so many people's minds.
Similarly, before September 11, the
public perception of firemen was something like "a bunch of
adventurous young guys and overgrown boy scouts with too much
testosterone, who are living out a childhood fantasy of being
firemen and getting their kicks by driving big red trucks real
fast." After September 11, the image is "a bunch of heroic guys who
rush into burning towers to save people, and die when the building
comes down on their heads."
That's the power of association.
A
corollary to association is something that I like to call "reverse
association" — basking in reflected glory by honoring others (who
may be totally out of your league). An easy way to accomplish that
is to hand out "awards", honoring others for something or other. An
interesting example of "reverse association" is: Federal Reserve
Chairman Alan Greenspan received the Enron
Prize for Distinguished Public Service from Ken
Lay in November, 2001, less than three weeks before Enron filed for
bankruptcy. Now I'll guess that Greenspan wishes he had never
accepted the award.13
Guilt By
Association is of course a negative association.
It is like, "Senator
Blowhard had lunch with Ken Lay, Andy Fastow, and Jeffrey Skilling
of Enron. Therefore Senator Blowhard is just as corrupt as them."
We do not really know anything about Blowhard's integrity,
just from that. He is not automatically guilty just because he
associated with those guys one time.
(But
if he often associated with them, and took lots of money from
them, and rode around in their jet while campaigning for office,
like George W. Bush did, then that is another matter.... And if
his Vice President then arranged the energy regulations so that
Enron could massively rob the State of California with
artificially inflated electricity prices, then that is very
suspicious.)
- The
Glittering Generality
The Glittering Generality is
a kind of Association technique.
American politicians routinely wave the
American flag and praise God, country, Democracy, Freedom, Mom, and
apple pie, trying to create links in people's minds (associations)
between themselves and those other positive images.
So salt and pepper your speeches with
zillions of flowery phrases and wonderful-sounding words and vague
glittering generalities:
- "God, country, Mom and apple pie"
- "Patriotism, Freedom, Democracy, and
the good old USA"
- "safety and national security"
- "those simple
home truths that some of us learned at our mother's knee,
and which many of us have forgotten and neglected — honesty,
purity, unselfishness and love."
- "inspiration and liberty for all"
- "the great creative sources in the
Mind of God"
- "the combined moral and spiritual
forces of the nation"
- "Christian values"
- "The Love of Jesus"
- "The Glory of God"
- "The Power of the Almighty"
- "The Will of God"
- "family values"
- "Freedom is on the march."
- "Our wonderful patriotic troops who
are fighting for Freedom in Iraq"
- "The wonderful men and women who serve
in our volunteer army"
It is really tragic how many innocent
people have been murdered in the name of Freedom, Democracy, and
Christian family values... (Just recently, 30,000 children in Iraq,
and before that, zillions of Nicaraguans, Guatemalans and
Vietnamese.)
A common variation on The
Glittering Generality is invoking images of "The Golden Age". Imply that there
was a better time way in the past — "The Good Old Days" — when
everything was wonderful — "everybody was happy, everybody was kind and
decent, everybody obeyed the law, everybody believed in God, the
rulers were wise, just and honest, and children obeyed their
parents".
Sometimes this Golden Age is embodied in
a popular myth, like The
Tales of King Arthur and Camelot, where noble knights believed
in Might For Right (not
"Might Makes Right"), and the brave knights spent their time
rescuing fair damsels in distress. And of course, the wizards of The Olden Times, like Merlin, were
much wiser and much more powerful than today's wizards, and their
magic was so much better than today's magic... And the maidens in
those days were beautiful and pure and chaste, and the knights were
all honorable and chivelrous. And the king was the wisest and most
noble of kings.
Then the speaker invokes an appeal to
return to the Good Old Days — "We must get Back to
the Basics, and Back to Traditional Values".
Adolf Hitler and the Nazis actually used
those terms — "Back to the
Basics" and "Traditional
Values" — in their propaganda, while campaigning
for seats in the Reichstag, and they declared that Hitler could take
Germany back to "The Golden Age" if elected. (We all know how that
worked out.)
And today, Alcoholics Anonymous leaders
also run "Back to the
Basics" meetings that supposedly have the good
magic of the olden days.
- Exaggerate
You don't blatantly lie; you just stretch the truth a good bit. This
also has the advantage that even if you get caught at it, you can
always argue that you were telling the truth, and it's all a matter of
degree, and people just got the wrong impression, or took it the wrong
way... Mark Twain explained that expanding a story wasn't really a
lie, just a "stretcher".
For an example of exaggeration, this is
one of the faithful followers of the cult leader
Frank Buchman singing his praises, trying to make
him sound like a citizen of the world:
...he
knows China like the Chinese; he is thoroughly at home in Germany,
the Netherlands, India, America, Africa, and Australia.
A. J. Russel, For Sinners Only, page 82, quoted
in
Experiment With God; Frank Buchman
Reconsidered, Gösta Ekman, page 57.
Frank Buchman probably did feel at home
in Germany, because he was a native German speaker, the son of
German-speaking Swiss emigrants to Pennsylvania. But it is
questionable whether he was equally at home in all of those other
countries that he visited for short periods of time, unless they
just happened to have five-star
hotels, which was really Buchman's favorite environment. And
it is absurd to say that Buchman knew China like the Chinese. Frank
Buchman only spent a couple of years in China as a missionary, where
his behavior was so obnoxious
and offensive that the Bishop of Hankow finally
ordered him to stop working in China.
For another example of exaggeration:
Japanese
business and industry is such an incredible gargantuan efficient
powerhouse that it will devour American industry, like Godzilla
stomping his way through Tokyo. We'll all end up speaking Japanese
and driving Hondas. The only hope of survival that we have is to
adopt Japanese styles of management, so that we can become more
like them. And American workers need to learn how to be more like
Japanese workers, too. They need to learn to be more loyal to
their companies, and they need to accept wage cuts and roll-backs
in benefits to help save their employers.
That was actually a real argument heard very often during the
seventies and eighties, when Japan was having a few good years and
taking major chunks of the American consumer-electronics and
automobile markets. But after that, the Japanese economy crashed
badly, and stayed crashed, and it's still a dead dog. Nobody but
nobody now says that we should copy Japanese business, industry,
banking, or management styles. In fact, the current pundits proclaim
that the Japanese must abandon their traditional ways, dump the
good-old-boy system, abandon protectionism and open up their
markets, and copy American business and banking styles if they are
to ever have
any hope of economic recovery.
The error was in exaggerating the degree
of Japanese success in the business world, and in exaggerating the
effectiveness of Japanese management and business styles. The
speakers extrapolated a world-shaking economic juggernaut from a few
spectacular Japanese successes in making TVs, stereos, and cars —
successes that used unfair anti-competitive practices that were
sponsored by the Japanese government — "Japan,
Incorporated". The speakers exaggerated those Japanese
successes to the point of assuming that those successes were an
unstoppable wave of the future that would go on forever, and conquer
the whole planet. (And then they told the American workers that was
why they must take pay cuts...)
In Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Wilson made
heavy use of exaggeration, especially when discussing the success
rate of the Twelve-Step program.
- Confusion of
Correlation and Causation
This is simple and straight-forward: just because two things tend to
happen together does not prove that one thing causes the other. The
rooster's crowing doesn't really make the sun rise.
Variations on this logical fallacy
include:
- Confusion of coincidence and causation
- Confusion of association and causation
- Confusion of correlation and causation
- Assuming a cause-and-effect
relationship between unrelated things
Young women going to church and getting
married does not really cause them to get pregnant and have babies,
even though there does seem to be a strong correlation there. The
real cause of the young women getting pregnant is something other
than the priest or minister reciting some words...
On Saturday morning, May 17th, 2014,
National Public Radio did an interview about confusion of causation
and correlation that revealed:
- Between the years 1999 and 2009, the
more movies that Nicholas Cage acted in, the more people died by
falling into swimming pools.
- The more people ate cheese, the more
they died by getting tangled in their bed sheets.
- 100% of the people who eat mashed
potatoes die.
But then the interviewee also remarked
that sometimes correlations are valid, like the correlation between
people smoking and getting lung cancer. That correlation got doctors
busy investigating the link between smoking and cancer.
Assuming a cause-and-effect relationship
between unrelated things includes the "But
it worked for me," logical fallacy. The speaker
just assumes that something worked because he got the desired
result. The speaker ignores all of the other efforts that he put
into making it happen. The classic example of that is an Alcoholics
Anonymous member declaring that the 12 Steps worked for him because
he isn't drinking alcohol. The speaker just assumes that the Steps
made him quit drinking, and he forgets that he actually quit
drinking in detox before he ever went to an A.A. meeting. He also
ignores the fact that what the 12 Steps really are is brainwashing
and indoctrination techniques for religous conversion. The 12 Steps
do not even say that you should quit drinking.
Another false correlation: Some people
who tout "spiritual healing" routinely cite
studies that show that people who have positive,
cheerful attitudes recover from illnesses and surgeries faster than
people who have glum, dour attitudes. They then assume that this is
proof of the efficacy of "spiritual healing".
- They overlook the obvious fact that
those cheerful attitudes may well be caused by the the patients'
rapid recovery. People who are rapidly recovering are almost
always much more
cheerful than patients who are sick unto death and dying.
- And they overlook the fact that those
two factors may correlate — they may happen together: Rapid
recovery causes cheerful moods, which cause more rapid healing,
which causes more cheerfulness, and so on... Just the act of
relaxing and being cheerful increases blood flow through the body,
which promotes healing and improves the functioning of the immune
system. That is simple medicine, not "the power of spiritual
healing".
- They also ignore the fact that any
apparent link between recovery and something else, anything else,
may be pure coincidence. In any large group of sick people, some
will recover and some won't. There isn't necessarily any link
between "spiritual attitudes" and people recovering, but the
people who wish to believe there is will concentrate their
attention on just the recovering "spiritual" people, and ignore
everything else. That, in turn, becomes an example of "observational
selection", seeing what you want to see, and ignoring the
rest.
- And when the investigator has an
agenda — a desired outcome — he can be also be fooled by
observational bias as well — just tending to see what he wishes to
see. The measure of which patients are cheerful, and how cheerful,
is a subjective measurement
— it relies entirely on the judgement of the investigator. It is
all too easy to rate the recovering patients as very cheerful and
the non-recovering patients as very glum when that is what the
investigator wishes to see.
Alcoholics Anonymous has plenty of
examples of confusion of causation and correlation, or confusion of
coincidence with causation. The most obvious ones are:
- Assuming that attending A.A. meetings
makes people quit drinking.
- Assuming that attending A.A. meetings
makes people stay sober.
- Assuming that doing the Twelve Steps
makes people quit drinking and stay sober.
- Assuming that many years of membership
in A.A. causes people to stay sober.
- Assuming that praying makes people
quit drinking and stay sober.
- Assuming that doing the Twelve Steps
makes people more "spiritual", or more moral.
(And of course, that
last item will be loaded with observational bias. Who
judges? How do you impartially judge just how much more
"spiritual" somebody is after doing the Twelve Steps for
three or six months? And how do you impartially distinguish
between "spirituality" and superstition? How do you
distinguish between real spirituality and crazy
self-delusion like, "Quite
as important was the discovery that spiritual principles
would solve all my problems.")
Just because some people sit in an A.A.
meeting room and talk about God and not drinking does not prove that
A.A. made them quit drinking, even if they believe it. Nor does it
prove that A.A. is keeping them sober.
Using the goofy A.A. "cause and effect" illogic, we
can happily declare that A.A. is totally unnecessary because
mothers are the real cause of sobriety. How can we know that?
Simple. Show me an alcoholic whose mother didn't tell him to quit
drinking so much. Momma tells him to quit drinking, and then he
finally does, so mothers are the real cause of sobriety. A.A. is
irrelevant and unneeded.
What really happens is: A lot of people
quit drinking in order to stop being sick, and a lot of them get
pressured or coerced into attending some A.A. meetings, and then a
few of them become obsessed with cult religions like the Moonies or
Scientology or Alcoholics Anonymous, and their favorite cult
convinces them that they are sober because
of the cult — that the cult saved their lives —
that involvement with the cult is keeping them sober — so they
become committed to the cult and make it their new lifestyle for a
while. They confuse coincidence with causation. But, eventually,
most of those people wise up and realize that it's all a pack of
lies, and quit the cult. In Alcoholics Anonymous, for example, 95%
of the newcomers drop out in the first year alone, and,
nevertheless, a bit more than half of all alcoholics find lasting
sobriety anyway.
And it's easy to
see causation where there is simply no evidence to
support such an assumption. Often, just wishful thinking
is enough to make people see cause-and-effect
relationships:
"And...
I believe addictions are also caused by a sense of
spiritual separation from God, or one's Higher Power,
or union with the All-That-Is."
Addiction:
A Spiritual Crisis, Judith Wagner, Tampa Bay New Times,
Winter 1991, page 18.
And that
belief was based on what facts or observations? Did
the authoress actually do even just one good survey
of a few hundred addicts, asking them what they
believed and how separated from "Higher Power" they
felt?
|
A
common use of this propaganda technique of confusion of causation
and correlation is to do polls or surveys of A.A. members, asking
them about their drinking habits, and then "discover" that they
drink less than some other group of people, perhaps a group of guys
at the local bar, or the winos under the bridge. Then the
"researcher" declares that there is "an
association between AA attendance and abstinence from alcohol/drug
use", and he concludes that
"Weekly
or more frequent attendance at 12-Step programs may be effective
in maintaining long-term drug and alcohol abstinence. Treatment
providers should encourage and assist their clients in 12-Step
participation."
"12-Step
programs help maintain abstinence", R Fiorentine, The Brown University Digest of
Addiction Theory and Application, Sept 1999, v18 i9 p1
What the "researcher" won't tell you is
that if you repeat that kind of study, comparing the people found at
the local Baskin Robbins ice cream parlor to the guys at the local
bar, you can, in just the same way, "prove" that eating ice cream
reduces alcohol consumption.
The logical
conclusion is, of course:
"Weekly
or more frequent attendance at Baskin Robbins may be
effective in maintaining long-term drug and alcohol
abstinence. Treatment providers should encourage and
assist their clients in Baskin Robbins ice cream
socials participation."
|
Also note the use of the propaganda
technique called "Sly Suggestions"
in that quote. In the first sentence, the author Robert Fiorentine suggested that A.A. may be effective. He
could only suggest the idea, because he knew full well that the data
did not show any cause-and-effect relationship. But in the next
sentence, the author suddenly assumed that his suggestion was true,
and he stated that treatment providers should shove
patients into Alcoholics Anonymous groups.
And lastly, note how the author
completely ignored the fact that the people at the A.A. meeting were
a self-selected group (a biased sample).
That is:
The people who wanted to stay sober went to the A.A.
meetings.
The people who wanted to get drunk went to the bar.
So of course the people at the A.A. meetings drank
less than the people at the bar. That comes as no surprise. But that does notprove that A.A. is somehow causing the "meeting
makers" to abstain from drinking. It doesn't even "suggest" it. The
author did a reversal of a
cause-and-effect relationship, because the truth is just the
opposite:
People's desire to stay sober makes them
go to A.A. meetings.
They go because they have been
miseducated and fooled into believing that A.A. is somehow necessary
or "helpful for maintaining sobriety".
| To be fair, what
the author of that "study" really did was conduct
interviews with the patients and ex-patients of 26 Los
Angeles area "treatment programs" (almost all of which
were based on "Twelve Step Facilitation" — 'TSF'11),
and compare those who were still attending A.A. meetings
with those who were not. He found that those who
attended the meetings drank less and took fewer drugs.
That should come as no surprise, because, by and large, only those
people who had not relapsed were still attending A.A.
meetings. Many of the relapsers
really were to be found at the local bars. People
stopped going to A.A. meetings when they resumed their
former alcohol or drug habits. Hence
Fiorentine used a very biased sample. His claimed
results were just another example of Lying
With Statistics, as well asObservational
Selection — i.e.: 'Cherry-Picking'.
And, alas, we were never told
what the success rate of those 26 Los Angeles area
treatment programs really was. (They almost never tell
the truth about that.) Those so-called "treatment
programs" usually have about a 90% failure rate, so the
remaining 10% of the patients who were still moderately
clean and sober (clean and sober enough to "graduate")
were the people who really
wanted to stay clean and sober.
| The
so-called "treatment programs" are really
just a system for filtering out those few
alcoholics and addicts who are ready and
willing to quit drinking and doping now —
and then the treatment center and A.A./N.A.
will take the credit for the successes when
they quit, but will refuse to take any of
the blame for the other 90% of the "clients"
who don't "graduate".
That stunt is pure Observational
Selection — counting
the hits and forgetting the misses.
|
And it's backwards logic to
try to conclude that the A.A. meetings *make* the
few abstainers stay clean and sober. Fiorentine reversed
the cause-and-effect relationship. The truth is:
People's sobriety causes a few of the clean and sober
people to go to A.A. meetings.
People's choice to consume drugs and alcohol
causes them to not go to A.A. meetings. They go to the
meetings at the local dope dealer's house instead.
That
is not a joke or an idle suggestion. In her
1988 book that promoted Alcoholics
Anonymous, Nan Robertson reported that most
of the newcomers to A.A. had already quit
drinking, so it really is sobriety
that causes people to go to A.A. meetings:
About
60 percent of all newcomers — some still
drinking at first, most not — who go to
A.A. meetings for up to a year remain in
A.A.
Getting
Better Inside Alcoholics Anonymous,
Nan Robertson, 1988, page 94.
(You can ignore the funny
word game where Nan Robertson declares
that most of the people who stay in A.A.
"for up to a year" stay in A.A. for a
while longer. Actually, only
five percent of the newcomers stay in
A.A. for a year.)
|
Another way to say it is:
People's desire to stay clean and sober causes some of
them to go to 12-Step meetings.
People's desire to get stoned causes them to go
to the dope dealer or the liquor store.
So of course the people whom
you find at the 12-Step meetings will be a bit less
drunk and stoned than those whom you find at the bar or
at the dope dealer's house. (Even though 22% of the
treatment programs' ex-clients who were going to the
A.A. and N.A. meetings were actually still using drugs
or alcohol. See the 2nd quote down.)
In another write-up of
Fiorentine's Los Angeles study, we also got this
misinformation:
Looking at 262 patients in 26 Los Angeles
addiction treatment programs, the researchers found
that clients who attended at least one 12 Step meeting
per week after completing treatment had much lower
levels of drug use at six-month follow-up (22% were
using), than those who participated less frequently or
not at all (44% were using). Statistical analysis led
Fiorentine to conclude that the better rates of
abstinence "could not be attributed to differences in
motivation or to other post-treatment activities".
Regular 12 Step attendance made the difference,
prompting the conclusion that 12 Step meetings work
well as "a useful and inexpensive aftercare resource
that can help many patients to maintain abstinence".
"12
STEP POWER SHOWN BY SCIENTIFIC METHOD", By:
Voyles, Claudia, Guidepoints:
Acupuncture in Recovery, 10708200, March 2000,
page 5,
which cites: R Fiorentine, in NIDA Notes, v. 14, No 5,
December 1999.
Fiorentine's conclusions are
totally unwarranted and are based solely on his
assumption of a desired cause and effect relationship
between going to meetings and sobriety, not the facts.
That is, he just wishes that
A.A. or N.A. meetings really worked. His "statistical
analysis" is worthless because he assumes that the
numbers show that 12-Step meetings cause abstinence,
rather than that the desire to be sober and unaddicted
causes meeting attendance. Fiorentine confuses
correlation with cause and effect.
And it was really outrageous
to claim that "the scientific method" had proved the
effectiveness of 12-Step meetings. Claudia Voyles titled
her article:
"12
STEP POWER SHOWN BY SCIENTIFIC METHOD".
There is no truth to that statement. None whatsoever.
That was not a valid scientific test. There was no
"scientific method" in any of Fiorentine's deceptive
propaganda. There was no control group with which to
compare the Twelve-Step Facilitation groups, to see what
effect the so-called "treatment" and the 12-Step
meetings actually had — to see whether the "treatment"
really improved on Mother Nature.
The
proper way to do such a medical study or
scientific experiment is a "Longitudinal
Controlled Study". How you do that is get,
say, 200 or 2000 convicted drunk drivers or
other alcoholics from a traffic court or a
hospital, all of whom have been determined
to be alcohol abusers by a doctor or
competent therapist, and then divide them,
randomly, into two equal groups. Send the
first group to Alcoholics Anonymous
meetings, and do nothing with the second
group. Let them go home. Let them drink all
they want. They are "the control group".
Give them no "treatment" or punishment of
any kind.
(It's
fair. Getting no
treatment — being a
guinea pig in a scientific experiment — IS their
punishment.)
In order for
any "treatment" or program to claim
success, it must do significantly better
than the control group.
At the end of
the test, at 6 months or a year or two
later, count and measure all of them, to
see how many are still drinking
destructively. Compare the A.A. group to
the no-treatment group, to see what the
effect of A.A. really was.
Every time that experiment
has been done, the results were that A.A.
didn't work at all, and had no good
long-term effects. In fact, the
A.A.-treated group did worse than
the no-treatment group, and A.A. had an
appalling death rate, too.
|
Likewise, the statement that
"Regular 12 Step attendance made the difference,
prompting the conclusion that 12 Step meetings work
well..."
is groundless and untrue. Fiorentine merely assumed that
12-Step meetings made a difference. The evidence does
not support that conclusion.
Nevertheless, the citation
for Fiorentine's article says:
"A
recent study confirms that weekly participation in
12-Step programs, such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) or
Narcotics Anonymous (NA), help people in recovery to
maintain their abstinence for up to two years after
completing substance abuse treatment."
"12-Step
programs help maintain abstinence", R
Fiorentine, The
Brown University Digest of Addiction Theory and
Application, Sept 1999, v18 i9 p1
Note the word game where it says that
12-Step meetings "help" people maintain abstinence.
They imply cause-and-effect, but don't say it
outright, because they can't. There is simply no
evidence of any cause-and-effect relationship between
going to 12-Step meetings and abstaining from alcohol
and drugs.
We also got a demonstration of the
propaganda technique called "Lying
With Qualifiers" there. It said that A.A.
meetings "helped" people to "maintain their abstinence for up to
two years". Up to
two years? So does that
mean that lots of the "meeting makers" relapsed at the
one month point, and more at two months, and more at
three, and more at six, etc.? And the very last clean
and sober hold-out relapsed at the two-year point?
Yes, unfortunately, that must be what it really means,
because that's what really happens.
|
- The Fallacy
of a Single Cause.
Claim that a result came from a single cause, when it was really
caused by a whole lot of different things.
Alcoholics Anonymous uses this fallacy
often. If someone quits drinking for half a dozen different reasons,
like to save his life, career, job, marriage, money and health, A.A.
claims that he quit drinking because he attended some A.A. meetings.
Or because of the 12 Steps (which he may not have even done).
- Reverse a
Cause-and-Effect Relationship
Declare that 'B' caused 'A', when in fact 'A' caused 'B'.
A recent
article in the British newspaper Telegraph gave
us an illustration of this logical error:
Intelligent humans evolved because of big-hipped
ancestors
Intelligent humans developed because our female
ancestors had wide hips which allowed them to give
birth to babies with big brains, according to new
research.
By
Nick Allen
Last Updated: 9:13PM GMT 13 Nov 2008
The hips of females from the species Homo erectus, a
primitive relative of modern humans, have been found
to be wider than was previously thought.
That means they were well equipped for delivering
babies with a larger cranial capacity which ultimately
allowed intelligent human beings to evolve.
...
Scientists came to their conclusion after
reconstructing a 1.2 million-year-old fossil pelvis
discovered in Gona, Ethiopia.
...
A narrow pelvis for females would have caused infants
to be born with relatively small brains.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/3453980/Intelligent-humans-evolved-because-of-big-hipped-ancestors.html
|
That is the exact opposite of the truth.
The reality is:
- Pre-human ape-men evolved larger
brains and higher intelligence in order to survive. The stupid
ones either starved or got eaten by lions and tigers, leaving the
smarter ones, with bigger brains, to reproduce. (Hint: the ones
who were intelligent enough to use clubs, tomahawks, and spears to
defend themselves from the predators lived a lot longer. And
having the brains to build a fire was a life-saver in cold
winters.) So gradually, human intelligence and human brains both
increased in size.
- Then, the females with wider hips were
able to deliver such larger-headed babies without complications,
while the narrowest-hipped females died in childbirth.
- The wider-hipped females gave birth to
more wider-hipped daughters, and the process repeated itself, with
the narrowest-hipped females continuing to die in childbirth, and
the wider-hipped ones surviving.
- Carry that process forwards a million
years, and you will get a population where all of the females have
wide hips.
Later in the article, the author finally
got his logic straightened out:
The
need to give birth to large brained infants was probably the
primary driver behind the shape of the pelvis.
Alcoholics Anonymous uses this logical
error constantly:
- They routinely infer that A.A. meeting
attendance causes sobriety, rather than that the desire for
sobriety causes some people to attend some A.A. meetings. (The
same desire for sobriety also causes people to quit drinking
alcohol.)
- A.A. infers that doing the 12 Steps
causes people to quit drinking, rather than that quitting drinking
causes some people to do the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Most of the A.A. members who are actually continously sober really
quit drinking before they did the 12 Steps — and often, they quit
drinking before they even attended very many A.A. meetings.
(Many alcoholics quit drinking in a detox center, which then sends
them to A.A. meetings, and then A.A. takes the credit for the
sobriety.)
- Again, the desire for sobriety causes
some people to waste their time practicing some useless "steps" of
an old cult religion. The 12 Steps do not cause people to desire
sobriety.
- Straw Man
The Straw Man technique
is a stunt where you prop up an easy-to-defeat opponent, like a Straw
Man, and then attack him and knock him down, to make yourself look
big, strong, and victorious.
For example, politicians and District
Attorney candidates running for election brag that they will
"prosecute sexual predators to the full extent of the law." But that
is what all of the politicians do. Nobody likes sexual predators.
They don't get any easy treatment. It isn't like the other candidate
is "soft on sexual predators".
Similarly, you can attack a caricature of
what the other person said, rather than arguing against what he
actually said.
A popular variation of the Straw Man
technique is the "What
if?" argument. Just prop up absurd
hypothetical situations that never really
happened and then demolish them.
During
the March 23, 2006 press conference, Washington Post
reporter Jim VandeHei asked, "A growing number of
Americans are questioning the trustworthiness of you and
this White House. Does that concern you?"
Bush
just wouldn't say. "I believe that my job is to go out
and explain to people what's on my mind," he replied,
launching himself on a rambling discourse on war
followed by a straw-man attack on unnamed people who
don't take al Qaeda seriously.
By Dan
Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
White House Briefing,
News Between the Lines
Wednesday, March 22, 2006; 1:00 PM
|
Nan
Robertson used a flavor of the Straw Man trick in her book Getting
Better Inside Alcoholics Anonymous. While arguing for
the disease theory of alcoholism, she propped up a few reasons why
alcoholism should not be called a disease and then knocked them
down, and then felt that she had made her point:
- Moral and social objections: "How
can the habit of opening ones mouth and pouring alcohol down
one's throat be called a disease?"
- Objections that the disease concept
interferes with recovery — it provides patients with a
ready-made excuse: "Don't blame me, I'm sick".
- Political and social objections — If
alcoholism is a disease, it should be treated by doctors, not
amateurs.
(See Getting Better Inside Alcoholics
Anonymous, Nan Robertson, pages 196-197.)
Nan Robertson dismissed all of those
arguments with a paragraph each, and then concluded that alcoholism
was a disease.
- All that Nan Robertson did was dispute some other people's objections to
calling alcoholism a disease.
- She did not prove that alcoholism was
a disease, or even produce any good evidence that there is any
such disease as alcoholism.
- What Nan Robertson missed in her
broken logic is the simple fact that, even if it was okay, in Nan
Robertson's mind, for alcoholism to be called a disease, that
still did not make it an actual disease.
It's just like: Even if it is okay, in the minds of
some superstitious people, for the world to be called "flat",
that still does not make the world really flat.
Another example: From the "Big
Book" Alcoholics
Anonymous, we learn that Bill Wilson was only able to convert
brain-damaged morons and pathetic cry-babies to the new Alcoholics
Anonymous religion. Wilson used the straw-man tactic constantly,
portraying non-believers and the unconverted as the most pathetic
self-pitying stupid prejudiced
fools who were unable to see the truth until the
brilliant, wonderful Bill Wilson came along and saved them from
their stupidity. This quote is from the "Man On The Bed" story in
the Big Book, where
Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob were allegedly recruiting for A.A. in the
hospital:
Actually, they were
really recruiting for Frank Buchman's pro-Nazi Oxford Group
cult at that time. There was no such thing as Alcoholics
Anonymous in the spring of 1935, only Frank's fascist Oxford
Group cult religion, and that is what Bill and Dr. Bob were
recruiting new alcoholic members for.
Two
days later, a future fellow of Alcoholics Anonymous stared
glassily at the strangers beside his bed. "Who are you fellows,
and why this private room? I was always in a ward before."
Said one of the visitors, "We're giving you a treatment for
alcoholism."
Hopelessness was written large on the man's face as he
replied, "Oh, but that's no use. Nothing would fix me. I'm a
goner. The last three times, I got drunk on the way home from
here. I'm afraid to go out the door. I can't understand it."
The A.A. Big Book, Alcoholics
Anonymous, 3rd Edition, Chapter 11, "A Vision For You", page
157.
(The
answer, you
blithering idiot, is that you are getting drunk because you
are stopping off at the bar on the way home from the hospital, and
drinking more alcohol. It's very easy to understand.)
Bill Wilson posing for a staged "Man
On The Bed" publicity photograph, where Bill
allegedly performed miraculous faith healings,
making the drunks "pick up their beds and walk", just like
in the story of Jesus healing the cripple by the pool.
Notice the cross on the wall. This photograph was very
carefully staged for best effect. |
For
another good example of the straw man tactic, consider
this quote:
A Peek Into Twenty-First-Century Medicine
The healing power of the
spirit, exemplified by the success of the Twelve
Steps program in helping overcome a variety of
addictions, will be harnessed more fully to treat a
wider range of medical problems.
Lawyers boast that when
their professional forebears were writing the
Constitution and organizing the Supreme Court,
doctors were still bleeding patients to remove ill
humors and using leeches as medical apparatus.
As
medicine moved out of its primitive beginnings and
joined the revolution in science, it is easy to
understand why the spiritual dimension of healing
was absent from serious discussion. Spirituality,
with its nebulous connotation, sounded too much like
the folk traditions of another era and did not have
the clarity of the surgeon's knife or the
pharmacist's pill. Today, however, it is only
because medicine is on a firm scientific basis that
the spiritual dimension of healing can be fairly
evaluated. Although modern medicine has been slow to
take up the challenge, this healing factor is now
too obvious to ignore.
...
The field of medicine is still in its infancy in
understanding the spiritual dimension of healing.
But it is clear that the power of the mind and the
spirit to overcome both chronic and acute medical
problems is real. In the twenty-first century, this
healing force can be harnessed more fully and
effectively through scientific persistence and
spiritual growth within the discipline of medicine.
The Spiritual
Dimension of Healing, Jeff Jay, The World & I,
05-01-2000, Size: 8K.
Available on the Internet through your public
library's Electronic Library of periodicals.
The author has a bone to pick
with modern doctors. He is angry with them because they
won't agree with his ideas of "spiritual healing." So he
declares, essentially:
The reason
that modern medicine refuses to approve of
"spiritual medicine", faith healing, and magical
"Twelve-Step therapy" is because contemporary
doctors are still just as blind, stupid, and slow to
learn as they were 200 years ago, and they have
still hardly gotten beyond using leeches and
blood-letting.
That is quite untrue, of
course. Modern medicine is very good, and is far beyond
stupidly using voodoo medicine, which is what the author
of that quote wants to shove on us.
The author recites the faults
of ancient medical practice in order to make current
medical practice look bad, because he can't fault
contemporary doctors. If
you can't attack today's doctors as stupid, then
attack the ones who lived 225 years ago. They are easy
to criticize and ridicule and knock down. That's
the Straw Man tactic.
And the author lies and
grossly distorts the facts as well: People studied and
tried faith healing and spiritual medicine for thousands
of years. It was all they had, so they really wished
that it would work. It took us a very long time before
we finally learned some things that actually work
properly, and what actually works is penicillin,
streptomycin, and tetracycline, not occult incantations,
prayers, chants, charms, voodoo dolls, magic spells, or
sacrificing your first-born son on the alter to appease
an angry God.
And the author also misuses
the word "spiritual". Bill
Wilson constantly confused psychological, emotional,
and spiritual things, and so does this faithful
follower of his. (Bill made grand, sweeping
proclamations like that all forms of "spiritual
diseases" were caused by "resentments" — the Big Book, page 64.)
What isn't obvious from the quote above (see
the larger review) is that the author would talk
about things like how people having a positive mental
attitude towards their recovery from illness coincided
with people rapidly healing what ailed them, and then
the author would call that "spiritual healing." That
isn't spiritual healing; that's just psychology. That's
just having a good mind-set — a positive and cheerful
attitude. And that positive attitude was often caused by
the patient's rapid recovery, rather than the rapid
recovery being caused by the positive attitude... That
is "Confusion
of Correlation and Causation" again.
And last but not least, the
author also gave a good demonstration of the Big
Lie technique. That quote is just loaded with Big
Lies:
- "'The healing power of the
spirit' is an established fact."
- "Everybody
knows that spiritual healing
works."
- "The spiritual dimension
of healing is an established fact."
- "The power of the mind and
the spirit to overcome both chronic and acute medical
problems is real."
- "The
success of 'the Twelve Steps program' in
helping people to overcome a variety of addictions is
an established fact."
- "Alcoholics Anonymous
successfully practices spiritual healing."
- "Modern medicine is an
infant, just barely out of the realm of blood-letting
and leaches."
- "Modern medicine was slow
to move out of its primitive beginnings and join the
revolution in science." (Not, that it was the
revolution.)
- "'Spiritual healing' has
never been properly studied."
- "The spiritual dimension
of healing was absent from serious discussion."
- "Modern medicine has been
slow to take up the challenge of studying faith
healing and 'spiritual healing'."
- "The spiritual dimension
of healing is a healing factor that is now too obvious
to ignore."
- "The field of medicine is
still in its infancy in understanding the spiritual
dimension of healing."
- — And, by implication,
"Sometime in the future, modern medicine will finally
get smart enough to discover spiritual medicine and
learn how to use it."
— All of which are lies.
| For
just one example of modern medicine embracing
"spiritual healing," consider that 'Native
American' or Original American people can and
do have their own spiritual healing ceremonies
performed for them in hospitals. They get both
the medicine man and Western-medicine doctor
working on them, simultaneously. (I was
tempted to write "white-man doctor", but these
days, the 'Western-medicine' doctor is likely
to be Jordanian, Pakistani, or Indian — India
Indian.) |
| Another,
much less positive, example of so-called
"spiritual healing" is this: Here in Portland
Oregon there is a fundamentalist sect of
people who call themselves "The Church of the
Followers of Christ". They do not believe in
doctors or medicine. They only believe in
prayer and "spiritual healing". When one of
their children gets sick, they pray over the
child, and they absolutely will not take the
sick child to a doctor or a hospital. If the
child dies, he dies. They declare that it must
be the Will of God. Every few years, they kill
another child that way.
Just recently, in
May 2010, the parents of one of their dead
children were tried for manslaughter, and
convicted. The father got two years in
prison. The mother got off with probation so
that she could care for the surviving
children. And then, just a few months later,
that crazy congregation killed another child
the same way. So now those parents
are being charged with manslaughter. This
has been going on for many years.
The big flaw in
their logic is that they are actually so
arrogant and delusional that they think they
are powerful magicians. They imagine that
their prayers are working magical
ceremonies. They think that they can summon
spiritual powers and magical forces just by
incanting some holy names like "God" and
"Jesus Christ". That is actually no
different from a sourcerer who imagines that
he can get magical powers by summoning up
demons by name.
Obviously, their
magic is not working very well. (Although
they believe that it is: most of the time,
the children do recover while being prayed
for. Their children's recovery rate from
childhood diseases and the common cold is
especially good.)
|
|
- Hypnotic Bait
and Switch
Observe the broken flow of logic between these two paragraphs:
This world of ours has made more material progress in the last
century than in all the millenniums which went before. Almost
everyone knows the reason. Students of ancient history tell us
that the intellect of men in those days was equal to the best of
today. Yet in ancient times material progress was painfully slow.
The spirit of modern scientific inquiry, research and invention
was almost unknown. In the realm of the material, men's minds were
fettered by superstition, tradition, and all sorts of fixed ideas.
Some of the contemporaries of Columbus thought a round earth
preposterous. Others came near putting Galileo to death for his
astronomical heresies.
We asked ourselves this: Are not some of us just as biased
and unreasonable about the realm of the spirit as were the
ancients about the realm of the material?
(The Big Book, William G. Wilson, page
51.)
All of the statements before the last one
are true and unchallengeable. The listener
will be lulled into uncritically accepting more
statements, expecting them to also be unquestionably true. That is
when the speaker (Bill Wilson) suddenly slips a lie into the speech.
The last sentence is an irrational appeal to embrace the very evils,
the narrow-minded blind faith, the superstitious "spirituality" and
"the realm of the spirit" that the previous sentences had so
properly criticized.
Bait and switch.
And
it's also a gross distortion of the facts — a False
Analysis Of History — to say that "the
ancients" were "biased and unreasonable" about the "realm of the
material." They weren't. The medieval Roman Catholic Church
authorities were far more "biased and unreasonable" about the "realm
of the spirit." They would not tolerate any "spiritual", religious,
or philosophical ideas that were different from their own. They
asserted that they and the Bible had all of the true answers about
everything in the world, and anyone who disagreed with them the
least little bit was evil and doing the work of the Devil and trying
to lead people to Hell. Their inquisitions ran for centuries, and
killed a lot of people. One of the commonest reasons for a death
sentence and burning at the stake was "heresy".1 The
Church burned Bruno at the stake for declaring that the Earth
revolved around the Sun.
- The Either/Or Technique —
Bifurcation — the Excluded Middle
Present the audience with only extreme either/or, black-or-white
choices, while admitting to no gray areas inbetween. Consider only the
two extremes in a range of possibilities, to make the "other side"
look worse than it really is. Carl Sagan called this the "excluded
middle" technique.
The Excluded Middle technique also
includes:
- Short-term versus long-term comparison
— a subset of the excluded middle —
- "why pursue fundamental science
when we have so huge a budget deficit?".
- "Why should we believe predictions
of global warming when they can't predict the weather two
weeks in advance?"
- Slippery slope — another subset of the
excluded middle — make unwarranted extrapolations of the effects
of a course of action, like: "give 'em an inch and they'll take a
mile."
For example:
- "If you're not one of us,
you're one of them."
This is called "the
sheep and goat distinction".
- "If you aren't a dirty, lying
Communist, then of course you agree with us, and you will be happy
to join our John Birch Society (or the KKK, or the Nazi party,
etc.)..."
- "He who is not with me is against me,
and he who does not gather with me scatters." [Matthew 12:30]
- "Those who are not with us are against
us." [Comrade Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Russia, 1917]
- "You are either part of the solution,
or part of the problem."
- "Either you are Serving the Lord (as
our church defines it) or you are serving the Forces of Evil."
- "Either you are a fanatical true
believer like us, or you are an evil hard-boiled atheist."
- "Either you are saved by Christ or you
are doomed to suffer the pains of Hell."
- "You guys must either you act like
stupid brutish Neanderthals, or else you will look like you are
gay and effeminate."
- "Either you are willing to commit your
entire life to our great cause or else you are a wimp, a weak
hand, and a real loser."
- "Look. You're on board, or you're not
on board. Okay. But just, if you're on board, then you're on board
just like the rest of us. Period." — Tom Cruise, talking about
membership in Scientology.
This Nazi propaganda
poster from World War II used the Either/Or
technique along with a lot of Glittering
Generalities. It says:
In the Red
War,
Mother or [Communist] "Comrade"?
People or Machines?
God or Devil?
Blood or Gold?
Race [Racial Purity] or Crossbreed [Mixed-race
children]?
Folk Songs or Jazz?
National Socialism [Naziism] or Bolshevism?
|
- The Oxford Group/Moral Re-Armament
cult leader Frank Buchman said:
"an
extreme of evil must be met with an extreme of good. A
fanatical following of evil by a passionate pursuit of good.
Only a passion can cure a passion. And only a superior
world-arching ideology can cure a world divided by warring
ideologies." ...
"Whenever men give man the place in their lives that God
should have, slavery has begun. 'Men must choose to be
governed by God, or they condemn themselves to be ruled by
tyrants.' There can be no neutrality in the battle between
good and evil."
Dr. Frank
N.D. Buchman, the leader of the Oxford Groups—Moral
Re-Armament cult, in a speech, "Brave
Men Choose", given June 4, 1961, at Caux, Switzerland,
quoted in Frank
Buchman's Secret, by Peter Howard, page 141.
What
Frank Buchman didn't bother to say there is that those who
"chose to be governed by God" were really supposed to be
governed by Frank and his lieutenants. The Buchmanites claimed
that they, and only they, knew what God really wanted people
to do. They, and only they, were "sane" and "Guided by God",
Frank said, and everybody else was "insane". So, if you were
"Guided by God", then you would do what Frank told you to
do... (Frank
Buchman was really a fascist.)
- Buchman also said,
"There
are only two fronts in the world — the positive front and the
negative front, those who obey God and those who refuse to
obey Him."
Dynamic
Out Of Silence; Frank Buchman's relevance today,
Theophil Spoerri, page 117.
But
"obeying God" really ended up meaning that you were supposed
to obey Frank and his followers. That's the logical fallacy of Conflation,
False Equality.
- In 1943, Frank Buchman declared:
"Unless
America recovers her rightful ideology nothing but chaos
awaits us. Our destiny is to obey the guidance of God.
The true battle-line in the world today is not between
class and class, not between race and race. The battle is
between Christ and anti-Christ.
'Choose ye this day whom ye will serve.'"
Frank
Buchman As I Knew Him, H. W. 'Bunny' Austin, page 110.
Nevertheless,
America somehow managed to win World War II without choosing
to join Frank Buchman's cult.
- Peter Howard, the fascist who
succeeded Frank Buchman as the leader of Moral Re-Armament, wrote:
The
choice is moral re-armament or national decay. ...
It is a choice that all of us must make. Christ or
anti-Christ, spirit or beast, renaissance or decadence, moral
re-armament or a godless, hopeless, purposeless age.
Britain
and the Beast, Peter Howard, pages 110 and 118-119.
"Christ
or anti-Christ"... That doesn't leave much room in the middle,
does it?
- "Either
you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."
Acting President G. W. Bush has repeatedly declared that the world
was either "with us or against us" in his war on terrorism that he
launched after the September 11 attacks.
Note that George Bush
didn't give the rest of the world any choice in the means,
strategies, or tactics that they may choose to use in their wars against
terrorism (which some of them have been fighting for many
years). Everybody was supposed to just follow Bush's orders and
attack Iraq or else they weren't "with us".
- Likewise, our Fearless
Leader said of his war against Iraq:
This
will not be a campaign of half measures.
G. W. Bush, 21 March
2003.
- And Bush creates a false choice with
this statement:
"When
it comes to a choice between defending America or believing the
words of a madman, I will always defend America."
G. W. Bush, July 2004.
Who was the madman?
- Hans Blick (the United Nations
weapons inspector) when he said that there were no Weapons
of Mass Destruction in Iraq?
- The 9-11 Commission when it
declared that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein
and the 9-11 terrorist attack?
- Enron came up with a great choice for
its some of its employees:
"Either help us to cook the books so that the CEO Jeffrey
Skilling gets the numbers that he wants, or else you are a coward
who doesn't have the guts to play with the Big Boys, and you
aren't a team player."
Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics
Anonymous give us many more examples of the either/or technique:
- "Either you will totally abstain from
drinking alcohol for the rest of your life, or else you will drink
maniacally, consuming such huge amounts that you will die drunk in
a gutter."
- "Either totally abstain from all
drugs, even the ones the doctor gives you, or else you will be
shoving a needle in your arm next week."
- "Either totally abstain from all
medications, even the ones the doctor gives you, or your recovery
isn't complete — you aren't really sober. Meds still the small
quiet voice of God."
- 'Either you are a true believer or
else you are an atheist': According to Bill Wilson,
if you won't completely accept all of his dogmatic religious
beliefs, then you must be a disgusting
agnostic or an atheist. No middle ground or independent
thinking is allowed — it's literally all or nothing:
"When
we became alcoholics, crushed by a self-imposed crisis we
could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the
proposition that either God is everything or else He is
nothing. God either is, or He isn't. What
was our choice to be?"
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William
G. Wilson, We
Agnostics, Page 53.
- "It's
Alcoholics Anonymous — or else!" (A.A. Big
Book, 3rd Edition, page 378.)
- "God
has either removed your husband's liquor problem or He has not."
(A.A. Big Book, 3rd & 4th Edition,
page 120.)
- Bill Wilson says that alcoholics must
practice the A.A. religion or else they will die:
"To
be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual
basis are not always easy alternatives to face."
The Big Book, William G. Wilson,
page 44.
Actually,
they are not alternatives at all. There is a third choice:
just quit drinking, and live a healthy, happy, and sane life
without a cult religion.
- "Either
you are dealing with a man who can and will get well or you are
not. If not, why waste time with him?"
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Henry
Parkhurst, Chapter 10, To
Employers, page 142.
- "None
of us in Alcoholics Anonymous is normal. Our abnormality compels
us to go to AA... We all go because we need to. Because the
alternative is drastic, either A.A. or death."
Delirium
Tremens, Stories of Suffering and Transcendence, Ignacio
Solares, Hazelden,
2000, page 27.
- "Either work
a strong program or else your fate will be jails, institutions, or death." (Popular A.A. slogan.)
- "Work
the Steps or Die!" — (Popular A.A. slogan.)
- "Even if you abstain from drinking
alcohol, you must still practice Bill Wilson's Twelve Steps all of
the time, or else you will turn into a dry
drunk, a person who acts just like an obnoxious
drunkard even when sober."
- "You must be willing to go to any lengths to
recover from alcoholism", or else "you aren't really
trying."
(A.A. Big
Book, 3rd Edition, pages 58 and XX.)
- Bill Wilson said of alcoholics:
"Either
we insist upon dominating the people we know, or we depend on
them for far too much."
"Either we ... tried to play God and dominate those about us, or
we ... insisted on being overdependent on them."
(Not-God,
Ernest Kurtz, page 125.)
- A.A. defenders say, "You can't
criticize our program unless you have a perfect, fool-proof,
never-fails program of your own to offer as an alternative."
Translation: "Either
show us a perfect program of your own design, or else accept our
goofy program."
- A.A. promoters ask,
"Which
would you rather get treatment and advice from — your old
drinking buddies, or AA members?"
(For me, the
answer is, "Neither." Try finding someone who is sane and
reasonable and who knows what he is talking about, like a
doctor who is good at treating addictions.)
- And even people who are trying to be
objective can get caught in traps:
"Either
addiction is a disease and addicts are powerless over their
addictions, or else addiction is a choice and addicts can stop
any time they want to."
Such an argument ignores the middle
possibility: that physical addiction to a chemical really messes
with the addict's mind and makes quitting extremely difficult
(but not impossible). Sometimes, it is true that an addict can
quit any time he wants to — he just cannot "want to" intensely
enough to overcome the urges, the cravings, the crazyness, and
the pain that inevitably accompanies withdrawal. (That is, he
can't "want to enough" until something extreme happens to
motivate him, like getting sick unto death, nearly dying, or
seeing a friend die. Then that can be the stimulus that provides
the motivation to finally quit and stay quit.)
- False
Dichotomy
The False
Dichotomy technique is very similar to the Either/Or technique. A
dichotomy is the division of something into two pieces. A false
dichotomy is an attempt to divide something with a false dividing
line, like:
- You can have either quantity, or
quality, but not both.
- Some people vote for God, and some
people vote Democratic.
- Some people support the troops, while
others want to end the war.
- Some people support President Bush,
while others are not so patriotic.
- Unwanted fertilized human eggs should
be adopted, not used for stem cell research.
{That
statement implies that it is an either/or choice, and
ignores the fact that there are 400,000 unwanted embryos in
freezers around the U.S.A., extras left over from in vitro fertization
procedures, and very, very, very few of them will ever get
adopted and become "Snowflake Babies". So far, only 81 of
them have ever been adopted. There really are not a lot of
women around who are begging the doctors to shove somebody
else's fertilized egg into their wombs. There are more than
enough unwanted frozen embryos to go around, and the sad
truth is that almost all of those embryos will end up
getting flushed down the drain after they have sat in the
freezer for too long. They get freezer burn too, you know.}
Variations on False Dichotomy include:
- False Dilemma: The choice presented is
only A or B. Rejecting A is selecting B.
- Bifurcation
- Either/Or: Reduce reality to, "Either
this is true, or that is true."
- The Enemy Of My Enemy Is My Friend
- Hobson's Choice
- Alternative Advance
Another very common false dichotomy is: "Do
you believe in God or evolution?"
But if you believe that evolution was God's method of creating us,
then there is no conflict between science and religion. Yes there is
a God, and yes, evolution is true.
The only conflict is between
modern observations of reality and the superstitions of some
ill-educated Israeli goat-herders who happened to live in the Sinai
Desert 4000 years ago. But what did they know? They thought that the
Earth was flat, and that the Firmament was a black dome over the
Earth, to which all of the stars were glued. (Read the beginning of Genesis, and the part of Revelations where the
Lord rolls up the Firmament like a Venetian blind and takes it away.
There goes the night sky and all of the stars that are glued to it.)
Al Shebab is a terrorist gang in Somalia
that is linked to Al Qaeda. They recently carried out a terrorist
attack on a shopping mall in Kenya that killed 70 people. OPB
Newshour, 2014.01.07, did an article on Al Shebab. In it, an Al
Shebab leader Sheik Ali Dehere lectured new suicide mission
recruits: "When
we fight and are martyred, we are hoping to be with God in
Paradise. We are hoping for beautiful women. What do the infidels
hope for? Nothing."
That is a false dichotomy. People who are not murdering terrorists
hope for many things, generally good things. They might even hope to
go to Heaven. And people who choose to not be murdering terrorists
are not necessarily "infidels". That is a Sheep
and Goats distinction.
George Bush uses the false dichotomy
technique constantly, framing an argument as a choice between two
irrelevant things. While talking about the armed insurgents in Iraq,
he said that they had to "choose between freedom or a return to
darkness." (23 Aug 2005). The insurgents are not opposed to freedom.
They are opposed to the occupation of their country by the United
States Army. In fact, those insurgents want to be even freer than
they are now, so that they can do whatever they want to do without
interference from Americans.
| Recently,
Tom Cruise appeared on television to promote the movie War of the Worlds.
Somehow, the interview morphed into a tirade against
modern psychiatry, and criticism of psychiatrists for
giving tranquilizers to adults and psychotropic drugs to
children. He voiced many bitter denunciations of modern
psychiatry. Cruise claimed that "You don't know the
history of psychiatry like I do." Cruise also said that he
believes that Scientology offers a valid alternative to
current psychiatric practices.
But Tom Cruise is making the
whole issue into a false Either/Or choice
— a false dichotomy. Is isn't EITHERmodern
psychiatry is right, OR Scientology
is right. Cruise ignores the obvious possibility that
both could be wrong:
- Some psychiatrists are
very much at fault for prescribing entirely too many
medications — especially Ritalin — to children just
because they are high-energy little live-wires (which
a lot of healthy children are). Sitting still in a
classroom all day long, year after year, is downright
unnatural and unhealthy, and drugging children to make
them be quiet is despicable.
- AND Scientology
is at fault for being a complete fraud and cruel
rip-off — just organized crime masquerading as a
healing group.
|
Bill Wilson's favorite false dichotomy
was to divide people into those "faithful" people who believed the
crazy dogmatic things that he was preaching, and the "atheists and
agnostics" who didn't.
And, some alcoholics accepted all of
Bill's bull, while others were "unreasoningly
prejudiced".
And then A.A. teaches us that there are:
1) those good A.A. members who Keep
Coming Back to more A.A. meetings and Work The Steps in all
of their affairs; and
2) those unfortunates who will die drunk in a gutter.
And,
1) Good A.A. members are able to grasp a lifestyle that
requires "rigorous
honesty" (like Fake
It Till You Make It and Act
As If), while
2) Non-members are "constitutionally incapable of being honest
with themselves. ... They seem to have been born that way."
- The Enemy Of
My Enemy Is My Friend
This is another kind of false dichotomy — an attempt to divide people
into just two camps or sides or causes.
Variations:
- "The
enemy of bad must be good."
- "Those
who are opposed to bad must be good."
- "If a bad
man hates me, then that proves that I am good."
- "If a
very bad man is opposed to what Joe is doing, then Joe must
good, and Joe must be doing good things."
- "The
friend of my enemy is also my enemy."
- "If I am
opposed to something bad, then I must be good."
Heinrich Himmler and two other S.S. officers collecting
wildflowers for a little girl that he is going to visit.
|
Those are obviously false assumptions, fraught with dangers. Nobody is
absolutely bad, or absolutely good, so their enemy cannot be
absolutely the opposite, either. Even Heinrich Himmler, the man who
personally managed the halocaust that murdered 6 million Jews, had a
soft spot in his heart for pretty little girls, and he doted on them
and would pick wild flowers for them. But that didn't make those
little girls bad, or our enemies.
Adolf Hitler hated Joe Stalin, and was
totally opposed to what Joe was doing, but that didn't make Stalin a
good guy. Both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were world-class
murdering monsters.
Peter Howard used this technique to try
to claim that the Oxford Group / Moral Re-Armament organization was
good. He claimed that he had a secret Gestapo report on the Oxford
Groups that the Gestapo had printed during World War II, which
condemned the Oxford Groups as a dangerous influence, and ordered
Gestapo agents to watch them closely. Thus, Howard concluded, the
Oxford Groups must be virtuous, and the allegations that the Oxford
Groups were essentially a fascist cult religion must be false. That
is bad logic. The leader of the Gestapo, Heinrich Himmler, was
against all Christian
churches, because they encouraged people to be loyal to something
other than Adolf Hitler. Also, Himmler dismissed all of Christianity
as a "Jewish" religion, and wanted to stamp it out and return to
ancient paganism. So Himmler was wary of the Oxford Groups
just because they said that they were Christian (which they were
not, really, in the final analysis).
Scientology routinely uses a variation on
this tactic. Scientology opposes the use of all psychiatric drugs
and medications, claiming that Scientology procedures are the only
valid treatment for psychiatric problems. Scientologists especially
like to complain about children being overmedicated with harmful
drugs like Ritalin. Like most successful Big Lies, there is a grain
of truth in such complaints. It is despicable to overmedicate
children and dope them out just because they are energetic little
live wires who don't want to sit still in classrooms when the sun is
out and it's a beautiful day outside. But Scientology way overdoes
it in opposing all psychiatric medications. And then they use the
logical fallacy of "we oppose something bad so that proves that we
are good."
And then they go on and on, denouncing
drug after drug, finding fault with every tranquilizer and
anti-psychotic around, picketing and warning against Zoloft, Paxil,
Luvox, Celexa, Lexapro, Seroxat, Prozac, Effextor, etc., and all the
while claiming that they great because they are saving people from
the bad psychiatrists. And the more they can find wrong with
medications or psychiatrists, the more convinced they are that they
are right about everything.
Alcoholics Anonymous uses this ploy
constantly by declaring, "Alcoholism is very bad, so A.A., which
opposes alcoholism, is very good."
The so-called "recovery industry" uses
this ploy by declaring that they are very opposed to "addiction",
implying that they are good people who are dedicated to helping
others, rather than just charlatons with ineffective quack cures who
are out to get your money. Their advertisements go on and on,
ranting about how bad "addiction" is, without actually showing that
they are doing anything good for the problem.
- "Hobson's
Choice"
Give a free choice between something or nothing.
The classic example of Hobson's Choice is
"Take it or leave it." Either take the one thing offered, or get
nothing.
The A.A. program is often offered in this
manner: Either accept the entire program and believe all of it, or
else get no help: "If you aren't willing to accept this Program,
then you should go out and do some more research on the subject."
- Alternative
Advance
Provide two or more choices which do not cover the range of
possibilities, but which only reflect essentially the same
proposition.
A Jehovah's Witness recruiter may say,
"If
you don't agree with me, let's study this book I've brought along.
If you do agree, let's go to the Kingdom Hall this Sunday."
Both choices expose you to indoctrination in their religion.10 One
obvious logical choice is missing:
"If
we don't agree about religion, we can just drop the matter and
part company amicably."
Here is another example:
In
A.D. 640, when the Saracens captured Alexandria, seat of ancient
culture, Greek scholars pleaded with them not to burn the scrolls
of the great library. Their reply, as recorded by Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire remains
a classic in theological logic. "If the writings support the
Koran, they are superfluous," ruled the warrior tribesmen. "If
they oppose it, they are pernicious; burn them."
Richard Mathison, God is a Millionaire, page 33.
- "Somebody's
got it worse"
When people complain about something, tell them that they should be
happy with the situation because somebody else has it worse.
- "You should be happy to have Mr. Smith
as your slavedriver. He only beats you once a day. Those poor
bastards under Mr. Jones get beaten three times a day."
- "You are lucky to have those shiny new
chains and shackles. Look at those poor slobs over there, with
rusty old chains. Do you know how those things chafe on wrists and
ankles?"
- "You should be happy to be working for
a dollar an hour. The boss is being generous. The guys in Bungeria
only get 25 cents an hour."
- Faulty
Syllogism
A Faulty Syllogism is
bad logic, pure and simple — a bad chain of logical deduction.
Technically,
a proper syllogism is an argument, the conclusion of which is
supported by two premises, of which one (major premise) contains
the term (major term) that is the predicate of the conclusion, and
the other (minor premise) contains the term (minor term) that is
the subject of the conclusion; common to both premises is a term
(middle term) that is excluded from the conclusion. A typical form
is: "All A is B; all B is C; therefore all A is C."23
Whew! A simpler and clearer example of a
good syllogism is like this:
"All Pekinese ducks are white.
Mister Lee is a Pekinese duck.
Therefore Mister Lee is white."
A faulty syllogism might be something
like this:
"You think as
much as college professors, and college professors don't make
any money, so if you keep on thinking we won't have any money!"
Another rather popular faulty syllogism
is this:
- A young, aspiring poet has his poems
panned, trashed, or ignored by the critics.
- That young poet recalls that many of
the greatest poets were also panned, trashed, or ignored by the
critics when they were young.
- "Therefore," the young poet
concludes, "I must also be one of the great poets."
Obviously, the flaw in the logic is to
overlook the simple truth that for every young genius artist who
gets panned by the critics, there are a hundred incompetents who really should be trashed
by the critics.
A variation on that faulty syllogism is:
"Jimi Hendrix,
Janice Joplin, John Bellushi and James Dean all died young, and
they were all great artists. So if I die young — go out in a blaze
of glory like a shooting star — then I will also be remembered as
a great artist."
NOT!
You have to be a great artist to be remembered as one. Dying
young does not make one a great artist.
And memory is selective.
What you don't remember is all of the non-greats who died young.
What were their names?
And conversely, what about all of
the great old artists? What about the Rolling Stones and the
Grateful Dead, and B. B. King and Chuck Berry, and Robin
Williams and Dustin Hoffman and Frank Sinatra, and George
Burns and Bob Newhart and W. C. Fields? They didn't have to
die young to achieve greatness, did they?
(And
that was a demonstration of the debating technique called "Refute by
Example"...)
- Non
Sequitur
Non sequitur means "it
does not follow" — the logic is broken. If there is a chain of
argument, every link in the chain must work.
A non sequitur can be
something like this:
"I supported
terrorists today. I did just a little bit of dope. I thought I was
just having fun, but I gave money to terrorists when I did that."
That
is totally bogus logic. Colombian drug lords did not bring down the
World Trade Center on September 11; some crazy oil-rich Saudi
Arabians did. A good chain of logic is like this:
"I
supported terrorists today. I thought I was just having fun, but I
gave money to terrorists. I drove my car down to the gas station
and filled up the tank, and went cruising. But the gas station
sent the money to Bush's and Cheney's friends' oil companies, who
sent the money to Saudi Arabia, which gave the money to the bin
Laden family, who gave some of the money to Osama, who gave it to
his terrorist guys. So I supported terrorists when I bought
gasoline today."12
Likewise, this old argument is completely
illogical: At the dinner table, a mother tells her child, "Finish
your peas. There are children starving in China."
A
precocious child will answer, "So send my peas to China."
A commercial on PBS for a big financial
company tells the story of a couple of university professors who put
their children through college. The wife stops the narrator and
says:
"You don't
build up a big nest egg on a couple of teachers' salaries. You
need a plan and a financial consultant who isn't afraid to roll up
his sleeves."
That is nonsense, another non
sequitur. Obviously, unless that couple robbed a bank or
inherited a fortune or took bribes from their students for good
grades, they really did build
up their big nest egg on a couple of teachers' salaries.
Advertisements for some cigarettes brag
that the tobacco is completely natural and free from additives and
chemicals, so it is somehow less harmful. That is completely
non-sensical logic. Tobacco in any form is poisonous, and tobacco
kills 430,000 Americans per year, regardless of what chemicals it
may or may not have added to it.
Frank Buchman's Oxford
Group cult came up with
this jewel:
'I most hate self,
because "I" is the middle letter of SIN.'
(By that
brain-damaged Oxford
Group logic — '"I" is the middle
letter of SIN' — they should have also
hated Saints and Salvation, because "S" is the
first letter of SIN. And perhaps they should also hate Nuts and
Noodles, because "N" is the third letter of SIN.)
Another Non
Sequitur, or piece of broken logic, is Carl Sagan's old
favorite:
"There aren't any
aliens out there. We have been looking for them for 50 years, and
we haven't seen any. We would have seen them or made contact or
something by now, if they existed."
Carl Sagan's answer is: "Absence
of evidence is not evidence of absence."
In particular, we have explored only the most minuscule part of our
Universe, maybe something like only a quintillionth of one percent
or less. Even our best telescopes cannot even see the planets
orbiting the nearest neighboring stars, so how could we see their
spaceships? (Really. We compute the existence of distant planets by
watching how the stars wobble a tiny bit as the invisible planets
orbit them.) It's outrageously premature to declare that there is
nobody out there, just because we haven't seen them yet.
It's kind of like going down to the
seashore, and sucking up a drop of water in an eye-dropper, and then
looking very closely at the drop, and announcing, "I don't see any whales
in there. Obviously, whales don't really exist."
Another popular one is: "Drafting people and
forcing them to serve in the army isn't slavery because everybody
is subjected to it."
Of course it's slavery. Whether something is slavery or not
has nothing to do with how many people are enslaved.
(By the way, not everybody was subjected to it. Rich men's sons got
college deferments and ended up avoiding the draft. Dick Cheney got
five deferments because he said he "had other priorities.")
In a TV commercial for the Turbo-Tax®
computer program (2004.01.20), the husband asks, "What if we made a
mistake?"
His wife confidently answers, "The calculations are guaranteed accurate."
That is brain-damaged logic, a real non-sequitur.
The husband asked "What if we made
a mistake?", not "What if the computer program made a mistake?"...
Sure, the computer's basic calculations like addition and
multiplication will be accurate, but that doesn't guarantee that the
humans haven't messed everything up. You know the old saying, "Garbage In, Garbage Out".
The Turbo-Tax guys cannot guarantee against human error. The reason
that it is so hard to make things fool-proof is because fools are so
damned clever at thinking of new ways to screw things up.
American Express has a commercial on TV
that is similarly illogical. A man who declares that he works as a
waiter in a restaurant and also coaches childrens' basketball
explains that,
"I
want my players to develop as athletes.
"I want my players to develop as students.
"My life isn't just about playing games.
"That's why my card is American Express."
What?! There
is no logic to that. He has not established any basis for choosing an
American Express card over a VISA or Mastercharge. He has not
introduced a single fact to support his sentiments. He might as well
be saying,
"My
life isn't just about playing games.
"That's why I drink only expensive imported single-malt scotch."
Crazy anti-environment people who are
also religious fundamentalists declare that warning messages about
destruction of the environment are untrue because...
"We cannot destroy the world any more
than we were capable of creating it."
That's a non-sequitur —
completely illogical nonsense. Of course we can destroy things that
we did not create. Anybody who picks up a gun and kills someone who
isn't one of his own children is destroying something that he didn't
create. Anybody who is stupid enough to start a forest fire and burn
down a forest is destroying something that he didn't create.
Those
fundamentalists are trying to imply that only God can destroy
this world (so we are safe from such danger), but that is
obviously not true at all. That is just so much wishful
thinking. Just ask the survivors of Hiroshima.
Curiously, that
goofy non-sequitur is
almost a word-for-word repetition of the
illogical argument that was parroted
by the true believers in Frank Buchman's
Nazi-sympathizing Moral
Re-Armament cult back in the 1930s
and '40s and '50s. They declared that without hearing
"The Voice" that Frank Buchman heard (which they claimed
was the Voice of God) —
Without
it we are no more capable of saving the world than
we were capable of creating it in the first place."
Experiment
With God; Frank Buchman Reconsidered, Gösta
Ekman, 1971, page 84.
|
In
another brain-damaged non
sequitur, G. W. Bush tells the troops: "It is wonderful to bravely,
patriotically, serve your country and fight terrorism. I am
committed to fighting terrorism. Some of you may die in this
war, but that is a sacrifice that I am willing to make. Bring
'em on!"
The supporters of George W. Bush insist
that having investigations to discover the truth behind Bush's many,
many mistakes, deceptions, and false statements regarding the war in
Iraq would not be good for America:
"We can't discover
the truth right now; we are in a war against terrorism."
That is a non
sequitur.
Recently (Nov. 22, 2006) the elder George
Bush was in Dubai, where he was
harshly criticized for the foreign policy of the
United States and the military adventurism of his son. Papa Bush
responded, "How
come everybody wants to come to the United States if the United
States is so bad?" That is a non
sequitur. There are many good reasons for wanting to come to
the United States which do not imply approval of George W.'s bombing
and invasion of Afghanistan and Iraqi, or his policy of
unquestioning support of Israel. One good reason for coming to the
USA is to get away from American bombing in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Another good reason is to get away from American-trained death
squads in military dictatorships around the world.
Another non
sequitur: a cult old-timer declares, "I
dedicated my life to the cult. I worked hard for 20 years to
promote it and recruit new members. Therefore I am noble and
selfless and the cult is wonderful, and we all live lives of
self-sacrifice to help others."
This non
sequitur might be called "proof by delusion": "I
saw lights, so it was a spiritual experience."
Paul Krugman reported a crazy
non-sequitur recently:
Consider
one of Mr. Romney’s most famous remarks: "Corporations are people,
my friend." When the audience jeered, he elaborated: "Everything
corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it
goes? Whose pockets? Whose pockets? People’s pockets." This is
undoubtedly true, once you take into account the pockets of, say,
partners at Bain Capital (who, I hasten to add, are, indeed,
people).
Paul Krugman, Off and Out With Mitt Romney, The New York Times, 2012.07.05
The fact that people get money from
corporations does not mean that corporations are people,
entitled to human rights, like freedom of speech or the right to
vote. Corporations cannot be imprisoned for their crimes, can they?
Or be given the death sentence for polluting children to death. Or
die of old age. Or get cancer. Or bleed and suffer. Corporations are
actually just legal fictions that allow some people to do business
without being liable for the consequences of their actions. If the
same people do busness as a partnership, they can be put in prison
for their crimes.
Today, commercials on the radio tell you
that you need to join Al-Anon or Ala-Teen "to get help" because
Daddy drinks too much alcohol —
"I
don't know who he is any more. I don't know who I'll meet — my
husband or somebody else..."
"We are the family and friends of alcoholics. We may be different,
but we have one thing in common: We want our lives back."
The broken logic there is: "Daddy drinks too much alcohol, and living with him
is a nightmare, so you need to go join the
12-Step cult religion where you will be told to
confess all of your sins
and find your part in it and quit being so
selfish and quit being such a domineering bitch."
That's a real non
sequitur — there is no logic to it.
For another example of bad logic:
Both
of the co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, William G. Wilson and
Dr. Robert Smith, were very heavy smokers. So were most of the
other early A.A. members. Bill Wilson often said that members did
not need to quit smoking; that smoking was okay, and could
even help (in spite of the fact that it was killing him). A coffee
pot and lots of ash trays were considered the standard essential
equipment for any A.A. meeting. Therefore, smoking lots and lots
of tobacco, and drinking lots and lots of coffee, just like Bill
W. and Dr. Bob did, is perfectly okay, and it may even help you to
quit drinking alcohol, just like they did.
(It
may also help you to quit breathing, just like
they did, but that's another story...)
Another brain-dead non-sequitur:
"When
I went to an A.A. meeting, I was amazed to see that they were all
just like me. They really understood. For the first time, I felt
like I belonged. Therefore, Bill Wilson was a total genius and
right about everything, and the Twelve Steps are the One And Only
True Path to Sobriety, Serenity, and God."
A very common argument that one often
hears around the "recovery community" is descriptions of the horrors
of alcoholism and drug addiction being used to glorify Alcoholics
Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. The logic is: "Alcoholism is bad, so
A.A., which is intended to save alcoholics, is good."
But that is just another non-sequitur. That is no more
logical than saying, "Alcoholism
is bad, so Scientology is good."
Scientology also claims
to have a never-fails cure for alcoholism and drug addiction — an
allegedly-independent organization called Narconon.
And their magic answer is: "Give all of
your money to Scientology for more 'auditing', and they will fix
your mind."
Just because something claims to have
good intentions does not make it good. As one wit declared,
"The opposite of 'good' is good
intentions."
- Post
Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc — "It
happened after 'X', so it was caused by 'X'."
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc means
"it happened after..., so it was caused by...". That implies a
cause-and-effect relationship where none may exist.
The classic example of this is, "The
rooster's crowing makes the sun rise: First the rooster crows, and
then the sun comes up over the horizon, so the rooster's crowing
makes the sun rise."
A few more examples of false logic:
- A bunch of teenage girls took sex
education classes in high school, and then got pregnant.
Therefore, sex education classes make teenage girls get pregnant.
The classes give the girls ideas.
The fact that young
females have been managing to get pregnant for hundreds of
millions of years without any formal education — using only
on-the-job training — is considered irrelevant.
- Tommy says, "I was sick. I drank a
whole bottle of Dr. Philo T. Farnsworth's Magic Rejuvenation
Elixir, and immediately got better. So that Elixir really works
good."
Tommy ignores the
simple fact that most people routinely spontaneously recover
from all of their illnesses (except perhaps the last one)
without any Magic Elixir, so he has no way of knowing whether
the Magic Elixir was responsible
for his recovery.
- Sam won the lottery, and immediately
went on a huge outrageous binge of celebration that ended in him
dying drunk. He had all of the free time and money he needed to
drink himself to death, and he did. Therefore, winning the lottery
is a terrible thing that will make you die drunk.
(Likewise, success is
also a dangerous thing that will probably ruin you, so don't
succeed in life.)
- Joe went to A.A. meetings, and quit
drinking. So, going to the meetings caused Joe to quit drinking.
- Henry did the Twelve Steps, and quit
drinking. He stopped drinking after he did his Fifth Step. That
proves it: doing the Fifth Step makes people quit drinking.
- Jackie
relapsed after he did his Twelfth Step. So did Paddy and
Lillian and Ebby and Johnny. That proves it: doing the
Twelfth Step makes people relapse and die drunk.
- The Norm of
Reciprocity
The norm of reciprocity is
a technique that exploits people's natural tendency to want to repay
debts. I know that sounds unbelievably Pollyannaish, because you might
think that most people want to avoid paying debts, but no matter how
cynical you may feel about the human race, people do have a basically
cooperative nature, especially
in face-to-face relationships. It dates from our days as
primitive members of tribes, just cavemen, who helped each other to
survive. When one person does a favor for another, the other feels
indebted, and wants to return the favor to even out the score. Even
today, there are still a few remaining tribes who have an economic
system that is just a complex web of traded favors and debts, and they
all manage to remember who owes what to whom...
The Hari Krishnas discovered that they
could increase their haul of money from airports by giving away
flowers. That is, if they just tried to shake travelers down for
donations, they got rejected a lot. But when they gave travelers a
flower, "...because we love you, and you are so beautiful...", and
then hit up the traveler for a donation, they got a lot more money.
The act of giving the flower made the traveler feel indebted and
embarrassed, and vulnerable to the request for money.
Then they used
the same technique for selling their Krishna books in airports:
"Give" the book to the traveler "because he looks so enlightened,
like someone intelligent enough to appreciate that material", and
then hit him up for a big donation to finance the printing and
distribution of that cosmic wisdom...
The one time they pulled that stunt on
me, I had just spent my last dollar on the airplane ticket. When
I finally managed to convince the woman who was working on me
that I really didn't have even just a twenty left in my pockets,
she gave me a look of disgust, angrily grabbed the book back out
of my hands, and stomped off in frustration... So much for how
intelligent and enlightened I look... Oh well.
- Guilt
Induction
Guilt is an especially powerful tool for manipulating people's minds.
A late-night TV infomercial says:
"Don't you think it's time you gave
your family all of the things that they deserve? Buy this
get-rich-quick scheme right now."
Another commercial that sells a panic
button service has a woman saying,
"What if something happened to my
mother? I don't think I could forgive myself. I'll buy her a
medical alert service."
They imply that you are neglecting your mother if you don't buy their
service, and they make you afraid of what might go wrong. That
commercial cleverly combines guilt induction with fear-mongering, so
they are using two propaganda techniques on your mind at once.
People who feel guilty are far more
likely to comply with a request than they would be if they didn't
feel guilty. Thus, making people believe that they have hurt you,
and then pressing a request for them to do something (which offers
them a feeling that they can make amends by doing something for you)
is an effective way to get people to do what you want.
Guilt induction and self-criticism
(confession) sessions formed the core of the Red Chinese
brainwashing program, and they are still used by many cults.
Edward Hunter wrote a beautiful book about the Red Chinese
brainwashing that was done to the American, British, and other
United Nations prisoners of war in North Korea during the Korean
War. He explained the mechanics of "brainwashing" this way:
The
Reds had found that the easiest way to subdue any group of people
was to give its members a guilt complex and then to lead them on
from self-denunciation to self-betrayal. All that was required to
put this across was a sufficiently heartless exploitation of the
essential goodness in people, so that they would seek
self-sacrifice to compensate for their feelings of guilt. The
self-sacrifice obviously made available to them in this inside-out
environment is some form of treason.
Brainwashing,
From Pavlov to Powers, Edward Hunter, page 169.
So, first, the Communist guards would do
something like make the prisoners feel guilty for being part of "a
rich racist society where they never cared about the fate of the
poor Negroes", and then the prisoners had to confess that in
self-criticism sessions, and then the only way to atone for such
sins was to love and praise the wonderful Chinese Communist society
where everyone was equal (but some people were more equal than
others).
Prof.
Margaret Thaler Singer also considered inducing "a
sense of powerlessness, covert fear, guilt, and dependency" to
be one of the five
essential conditions for an effective
mind-control or "brainwashing" program. The Red Chinese guards
were able to accomplish that easily, because all of the prisoners
were at the mercy of the guards, who could punish or kill them on
a whim, or for no reason at all.
Likewise, many religions and religious
cults use guilt to manipulate their members. Frank Buchman's Oxford Group cult
refined guilt induction to an art and a science — "The
Five C's" — and used it as a standard part
of their recruiting scheme. The Oxford Groups also induced a sense
of powerlessness in their victims with the doctrine that "Everyone
has been defeated by sin, and is powerless over it. Everyone is
insane (except
Frank Buchman and his lieutenants). Only
'Surrender to God'[Read:
surrender to Frank Buchman's cult] can
restore one to sanity."
All of Prof. Margaret
Thaler Singer's five
essential conditions for an effective
mind-control or "brainwashing" program were present in the Oxford
Groups.
Guilt induction
is also a big part of the Alcoholics Anonymous program. The
A.A. founders Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith learned it from the
Oxford Groups when they were members of that cult. Seven of the
Twelve Steps, Steps Four through Ten, dwell on sins, "defects of character", "moral
shortcomings", offenses, people we have harmed, and wrongs — "the exact nature of our wrongs." Good
A.A. newcomers are supposed to do a "moral inventory" and list every
sin they ever committed in their whole lives, and then confess it
all to another A.A. member and God. Then they are supposed to make
another list of everybody they ever hurt, offended, or pissed off,
and they have to go apologize or somehow "make amends." And then
they are supposed to repeat that whole rigamarole for the rest of
their lives. Such constant guilt induction can be very harmful and
psychologically damaging. It even sometimes drives people to
suicide.
(And Alcoholics Anonymous also induces a sense of
powerlessness with Steps One and Two:
"1. We admitted we
were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become
unmanageable."
"2. [We] Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves
could restore us to sanity."
Implying
that you are insane and you cannot heal yourself. Somebody
else has to manage your life for you and restore you to
sanity.
With the guilt induction and inducing a
sense of powerlessness, we have two of the most important
ingredients for a working brainwashing program.)
Bill Wilson's mania for inducing guilt in
others was so intense that he even tried to make people feel guilty
for not being
sinners. On page 66 of Bill's second book, Twelve
Steps and Twelve Traditions, Bill described all of the
disgusting ways that sinners will sin and then deny it and try to
avoid confessing their sins. Then Bill wrote:
We
who have escaped these extremes are apt to congratulate ourselves.
Yet can we? After all, hasn't it been self-interest, pure and
simple, that has enabled most of us to escape? Not much spiritual
effort is involved in avoiding excesses which will bring us
punishment anyway.
Twelve
Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 66.
So if you don't commit a lot of sins and
crimes, then you should feel guilty for being selfish and pursuing
"self-interest, pure and simple":
— You aren't really a good person, and you aren't really spiritual.
— You are just selfishly avoiding punishment.
Poor insane old Bill
Wilson really did hate human
nature. No wonder he was a chronic depressive.
That's also a good example
of a double-bind —
You are damned if you do, and damned if you don't:
- If you commit a bunch of sins and
crimes, it's because you are selfish and unspiritual.
- If you don't commit
a bunch of sins and crimes, it's because you are selfish and
unspiritual and just selfishly avoiding punishment.
Either way, you are too
selfish to be "spiritual." So you should start doing Bill Wilson's
Twelve Steps, listing and confessing all of your sins and feeling
guilty about everything.
But the best example of Bill Wilson's
crazy mania for guilt induction has to be this jewel where Mr.
Wilson declared that we were guilty of all
of the Seven Deadly Sins,
including Sloth,
because we work hard:
And
how often we work hard with no better motive than to be secure and
slothful later on — only we call it "retiring."
Twelve
Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 67.
So, working hard now, so that we can
retire later, in our old age, with some financial security, is
contemptible "slothful"behavior,
is it?
Is there anything more
ridiculous that Deacon Wilson could possibly try to make us feel
guilty about?
- Play On
Emotions, Appeal To Emotions
We have lots of emotions that can be manipulated by a clever
propagandist. We've already mentioned guilt, which is in a category of
its own. But there are plenty more to exploit, like: Fear, lust for
power, hope, pride, vanity, egotism, insecurity, ambition, machismo,
"patriotism", greed, love, loneliness, nostalgia, religiosity,
sentimentality, and lust for sex.
- Fear,
especially fear of death, is a particularly powerful emotion, one
that can be manipulated to good advantage:
- A preacher who wants to increase
attendance at his church advertises: "Don't wait for the
hearse to take you to church."
- A cult recruiting leaflet asks, "If you died this
very moment, do you know where you would spend eternity? If
you do not, there is an answer for you. It is ______." (Fill
in the blank with the name of your favorite panacea...)
- Believers who confuse religion and
politics declare: "If we don't line up politically, we
Christians shall lose this country. The forces of evil are
trying to take America away from us. Winning means that we
will protect all that is good and sacred."
- When San Francisco residents
suggested getting their own municipal power company so that
they could stop paying for enormously over-priced electricity
from PG&E and Enron, they were told, "It's too risky, too costly."
(How could it
possibly be more risky and more expensive than handing your
wallet to Enron?)
- Someone who wishes to stop a
public debate declares, "The debate must be cancelled, both
because it might offend people and because it could stir up
racial hatred. There is a potential threat to public order." (BBC News,
Monday, 26 November 2007, "The limits to freedom of speech")
- Spread Fear,
Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD).
Microsoft is a past master of this stunt:
"If you use some software that was written
by someone besides Microsoft, it might not work right with
your Micro$uck operating system. It might mess up your
machine. You might lose files... We might even have
deliberately built in some secret bugs and booby-traps and
bombs that will get triggered if we see you using a
competitor's software in 'our system'... You don't get any
guarantees that it will all work together correctly if you
don't buy all of your software from us."
- Promote Conspiracy
Theories. "They" are all out to get you. (And a paranoid
book of disorganized 'facts' proves it.) After
September 11, 2001, our Commander-in-Empty-Flight-Suit Bush
declared, "Oceans
no longer protect us"as if the oceans protected us from the
attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, or from the first World
Trade Center bombing in 1993...
- Alcoholics Anonymous often uses
fear mongering and death threats to manipulate people:
- A.A. teaches that failure to
follow the A.A. program precisely will result in relapses
and drinking yourself to death.
- A.A. also teaches that you
will either turn into a "dry
drunk" and act crazy, or relapse and die, if you
don't"work a strong program" by
practicing Bill Wilson's Twelve Steps "in all of your
affairs."
- Bill Wilson constantly
threatened people with death unless they followed
his instructions exactly:
Unless
each A.A. member follows to the best of his ability
our suggested [my required]Twelve Steps to
recovery, he almost certainly signs his own death
warrant.
Twelve
Steps and Twelve Traditions, William Wilson,
page 174.
- They say that if you won't
make A.A. or N.A. your new life, that your fate is "Jails,
Institutions, or Death."
- Failure to "Work
A Strong Program" in A.A. will end in "Jails, Institutions, or
Death".
- Step Eleven teaches us to
practice meditation and prayer until we hear God talking
to us, but then Bill Wilson tells us not to trust our own
minds when we hear God talking — that it is "dangerous" to
"go it alone" and could result in "tragic" results — so we
should take our received "Guidance from God" to our
sponsors for their approval, and let them rewrite God's
messages:
If
all our lives we had more or less fooled ourselves,
how could we now be so sure that we weren't still
self-deceived? ... Going it alone in spiritual matters
is dangerous. ... Surely
then, a novice ought not lay himself open to the
chance of making foolish, perhaps tragic, blunders in
this fashion. While the comment or advice of others
may be by no means infallible, it is likely to be far
more specific than any direct guidance we may receive
while we are still so inexperienced in establishing
contact with a Power greater than ourselves.
Twelve
Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson,
pages 59-60.
But there are also plenty of other
emotions, besides fear, to exploit:
- Arouse
Resentments.
Adolf Hitler found a great way to get the German people on his
side: Claim that Germany
had been attacked by the Jews, and that the Jews had caused
World War One, and that the Jews were exploiting the German
economy after the war, which was supposedly why all of the
German people were poor and unemployed, which aroused
feelings of paranoia, resentment, and anger. And then it didn't
matter whether it was the British and French, or the Jews or
Communists, or Czechoslovakia or Poland, they had all supposedly
attacked Germany or German people in one way or another, at some
time or other, so it was supposedly okay for Hitler to strike back
in revenge, which he did with a vengeance. That made Hitler look
like a great leader, someone who was very strong on national
defense while he invaded foreign countries.
Fat old Nazi Reichmarshall Hermann
Goering said,
"Voice
or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding
of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them
they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack
of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the
same in any country."
Oddly
enough, that is the same technique that George W. Bush and
Carl Rove have been using on the American people to promote
the war in Iraq. Did Rove study the Nazi propaganda
techniques?
Alcoholics Anonymous often arouses
feelings of self-pity and resentment by complaining about how
unfairly alcoholics have been treated for so long:
Psychiatrist Leo Hennigan, a former alcoholic and author
of the book A
Conspiracy of Silence: Alcoholism, says that the battles
he fought in the South Pacific during World War II were
nothing compared to the personal war that he fought with
alcohol for 15 years. Hennigan blames this long siege on the
medical community's disinterest. It wasn't until 1956 that the
American Medical Association labeled the condition a disease
rather than immoral behavior, and even now, after four years
of training at most medical schools, doctors receive only two
hours of instruction about alcoholism. He also blames societal
attitudes that reflect people's misunderstanding about the
disease. Most don't realize that the nature of alcoholism
causes the alcoholic to drink because he must, not because he
wants to. Society is also largely unaware of alcoholism's
genetic predisposition. In Hennigan's family, for example,
three maternal uncles died before 50 of the affliction.
When Hennigan takes issue with Alcoholics Anonymous, it
has nothing to do with its tremendous 75% rate of
rehabilitation. Instead, he argues that AA relies too much on
the "anonymous" part of its title. When the organization began
in the 1930s, the group was small and needed the shield of
anonymity, but not so today. "If AA's anonymity is scrapped,
the group's ranks will swell by many millions and greatly
assuage the effects of alcoholism in America." The most
therapeutic role that AA can deliver is to allow struggling
members to be encouraged by others who have "been there, done
that." In fact, it was the testimony of a recovered alcoholic
that influenced the AA founders to begin the organization.
When alcoholics are no longer anonymous, Hennigan
contends, the organization will finally fulfill the 12th step
of the program which says: "Having had a spiritual awakening
as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message
to alcoholics."
"Alcoholism's
nemesis", by Robert Selle. World
& I magazine, Jun 2000 (Vol 15, No 6).
Pages 62-65.
- Oh those poor, hard-done-by
long-suffering alcoholics. The doctors are stupid and don't
know anything and don't care, and nobody understands
alcoholism, and society's attitudes are all wrong. The only
answer is to cry in your beer and go join a cult religion.
- And that declared 75% success rate
of Alcoholics Anonymous is a lie, so the author was assuming
facts not in evidence. Bill Wilson was actually lying
with qualifiers when made that claim — he
only counted those people "who came to A.A. and really tried". (If
they didn't quit drinking, then, in Bill Wilson's opinion,
they didn't "really try".) Wilson wrote that lie in the
forward to the second edition of the Big
Book, and the A.A. true believers have been
repeating it ever since, but it's still a lie. The truth is
that even the two founders of Alcoholics Anonymous,Bill
Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith, calculated that their success
rate was a mere five percent — which is
just the same as the success rate of people who do it alone,
without Alcoholics Anonymous.
- In this sentence, the author used
the tricks of Assume
Facts Not In Evidence and Assume
The Major Premise:
"Most don't
realize that the nature of alcoholism causes the alcoholic
to drink because he must, not because he wants to."
No matter how many people "realize it" or don't realize
it, the assumed "fact" is flat-out wrong, period. Alcoholics
drink because they want to. Alcoholics have a choice. If
alcoholics didn't have any control over their drinking, then
they couldn't quit drinking. But they do quit, by the
millions, and they do it without any cult "support group".
- [Oh,
by the way, the World
& I magazine is a front
for the Moonies. It is part of Rev. Sun Myung Moon's
empire. That's why they publish goofy articles like that.]
- Arouse
'Patriotism'.
In the nineteen-sixties through the 'eighties, there was a Moral
Re-Armament song-and-dance show called "Up With
People", which featured squeaky-clean, well-shorn
beautiful young people singing and dancing and waving the American
flag in patriotic skits. Although the show never explicitly said
that we should go over to the other side of the world and drop
bombs on skinny, starving rice farmers in Viet Nam and kill about
two million innocent civilians, that was the effective message,
and that's what happened. All of that, just from appealing to
"love of country", and "love of people" and "the American Way".
- Arouse
'Love' and exploit peoples' loneliness.
- The Moonies (members of Rev. Sun
Myung Moon's Unification Church) use "love bombing" to exploit
the loneliness and horniness of new prospects:
Basically
I felt a great love and warmth from all sides and I
couldn't understand why they were so loving and warm. Why
were they so serving? At times I found it a bit
oppressive, it was too much for me at some times. I
couldn't understand why they were doing it because I'd
never met Christians like that before. They were talking
about changing the world. Other Christians always talk
about the Bible and believing in Jesus Christ and
believing faith would do it — and I believed that that
wasn't going to do it at all.
The
Making Of A Moonie: Brainwashing Or Choice?, Eileen
Barker, page 185.
"Again,
there is a strict segregation between the sisters' and
brothers' sleeping and bathroom arrangements, but physical
contact in the form of (albeit strictly platonic) hugging
and hand-squeezing occurs frequently between the sexes.
The guests may have their backs and shoulders rubbed
during lectures (presumably to keep them awake) or at
night (presumably to help them sleep). I received an
expert massage from one young woman while she told me
about her experiences when her mother, one of the most
active anti-Unification campaigners in America, had
attempted to have her deprogrammed."
The
Making Of A Moonie: Brainwashing Or Choice?, Eileen
Barker, page 112.
A
further 'spontaneous' response, towards the end of the
weekend, was to break into song:
We love you, Eileen (or
Johnathan, or Dave, or Jane),
We love you more than anyone,
We don't want you to leave us —
And we don't mean maybe!
The Making Of A Moonie:
Brainwashing Or Choice?, Eileen Barker, page 113.
- Alcoholics Anonymous also exploits
people's feelings of loneliness or isolation:
- "We offer you unconditional
love and acceptance."
- "Let us love you until you can
love yourself."
- "When
we reached A.A., and for the first time in our lives
stood among people who seemed to understand, the sense
of belonging was tremendously
exciting."
Twelve
Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson,
page 57.
- Appeal to
Sentimentality and Nostalgia.
Many successful politicians have a collection of mawkish
sentimental stories to tell, real tear-jerkers, to appeal to the
voters' emotions. They brag about their retarded kid that they
didn't let go of, or their sick kid, or the child that died, or
their wife with cancer, or good old Mom, or their grandparents who
were such wonderful "God-fearing" people before they died, or the
father who mined coal until he died putting his children through
college.
There are also the glowing stories of
the "good old days", and how wonderful life was in a small town
way back when. Andy Griffith built a whole sentimental world, Mayberry, on such fond
remembrances, a small town where life was simple and everybody
knew everybody else and the biggest crimes were parking tickets,
and the bumbling Deputy Sherrif Barney Fife (Don Knotts) was not
allowed to carry a loaded gun. Politicians love to invoke such
images as "the Real America", and "the forgotten America".
Of course those nostalgic stories
don't really have anything to do with what this politician might
do if he gets his hands on some power and taxpayers' money, or
whether he will devote his careeer to collecting bribes, but his
stories sure sound sentimental.
Alcoholics Anonymous also uses
sentimentality and stories of the "good old days" to talk about
how wonderful A.A. was way back when... In fact, there is a
whole "Back To
The Basics" fundamentalist school of A.A. that
insists that A.A. worked great in the early days, and that A.A.
is having difficulties now only because "the message" has become
"watered down". But if we just get back to the basics and
practice that old-timey religion properly, then it will work
correctly and everything will be wonderful.
Alas, it isn't so. A.A. was a
failure in the beginning too, and Bill Wilson just lied about
it and faked the numbers.
- Are You
Afraid?
This is a mind game that tricks people into doing whatever you wish by
implying that they are afraid to do it, and that's the only reason why
they won't do it. This trick arouses several emotions: macho pride,
fear of cowardice, fear of being shamed or embarrassed, and it urges
people to do something just to prove that they aren't afraid.
Steve
Hassan, in his book, "Releasing
the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves",
described how, as a 19-year-old student at Queens College in New
York City, he was approached by three attractive women who said they
were also students, and invited him to dinner. He had just broken up
with his girlfriend, so he was lonely, and didn't mind having some
female companionship. He wound up accompanying his new friends to a
few weekend workshops — all in the spirit of being "open minded."
"It dawned on me when I was driving with
them to an estate in upstate New York owned by the Unification
Church. I'd ask them, 'Why
are we going there?' They would turn it around
on me and say, 'Why,
are you afraid?'" Hassan recounted. And that deception
was the beginning of several years of "service"
to the cult.
- Induce and
Exploit Apophenia
Apophenia is also known as "seeing through tinted lenses".
People's brains have an unfortunate
tendency to see what they expect to see, and only notice what they
want to see. Once somebody buys into a peculiar model of reality, a
perceptual filter kicks in where they notice more and more "facts"
that appear to reinforce their chosen beliefs, and they ignore any
conflicting information that comes along, so they become more and
more convinced of the correctness of their beliefs: "It's all so obvious to
anyone who learns the real truth!"
"All
of us show bias when it comes to what information we take in. We
typically focus on anything that agrees with the outcome we want."
"We need to acknowledge our tendency to incorrectly process
challenging news and actively push ourselves to hear the bad as
well as the good."
"Why We Make Bad
Decisions", New York Times, 19 October 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/opinion/sunday/why-we-make-bad-decisions.html%29
- Fundamentalist Christians see Satan as
the cause of all of our problems, and every bad event on the
evening news is seen as further evidence of the truth of that
belief.
- "End-timers" see that the end of the
world is coming very soon now. They see all of the
end-of-the-world prophesies in the Bible as already coming true,
and the end is near.
- Communists see those rich capitalists
waging class warfare as the cause of all of our problems, and the
news 'proves' their viewpoint right.
- Other people see it all as
conspiracies of the Trilateral Commission and the Illuminati and
the New World Order...
- The X-Files crowd sees everything in
terms of Roswell crashes and government cover-ups and alien
abductions and secret organizations and interplanetary plots...
- Neo-Nazis see everything as the Jewish
Conspiracy to take over the world...
- Other rather depressed people see
society as degenerating and becoming increasingly immoral, and
it's all going to fall apart soon. The evening news tells them
that crime is increasing, and everything is just getting worse and
worse.
This is nothing new. Thousands of
years ago, an unhappy Assyrian enscribed:
The
Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound.
Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to
write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is
fast approaching.
== Assyrian tablet, c. 2800 BC
A skillful propagandist can use this
human logical failing to his advantage. Apophenia helps to create
really blinded, convinced, true believers. Radical politicians,
extremist preachers, and cult leaders all encourage and exploit apophenia in their
followers. Start off by teaching the followers and believers merely
biased and questionable "facts", and then use those non-facts as the
basis for believing more unrealistic ideas, which form the basis for
more radical views, which lead to unquestioning belief in even more
radical ideas.
- Many years ago, I went to a
Pentecostal church service where the preacher read a newspaper
article about the Satanic funeral of a Satan-worshipper. The
Satanic preacher consigned the dead man's soul to Hell and the
care of Satan. Rather than dismissing this story as an example of
the stupidity and foolishness of some people, the preacher
declared that this was proof that they were locked in mortal
combat with Satan and that they must become even more devoted,
unshakeable, true believer Pentecostals.
- I was recently watching an episode of
the TV program Uncovered:
Alien Files, where, in just a few minutes, I got statements
that assumed the truth of the Bermuda Triangle, Flight 19,
Atlantis, alien spacecraft, the Roswell flying saucer crash, and
the government coverup. That show is apophenia to the max.
(Flight 19 was an incident
where a squadron of fighter aircraft took off from a base in
Florida and flew out over the Atlantic ocean and became
disoriented and ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea and
were lost. Then a flying boat that went to rescue them also
crashed into the ocean and was lost. No traces of the lost
aircraft or the flight crews were ever found. The UFO true
believers insist that aliens kidnapped them. You can get more
details from the Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_19 )
- Extremist right-wing politicians
declare that the sad state of affairs in America is caused by
"Liberals" and welfare queens sucking the money out of America.
They never mention oil companies getting billions of dollars in
tax breaks and ultra-cheap leases of government-owned offshore oil
fields. And those policians argue that workers demanding decent
wages is driving American companies overseas where cheap Chinese
labor will work for less. (There is some truth to that, but making
American workers live in poverty is not the answer. If all of the
workers are broke, who will buy the products in the stores and
make the economy go?) And of course "Big Government" is just
messing everything up. (But don't expect those angry right-wingers
to give up their lucrative farm subsidies or their fat defense
contracts from Washington.)
- Extremist left-wing politicians see
every billionaire in America (except George Soros and Warren
Buffet) as monstrously selfish and evil criminals who are
practically the spawn of Satan — heartless creeps who deliberately
steal food out of the mouths of babies, and take away their
medical care, and destroy America by outsourcing American jobs and
giving them to cheap Chinese wage-slaves. (There is a shred of
truth in this, but only a tiny shred. Sufferers from apophenia way
over-blow it. There are actually good rich people who really want
to do the right thing.)
Also see the Wikipedia page on apophenia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia.
- Ad
Hominem, Launch Personal Attacks On Opponents
When you can't refute factual arguments, kill the messenger. Have fun
with character assassination. Attack the arguer and not the argument. Ad Hominem includes
slurs, slander, libel, innuendo, baseless accusations, irrelevant
criticism, groundless denunciations, and name-calling.
For example,
- "Maybe
that book you quoted makes a good case, but I heard that the
author is a drunk."
- "The
author is obviously biased. He is just a pill-pusher."
- "I
can't believe what you say because you're just an imperfect
human being."
- "You
don't get it."
- "You're
just arguing to prove to your colleagues that you can change my
mind."
- "That
came from a guy who has a bathtub in his basement."
- "He
still lives in his mother's house."
- "You
should learn to be more civil in your criticisms."
- "You
are just prejudiced. Who did you vote for in the last election?"
- "You
are just partisan."
- "You
are on a crusade against [whatever], aren't you?"
- "You
are an outsider."
- "You
are immoral, unspiritual, and against God."
- "You
are just trying to make us look bad."
- "You
are just an immature complainer."
- "You
are just feeling sorry for yourself."
- "You
are just up tight. Don't be so up tight."
- "Don't
take yourself so seriously."
- "You
are ugly, and your wife is even uglier."
- "You
are stupid."
- "You
are crazy."
- "You
don't know what you are talking about."
- "You
have funny hair."
- "You
have bad taste in music."
- "You
have a bad attitude."
- "You
are against religion."
- "You
are just in a bad mood."
- "You
are just on the rag."
- "You
are carrying on like an old woman."
- "You
should be on the '10 Worst-Dressed People' list."
- "It
seems very unlikely that you wished that the Olympus E-3 camera
was a better camera. You are only too happy to criticize the
E-3." And dismiss
criticism as invalid and "nit-picking": "Isn't all that excessive comparison and
pixel-peeping going much too far for this forum?"
- And, when you refuse to believe the
lies of a thieving con artist, he says, "You have some trust issues that you need to work
on."
- When a black person or a long-haired
old hippie argues that there is something wrong with a society
that spends more money on jails and prisons than on schools, the
neo-conservatives answer, "Oh, you're just worried about getting sent to
prison yourself."
When people objected to major credit card
companies paternalistically declaring that you could not pay for
certain purchases with their credit cards, like medical marijuana,
gambling chips, online pornography, or donations to Wikileaks, a
defender of the credit card companies declared:
Paul,
you sound like one of those who believe you have the right to do
what you want when you want and no mater who it hurts as long as
it feels good to you. You probably voted for Obama as well wanting
to redistribute the wealth so you can buy more porn, cigs and
alcohol then cry foul and leave the card company and the paying
world with your problem and by proud of yourself. What a jerk!!
== Petem
http://mtf.news.yahoo.com/mailto/?prop=finance&locale=us&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffinance.yahoo.com%2Fbanking-budgeting%2Farticle%2F112832%2Fcredit-card-wont-let-you-buy-smartmoney&title=credit-card-wont-let-you-buy-smartmoney%3A%20Personal%20Finance%20News%20from%20Yahoo%21%20Finance
A blogger described the behavior of
Pentecostal recruiters who use the ad
hominem technique on people who disagree with
them:
...when
a Pentecostal cannot get you to agree with his memorized slogans
or his procedure to manipulate you into doing and thinking in his
way, he will dispense with you as a corrupt, or even as an evil
person. Furthermore, if his mind is working even at a deficient
level of efficiency, and part of his mind can see that you have a
valid point, he will immediately recognize your "logic" as a
threat and he is likely to attack you personally, and accuse you
of ulterior motives for holding such "logic." However, he cannot
see that his response is not a rational response to a respectable
argument, but a change in the context — he changes the subject
from the topic at hand to you personally, and proceeds with this
attack.
This, I assert, is the basis of
FRAUD.
It
is based upon a faulty system whereby the person is not bound by
the ground rules of a logical system. They are not engaging in a
debate or discussion with you; they are trying to manipulate
you. They might try to deceive you into thinking that they are
open to discussion or a respectable debate, but they are not;
they are being deceitful, crafty, irrational, and devious.
Again, go back and read what I described above. If they talk to
you and then proceed to attack you personally instead of
focusing upon the subject at hand, they are playing a
manipulation game and not entering into a serious discussion.
When they accuse you of bitterness without listening to your
arguments, they are hustling you; the same goes for any other
number of epithets they use to dismiss you and attack you
personally, like backslider, reprobate, rebellious, etc.
http://ex-pentecostal.blogspot.com/
When Jesse Prince, a former leader of
Scientology in Denmark, criticized the dishonest financial practices
that he had seen in Scientology, a spokesman for Scientology
answered,
To
make allegations about the church's finances now, Mr. Prince, who
has not been a position of responsibility in the church for nearly
15 years, and who hasn't even worked for the church for more than
7 years, is, uh, very specious. He's not in any position to know.
ARON MASON, in an
interview, reprinted on the Rick Ross website
http://www.rickross.com/reference/scientology/personal1.htm [Dead Link]
Note that Mason did not actually deny or
even answer Prince's statements about Scientology's history of
financial dishonesty — Mason just implied that Prince didn't know
what he was talking about because Prince couldn't know what the current facts were.
That's a type of Ad
Hominem attack.
(It's also bad logic: "If you can't prove
that I stole money this week, then what I might have stolen last
year doesn't count." It's also the
propaganda trick of Creating A
Diversion — divert attention to a different
time.)
Sometimes ad hominem attacks can
be quite subtle. When the Alaska oil pipeline was pierced by a
bullet, 275,000 gallons of oil spilled out because the operators of
the pipeline took several days to stop the leak. As you can imagine,
some Alaskan citizens complained. Aleyesca, the pipeline operator,
claimed that it had handled the accident in a competent manner, and
that "The
criticism came from a small group of critics who always criticize
everything that we do."22
That is a kind of ad
hominem attack on critics.
The oil company did not actually respond to the charges and
accusations of incompetence. They did not explain why it took them
several days to plug a single bullet hole. They merely attacked
their critics, trying to assert that the criticism was invalid
because it came from a small group of vocal critics.
But the truth is: It does not matter whether the criticism comes
from a small group of diligent watch-dog citizens or a large
environmental protection agency — valid criticism is valid
criticism, and incompetence is incompetence.
You can use the Ad
Hominem technique to defend Alcoholics Anonymous
like this:
If a critic says something like,
"We have a lot of good,
valid, scientific and medical studies that show that the Twelve
Steps do not cause people to quit drinking or stay sober,"
then you should respond with:
- "Oh yeh? Well I hear that you are just an
atheist and a liar, and crazy."
- "You are just in it for the money."
- "You are insane."
- "You are in denial."
- "You aren't an alcoholic, so you
can't possibly know what you are talking about."
- "And if you are an alcoholic, then
you are just a dry
drunk."
- "You haven't been a member long
enough to know anything."
- "You just
don't want to get sober."
- "You are just unspiritual and don't
want to Work The Steps yourself."
- "You are
against spiritual principles."
- "You are against God."
- "You hate God."
- "You criticizing A.A. because you
just want to drink."
- "That's just your selfishness
talking."
- "You don't know what you are talking
about because you don't Work
The Steps."
- "You have a grudge against A.A.,
that's all..."
- "Right now your mind is insane, and
you can't tell the truth from the falsehood."
- "You are just looking for an excuse
to drink."
- "You are angry."
- "You have a 'resentment'."
- "You don't understand A.A.."
- "You don't understand A.A.
spirituality because you are an atheist."
- "You don't understand A.A.
spirituality because you are a Christian."
- "You don't understand A.A.
spirituality because you aren't a member of A.A.."
- "You are too dishonest to understand
A.A. spirituality."
- "You just don't get it."
- "You think you know everything."
- "We don't have to listen to you
because you don't have any credentials — you aren't a doctor or
a professor. You don't know what you are talking about."
- "We don't have to listen to you —
you are just a doctor. A.A. knows much more than all of the
doctors and priests and ministers and psychiatrists that we went
to for so many years." (See the Big
Book, 3rd Edition, page 473.)
- "You just want to sell pills."
- "You think you are smarter than
other alcoholics."
- "You are diseased and in denial if you
criticize Alcoholics Anonymous."
- "You just don't want to quit
drinking."
- "Screw you! What do you know about
sobriety?"
- "You aren't qualified to have an
opinion of A.A. yet, because you don't have enough years of
sobriety." (And if you do have enough years, then "You are just
a Bleeding Deacon.")
- "your obviously not equiped to give
any advice." (sic., sp.)
- "Those critics are often pushing
inaccurate information or unintentionally pushing
misinformation."
- "You are
angry, so we don't have to listen to you."
- "Somebody injured you; that's why
you spend so much time criticizing Alcoholics Anonymous."
- "Your posts and your website lead me
to wonder why you spend so much energy on this. Don't you have
anything better to do than run down a group that has helped
many, many people?." (Hint: That line
was not about me; it was aimed at Rebecca Fransway in the
newsgroup alt.recovery.from-12-steps,
Feb. 8, 2001.)
- "You are just obsessed with proving
Alcoholics Anonymous wrong."
- "You are a chronic slipper who could
not grasp AA at all."
- "You will relapse soon."
- "You will fall off of the wagon
soon."
- "Nobody can have as many resentments
as you have and not drink again."
- "Are you still drunk? Anybody with
such a chip on their shoulder will go back out again."
- "You are one of the people who
couldn't work the program."
- "You are not really committed to
sobriety."
- "Your arguments are more and more
like rants. Increasingly technicoloured ones."
- "You just like to hear yourself
talk."
- "You don't care how many alcoholics
you kill by saying that A.A. doesn't work."
- "You are
doing a great disservice to those seeking sobriety."
- "You are doing great harm to
alcoholics."
- "You are causing alcoholics to
relapse."
- "You are hurting alcoholics by
driving them away from Alcoholics Anonymous."
- "Have you saved any lives lately, or
do you just sit here and bitch about AA?"
- "That orange guy is getting really
REALLY boring."
- "Your anger towards A.A. can't be
doing you any good."
- "You spent a lot of time trying to
figure out why AA didn't work for you. Which is really just a
way of justifying your drinking."
- "You've only paused your drinking,
and never genuinely stopped."
- "You must be an agnostic or an
atheist if you object to the
wonderful spirituality of Alcoholics Anonymous."
- "And I'll bet that you molest
little girls when the moon gets full, too."
- "Somebody must have hurt you. That's
why you criticize A.A."
Here is another example of an ad hominem. When somebody using the
name "King EZ" posted criticism of A.A. to a blog, an A.A. defender
counter-attacked with:
King
ez can't spell worth a damn, and places punctuation at random
between words so his writing will look like — books he sees; at
barnes&noble. Though this % makes his posts hard to read, make
no (mistake), he is a genius, both his Son and {Mother} think —
so.
http://kingez.com/blog/2008/11/11/aa-become-the-addiction/
That attack uses both ad
hominem and sarcasm. But there was not a word of
defense of A.A., or any facts relating to the subject of "addiction
to A.A.". Just complaints about imaginary errors. And the funny
thing is, I couldn't find any incorrect punctuation, and only a few
misspellings, in the original post. But who needs facts when you are
defending a cult?
And a cute variation on that theme is:
"Oh you poor thing.
I'm so sorry to hear that the 12-Steppers hurt you so bad. You are
obviously in need of some counselling. Just call 1-234-567-8901
and we'll fix you right up."
In other words,
"Yep, you're insane,
so us counselors who push 12-Step meetings on every patient we get
can happily disregard everything that you have said about the
inefficacy of 12-Step 'treatment'."
- Engage in
Name Calling
Name calling is a kind of ad
hominem attack, but it has a special power
and flavor all its own.
"If
you can't answer a man's argument, all is not lost; you
can still call him vile names."
— Elbert Hubbard |
This technique is simple and obvious: you
just call your opponents names, preferably really derogatory and
slanderous names, like this:
- "You are
an atheist, a liar, a dummy, a drunkard, etc..."
- "You are
a sexist, a racist, a fascist... not politically correct..."
- "You are
an elitist, effete, intellectual..."
- "You are
a Communist, or a socialist, or a Jew, or a Nazi..."
- "You are
a terrorist..."
- If someone wants to leave a few old
trees standing in the forest, call him a "tree-hugger".
- If someone talks about the inequality
of the justice system, where poor blacks get the death sentences,
but rich people who can afford a dream team of expensive lawyers
get off, call him "a bleeding-heart Liberal."
- When France and Germany declare that
they do not wish to participate in unprovoked "pre-emptive
warfare", dismiss them as "the old Europe".
- A blogger who
insists that people are not going to wastefully
use up the world's remaining oil supply declared on 10 October
2005, when the price of oil declined temporarily:
"I don't know how
low it [the price of oil] will go, but I do know that the
frikkin' lunatics over at clusterfucknation are
foamin' at the mouth about this. 'Its just temporary. We're
still all gonna die.' Kuntsler says it is a 'Make-believe
nation'. They just can't take it that the apocalypse is not
nigh."
- If someone criticizes Alcoholics
Anonymous, answer:
"People
who attack A.A. are just stupid A.A.-bashers. You don't have
to pay any attention to what A.A.-bashers say because they are
just stupid A.A.-bashers."
"You're just a dry drunk with a
resentment..."
And when sober old-timers complain
about A.A. misbehavior, say "You're just a
bleeding deacon..."
Notice that name-calling allows you to
actually define your opponent, based on just a few facts, or even on
no facts whatsoever.
Also notice the implication that it is
okay to kill people if you call them the right name, like
"Communist", or "terrorist".
- Apply Labels
Apply labels to things or people — especially derogatory labels. This
is very similar to name-calling.
- If someone talks about universal
health care, scream "That's Socialism!"
- If someone talks about peace and
freedom and justice, complain, "That's a Liberal agenda."
- Delegitimize
One's Opponent
Delegitimize one's opponent so as to avoid addressing the substance of
his argument. This is another kind of ad
hominemattack. The goal is to make it impossible for opponents
to be heard respectfully in the debate.
- "Those
protesters are just a bunch of unruly kids."
- "Those
protesters are just a bunch of unemployed people."
- "Those
protesters are just a bunch of old people."
- "Those
protesters are just a vocal minority."
- "They are
just on a crusade against [whatever]."
- "They are
all just Socialists."
- "They are
all just Communists."
- "Those
people are just religious fanatics."
- "They are
all cult members."
- "They are
skinheads."
- "They are
Tea Party members."
Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-WI, 1947-1957)
accused Gen. George C. Marshall and Secretary of State Dean Acheson
of being part of "a [Communist] conspiracy so immense as to dwarf
any previous such venture in the history of man. A conspiracy of
infamy so bleak that, when it is finally exposed, its principles
shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all liberal men."
If a politician can convince the audience that his opponent is a
sleazy Commie lying traitor, then it won't matter what the other guy
says after that...
When ABC News wrote an article
about the Democrat's targets for investigation (Nov.
8, 2006), one Republican apologist responded:
"It
causes me concern that Nancy Pelosi has stated that Halliburton,
CIA, and tobacco companies are early targets for them. They need
to get on with real business. Voters wanted change. Not adults
acting like children."
So, Republicans investigating President
Clinton's sex life for two years was okay, but Democrats
investigating major crimes like immense corruption and war
profiteering, secret CIA kidnappings and "renditioning" to foreign
torture prisons, and tobacco companies addicting our children to a
killer drug is "adults acting like children."
When the Olympic torch was being carried
through London (4 April 2008), protestors denounced China's
occupation of Tibet and human rights abuses. Protestors repeatedly
clashed with the Chinese security guards and British police. Then a
Chinese official criticized the protesters:
A
spokesman for the torch relay's passage around the world, Qu
Yingpu, putting a brave face on the protests, said Chinese
officials were grateful to the British police "for their efforts
to keep order."
He added, "This is not the right time, the right platform, for any
people to voice their political views". New York
Times, 6 April 2008
As if we should suddenly stop caring
about freedom and human rights abuses just because someone declares
a sporting event?
And who says that sporting events cannot be the site of a protest
about human rights violations?
(And what good did it do to let Adolf Hitler host the 1936 Berlin
Olympics without protest?)
When a photography web site (DPreview.com)
gave a well-deserved low rating to an Olympus E-510 digital SLR
camera, one Olympus fan retaliated with, "DPReview can say what ever they want when
classifying cameras. I believe they are just bowing to Canon's
marketing strong arm."
- As if nobody could possibly criticize
a defective, inferior, crippled Olympus camera unless he was paid
to do it, and threatened with loss of advertising revenue.
- And notice that the speaker was also
using the
propaganda technique of providing feelings or beliefs instead
of any actual evidence. The speaker said that he believed that
the rating was unjust.
- Also notice the propaganda trick of
"demonization of the enemy". Canon is allegedly a monster that
causes people to tell lies, rather than just a company that makes
better cameras.
When I complained about how inferior the
Olympus E-510 was in so many ways, another Olympus fan-boy responded
with the same "Delegitimize One's Opponent" propaganda trick,
implying that I was stupid for expecting it to be a good camera: "What did you expect in
that price bracket? [$1000] You don't get all of the features that
you want for that price." As if I'm not
supposed to expect to get a good camera for $1000.
A.A. members use this Delegitimize
One's Opponent technique too. When people start
discussing the failings and shortcomings of Alcoholics Anonymous and
its 12-Step program, some true believer A.A. member often
sanctimoniously declares, "I am not much of an AA gossip. I'm here to save my
ass."
That of course also has nice touches of "spiritual one-upmanship": "People who tell the truth about the bad
aspects of A.A. are just 'gossips', but I'm better than that."
- Deflect
Criticism and Blame By Delegitimizing It
As in, "That's just campaign talk." (So
ignore it.)
After the Wall Street melt-down, we
heard.
- "I don't think that this is the time
to be pointing fingers."
- "We don't want to get into the blame
game."
— which just means,
- "Let's not talk about who screwed up
big time."
- "Let's not prosecute the criminals."
You heard a lot of that kind of talk in
the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when nobody wanted to take the
blame for the FEMA incompetence. You also hear it in relation to the
quagmire in Iraq.
Recently, when someone listed a dozen
things that Apple iOS had copied from Android, someone else
responded:
Oh
for the love of God , can we please NOT turn this into another
boring Android Vs iOS thread , it's getting so boring with the
same people making the same comments over and over again.
Posted by
DarkSeptember, June 18, 2012 1:46 PM (PDT)
Well, that's one way to stop criticism of
Apple without actually answering the criticism.
| On
May 18, 2007, former President Jimmy Carter criticized
the Bush administration, saying that President
George W. Bush's administration is "the worst in history"
when it comes to international relations.
Carter, who won a Nobel Peace
Prize in 2002, criticized Bush:
"We
now have endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war where
we go to war with another nation militarily, even
though our own security is not directly threatened, if
we want to change the regime there or if we fear that
some time in the future our security might be
endangered. But that's been a radical departure from
all previous administration policies."
Carter's harshest assessment
was of the White House's Office of Faith-Based and
Community Initiatives, which helped religious charities
receive $2.15 billion in federal grants in fiscal year
2005 alone:
"The
policy from the White House has been to allocate funds
to religious institutions, even those that channel
those funds exclusively to their own particular group
of believers in a particular religion. Those things in
my opinion are quite disturbing. As a traditional
Baptist, I've always believed in separation of church
and state and honored that premise when I was
president, and so have all other presidents, I might
say, except this one."
Republican National Committee
spokeswoman Amber Wilkerson questioned why Carter, who
teaches Sunday School in his hometown of Plains,
Georgia, would attack Bush:
"Apparently,
Sunday mornings in Plains for former President Carter
includes hurling reckless accusations at your fellow
man. It's hard to take a lecture on foreign policy
seriously from President Carter considering he's the
same person who challenged Ronald Reagan's strategy
for the Cold War."
Notice that she did not
actually answer any of President Carter's criticisms of
Bush's policies and actions. She just attacked the
source of the criticism, and tried to imply that Carter
had no legitimate grounds for criticizing Bush, and
therefore the criticism was invalid.
And of course Ms. Wilkerson
also used the ad hominem technique,
personally attacking President Carter, as well as
completely reversing
reality. She accused Carter of "hurling
reckless accusations at your fellow man" when
she was actually the one who was doing that. Carter did
not "hurl reckless accusations"; Carter spoke about the
American tradition of never attacking first and never
deliberately starting wars and never being the
aggressor, and the American tradition of separation of
church and state. And Carter spoke about how the current
Bush administration had violated those policies. But she
didn't want to talk about that, so she attacked
President Carter personally, and said that it's hard to
take him seriously.
|
- Delegitimize
Criticism and Rebuttal in Advance
Devalue, delegitimize, and reject responses in advance of them
happening.
For instance:
- "Oh, don't mention Prof. Falken's
study. Everybody knows he's nuts." (Slander.)
- "I don't want to start an argument,
but..." (So don't contradict the nonsense that I'm saying.)
Bill Wilson used this technique too:
Some
will become quite annoyed if there is talk about immorality, let
alone sin. But all who are in the least reasonable will agree upon
one point: that there is plenty wrong with us alcoholics...
Twelve
Steps and Twelve Traditions, William Wilson, pages 48, 49.
So if you don't want to go along with Bill Wilson's
hatred of those disgusting sinful alcoholics,
then you are being "unreasonable".
Bill Wilson did
it again here, in a different way, as he taught people how to
conduct séances and channel God and get messages and work orders and
power from God:
... Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a
decision. ... We are often surprised how the right answers
come after we have tried this for a while. What used to be the
hunch or the occasional inspiration becomes a working part of the
mind. Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious
contact with God, it is not probable that we are going to be
inspired at all times. We might pay for this presumption in all sorts
of absurd actions and ideas. Nevertheless,
we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more
on the plane of inspiration.
The Big Book, 3rd edition, William G.
Wilson, pages 86 to 87.
Bill Wilson declared that if somebody
started acting crazy from doing Step 11 because he was convinced
that God was telling him to do insane things, that wasn't the fault
of Bill's occult practices, or of "God" — that was just a beginner
who had not learned how to be a good psychic yet. So don't criticize
Bill's superstitious practices; there is nothing wrong with them.
It's just the beginners' fault.
- Spurious
Delegitimization of Evidence or Criticism
Attempt to delegitimize annoying and inconvenient little facts and
evidence by a variety of techniques like bad logic, slurs, and
innuendo. Similarly, dismiss criticism as invalid without actually
answering it.
For instance:
- "That report has been discredited." (Passive
voice. Discredited by whom? When? Where?)
- "That report is old." (Dismiss by
Antiquity, reject by age.)
- "That information is considered
invalid." (Passive
voice, nobody there. Considered invalid by whom?)
- "That's the tenth time you've
mentioned that. Will you get off it?" (Repetion doesn't make information become untrue.)
- "Everybody considers that book
worthless." (Appeal
to "everybody
knows".)
- "You are criticising the Church's
coverups of child-molesting priests because you are bigoted and
prejudiced and just against the Church." (Use of ad
hominem.)
- "You are criticizing Israel's
mistreatment of the Palestinian people because you are
anti-Semitic and racist." (Use of ad
hominem.)
- "Your criticism is hurting the
feelings of a billion believers." (Use of ad
hominem.)
- "You criticise Catholics but you
wouldn't do the same to religion X..." (Use of ad
hominem.)
- "You criticise Islam but you wouldn't
do the same to Christians or Jews..." (Use of ad
hominem.)
- "I'm offended by your accusations." (Use of the Drama
Queen Ploy.)
- "Quit trying to stir up trouble." (Use of Spurious Delegitimization
of Opponent.)
- Spurious
Rejection of a Question
Use invalid or spurious reasons for rejecting a question that you
don't wish to answer.
For example:
- "That question was a trap!"
- "That question is unfair!"
- "That's none of your business!"
- "You can't ask about the A.A. success
rate because A.A. is not a treatment program and A.A. doesn't keep
records."
- Demonize the
Enemy
Make one's enemy into the Devil incarnate. Tell endless stories how
evil and monstrous the enemy is.
For example, as the Bush administration
lied us into the War in Iraq, we were told that Saddam Hussein was
"the Hitler of the Middle East", and that he used chemical weapons
on his enemies (which the USA actually gave him to use on the
Iranians), and that his troops were so heartless and brutal that
they threw Kuwaiti babies out of incubators and onto the floor as
they stole the incubators. The latter story was actually a lie told
by the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to incite Americans to go
to war on behalf of Kuwait.
In A.A. circles, those people who
criticize Alcoholics Anonymous are demonized with accusations that
they don't care how many
alcoholics they kill (by telling the truth and
discouraging people from believing in A.A.).
- Stroking
Ploys
This is just the opposite of name-calling — call somebody good things,
like: "a patriot, a real American, a great Christian, a real credit to
his race, an example to us all, an inspiration."
A late-night TV infomercial that
advertizes an exercise machine introduces the machine's designer as: "Here is Joe Blow, one of
the hottest men in Hollywood because he gives people what they
want — crisp, lean, healthy bodies."
A radio advertisement for vitamins says,
"Dr. Sawbones, a recognized authority on blah-blah..." Recognized by
whom? We got no actual evidence that Dr. Sawbones knows anything.
The true-believer Buchmanite Theophil
Spoerri gave us examples of both denigration and stroking ploys in
his biased biography of Frank Buchman: Dr. John Hibben, President of
Princeton University, was called "a well-meaning but
weak man",and Spoerri said, "fearing for the good
name of the university, [he] allowed himself to be stampeded", when
President Hibben banished Frank Buchman and his cult from Princeton.
On the other hand, Spoerri called the lady Anneliese von
Cramon-Prittwitz, who converted to Buchmanism, "a distinguished and
intelligent woman." (Dynamic Out Of Silence:
Frank Buchman's Relevance Today, Theophil Spoerri, pages 77
and 114, respectively.)
Bill Wilson gave us an example of this
technique in his pro-smoking
story on page 135 of the Big
Book. The chain-smoking A.A. member who threw a drunken
screaming temper tantrum to avoid quitting smoking was called "our friend" and "a most effective member of
Alcoholics Anonymous", while his clean and
sober wife who was pleading with him to quit killing himself with
cigarettes was called "one of those persons" —
you know, one of those intolerant puritanical killjoy nagging
wives who are always trying to keep us good old
boys from having fun.
- Offloading
Blame
The propagandist never accepts blame for
his mistakes or crimes. Somebody or something else is always to
blame. This is especially true of politicians and cult leaders who
have Narcissistic
Personality Disorder.
"Now
look at what you made me do."
"He started it."
"He did it first."
"It's all because of them."
The following tricks are various ways to
offload blame.
- Blame A
Scapegoat
This is a well-known trick: find a scapegoat to blame for all of
your group's problems.
Hitler was of course infamous for
blaming the Jews for all of Germany's economic problems after
World War One. He even claimed that a Jewish
conspiracy had caused World War One. And
Hitler insisted that the Germans would be very happy after the
Jews were eliminated.
- Blame The
Victim
If a crime is committed against someone, blame the victim instead
of the perpetrator. When something goes wrong, blame the victim
rather than the cause of the problem.
Trial lawyers love to use this one: "That bastard
deserved to get murdered. He had it coming. His killer did the
world a favor."
Or, "She deserved to get raped. She was asking for
it. Look at the sexy way she dressed. Everybody
knew that she was a loose woman."
That is part of the classic "Nuts and
Sluts" defense — claim that the woman who got raped is crazy and
a whore (so presumably, it doesn't matter that she claims that
she was raped).
"You
were just gullible and asking for it..."
After somebody gets robbed, tell him, "You shouldn't tempt
people."
Another example from politics: "John Kerry deserves
to get attacked with lies and smears committed by the 'Swift Boat Veterans for Truth'.
He brought it on himself by daring to mention his good war
record."
Sometimes this technique is used very
subtley. Get a load of what a merchant says when his company
goofs and ships the wrong part to a customer:
"RMA
#: 106260 - Wrong Item Received"
Note — wrong item received by customer, not wrong part shipped
by merchant. That stupid customer went and received the wrong
part.
Bill Wilson and A.A. are masters of
this stunt. Bill Wilson wrote these lies in the Big Book, and they are read out
loud at the start of every A.A. meeting:
RARELY
HAVE we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our
path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will
not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually
men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being
honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are
not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are
naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of
living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less
than average. There are those, too, who suffer from grave
emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if
they have the capacity to be honest.
...
At some of these [steps] we balked. We thought we could find
an easier, softer way. But we could not.
The A.A. Big Book, Alcoholics
Anonymous, William G. Wilson, Chapter 5, "How It Works",
page 58.
If the hocus-pocus voodoo-medicine
cult religion program of
Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't work, and doesn't really help
you to quit drinking, then it's all your own fault because you
are so bad, so dishonest and lazy, and selfish and manipulative,
always seeking an easier, softer way, and you were born that
way:
"The program doesn't fail people;
people fail the program."
- Blame
Somebody Else (Anybody Else)
This is the more general version of Blaming
A Scapegoat.
- You can blame other people for
your problems — "They
are all against me. They have been sabotaging me at every
turn."
- You can blame subordinates for
your poor job performance: "No one in the Intelligence Community urged
me to step back from my tough talk about a nuclear Iran
posing a danger of World War Three."
A popular variation on this technique
is, "Do Whatever You
Wish To Do, And Blame Somebody Else For It".
- "The reason why I must create and
enforce such draconian rules and regulations is because some
people cause problems."
- "We wouldn't need to bug your
telephone and spy on you if it wasn't for the terrorists..."
- "Now look at what you made me do."
- Blame A
Non-Factor
Blame something that isn't really the cause of the problem. (It's
a kind of diversion tactic, diverting attention from what is
really wrong.)
Homer Simpson, refusing a beer: "Can
I just have a glass of water?"
Moe the Bartender: "Water?! That stuff killed my Grandmother."
George W. Bush recently gave us a
good example of this technique. While touring in Biloxi,
Mississippi, in early May 2006, Bush declared that he would like
Congress to "give me a capacity to raise CAFE standards." (CAFE
is "corporate average fuel economy" — the miles-per-gallon
standards for new cars.) Well gee, it seems like Bush would have
raised the fuel efficiency standards long ago, if it weren't for
that nasty Republican-controlled Congress tying his hands and
keeping him from doing the right thing.
But Bush always
had the power to change the fuel standards. Ronald Reagan
didn't need the approval of Congress to change the standards
(downward). Certainly Congress was under the impression that the
President could require cars to get better mileage in the 1990s,
since it went out of its way, using annual spending legislation,
to prevent President Clinton from doing so. But now that the
public is noticing that Bush has done nothing to make the car
manufacturers build in better fuel efficiency, Bush claims that
he needs Congress to allow him to do his job.
Likewise, A.A. boosters try to
explain away the immense A.A. failure rate by saying, "Well, you can't
consider those people who drop out of A.A. without working the
Twelve Steps to be failures of Alcoholics Anonymous. They
don't count. You can't blame A.A. if they won't work the
Steps. And you can't blame A.A. for those drunks who didn't "work a strong program". They
don't count."
Actually, they do count. No matter
why people quit A.A. without quitting drinking, A.A. still
failed to get those alcoholics sober. They are still a part of
the A.A. failure rate. Either the A.A. program works to make
alcoholics quit drinking, or it doesn't.
Something that is so repulsive that
it causes 95% of the newcomers drop out within a year cannot
claim that it is a great success, or would be a great success,
if only people would follow orders.
And what about all of the people who
spent years in A.A., working the Steps and "working a strong
program", and who regularly relapsed anyway? The speaker doesn't
mention them. He tries to pretend that they don't exist — he
tries to claim that all of the A.A. failures and dropouts are
solely due to people not working the program correctly.
(And then they use a self-referential
definition of "correctly". Someone who is "working the program
correctly" is abstaining from drinking. So by definition, the
program "always works if people work it correctly".)
- Claim That
There Is A Panacea
Claim that there is, or that you have, a magical cure for all of your
listeners' problems.
Adolf Hitler told the German people that
he had a simple sure-fire cure for Germany's economic woes: National
Socialism, which really meant fascism, which included getting rid of
the Jews and Leftists, and having Germany run by "one strong
leader", and getting revenge on Britain and France.... We all know
how well that worked out.
Bill Wilson declared that the relabeled
Oxford Group cult religion (which he called "the Alcoholics
Anonymous program") was the answer to all of an alcoholic's
problems:
"Quite
as important was the discovery that spiritual principles would
solve all my problems."
The Big Book, 3rd edition, William G.
Wilson, Chapter 3, More
About Alcoholism, page 42.
- Claim That
There Is A Panmalefic
A panmalefic is
just the opposite of a panacea. A panmalefic is supposedly the one big
bad cause of all of your problems.
I just made that word up. A panmalefic is
the exact opposite of a panacea. Where a panacea is one simple cure
for all of your problems, a panmalefic is the one simple cause of
all of your problems.
The prefix "pan" means "over all" or
"entirely covers" or "everywhere", as in pan-American, pandemic, and
panacea.
The word "malefic" is in the dictionary, and means "causes evil, bad
things, ills, harm, or diseases".
Put them together, and you have a word that means the cause of all
of the world's problems.
Simple-minded people like simple answers,
so they love to hear that everything can be explained in terms of
panmalefics and panaceas.
Historically, plenty of rabble-rousers
have used the panmalefic idea to blame one scapegoat or another for
everything:
- "Jews
are the cause of all of our problems and are a great threat to
our children and our nation and we must find all of the hidden
Jews and destroy them before they do great harm to us." [Paraphrasing
the Nazis in 1932.]
- "Communists
are the cause of all of our problems and are a great threat to
our children and our nation and we must find all of the hidden
communists and destroy them before they do great harm to us." [Paraphrasing
Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-MN) in 1952.]
- "Alcoholics
are the cause of all of our problems and are a great threat to
our children and our nation and we must find all of the hidden
alcoholics and destroy them before they do great harm to us." [Paraphrasing The Secret History of Alcoholism: The
Story of Famous Alcoholics and Their Destructive Behavior,
by James Graham, and also Doug
Thorburn's books.]
- Flattery
Get someone to accept the bulls**t that you are shovelling by
flattering and praising them. This is an unabashed appeal to egotism.
For example, a television commercial
tells housewives that "You
are so wonderful — you juggle six jobs at once, take care of three
kids, and still manage to look good — so that's why you should buy
our junk. A sophisticated person like yourself would settle for
nothing less..."
Another commercial declares, "Your life has more than
one dimension. That's why you wouldn't consider playing [golf]
with anything but..."
And another commercial says, "There is no
mass-produced human being. We know that you are unique, with
special tastes."(That's why you should buy the same
mass-produced junk that we sell to everybody else.)
The advertising on a box of clove
cigarettes says, "Their
brown wrapping is uniquely created to suit your distinct
personality."
- My distinct personality? What is so
distinct about being stupid enough to get addicted to nicotine and
burn out your lungs?
- And that brown wrapping isn't unique.
They crank out those clove cigarettes by the millions, and every
last one of them has the same brown wrapping, no matter whether
they are being made for me or for the teenage kids down the
street.
Alcoholics Anonymous uses this stunt too.
If you believe A.A. propaganda, you will "Come
To Believe" that only unto you
has the Lord given the gift of being able to heal
other alcoholics — you are that special in the eyes of the Lord —
you have been chosen by God:
God
in His wisdom has selected a group of men to be the
purveyors of His goodness. In selecting them through
whom to bring about this phenomenon He went not to the
proud, the mighty, the famous or the brilliant. He went
to the humble, to the sick, to the unfortunate — he went
to the drunkard, the so-called weakling of the world.
Well might He have said to us:
Into
your weak and feeble hands I have entrusted a Power
beyond estimate. To you has been given that which
has been denied the most learned of your fellows.
Not to scientists or statesmen, not to wives or
mothers, not even to my priests and ministers have I
given this gift of healing other alcoholics, which I
entrust to you.
Judge
John T., speaking at the 4th Anniversary of the Chicago
Group October 5, 1943. |
Well, God might have said that to them,
but God didn't really say that to them, now did He? Nowhere in the
Bible, The Talmud, the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Sutras, the
Vedas, the Upanishads, the Dead Sea Scrolls, or any other major
religion's scriptures does it say that the alcoholics are God's
Chosen People, entrusted with "a Power beyond estimate" — "the only
cure" to alcoholism.
- Proof by
Anecdote
Proof by Anecdote is a
stunt where you make some grand generalization, and then you tell one
or more stories that appear to support your generalization, and then
you conclude that the point is proven. (You can ignore all of the
other stories that disprove your point.)
For example, President Ronald Reagan gave
a speech on TV where he told of Sandinista soldiers tying a priest
to a tree and beating him. Reagan concluded that this story was
proof enough of the evils of the Sandinistas to justify the USA
waging an undeclared, illegal, war against Nicaragua for several
years, the war that ended with the treasonous Iran-Contra Arms-for-Hostages and
the Oliver-North-Contra Cocaine-for-Guns fiascoes.
(President Reagan
didn't bother to give any TV speeches complaining about how many
Nicaraguan civilians were killed by the Contras, or how many
American inner-city black kids were killed by the Contras'
cocaine. Just a few anecdotal stories of Sandinista soldiers'
misbehavior was all of the evidence that Reagan needed or
wanted...)
This Proof-by-Anecdote technique
is heavily used in advertising:
- "Diets never worked for Susan, but
then she discovered the Shrivel-Up Program® and lost 50 pounds."
- "My wife and I needed a new
dishwasher. Thanks to you we received a $1900 Viking dishwasher
for free!"
- "I made $8000 in my first week of
trading."
- "He made more money on that trade than
he made in a week on his job. And what computer program did he use
to trade stocks? The XYZ program from the stock market genius Joe
Blow."
- A radio commercial that advertises a
service that will deal with the IRS for you says, "I owed the IRS
$125,000, and they settled for $22,000." But of course there is no
evidence that you will get that lucky.
The plural of "anecdote" is not
"evidence".
Lots of organizations like to use poster
children to "prove" their point. The homophobic fundamentalist
Christians show off one guy who says that he got "converted" from
homosexuality or bi-sexuality to straight heterosexuality, and then
they claim that their poster-child example proves that all gays are
merely "choosing a gay lifestyle", and that they can change if they
want to.
Likewise, the entire back two thirds of
the Alcoholics Anonymous Big
Book, with all of its autobiographical stories, is just one
long demonstration of the Proof
by Anecdote propaganda technique. Bill Wilson
just printed a collection of people's stories, all of which claimed
that A.A. had helped them in some great way, and then Bill concluded
that the stories proved all kinds of things like:
- that the A.A. program and the Twelve
Steps really work for quitting drinking,
- that the A.A. program is the only thing that
works.
- that prayer really works, and that God
could, and would, if they asked Him to, answer their prayers, and
remove all of their "defects of character", and make them quit
drinking.
- that people must completely surrender
and completely give
themselves to the "simple" A.A. program,
- that if you pray and meditate enough,
you can hear God or some other Higher Power talking to you in your
head,
- that you can get wonderful results,
and recover from alcoholism, by praying to just any old God or
"Higher Power", and your "Higher Power" can be anything you wish
it to be, including the A.A. group itself.
- that God is actually eager to start
doing favors for you and granting all of your wishes, just as soon
as you start doing Bill Wilson's Twelve Steps.
— None of which were actually proven, or
even demonstrated by a fair sampling of cases. It is obvious that
the stories are just another example of cherry-picking — Bill
printed only those stories that said what he wanted people to
believe, and rejected everything else. A.A. members who didn't get
sober did not get to put their stories in the Big
Book. (And "cherry-picking" is actually just another name for Observational
Selection.)
This is another example of Proof by Anecdote, used in a
slightly different way:
Step
Nine has reclaimed many broken friendships; it has brought peace
and happiness to the lives of those who suffered because of our
alcoholism. Its great rehabilitative power has also affected the
lives of thousands of alcoholics through the spiritual awakening
they have experienced. Because of this Step, these alcoholics have
recovered their self-respect, they have taken on courage and
confidence, and they have assumed responsibility. They sense God's
presence, and with His presence comes the realization that their
lives are again becoming manageable.
The
Little Red Book, Hazelden, page 89.
Gee, that sounds pretty fantastic. I
guess we should all start doing the Twelve Steps immediately, so
that we can get the Big
Experience too, right?
Well, it sounds great, but only until we
remember that A.A. claims to be keeping millions of alcoholics
sober. If only "thousands" out of millions get the wonderful
"spiritual awakening" and "sense God's presence", then the odds of
getting "The Big Spiritual
Experience" are really only one in a thousand.
Now that doesn't sound so awe-inspiring,
does it?
Note
just how carefully that deceptive, double-talking Hazelden
propaganda was constructed. If we read it critically, we will see
that maybe a
few thousand people — out of millions of claimed A.A. members —
have benefited in some way from the Twelve Steps that Bill Wilson
wrote. But, without hesitation or qualifications, Hazelden says
that the guilt-inducing Twelve Steps will give people:
- self-respect
- courage
- confidence
- responsibility
- awareness of the presence of God
- and manageable lives
without offering us any
actual evidence or proof of their unfounded grandiose claims that
the 12-Step program has "great rehabilitative power."
Which
brings up the next item: Double-talk.
- Double-talk
Confuse your listeners with contradictory, illogical, or
incomprehensible jabber:
- Unprovable
Statements
Just make up grandiose, completely unprovable statements that say
whatever you want people to believe:
- "You don't have to worry about
overpopulation. Overpopulation of the Earth is impossible, because
each person is a ray of light from God, and God will only send out
so many rays." (That came from some new-age nut or other.)
- "I lived on Betelguese in my last
incarnation. I came here to help mankind through the current
crisis." (Another phony guru.)
- "Body thetans are the spirits of
people from another planet who were murdered 60 million years ago
in a big purge of excess population. Today, they will cling to
your body, and try to get into your body, and cause you all kinds
of troubles." (But, for only
$350,000, we can fix your Interplanetary
Cooties problem for you. —
Scientology)
- "We were friends in a previous
lifetime."
- "God appeared to me in a vision and
told me that he had a special message that I was to carry to the
world." (Many goofy cult religions)
- "The Purpose of Life is
Self-Realization." (ISKCON, the "Hari Krishnas")
- "The purpose of life is to transform
energy from one plane to another."
- "God guided
Bill Wilson to write the Twelve Steps." (A.A.,
of course.)
- "Doing these Twelve Steps will please
God."
- "Doing these Twelve Steps causes an
increase in spirituality."
- "God wants you to do this stuff."
- "The Twelve Steps work in a magical
mystical way that cannot
be scientifically tested or logically
explained."
- Undisprovable
Statements
This is simply the converse of unprovable
statements. This technique uses statements that cannot be proven
false.
Peter Howard,
the fascist disciple who took over the leadership
of Moral Re-Armament after Frank Buchman died, gave us many examples
of undisprovable statements
in his little book of praise for the cult leader Frank Buchman:
Frank
Buchman liked to recall the story of the time he introduced Joe to
a French Cardinal at tea. ...
It was the same Cardinal who said, "MRA is a crack of the
whip for Christians who have forgotten their mission, and offers a
positive alternative to sincere Marxists."
Frank
Buchman's Secret, Peter Howard, pages 89-90.
Which French Cardinal? When, where? Did
he really say that? We only have Frank Buchman's word for it, saying
that some unnamed Cardinal praised his organization.
Senior
military men in America have realized the necessity that a nation
have an ideology to match the demands of the twentieth century.
One of them is an Admiral. He came many times to meet Frank
Buchman and to be trained in Moral Re-Armament. ...
Frank
Buchman's Secret, Peter Howard, page 81.
Who? Which "senior military men"? Which
Admiral? When? Where?
An
American General told Frank Buchman two years ago, "Our country is
like a dead knight in armor. We have the weapons, but need the
spirit and will to prevail."
Frank
Buchman's Secret, Peter Howard, pub. 1961, page 82.
Which general said that? "Two years ago"
would have made the year 1959, at the height of the Cold War. The
U.S.A. was definitely not like a "dead knight without a will" then.
(More like a paranoid psychotic, busy building enough H-bombs to
blow up the entire world 19 times over.)
A
British Colonel once came to see him. ...
A few days later the Colonel came back. He was smiling. He said,
"It's a miracle. ...
Frank
Buchman's Secret, Peter Howard, pages 99-100.
Once again, which Colonel? When, where?
At
a time when Africa is calling on the white man to leave, leaders
of seventeen countries of Africa urged Frank Buchman to come, and
bring with him the men and women of Moral Re-Armament.
An African leader summed up Buchman's work in these words,
"Moral Re-Armament is doing for Africa what Abraham Lincoln did
for America. It is binding up the nations' wounds and setting the
people free."
Frank
Buchman's Secret, Peter Howard, page 68.
So, the Hitler-loving Dr.
Frank N. D. Buchman was the "Abraham Lincoln of Africa", was he?
Says who?
And once again, which leaders? And how
did the author, Peter Howard, define "an African leader"? Those
"leaders of 17 nations" who supposedly invited Frank Buchman to come
to Africa could have been anything from popularly-elected Presidents
to murdering territorial warlords to the chiefs of hungry tribes of
cannibals. Just try to prove that 17 of them didn'tinvite
the stout, well-fed Frank Buchman to dinner...
You know, Peter Howard's book reads a lot
like Hollywood gossip sheets or supermarket tabloids, which are
always loaded with unverifiable sources like:
- "Close friends say...",
- "Inside sources say...",
- "Knowledgeable persons said...",
- "An unnamed official said...",
- "It is rumored that...".
- "Some people believe that...".
- "Confidential informants say...".
And not to be left out, Bill Wilson used
the same stunt in the Big
Book:
Many
doctors and psychiatrists agree with our conclusions. One of these
men, staff member of a world-renowned hospital, recently made this
statement to some of us: "What you say about the general
hopelessness of the average alcoholic's plight is, in my opinion,
correct."
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G.
Wilson, More About
Alcoholism, page 43.
What unnamed doctors and psychiatrists
agreed with Bill Wilson? How many doctors really agreed with Bill
Wilson? It wasn't any sizeable percentage of the American Medical
Association — what they said about the Big
Book and Bill Wilson's religious cure for
alcoholism was: "the book has
no scientific merit or interest."
- The Language
Trap
Use a word in different ways, but logically treat it as the same
concept:
"You
say you're looking for truth. Well, we refer to our religion as
'The Truth'. Why do you think we do that?"
The Language Trap is not just a
rhetorical device, but a major problem in communication. It is a
"trap" because people on both sides of an argument can inadvertently
stumble into it if they are not aware that the same word can be used
with different senses and connotations.7
| When
a believer and a rational person talk about the truth,
they are using the same word but they are talking about
very different things. When a rational person says, "Two
plus two equals four. That is the truth.", he means that
we can clearly demonstrate the truth of that statement by
adding things together. We can group objects together and
see with our own eyes the truth of two plus two adding up
to four. When a believer says that his beliefs are the
truth — for example, insisting that everything in the
Bible is The Truth, and the unquestionable Word Of God —
he means something else. He means that he won't tolerate
anyone refuting the validity of his statements or
questioning the truth of those stories. He fervently
believes that if he fervently believes that some things
are true, that they will become true. (And if you don't
believe, then you break the spell and ruin the magic.)
Alas, all of those beliefs are false. Simply believing
that something is true will not make it true. Two plus two
will not add up to three or five if you believe it
strongly enough. |
| One
of the more humorous examples of the Language Trap was a
classic episode of the TV show called The
Twilight Zone. A race of space-traveling aliens came
to Earth, and quickly solved all of Earth's problems.
There was no more war, or disease, or famine. It was like
"the Millenium".
Some people were very
suspicious of the aliens and asked what their ulterior
motive was. The aliens answered that their only desire
was "to serve man". Aliens even took lie detector tests,
which showed that they were telling the truth. People
began leaving Earth and traveling to the aliens'
homeworld in great numbers, to enjoy the marvels of a
very advanced civilization.
Meanwhile, a crew of
hard-working translators were striving to translate the
alien's "holy book", which was simply titled "To Serve
Man". At the end of the program, the Earthlings
discovered that the book was a cookbook. The aliens
wanted to "serve man" alright: baked, broiled, or fried.
|
Churches and religions stumble into this
trap all of the time. They all talk about having "The Truth", and
the indisputable "Word of God", but their truths differ from church
to church. Nevertheless, the true believers insist that they have
The Truth and everybody else is wrong.
A television evangelist constantly
declares that you must "plant a seed" by giving him money. He refers
to the sentence in the Bible that says, "As you sow, so shall you
also reap." The line in the Bible says simply that what you put out
is what you get back. If you sow seeds of anger and hatred, that is
what you will get back. If you treat other people in an unfriendly
manner, that is how they will treat you. But the TV evangelist
twisted the meaning of the words and declared that you were
"planting a seed with the Lord" by giving him money, and he goes on
and on about "What are you going to harvest? If you have planted
nothing, then you will harvest nothing." That is really twisting the
meaning of that line by changing the meanings of the words "sow" and
"reap".
Also, the TV evangelist merely assumes
that the viewers will get something back if they "plant a seed" by
giving him money. Then he assumes that any good things that happen
later in the donors' lives were caused by the "seeds" that they
planted. (Assuming a
cause-and-effect relationship where none exists.) Then the
preacher can use
testimonials, reading letters that say things like, "Mrs. Mary
B. had cancer, but she planted a seed with the Lord (by giving me
lots of money), so the Lord removed her cancer, and now she is
healthy and happy and cancer-free. Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!"
In Alcoholics Anonymous, the word
"alcoholic" has four distinctly different definitions that are used
interchangeably, all too loosely. (Bill Wilson started doing that in
the "Big Book", and his followers
have been doing it ever since.)
- An alcoholic is someone who habitually
drinks far too much alcohol.
- An alcoholic is someone who is
hyper-sensitive to alcohol — something like allergic to it —
perhaps because he inherited a gene — and he is someone who will
become readdicted to alcohol and go on a binge and drink for years
if he drinks even just one beer.
- An alcoholic is somebody who cannot
quit drinking — he is "powerless" over alcohol.
- An alcoholic is an immoral
person who is resentful, angry, manipulative, self-seeking,
dishonest, selfish, and a prime example of instincts run wild,
self-will run riot, and the Seven Deadly Sins... and on and
on and on....
Those are four very different definitions
of "an alcoholic", and they are not the same thing at all. And they
are not equally applicable to all people who have a drinking
problem.
Personally,
- By the first definition, I stopped
being an alcoholic thirteen years ago when I quit drinking
alcohol.
- By the second definition, I will
always be an alcoholic — I am and always will be hypersensitive to
alcohol, and easily readdicted if I drink any more alcohol.
- By the third definition, I wasn't an
alcoholic, because I could quit drinking, and I did. I even quit
drinking without any help from A.A., because I quit drinking two
weeks before I was ever sent to an
A.A. meeting.
- By the fourth definition, I was never
an alcoholic. I was, in fact, a nice, happy, drunk, and people
liked having me at their parties because I was fun to have around
when I got high. (But, as one friend pointed out, even nice drunks
die of cirrhosis of the liver.)
- Vague,
Undefined, Grandiose Language
Make up all kinds of impressive-sounding grandiose phrases and
expressions that are vague and not very precisely defined, so that no
one can quite accuse you of being wrong. They can't even really argue
with you because everything is so nebulous and intangible. It's like
trying to bite fog.
Politicians are past masters of this art:
- The Great Society (Johnson: the
country nearly explodes in civil war.)
- Law and Order (Nixon: the
most criminal administration in history: the President and
Vice-President resign to avoid impeachment, and half of the
administration goes to prison.)
- Peace with Honor (Nixon: when
defeat is inevitable, be someplace else.)
- A Kinder, Gentler Nation (Bush
the first: start another war, while running up
staggering deficits.)
- Compassionate Conservatism (Bush
the second: start another war, spend the Social
Security and Medicare money on weapons systems, eliminate civil
rights, rape the environment, and give the rich people a big tax
cut, all while running up staggering deficits.)
- States' Rights ("The
state has rights only if I think the state is right.")
States can do whatever they want to do, if and only if the White
House, the Supreme Court, and Congress happen to like it. Think:
racism and segregation, Medical Marijuana, "Right to Choose" vs.
"Right to Life", the year 2000 Florida Presidential elections,
Physician Assisted Suicide, and Gay Marriage.)
- Selfless Patriotism (serving your
political party)
- Public Service (30 years of taking
bribes)
- Judicial Restraint (the Republicans on
the Supreme Court rig the Y2K election.)
- "...marching to the field of glory" —
what politicians say to young men to drum up support for another
war.
A current commercial for a politician
says, "He'll
move us forwards."
Huh? He'll move us
where?
That's actually so vague that it is meaningless. You have no
idea what that scoundrel will do if he gets elected.
Bill Wilson's delusional
disorder gave us a bunch of classic examples of
vague, grandiose, bombastic raving:
- "We
have come to believe He would like us to keep our heads in the
clouds with Him, but that our feet ought to be firmly planted on
earth. That is where our fellow travelers are, and that is where
our work must be done."
(The Big Book, 3rd edition, Chapter
9, page 130.)
- "We
feel we are on the Broad Highway, walking hand in hand with the
Spirit of the Universe."
(The Big Book, 3rd edition, Chapter
6, page 75.)
- "...
you can join us on the Broad Highway."
(The Big Book, 3rd edition, Chapter
4, We Agnostics,
page 55.)
- "This
is the Great Fact for us."
(The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Chapter
11, A Vision For You,
page 164.)
- "Instead
of regarding ourselves as intelligent agents, spearheads of
God's ever advancing Creation, we agnostics and atheists chose
to believe that our human intelligence was the last word..."
(The Big Book, 3rd edition, Chapter
4, We Agnostics,
page 49.)
(So
just what is "God's ever advancing Creation"? It sounds like "The Blob that Ate Hollywood".
And where is it advancing to? )
- "He
stood in the Presence of Infinite Power and Love."
(The Big Book, Bill Wilson, 3rd
edition, Chapter 4, We
Agnostics, page 56.)
(How
did Bill Wilson know that it was 'infinite'? Did Bill measure
it?)
- "We
are not cured of alcoholism. What we have is a daily reprieve
contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Every
day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into
all of our daily activities."
(The Big Book, 3rd edition, page 85.)
(Just
where did that "vision" come from? Prayer, meditation, belladonna, delirium
tremens, LSD,
or delusions
of grandeur?)
So
just what does all of that grandiose nonsense have to do with not
drinking any more alcohol?
And Bill wasn't alone. We get this kind
of double-talk from other A.A. boosters:
- As
the human personality develops from a preoccupation with the
survival, passion, and power needs of its "lower self," toward
the understanding, compassion, and unity strivings of its higher
self, it also grows spiritually.
(Spirituality:
The key to recovery from alcoholism, Warfield, Robert D.
and Goldstein, Marc B., Counseling
& Values, April 1996, Vol. 40, Issue 3, page 196.)
Say what?
- Anyone
who comes to ten meetings has begun an irreversible process of
recovery. Everything in that person's life becomes part of the
recovery process, regardless of how chaotic it looks or feels.
(An ACOA
recruiting pamphlet)
Anyone?
Irreversible process? Everything?
- You
can go anywhere you want and take risks, because with sobriety
and the Twelve Steps of AA you can always correct what has gone
wrong and make amends. Your compass will always point you back,
even if it feels like you're spinning in circles and have lost
your direction.
(The
Way Home, Hazelden,
page 245.)
Which means just
what?
- That the magic of Bill Wilson's Buchmanite
Twelve Steps will always protect
you? You can go anywhere and
take risks?
- That you can always undo
mistakes? "You can
always correct what has gone wrong"? (I wish...)
- That your moral compass will always point in
the right direction?
Note the repeated use of the word "always". That reveals cultish
irrational absolute black-and-white thinking. The authors
won't say something moderate like that the 12 Steps will often
help you, or that they help most of the time, because that would
be admitting that the Steps fail some of the time. No, the
Hazelden religious fanatics insist that the 12 Steps will always work, anywhere. (That is, of course,
absurd. Not even penicillin works all of the time, anywhere.
And the real A.A. failure rate is staggeringly high.)
- Another A.A. true believer exhorts
people to read the A.A. Big
Book with this grandiose declaration: "Want a new life? Read
it! Read the black bits, don't put anything into the white bits
and find a freedom you never imagined you could have."
- Loaded
Language, Euphemisms, and Redefined Words
This item is related to the previous two, but they aren't the same
thing. Loaded language is more generic because any words can be
redefined for any reason, to support any agenda, and to mask any
activity.
Carl Sagan called such terminology
"weasel words."
"You
can always tell when someone isn't telling the truth,
because he doesn't speak clearly. Euphemism is a cover for
either ignorance or dishonesty. In other words, if you
can't state it in a clear simple declarative sentence,
then either you don't know what you are talking about, or
you are trying to prevent me from understanding what you
are talking about, and both bug me."
Tucker
Carlson, in an advertisement for his TV program "Unfiltered" on
Public Television, August 6 to 27, 2004. |
- Adolf Hitler and the Nazis routinely
invented euphemistic phrases to disguise what they were doing,
like the "Special Handling" that they gave the Jews, sending them
to the "Final Solution." "Guest workers" were really foreigners
who had been kidnapped at gunpoint and forced into slave labor
brigades. Zyklon B, the poison gas used to kill millions of Jews,
was called "material for the resettlement of Jews".
Sometimes, the euphemisms became
comical. By the end of World War Two, the Germans had 30
euphemisms for "retreat",
including "planned withdrawal, successful disengagement, elastic
defense, mobile defense, retrocessive maneuver, withdrawing
maneuver, unencircling maneuver, according to plan, shortening
of the front, systematic evacuation, without enemy pressure,
undisturbed by the enemy, and withdrawal to the enemy's
surprise."
- Likewise, Mao Tse Tung sent his
enemies to slave labor on remote farms for "re-education" so that
they would learn to "blossom properly." And all of the Commumists
were notorious for "liberating" people, like the Tibetans,
Latvians, Lithuanians, and Estonians, who did not wish to be
"liberated" by the Chinese People's Army or the Soviet Army. And
now, of course, George W. Bush is "liberating" Iraq in the same
manner.
- Throughout the entire second half of
the twentieth century, various United States Presidents used the
term "police action", rather than "war", to get around limitations
on Presidential powers, and to avoid having to tell the public
that we actually were in yet another war.
- In the Oxford Groups and Moral
Re-Armament cults, Frank Buchman's "inspired democracy" really
meant slavery:
An
increasing number of citizens in democratic states are now
unwilling to acknowledge in speech and action those inner
authorities on which the life of democracy depends. Each man
has his own plan. It's so wonderful each to have his own plan.
It's such freedom, such liberty! Everyone does as he pleases.
But not in the Oxford Group. There you have true democracy.
You don't do as you please, you do as God guides. You do God's
plan.
Frank Buchman,
speaking at Visby, Sweden in 1938, quoted in Experiment
With God; Frank Buchman Reconsidered, Gösta Ekman, pages
44-45.
Ah, but who gets to say just what
God's plan is? The Oxford Group sure didn't hold elections.
The answer is,
Frank Buchman declared that he heard The Voice of God better
than other men, so everybody should just obey his orders
without question. That was "inspired democracy".
- Likewise, Frank Buchman's convert
Herbert Grevenius praised Frank Buchman with this bit of Orwellian
double-think:
His
enormously active life is built on one thing only — guidance.
He openly admits it. He is a sail always waiting to be filled
by the wind, a man with a great and warm and humble heart, a
democrat who wants to set men free under God's dictatorship.
Experiment
With God; Frank Buchman Reconsidered, Gösta Ekman, page
21.
- The most outrageous one I've heard
recently is "aggressive
accounting practices". That's what Enron used
to do things like turn $3 billion of very real losses into $1
billion of phony paper profits, which made the stock price rise,
which was very convenient for the executives who were happily
dumping their worthless shares of Enron stock on an unsuspecting
public in the world's biggest Pump
and Dump stock swindle... "Aggressive accounting practices" indeed.
- Another good one is: George W. Bush's
scare stories about how we were all going to be killed by Saddam's
Weapons of Mass Destruction which he built with all of that
yellow-cake uranium that he was supposedly buying from Niger — "The
next warning may come in the form of a mushroom cloud" —
were not really exaggerations, fear-mongering, deceptions, and
bare-faced lies; they were merely "less-than-fully-verified" facts; (A conservative talking
head, defending Bush on National Public Radio, Jan. 20, 2004.)
- Another recent goody from the Bush
administration: The poor people are not suffering from hunger any
more; they just have "nutritional insecurity".
Alcoholics Anonymous makes extensive use
of loaded language and redefined words:
- In Alcoholics Anonymous terminology,
the word "sobriety" doesn't mean "not drinking" or "an
unintoxicated state"; it has this bombastic redefinition: "A special state of
Grace gained by working the Steps and maintaining absolute
abstinence. It is characterized by feelings of Serenity and
Gratitude. It is a state of living according to God's will, not
one's own. It is sanity."
- Likewise, "Sanity is living according to God's Will, rather
than one's own."
- "Recovery" does not mean rebuilding
your health, mind, body, and life while not drinking; it means
going to A.A. meetings, doing The Twelve Steps, and abstaining
from alcohol. According to A.A. dogma, someone can't be recovering
from alcohol if he isn't going to A.A. meetings and doing The
Twelve Steps; he's "only abstaining".
- By the same broken logic, he's "only
dry" but not "sober". According to A.A., you can't enjoy a period
of "sobriety" without going to A.A. meetings. Thus, a cultish A.A.
member can ask someone, "Do you really have a year of sobriety, or are
you only abstaining from drinking?"
- Likewise, a "dry drunk"
is someone who does not drink alcohol, but who refuses to join
A.A. and do the Twelve Steps. He is supposedly still acting like a
drunk man, exhibiting all of the objectionable behavior of a
drunkard, even though he does not drink alcohol, simply because he
won't conform to the A.A. program.
- "Emotional security" means "getting
our own way." (12X12,
page 115.)
- "Humility" is "a desire to seek and do
God's will." (12X12,
page 72.)
See the Cult Test item Cult-Speak for
many more examples.
A variation on euphemisms is the use of
lots of acronyms, which can reduce speech to near total
incomprehensibility. This is Scientology jargon:
...the
New OT VIII C/S was RPFed (Laura Wolfe, wife of Milton Wolfe who
was jailed on behalf of the GO and later ended up as CO FSSO
(FSSO: Flag Ship Service Org, The service org on board the
Freewinds.) The replacement C/S, Sue Walker, wife of Jeff Walker,
one of the original Class XII who was Snr C/S Int at the time...
http://www.whyaretheydead.net/krasel/aff_96.html
What that means is, somebody with the
highest rank, OT VIII — Operating Thetan Level 8 — also a C/S — Case
Supervisor — was punished — RPFed — Rehabilitation Project Force —
and I'm not sure what a GO or CO are...
- Deception by
Renaming
If something sounds really bad, or is
really bad, just give it a new name.
"An important art of
politicians is to find new names for institutions
which under old names have become odious to the
public."
— Talleyrand. |
In March of 2013, the small island nation
of Cyprus went into a financial crisis. The banks of Cyprus had been
acting as low-tax bankers for organized crime in Russia and
Mideastern drug traffickers. Hence they had a lot of cash to invest.
The Cypriot banks made the giant mistake of investing heavily in
high-yield Greek bonds, which suddenly became nearly worthless when
the Greek economy crashed. So the banks were bankrupt and deeply in
debt.
The EU and Cypriot leaders proposed
seizing roughly 8 or 10% of everybody's money in the Cypriot banks
to repay the mobsters. The people of Cyprus rebelled, and the
Cypriot parliament voted the idea down.
So, on March 25th, the powers that were
came up with a new answer, which involved a "haircut" on bank
accounts that held more than 100,000 Euros that would confiscate up
to 40% of the money in those accounts. The New York Times reported
that, "the deal would scrap the highly controversial idea of a tax
on bank deposits, although it would still require forced losses for
depositors and bondholders." Say, what? In fact, there is no
material difference between the so-called "tax" and the "forced
losses." That was just semantics.
No matter what you call it, the banks
were still violating a sacred trust and stealing depositors' money
with the excuse of "We need your money, so we are taking it," (and
that caused a panic where people quickly withdrew their money from
banks all over Europe). Never before had the "masters of finance" in
Europe declared that they could just take money from people because
they wanted it.
- Fluffy
Phrases
Fluffy phrases are like euphemisms, but have a flavor of their own,
sort of like Pollyanna's babble.
For example, the Allstate insurance
company is advertising a "good claim experience", which, when you
think about it, is kind of ridiculous. You just suffered a big loss,
and it's a happy experience?
"Yes, it was a terrible car accident.
My daughter went to the hospital with a smashed face, and she
will never look the same again, but I had a happy claim
experience with Allstate."
- It's Free!
The human mind is really funny when it comes to the word "free".
People often cannot resist the temptation of something that is free.
- Salesmen routinely fool people into
buying things that they don't need because they will get a "free
gift" with it.
- People will pay more for a car that
includes "free" accessories.
- An alcoholic who is abstaining from
drinking may accept the offer of a free drink when he would not
buy a drink for himself. "It's
free. How can you resist? Just this one. This one's for free."
- Use
Self-Referential Definitions — Define Something In Terms Of Itself
These are also called circular
definitions.
Alcoholics Anonymous uses a
self-referential definition of "working the program correctly", and "Working A Strong Program".
- Someone who is "working the program
correctly" abstains from drinking alcohol, as well as gets a
sponsor, reads the Big
Book, does the Twelve Steps, and attends a lot of A.A.
meetings.
- Then the A.A. promoters claim that the
A.A. program "always
works if people work it correctly" .
- Works to do what? Well, it supposedly
works to make people quit drinking. But quitting drinking was the
first requirement for starting to "work the program correctly".
- Pigeon-holing
and Labeling
This error in thought comes from stuffing people and things into
simplistic categories — "pigeon-holes" — and assigning inaccurate
names to them. This can be done without malice, and yet, it still
results in erroneous thoughts and wrong conclusions.
Many simple-minded people want to stuff
everything that they don't understand into some simple pigeon-hole,
and then they believe that they know what it is.
People have a natural tendency to want to
name things. Once they learn the name of something, they assume that
they know what it is. Wrong. They simply have a word, a label. They
still do not know what it is. And they don't know whether the name
is an accurate description of the thing.
Alcoholics Anonymous does an outrageous
job of pigeon-holing and labeling people:
- You are an alcoholic.
- You are an addict.
- You are a dry drunk.
- You are a bleeding deacon.
- You are just a bitter, angry old
ingrate.
- You are unspiritual.
- You are spiritual.
- You are Working
A Strong Program.
- You are a respected oldtimer.
- You are a trusted servant.
- You are in constant conscious contact
with God.
- You are a Friend of Bill.
- You are not a Friend of Bill.
- You are sitting on the pity pot.
- You are in denial.
- You are a baby.
- You are a normie.
- You are selfish.
- You are just a mess of unconfessed
sins and wrongs and defects
of character and moral
shortcomings.
- You are angry, and you have a
resentment.
- Deception Via
Mislabeling or Misnaming Things
A commercial for a get-rich-quick scheme
says that the cost of the scheme is inconsequential because: "You can take it out of
your cash flow."
Wrong. You do not deduct expenses from "cash flow". Expenses come
straight out of your profits,
and if you don't have any profits, then you are suffering a
financial loss, no matter how large your cash flow is, and the cost
of that get-rich-quick scheme will be part of your loss. In fact, if
you don't have profits, then "cash flow" becomes your enemy — it
turns into "burn rate" — the rate at which you are burning up your
cash reserves and heading for bankruptcy.
A TV evangelist's commercial declares
that you can get his "free" book or DVD "For a gift of $40." If you
have to pay $40, then that is a sale of merchandise, not an exchange
of gifts.
Similarly, George W. Bush calls his
attack on Iraq "a war for freedom". Every time Rumsfeld attacks
another city like Fallujah or Najaf or Kut or Sadr City and kills
several hundred more people, including women and children, Bush says
that it's a victory for "freedom".
Bush also calls the rebels against
American hegemony "the enemies of freedom". No, they really want to
be free — especially free from our army in their country.
Bush says that they hate us because of
our "freedom". No, they hate us because our military forces are
destroying their country and killing their children with our "Shock
and Awe" bombing.
- Misuse Words
Blithely give words a completely different meaning than their usual or
commonly-accepted ones.
For example, Bill Wilson wrote this
deceptive propaganda while trying to convert people to his religious
beliefs (and while pretending to
be a converted agnostic):
Logic
is great stuff. We liked it. We still like it. It is not by chance
we were given the power to reason, to examine the evidence of our
senses, and to draw conclusions. That is one of man's magnificent
attributes. We agnostically inclined would not feel satisfied with
a proposal which does not lend itself to reasonable approach and
interpretation. Hence we are at pains to tell why we think our
present faith is reasonable, why we think it more sane and logical
to believe, why we say our former thinking was soft and mushy when
we threw up our hands in doubt and said, "We don't know."
The Big Book, 3rd & 4th Editions,
William G. Wilson, Page 53.
There, Bill Wilson misused the word
"logical". There is nothing "logical" about blind faith in a cult
religion. Logic is a thought process where one examines facts and
then draws conclusions from them, using inductive or deductive
reasoning. It is not "more sane and logical" to stop thinking
critically, and just blindly believe in Bill Wilson's religion.
Bill was also using the hypnotic
bait-and-switch trick. He started the paragraph by praising
logic and saying that he liked it. But then he switched sides and
attacked logic, and praised blind faith in
his beliefs as being more "logical" than logic
itself.
And it's almost funny how Bill admitted
that he was "at
pains to tell why we think our present faith is reasonable, why we
think it more sane and logical to believe..." The
reason that it is so hard to defend that point of view is because it
is completely irrational and illogical. It is based on no facts at
all. It is just so much wishful thinking.
Likewise, George W. Bush misuses words
like "freedom" and "civil liberties" while he claims that he has the
right to spy on people without a judge signing off on the
surveillance. Bush says that he is careful of people's "civil
liberties" while he spies on American citizens without a court
warrant.
Wrong.
The Constitutional protection of the
American people from the searches of an intrusive dishonest
politician is not "freedom" or "liberty"; it is a Constitutional
protection. "Civil liberties" are things like the rights of the
citizens to gather together and speak in protest against Bush's
actions — something that George W. Bush does not allow anywhere
around him. The protesters are confined to "free speech zones" that
are far away from Bush.
(By the way, the whole of the United
States of America is a Free Speech Zone. George W. Bush should learn
that while he is pretending to protect and uphold the Constitution
of the United States.)
- Moving The
Goalposts
This trick is like:
- Demand that your opponent prove Fact
A.
- When he does, answer, "But you didn't
prove Fact B."
- When he does that, answer ""But you
didn't prove Fact C."
- etc...
This trick is also known as "changing the
parameters of the question afterwards", so as to invalidate a true
answer. And it's also called "moving the bar".
For example, "BLAH-BLAH is a
harm-reduction model rather than an abstinence model. From my
observations of those around me, and my own experience, I have the
opinion that the harm reduction model doesn't work for most
people."
Answer: "Every addict who injects heroin with a clean
syringe has zero chance of contracting HIV or Hep C, so how can
that be 'not working
for most people'?"
The mental diversion was, of course, to
assert that harm reduction programs fail because they do not enforce
absolute abstinence from drugs or alcohol. But that was never the
goal of harm-reduction programs.
Dr. and Prof.
George E. Vaillant used the same technique in his
analysis of Alcoholics-Anonymous-based treatment in The Natural History of Alcoholism Revisited. Alcoholics
Anonymous insists that members must totally abstain
from drinking alcohol, and if a member drinks even one single drink,
then he looses all of his sober time and immediately starts over at
zero. But when Dr. Vaillant tested Alcoholics Anonymous, he found
that the results
were "appalling", so Dr. Vaillant changed his definition of
"sobriety" to "sober for 51 weeks out of the year", so that some
people could be scored as "in stable remission for 3 years". That's
moving the goalposts to make the results look better.
Alcoholics Anonymous uses the Moving the Goalposts trick
very often. The whole A.A. program is a Move-the-Goalposts routine:
- In the beginning, the advertised goal
of the A.A. program is to quit drinking and save your life.
- But if someone quits drinking without
embracing Bill Wilson's version of Dr. Frank Buchman's cult
religion, then the A.A. true believers complain that the
newly-sober alcoholic has not "found God", and he isn't "working a
strong program".
- Then they will complain that the
beginner has not "Worked The Steps" properly, and he hasn't listed
and confessed all of his sins in Steps 4 and 5, "holding nothing
back."
- And he has not "surrendered to God".
- And he has not rid himself of all
"resentments" and anger.
- And he isn't correctly hearing God in
Step 11.
That is a lot more to do than just quit
drinking.
- Set Low
Expections
Prepare the audience for poor results by setting expectations very
low, so that whatever happens, it seems better than they expected.
Corporate executives use this stunt on
Wall Street financial analysts all of the time. They cry to the
analysts that business conditions are really tough right now, the
economy is bad this quarter, and the results won't be very good, so
that the analysts predict a low profit-per-share for the current
quarter. Then, when the company produces results that are better
than expected, the stock price soars.
Alcoholics Anonymous uses the same stunt
to explain away the bad behavior of A.A. members. An often-repeated
slogan is "We are not saints." Thus, anything from dealing drugs to
other A.A. members, to helping oneself to the collection basket, to
sexually exploiting the attractive young women who come to A.A.
seeking help with a drug or alcohol problem is okay, and easily
explained, because "We are not saints."
One A.A.
apologist actually argued that it was wrong to
demand moral behavior from rapist A.A. members — to demand that the
sexual predators in A.A. stop raping the young female newcomers —
because that would be setting expectations too high:
The problem with what you are doing
is that A.A. is a place for sick people to get well. For
alcoholics to come recover. It is not a place for nice kind folk
to become saints.
If you start making behavior rules,
which is in essence exactly what you are trying to do, where
does it end? Do you really think people are trying to condone
illicit behavior?
No, that is not what people are
saying. What they are saying is that "no matter how far down the
scale" you have gone, you are welcome in A.A. If you don't
change, well, you won't stick around. You are welcome to come,
but why would you? A.A. is for the sick trying to get well, and
if you aren't interested in getting well, you won't be around
long. That is why the traditions state 'there is no A.A.
police'. Get it? That is why A.A. members — and I live in PA —
have a hard time listening to you.
If
you start trying to make a list of unacceptable behavior, you
are essentially making a list of rules for membership, of which
there aren't any and hopefully never will be. I fail to see how
you can not comprehend this. Our fellowship can not deny even
the most unsavory of individuals. Even in the midst of their
lowest points, they are welcome.
Posted
by: "inventory" — September 13, 2007 07:12 AM, to a Washington Post readers'
comments section, in response to a story about the sexual
exploitation going on in the Washington DC "Midtown Group of
A.A.".
The
writer argues that "If
you don't change, you won't be around long." That
isn't true at all. The thieves and rapists in the Midtown
Group have been around for more than 20 years,
and they show no signs of going away. Why would they quit A.A.
when they get money, power, and sex from running a cult?
This
A.A. apologist is actually trying to argue that there are no rules
in Alcoholics Anonymous, and that it is against "The Traditions"
to demand that people behave in a moral manner. Well, the A.A.
"Third Tradition" says,
The
only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop
drinking.
That
is the only requirement for A.A. membership, not the only law. The
"A.A. 12 Traditions" do
not say that the only RULE that A.A. members
must obey in life is "a desire to quit drinking". There are still
other rules that are expected of all people: don't rape, don't
rob, don't murder... A.A. does not get to suspend those rules
because "We are not saints".
- The Perfect
Solution Fallacy, also known as The Nirvana Fallacy
This is somewhat the opposite of Setting Low Expectations — this
fallacy demands unrealistically good results, or else it isn't worth
doing.
A sex addict might say, "So you need to
be totally clean... But you just looked a little bit. Oh, OK, you're
not clean anymore. You might as well get on a sex binge now!!"
For an alcoholic could it be something
like: "So you need to be totally sober... But you just thought about
drinking... or you accidentally drank a little bit of wine that was
offered to you. Oh, OK, you're not clean anymore. You might as well
get totally drunk now!"
(Thanks, Mario.)
- Sliding
Adjectives
Use a sequence of descriptors, usually adjectives, where the value,
quality, and characteristics of what is being described slip and slide
from one thing to another, often to the exact opposite.
For example:
- genuine pictures of a fake artifact
- genuine simulated leather
- high-quality plastic
- honest politicians
- really solid guesswork
- anecdotal medical
study
- Compassionate Conservatism
- "executive vinyl" (That is actually real terminology. I found that label
inside of a cheap appointment book with a plastic simulated
leather cover.)
- Vague
Adjectives
Use adjectives that sound good but don't really tell us what they
mean. For example, advertisements for a store offered:
- "the top digital cameras"
- "top plasma and LCD TVs"
- "popular furniture"
In the first two examples, does the word
"top" mean that the equipment is high-quality, or that they are
best-sellers? Best-sellers are usually inexpensive and hence low
quality.
The third example more clearly describes
best-sellers, but that still does not show that the furniture is
actually any good, or worth buying. Attempts to stampede you into
buying something because everybody else is buying it is just another
recycling of the old propaganda trick "Everybody
knows, everybody says, everybody is doing it", also
known as "The Bandwagon".
A spam email advertised: "Strong Programs
for Real Estate Risks". Excuse me? What the heck is a "strong
program"? They continued, "HOW STRONG ARE YOUR LINKS?" Careful
reading revealed that they were selling insurance. They continued:
"Discover how our expanding line of comprehensive programs and
products can protect your clients from a multitude of real estate
exposures at the industry’s most competitive rates. Become an
Appointed Agency Today!" Ah, so they want me to sell insurance for
them.
- Undefined
Terms
Use words that sound good or bad but are not actually defined and have
no concrete meaning.
For example, a TV commercial for a tooth
whitener declares that your teeth will be "nine shades whiter in
only ten days." So what is a shade of white? How much of a change in
color is "a shade". How much whiter will your teeth actually be? You
would think that maybe some artists' institute or the National
Bureau of Standards would have a formal definition of "shade", or
some color charts to show what is a "shade of white", but they
don't. A shade of white could be anything. So no matter what happens
from use of the tooth whitener, the advertiser can claim, "What? You
can't see any difference? Your eyes just aren't sensitive enough.
Believe me, your teeth are definitely nine shades whiter."
Bill Wilson used this technique in the Big Book constantly.
His sermons and lectures were non-stop streams of grandiose,
undefined terms. For example, Bill declared that atheists and
agnostics would get "results" if they just started believing in his
religion:
We
found that as soon as we were able to lay aside prejudice and
express even a willingness to believe in a Power greater than
ourselves, we commenced to get results, even though it was
impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that Power,
which is God.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G.
Wilson, We Agnostics,
Page 46.
We commenced to get what results? Was it
quitting drinking? Was it longer periods of sobriety between
relapses? Was it simply drinking less per day? Who knows what
"results" they got? Bill doesn't say. We have to just take his word
for it that some kind of benefits accrued because people believed
something.
(Heck, Bill didn't even
really say that the results were good, did he? He just said that
they "commenced to get results". The results could have been that
they all got drunk and partied their brains out.)
Likewise, Bill Wilson declared:
As
soon as a man can say that he does believe, or is willing to
believe, we emphatically assure him that he is on his way.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G.
Wilson, We Agnostics,
Page 47.
On his way where? What does that actually
mean?
- Pseudo-intellectual
Bull
Use lots of big or unusual words and tell your lies with stilted,
complicated, incomprehensible sentences that sound very educated.
This item is similar to "Vague, Grandiose
Language" and "Double-talk", but this one has a flavor all its own.
It is particularly prevalent around universities, and lives in
scholarly journals, and is a favorite tool of intellectual
wanna-bees.
This example of pseudo-intellectual bull
is Dr. Carl G.
Jung, telling us how to get a spiritual experience:
The
only right and legitimate way to such an experience is that it
happens to you in reality and it can only happen to you when you
walk on a path which leads you to higher understanding. You might
be led to that goal by an act of grace or through a personal and
honest contact with friends, or through a higher education of the
mind beyond the confines of mere rationalism.
C. G. Jung, in a letter to
Bill Wilson, quoted in Bill
W., by Robert Thomsen, pages 362-363.
Just try to figure out, from reading
that, just what you are really supposed to do to get yourself a
spiritual experience.
Adam
Rafalovich wrote an exemplary piece of such pseudo-intellectual bull
that attempted to posit that Narcotics Anonymous meetings actually
work and have positive effects on ex-addicts:
Embedded
within the interplay of these moments of recovering-addict
identity is a technique of identity transformation I refer to as
false working. False working denotes a mechanism by which NA
members are given permission to "act as if" they truly believe in
the NA message regardless of their real sentiments. This technique
is exemplified by the aphorism Fake
it 'til you make it. False working proves to be
a crucial component for the NA organization to maintain long-term
membership and recruit new, skeptical members.
Keep
coming back! Narcotics Anonymous narrative and recovering-addict
identity, Adam Rafalovich, Contemporary
Drug Problems, Spring 1999, v26, i1, p131.
In
other words, lie and fake it and pretend to be getting great
results from "working
the program", to fool the newcomers into believing that the
voodoo medicine 12-Step routine really works. Such deceit is
useful for what the author calls "identity
transformation" — converting newcomers into good cult
members. Note that the author says that such deceit and fakery is
even "a crucial component" in keeping the old-timers coming back.
So everybody is deceiving everybody else, all of the time.
Everybody is re-enacting "The
Emperor's New Clothes".
Note
the stilted language and the euphemisms that disguise the real
meaning of Rafalovich's statements. Instead of saying, "lie and
deceive", the author uses the phrases, "false working" and "permission
to 'act as if' they truly believe in the NA message".
The author, Adam Rafalovich, gave us many
more examples of this pseudo-intellectual bull technique in that
article. A few more of them:
-
"Standing
most significant in the literature today is the concept of
narrative and its effect in creating group cohesion inside and
outside 12-Step meetings. It is believed in the study of
12-Step recovery processes that the mutual disclosures of
members fosters processes of belonging and commitment to the
collective goal of drug and alcohol abstinence. ...
In addition, the study of story presentation has been shown to
be integral in developing moral attachments to a
collectivity."
Keep
coming back! Narcotics Anonymous narrative and
recovering-addict identity, Adam Rafalovich, Contemporary Drug Problems,
Spring 1999, v26, i1.
In
other words, use the standard cult recruiting technique of Personal
Testimonies of Earlier Converts to
fool the newcomers and suck them into the cult. Much of the
"sharing" is just sales pitches telling newcomers to join the
group and Keep
Coming Back.
And
Rafalovich uses the
passive voice technique to assert
unsupported claims:
"It is believed
... that the mutual disclosures of members fosters
processes..."
Who believes it? What do they know? Why should we care
what some nameless, faceless people believe?
-
"By
examining the contents of common NA testimony, we can examine
data that demonstrate that individual action is as much a
result of the NA organization as it is a contributor to it.
Therefore when positing a theory of the recovering-addict
identity process, it is important to acknowledge the
internalization of an organization as a result of becoming a
contributor. Interestingly, NA members realize this
theoretical notion. Contribution, for example, is a strong
ethic within the organization; it is believed that to not
participate in the narrative environment (i.e., not share
during meetings) will harm one's chances of continued
abstinence."
Keep
coming back! Narcotics Anonymous narrative and
recovering-addict identity, Adam Rafalovich, Contemporary Drug Problems,
Spring 1999, v26, i1.
In
other words, the way to become one of the group is to start
talking the talk in meetings, and telling people that the
program is working for you. "Fake
It Until You Make It." The
more you do it, the more it will warp your thinking and make
you feel and act like one of the old-timers.
That
is a use of the cognitive
dissonance technique —
Since you don't want to think of yourself as a lying fake, you
will start to imagine that you really
are getting some great results, just like
you have been saying... Your subconscious mind will struggle
to minimize the pain of the conflict between believing that it
is wrong to lie, and the group requirement that you say that
you are getting great results from the program — and coming to believe that
the program really
IS workingfor you, and that you are telling the truth,
is the subconscious mind's answer to the problem.
It's
really a very common brainwashing and mind-control technique:
"Makem' say it
enough times, and they'll start to believe it."
"Makem' go through the motions enough times, and they'll
start to think that such behavior is normal."
And,
the author tells us, if you should choose to not engage in
such cultish behavior, and do not "Fake
It Until You Make It", then you just
might leave the cult and not come back. (No surprise there.)
Also
note the use of two other propaganda techniques in this one
line: "it
is believed that to not participate in the narrative
environment (i.e., not share during meetings) will harm
one's chances of continued abstinence."
There, we get
- the use
of the passive voice, yet again, citing the opinions
of some more invisible, unnamed people, and
- fear
mongering
- It is believed by whom? Says
who?
- Where is the evidence that
anybody should believe such nonsense?
- What medical or scientific
study, survey, or poll showed that telling lies in N.A.
meetings — faking
it 'till you make it — reduces drug
consumption, or reduces relapses?
- Where is the evidence that
refusing to lie and deceive increases drug addiction?
There
is no evidence to support such illogical statements. The
author tries to shove that cult dogma at us as established
fact by declaring that some unnamed people believe it to be
true.
-
"Solidarity
and collective identity in NA are constructed by narrative
that depicts qualitative differences between addict and normie
worlds. It has been argued that this process of creating
difference is socially constructed and is ultimately aimed at
fostering a stronger dependency upon the group."
Keep
coming back! Narcotics Anonymous narrative and
recovering-addict identity, Adam Rafalovich, Contemporary Drug Problems,
Spring 1999, v26, i1.
Meaning:
the testimonials of earlier converts emphasize the standard
cult attitude of, "Our
group is special. We are special people, and
different from the 'normies'.
Only another cult member understands."
And
it's also the cult practice of: You
must become dependent on the cult. They
say, "You really need this 'support
group'. You can't make it alone. Nobody can do it alone.
You'll die without us." and "Addicts
like us can't be happy in the normie world, so just stay
here with us."
Rafalovich
says that the program is "ultimately
aimed at fostering a stronger dependency
upon the group." That is really
insidious cult behavior. They want you to become dependent on
the cult for everything. The cult will become your entire
social circle, and your family, and your whole life. You will
end up needing the cult to tell you who you are, and what you
should think and what you should do. That produces mental
cripples who cannot live outside of the cult. That is not
'recovery'.
-
"Leveling: This initial phase
of learning Narcotics Anonymous normativity and adopting a
recovering-addict identity involves a homogenization where
newcomers become convinced of a common thread between
themselves and the rest of those involved with NA. ...
No one member ever stops becoming part of the leveling
process. 'Oldtimers' still try hard to discover linkages
between themselves and other members of the group. ...
The focus for seasoned members often involves the invocation
of the disease concept, its manifestations at the psychic and
behavioral levels."
Keep
coming back! Narcotics Anonymous narrative and
recovering-addict identity, Adam Rafalovich, Contemporary Drug Problems,
Spring 1999, v26, i1.
Translation:
Newcomers buy the group member stereotype and start to think
that they are "just like everybody else" in the cult. Then, you can't
ever leave the cult,and you can't ever stop using the
Procrustean Bed on yourself, trying to force
yourself to become the cult's stereotypical "good member".
(What the author calls "Leveling".) Even the old-timers have
to continue doing it. And you can't ever stop parroting the
cult dogma, like the "spiritual
disease" concept.
-
"Conclusion: The presence of a
technique like false working gives credence to the relative
instability of the addict identity. It is not a technique
reserved strictly for those who are new to the NA environment.
It is a safety valve for all members, allowing those who have
never encountered or are straying away from a sincere attitude
of recovering-addict identity to be cynical or skeptical of
NA, given, of course, that their actions state otherwise."
Keep
coming back! Narcotics Anonymous narrative and
recovering-addict identity, Adam Rafalovich, Contemporary Drug Problems,
Spring 1999, v26, i1.
Translation:
the presence of a technique like "false working" proves that
it is a cult that plays mind games on people's heads,
including deceiving the newcomers and dishonestly changing
people's concepts of themselves (identity). The fact
that even the old-timers are still supposed to be "faking it until they make it" means
that the program doesn't ever start working right — they never
make it — but the old-timers can't be
honest and actually say that out loud. They too must
continue to "Act As
If..."
-
"Twelve-step
programs are increasingly recognized as important resources
and treatment adjuncts for recovering alcohol and other drug
abusers. ... This paper explores 12-Step programs such as
Alcoholics Anonymous in light of Margaret Mahler's
conceptualization of the separation-individuation process that
leads to object constancy and healthy object relations."
An
analysis of 12-Step programs for substance abusers from a
developmental perspective, Shulamith Lala Ashenberg
Straussner; Betsy Robin Spiegel,Clinical
Social Work Journal, Fall 1996 v24 n3 p299(11)
Meaning: If it is totally incomprehensible
even to someone with a degree in the hard sciences, then it
just might be total bull.
Also
notice how the A.A. propagandists routinely proclaim that A.A.
and the other 12-Step groups are "just being
discovered" (by whom?),
and are "increasingly recognized as
important" (by whom?),
as if those A.A. promoters haven't been pushing the same
irrational old 12-Step cult religion and
voodoo medicine for the
last 75 years — and as if Alcoholics
Anonymous were not actually an organization in decline. That
is the propaganda technique of Assume
The Major Premise.
- Slogans:
Simplistic Slogans and Though-Stopping Slogans
There just isn't anything quite like a nice, short, snappy slogan.
People don't like to have to memorize long pages of boring facts and
figures, but they can remember slogans easily. Slogans can just cut
through the fog and grab people's hearts and minds in ways that no
other kind of speech can. Slogans can become battle cries, like
"Remember the Alamo!" A good slogan can make or break a politician's
campaign:
- "Where's The Beef?"
- "Make My Day!"
- "It's the Economy, Stupid!"
- "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer!"
Dr. Robert J.
Lifton, who did much of the original research on Chinese
Communist brainwashing techniques, called such slogans "thought-stopping clichés". He
found that such slogans constrict human understanding, rather than
expand it. They stop people from thinking.
Thought-stopping slogans can be used to
jump to completely illogical conclusions: "People are more
important than things. So let's drill for oil in the Anwar
National Wildlife Refuge."
| "The
answer is Jesus! The answer to everything is Jesus!
The answer is always Jesus!"
Yeh, but what if the question was, "What will your monthly
payments be if you borrow $100,000 at 7% interest
and want to pay it back in 20 years?"
|
A.A. has far too many
slogans to list here. Here are just a few
examples:
- "Keep Coming Back! It Works!"
- "It Works If You Work It!"
- "Work It, You're Worth It! You Die If
You Don't!"
- "Turn It Over."
- "Let Go and Let God."
- "One Day At A Time."
- "Your best thinking got you here."
- "Think, Think, Think!"
- "Stop Your Stinkin' Thinkin'."
- "Keep It Simple, Stupid."
- "Utilize, Don't Analyze."
- Oversimplify
This one is simple: Just oversimplify the issue. Reduce the issue to a
few simple sentences that any blithering idiot can understand. Leave
out all the complicated facts and confounding factors. Reduce the
debate to just a few simple-minded sentences and slogans. Reduce
complex multi-faceted issues to simplistic statements that can be
expressed in a short sound bite.
For
every complicated problem there is a simple and wrong
solution.
== H. L. Mencken
"The problem with KISS — Keep It Simple Stupid — is that
it often leads to LOVE — Leave Out Virtually
Everything."
== credited to "a smart musician"
|
Adolf Hitler instructed:
All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must
be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is
addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to
reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be.
But if, as in propaganda for sticking out a war, the aim is to
influence a whole people, we must avoid excessive intellectual
demands on our public, and too much caution cannot be exerted in
this direction.
The more modest its intellectual ballast, the more
exclusively it takes into consideration the emotions of the
masses, the more effective it will be. ...
It is a mistake to make propaganda many-sided, like
scientific instruction, for instance.
The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their
intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous.
In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be
limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans
until the last member of the public understands what you want him
to understand by your slogan.
Mein
Kampf, Adolf Hitler, pages 180-181.
Alcoholics Anonymous grossly
over-simplifies the problems of alcohol abuse and alcohol addiction.
(And Narcotics Anonymous also over-simplifies the issue of drug
addiction.) A.A. tries to reduce those problems to just a matter of
"resentments" and unconfessed sins causing "spiritual diseases", and
"ego" and "self-will" causing "defects of character" and "moral
shortcomings". And the cure is supposedly to "work a strong
program", and "surrender to God", and do the 12 Steps and attend
lots of meetings.
A.A. totally ignores the problem of
mental illnesses like Bipolar Disorder and schizophrenia causing
people to drink too much alcohol and take too many drugs. And A.A.
rarely, if ever, sends people to real doctors and psychiatrists to
get those problems fixed.
- Wrap Yourself
In A Higher Power
The two most popular styles are "Wrap
Yourself in the Flag" and "Wrap
Yourself in the Bible." But wrapping yourself in a
generic God without a Bible, and in a generic religiosity, like
Alcoholics Anonymous does, also works.
People feel reluctant to attack someone
who appears to be so patriotic or religious. They fear that their criticism
will be misunderstood by others as an attack on
God or Country. So you can get lots of cheap and easy advantages by
wrapping yourself in the Bible or the Flag, or both.
The absurd lengths to which con artists
will go to convince you that they are good, religious people are
sometimes mind-boggling. A web page that is supposedly about
"Christian" drug and alcohol treatment programs, http://www.christiandtc.com/christiandrugrehabprogram/,
actually features a lot of garbage that is just failed quack
programs with the label "Christian" added on, to make them sound
good:
- The link for "drug rehabs" actually
goes to a web page that advertises schemes to beat drug tests: http://www.christiandtc.com/drugrehabs/ actually
links to http://www.asmartsourcedrugtestkit.com/prodblood.htm.
- The link for "drug rehab program", http://www.christiandtc.com/drugrehabprogram/,
advertises, among other things,"Alex
knows what it takes for you to get a Pharmaceutical / Medical
sales position!", and CELEBRITY
CRUISE LINE — Drug store, Payday Loan, video
poker, and — best of all — "Jeb Bush: Daughter improving in drug
rehab".
- And the most amusing feature of that
web page is the second paid link, "Christian Pastor Converts To
Paganism" — http://www.christiandtc.com/ltrendee.html —
which actually links to a web page that sells a software package
for submitting articles intended to drive traffic to your web site
to that you can make money by selling more stuff —
http://article-submitter.solidbytes.com/?hop=seishin. (Now a broken link.)
Please don't ask me what that has to
do with Christianity or recovery from drug and alcohol problems.
Similarly, a web page that sells
colloidal metals as cures or treatments for various aliments
decorates its web pages with the American flag, and the quack doctor
(a veterinarian and N.D., not an M.D.) is even dressed in a
red-and-white striped shirt (with a cowboy hat, just to mix the
images). See http://www.healthy-ways.com/selenium.html and http://www.healthy-ways.com/quest.html.
- Repeat Old
Memes
There are some old ideas that are so
pervasive that they might be called the memes of the society. They
may be inaccurate or even quite false, or give a very distorted
picture of reality, but people often accept them without thought
because they are so old and well-established that they slip into
your mind without triggering a critical reaction.
For instance, old Conservatives often
love to describe one of their own as a "self-made man", who rose up
from poverty in another Horatio-Alger-like rags-to-riches story. The
problem is, there is no such thing as "a self-made man".
- The guy's mother would probably have a
strong opinion on the subject — pointing out that she distinctly
remembers a lot of discomfort and pain that was involved with
making him and getting him into this world.
- And then his mama had to work for many
years to feed him and clothe him and teach him and give him a good
set of values...
- And then this "self-made" boy went to
a public school where his education was paid for by the
tax-payers...
- And then the guy probably got a lot of
other opportunities and lucky breaks, and help from a mentor, and
then, yes, I'm sure he worked hard for success, and he was lucky
enough (or corrupt enough) to end up rich.
And then the ideologues who have a
Wild-West mentality — "every
man for himself; survival of the fittest; you can build an empire
if you are strong and brave and smart and work hard" —
like to declare that he is a good example of a "self-made man" who
did it without any "handouts".
For more on memes, see these links which
were suggested by Mary C. Hogan, Ph.D.:
- http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/1998/vol2/wilkins_js.html
- http://www.memecentral.com/
- http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/MEMIN.HTML (Dead Link.)
- Claim
Causation By A Higher Power
Claim that your favorite thing was deliberately put here or created by
a "Higher Power" (which is often called "God" or "the Lord", but is
also called a lot of different names).
Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler's fawning
Minister of Propaganda, declared:
Destiny
has sent us this man [Adolf Hitler] so that we, in this time of
great external and internal stress, shall testify to the miracle.
The
Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich, William L. Shirer, page
1109.
So who is "Destiny", and how can I
meet her? Is she related to that other popular cause, "Fate"?
Likewise, when he heard that President
Roosevelt had died, another of Hitler's boot-lickers declared:
This
was the Angel of History! We felt its wings flutter through the
room. Was that not the turn of fortune we awaited so anxiously?
== Count Schwerin von Krosigk
The
Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich, William L. Shirer, page
1110.
The Angel of History? I recall
Michael, and Gabriel, and Lucifer, and The Angel of Death, and
several others, but can't seem to remember any "Angel of
History"...
That sounds a lot like Karl Marx's
mystical "Force of History" that was supposed to spontaneously bring
us a Worker's Paradise. (In spite of his declarations of atheism,
Karl Marx was actually a muddled-headed mystic who believed in
Higher Powers or Higher Forces that just magically made things
happen, and determined the course of history.)
- Everybody's
Doing It, Everybody Knows, and Everybody Says, and The Bandwagon
Imply that what you want people to do or believe is what everybody
else is doing or believing.
- "Everybody knows that the world is
flat. All of the leading university professors and Church
authorities agree that Christopher Columbus is a crazy fool for
thinking that the world is round, and that he can get to the East
by sailing west. Everybody knows that he will fall off of the edge
of the world."
- "Everybody knows that diseases are
caused by evil spirits, and witches putting hexes on people. So if
your children get sick, the only cure is to burn the old lady who
lives next door, and then your children will get better."
- "Everybody knows that blood-letting is
the best cure for a fever. It worked on George Washington, didn't
it?"
This is also known as "The Bandwagon" —
appeal to people to "get on the bandwagon", or "get with the
program", or "catch the wave", or "get with it", or "keep up the
momentum".
- "This product is the hottest thing —
it has sold out repeatedly."
- "It's the most popular thing we have."
- "It's the fastest-growing form of
music."
- "It's definitely the fashion hit of
the season."
- "These beliefs are increasingly being
accepted."
- "A mighty army of the Lord."
The individual who clings tenaciously to unverified
beliefs confuses his beliefs with fact, and often
inflicts this confusion on others in his struggle to
resolve it in his favor. When many people are persuaded
to subscribe to the same pretense, of course, it can
gain the aura of objectivity; as British psychoanalyst
Ron Britton has observed, "we can substitute concurrence
for reality testing, and so shared phantasy can gain the
same or even greater status than knowledge." The belief
doesn't become a fact, but the fact of shared belief
lends it the valuable appearance of credibility. The
belief is codified, takes hold, and rises above the
level where it might be questioned.
Bush
on the Couch, Justin A. Frank, M.D., page 61. |
A variation on this technique is
rationalizing one's own behavior by claiming that:
- It's what everybody does.
- That's just how it's done.
- It's normal.
- It's standard operating procedure.
- It's customary.
- It's standard practice in the
industry.
- It's accepted practice.
You can stampede large masses of people
into following a certain course of action if they think it's what
everybody else is doing, or will do. We see an amusing example of
this most every Christmas, when one particular toy, like a Furby or a Cabbage Patch Doll, becomes the fad
toy of the season, and all of the children simply
must get one because everybody else (all of the
other children) is getting one. The parents go nuts trying to find
one as the supply sells out and a bidding war sets in, and the
parents often have little real idea of what it is they are trying to
get. All they know is that it's what the kids want. All that the
kids know is that it's what everybody else wants.
The human and social pressures to conform
to the group are very strong. People often conform to the group even
without realizing it, or admitting it. Some people fancy themselves
non-conformists, but they almost always simply adopt an alternate
fashion of dress, hair style, speech, and behavior. You can tell who
the "non-conformists" are by which uniform they wear.
In fact, to be a "real non-conformist",
you have to conform and wear the uniform. If you simply dress and
act any way you want to, people will just regard you as a weirdo.
- For more than 20 years that I can
remember, McDonald's has been advertising that it is simply The place where
everybody eats burgers. The commercials tell our children, "It's
just the regular American Way. Everybody is doing it." Not to be
left behind, Dairy Queen has launched a series of commercials that
tries to convince us that we should just refer to Dairy Queen as
"D.Q.", as if eating at Dairy Queen is so commonplace that
everybody will immediately know what you mean when you just say
"D.Q.". So far, that phony chummy familiarity does not seem to
have caught on, probably because people know that it's phony and
resent the attempt at manipulation of their feelings. Oh well,
better luck with the next advertising campaign.
- In a wicked twist on this psychology,
organizations like Microsoft or political special interest groups
have been caught sponsoring phony "grass roots campaigns" where
long tables of tired, frowzy grandmothers were paid to hand write
a river of "spontaneous" letters that supported some particular
position that their employer liked... The numerous letters were
supposed to show that everybody favors
the sponsor's position.
- On television, advertisements for two
TV shows declare that "Everybody is talking about..." and "All of
America is talking about..." (Oddly, I had never watched either
stupid show and none of my friends said anything about them
either.)
- The
"Moonies" — the members of the Unification Church of Rev. Sun
Myung Moon — use the "Everybody's Doing It" technique in their
recruiting and indoctrination routines. Newcomers are invited to
lectures or workshops, where they are exposed to Unification
Church doctrines like The
Divine Principle. The Moonies always pack the
audience with committed true-believer members,
making sure that the audience is always more than 50% enthusiastic
members, and then they arrange the seating so that each newcomer
has an old member on both sides of him. To the newcomer, it seems
like the doctrines of the Unification Church must be brilliant,
because everybody else is really wowed and amazed at how clear and
logical it all is...6
- Politicians love to use that stunt
too. Richard Nixon and gang packed the gallery at the 1972
Republican National Convention with clean-cut photogenic Young
Republican college kids who had been specially bussed in just for
the occasion, just so that they could be seen on TV cheering for
Nixon — just showing the American people that it wasn't only the
old fascists who loved Nixon...
- In
2004, George W. Bush is using a variation on this stunt: He
appears before crowds that are "mostly friendly, invited guests".16 Well
that gets rid of the hecklers and the critics, doesn't it?
- Another recent example was on Meet The Press (NBC
TV). Steven Hadley, President G. W. Bush's National Security
Advisor, declared on 3 December 2006 that "I think the American people understand the cost
of failure..." (So let's all do what George
wants.)
No matter how many Americans understand the cost of failure,
there is no evidence that the American people want to see more of
their sons' lives wasted in a disastrous misadventure. There is no
evidence that the American people agree with George. The results
of the last election declare that the American people really do
understand the cost of failure, and they are tired of George
Bush's failures.
Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics
Anonymous and Al-Anon use this Everybody's
Doing It and Everybody
Knowstechnique often:
Alcoholics Anonymous also makes good use
of the social pressures to conform to the group. If A.A. can just
make people Keep Coming
Back, then those people will eventually get worn down and
converted to believing what everybody else is believing. They will
end up saying and doing what everybody else is saying and doing.
It's just human nature.
The flip side of the "Everybody's
Doing It" coin is "Nobody
Is Doing It." If you don't see it on TV, then it
isn't real. If you don't hear an idea espoused on TV, then that idea
must be radical or extremist, and can't be true.
For
instance, the CIA didn't really perform experiments in mind control
and brainwashing on innocent, unaware American and Canadian
civilians, including giving them LSD without their knowledge. That
can't possibly be true, because we never saw it on TV.5
Likewise, television and the movies
always portray Alcoholics Anonymous in a positive light, with movies
like "My Name Is Bill W.",
"Clean and Sober", "The Days of Wine and Roses", and "28 Days", and positive portrayals
in TV programs like"Cagney and Lacy" and "ER" and "The West Wing".
Nobody on TV ever says that A.A. is actually a stupid superstitious
cult religion that is completely ineffective for treating
alcoholism, so that can't possibly be true.
- Pomp,
Ceremony, and Ritual
Pomp, ceremony, and ritual are
effective techniques for manipulation of the emotions of crowds.
Everybody uses it, from the President of the United States, to the
Queen of England, to the Pope. The Moonies like to have mass weddings
where thousands of couples are married at a time. Adolf Hitler raised
pomp, ceremony, and ritual to an art form at the Nuremberg
rallies.
Nazi Party Day, Nuremberg, 1934
Adolf Hitler is the center guy of the three who are
facing us and giving the straight-armed salute.
Heinrich Himmler is
Hitler's right-hand man there.
(click on image for larger
version)
|
| Speaking of large,
powerful armies of disciplined, unthinking, obedient
followers, Alcoholics Anonymous seems to have its own
too. These quotes are from books of daily meditations
for A.A. members published by the A.A. headquarters and
Hazelden:
"I
will center my thoughts on a Higher Power. I will
surrender all to his power within me. I will become
a soldier for this power, feeling the might of the
spiritual army as it exists in my life today. I will
allow a wave of spiritual union to connect me
through my gratitude, obedience, and discipline to
this Higher Power. Let me allow this power to lead
me through the orders of the day."
Daily Reflections; A
Book of Reflections by A.A. members for A.A.
members, Alcoholics Anonymous World Services,
Inc., 1990, August 27, page 248.
I
will lock arms today and move forward in the company
of those who need me. I need them also.
The Promise of a New
Day: A Book of Daily Meditations, Karen Casey
and Martha Vanceburg, Hazelden, November 4.
|
The interesting thing about pomp, ceremony, and ritual is that it
has an irrational appeal. You are asked to accept an organization
and its whole package of beliefs and dogma based on beautiful
costumes, magnificent surroundings, rituals, ceremonies, and
dramatic productions — things that have absolutely nothing to do
with whether it is a good or bad organization, has a good or a bad
agenda, or has a good or a bad leader.
You shouldn't choose your religion or
your politics on the basis of who has the most colorful costumes or
the most entertaining ceremonies, but a lot of people do.
A variation on this technique is lots of
hoopla, fun, parties, spiritual jet-setting, get-togethers,
conventions, and conferences.
Alcoholics Anonymous has lots of
ceremonies and rituals — every meeting is a ceremony where people
practice rituals like incanting the Twelve Steps and Twelve
Traditions, and praying out loud, as well as reciting several other
pieces of standard church dogma at the start of every meeting.
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), the ceremonies of A.A. are not
nearly as dramatic or colorful as those of the Nazis or the Moonies.
- Humor and
Ridicule
Satire is a time-honored political weapon, and a devastating one. Few
pompous, stuffed-shirt politicians or other phony leaders can stand
much of it. A good joke can be deadlier than a gun when it comes to
killing off bad politicians.
Unfortunately, Alcoholics Anonymous
doesn't have any good jokes about itself. A.A. pretends to have a
lot of humor by laughing and joking about everything and anything
except the stuff that really matters — like the faults and
shortcomings of A.A. itself. A.A. claims to have rules like, "Rule #62: Don't take
yourself too damn seriously." (12X12,
page 149.)
But what that really means is, "You can and should put
yourself down, and tell jokes about yourself, and laugh at how
stupid you are, but don't you
dare ridicule A.A. or its doctrines, or its founders."
(I hear that the A.A.
true believers go non-linear when you tell them my jokes
about A.A.... Too bad; they are missing out on some fun.)
- Assume The
Major Premise
People's minds have this peculiarity: Only the most thoughtful of
listeners examine major premises — the premises upon which an argument
is based. When a doubtful assertion is made, most people will plunge
into arguing about the assertion without further thought about the
underlying assumptions.
For example: in the early part of World
War Two, before the U.S.A. had gotten into the war, the Nazis
desired to convince the American people that Germany would defeat
Britain and win the war. But if they had stated such an idea
directly, it would have aroused the suspicions of the American
people, who would have argued the point.
So, what the Nazis did was spread many
stories and arguments about how the U.S.A. should go ahead and trade
with a victorious Germany after the war was over:
- "Whether we like Hitler or not, we
will have to deal with him."
- "If the Nazis win, let's not be
sentimental — business is business. It is all an imperialist war
anyway."
- "Europe is just too big for us to
ignore, and not trade with, even if Germany is running the whole
thing."
The listeners may have immediately
launched into arguments over whether we should trade with Germany,
but few challenged the underlying assumption, the major premise,
that Germany would defeat Great Britain.
Another example: "Why does America have
the best government in the world?"
No evidence has been supplied to support the idea that
the United States (not "America") has the best government. Many
European democracies from Denmark and Sweden to Switzerland would
challenge that arrogant assumption.
| In
March of 2005, we are seeing the use of this technique of
assuming the major premise in the tragic case of Terri
Schiavo, a woman who 14 years earlier suffered a heart
attack that stopped the flow of blood to her brain that
caused most of her brain to die. Her husband favors
stopping life support and letting her go, but Terri's
parents and brother (the Schindler family) constantly talk
about "saving her" and "keeping her alive" by re-inserting
the feeding tube. That is assuming a fact that has not
been established — that her brain is still alive — that
she can be saved.
Her brother has even gone so
far in his sadly deluded wishful thinking as to
interpret some of her moans as speech declaring that she
"wants to live". That is really assuming
a lot. Her moans of "Aaaah waaaah" could just as easily
mean "I want you to leave me alone and let me die"
(although in truth they don't really mean anything at
all).
Those who favor keeping Terri
on life support call it "judicial murder" for the courts
to order the feeding tube to be removed in compliance
with her husband's wishes. And out in the streets,
protesters campaign for the governor or congressmen or
judges or the President to "save the life of Terri".
What all of those activists
erroneously assume is the major premise — that Terri
Schiavo can in fact "be saved" and be "kept alive" and
that she actually is alive and has a functioning brain —
that there is something or somebody left in that body to
save. But 14 years of debates and court cases and
doctors' examinations and medical tests, as well as the
failure of Terri's medical condition to improve in 14
years, have shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that the
higher parts of her brain died and liquefied a long time
ago, and that she isn't in there any more. There is
nobody left to save. The real Terri Schiavo died 14
years ago.
[Update:
June 2005: The autopsy of Terri Schiavo revealed
that her brain had been hopelessly destroyed, and
she was brain-dead for 14 years.]
(Also note that somebody is
using the propaganda technique of Observational Selection on
you when they choose what you will see on television.
Out of the many, many hours of videotapes that the
Schindler family has made, you get to see only a few
seconds of images that appear to show Terry Schaivo
reacting to her environment or responding to people
stroking her face. But a judge who watched 14 hours of
the videotapes concluded that she was not aware of her
surroundings, and that she was not reacting to stimuli
in any conscious manner.)
|
Also see The
Effectiveness of the Twelve-Step Treatment for
an example of A.A.-Trustee Professor George Vaillant's use of this
technique.
For another example of "assuming the
major premise", at Narcotics Anonymous meetings, the group secretary
always asks:
"Can we see a show of
hands of those who have a year or more of clean time to show that
this program works?"
They never ask,
"Can we see a show
of hands of those who have a year or more of clean time without
doing Bill Wilson's Twelve Steps, to show that his bombastic cult
religion nonsense is completely unnecessary?"
FYI: I am one of
those hands. :-) And I'm not the only one...
- Petitio
Principii — Assume Facts Not In Evidence
Petitio Principii is
similar to "Assume the major premise".
Petitio
Principii is "a logical fallacy in which a
premise is assumed to be true without warrant, or in which what is
to be proved is implicitly taken for granted." In court, lawyers
will scream, "Objection,
Your Honor! The counsel is assuming facts not in evidence!"
"I don't believe in astrology. But then again, I'm
a Capricorn, and Capricorns don't believe in astrology."
Another
facet of "Petitio Principii" is
asking questions that are really veiled statements. One of the most
famous examples of that is the question, "Have you stopped beating
your wife yet?" It doesn't matter whether you answer yes or no, you
are confessing to having beaten your wife.
One of the most annoying things about
religious recruiters and proselytizers is how they assume that you
are a hopeless sinner, before even bothering to ask about your
actual spiritual condition. Their tracts advertise "How To Get On
Target", without asking where you are currently aimed. They just
assume that you are a disgusting sinner, headed for perdition, going
to Hell in a bucket. (And they rationalize their behavior by
declaring "All are sinners" — which they conveniently interpret to
mean that they are entitled to lecture you about religious matters.)
Alcoholics Anonymous uses this
technique in many ways. For instance:
- First, Bill Wilson tried to get
prospective recruits to sign blank checks, and promise to go to
"any length" to quit drinking:
Wait
for the end of the spree, or at least for a lucid interval.
Then let his family or a friend ask him if he wants to quit
for good and if he would go to any extreme to do so. If he
says yes, then his attention should be drawn to you as a
person who has recovered.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William
G. Wilson, page 90.
What
if he says "No,
I won't go to any
extreme. There are all kinds of things that I won't do
to get sober, including lie, cheat, steal, and rape little
girls when the Moon gets full. I won't join a crazy cult
religion, either."?
"If
you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go
to any lengths to get it — then you are ready to take certain
steps."
Alcoholics
Anonymous, William G. Wilson, "How It Works", 3rd &
4th Edition, page 58.
But then, some pages later, Bill
Wilson suddenly assumed a big fact not in evidence:
Remember
it was agreed at the beginning we
would go to any lengths for victory over alcohol.
Alcoholics
Anonymous, William G. Wilson, "Into Action", 3rd &
4th Edition, page 76.
Nowhere does it say that all of the
alcoholics agreed in the beginning to go to "any length" to quit
drinking. Bill Wilson just asked a question in one place, and
then, in another place, he assumed the answer that he wanted.
- "When
they choose a sponsor, beginners should usually choose someone
with four to eight years of Time.
Someone with less time may not be experienced enough, while
someone with much more time may be too spiritual to relate well
to a beginner's problems."
If you want to argue with that
statement, the usual human thing to do is to start arguing about
how many years the ideal sponsor will have, rather than whether
one should get a sponsor at all, or whether having many years of Time makes someone
more spiritual.
That "advice" has many underlying
assumptions — premises — none of which are supported by any
evidence (and none of which are even true):
- Beginners should get sponsors.
- Beginners will benefit from having
sponsors.
- Suitable sponsors will be able to
relate to the beginners' problems and help them with those
problems.
- People grow increasingly spiritual
from more years of practicing the Twelve Steps and going to
A.A. meetings.
- People with lots of Time are so
spiritual and holy that they have moved up to another plane of
existence, one that is just too lofty for a beginner to
handle, and one from which the terribly holy old-timers may
have difficulties relating to the common rabble.
None of those assertions have been
proven or even clearly stated and supported by evidence and
facts. The speaker just shoves it all at us, "under the table",
so to speak, as assumed facts that are just incidental to the
question of how many years of sobriety a good sponsor should
have.
In
fact, recent
research has shown that newcomers do not
benefit at all from getting sponsors. In a recent controlled
study, a group of new Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics
Anonymous members who got sponsors did no better than another
group who didn't get sponsors. But strangely enough, the elder
members who chose to
become sponsors did better than the other
members who did not choose to act as sponsors. (The sponsors
were a self-selecting group; not randomly chosen.) It seems
that getting their egos stroked, acting as puffed-up,
all-wise, all-knowing sponsors, ordering the wimpy newcomers
around, helps the sponsors to stay clean and sober, even if it
doesn't help the newcomers any.
- In his second book, Bill Wilson wrote
about confessing all of one's sins (Step Five) by saying:
The
real tests of the situation are your own willingness to
confide and your full confidence in the one with whom you
share your first accurate self-survey.
Twelve
Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 61.
First
accurate self-survey? Says who? Bill Wilson was assuming a
lot in declaring that newcomers to A.A. had neverdone
an accurate self-assessment before. How would he know? But then,
Bill always assumed that alcoholics were just immoral
bums who needed to be reformed with his version
of spirituality. Bill Wilson assumed that all A.A.
newcomers were strangers to real religion, people without any
real morals or spirituality — they were even atheists or
agnostics — who knew nothing about God and who had never done
any introspection before. Bill also wrongly assumed thatwallowing
in guilt and only listing negative things —
all of one's "defects of character", "moral shortcomings", and
"wrongs" — constituted "an accurate self-survey".
Also see the Bait
And Switch Con Game web page for an example of
Bill Wilson using Petitio
Principii to convince people that they must
believe in his beliefs.
- Hidden
Assumptions
Hidden assumptions are much like the previous two kinds of
assumptions, Assume The Major
Premise, and Assume Facts Not
In Evidence (Petitio Principii),
but in this technique the assumption is so subtle that it isn't even
mentioned.
Television infomercials that sell stock
market trading computer programs, or options or FOREX trading
programs, all try to foist numerous hidden assumptions on the
viewers:
- They assume that stocks, contracts, or
other pieces of paper will routinely go up and down in price in
neat cycles, and that you will be able to choose a stock, option,
or futures contract that will conveniently do so for you.
- They assume that you or their computer
program will be able to pick the correct stock or option and buy
it at the lowest price, and then sell it at the highest price. In
other words, they assume that you or their program will be able to
"time the market".
- They assume that there is something
called a "cash flow" that you can just dip into, as if it were a
river of money, and you can just scoop out buckets for yourself.
There is no such thing in the financial markets. The reality is
that there are a lot of sharp, experienced, professional traders
who are buying and selling pieces of paper while haggling over
every penny.
- They often tell you that you can place
stop losses on every order. That is true, but you still lose money
before the stop loss takes effect. It
stops the loss from getting even worse; it doesn't stop you from
losing money. And stop loss orders don't always
take effect as soon as you wish. In big stock market crashes (like
1929 and 1987), people had to wait a long time, a seeming
eternity, while they watched their stock sink like the Titanic,
before their sell order was finally filled by a willing buyer —
filled at a very low price. (Often, there just aren't a lot of
willing buyers around in a stock market crash. Everybody is trying
to sell. And you can't sell something until someone else wants to
buy it from you.) That infomercial implies that you will only lose
a little bit on bad trades because of stop loss orders, while
making big profits on lucky trades. ("Stop your loses;
let your winnings run.") But that isn't necessarily
true or always even possible. And they assume that if you lose a
little on one trade, that you will make it up on the next trade.
That isn't necessarily true, either. If your luck is bad, you can
stumble from one losing trade to another until you run out of
money.
- The infomercial makers assume or imply
that the computer program is looking at the same things as the
market. It isn't. Computer programs track current trends in prices
— in other words, by analyzing the past, up to just a few seconds
ago — but the big institutional investors and traders are always
buying and selling things based on their
vision of the future, as determined by such arcane factors
as the prime interest rate, the price of oil, housing starts,
unemployment figures, retail sales, and various other economic
measurements like business profit predictions and the Consumer
Confidence Index, and even rumors and whispered tips and insider
trading information. The big boys are always looking at the future
and trading on the basis of what is going to happen in the future,
while the computer program in your dinky little computer is
reacting to the present and past prices.
- The infomercial makers assume or imply
that their computer program can predict the future. Oh really? If
it can, why isn't everybody using it?
- They assume that your trades won't
ever influence the market — that your buy and sell orders won't
drive prices up or down, no matter how large your orders are. They
even assume that ALL of
the buy and sell orders of all of the other people who also bought
the same computer program won't drive the prices up or down, and
that you won't end up in a race with them to see who can get their
orders executed first. The infomercials don't mention the fact
that if the computer program tells every program user to buy the
same stock or option at the same time, the price of the stock or
option will jump sharply, and then it won't be a bargain any more.
- The talking heads in infomercials
assume that leverage is good, and that you will profit from it.
They happily declare that you can buy stocks, options, and futures
contracts on margin — meaning, putting up, in cash, only a small
fraction of their actual cost, and borrow the rest. That allows
you to profit by several times as much money if your gamble pays
off big. But it also allows you to lose several times as much
money if the trade goes sour. In highly-leveraged deals, you can
easily lose more than your total investment, and end up owing the
broker large sums of money. (Remember Long Term Capital
Management.) The salesmen don't mention that ugly fact.
- The infomercials assume that you can
win at the financial markets trading game, even if you are a
beginner, just because you bought an easy-to-use computer program.
Those TV commercials imply that the big boys in the financial
markets are too stupid to buy the same computer program and use it
(if only to see what the dumb thing says), and that the big boys
are too stupid to hire lots of smart young computer programmers to
write even better programs for them (which they have already
done).
- The infomercials assume that it is
easy to be right.
Many billions of dollars worth of stocks, bonds, options, and
futures contracts are bought and sold every day, and every trade
is between two people or companies, one of whom buys and one of
whom sells.
Curiously, both parties in every trade believe that what they are
doing is the best thing to do.
Every time you buy, the guy who is selling is convinced that you
are making a mistake.
Every time you sell, the buyer is convinced that you are making a
mistake.
If you are a beginner who is trading against experienced
professionals at big market-making brokerages, who is more likely
to be right?
- Assume
Futures or Future Results
Stack the deck in an argument by assuming that certain future events
or future results will occur.
For example, a political candidate can be
dismissed with this argument: "Sure, Joe Blow is a great guy and he has some good
issues and he says some good stuff. But he can't win, so there is
no point in seriously considering him as a candidate."
Obviously, if nobody will seriously
consider Joe as a candidate, he can't win.
(And now, in 2009, do you remember how
many people said that the young, black, Junior Senator from Illinois
couldn't possibly really win the Presidency, so his campaign was
just a joke, and shouldn't be taken seriously?)
- Fallacy of
Presupposition
Ask for an explanation of something not yet established:
"If
evolution is true, then..."
Since the study of evolution is a work in progress, one can always
find a point of controversy, and challenge the other person to
demonstrate that it is true, while assuming that failure to do so
proves the entire matter false.
- Affirmation
of the Consequent
Improperly validate the key element of an implication:
"The
Bible says God's people will be happy; we are happy; therefore the
Bible speaks truthfully."
A.A. does it like this:
"RARELY HAVE we
seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. To
thoroughly follow our path requires absolute abstinence from
drinking alcohol. If somebody drinks, then he isn't thoroughly
following our path.
"But this one guy didn't drink, so he did thoroughly follow
our path, and he stayed sober, so that proves that the program
works to keep people from drinking."
- Irrelevant
Conclusion (Ignoratio Elenchi)
It's a conclusion that does not follow from the argument:
"Jehovah's
Witnesses have the true religion because only we do so much
door-to-door preaching."
If you point out that Mormons also preach in this way, you'll be told
that they don't do as much of it, or that their religion is obviously false.9
Likewise, "Alcoholism is bad,
really bad, so A.A., which is intended to save alcoholics, is
good."
That is bad logic. There is no evidence that the A.A.
cult religion actually saves anyone.
That bogus logic is no different than,
- "Drug addiction is bad, really bad,
so Scientology is good."
(Scientology has a front group called "Narconon" that
claims to save drug addicts by using Scientology "principles" on
them.)
- "Cancer is bad, really bad, so the
Nazi Party is good."
(The Nazis really did want to wipe out cancer. See The
Nazi War on Cancer by Robert N. Proctor.)
A.A. missionaries like to brag
about the scientific studies that have found that there is a genetic
factor in alcoholism. They then claim that those studies support the
A.A. disease theory of alcoholism. That is another irrelevant
conclusion.
The fact that some genes affect a person's susceptibility to
alcohol addiction does not make alcoholism a disease any more than
my genes for blue-green eyes prove that Blue-Eye-ism is a disease.
And I also have the genes for premature graying of the hair, and
that isn't a disease either.
Just because someone is more prone to alcohol addiction does
not make him powerless over alcohol or unable to control his
actions, and it does not make habitual alcohol consumption a
disease.
- Confusion of
Beliefs with Facts
This includes
- Substitution
of Beliefs for Facts,
- Insistance
that "Beliefs Trump Facts", as if "It's
what I believe" is the final answer to an
argument,
- and "Belief
Equals Truth", as if something is true because
somebody believes it.
Dogmatic religious sects with bizarre
beliefs are notorious for using this logical fallacy. When you
present a true believer member of such a church with facts that
contradict his beliefs, he answers, "Well, what we believe is...",
and that is supposed to be the end of the argument — the final
answer on the subject. The fact that they believe something
supposedly makes contradictory facts irrelevant and invalid —
contradictory facts are just minor irritants to be ignored and
discarded.
An aspirin commercial portrayed a man
declaring, "Last
year I had a heart attack, right there where she is standing. If
it hadn't been for Bayer aspirin, who knows? I believe that Bayer
aspirin saved my life."
No actual medical evidence is supplied to show that aspirin
really saved him from death by heart attack, and the commercial
doesn't actually say that Bayer aspirin saved the guy's life. In
fact, the commerical does not even say that the man took any
aspirin. We just get his uninformed "belief". Besides, is that guy
for real, or is he just an actor reading a script?
Note that this is also an example of Sly
Suggestions and Proof
By Anecdote.
A woman who was campaigning for John
McCain in Florida declared, "You've got to understand how bad it will be if we
get Obama, and I firmly believe that."
NPR (National
Public Radio), Morning News, 3 November 2008.
That woman's firm belief is not evidence of anything — other than
evidence of what her strongly-held opinions happen to be.
When a person who is skeptical of
Alcoholics Anonymous declares, "The Bible does not say that God will make you quit
drinking and restore you to sanity and take care of your will and
your life for you and remove all of your defects of character just
because you 'turned your life over' and confessed all of your sins
to your sponsor," a 12-Step believer answers, "What, don't you believe
that God cares about you and wants you to be healthy and happy?"
The answer is, "It doesn't matter what I believe about God's
feelings and desires, the fact remains that the Bible still does
not say that God will do the 12 Steps for you."
(In fact, the Bible actually specifically
bans several of the practices that are embodied
in the 12 Steps.)
Another A.A. advocate declared:
"I
am a firm believer that if someone is ready and is truly an
alcoholic of the desperate sort that I was, within this program
there is a solution that works."
http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/alcoholism-12-step-support/149124-aa-cult.html
There, the writer uses both Lying
with Qualifiers and Confusion
of Beliefs with Facts to declare that the 12-Step
program works, he believes, if...
A variation on this logical fallacy is, "I'm sure that...",
as in,
"I'm sure that
President Bush had the legal authority to spy on thousands of
Americans and tap their phones without a warrant."
One political hack's convinced opinion, no matter how sure he is,
doesn't change the facts of the matter, or change what is actually
in the laws of the USA.
- Substitute
Feelings For Facts
Declare that you feel that
something is true, and act like that is supporting evidence.
- "I feel that he is a good man. He has
a good heart."
- "I feel that it was the right thing to
do. I don't have any qualms about it."
The "good heart" argument is one that
George W. Bush uses often. When one of Bush's political appointees
proves himself to be totally incompetent and unqualified for his
job, Bush answers, "He
has a good heart."
Likewise, President Ronald Reagan used
this technique when he declared, "My heart tells me that we did not trade arms for
hostages, although my head tells me that we did."
And G. W. Bush did the same thing again:
After the Intelligence Community released a National Intelligence
Estimate that clearly stated that Iran was not building nuclear
weapons, and had abandoned their nuclear weapons program many years
ago, Bush declared, "I
still feel that Iran is a threat."
- Confusion of
Abstractions with Reality
This includes Confusing the
Map with the Territory. (The territory is the real land; the map
is an abstraction drawn on a piece of paper.)
We humans are very good at making
abstractions to reduce big complex things to small manageable simple
ideas. Unfortunately, we are prone to making the error of confusing
our abstractions with the actual thing that they represent. Then,
- "Fighting for the Flag" equals
defending one's country from an enemy. (They are not the same
thing at all.) Likewise, burning a flag is not burning down
America.
- An ardent young Nazi wrote a letter to
his girlfriend, explaining that he did not wish to die in the
coming war (WWII), but if he did, it didn't matter, because "What
is my death compared to the Greatness of Destiny?" Obviously, with
20-20 hindsight we can see that Adolf Hitler offered no "Greatness
of Destiny" that was worth dying for. (It is an immense human
tragedy that for thousands of years, young people have been conned
into fighting and dying for such meaningless grandiose language.)
- A funny colored area on a paper map
(an abstraction) is suddenly worth fighting for, even if "we" do
not own it (like Vietnam and Iraq).
- In a stock market television program,
a pundit declared that the current condition of the stock market
was, "Liquidity
seeking things of value."
"Liquidity" is
an abstraction, a relative measure of how much money is easily
available for loans or purchases of stocks and bonds. Liquidity is not a
hairy animal like a bear or a bull that prowls Wall Street seeking
something to eat.
Now there may have been a few people
or institutional investors who were seeking something of value
to buy — there are usually at least a few bargain-hunters around
— but "Liquidity" was definitely not roaming "The Street",
searching for something to buy. In fact, the sub-prime mortgage
debácle soon shattered the confidence of "The Market", and left
it very illiquid. (In other words, those people who had some
money decided that they would rather keep it than give it to
some fast-talking con-artists.)
- Circular
Reasoning (Circulus in Demonstrando)
Support a chain of arguments by the arguments it contains, as in:
"The
Bible is true because it is written by God. The Bible tells us how
God wrote the Bible. God doesn't lie, as the Bible tells us, so He
wouldn't write a book that is false, would he?"
Likewise,
"If
reading were not supposed to be illegal, then it wouldn't be
against the law, would it?"
Or,
"Smoking
marijuana is bad because it is against the law.
Smoking marijuana is against the law because it is bad."
Or,
"You
can get rid of the excessive noise from the Olympus E-510
camera's small Four-Thirds sensor by running a noise-reduction
program that will unfortunately also erase all of the fine
picture details along with the noise. After all, noise reduction
programs are really just blurring programs."
"But you can get the fine detail back at the expense of
increased noise by sharpening or turning off the noise
reduction."
"Besides, the noise isn't that important."
Or,
"The
Alcoholics Anonymous program works great for the rare few people
for whom it works great."
Or,
"It
is okay to lie and exaggerate
how many lives A.A. really saves, in order to promote A.A.
and get people to join A.A. — the end
justifies the means — because A.A. is a
wonderful organization that has saved so many lives...."
Variations on Circular Reasoning include:
- Begging The Question
- The Chicken and Egg Argument
- Circular Definition
- Ciruculus in Demonstrando
- Petitio Principii
- Reasoning in a circle
- Appeal to
Evil
Appeal to and arouse the worst parts of people's character.
Hate-mongering, demagoguery, rabble-rousing, and similar methods of
crowd manipulation can best be accomplished by appealing to the low,
base, worst side of people's character — to the faults, vices, fears,
and weaknesses of the audience. Various crowds can be wooed by
appealing to their greed, anger, jealousy, vanity, fears, racism,
sexism, hatred, or lusts.
- In his classic book on mass religious
movements, The
True Believer, Eric Hoffer wrote:
Hatred
is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying
agents. It pulls and whirls the individual away from his own
self, makes him oblivious of his weal and future, frees him of
jealousies and self-seeking. He becomes an anonymous particle
quivering with a craving to fuse and coalesce with his like
into one flaming mass. Heine suggests that what Christian love
cannot do is effected by a common hatred.1
Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a
God, but never without belief in a devil. Usually the strength
of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and
tangibility of its devil. When Hitler was asked whether he
thought the Jew must be destroyed, he answered: "No.... We
should have then to invent him. It is essential to have a
tangible enemy, not merely an abstract one."2 F.A.
Voigt tells of a Japanese mission that arrived in Berlin in
1932 to study the National Socialist movement. Voigt asked a
member of the mission what he thought of the movement. He
replied: "It is magnificent. I wish we could have something
like it in Japan, only we can't, because we haven't got any
Jews."3
1. Heinrich Heine, Religion and Philosophy in Germany (London:
Trubner & Company, 1882), p. 89.
2. Hermann Rauschning, Hitler
Speaks (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons,
1940), p. 234.
3. Fritz August Voigt, Unto
Caesar (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons,
1938), p. 301.
The
True Believer, Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements,
Eric Hoffer, pages 89 to 90.
- Senator Joseph McCarthy and his lawyer
Roy Cohn used fear of Communists to terrorize the nation and build
their careers. They became such vicious demagogues with their
"black lists" of names and their accusations of people being
Communists, or "Communist sympathizers", or "fellow travelers"
that fear of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his staff of mad-dog
anti-Communists replaced fear of Communism in many people's
minds...
- Racists inflame their audiences by
complaining about all of the "special privileges" that the blacks
get through government programs, and complaining that the blacks
are "taking over."
- White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis
routinely preach hatred of blacks and Jews, and arouse fear of
them by accusing them of giant conspiracies and horrible crimes.
- Some other politician might appeal to
a crowd by arousing their laziness and greed, by promising
pork-barrel projects that will put them on easy street. This
tactic is routinely used on millionaire industrialists who are
promised more lucrative government contracts and lower taxes.
- Preachers routinely use fear of death
and fear of Hell to manipulate their audiences.
- Some preachers seek to induce disgust
and homophobia in their audiences, to make them hate and fear
homosexual people. Note that there is always a veiled game of
one-upmanship going on in those tirades: "We are special. We are
more holy than those other people because we don't do the
disgusting things that homosexuals do..."
- Other evangelists preach hatred of
abortionists and women who get abortions, and incite followers to
shoot doctors and bomb clinics, in the name of "Preserving Life."
A.A.
appeals to some bad characteristics, too:
- Arouse fear of death:
- "You
must either work a
strong program or else you will die drunk
in a gutter."
- Unless
each A.A. member follows to the best of his ability our
suggested Twelve Steps to recovery, he almost certainly
signs his own death warrant.
Twelve
Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page
174.
- To
one who feels he is an atheist or agnostic such an
experience seems impossible, but to continue as he is means
disaster, especially if he is an alcoholic of the hopeless
variety. To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a
spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face.
The Big Book, William G. Wilson,
page 44.
- "None
of us in Alcoholics Anonymous is normal. Our abnormality
compels us to go to AA... We all go because we need to.
Because the alternative is drastic, either A.A. or death."
Delirium
Tremens, Stories of Suffering and Transcendence,
Ignacio Solares, Hazelden,
2000, page 27.
- Appeal to vanity, egotism, and lust
for power:
- "We
Alcoholics Anonymous people are special, very special. We
are so special that we are God's
Chosen People. Only unto us has God given the magic
gift of healing alcoholics."
- "I'm
so holy that I spend all day, every day, 'Seeking and Doing the Will of
God' and practicing these
principles in all my affairs (including all of
my affairs with my mistresses, just like Bill Wilson did)."
- "After
you have 10 or 20 years of Time,
you are like unto a saint, respected, obeyed, and admired by
the young. You can have an entire stable of young sponsees
doing your bidding."
- "We
really are Chosen. Our years of getting beaten down by
alcoholism have prepared us for leadership roles. Now that
we number in the millions — not just us, but all of the
Twelve-Step groups — we can become a force for change."
— One of the
A.A. faithful, "sharing" at a meeting.
(Presumably,
after the peaceful, non-violent coup
d'etat, we can have a wonderful alcohol-free country
run by a fundamentalist theocracy, just like Iran. Our new
Fearless Leader will be the Ayatollah Anonymous, who will
enforce the teachings of the Prophet, Bill Wilson.)
By
the way, did anyone else notice the conflict between
"becoming a force for change" and the ban on getting
involved in outside issues — Tradition Ten? That "we number in the millions" phrase
means just one thing: enough registered voters to swing an
election. That's politics, not recovery.
Did
anyone else notice the embedded egotism and arrogance?
Only the alcoholic 12-Steppers are qualified for
leadership roles, because of their years of
bottle-training. Only they can be "a force for change".
And
why do we need such big changes now? Apparently, it's
because the normal people who were running the world, and
keeping things together, for all of those years while we
were busy drinking ourselves to death weren't "The
Chosen People", and they weren't religious
enough, and they haven't been doing a good enough job of
running the country in a moral fashion. But just watch the
changes after us brain-damaged alcoholics and drug addicts
and religious fanatics seize power.
"Boy,
will the ordinary people have to kiss our asses now. The
shoe's going to be on the other foot now... We're really
gonna be a force for change now..."
- Indulge the true
believers' love of absolutes:
- "Bill
Wilson was inspired by God when he wrote the Twelve Steps
and the Big Book —
Bill asked for, and received, Guidance
from God, so every word in the Big
Book is unquestionably true."
- "A.A.
practices the
Oxford Groups' Four
Absolutes — 'Absolute
Honesty, Absolute Love, Absolute Unselfishness, and
Absolute Purity'."
- "Alcoholics
Anonymous is the only possible way to overcome a drinking
problem."
- "You
must totally abstain from drinking, or you will be a
drunkard — 'One drink, One drunk.'"
- Alcoholics
Anonymous is The
Only Way.
- Indulge lust for sex:
- "Newcomers
are easy marks. They are just freshly detoxed, their heads
are still cloudy, and they are very shaky and confused and
insecure, so they are easy to fast-talk and pick up."
- "Every
meeting is a cattle call. It's a good place to pick up women
even if you aren't an alcoholic or an addict."
- "Once
you have (or can claim to have) enough years of sobriety,
you can start sponsoring all of the delicious young things
that you want in your bed. Just walk up to them after their
first meeting, and ask them if they want the
help of a sponsor. And if anyone objects to your
behavior, just point out that you have more Time than they
do."
- "Heck, in Mike
Q's Midtown Group, the old-timers get their pick of
the new underage girls. The girls are even assigned to their
new sponsors by the group's elders."
With all of those great selling points, do you think we can attract
some new members to our "little fellowship"?
- Appeal to
Higher Principles
You must do something, or we must support a certain course of action,
because some Higher Principle requires it:
- Social Darwinism teaches us that the
big and strong people should eat the small and weak people,
because it will improve the species. It's Mother Nature's sacred
law, The Survival of the
Fittest. There is no sense in helping the small, weak,
sickly people, because it will only let them reproduce and pollute
the gene pool.
- The Pope declared that Spain and
Portugal should seize all of the native American people's lands
because they were heathens and "in rebellion against The One True
God", and Spain and Portugal had the moral duty to Christendom and
God to convert the natives to Christianity.
- Manifest Destiny teaches us that white
men in the U.S.A. should kill Indians and steal their land because
it is the white man's God-given destiny to dominate the continent
and build a great nation (— a great white Christian nation, that
is).
- Likewise, Israel currently argues that
they have God-given right to steal the Palestinian people's land
and water because God gave that land to some Jewish ancestors 4000
years ago — and they didn't lose the deed to the Romans 2000 years
ago, like Moses and Jeremiah predicted that the Lord would make
happen, if the Israelites weren't good enough:
"If
you ever make idols, the LORD will be angry, and you won't
have long to live, because the LORD will let you be wiped out.
Only a few of you will survive, and the LORD will force you to
leave the land and will scatter you among the nations." (Deuteronomy
4:26-27)
"Israel,
today I am giving you the laws and teachings of the LORD
your God. And if you don't obey them all, He will put many
curses on you. ...
The LORD will let you be defeated by your enemies, and you
will scatter in all directions." (Deuteronomy
28:15,25)
They
sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire. They
practiced divination and sorcery and sold themselves to do
evil in the eyes of the LORD, provoking him to anger. So the
LORD was very angry with Israel and removed them from His
presence ...
2 Kings 17:17,18
The
LORD said,
People of Judah, I am the LORD your God, but you have
refused to obey me, and you didn't change when I punished
you. And now, you no longer even pretend to be faithful to
me. ...
You have disobeyed me by putting your disgusting idols
in my temple, and now the temple itself is digusting to me.
At Topheth in Hinnom Valley you have built alters where you
kill your children and burn them as sacrifices to other
gods. I would never think of telling you to do this. So
watch out!
Jeremiah 7:28 and 7:30-32
The
LORD said,
I destroyed the land because people disobeyed me and
rejected my laws and teachings. They were stubborn and
worshiped Baal, just as their ancestors did. So I, the LORD
All-Powerful, the God of Israel, promise them poison to eat
and drink. I'll scatter them in foreign countries that they
and their ancestors have never heard of. Finally, I will
send enemy soldiers to kill every last one of them.
Jeremiah 9:12-16
Speaking of
which, in chapters 2, 3, 7, 13, 17, 20, and 25 of
the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses says that the Lord
our God commands us faithful followers to practice
religious bigotry, racism, mass murder, genocide,
and ethnic cleansing, in order to keep people from
worshipping the wrong God (which meant, "any God
besides the blood-thirsty monster that Moses
liked").
- "We
met Sihon and his army in battle at Jahaz, and
the LORD our God helped us defeat them. We
killed Sihon, his sons, and everyone else in
his army. Then we captured and destroyed every
town in Sihon's kingdom, killing everyone, but
keeping the livestock and everything else of
value." (Deuteronomy
2:32-35)
- "The
LORD our God helped us destroy Og and his army
and conquer his entire kingdom of Bashan,
including the Argob region. His kingdom had
lots of villages and sixty towns... We
completely destroyed them all, killing
everyone, but keeping the livestock and
everything else of value." (Deuteronomy
3:3-7)
- "...
you must destroy them without mercy." (Deuteronomy
7:3)
- "...
you must stone them to death. ... Don't show
any pity." (Deuteronomy
13:8-10)
- "You
may hear that some worthless people there have
talked everyone there into worshipping other
gods... ... you must take your swords and kill
every one of them..." (Deuteronomy
13:13-15)
- "...
kill all the men. Take the women and children
as slaves..." (Deuteronomy
20:14-15)
- And
then the book of Numbers gives
us helpful instructions at this point — it
tells us to kill everyone in a neighboring
city, even the baby boys, except for the
virgin girls, whom we shall keep and turn into
our sex slaves:
"Moses
became angry with the army commanders and
said, "I can't believe you let the women live!
They are the ones who followed Balaam's advice
and invited our people to worship the god
Baal-Peor. ... You must put to death every
boy and all of the women who have ever had
sex. But do not kill the young women who have
never had sex. You may keep them for
yourselves. ...
Moses and Eleazar followed the LORD's
instructions, and listed everything that had
been taken from the Midianites. The list
included ... 32,000 young women who had
never had sex. (Numbers
31:14-35)
If Moses' army kept 32,000
young virgins for themselves, then they must
have slaughtered at least three or four
hundred thousand other people — older
married women, widows, younger girls, men,
boys, and infants, because virgin young
women were pretty rare, because the girls
married very young, soon after puberty.
There wasn't much of a time window during
which girls were virgin young women. If
Moses were alive today, he would be taken to
the Hague in chains and put on trial for war
crimes, right beside Slobodan Milosevik and
Robert Mugabe. "Genocide" is
the only name for such racist immoral
conduct.
- "Whenever
you capture towns in the land the LORD your
God is giving you, be sure to kill all the
people and animals. ... If you allow them to
live, they will persuade you to worship their
disgusting gods, and you will be unfaithful to
the LORD." (Deuteronomy
20:16-18)
Now
that is downright wacky. The livestock will
persuade you to worship false gods? Somebody
is insane.
- "The
LORD your God will help you capture the land,
and He will give you peace. But when that day
comes, you must wipe out Amalek so completely
that no one remembers they ever lived." (Deuteronomy
25:19)
And then chapter 21 of
Deuteronomy, verses 11 to 14, handily teaches us
how to make sex slaves out of the surviving enemy
women: If she is beautiful enough to make you want
her, then cut her hair and fingernails, dress her
in Israelite clothes, and give her a month to
mourn for her dead husband or father (whom you
killed). Then you can drag her into your bed and
keep her as your sex slave for as long as you wish
(they call it, "marry her"). If you grow tired of
her, you can get rid of her at any time you wish
(they call it "divorce her"). But if you have had
sex with her — "if you have slept with her as your
wife" — then you have destroyed her cash value —
you have "dishonored her", and you cannot sell her
into slavery any more. You will have to give her
her freedom — just boot her out into the streets
when you are done with her.
Oh well, I guess that's just the price
of getting laid while keeping people from
worshipping the wrong god.
|
- Old Nazis tell us that the S.S. had a noble
spiritual mission to elevate the human race by
protecting and enhancing the purity of the white, blue-eyed, Aryan
race. Eliminating the Jews, Blacks, Gays, and Gypsies, and
preventing them from further contaminating the gene pool, was only
a part of that great program.
"And then did the heroic S.S.
soldiers smite the disgusting Jewish villages in the land of
the Ukraine, completely destroying them all, killing
everyone, but keeping the livestock and everything else of
value, for the LORD was with them: Gott
Sei Mit Uns."
- Communism teaches us that we must
overthrow the rich people and seize all of their property and kill
them all and spread Communism everywhere because Dialectical
Materialism teaches us that the Revolution of the Proletariat is
inevitable — the "Force of History" cannot be stopped.
- For the sake of "Welfare Reform" and
"Compassionate Conservatism", we should kick all of the single
mothers off of welfare. It will "teach them to be responsible."
- In Alcoholics Anonymous, you must quit
drinking because God wants you to, so that you can then spend the
rest of your life "seeking and doing the Will of God." (Which, according to
the Old Testament, might be "Kill
all of your neighbors who are not Jewish, except for the virgin
girls, whom you may keep as your sex slaves.")
- Appeal to
Authorities (Argumentum ad Verecundiam)
Cite and quote all kinds of authorities to support your statements.
Also seem to obtain support from famous people who are not present to
state their actual opinions.
- In Herman Melville's classic novel Moby Dick,
the crew begged Captain Ahab to stop his suicidal monomaniacal
persuit of the white whale. Captain Ahab dismissed the crew's sane
advice with the statement:
"There is one
God who is Lord over all the seas, and there is one Captain who
is lord over all the Pequod. Now get back to your post."
- Religious proselytizers argue,
"Einstein believed in God. Do you think you are smarter than
Einstein?"
- "The Bible says that there were giants
in the Earth in those days, so of course dinosaurs lived at the
same time as people."
- Another appeal to an authority:
"Professor I.M.A. Bore of the Philadelphia Institute of Phrenology
states that Green Eggs and Ham is the most beneficial breakfast
there is. Who are you to claim that you know more than Professor
Bore?"
- A radio advertisement for vitamins
says, "Dr. Sawbones, a recognized authority on blah-blah..."
Recognized by whom? What medical school or university or council
of doctors recognized Dr. Sawbones as an authority on anything? We
got no actual evidence that Dr. Sawbones knows anything, just a
passive-voice declaration that Dr. Sawbones has been "recognized".
- "It's
the World Of God."
I want to conclude with a word about "You gotta
believe it 'cause it's in the Bible." You can bet your
bottom dollar that the person saying it is not referring
to the Sermon on the Mount. Rather he has in mind a
passage you have no business believing in — one, for
instance, supporting homophobia or gender inequality.
No one says, "You gotta believe it 'cause it's in
Shakespeare" or Dante or Goethe or Pushkin. Although not
as much as the Bible, these writings still have a lot of
authority for a lot of people. The difference is they
have no doctrine of
authority.
Why, for Christians, should the Bible alone have a
doctrine of authority, especially when such doctrines
demand either a literalist approach which is
unacceptable or something which waffles hopelessly?
Why does the Bible need a doctrine of authority?
To compel our allegiance? To make us believe something
our reason, experience and conscience reject? How can
anything outwardly command us that has not first
inwardly claimed us? Besides, nobody thinks all biblical
passages are of equal worth, that each represents an
axis on which our whole faith pivots.
William
Sloan Coffin, The
Heart Is A Little To The Left; essays on public
morality, page 50.
William Sloan Coffin served for eighteen
years as Chaplain of Yale University, was Senior
Minister of Riverside Church, and is President
Emeritus of SANE/FREEZE: Campaign for Global Security.
And yes,
I know, that is another appeal to authorities.
|
A variation on the Appeal
To Authorities trick is a bogus appeal to
authorities — city phony or questionable or non-existent
authorities. For example, a sensational TV show about UFOs described
an unknown object as, "...but many experts considered it a UFO."
Excuse me? What "experts"? They were never named. And how does
someone become an expert on UFOs? Can you get a Ph.D. in Ufology?
Will the U.S. Air Force or NASA or the CIA or NSA certify you as an
expert on UFOs? For the purposes of that TV show, it seemed that an
expert was anyone that they wished to call an expert.
Another kind of appeal to authorities is Name Dropping, where the speaker
liberally salts and peppers his speech with the names of the famous,
rich or powerful people, as if movie stars and millionaires have all
of the wisdom of the world.
In A.A. history, Dr. Frank Buchman was of
course the champion name dropper. He spent his whole life in pursuit of
the rich and famous, and dropped their names all over the
place.
In A.A., the rap is:
- "Well, Bill Wilson wrote in his second
book that if you don't do the Twelve Steps, you are signing your
own death warrant, so you had better do all of the Steps all
of the time if you want to live.
- "Joe Blow has twenty years of
sobriety, so when he says that six times seven is 48, you'd better
believe he's speaking from a wealth of experience."
- "Bill Wilson wrote in the Big Book that
alcoholism is a spiritual disease, so it's a proven fact.
- "Dr. William D. Silkworth" said that
alcoholism is a disease coupled with an allergy, so there is no
question about it."
- "Professor George E. Vaillant of
Harvard University says that all
alcoholics should join A.A., even though it doesn't work, so
they should, of course, for their own spiritual well-being."
A variation on Appeal
to Authorities is to get a fake expert to say
what you want people to hear. Use some bozo who got his Ph.D. from a
diploma mill, and call him the greatest expert on the subject in the
country, and have him spout your party line. That's what the current
anti-abortion movement is doing with their pseudo-scientific claims
that abortions harm women's health and drive them to suicide. Their
"expert", the "greatest authority on the subject", got his degree
from a "non-accredited institution", and his "research" is little
more than a collection of anecdotes. (See Bill Moyers, PBS, 20 June
2007.)
Another variation on the Appeal to Authorities technique
is to use the passive voice to award bogus honors to bogus
authorities, as in, "Mr. Ima Bore has been recognized as the
greatest authority on Chinese vitamins." Has been recognized by
whom? (Half a dozen ignorant sycophants?)
Another variation on the Appeal to Authorities technique
is to falsely quote things that were never said or written, as in "Professor Bore declared
in his encyclopedic History
of Western Thinkers that unthinking obedience
to the Powers That Be was the easiest path to happiness",
when Prof. Bore never said any such thing.
Bill Wilson used this stunt when he
declared that William James wrote in his Varieties
of Religious Experience that spiritual
experiences came from "compression at
depth". James never said anything like that. (Bill Wilson was
just stoned out of
his gourd when he read the Varieties
of Religious Experience.)
Bill Wilson also declared that the famous
psychiatrist Carl Jung said that the only cure for alcohol addiction
(dipsomania) was religiomania — religious fanaticism. Jung never said
any such thing either.
- Cite
Credentials
This trick uses real credentials, titles, ranks, certificates,
diplomas, or positions to create the appearance that someone is an
authority of some kind, and is right.
"Professor Ima Bore has 17 degrees from
the Philadelphia Institute of Phrenology, including a Masters in
Egg-Juggling."
Degrees and credentials are all well and
good, but do not necessarily make someone right. Our history is full
of disasters brought on by people with degrees. Degrees are not
wisdom. Most of the people in government have some kind of
credentials, and they still make horrible mistakes and get us into
unnecessary wars and economic crises.
- Use Fake
Credentials
This trick uses false or faked credentials, titles, ranks,
certificates, diplomas, or positions to create the appearance that
someone is an authority of some kind when he is not.
- The use of fake diplomas from a
diploma mill immediately comes to mind. Then the charlaton assumes
the title of "Doctor", and pretends to be a recognized authority
on some subject.
- Speaking of "getting recognized", that
leads to setting up phony "councils" or "committees" or other
organizations to issue fake credentials. For example, a
child-abusing fake teen rehabilitation center, the "Pacific
Coast Academy" in American Samoa, is not licensed or
registered in the United States. The academy's only accreditation,
the academy's owners say, is with the "Samoan Youth Rehabilitation
Agency". But the "Youth Rehabilitation Administration Agency of
Western Samoa" is a fake organization that the child-abusers set
up to give themselves credentials. That fake agency basically does
not exist, and it is not even listed in the telephone directory.
- A vitamin salesman says that his
product is approved by "The Vitamin Council". What the heck is
"The Vitamin Council"?
- Appeal to
Force (Argumentum ad Baculum)
It is an exploitation of fear: "If you don't believe
what we're saying, you will be destroyed by God!"
"You must have faith. It's very important that you believe.
Little Susie didn't believe in Santa Claus, so God got mad at
Susie and turned Susie's father into an alcoholic who got drunk
and beat her. So you'd better believe in Santa if you don't want
that to happen to you."
(And yes, that example also uses the Proof
by Anecdote propaganda technique, and Argue from
Adverse Consequences as well. See how easy it is to
combine several techniques into just a few lines?)
Similarly, if you won't join Alcoholics
Anonymous, then the Big Bad Booze Bogeyman will get you:
- "Alcohol
is cunning, baffling, and powerful" and wants to kill you.
- Your
addiction wants to kill you.
- Your
disease wants to kill you.
- You are
powerless over alcohol, so you will relapse and die drunk in a
gutter.
- Alcohol
will destroy you.
- Your
inevitable fate outside of Alcoholics Anonymous is "Jails,
Institutions, or Death".
- Appeal to
Popularity — Appeal to the People (Argumentum
ad Populum)
Claim that something is obviously true because many people are
convinced that it is true.
"Can
you deny that the Bible is the most widely distributed book of all
time? Can you deny that most people in this country are Christian?
That proves that what we are saying is true."
And:
"A.A.
is considered to be the most successful sobriety program of all
time. Most people believe that A.A. is the best solution for
alcoholism."
Ignore
the facts that there was a time when most people believed that the
snake pit was the best treatment program for mental illness, and
that there was a time when most people believed that the Earth was
flat.
- Appeal to
Numbers (Argumentum ad Numerum)
Argumentum ad Numerum maintains
that the more people who are convinced about something, the more
likely it is to be true, and the more people who do something, the
more right it is. This trick is close to the trick of "Everybody knows" —
"Everybody knows that we are right."
- "He is admired by thousands of loyal
followers."
- "Millions of bottles sold."
- "As seen by millions on TV."
- "More than 1,000,000 sold."
- "Over six million people just like you
have already called." (This one also uses "Appeal to
Common Folk".)
- "Billions of burgers served."
- "They sold over 20,000,000 bottles.
That proves Lipozene really works."
- "When a diet pill sells over 20
million bottles, it's time to try it."
- "With over 15 million tablets sold,
you owe it to yourself to give xxx a try."
Frank Buchman and his Oxford Groups /
Moral Re-Armament organization used this propaganda technique
constantly — they invariably bragged about how many thousands of
people had attended their latest house party or
convention, and about how many people
had been converted by their latest mission.
I am speaking today to the millions across the world who in
these anxious days are increasingly looking to Moral Re-Armament
as the one hope for the future.
Frank Buchman, 29
October 1939, Remaking
the World: The Speeches of Frank Buchman, Frank Buchman,
pages 151-154.
But there was a flaw in their logic:
"In
their recent American tour, the Groups on at least three occasions
— Detroit, Louisville, and Phoenix — found the work of conversion
far harder in towns
where they had previously worked: still more significant, at Louisville, where two
years previously hundreds had made their surrender, they found
only eleven who had remained in any sense active members."
The
Groups Movement, The Most Rev. John A. Richardson, pages
26-28.
Morehouse Publishing Co., Milwaukee, Wis., 1935.
Likewise, A.A. supporters claim that
Alcoholics Anonymous has more than 2 million
members in more than 153 countries world-wide, and they say
that more than 13 million copies of the Big
Book have been printed, and then they say that
those numbers prove that A.A. is a really good organization, and
that all of Bill Wilson's religious beliefs must be true and
correct, and that the Twelve-Step program must really work great.
Such
an illogical argument ignores the fact that Hitler had far more
than 2 million Nazis, and Stalin had far more than 2 million
Communists, but those weren't good organizations, out to save the
world. They also sold lots of copies of their books, Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto, but
neither Communism nor Nazism was a good philosophy for the
betterment of the world, in spite of their many fanatical true
believers. And neither of their systems worked, either, in spite
of their large numbers of members.
Likewise,
Scientology and the Moonies also have large numbers of members,
and they also sell lots and lots of books, but that doesn't make
them good cult religions, either.
The
large numbers proved nothing except that it is possible to
hoodwink a lot of people.
And
A.A. is a complete failure as a treatment program for alcoholism.
It has a very low
success rate and a very high death rate. All of the bragging
about how many people attend the A.A. meetings is pretty
meaningless in the face of the A.A. failure rate and death rate.
- Dismiss by
Numbers
This is just the opposite of Appeal
To Numbers: Dismiss facts or arguments that you don't like by
claiming that they represent very small numbers of people or things.
For example, when I complain that a
certain computer program or feature or piece of hardware does not
work correctly with the Linux operating system, the manufacturer
invariably answers that not very many people run Linux, so he
doesn't need to bother making his product work right with Linux.
Likewise, when I ask for other things to
work correctly, and have all of the features that I need to make
them useful, the maker often answers that not very many people care
about that feature.
The same thing applies to politics.
Politicians say (in so many words):
"Not
very many people really care about that issue, so we won't bother
to do anything about it."
(Never mind what is actually right or wrong...)
- Appeal to
Averages
The speaker appeals to an average that is false or irrelevant.
For example, a serial killer might
declare, "I
may have kidnapped, raped, and murdered half a dozen pretty girls,
but there are 150 million American women whom I did not harm in
any way, so I really have a very good record, on average."
A Congressman or Senator might declare, "Okay, so I got caught
taking 100 bribes. But there were 10,000 bribes that I did not
accept. (The other Congressmen got them.) So I'm really 99%
honest. Really. Honestly."
A.A. members use the same technique
often: "Oh,
yeh, there may be a few cases where sponsors rape
their sponsees, and there may be a few thirteenth-steppers
preying on the newcomers, and there may have been a few cases
where the sponsors told their sponsees not to take their
medications, and then the sponsees died, but on average most
people get through A.A. without getting raped or killed."
- Appeal to
Fame
Claim that something is good because it is famous. This is a kind of Appeal to Numbers.
- This is the famous Joe Blow,
well-known for...
- Featured in newspapers and
magazines...
- As seen on TV...
- Recognized by millions...
- Miss Blondie Starlette, the famous
actress, says you should buy these cosmetics.
- Dismiss by
Lack of Fame
Claim that something is bad or inferior because it is not famous or
well-known.
- I never heard of you before.
- Never heard of it...
- Nobody's ever heard of that one.
- ...Completely unknown outside of his
own village...
- Appeal to
Antiquity (Argumentum ad Antiquitatem)
Validate a proposition by its age.
- "Give me that Old Time Religion."
- "People have been worshipping this way
for thousands of years."
- "The Bible has survived for so long
that it must be
true!"
Compare the Bible to
the Illiad, Gilgamesh, or the Vedas. They are all older.
By the logic of Argumentum
ad Antiquitatem, we should all be worshipping the ancient
Egyptian gods like Ra —
He's far older than Jesus Christ.
- Dismiss by
Antiquity
This is the opposite of the previous technique. Dismiss, discount,
invalidate, or reject something because it is old. This technique
falsely assumes that things are bad or untrue or invalid just because
they are old.
- "I can't believe that you are still
using that old stuff."
- "Man, that's really old. You don't
still believe that stuff, do you?"
- "That's really out of date. Why don't
you get some recent studies?"
- Appeal to
Novelty — Newness (Argumentum ad
Novitatem)
Claim that the newness of a statement proves its validity. This is
just the opposite of Appeal to Antiquity. This stunt assumes that the
newest thing is the truest thing.
Jehovah's Witnesses say: "Yes,
there have been errors in the past, but we receive 'New Light'
from Brooklyn, and so 'the light keeps growing brighter'. You
see how this brings us closer to truth?"
Bill Wilson and other A.A. boosters often
used this trick to argue that Alcoholics Anonymous was wonderful
because it was a great new
method of treating alcoholism; not that it was
just a recycled old
cult religion that had nothing new
or original.
In
all, about two hundred cases of hopeless alcoholism have been
dealt with. As will be seen, about fifty
percent of these have recovered. This, of course, is
unprecedented — never has such a thing happened before.
THE
ONE HUNDRED MEN CORPORATION Prospectus
We
are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Into Action, pages 83-84.
...
the A.A. group is to be understood as an unusually intimate
primary group which sponsors, in a potent learning situation, a
new way of life — a new subculture.
Alcoholics
Anonymous: An Interpretation, Milton A. Maxwell, Ph.D.,
writing in
Society, Culture, and Drinking
Patterns, David J. Pittman and Charles R. Snyder, editors,
page 582.
Milton A.
Maxwell was a member of the Board of Trustees of Alcoholics
Anonymous World Services, Inc..
Cult religion is not a new subculture.
It's a very, very
old thing.
What is really funny is that today A.A. boosters also
like to call A.A.
treatment of alcoholism "traditional treatment", and declare
that it is the dependable, old, tried-and-true method, so they are
trying to use both Appeal
to Novelty and Appeal
to Antiquity on us at the same time. They
are simultaneously trying to claim that Alcoholics Anonymous is
the latest, greatest, and best new invention and also the
dependable traditional safe old thing.
- Dismiss by
Novelty
This technique is just the opposite of the previous one. Invalidate a
proposition by its newness. This technique falsely assumes that things
are bad or untrue or invalid just because they are new.
- "Oh no, I'm not going for any of that
new nonsense. If it hasn't been tested and proven true for a very
long time, then it can't be trusted."
- "People haven't been using that new
method for very long, have they?"
- "And that was invented, when, last
year?"
- "And how many millions of people has
that medicine cured so far?"
- Appeal to the
Exotic
Try to make people believe that something
is good because it came from distant lands or secret traditions or
foreign cultures. Like it was hidden in the Cave of the Ancients in
the Himalayan Mountains by celibate monks for ages, but now we have
the secret.
For example: "American
tourist discovers an Ancient Herbal treatment for hair loss on a
chance trip to India".
Funny that India has even more bald old men than the USA does.
Similarly, women are bombarded with ads
that proclaim that the French women have secret skin treatments that
make them look forever young. I wish it were true....
And a cream for cracked, dry, skin
advertizes: "a skin-softening formula known to ancient Mid-Eastern
civilizations." So haven't we made any improvements
in skin softeners since ancient times?
- Appeal to
Tradition
Argue that people should do something or believe something because
that's the way it has been done for a very long time — it's
traditional.
- "It's
the way we've always done it."
- "It's
our culture."
- "It's
customary."
- "It's
traditional."
- "It's
an ancient belief among our people."
- "You
can't upset everybody by breaking with tradition."
- "It's a
process that's been going on for a long time."
- "If it
was good enough for grandpa, it's good enough for us."
- "It's
the stuff that made America great."
- "The
Founding Fathers believed it."
- "Give
me that old-time religion, it's good enough for me."
The saying, "It's our culture," is often
synonymous with, "Yes, we are doing stupid things. we do stupid
things because we have always done stupid things." Even the Nazis
noticed that logical fallacy: "When I hear people speak of culture,
I reach for my pistol." — Heinrich Himmler.
Treatment centers that use 12-Step
quackery on alcoholics and drug addicts like to call 12-Step-based
treatment "traditional treatment", even though Alcoholics Anonymous
is really only 70 years old, which makes it far from traditional.
Burning girls at the stake for witchcraft, and putting the town
drunkard in stocks and pillory, now that's traditional treatment.
- Appeal to
Normality
Argue that:
- "It's normal."
- "It's policy."
- "It's standard operating procedure."
A close relative to the argument that
"It's Traditional" is the declaration that "It's
Policy", or "It's
Corporate Policy". The speaker gives no good reason for his
behavior; he just says that "We do it this way because we do it this
way."
National Public Radio recently
(2013.05.15) came up with a good example of this: A tourist rip-off
ice cream shop in Rome charges 18 Euros ($21) for a large ice cream
cone. When the owner of the business was asked about the price, he
rationalized, "I don't understand what the big deal is. It's
normal." Of course the local Italians declared that there was
nothing normal about paying $21 for an ice cream cone, and they
would never do it.
- Appeal to
Poverty (Argumentum ad Lazarum)
Exploit the misconception that money corrupts.
(The real proverb is, "The Love of Money is
the root of all evil.")
"A.A. is just a poor non-profit
organization, so it must be a good organization."
(Actually, A.A. has a lot of money, and is committing
serious crimes to get more.)
- Appeal to
Wealth (Argumentum ad Crumenam)
This item is just the opposite of the last one — argue that something
is right because it is so rich and powerful and successful:
"Well,
Micro$uck software must be great stuff — just look at how rich
Bill Gates is."
The converse is:
"If
you're so smart, then why aren't you rich?"
- Appeal to
Common Folk
A politician argues that he is just a regular guy, and what he says is
just common folk wisdom.
"There ain't nobody here but us good old
boys."
George W. Bush uses this technique often,
in claiming that he is not "an elitist" and not "one of the elite"
(in spite of the fact that he was born into a very rich family,
attended Yale University, and joined Skull
And Bones, one of the most elite, exclusive and powerful
fraternities in the world), and was molly-coddled and protected all
of the way to the White House.
Bill Wilson used this stunt often:
We
are average Americans. All sections of this country and many of
its occupations are represented, as well as many political,
economic, social, and religious backgrounds.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G.
Wilson, page 17.
Then Bill tried to pass off his crazy cult
religion that he got from the fascist
Hitler-praising Dr. Frank Buchman as "regular
American":
We
represent no particular faith or denomination. We are dealing only
with general principles common to most denominations.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G.
Wilson, page 17.
- Appeal To
Stupidity
Flaunt an anti-intellectual attitude, and belittle knowledge, wisdom,
intelligence and education.
This technique is closely related to "Common Folks" — "There ain't nobody here but us stupid
common folks. I'm just a regular ignorant Joe, just another man of
the people."
Radio and TV commercials say,
- "I'm no brain surgeon."
- "I'm not a rocket scientist."
- "I don't know how it works, but I
know that it works."
- "I'm no computer whiz but..." (But I'm smart enough
to figure out how to give my money to a fast-talking
salesman.)
- "I'm so stupid that I can't tell the
difference between margarine and butter."
- "I'm so stupid that I can't tell the
difference between real wood siding and plastic, or between real
leather and plastic."
- "I'm so stupid that I can't tell the
difference between real orange juice and chemical soup."
- "My dog is so stupid that he can't
tell the difference between soy beans and bacon."
A corollary to
this technique is contempt for people who have some intelligence or
education. Preachers have been known to declare, "Those elitist people have fancy talk and big words
and clever arguments, and they try to make us feel like fools — but
they are the real fools — simple faith is better."
Unfortunately, lots of politicians win
elections with this one:
"Ah'm
no intellectual. Ah'm just a hard-workin' man of the people. Mah
voters don't know nuthin', and neither do Ah. Ah wouldn't be
caught dayed with any fancy book-larnin' in me. Back home in
Muckshoe, Tayexus, we don't need nuthin' but that good Old-Time
Religion..."
Acting President George W. Bush was born
an instant millionaire and went to Yale University and the Harvard
Business School, but now he cleverly pretends to be just a "common
folk" dumb hick from Texas, just one of the down-home common people,
not one of those digusting "effete" Democrats who know how to read
books. Bush says, "I
don't read newspapers" and "I don't do nuance."
And Alcoholics Anonymous says,
- "Nobody is too stupid to get the
Program, but some people are too intelligent."
- "Stop Your Stinkin' Thinkin'."
- "Your best thinking got you here."
- "Utilize,
Don't Analyze."
- ...
we agnostics and atheists chose to believe that our human
intelligence was the last word... Rather vain of us, wasn't
it?
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William
G. Wilson, We
Agnostics, page 49.
- Antirationalism
Antirationalism is another propaganda trick that is similar to
anti-intellectualism, but it's different in an important way.
Antirationalism promotes the idea that there are no such things as
valid, reliable facts or hard evidence, just various conflicting
opinions. Speakers who are pushing antirationalism argue that "It's just my opinion
versus your opinion, and it's all so controversial that we can't
really know anything for sure."
A variation on this technique is the old
line,
"Oh heck, you can
never really know for sure what caused it... Maybe it was this, or
maybe it was that...",
or
"Who knows? Maybe
it's true. You can never know anything absolutely for sure."
That is just a dodge to avoid admitting
the truth. Yes, we can know some things for sure:
- The earth is round, not flat.
- The Moon is not made of green cheese.
- Bacteria, not evil spirits, cause
strep throat and tuberculosis.
- Sour milk is not caused by witches
casting nasty spells.
- Penicillin works better than faith
healing for curing streptococcal infections.
- Alcoholism is not a "spiritual
disease" which can
only be cured by a "Higher Power" (or not even
cured, but just postponed).
Life isn't all just a vague mystery where
maybe one thing is true, or maybe a different thing is true, and
everybody has their own opinion, and nobody knows anything for sure.
See Tim Minchin's Storm video. The
girl "Storm" was the personification of antirationalism: "Life
is a mystery. We never know anything for sure."
- Fake Philosophy: "It's
all just an illusion."
Obfuscate the issue with fake philosophy, claiming that "It's all just an image.
It's all just an illusion. We don't actually see reality. You never
really know anything for sure."
For example, a scheming defense lawyer
might tell a witness to a murder, "Isn't it true that we don't
actually see reality? In fact, our two eyes don't even see the same
image. Light plays on our retinas, causing electrical impulses to
flow through the optic nerves into the brain, where the impulses are
amplified, inverted, filtered, disassembled, reassembled, and formed
into what we interpret as three-dimensional images of something. But
what we think we see bears little resemblance to what actually
happened in front of our eyes, out there in the objective world. In
fact, it's all nothing but a play of vibrating atoms. Even
interpreting those atoms as being divided into separate, individual,
objects is an illusion. In truth, it's all just a single unified
Universe of vibrating atoms. So you didn't really see my client
murder someone, did you? You only thought you saw it. You
experienced an illusion."
The obvious answer to that is, "Since
it's all just an illusion, you shouldn't have any objection to the
jury finding your client guilty, and the state executing him for
murder. He isn't really being executed. It's all just an illusion.
You only think you are watching him get executed."
- Appeal to
Desperation and Argument
from Impotence
Argue that we must do
something, that we cannot just do nothing, and since we don't
know what to do, let's do what I want.
Or, since we can't do what is really the right thing, let's do what I
suggest as an alternative.
Twelve-Step-oriented recovery counselors
use this strategem a lot. They argue that "Perhaps the
Twelve-Step programs aren't giving us as high a
success rate as we would like, but they are
the only game in town. We can't just stop treating the
alcoholics and drug addicts — we
have to do something — so let's continue to
push all of our patients into 12-Step meetings, because it's the
only thing we've got."
Actually, the 12-Step meetings are not
the only thing available. There are SMART, SOS,
and WFS meetings,
just for starters. And the most successful program of all is people simply quitting
alone, on their own, saving their own lives by themselves. But
the 12-Step true believers stubbornly ignore that. And of course the
counselors ignore that — their jobs are threatened by the successful
do-it-yourselfers.
- Argue from
Ignorance (Argumentum ad Ignorantiam)
Claim that an idea should be considered valid because there is nothing
to prove otherwise:
"Nobody
ever proved that the miracles in the Bible didn't occur,
did they?"
And A.A. members argue, "Well,
nobody has ever proven that the Twelve Steps cause people to
commit suicide, have they? So the Twelve Steps can't be harmful
to people's mental health."
Actually, Dr. and Harvard Prof. George E. Vaillant,
Class A Trustee of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, came
pretty close to proving it. He showed that A.A.-based treatment of
alcoholics produced a higher
death ratethan any other method of treating alcoholics.
And the list of
A.A. suicides just keeps on growing.
- Appeal to
Pity (Ad Misericordiam)
A clever defense lawyer will argue, "Look
at the poor defendant. He has already suffered so much, there is no
point in convicting him of his crimes, in spite of the evidence
against him."
- Exploit
Wishful Thinking, and Tell Them What They Want To Hear
Tell the audience whatever they wish to
hear, rather than some unpleasant truths. Many a politician has won
an election by using this technique.
- A weight-loss commercial says: "You
don't have to diet. You don't have to exercise. Just take these
pills and lose weight. Best of all, 75% of the weight that you
lose is fat, not water."
- Other people who are in
denial say: "Oh heck, the oil isn't going to
run out. There is an unlimited supply of oil down there, just
waiting for us to find it. You don't need to start planning for a
future without cheap oil."
- "Globalism will bring us a worker's
paradise where everybody is happy and rich. It doesn't matter if
all of the factories in America get shut down and sold to China.
We don't need those old "smoke-stack industries". We can all make
a good living by shuffling around pieces of information on
computer screens in the wonderful new 'Information Age'."
(Except for all of the "service workers", like the janitors and
burger-flippers, who will get minimum wage...)
- "Global warming? What global warming?
We don't need to worry about our enormous rate of burning fossil
fuels. It's wonderful, how much we get to use. Our standard of
living is defined by how much energy we use up. The more, the
better."
- "If we fight the terrorists and other
Moslems over there, it will keep them from attacking us over here.
We are safe."
- "Jesus is on our side. He isn't even
disturbed by the 30,000 children we have killed in Iraq, because
we are in a holy war against Islam and a little collateral damage
is unavoidable."
(Jesus didn't really say, "Whatever
you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.")
- "Calerpa
taxifolia isn't going to destroy the entire
ecology of the Mediterranean Ocean. Don't worry. There is nothing
to get excited about."
- Many a guy has gotten laid by using
this technique too:
"Oh yeh,
baby. Of course I'll love you forever. No doubt about it. Let's
do it."
Konrad
Heiden explained how Adolf Hitler used this technique:
Sometimes Hitler could not decide whether to heap the blame
for everything on France or on the Jews.
[Then
Heiden gave examples of Hitler giving speeches where he
contradicted himself.]
Thus the prophet falsifies his own words. With the deepest
conviction he contradicts his deepest convictions. It is as though
the various heads of a many-headed beast were biting one another.
The truth is irremediably buried beneath these deceptions
and contradictions. How, then, can the speaker expect to put
through a single incisive, suitable lie, when from speech to
speech, from sentence to sentence, he changes even the lies? Whom
does he expect to persuade that he himself believes a single one
of these mutually contradictory lies? And to what purpose does he
try to spread an opinion among the people, when on the very next
day he is going to sacrifice that opinion?
Such questions are asked by those who do not understand
propaganda, who regard propaganda as the art of instilling an
opinion in the masses. Actually it is the art of receiving an
opinion from the masses.
The usual conception of the great propagandist is the
commanding, purposive mind, who by magic suggestion subjects an
empty animal mass to his will; Marc Anthony, who in a single
speech makes a thousand friends out of a thousand enemies. It is
in this light that most of our contemporaries view the greatest
propagandist of our day, Adolf Hitler, and this is Adolf Hitler's
own idea of himself. With the authority of success, he has put
over a false theory of the world; the theory that he dominates the
minds of millions by tirelessly hammering the same simple
statement into them. But this only shows that he never listened to
himself very closely, and was never too eager to illuminate his
own success. He does not hammer the same simple statement into the
minds of millions; on the contrary, he played with the masses and
titillated them with the most contradictory assertions. It is this
art of contradiction which makes him the greatest and most
successful propagandist of his time. He does not dominate the
minds of millions, his mind belongs to them. Like a piece of wood
floating on the waves, he follows the shifting currents of public
opinion. This is his true strength.
The true aim of political propaganda is not to influence,
but to study, the masses. The speaker is in constant communication
with the masses; he hears an echo, and senses the inner vibration.
In forever setting new and contradictory assertions before his
audience, Hitler is tapping the outwardly shapeless substance of
public opinion with instruments of varying metals and varying
weights. When a resonance issues from the depths of the substance,
the masses have given him the pitch; he knows in what terms he
must finally address them.
Rather than a means of directing the mass mind, propaganda
is a technique for riding with the masses. It is not a machine to
make wind, but a sail to catch the wind. The mass, however, is a
phenomenon of deepest world importance — this leveled
conglomeration of fools and wise men, heroes and cowards, proud
and humble, the unusual and the average. This mass, with its
anonymous intellectual pressure, its unexpected moods and
unconscious desires, mirrors and echoes the commanding force of
prevailing conditions; it embodies and personifies the necessities
and resistances of the objective world; it expresses the silent
command of Fate in a mysterious murmur. It is the art of the great
propagandist to detect this murmur and translate it into
intelligible utterance and convincing action. If he can do this,
his utterances and actions may be full of contradictions — because
the contradictions lie in the things themselves; they may be
deceptive and misleading. The lies of the propagandist reveal the
deeper truth of the whole world's cynicism and dishonesty. By his
lies the great propagandist involuntarily shows himself to be an
honest, self-revealing prophet of the Devil.
Der
Fuehrer, Konrad Heiden, pages 139-141.
- It Ought To
Be True, So It Is.
This logical fallacy is a form of wishful thinking, where people are
willing to believe that things are true just because it seems like
they ought to be true.
People routinely believe in a wide
variety of screwy things just because they like the sounds of them,
and think that they ought to be true:
- Higher beings who ride around in
flying saucers are here to save us (from our own stupidity).
- Ghosts of dead saints come and help
some people, and save some children from disasters (while letting
many others die).
- Ghosts of dead pets come back and save
their former owners from various accidents.
- The ghost of the Virgin Mary routinely
goes around the world making statues bleed, just to increase the
faith of the wavering doubters.
- God has nothing better to do with his
time than save alcoholics from themselves by punishing them and
"beating them with the whip of alcoholism" and forcing them to
join the 12-Step religion.
Clever politicians and propagandists will
exploit peoples' willingness to believe such things by repeating
such stories, which makes the gullible members of the public think
that the politician must be really good, and really spiritual.
- It's
Too Terrible To Tell
The essense of this technique is:
"We
know a truth, but it is too terrible to tell, and to do so would
harm too many innocent people, so we can't say it, and you
shouldn't say it either."
This argument was used by the Church in
Rome during the Middle Ages to declare that you couldn't tell the
truth about all of the crimes and sins of the Church — burning
millions of women and girls as witches, molesting the alter boys,
selling everything from indulgences to Bishop's offices, and using
the Grand Inquisition and heresy trials to silence the critics — "You
can't criticize the Church, because if you do, it will destroy
the faith of the weak people, and then they won't be able to get
into Heaven."
Politicians routinely use this technique,
too. They believe that we can't hear the truth about things like
global warming or peak oil, because if the people really knew the
whole truth about what is going on, the people would panic and
society would fall apart. The powers that be think that the truth
about those things is too terrible to tell, so the politicians don't
tell us the truth.
Contemporary politicians also use this
trick to avoid telling the truth about what the U.S. Government has
been doing in a variety of areas: "It's too terrible to tell, and if
it was publicly known, it would help the terrorists. So don't ask
what we have been doing."
Today, with A.A., the rap is:
"You can't tell the
truth about Alcoholics Anonymous. You shouldn't expose:
- the
deceptive recruiting,
- the
bait-and-switch stunts,
- the perjury,
- Bill
Wilson's insanity and dishonesty,
- the goofy,
unscientific, grossly wrong ideas about alcoholism,
- the grossly
inflated 'success rate',
- the
complete failure of A.A. as treatment for alcoholism, or
- the cult
religion nonsense,
—
because if you do, it will make a bunch of the weaker alcoholics
relapse and die drunk, and it will all be your fault. If you tell
the truth, you will be 'doing an
immense disservice to those who are trying to achieve
sobriety'."
- Argue from
Adverse Consequences
Put pressure on the decision maker by pointing out the dire
consequences of an "unfavorable" decision. This includes the Slippery Slope argument.
- "If we let Viet Nam go, then all of
Southeast Asia will fall to Communism like a row of dominoes going
down. Then we won't be able to stop Communism. We will lose the
whole world."
- If we curb the power of corporations,
we will destroy the American business environment. We can't tell
corporations that they don't have God-given civil rights like
freedom of speech and freedom to influence voters, or else all of
the corporations will flee to foreign countries that treat them
better. (Countries like China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea,
Singapore, Thailand, Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvadore — the
countries to which they have already moved
their factories.)
- Likewise, we can't enforce
environmental protection laws against those same corporations, or
else they will move to foreign countries that have no such laws,
and that will be the end of America.
Bill Wilson used this technique a lot,
and Alcoholics Anonymous still does — constantly. Do what they say,
or else you will die in agony:
- Argue from
Beneficial Consequences
This is just the opposite of Argue from
Adverse Consequences. In this case, argue that people should do
what you wish because they will benefit if they do so.
For example,
"You
should believe in God because it will be beneficial to you to do
so. You will get feelings of peace and serenity from knowing that
you are on the right side of the question. You will get into
Heaven after you die."
That is bad logic. The reason for
believing in God is because one believes that there is such an
entity. What benefits someone might get from such a belief is a very
different issue.
Alcoholics Anonymous uses this technique
too:
- "You should just accept and believe
all of the A.A. teachings, and Work
A Strong Program, no matter how strange, outlandish,
illogical, or heretical the A.A. practices really are, because
working the A.A. program will make you sober, happy, and
spiritual."
- "It doesn't matter whether the Steps
make sense to you. Just do them and you will get a new life."
- "Keep Coming Back! It Works!"
- Apply Time
Pressure
Apply time pressure to get someone to do something.
Advertisements and commercials use this
trick all of the time:
- "This offer is only good for 5
days."
- "Don't miss this unique
opportunity."
- "This sale ends on Sunday."
- "This invitation will expire if we
don't get a response before the end of the weekend."
- "We really need a response back
before the end of Friday."
- "Only three days left."
- "Can you give before midnight?"
- "Supplies are limited."
- "There is talk of a national
shortage."
- "Buy XYZ today. The price will go up
tomorrow."
- "First come, first serve. The early
birds will get the best items."
- "All of our mortgage experts are
waiting to help you, but you must call right now."
- "If you call in the next ten
minutes, you get a free gift."
- "If you call in the next fifteen
minutes, you can get two for the price of one."
- "Hurry. When it's gone, it's gone."
- "Call now. Callers get priority."
Bill Wilson used this trick to tell
prospective recruits that they had better
join A.A. quickly, before they were killed by their "severe
affliction" without even realizing what was happening — "many are doomed who
never realize their predicament." (TheBig Book,
3rd & 4th Editions, William G. Wilson, page 92.)
- Argue For
Delay
This is just the opposite of applying time pressure: Argue that
- "We must not be hasty."
- "Let's reconsider,"
- "Let's think about it some more."
- "It's too early."
- "The time isn't right."
- "Let's form a committee and do a
study."
- "We need more information before
making a decision. We need to be sure."
- "We haven't gathered enough
evidence."
- "That isn't in the current budget.
Maybe next year."
- "We don't want to do anything right
now."
- "The timing isn't good."
- "People aren't ready for that yet."
- "I'm sure that will happen sometime
in the future, but not this year."
Alcoholics, drug addicts, and cigarette
smokers use this propaganda technique to avoid actually quitting
their bad habits:
- "Frankly,
I'm not ready to quit just yet."
- "I'll think about it."
- "Let's not be hasty."
- "Let's think about it some more."
- "Let's reconsider."
- "This is a big step. I need to
prepare myself."
- "Maybe next month."
- "I'm under too much stress to quit
right now."
- "Let's not do anything right now."
- "I'm not ready just now."
- "I need time to get ready."
- "I'm not prepared to do anything."
- "Not today."
- "I've got too many other things
going on right now."
- Stall
This is just the physical application of Argue
For Delay. Really do delay. Use every possible excuse for
not doing something.
A reputable study committee reported to
TEPCO (the Tokyo Electric Power Company) that the tsunami protection
at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant was inadequate. TEPCO responded
by doing nothing. (Fixing the problem would have been expensive.)
When asked why they had done nothing about the problem, TEPCO
replied, "We are still reviewing the matter."
And TEPCO was still reviewing the matter
two years later when the earthquake and tsunami struck, disabling
the cooling systems in the reactors and causing the worst nuclear
meltdown in the history of mankind.
- The Real
Scotsman Fallacy
This logical fallacy discards facts that conflict with a sweeping
generalization by using the word "REAL" as a qualifier. It is a kind
of observational selection that uses twisting of the meanings of words
to apparently change the facts.
The Real Scotsman Fallacy works like
this:
Joe: "All
Scotsmen play golf."
Fred: "But
look at Brian MacGregor over there. He's a Scotsman, and he
doesn't play golf."
Joe: "Ah,
but if he were a real Scotsman,
he would play golf."
Alcoholics Anonymous uses that fallacy
like this:
- Stepper: "Alcoholics Anonymous is the only way for an
alcoholic to overcome alcoholism. All alcoholics simply mustjoin A.A. and work a strong
program if they wish to live.
- Critic: "But look at Terry over there. He didn't join A.A.,
but he recovered from alcoholism anyway. He has more years of
sobriety than lots of you steppers."
- Stepper: "Oh, but he isn't a real alcoholic.
If he were a real alcoholic, then he wouldn't be able to quit
drinking without Alcoholics Anonymous and doing the Twelve
Steps. If you can get sober, and stay sober, without Alcoholics
Anonymous, then you were never really an alcoholic, just a
'heavy drinker'."
Likewise:
- All alcoholics must get a "higher
power" and "surrender to it" in order to quit drinking and stay
sober.
- If someone quits drinking and stays
sober without "surrendering to a higher power", then he wasn't a
real alcoholic.
- Inverse Real
Scotsman Fallacy
This is very much like the Real Scotsman Fallacy, but works
"backwards".
"Steve B." explained it this way:
If
I say I can spot homosexuals because they wear pink shirts, and it
turns out they are homosexuals, then I'm right and that proves my
system of identification is sound.
But
if I'm wrong and they turn out not to be homosexuals, then I
just say "Yes they are, because all people wearing pink shirts
are homosexual, no matter whether they show any actual signs of
homosexuality or not!" So I'm still right.
Similarly:
- Declare that Joe Blow is an alcoholic
because he acts like an alcoholic.
- If someone responds, "No, he isn't an
alcoholic. He doesn't drink alcohol at all. He never drank."
- The answer is, "Yes, he is so an
alcoholic, even if he isn't 'a practicing alcoholic', because he
is displaying 'alcoholic thinking'."
Some crazy A.A.
parents have told their children that the children
are alcoholics because they are "acting alcoholically", even though
the children have never drank alcohol.
- Inconsistency
The way that data is analyzed, or logic is applied, is inconsistent.
For example,
- Congress bases military budgets on
worst-case scenarios, but it thriftily ignores scientific
projections of environmental dangers because those dangers are not
"adequately proven".
- Likewise, marijuana and LSD are
outlawed, and dealers of those drugs receive very harsh prison
sentences, because "they might be dangerous", or "they might lead
to harder drugs."
But dealers of tobacco and alcohol, the two deadliest drugs in
America, do not even get a traffic ticket, in spite of the fact
that:
- The annual death toll from tobacco
is 420,000 Americans per year.
- The annual death toll from alcohol
is 100,000, plus about 17,000 in drunk-driving automobile
accidents (40% of all fatal automobile accidents).
- The annual death toll from LSD is
zero.
- The annual death toll from
marijuana is zero.
- Rich people argue that we should not
give money to poor people, because it acts as a disincentive for
them to work hard and accomplish things for themselves. But those
same rich people demand repeal of the inheritance tax so that
their children can inherit hundreds of millions of dollars
untaxed, and they don't see that as a disincentive for their own
children to work hard and accomplish things for themselves.
-
- The dogmatic fundamentalist true
believers say that our scientists are all wrong — even evil —
when they talk about evolution;
- and the believers say that our
scientists are immoral when they want to use stem cells to
cure our diseases;
- but then they expect our
scientists to be a bunch of real geniuses whose ingenuity and
technology is going to save our lives when the world's oil
supply runs out. ("Don't worry, they will come up
with another great invention and another technological
quick fix, just like always.")
- And, when those true believers get
sick, they don't hesitate to run to the hospital and get
medical care from those doctors who believe in science,
evolution, and stem cell research.
- America is a land of freedom and
inalienable rights that are listed in the Bill of Rights. But if
the acting President or the Attorney General labels you an enemy
of the people, then you don't have any rights.
That
is not written in the Constitution, but that's how Bush and
Ashcroft read it anyway.
- Poor young black men who steal $5000
worth of stuff are put in prison for several years because "they
are a danger to the community", while rich white men in expensive
business suits who steal $50,000,000 get a year of hard time plus
some community service because they were "non-violent" when they
stole all of the little old ladies' retirement money.
Think: Ivan Boesky and Michael
Milken.
Boesky, who was the bigger villain of the pair, got reduced time
by snitching on Milken, and then both only served about two
years... (Ironically, Boesky is now retired to his yacht in the
Caribbean, while Milken has been doing a lot of social work,
apparently trying to make some amends.)
Watch
the Enron investigations
for some new villains who will be forced to retire to their
winter palaces in Aspen, rich, now that their big pump-and-dump
stock swindle is over,
- Ken Lay with at least $37,683,8872 (perhaps
as much as a few hundred millions of dollars),
- Jeff Skilling with something
between $63,000,000 and $70,000,000,2
- Andrew Fastow with $60,600,000,2
- Michael Kopper with $10,000,000,2
- Lou Pai with something between
$62,936,552 and $250,000,000,2
- Rebecca Mark with $79,000,000,2
- Tom White (acting Pres. G. W.
Bush's Secretary of the Army) with $14,000,000,2
- Ken Rice with $70,000,000,2
while the employees of Enron and the subsidiaries like Pacific Gas and Electric (in
Portland, Oregon) that Enron bought and sucked dry, now have no
retirement funds at all left. Nothing. And many of those retirees
are just too old to go back to work. So what do they do? Join the
homeless people, I guess.
But those smiling, well-dressed,
suit-and-tie, white-collar criminals weren't "violent" when they
stole Grandma and Grandpa's retirement funds.
And the U.S. government isn't going
to replace their retirement funds is it? — Not even the part
that was given to the politicians, mostly Republicans, in
"campaign contributions". The Republicans are talking about
spending the wealth of the nation on a war with oil-rich Iraq,
not on taking care of our own old people.
The Republicans were all for an
extremely expensive bailout of the savings and loan
institutions, which happened after, and was caused by, the
Republicans deregulating banking, but they won't do a thing for
the retirees who got burned by Enron after the Republicans
deregulated the natural gas industry.
- I have many more,
far too many to put on this page. Inconsistency just
seems to be The Way of
the American Politician. Benjamin Franklin once quipped that
consistency was the hum-drum of little minds. If that is so, then
our politicians in Washington D.C. must be world-class geniuses.
A.A. dogma and literature are loaded with
inconsistencies and contradictions. For example,
- We learn from the Big
Book that if someone abstains from
drinking for thirteen years without going to
A.A. or doing the Twelve Steps, and then relapses, it proves that
you can't do it without A.A.. But if someone quits drinking for
only six months by going to meetings and doing the Twelve Steps,
then that proves that A.A. and the Twelve Steps work.
(Even though the vast majority of Bill Wilson's new A.A. members either did
not quit drinking or soon relapsed, and even though half of
the authors of the original Big
Book stories returned to drinking, Bill still
insisted that his "spiritual" program for sobriety worked great.
And Bill Wilson considered all of the non-members who didn't quit
drinking as proof that you can't do it alone.)
- Likewise, according to A.A., if
someone does the Twelve Steps and quits drinking, then that proves
that the Twelve Steps work for making people quit drinking. But if
someone does the Twelve Steps and then relapses, it doesn't prove
that the Twelve Steps make people drink.
- If someone killed himself with
alcohol, Bill Wilson considered him a failure and a real loser.
But if someone killed himself with tobacco, Bill Wilson considered
him "a most
effective member of A.A.", someone whose "more serious
ailments were being rapidly cured".
- When someone comes to A.A. meetings
and then quits drinking and stays quit, A.A. gleefully claims the
credit for the success. But when someone comes to A.A. meetings
and then drinks himself to death, A.A. says that it isn't
responsible for the failure.
- And I have plenty
more...
- Compare
Apples To Oranges
This is similar to the previous item,
inconsistency, but has special twists of its own.
In a radio commercial for a tax
preparation service (Spring 2005), we heard:
"Jackson-Hewitt's
average refund is $400 more than the average IRS refund."
Well of course it is. They are comparing
apples to oranges. The average refund from the IRS includes all of
the poorest people in the country. You have to actually make some
money before you need a professional tax accountant to prepare your
tax forms for you, and can pay for it. The average Jackson-Hewitt
customer is lots richer than the average minimum-wage janitor or
burger-flipper, so of course they get larger refunds. The commercial
tries to imply that the larger refund is due to the Jackson-Hewitt
accountants' skill in finding deductions, but I suggest that it is
due to their customer's higher incomes and higher withholdings, and
hence, larger refunds due.
Over
in "the recovery community", one A.A. defender announced:
I
am appalled at such blatant misconstrual of the
program of Alcoholics Anonymous. AA is Spiritual,
true, but not religious. An edition of Webster's
defines the two as follows:
- Religion - any system
of faith or worship; the outward manifestation of
belief in a Supreme or Superior Being; love and
obedience toward God; piety; monastyic vow or
state; conformity to Biblical precepts; devotion;
fidelity.
- Spiritual -
incorporeal; not material; possessing the nature
of qualities of a spirit; mental or intellectual;
pure; holy; heavenly-minded; not lay or temporal;
ecclesiastical; relating to matters of a sacred
nature; not worldly; the spiritual nature as
oposed to physical.
Another edition of Websters (which leaves the Biblical
concept out) says:
- Religion - The worship
of God or gods. A belief; a system of doctrines of
faith and worship.
- Spiritual - Not
material; Relating to the moral feelings; Pure,
holy, sacred.
|
But note that the writer was comparing a
noun to an adjective. So of course the noun "religion" sounds much
more solid and material than the adjective "spiritual".
If we compare the adjective "religious"
to the adjective "spiritual", some of the important distinctions
vanish. In fact, the words become synonyms:
religious: (The American
Heritage Dictionary, Second College Edition, 1982.)
- Of, pertaining to, or
teaching religion.
- Adhering to or manifesting
religion, pious.
- Extremely faithful,
conscientious: religious
devotion to duty.
spiritual: (The American
Heritage Dictionary, Second College Edition, 1982.)
- Of, relating to,
consisting of, or having the nature of spirit; not
tangible or material.
- Of, concerned with, or
affecting the soul.
- Of, from, or
pertaining to God.
- Of or belonging to a church or
religion; sacred.
- Pertaining to or
having the nature of spirits; supernatural.
|
And Random House says:
Spiritual (Random House
Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition, 1993.)
- of or pertaining to
sacred things or matters; religious; devotional;
sacred.
|
As the judge said in the case of Grandberg v. Ashland County, a 1984
Federal 7th Circuit Court ruling concerning judicially-mandated A.A.
attendance:
The
distinction between religion and spirituality is meaningless, and
serves merely to confuse the issue.
The converse of comparing apples to
oranges is equating them — declaring that they are the same thing —
the logical fallacy of Conflation,
False Equality.
- Special
Pleading
Special pleading typically refers to the Will of God. There are other
"special pleadings," like the Communist's "Force of History" or a
misguided environmentalist's "Mother Nature", but God's
Will is still the most popular excuse for doing
some horrible things.
Don't do something because I tell you to
do it, but rather, do it because it is the Will of God, and God will
be happy if you do it for Him.
- "Quit drinking",
- "Do The Twelve Steps",
- "Shove the Twelve Step religion on
every sick person you can get",
- "Blow Up The World Trade Center and
kill thousands of innocent people",
- or "Launch a Blitzkrieg 'Shock And Awe' bombing
campaign on Bhagdad and kill thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians
with cluster bombs and the indiscriminate use of overwhelming
American firepower"
... Heck, everybody's just doing the Will of God.
An
Israeli newspaper even quoted George W. Bush as saying that God
told him to attack Afghanistan and Iraq...
"God
told me to strike at al Qaeda, so I struck them; then God told
me to strike at Saddam, so I did."
Usually,
if someone says that God told him to go kill somebody, and then he
actually goes and does it, we lock that dangerous nut-case up in a
mental hospital for a very long time...
- Self-Sell
This one is so simple and slick that it is brilliant: Instead of
trying to cram a particular attitude or belief down the throats of
some unwilling recipients, get them to convince themselves of the
validity of your ideas. Do something like ask them for their help in
promoting a good thing, so that they ask themselves,
- "How can we convince the general
public of the virtues of this program?"
- "How can we get people to support this
worthwhile cause?"
They will sell themselves on the idea as they try to sell it to
others.
For
a humorous example of this, see the movie "Cold
Turkey" which starred Dick Van Dyke, who acted as a preacher
who had to make his whole town quit smoking. The local Neo-Nazis
were a particularly tough bunch to get to quit. Van Dyke won them
over by enlisting them as smoking-ban enforcers. Their
only request: "Can we wear arm-bands?"
Another
twist on Self-Sell is that whenever a cult sends members out
recruiting, those recruiters will end up selling themselves on the
cult's dogma when they try to convince others of the truth of the
cult's teachings. Smart cult leaders know this, and get new converts
out recruiting, fast. It's called "Actionizing." A.A. calls it your
"Twelfth Step."
The Big
Book gives us a clear example of that in the
autobiographical story The
Vicious Cycle. The author, James Burwell, a former skeptic and
unbeliever, described setting up a new A.A. group in Philadelphia,
after having been a member in New York City:
When
I started to tell the boys how we did it in New York and all about
the spiritual part of the program, I found that they would not
believe me unless I was practicing what I preached. Then I found
that as I gave in to this spiritual or personality change I was
getting a little more serenity. In telling newcomers how to change
their lives and attitudes, all of a sudden I found I was doing a
little changing myself.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Jim
Burwell, The Vicious
Cycle, page 249.
(Yes,
that brainwashing program is powerful and works well, doesn't it?
It even works on you while you are using it on others...)
- Repetition
for Emphasis (Argumentum ad Nauseam)
Drive home an unproven point by repeating it so often that it might
become accepted by rote.
Adolf Hitler declared in Mein Kampf that
effective propaganda must confine itself to a few points and repeat
them over and over. Hitler wrote:
It
[propaganda] must repeat those points over and over again until
the public believes it. The principles behind propaganda are the
same principles of mind control, hypnotic suggestion, and mental
programming: distraction and repetition. With propaganda,
distraction draws attention away from information that is true and
directs attention to information that is false. Repetition of the
false information imbeds it in your subconscious mind so that your
acceptance of its truth becomes a conditioned response. You accept
this information as true without thinking whenever it is presented
to you again.
"If
you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people
will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be
maintained only for such time as the State can shield
the people from the political, economic and/or military
consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally
important for the State to use all of its powers to
repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of
the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the
greatest enemy of the State."
Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda
"See,
in my line of work you got to keep repeating things
over and over and over again for the truth to sink in,
to kind of catapult the propaganda."
George W. Bush
|
Alcoholics Anonymous has a standard list
of unproven (and even disproven)
assumptions that they constantly repeat:
- A.A. is the best, the time-tested, the proven way to
recover from alcoholism.
- Keep Coming Back, It Works! (If you
make it work...)
- Alcoholics need the Twelve Steps to
teach them spirituality. They didn't know anything about God
before they met the Alcoholics Anonymous recruiter.
- The Twelve Steps are a great program
for quitting drinking.
- Nobody can do it alone. You need your
support group.
- Alcohol is cunning, baffling, and
powerful, and wants to kill you.
- The Twelve Steps are "simple spiritual
principles" (rather than cult
practices).
- God is pleased when you do Bill
Wilson's Twelve Steps.
- "RARELY have we seen a person fail,
who has thoroughly followed our path..."
- Antimetabole
An antimetabole is a rhetorical device where you reverse a phrase to
get a simplistic slogan that sounds profound, but isn't, like:
- "Unless you learn to master your rage,
your rage will become your master." (from the
movie Mystery Men)
- "When the going gets tough, the tough
get going."
Alcoholics Anonymous uses this device
often, as in,
- "The program doesn't fail people,
people fail the program."
- "The Steps don't work unless you work
the Steps."
- "The Steps don't work to make you quit
drinking; you must quit drinking to work the Steps."
- "Working the Steps won't make you quit
drinking right; quitting drinking will make you work the Steps
right."
- "You don't work the Steps to quit
drinking; you quit drinking to work the Steps."
- "AA does not leave US — We leave AA."
- Reification
Treat something abstract as real.
"I
know there's a God; I've felt him in my life."
This statement can be explained in several ways that do not require an
actual god to exist.
By that faulty logic, it would be equally
valid to say that if I feel nervous while walking in creepy dark
alleys in bad parts of town at night, that proves that Satan and
vampires are real:
"I
know they are real; I've felt them breathing down the back of my
neck at night."
What if someone said to you, "My Satan is
real. I feel him with me in everything that I do. I can feel his
presence right now."? Would you take that person's statements as
valid information, and consider that person a reliable source of
wisdom about God, Satan, religion, life, the universe, and
everything?
Or would you conclude that he is a raving
lunatic?
Now what if somebody says, "My Jesus is
real. I feel him with me in everything that I do..."?
- Take
Undeserved Credit
This is a favorite of politicians. If
anything good happens while they are in office, they are quick to
take credit for it. (They rationalize that
they might as well, because if anything goes wrong, they get the
blame for it.)
Using this technique, Republicans like to
claim that Ronald Reagan somehow 'caused' the fall of the Berlin
Wall and the break-up of the Soviet Union, not internal weakness,
corruption, and a crumbling infrastructure in the Soviet empire.
Frank Buchman's cult used this technique
often. Even today, their web site says:
Buchman's
story starts with a small-town American who sets out "to remake
the world" and in the attempt affected the moral and spiritual
condition of thousands of people at every level of society
throughout the world. From war-torn Europe to civil war in China,
from the rise of black nationalist independence movements in
Africa to the civil rights hotbed in the U.S, in the lives of
great leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Konrad Adenauer, and Harry
Truman — Buchman's remarkable influence kept turning up.
Advertising for Frank Buchman, A Life, by Garth
Lean
https://secure.iofc.org/shop/en/resources/shop/?room=3&product=47
Frank Buchman does not get the credit for
every civil rights movement in the world just because one of his
followers showed up there and parrotted slogans. And Mahatma Gandhi,
Konrad Adenauer, and Harry Truman were not followers of Frank
Buchman. The truth is that the social-climbing Frank Buchman sought
them out, and only talked to them for a few minutes. Buchman only
met Gandhi once, in 1915, and Adenauer perhaps a couple of times.
Harry Truman declared that he had never talked to Buchman. Truman
had sometimes helped Buchman's organization with draft problems, but Truman dropped
Buchman like a hot potato when he learned about
Buchman's history and Nazi sympathies and draft dodging.
Nevertheless, Buchman forever after tried to imply that Mahatma
Gandhi, Konrad Adenauer, and Harry Truman were his followers, world
leaders who had learned their "spirituality" from Frank Buchman.
(See Ghandi here and here, and here, and
Adenauer here.)
Bill Wilson and A.A. use this technique
constantly. If anybody quit drinking after having attended even just a few
A.A. meetings, Wilson and A.A. were quick to claim or imply
that the recovery was caused by A.A. and the Twelve Steps. But when
those people relapsed later, A.A. had nothing to do with that. "A.A.
caused the sobriety, but it didn't cause the relapse." Bill Wilson
even took the credit for the sobriety of people who finally
quit drinking several years after Bill encouraged
them to quit.
Likewise, another A.A. promoter, Nan
Robertson, wrote in her
book, "Getting
Better Inside Alcoholics Anonymous", that most of the
newcomers to Alcoholics Anonymous had already quit drinking, but she
credited their sobriety to A.A. anyway.
- Create A
Granfalloon
A granfalloon is some distinction or difference which sets members of
a group apart from other people who are not part of the group. The
purpose of creating a granfalloon is to engender a feeling of "Us
versus Them."
"He's
not one of us."
A granfalloon can be any distinguishing
difference. Race, religion, and nationality have been used for
thousands of years. It can be as simple as the jocks versus the
nerds.
Sometimes a granfalloon can be a small,
trivial difference, and still work. When Hitler was still just a
minor fledgeling politician, just beginning to build up his Nazi
party, he dressed his followers in brown shirts. Some critics
laughed and pointed out that they looked ridiculous. But rather than
discouraging Hitler's followers, the criticism made them cling to
their group and made them feel more committed to Hitler. Hitler
gained a loyal, hard-core cadre just for the price of a few brown
shirts.
In the book Soul
of A New Machine by Tracy Kidder, the author
describes how a smart manager organized teams of young computer
geniuses, and set them to competing against each other in the
creation of a new computer. The hardware designers were called "The
Hardy Boys", and the programmers of the machine's internal software,
the microcode, were called "The Micro-Kidders." The competition
between them was so intense that they worked day and night, seven
days a week, to finish the design and make the machine work. All of
them argued that they weren't going to let the other guys on their
team down, and they weren't going to let the other team outdo them.
But the only real difference between the two groups was which part
of the design they were working on. But that one tiny difference was
enough to cement their loyalty to their group.
Andrew Carnegie demonstrated the same
cleverness in eliciting greater output from one of his steel mills.
He asked the foreman how many units of steel the day shift had
produced. Carnegie wrote the answer with chalk in large numbers on
the sidewalk where the workers entered the plant, and then simply
walked away without explanation. When the night crew came to work,
they saw the number on the sidewalk, and asked what it was. Someone
told them. The night crew beat that number by a little bit. Early in
the morning, Carnegie erased the day crew's number, and chalked in
the night crew's output. The day crew saw that number on the
sidewalk when they came to work. They worked even harder, and beat
the night crew's output. Carnegie chalked in that number. The
following night, the night crew beat the day crew again, and
Carnegie chalked in that number. That contest of playing off the day
crew against the night crew continued for weeks, while output
steadily rose. Carnegie never said a word about the workers having
to increase their productivity — he just played one group off
against another, using no distinction between the two groups except
that one worked during the day, and one worked at night.
In a beautiful demonstration of creating
a granfalloon, teachers who wanted to educate a class about racism
created a new, artificial, racial distinction: they separated the
class into blue-eyed and brown-eyed people, and declared that the
brown-eyed people were superior to the blue-eyed people. "Everybody
knows" that blue-eyed people are dishonest and lazy, and can't be
trusted, and lie a lot, while "everybody knows" that brown-eyed
people are hard-working, honest, and trustworthy... By the end of
the day, the two groups almost hated each other, even though it was
just a mild one-day demonstration of discrimination. (It's enough to
make you wonder about our two-party system of Democrats and
Republicans hating each other — how much of their hatred and
partisan bickering and investigation of sexual affairs is based on
nothing more than the political equivalent of eye color?)
A current television commercial for
Prilosec® uses a variation of this trick: They ask, "So which day are you
on?" and a bunch of people proudly hold up
several fingers. The commercial creates a feeling of being "one of
the club" among those people who take the medicine. The granfalloon
is taking Prilosec.
Alcoholics Anonymous obviously uses
alcoholism as a granfalloon, to separate their group from everybody
else. Every member introduces himself like, "Hi, my name is Harry,
and I'm an alcoholic." Then outsiders, non-alcoholics, are called
"normal people", "regular people", "normies", or "earth people", and everybody knows that
you can't trust them to be accepting or understanding...
Likewise, A.A. uses membership in A.A.
itself as a granfalloon. Those who do The Twelve Steps are "one of
us", the people who understand, the members of the right religion, "The Friends of Bill", while those
who don't do The Steps are the other people, those "dry drunks"
who aren't our friends and who cannot be trusted.
In the Big
Book, an A.A. member says of a non-member:
"You
poor guy. I feel so sorry for you. You're not an alcoholic. You
can never know the pure joy of recovering within the Fellowship of
Alcoholics Anonymous."
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 334.
- Spin
Doctoring
Often, how people take the news depends on how you present it.
The TV series The
West Wing recently gave us a beautiful
illustration of that. The administration had a problem with some
new, improved equations for computing the threshold of poverty. The
problem was that the new equations said that there were two million
more poor people than the old equations did. Nobody wanted to face
the next election with two million more poor people than there were
when the President took office. Everybody around the White House was
stuck in a loop of, "We want to fix the equations, but we don't want
there to be more poor people." Then they took the problem to Toby,
the resident political hack spin doctor:
"Did I ever tell you about the guy who had a
batch of pink salmon that turned white? He canned it up and
printed on the label, 'Guaranteed
not to turn pink in the can.'
"So the equations have been broken for fifty years? What was
the matter with all of the previous administrations? Why didn't
those lazy bums fix the problem? This is outrageous! Thank God we
finally have a President who is doing his job!
"Remember: 'White Salmon, guaranteed not to turn pink!' By
God, I can sell anything!"
In March of 2006, Microsoft found
that its new operating system, Vista, was so buggy that they
wouldn't be able to bring it to market for the 2006 Christmas
season. They publicly announced yet another postponement of the
release date until after January of 2007, the umpteenth one in four
years of slipping schedules. Putting the best spin-doctor's
smiley-face on the situation, Microsoft spokesman and project
manager James Allchin said that the Vista delay was the "right
thing" to do. (NY
Times, 2006.03.27)
As if they had any choice in the matter.
The most unintentionally hilarious quote, however, came from
Microsoft marketing executive Brad Goldberg, who told Ziff Davis
Media's Microsoft Watch blog that, since people won't be able to get
new Windows computers for Christmas in December, there will be
another Christmas in January: "January has emerged as almost a
second Christmas, with gift cards, sales, etc. It's a new trend." (Washington Post "Personal
Tech" 2006.03.27)
Oh yeh, right.
In 2006, the Washington Post hired an
unqualified college flunk-out as a reporter for "the Right-wing
viewpoint", because he was the son of a Bush administration White
House official. He was fired, or "allowed to resign", when Internet
bloggers discovered that he was plagiarizing his writings. A
Washington Post editor declared, in a fine example of spin
doctoring:
Ben Domenech Resigns
In the past 24 hours, we learned of allegations that Ben Domenech
plagiarized material that appeared under his byline in various
publications prior to washingtonpost.com contracting with him to
write a blog that launched Tuesday.
An
investigation into these allegations was ongoing, and in the
interim, Domenech has resigned, effective immediately. When we
hired Domenech, we were not aware of any allegations that he had
plagiarized any of his past writings.
Jim Brady, Executive Editor, washingtonpost.com, in
"post.blog", March 24, 2006, Ben
Domenech Resigns.
One of the commenters just nailed it:
"When
we hired Domenech, we were not aware of any allegations that he
had plagiarized any of his past writings."
Is that the same as not being aware of any facts?
Posted by: Texas Ex | March 24, 2006 02:08 PM
- The
Semi-Attached Figure
"If you can't prove what you want to
prove, demonstrate something else and pretend that they are the
same thing."
— Darrell Huff (How to Lie with Statistics, p.
74.)
For example, if you can't prove that your
nostrum can cure the common cold, advertise that a well-known
"independent testing laboratory" has proven that it can kill umpteen
zillion germs in a test tube in just a few minutes. Advertise those
results by showing a picture of a doctor in a white coat reporting
the results. Don't bother to mention the bothersome little fact that
killing germs in a test tube isn't the same thing as killing them
inside of people. And don't bother to mention the fact that the
germs that got zapped in the test tube were something other than
cold germs... The real meaning of the one true fact — that the
nostrum simply killed some unidentified germs in a test tube, gets
lost in the hype. That's a semiattached figure.
(And,
if you think about it for a minute, plain old Clorox bleach is
great for killing germs in a test tube, but if you drink the stuff
to get over a cold, you won't...)
Similarly, you can easily think of some
popular household cleaners whose advertisements imply that your
family will be much healthier and more disease-free because their
product kills lots of germs on contact. Nobody asks whether those
unfortunate germs were actually harmful to humans. The vast majority
of bacteria and microbes are really totally harmless, which is why
we are still alive. In fact, recent studies have shown that the
constant, habitual use of germ-killers on everything, everywhere, is
just breeding super-bugs who are immune to our antibiotics, which is
a real medical disaster. But an ad that says, "Laboratory testing has shown that our kitchen
cleaner kills 300% more germs on contact" sure
sounds good, doesn't it?
Darrell
Huff noted:
There
are often many ways of expressing any figure. You can, for
instance, express exactly the same fact by calling it a one per
cent return on sales, a fifteen per cent return on investment, a
ten-million-dollar profit, an increase in profits of forty per
cent (compared with 1935-39 average), or a decrease of sixty per
cent from last year. The method is to choose the one that sounds
best for the purpose at hand and trust that few who read it will
recognize how imperfectly it reflects the situation.
How
to Lie with Statistics, Darrell Huff, page 82.
For example, if you run a store, and buy
an item for 99 cents every morning, and sell it for $1.00 every
afternoon, you are only making a 1% profit on sales, which sounds
terrible. But in a year of doing that, you make a 368% return on
investment (365*100/99), which sounds like you are making out like a
bandit.
In another example of the semiattached
figure, in a management-labor dispute, the management questioned the
workers about their gripes against the union. They collected every
trivial complaint that had ever been lodged against the union, added
up the numbers, and announced that 78% of the workers were "against
the union." Obviously, there is a huge difference between
disagreeing with the union about something or other, at one time or
other, and being against the union representing the workers.
"Flying
in airplanes must be growing increasingly dangerous, because 500
times as many people were killed in airplane crashes last year
(2001) as were killed in 1910."
That completely
ignores, of course, the truth that the Wright Brothers and friends
were the only people flying in 1910, and the September 11, 2001
terrorism that caused multiple airplane crashes was an exceptional
situation.
My all-time favorite in this category is, "Eating carrots is very
dangerous to your health, and will eventually kill you. 100% of
the people who ate carrots between 1860 and 1900 are now all
dead."
Recently,
the NBC Evening News used this trick to sensationalize a story about
teenagers buying alcohol over the Internet (9 August 2006). They
declared that "One
in 10 teenagers knows another teenager who has illegally ordered
liquor online."
That sounds pretty impressive, and it hints that one in 10 teenagers
is getting supplied alcohol by another teenager who gets it through
the Internet. It sounds impressive, until we realize that if the
average teenage knows 100 other teenagers, then only 1 in 1000
teenagers needs to have bought alcohol through the Internet just
once in order for that NBC statement to be true. (And if the average
teenager knows more than 100 other teenagers, then even fewer
teenagers need to have bought alcohol through the Internet.) And
just because a teenager knows someone who once bought alcohol
through the Internet doesn't mean that he got any of it.
When
Peter Howard defended the cult leader Frank Buchman and his Moral
Re-Armament organization in the booklet Fighters
Ever (November, 1941), Howard used the trick of
the Semi-Attached Figure in
his story about the controversy
over drafting Buchman's Moral Re-Armament followers into
the British army during World War II. The Buchmanites claimed that
the MRA men were all "lay evangelists of an established religion",
and as such, should not be drafted, and they got 174 Members of
Parliament to sign a motion that asked that the MRA men be given
special exemptions to the draft. Peter Howard wrote in his book that "the elected
representatives of more than 11,000,000 people" opposed
drafting MRA members. Peter Howard implied that all 11 million of
those British people were unanimous in their support of draft
exemptions for the MRA men, which was nowhere near the truth.15
Furthermore, those 174 Members of
Parliament had been elected on the basis of other issues than
drafting MRA members, so those 11 million represented British people
had never really voted on that particular issue at all. And then,
when the whole of the British Parliament voted, and decided not to
give the MRA men any special exemptions, Peter Howard did not bother
to write that "the
elected representatives of all 40 million Britons decided to draft
the MRA men just like everybody else".
- Use Exact
Numbers
The human mind has the funny peculiarity that exact numbers sound so
much more valid than round numbers, even if they aren't accurate, or
can't really be applicable. So use exact numbers in arguments, when
you wish to impress people.
Compare these two statements:
1.) The average American made about $25,000 last year.
2.) The average American made $24,979.37 last year.
Which sounds truer? Which sounds more
like somebody who knows what he is talking about? (But who was that
one "Average American" who made exactly that much, really?)
- Avoid
Specific Numbers
This is just the converse of the previous item — Avoid giving specific
numbers whenever it would be disadvantageous to do so.
Advertisements often do a fancy tap-dance
around the prices, and never tell you what it actually costs:
- "...Installed for less than you would
think."
- The price is "half of what you would
expect to pay."
(Actually, things never seem to be only
half of what I would expect to pay. I am always appalled by the high
new price of everything — twice what I would expect to pay.)
- Hide Behind
Others
You can mask your intentions and your egotism (or your stupidity) by
hiding behind others. Use words like we,
us, and our,
instead of I, me and my. You can say "We want" instead of
"I want," and "We think" instead of "I think." You sound more
important if you sound like you represent a group of people, rather
than just being one person speaking for yourself. You also sound less
selfish when you make demands.
Politicians routinely say, "The American
people want...", rather than "I want..." when they win an election,
but they don't say "The American people want..." when the vote goes
against them. Then they just complain that somebody cheated and
stole the election, or their opponents took a lot of improper
campaign contributions, or the voters got fooled, or something.
Politicians make statements like, "The American people
don't want government controlling their health care options." (Never
mind the fact that the FDA already does, in many ways.) You aren't
supposed to notice that it's the politician who objects to
government involvement in health care, not the American people who
have little or no health care. They very much want the government
giving them some health care options.
The cult leader Dr. Frank N. D. Buchman
gave us an example of this propaganda technique when he said,
in 1936,
I thank Heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler, who built a front
line of defense against the anti-Christ of Communism...
My barber in London told me Hitler saved all Europe from
Communism. That's how he felt.
So what on earth does the opinion of
Frank Buchman's barber have to do with anything? Well, Buchman could
put forth the opinion that Hitler had saved all of Europe from
Communism while pretending that it was someone else's opinion
besides his own. It tended to add weight to his own statements:
"See,
it isn't just my opinion. My English barber thinks so too."
Likewise, when Acting Vice President Dick
Cheney cursed and used obscenity on the Senate floor, (19 June
2004), telling Senator Lahey to "Go f**k himself" (or "Go f**k
off"), he later tried to rationalize his
behavior by explaining that many other Republicans agreed that it
was about time that he said that — that they felt that it was "long
overdue" (in spite of the fact that using foul language on the
Senate floor is against the Senate rules).
On
Dec. 11, 2003, when Acting President George W. Bush announced that
countries which had not participated in the coalition to blow up
Iraq would not be able to bid on contracts to rebuild Iraq, he rationalized his
actions by saying,
"That's what the U.S. taxpayers expect."
No, actually, it wasn't what they
expected.
G. W. Bush didn't bother to mention the extremely dangerous,
threatening, Weapons of Mass Destruction ("45 minutes to launch")
which the U.S. taxpayers really did
expect him to find.
Nor did he mention the claimed connections to the al Qaeda
terrorists which he had claimed threatened Americans ("Sadam will
give al Qaeda a nuke or something.")
And the U. S. taxpayers really didn't
expect Dick Cheney's friends at the Halliburton corporation to get
multi-billion-dollar contracts on a no-bid basis.
And the U. S. taxpayers didn't expect war profiteers to empty the
national treasury while deceived young men in uniform died for a
lie.
A variation on this trick of Hiding
Behind Others is to imply that lots of people are
with you, or lots of people agree with you:
"Thanks
for proving to all of us what a fool you are."
That sounds far more impressive than,
"I
think you are a fool."
Bill Wilson constantly used the stunt of
hiding behind others:
- He had the habit of hiding behind
others by saying things like "Miss Hock and I" or "Dr. Bob and I."
- He used to say "A.A. has saved these
men and their families," instead of "I, Bill Wilson, saved these
men and their families."
(Which led to, "So send money to the A.A. office", which really
meant "So send money to me.")
- He used to
say that the groups had to send money to the
New York headquarters "to
pay for our office" instead of "to pay for my living". (In the
early days, supporting Bill Wilson in comfort was the major
office expense of Alcoholics Anonymous.)
- When Bill and Lois Wilson were evicted
from their house at 182 Clinton Street in New York for non-payment
of the mortgage, Bill started a campaign that he called the "Lois W. Home
Replacement Fund", and Bill went around trying to con all of
the other A.A. members into signing pledges to donate. Bill didn't
admit that he wanted the other A.A. members to supply him with a new house;
no, it was just for poor old Lois.
- Bill Wilson would say "You should do our
suggested Twelve Steps if you wish
to recover" when he really meant, "You must do my
required Twelve Steps, which I
wrote, if you wish to live".
Unless
each A.A. member follows to the best of his ability our
suggested [MY
required] Twelve Steps to recovery, he
almost certainly signs his own death warrant. His drunkenness
and dissolution are not penalties inflicted by people in
authority; they result from his personal disobedience to [MY]spiritual
principles [cult
religion practices].
Twelve
Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page
174.
- Bill Wilson wrote in the Big Book that the
first ten alcoholic members of Bill's new temperance movement
would meet each evening, "constantly thinking how they might
present their discovery to some newcomer." (Page 159.)
"Their
discovery" really meant "Bill
Wilson's adaptation of Frank Buchman's cult
religion."
- The
Preacher's We
Veil accusations of others by saying "We" or "Us" when you really mean "You".
This is the flip side of hiding behind
others — accusing others of things by accusing "us". A preacher will
say "we" when he really means "you", as in
"We are all sinners;
may God have mercy on us"
when he really means,
"You are
sinners; may God have mercy on your miserable
worthless asses."
It's just human nature for people to
defend themselves from direct attacks, and to resent accusations,
but they are much more open to what sounds like some sincere talk
about "us" and "our shortcomings".
Bill Wilson used the preacher's "we"
constantly. He wrote:
- "At
some of these [steps] we balked. We thought we could find an
easier, softer way. But we could not."
The Big Book, William G. Wilson,
page 58.
- "We
temporarily cease to grow because we feel satisfied that there
is no need for all of A.A.'s [Bill's] Twelve Steps for
us.
Twelve
Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 113.
- We
"constructively criticized" someone who needed it, when our real
motive was to win a useless argument. Or, the person concerned
not being present, we thought we were helping others to
understand him, when in actuality our true motive was to feel
superior by pulling him down. We sometimes hurt those we love
because they need to be "taught a lesson," when we really wanted
to punish. We were depressed and complained we felt bad, when in
fact we were mainly asking for sympathy and attention. This odd
trait of mind and emotion, this perverse wish to hide a bad
motive underneath a good one, permeates human affairs from top
to bottom.
Twelve
Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 94.
Such
a negative, poisonous view of human life. When Bill Wilson
wrote Twelve Steps
and Twelve Traditions, he was in the middle of an
11-year case of chronic, deep, crippling, clinical depression.
It's easy to see why.
- If
our tempers are consistently bad, we arouse anger in others. If
we lie or cheat, we deprive others not only of their worldly
goods, but of their emotional security and peace of mind. We
really issue them an invitation to become contemptuous and
vengeful. If our sex conduct is selfish, we may excite jealousy,
misery, and a strong desire to retaliate in kind.
Such gross misbehavior is not by any means a full
catalogue of the harms we do.
Twelve
Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 94.
This
is just a never-ending assault on any shreds of self-respect
or feelings of self-worth that members may have left. It's
cultish guilt induction to the max.
- There is one more twist to the "we are
guilty" accusation, the "I
am guilty, but I mean YOU"
accusation. Bill Wilson did not use that particular trick himself, but
you will hear plenty of it in A.A. meetings:
"It took me years to learn to do all Twelve of the
Steps, and really work a Strong Program. I just goofed off for my
first few years in A.A.. I thought I was doing fine. I thought I
knew everything. It took me a long time to wise up and realize
that I had to work all of
the Steps all of
the time."
And by implication, you — you stupid
beginner — are doing the same thing. You also need to learn that you must work
all of the Steps all of the time.
But
the speaker never offers us any explanation for how he was able to
stay dry for so many years without bothering to "Work
The Steps" properly. That would be good to
know. We could save a lot of lives with that technique:
"Just abstain from both alcohol and
Alcoholics Anonymous. It'll save both your life and your mind."
- Put Words
Into Other People's Mouths
This is a form of hiding behind others,
where you make other people appear to be saying what you are really
saying.
Frank Buchman used this technique in his
quote above — "My
barber in London told me Hitler saved Europe from Communism.
That's how he felt." — and he used it again
here:
A Swedish steelworker told me: "Only a spiritual revolution
goes far enough to meet the needs of men and industry."
A Labor leader said: "I have seen the Labor Movement
triumph and felt in the midst of triumph an emptiness. The Oxford
Group gave my life new content. I see in its message the only key
to the future of the Labor Movement and of industry the world
over."
Frank Buchman,
speaking at East Ham Town Hall, 29 May 1938, quoted in
Remaking the World, the speeches of
Frank Buchman, Frank N. D. Buchman, 1949, pages 85-87.
Also quoted in:
Britain and the Beast, Peter
Howard, 1963, pages 107-109.
Also see:
Drawing-Room Conversion; A
Sociological Account of the Oxford Group Movement, Allan W.
Eister, Duke University Press, 1950, page 47.
- Tokenism
This is a well-known stunt. A company that does not wish to be accused
of racism or sexism hires one Token Negro, or one token woman, and
prominently displays the token right out front. Some firms hire a
black woman for the receptionist, thus killing two birds with one
stone.
Bill
Wilson published Doctor Silkworth's letter in the Big
Book, and used it to imply that the medical establishment
strongly approved of Bill's wonderful new plan to cure all of the
alcoholics with cult religion. Dr. Silkworth was A.A.'s token
doctor. Then Bill added an appendix to the second edition, "The Medical View on A.A.", which
listed five more doctors who said something nice about Alcoholics
Anonymous.
Bill
Wilson didn't bother to mention the fact that the American Medical
Association reviewed the book Alcoholics
Anonymouswhen it was first published, and they found it to
be a bunch of useless old garbage with no merit. That was the real
"Medical View" on Alcoholics Anonymous.
On October 14, 1939, the Journal of the
American Medical Association published the following review of "Alcoholics Anonymous: How More Than One
Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism":
| The
seriousness of the psychiatric and social problem
represented by addiction to alcohol is generally
underestimated by those not intimately familiar with the
tragedies in the families of victims or the resistance
addicts offer to any effective treatment. Many
psychiatrists regard addiction to alcohol as having a
more pessimistic prognosis than schizophrenia.
For many years the public
was beguiled into believing that short courses of
enforced abstinence and catharsis in "institutes" and
"rest homes" would do the trick, and now that the
failure of such temporizing has become common
knowledge, a considerable number of other forms of
quack treatment have sprung up.
The book under review is a
curious combination of organizing propaganda and
religious exhortation. It is in no sense a scientific
book, although it is introduced by a letter from a
physician who claims to know some of the anonymous
contributors who have been "cured" of addiction to
alcohol and have joined together in an organization
which would save other addicts by a kind of religious
conversion.
The
book contains instructions as to how to intrigue the
alcoholic addict into the acceptance of divine
guidance in place of alcohol in terms strongly
reminiscent of Dale Carnegie and the
adherents of the Buchman ("Oxford") movement.
The one valid thing in the book is the recognition of
the seriousness of addiction to alcohol. Other than
this, the book has no scientific merit or interest.
|
The doctors at the American Medical
Association immediately saw that Bill Wilson's "new spiritual
program" was just a clone of Frank Buchman's cult religion.
Bill never mentioned any of that. He just
said,
This
work has claimed the attention of prominent doctors and
institutions who say without hesitation that in a few years time,
as it gains impetous, thousands of hitherto incurable cases may
recover. Such people as the chief physician of Charles B. Towns
Hospital and psychiatrists of the Johns Hopkins Hospital at
Baltimore express such opinions.
The
One Hundred Men Corporation Prospectus, December 1938,
page 4.
Note that "the chief physician of Charles
B. Towns Hospital" was none other than Dr. William D. Silkworth, the
doctor who gave Bill Wilson the quack medicine "belladona cure"
while Bill was detoxing from alcohol. So basically, Bill's grandiose
claim of many endorsements from the medical community really boils
down to just one from his own doctor and a couple from psychiatrists
at Johns Hopkins. (Then Bill got a few more for the appendix added
onto the second edition of the Big
Book — including an endorsement from Dr. Harry
Tiebout, Bill's psychiatrist, who also said that Bill Wilson was immature,
narcissistic, and grandiose.)
And, speaking of tokens, Rev. Sam
Shoemaker was Bill's token Protestant minister, and Father Edward
Dowling, S.J., was Bill's token Catholic priest. Bill used both of
them to try to imply that the theology of A.A. was not bizarre and
heretical.
- Testimonials
and Stories
This is well-known too. Everybody is
doing it. Forest Gump was paid $25,000 to tell everybody that he
just loved to play ping-pong with his Flexo-Lite Ping-Pong Paddle,
which wasn't true, but Momma said that just a little white lie
wouldn't hurt...
Sports heroes and movie stars are
constantly telling us that we can be so much happier if we just do
like they do, and use a certain product...
It is an advertising truism that stories
sell. A commercial that just tells the true facts about a product
will often be a real failure, but a commercial that tells a story
can be very convincing —
- "I
just couldn't lose weight; none of the diets worked for me; I
was miserable. I didn't dare to go to the beach and appear in
public in a bathing suit. Then I discovered the ShrinkFit Diet
Program® and now I can wear a size twelve..."
- I
signed up with Insta-match® and in
just one day they found me a girl who couldn't wait to jump in
bed with me. I recommend that you give your money to Insta-match® too,
and you'll be happy just like me...
- "This
product is everything that I ever wanted. This product is just
what I was looking for."
By the way, you can tell that you are getting a
scripted testimonial when you hear the word "product". Real
people don't buy "products". They may buy diet pills or other
drugs or low-calorie drinks, or hair conditioner, or all kinds
of stuff, but they don't go shopping for "product". I never
bought "product" in my life. I never went to the store to get
"product", and I never went online to buy "product". When
people start talking to you about "product", you know that you
are getting just another standard canned sales pitch.
Also
notice how interchangeable the commercials are. When the
women in infomercials sit around talking about how happy
they are now that they got their husbands to use "this
product" (which might be a weight-loss formula in this
case), just a little retitling could make the same
testimonial into an advertisement for something entirely
different, like a hair-restoration product or an erectile
disfunction drug.
| In
an infomercial for a stock market trading program, a man
declares, "I
traded stocks for two hours and made $7000." Wow.
That sounds great. We should get in on that right away,
shouldn't we, if it is that easy to make big money?
Ah, but they didn't tell us
how many other times the guy traded stocks for two hours
and lost $7000, did they? They just imply that the guy
is a very successful trader who is consistently making
big profits. And they didn't tell us anything about how
the average trader fares.
So that also
makes it an example of "cherry
picking" — just publicizing a few hand-picked
spectacular success stories, while ignoring the many
more stories of failures.
A study of
such trading programs conducted by the SEC found
that more than 90% of the people who trade stocks
and options with such computer programs lose their
money, but the advertisers don't tell us that. They
just keep broadcasting exciting stories like, "My best
trade was when I made $10,000 in three trading
days."
|
Cults are notorious for trotting out a chorus line of poster
children who all give testimonials about how the cult is just the
greatest thing since sliced bread, and it has done such wonderful
things for them, and their leader is God's gift to mankind.
Alcoholics Anonymous is non-stop
testimonials. The last two-thirds of the Big
Book is all testimonials, all people
telling stories about how they just love A.A. and
the Twelve Steps, and how it made their lives so wonderful... But
the book does not tell any stories about the millions of other
people whom the faith-healing 12-Step religion did not help. The Big Book tells us
nothing about all of the
people who relapsed and went back out and died drunk —
it doesn't even mention the Big
Book's co-author Henry Parkhurst,
who died drunk. Such a "proof" with testimonials is very one-sided,
and only tells half of the story.
In addition, there is no actual evidence
that those people who did get sober actually got sober because of Alcoholics
Anonymous. There is no demonstration of any cause-and-effect
relationship between joining A.A. and getting sober. That critical
factor is just assumed and glossed over.
And every A.A. meeting is more
testimonials, people telling their stories, and claiming that A.A.
saved their lives, not that they saved their own lives by quitting
drinking...
And of course you
will not hear from any of the other people who found the A.A.
program to be of no help, and quit coming back.
- The Fallacy
of One Similarity
Two different things are declared to be the same thing based on just
one point of similarity (or just a few).
For instance,
"Your father is
authoritarian. The cult leader is authoritarian. Therefore they
are just the same, and you should trust the cult leader just like
you trust your father."
Obviously, you could continue that
through a number of other characteristics like,
- both are men
- both are balding
- both have fat bellies
but that would still overlook the single most important difference
between the two men: The father probably has the best of intentions
towards his child, while the cult leader is a psychopath who abuses
and exploits people.
It's easy to see how this logical fallacy
can get extended into stereotyping groups on the basis of just one
characteristic:
"All of those
tree-huggers are opposed to logging this stand of old-growth
trees. Therefore, they are all eco-terrorists who will do anything
to block progress."
Bill Wilson had a dramatic "religious" or
"spiritual" or hallucinatory experience, and thought he saw God,
when he was sick and detoxing from alcohol in Towns Hospital and
getting Dr. Silkworth's "Belladonna Cure"
(which was a hallucinogenic drug cocktail), and while also
being tormented and indoctrinated by recruiters
from Frank Buchman's Oxford Group cult. After reading in William
James' book, The Varieties
of Religious Experience, that some people have profound
religious experiences when they are really down, in despair and
great pain, Wilson decided that using the Oxford Groups techniques
to put people down, crush their egos, and make them feel powerless
and hopeless would recreate his "religious" experience in them. He
was wrong. It doesn't work.
Bill Wilson made the big mistake of
seizing upon a few points of similarity between what happened to him
and what he read in James' book, while ignoring the many large
differences:
- James' subjects weren't on
hallucinogenic drugs,
- they weren't suffering from Delirium Tremens while
detoxing from alcohol,
- and they weren't having their minds
"changed" by Oxford Group
recruiters.
- The Fallacy
of One Dissimilarity
This technique is simply the converse of The
Fallacy of One Similarity — find one difference
between two things, and then declare that they are completely
different.
For example, "Alcoholics Anonymous cannot be a cult because
there isn't a strong leader who commands and controls everybody."
That illogic ignores the fact that there
are many dozens of
different defining characteristics of a cult, and A
Charismatic Leaderis just one of them.
Besides, Alcoholics Anonymous did have a charismatic
leader as its founder — Bill Wilson. The founder Bill Wilson is now
dead, but A.A. is still ruled by the occult practices and customs
that he established, and through the crazy
things that he wrote in his books.
And a cult does not stop being a cult
just because the leader dies. Scientology, the Hari Krishnas
(ISKCON), the Moonies (Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church),
Jim Jones' People's Temple, The Branch Davidians of "David Koresh",
and Alcoholics Anonymous are all cults that now worship dead
founders. And yes, the People's Temple and the Branch Davidians
churches still exist and they still have some followers and true
believers, in spite of the fact that the majority of both cults died
in spectacular mass suicide—mass murder blowouts.
- If It Looks
Like X, Then It Is X.
When you find a snake that has red,
yellow, and black bands all around it, it's obviously just a
harmless King Snake, isn't it? So you pick it up to take it home as
a pet. It turns around and bites you and you die. What was the
logical error? A Coral Snake also has red, yellow, and black bands
all around it, and it isn't harmless. The two snakes look very
similar, but they are not the same thing at all.
The
key thing to look at to distinguish King Snakes from Coral
Snakes is which color is adjacent to the red bands on the
snake:
Red and black, friend of jack.
Red and yellow, kill a fellow.
|
Similarly, if a politician looks like a
respectable and honest man, he must really be one, right? I mean,
he's dressed in a fine suit and tie, isn't he? And he gives rousing
speeches, doesn't he? — Speeches full of fine words like God,
country, patriotism, and freedom. So he must be a great statesman,
right?
If a TV evangelist has a Bible in one
hand, and a cross in the other, and dresses impecably and speaks
softly and piously and says all of the right slogans and prays a lot
and looks just like a real holy man, then he must be one right?
...Even if he is preaching hatred and the advocating the
assassination of somebody he doesn't like. All in the name of Jesus.
Conversely, if a young black man with a
knit cap looks like a hoodlum gang member, then he must be one,
right?
Many animals take advantage of this
confusion of appearances by appearing to be a venomous animal. There
are harmless flies that look just like bees or wasps. The predators
leave them alone because they don't want to get stung.
- A Distinction
Without A Difference.
As in, "He was just a heavy drinker, not
a real alcoholic. Okay, he was drinking enough alcohol to wreck his
health and his brain and eventually kill himself, but he wasn't a
real alcoholic, because he managed to quit drinking without A.A. or
the 12 Steps."
When Vice President Dick Cheney's former
Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby declared that Cheney and
Bush had authorized and approved the surreptitious leaking of
classified nuclear intelligence information to get back at Joseph C.
Wilson IV for reporting that Saddam Hussein didn't get any
yellow-cake uranium from Niger, "A senior administration official, speaking on
background because White House policy prohibits comment on an
active investigation, said Bush sees a distinction between leaks
and what he is alleged to have done." ( Washington
Post, 2006.04.06)
What distinction? Is it not treason if it
is the President who subverts national security?
Something that would get an ordinary citizen locked up for years in
Leavenworth is okay if it is sneakily done by the President for
political reasons?
- Sly
Suggestions
Plant sly suggestions. Do not make solid statements which can be
proven wrong; rather, just suggest that your ideas may be true. Then,
often, perhaps a little while later, you might suddenly start assuming
that all of your suggestions are really true.
This technique is basically the old
strategy of first just getting your toe in the door, and then later
gradually working your way in. With this technique, the speaker
first gets his toe into the door of someone's mind by merely suggesting that an idea may be true (which
isn't too hard to accept, because it's only a suggestion that might
be true), and then the speaker gradually pushes further in by
assuming that the suggestion really is true.
For instance:
- "You may be a winner..."
- "You may have already won $10,000,000.
Just subscribe to a bunch of magazines and see..."
- "You may be the next winner..."
- "Your opinion may be worth $1000."
- "This diet plan may be the one that
works for you..."
- "This cream may be a make-up artist's
dream come true..."
- "This get-rich-quick scheme may be the
answer to all of your problems..."
- "Science and astrology: Are they
really at odds?"
- "Could a Chinese Herb Replace
Life-Threatening RA Drugs?"
- Con artists who tout stocks on the
stock market say of their latest "hot stock" that a "Big move
could happen."
(Yes, but will the
move be in the direction that you want? It might go down like
the Titanic.)
- "I am predicting, that this web site
may be part of a major corporate buyout by Microsoft, Google, or
Yahoo in the next 18 months."
(First it's a
prediction, and then it's just a maybe.)
- A commercial for a weight-loss pill
says, "If your weight loss is too rapid, then cut down and only
take one pill per day."
The sly suggestion
is, of course, that those pills really work great. Too good, in
fact. You will loose weight too fast.
- The back cover of Dr. Arthur Janov's
ridiculous book "The New Primal
Scream: Primal Therapy After 20 Years" advertises:
"Scientific
Research World-Wide Proves Primal Therapy May Prolong Life by
Reducing Stress".
Yes, and the
discovery of the coelacanth PROVES that
Nessie the Loch Ness sea monster MAY be
real too, but it's extremely unlikely, for about a dozen good
scientific reasons.4 I'm
not holding my breath.
Notice
the broken logic:
Scientific
blah-blah PROVES that Janov's garbage MAY work.
You get an absolute certainty — "proof" — followed by a
vague, uncertain, possibility.
And note that the opposite logic is equally valid:
Scientific
blah-blah PROVES that Janov's garbage MAY NOT work.
- On December 5, 2005, Condoleeza Rice
used the same word game in her attempt to explain to the European
countries the illegal American practice of "rendition" —
kidnapping people and shipping them to other countries that permit
torture, where they will be forcefully interrogated. Condoleeza
said that we had always had a problem with "what to do with these
individuals whom we know are
believed to be terrorists."
We get an absolute certainty — she spoke the word "know" with
strong emphasis — followed by a vague belief. Condoleeza used the passive
voice to declare that some unnamed person believes that some
guy is a terrorist.
"Yeh,
we know with
certainty that Joe Blow the village idiot thinks that Abdul is
a terrorist."
That is Condoleeza's lame-brained justification for violating
international law and besmirching the reputation of the United
States of America.
By
the way, I know that
some people believe that George W. Bush is a terrorist. And so
are Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and General Jerry Boykin.
They murder innocent people.
- A commercial on TV says, "Two years ago, I had a
heart attack. Right there where Tina is standing. If it weren't
for Bayer aspirin, who knows?"
They did not say that Bayer aspirin actually did anything
good for the guy. They didn't even say that the guy actually took
any aspirin. They just want to strongly hint that aspirin saved
the guy's life, because he presumably took some of it while having
a heart attack.
Bill Wilson was a past master of this technique, and used it
frequently:
If,
when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or
if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you
take, you
are probably alcoholic. If that be the case, you may be suffering
from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer.
To one who feels he is an atheist or agnostic such an
experience seems impossible, but to continue as he is means
disaster, especially if he is an alcoholic of the hopeless
variety. To
be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live
on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G.
Wilson, page 44.
Bill neatly tap-danced and segued from a
diagnosis of "you may be
sick" and "you might need
a spiritual experience" to "you are doomed to an
alcoholic death if you don't join my 'spiritual' program",
without a single new fact to support the sudden change in medical
diagnosis. He just started assuming that all of his previous
suggestions were unquestionably true. Then Bill Wilson used the Either/Or propaganda
trick to present the reader with only two limited
choices — join his cult or die: "To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a
spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face."
In
his second book, Bill Wilson used a Sly
Suggestion this way:
By
now the newcomer has
probably arrived at the following
conclusions: that his character defects, representing instincts
gone astray, have been the primary cause of his drinking and his
failure at life...
Twelve
Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 50.
Actually,
by now, the newcomer has probably come
to the conclusion that Bill Wilson was a raving lunatic, and the
newcomer has quit going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings
altogether. (At least ninety-five percent of the newcomers to
A.A. drop outin the first year.)
Oh, and Bill Wilson's
"primary cause" of drinking is bogus and just so much delusional
nonsense — "character
defects, representing instincts gone astray". Bill
Wilson had a zillion such goofy "primary
causes" of drinking and alcoholism, and they were all
wrong.
Notice how Bill Wilson used Sly Suggestions in this
paragraph of instructions to the wives of alcoholics, where Bill did
a clever tap-dance and slipped and slid from talking about how the
husbands must quit drinking to declaring that the husbands must
"discover" Bill Wilson's
Oxford Group version of God:
There
is another paralyzing fear. You may be afraid your husband
will lose his position; you are thinking of the disgrace and hard
times which will befall you and the children. This experience may come
to you. Or you may already
have had it several times. Should it happen again, regard it in a
different light. Maybe it
will prove a blessing! It may convince your husband he
wants to stop drinking forever. And now you know that he can stop
if he will! Time after time, this apparent calamity has been a
boon to us, for it opened up a path which led to the discovery of
God.
The Big Book, 3rd edition, William G.
Wilson, To Wives,
page 116.
- Bill Wilson started off talking
about how bad it might be
if the husband lost his job.
- Then Bill declared that it might be
a blessing... — that such a calamity might provide
the impetus for the husband to quit drinking.
- Then Bill suddenly assumed that his
suggestions were true, and totally changed the subject and
declared that the husband could quit drinking if he wished to,
which means that the husband is not "powerless over alcohol"
like Step One says, and then Bill Wilson concluded that
everything was wonderful because so many husbands had found
Bill's Buchmanite version of God.
So that also makes
it a
bait-and-switch trick: First the goal is to get the
husbands to quit drinking, and then the goal is to get the
husbands to "come to believe" in Bill Wilson's religion.
Even the commandment to "Work
The Steps!" was delivered in this sly back-door
manner. On the second page of chapter five of the Big
Book (page 59), it says that the Twelve Steps are
merely "suggested as a program of recovery." Bill
Wilson didn't want to write that. He wanted the Twelve Steps and all
of the rest of his dogmatic cult religion to be requirements of
membership in A.A., just like how, back in the early days, "surrendering
to God" was required before an alcoholic could attend Alcoholics
Anonymous meetings. But more moderate A.A. members strongly
objected to that because they clearly foresaw that Bill Wilson's
extreme religiosity was going to drive away many of the very
alcoholics whom the program was supposed to help.
So, after a loud and long screaming
contest, Bill was forced to compromise and write that the Twelve
Steps were just "suggested as a program of recovery" (The Big Book, page 59).
Bill Wilson did his best to put a
smiley-face on the situation by later declaring that his critics
"had opened the A.A. door wide to all, even the atheists and
agnostics", but Bill was really secretly nursing a resentment. So,
on the very first page of the next chapter that he wrote, chapter
six, Bill planted a sly suggestion that also used the
fear-mongering propaganda technique:
"If we skip this vital step, we may not overcome
drinking."
(The Big Book,
William G. Wilson, page 72.)
Then
again, we might. Heck, I did. In fact, the vast
majority of successfully recovering alcoholics do.
Bill gave us lots more examples of this
mind-bending Sly
Suggestions technique. The Big
Book is loaded with them. To list just a few
more:
We
asked ourselves this: Are not some of us just as biased and
unreasonable about the realm of the spirit as were the ancients
about the realm of the material?
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Page 51.
If
you won't swallow Bill's bull, then maybe you are prejudiced,
biased, and unreasonable as all get-out.
And
be careful not to brand him as an alcoholic. Let him draw his own
conclusion. ... But insist that if he is severely afflicted, there may be little
chance he can recover by himself.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G.
Wilson, page 92.
"Maybe you
are gonna die. I'm not saying for sure, but maybe you are gonna die if
you don't join my 'little fellowship' real
soon now."
Maybe you
have disturbed him about the question of alcoholism. This is all
to the good. The more hopeless he feels, the better. He will be
more likely to follow your suggestions.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William
G. Wilson, page 94.
Maybe we are really messing with
his mind now.
And maybe the
whole family should go join the Al-Anon
branch of the cult:
One
more suggestion: Whether the family has spiritual convictions or
not, they may do
well to examine the principles by which the alcoholic member is
trying to live. They
can hardly fail to approve these simple
principles, though the head of the house still fails somewhat in
practicing them. Nothing will help the man who is off on a
spiritual tangent so much as the wife who adopts a sane spiritual
program, making a better practical use of it.
The Big Book, 3rd edition, Chapter 9, The Family Afterward, page 130.
Bill Wilson says that the whole family may
do well to join his religion, because
Father is acting crazy again.
"Maybe they
will really benefit from Bill's version of Buchmanism." (The
religious cult that just drove Daddy crazy.)
Bill imagines that they can hardly fail to
agree with his program, once they see how wonderful his "simple
principles" really are. (Actually, Bill Wilson's so-called "simple
principles" were not really "principles", they were Oxford Group
cult recruiting and indoctrination practices.)
Then Bill Wilson lectured the
wives of alcoholics, telling them in several different ways
not to nag their husbands to quit drinking, and not to nag
their husbands to quit smoking, or else,
and Bill then made a few more Sly
Suggestions:
Our
next thought is that you should never tell him what he must do
about his drinking. If he
gets the idea that you are a nag or a killjoy, your chance of
accomplishing anything useful may be zero. ... This maylead to
lonely evenings for you. He may seek someone else to
console him — not
always another man.
Big
Book, 3rd Edition, To
Wives, page 111.
Bill
was also using the propaganda trick of Argue
From Adverse Consequences there, to put
the little woman in her place — "Don't nag your
husband to quit drinking, or else he
may go off with another woman."
We
know these suggestions are sometimes difficult to follow, but you
will save many a heartbreak if you can succeed in observing them.
Your husband may come
to appreciate your reasonableness and patience.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G.
Wilson, Chapter 8, To
Wives, page 111.
(Then
again, maybe he
won't appreciate you at all. Maybe he'll just continue to
take advantage of you, like Bill did to Lois.)
If
this kind of approach does not catch your husband's interest, it may be
best to drop the subject, but after a friendly talk your husband
will usually revive the topic himself. This may take patient waiting,
but it will be worth it. Meanwhile you might try to help the wife
of another serious drinker. If you act upon these principles, your
husband may stop
or moderate.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G.
Wilson, Chapter 8, To
Wives, page 111.
So the
husband may quit
drinking if the wife stops being a shrill nag? Why, it must
be her fault that he drinks.
And
while you are out recruiting, here is how you handle a drinker who
is perhaps not a disgusting atheist:
Your
prospect may belong
to a religious denomination. His religious education and training may be
far superior to yours. In that case he is going to wonder how you
can add anything to what he already knows. But he will be curious
to learn why his own convictions have not worked and why yours
seem to work so well. He may be
an example of the truth that faith alone is insufficient.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G.
Wilson, page 93.
That's a cute twist in the logic: "He may be an
example of one of Bill Wilson's unquestionably-true religious
beliefs." Bill is subtly slipping in another
propaganda technique there: Assume the
Major Premise. Just assume that something is true, and
talk like it is unquestionably true, because you wish to fool others
into believing that it is true, and then divert attention away from
that assumption by arguing about something else, like why it is true:
He may be an example of the
truth that faith alone is insufficient.
Then again, he may be
an example of the truth that religious beliefs really have very
little to do with drinking beer...
Bill managed to pack more lies into that
paragraph. This one sentence contains no less than two lies:
But he will be curious to learn why
his own convictions have not worked and why yours seem to work
so well.
- Who says that the other guy's own
convictions have not worked?
Who says that the goal of all religious beliefs is to keep people
from drinking alcohol?
I don't remember any of the Ten Commandments saying, "Thou
Shalt Not Drink Wine, Beer, Or Hard Liquor".
- In fact, Christ's first miracle
was making wine out of water, wasn't it?
- Didn't Jesus drink wine at the
Last Supper?
- And don't many Christians drink
wine at Communion?
- Don't Jews drink wine at Seder?
So having religious beliefs or convictions does not always bar one
from drinking alcohol. And drinking alcohol does not prove that
someone's religious convictions have failed.
- And religious convictions don't "work". They are not supposed to
"work". That is, religious convictions are beliefs.
They are not machines like cars or computers that are supposed to do
things, and supposed to
function in a certain manner. And it is not really the job of
religious convictions to control people's indulgence in food, sex,
drugs, or alcohol.
- The recruiter's convictions "seem to
have worked so well"? That may well be a slick
deception. The recruiter could bedoing the "Fake It
Until You Make It" routine. He may well relapse
and die drunk after doing a bunch of enthusiastic recruiting, just
like Jackie did in
the Big Book, and
just like Paddy did,
and just like Bill Wilson's own recruiter, Ebby Thacher,
did.
- Lastly, note the underhanded
suggestion that the religious beliefs of the A.A. members are
better than the beliefs of other religions, because the other
religions didn't keep their people from drinking.
You know, Bill Wilson just might have been one
of the greatest, slickest, most consummate American con artists,
when it comes to lies, deceit, and propaganda techniques.
The
A.A. headquarters is still cranking out the same style of
propaganda today:
Spirituality
is an awakening — or is it all the loose ends woven
together into a mellow fabric?
It's understanding — or is it all the knowledge one
need ever know?
It's freedom — if you consider fear slavery.
It's confidence — or is it the belief that a higher
power will see you through any storm or gale?
It's adhering to the dictates of your conscience — or
is it a deep, genuine, living concern for the people
and the planet?
Came
to Believe, Page 5, A.A. World Services, Inc.
Does the A.A. headquarters
teach real spirituality, or is it just a load of
bombastic bull droppings?
|
- Misleading
Inference
Somebody who is selling a get-rich-quick
scheme on late-night TV shows you an accountant's statement that
certifies that he is worth more than a million dollars. But there is
no evidence that the guy actually made that much money by using his
get-rich-quick scheme. He probably made the money by selling the scheme on
late-night TV.
Likewise, in an infomercial for a stock
market trading program, a woman says, "I feel bad when I don't make $1000 a trade."
Well okay, but how often does she feel bad? They didn't say
anything about that. They imply that she is so successful, and
making so much money, that it's an unusual and unhappy day when she
doesn't make $1000. But they actually presented us with no evidence
to support that assumption. For all we know, that poor woman could
be feeling 'really bad' every day.
- Unsubstantiated
Inference and Groundless Claims
Peter Howard complained bitterly about
the criticism that his favorite cult religion — Frank Buchman's
Moral Re-Armament — was getting:
So many people are snobs of intellect. They write well, make
money, gain titles or preach splendidly but are helpless and
barren when they meet a man in need. They shine before men but
change nobody.
Britain
and the Beast, Peter Howard, 1963, page 112-113.
Peter Howard tried to imply that members
of his religion really did do a good job of helping people and
changing them for the better, while his critics did not. But Peter
Howard provided no evidence to support that inference. Actually,
Frank Buchman's cult was notorious for also not changing
people. People would loudly proclaim that they had been "changed" or
"saved" at a big emotional rally or revival meeting or house party,
but they were very soon back to their
old bad habits, same as usual.
- Introduce
Irrelevant Information as Supporting Evidence
Here is an example of using irrelevant
information as supporting evidence. The cult leader Frank Buchman
was working on converting a college student, and...
...finally
the student said: "I'm not going to be a Christian." ...
Then Frank asked him what he believed.
"Confucius," came the unusual answer.
"Wonderful!" said Frank, deciding to humour him. "Tell me
about Confucius."
Frank says his friend did not seem to know much on that
subject. But Frank had been to China, and knew that Confucius said
he could tell people how to be righteous, but he hadn't the power
to make them righteous. Moveover, he had been to Confucius' grave,
and been entertained at tea by the seventy-sixth descendant of the
Chinese sage and seen the seventy-seventh descendant on the day
when he had to wear four coats because of the cold.
Frank Buchman,
quoted in Experiment
With God; Frank Buchman Reconsidered, Gösta Ekman, page 90.
The information that Frank Buchman
visited the grave of Confucius is totally irrelevant. It does not
mean that Buchman knew anything more about Confucianism than the
student or anybody else. Likewise, having had tea with a very
distant descendant of Confucius is also completely irrelevant
trivia, even though it sounds good on the surface. And to talk about
having seen an even more distant descendant on a very cold day is
absurd.
The author also used the propaganda
technique of making an Unsubstantiated
Inference, implying that Frank Buchman, unlike
Confucius, did have "the power to make people righteous".
Alas, Frank Buchman had no such power, either. Frank Buchman was
able to fool a few young college students and eccentric rich people
and make them think that they had been changed for the better, but
when it came to the people who really mattered the most and who really needed to get
"changed", like Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Goering, Joseph Goebbels
and Adolf Hitler, Frank Buchman
totally failed to make good Christians out of
them. So much for Frank Buchman's "power to make people righteous".
(Besides, what happened to free will?
If Frank Buchman really had "the power to make people
righteous", then wasn't he over-riding other peoples' ability to
chose good or evil for themselves?)
A variation on this propaganda trick of
introducing irrelevant evidence is to state a bunch of irrelevant
obvious platitudes, and then claim that they support your program.
Yammer a few trite hackneyed irrelevant clichés and slogans like, "People
are more important than things", and then conclude
that your cult is right about everything. (That was what "Up With People"
did.)
- False Analogy
They show you a fried egg and say, "This is your brain. This
is your brain on drugs..."
No, that isn't my brain. But considering the stupidity of
their arguments, that just might really be their brain...
Bill Wilson wrote:
Near
you, alcoholics are dying helplessly like people in a sinking ship.
The A.A. Big Book, Alcoholics
Anonymous, William G. Wilson, Chapter 11, "A Vision For
You", page 152.
No, alcoholics are not like helpless
people on a sinking ship. Alcoholics are not powerless over alcohol.
They can quit drinking, with or without Alcoholics Anonymous. (Now
whether they will quit
drinking and save their own lives is another matter.)
One A.A. member
reported:
"My sponsor used
to enliken the steppers to survivors of a shipwreck,
who all had to row in the same direction, in order to
survive. This related to a group conscience. 'What
would it look like if everyone rowed in different
directions?' was his analogy."
Again, that is a bad analogy. Recovering
or recovered alcoholics are not trapped in a lifeboat
together. They don't have to spend the rest of their
lives in an A.A. meeting room, conforming to the
group. They can all go in their own directions and get
on with their lives.
|
Bill had a zillion false analogies:
We
are like
men who have lost their legs; they never grow new ones.
The A.A. Big Book, Alcoholics
Anonymous, William G. Wilson, Chapter 3, "More About
Alcoholism", page 30.
So, Bill
says, you can't ever recover from alcoholism, and you can't ever
leave Alcoholics Anonymous.
Actually, if alcoholics suffer from an allergic reaction to alcohol,
like Doctor Silkworth suggested in the Big
Book (page
xxvi of 3rd edition; page xxviii of 4th edition), then we
are not at all like men who have lost their legs. We are like people
who are allergic to a poisonous chemical, so we are better off if we
don't consume that poison.
Bill continued:
The
Wright brothers' almost childish faith that they could build a
machine which would fly was the mainspring of their
accomplishment. Without that, nothing could have happened. We
agnostics and atheists were sticking to the idea that
self-sufficiency would solve our problems. When others showed us
that "God-sufficiency worked with them, we began to feel like those who had
insisted the Wrights would never fly.
The A.A. Big Book, Alcoholics
Anonymous, William G. Wilson, Chapter 4, "We Agnostics",
pages 52-53.
No, I don't feel like a stodgy old fool
when I hear some superstitious cult members proclaim that they have
found a magical panacea — that the cult has solved all of their problems.
(Especially not when I read what their real failure
rate is.)
The
alcoholic is like
a tornado roaring his way through the lives
of others.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G.
Wilson, page 82.
That was the behavior of Bill Wilson, not
all alcoholics.
They
suspect father is a bit balmy!
He is not so unbalanced as they might think. Many of us
have experienced dad's elation. We have indulged in spiritual
intoxication. Like
a gaunt prospector, belt drawn in over the ounce of food,
our pick struck gold. Joy at our release from a lifetime of
frustration knew no bounds. Father feels he has struck something
better than gold. For a time he may try to hug the new treasure to
himself. He may not see at once that he has barely scratched a
limitless lode which will pay dividends only if he mines it for
the rest of his life and insists on giving away the entire
product.
The A.A. Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G.
Wilson, Chapter 9, "The Family Afterward", pages 128-129.
No, a giddy
manic-depressive who has become obsessed with a cult religion is
not like a prospector who has just found gold.
- Conflation,
False Equality
Say or imply that two things are equal, and the same thing, when they
are not.
"We
pretend being religious makes us moral and
charitable."
When You're Riding Alone,
You're Riding With Osama, Bill Maher, page 117.
|
| The
serious issue is the conflation of the nation with one,
and only one, political party. When Palin says
"pro-American", she means pro-Republican. When McCain's
banners pronounce "Country First", they mean Republican
party first.
And
this is serious because such conflation is a hallmark
of dictatorial regimes — recall the Communist Party or
the Nazis. In each case, the party logo (hammer &
sickle or swastika) became the national symbol.
== Ed
Robertson, Bloomington IN
|
Adolf Hitler and the Nazis used this
propaganda trick often. They conflated "patriotism" with all kinds
of crimes:
- If you are patriotic, you will support
killing the Jews.
- If you are patriotic, you will never
criticize Adolf Hitler or his policies.
- If you are patriotic, you will support
invading foreign countries like Czechoslovakia and Poland, and
then Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, France, and the Ukraine.
- If you are patriotic, you will always
vote for the Nazi Party.
- If you are patriotic, you will agree
with Hitler about everything, and worship Hitler's words as the
ultimate in wisdom. You will read Mein
Kampf as your new bible.
- If you are patriotic, you will gladly
join the Army and help Hitler to conquer and occupy all of Europe.
In modern times, American politicians
have used the same tricks for the same things:
- If you are patriotic, you will support
the War in Vietnam, and not criticize it.
- If you are patriotic, you will support
invading Iraq.
- If you are patriotic, you will not
complain about the fact that there were no weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq.
- If you are patriotic, you will not
notice that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq did not make America
more secure.
- If you are really patriotic, you will
support the troops (rather than criticizing the war).
It is possible to support the troops while objecting to an illegal
war. Criticizing lying politicians is not the same thing as
criticizing the troops, but the politicians don't want you to know
that.
Politicians often use this trick to try
to equate patriotism with not criticizing the President:
- If you are patriotic, you will never
disagree with the President.
- If you are really patriotic, you will
support the President.
Those things are not the same things at all, of course. Sometimes the
highest patriotism requires criticizing the elected leaders, rather
than just going along with their program, and letting them get away
with anything. Today, we regard those "disloyal" Germans who fought
against Adolf Hitler as the greatest of German patriots.
More conflation: We routinely hear that
the economy is improving because a bunch of new jobs were created —
as if all jobs are equal — "a job is a job, and just having one is
wonderful." The people who are trying to fool you with faked
statistics try to equate low-paying jobs with high-paying jobs.
Someone who lost a high-paying manufacturing job and is now forced
to take a low-paying janitorial or burger-flipping job won't agree.
We can easily find plenty of examples of
this stunt in Bill Wilson's writings:
- Quitting drinking = joining Alcoholics
Anonymous.
- Quitting Alcoholics Anonymous =
returning to a life of drinking, and dying drunk in a gutter.
- A.A. activities = "recovery".
- A.A. activities = "spiritual
progress". (Big Book, pages 100 and 127.)
- The A.A. program = "treatment" of
alcoholism.
- And Professor
Vaillant used the reverse equality: "treatment"
of alcoholism = sending patients to Alcoholics Anonymous.
- Doing Bill's Twelve Steps = "spiritual
development".
- Doing Bill's Twelve Steps = "spiritual
growth".
- Believing in God = agreeing with
Bill Wilson's cult religion beliefs.
- "Having faith" = believing Bill's
bull.
- Choosing sobriety = accepting Bill
Wilson's Twelve Steps (and vice versa). (Alcoholics Anonymous
Comes Of Age, p. 28.)
- A.A. = sobriety. When they tell you
"Don't let anything come before your sobriety", that really means
"You must put
A.A. before everything else in your life."
- "Helping others selflessly" = going
recruiting for A.A. (Big Book, page 97.)
- "Putting other people's welfare ahead
of your own" = going recruiting for Alcoholics Anonymous. (Big
Book, page 94.)
- "Keeping spiritually active" = going
recruiting for Alcoholics Anonymous. (Big Book, page 156.)
- Behavior of which 12-Steppers
disapprove = "spiritual
disease".
- Surrendering your mind and your will
to the cult = "transcendence
of ego".
- Slavish dependence on A.A. equals "true
independence of the spirit." (Twelve Steps and Twelve
Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 36.
- Bill Wilson's "spiritual principles" =
God's spiritual principles.
- Bill Wilson's cult practices = God's
spiritual principles.
- Bill Wilson's strange ideas of God =
God.
- Bill Wilson's favorite cult religion =
"simple
principles".
- "Having faith in God" = believing
what Bill Wilson says.
- The voices in Bill's head = the voice of
God.
- Or, the voices in Bill's head = the voices of
spirits of long-dead people — medieval priests
and Nantucket whalers.
- Bill Wilson's funny state of mind = "restored to
sanity by God".
- Accepting the authoritarian structure
and extreme demands of a pro-Nazi cult religion = "getting good".
- Using your own intelligence and will
power to run your own life and take care of yourself = "playing God".
- Rejecting Bill's bull = being "unreasoningly
prejudiced".
- Being a slave of the A.A. God =
freedom:
First
of all, we had to quit playing
God. It didn't work. Next, we decided that hereafter in
this drama of life, God was going to be our Director. He is
the Principal; we are His agents. He is the Father, and we are
His children. Most good ideas are simple, and this concept was
the keystone of the new and triumphant arch through which we
passed to freedom.
A.A. Big Book, 3rd Edition, William
G. Wilson, Chapter 5, How
It Works, page 62.
- Many years of drunkenness = expertise
about alcoholism and sobriety.
At an A.A. meeting, a
member declares that A.A. is good for achieving sobriety,
because: "There's
an aggregate of two thousand years of drinking experience in
this meeting room. If we don't understand alcoholism, then
nobody does."
Wrong.
Bad logic.
Expertise in
getting drunk does not equal expertise in getting other people
sober.
Heck, just look at the guys drinking under the bridge — they
might have even more years of experience in drinking, because
they never stopped — they must really understand
drinking — but they haven't gotten anybody else sober lately,
have they?
- Double Bind
A double bind is
a trap where you are damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
The classic double binds are the tests
for whether a woman is a witch:
Throw her into a river or pond, and ....
If she sinks and drowns, she was innocent.
But if she floats and lives, then she's guilty (because the
Devil is holding her up), so she gets burned at the stake.
Likewise,
If she confesses (under torture) to being a witch, then she is
one.
If she denies being a witch, then that proves that she is an
evil witch who lies about being a witch.
Closer to home, Alcoholics Anonymous says
that
If you say that you are an alcoholic, then you obviously are
one.
If you deny being an alcoholic, then that proves that you are
a dishonest alcoholic who is in
denial.
The Hazelden Little
Red Book teaches us that this is a "symptom" that
indicates "mental illness":
—
Taking that first drink with the idea that "this time I'll control
it."
The
Little Red Book, Hazelden, page 28.
Oh? Is the opposite true? Is it a sign of
good mental health if you think "This time I won't
control it. This time I'll just get totally smashed, drunk as a
skunk, and righteously ripped..."?
Bill Wilson gave us another good
example of a double bind earlier, when he
declared that we were selfish and unspiritual if we committed a
bunch of sins and crimes, and we were also selfish and unspiritual
if we didn't commit a bunch of sins and crimes, because, in the
second case, we were just selfishly avoiding punishment.
Damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
Another common Alcoholics Anonymous
double bind is: "If
I don't feel like going to a meeting, I usually NEED to."
- If you feel like going to a meeting,
you should go to a meeting.
- If you don't feel like going to a
meeting, you should go to a meeting.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Either way, they insist that
you should spend your evening at one of their meetings.
Danny M. Wilcox teaches us, in his book
of A.A. dogma, that alcoholics are "people pleasers":
They
spoke of the things they had been willing to do to please other
people in their lives.
The need to please others and the perceived failure to do so
were often cited as among the main reasons they drank. Generally,
these members exhibited obvious anxiety concerning the opinion of
other people, which really emphasizes our social needs as human
beings.
Alcoholic
Thinking: Language, Culture, and Belief in Alcoholics Anonymous,
Danny M. Wilcox, page 86.
But five pages later, Wilcox also wrote
that being selfish and not caring how other people feel is a sign of
alcoholism:
"Selfishness,
self-centeredness! That is the root cause of all our problems" (AA
1976: 62). Everything revolves around self-centeredness. ...
Amazingly, when first introduced to AA most members said that they
did not think that they were especially self-centered. Some of
them thought it patently ridiculous to suggest that they were
interested only in themselves, since they could cite plenty of
examples of their generosity and concern for others. ...
Most members said that their selfishness just got worse as
their dependence on alcohol increased.
Alcoholic
Thinking: Language, Culture, and Belief in Alcoholics Anonymous,
Danny M. Wilcox, page 91-92.
So,
- you are an alcoholic if you care what
other people think and feel,
- and you are an alcoholic if you don't
care what other people think and feel.
Damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
They use the same trap on those people
who are children of alcoholics:
- If you strive to please yourself, that
proves you are a selfish, self-seeking alcoholic, and you need to
join Alcoholics Anonymous and do the Twelve Steps.
- If you strive to please other people,
that proves you are a neurotic "people-pleasing" Adult Child Of an
Alcoholic, and you need to join Al-Anon or
ACOA and do the Twelve Steps.
Damned if you do, and damned if you don't. You can't get out of it
without joining some 12-Step group and doing the guilt-inducing
Twelve Steps.
For that matter, as Bill sees it, you
can't ever escape from the Twelve Steps. Just being related to an
alcoholic dooms you to having to do Bill Wilson's Twelve Steps for
the rest of your life:
- If you drink alcohol, like your
relative, you have to join Alcoholics Anonymous and do the Twelve
Steps.
- If you don't drink alcohol, you have
to join Al-Anon or ACOA and do the Twelve Steps to treat your "spiritual
disease" of "codependency".
- Project
Future From Past
Assume that history repeats itself, and just because something
happened before, it will happen the same way again. Especially, make
the mistake of attributing the causes of events to only one or two
factors, while ignoring a lot of other factors.
For instance, "The last three times we had a full moon in
Aquarius, the stock of XYZ went up. So let's bet big on XYZ the
next full moon. It's a can't-lose
deal." The people who use astrology to
try to predict the stock market die broke, just like all of the
other cycle-trackers and wave-finders.
A corollary to projecting the future from
the past is the notion that history repeats itself. You will often
hear someone arguing that we must do a certain thing, or follow a
certain path, because that was the best thing to do back in 1938 in
response to Hitler (or some such thing). While it is wise to learn
from history, it is also wise to learn that history does not
necessarily repeat itself.
One wit declared that history doesn't
repeat itself, it rhymes.
- False
Analysis Of History
Misinterpret history to make it look different than it really was, to
create the impression that something happened which didn't.
For instance, some people say that Adolf
Hitler was a military genius, who just went too far in killing the
Jews. He was only beaten, they say, because America overwhelmed
Germany with supplies and equipment.
Fact:
Adolf Hitler was a military fool. He constantly over-rode the
decisions of his generals, who grumbled about the war being run by
Corporal Hitler. Hitler lost battle after battle, and lost
millions of troops, by stupidly attacking the wrong places at the
wrong time, and refusing to retreat and save his armies when
necessary.
And the Russians bore the brunt of the war, not the Western
Allies. The fighting on the Russian Front was an unbelievable
nightmare, featuring Russian human-wave attacks by the "punishment
brigades". They lost many, many millions of people — something
like 14 million — and gave a whole new meaning to the term "cannon
fodder", while the USA only lost about a quarter of a million men.
The Moral Re-Armament cult leader Frank
Buchman declared:
"We
finance our work as [George] Washington financed his revolution —
on our knees."
Moral
Re-Armament: What Is It?, page 106.
That is just so much nonsense. George
Washington most assuredly did not finance the American revolution on
his knees. He often had to beg the Continental Congress to cough up
some more cash and guns and supplies, but he didn't do it on his
knees.
And the old painting that
portrays George Washington praying on his knees at Valley Forge
perpetuates a myth. What George Washington really said was, "I have examined the
religion of the Christians, and the Jews, and the Musselman
(Islam), and in none of them do I find any virtue." So
much for financing the American Revolution on his knees.
The Buchmanites repeated that false
analysis of history while they continued to harangue people to
donate more money to Frank Buchman's cult:
Maybe you should give
everything you've got. People did two
hundred years ago when this country had to finance the Revolution.
Born
To Upturn The World: The people who are making the Sing-Out
explosion, "Up With People", David Allen, pub. 1967, Pace
Publications, page 71.
No, they
didn't.
Similarly, the often-heard claims that
the United States of America is a nation that was founded on
"Christian Principles" or is "based on Christianity" are also false.
The Founding Fathers were very careful to not incorporate
any religion into the Constitution of the United States. They had
already tasted a State-enforced religion in England — the Church of
England — and they didn't want any more of that, so the Founding
Fathers created the "absolute firewall" of separation between Church
and State. And where some colonies like Massachusetts and Maryland
already had laws that enforced one religion over another (death to
Jews), they had to nullify those laws in order to be part of the
United States.
Another popular misinterpretation of
American history is to say that the Vietnam War happened because
America was defending democracy in Vietnam... There wasn't any
democracy in Vietnam. There were a bunch of murdering heroin-dealing
generals running the southern half of the country. The USA was
fighting to keep control of the country, and keep its puppet
dictators in power, and to protect American investments, but not to
protect democracy or freedom. The truth is that there was never a
free and fair election while the USA dominated Vietnam. President
Eisenhower wrote in his memoirs that it was obvious that Ho Chi Minh
would win any fair popular election by a landslide, so the promised
elections were not held. Years later, they held some "elections"
that were just stage-managed affairs with only American-approved
condidates allowed to run. And of course the American selection,
like the murderous Colonel Nguyen Kao Ky, was always the winner.
Even today, we still have a few racists
in the USA whose analysis of history is a bit warped — they will
tell you that the kindly Southern slave owners took good care of
their slaves and gave them everything that they needed. Why, those
poor pathetic blacks would have been lost without their kindly
masters taking such good care of them... Al Jolson's most popular
song, "Swannee", depicted a black man sentimentally pining away for
his beloved plantation on the Swannee River, where kindly massuh
made life so good. Ah, the good old days.
A popular variation on false history is
to proclaim that current society is decadent and immoral, not at all
like the good old days when everything was wonderful. But any
reasonable analysis of history shows that things have often been far
worse than they are now, no matter whether you are talking about
sexual looseness, drug addiction, lawlessness, violent crime, wars
of conquest, cruel and oppressive rulers, plagues, alcoholism, or
social upheaval. One of my favorite quotes on this subject was found
in an ancient Egyptian tomb, built 4000 years ago:
"Alas, the whole world is derelict.
Children no longer obey their parents."
From
dogmatic religious moralists, we often get raps like,
"The Roman Empire collapsed because of immorality
and bread and circuses for the masses."
The speaker ignores the fact
that the whole premise of the Roman empire was immoral.
It was basically "Rob,
enslave, and murder others because you can get away
with it — you are bigger and stronger and more
vicious than they are, and you have better steel
swords. Such conquest of other people is
'glorious'."
The Romans even invented crucifixion to
punish and terrorize those people who objected to being
slaves of the Romans and giving all of their wealth to
the Roman soldiers.
The "immorality"
argument also ignores many other possible causes of the
decline of the Roman Empire, particularly the fact that
most of the later Roman Emperors appear to have been
suffering from lead poisoning and were insane. Lead
dishes were fashionable for the rich back then, and they
even piped in their running water in lead pipes, so many
of them suffered from brain damage caused by a lifetime
of lead poisoning. Some of those Roman emperors were
raving lunatics. It shows, when you read their history.
But the "immorality" argument ignores all of those other
important facts, and just tries to substitute a
simplistic cause for a complex process.
And then there was the
problem that Rome had a big silver mine in Spain. They
mined it heavily for a long time, and used the silver to
pay the entire Roman army. But when the miners dug to a
certain depth, they hit an underground stream and the
mine flooded. They could not ever get the water out of
the mine, and the mine was finished. No more silver for
Rome; no more silver for the army. When they got no more
pay, the Roman soldiers deserted. Then the Vandals
walked into Rome, and that was the end of the Roman
Empire. Somehow, the "immorality" seems to have been
largely irrelevant.
UPDATE: 2005.02.14:
It's Valentine's Day, from which we learn
another bit of the history of Rome: Emperor Claudius
outlawed marriage because he believed that unmarried
young men made better warriors. (At least they were in
a much nastier mood because they weren't getting laid
much.) A courageous priest named Valentine performed
secret marriages for young couples of lovers anyway.
When Claudius found out, he had Valentine killed. And
much later, Valentine was declared to be a saint, the
patron saint of lovers.
Nero fiddled while Rome
burned... Caligula killed everybody who bothered him,
including his favorite teacher and his own mother.
Constantine suffocated his wife and murdered his son.
Claudius outlawed marriage... Those later Roman
Emperors were mad as hatters.
— Which in turn is another
example of insanity caused by heavy metal poisoning:
English hatters used vials of mercury as weights to
shape hats, and after 20 years of inhaling mercury
vapors, their brains were gone and they were raving
lunatics. See Alice
in Wonderland for the story of one
mad hatter.
And
what will really tweak the noses of the religious
fanatics is pointing out the fact that the Roman
Empire did not collapse and fall apart until it
adopted Christianity as the official state religion.
As long as the Romans kept throwing the Christians
to the lions, they were okay. But when the Emperor
Constantin converted to Christianity and made
Christianity the official state religion of Rome,
and suppressed all other religions,20the
days of the Roman Empire were numbered.
Apparently
God was okay with the Roman Empire being Pagan, but
when they turned Christian, God got rid of them.
Does that
mean that if the United States adopts Christianity
as its official state religion, that the American
empire will decline and fall too?
|
Bill Wilson similarly misinterpreted the history of
temperance movements. He declared that organizations like the
Washingtonian Society and Women's Christian Temperance Movement were
failures that didn't sober up any drinkers, and that Bill's
Alcoholics Anonymous program was the first working sobriety program
in history. Nothing could be further from the truth. Bill wasn't the
first, and A.A. doesn't
work.
And the reason that those other
temperance organizations didn't spread like cancers is because they
were not evil mind-controlling cults that convinced their followers
that they absolutely must go recruiting or
else they will die.
Also see the example of Hypnotic Bait
And Switch for another example of the false
analysis of history.
- It's Never
Happened Before
This is also an appeal to a false analysis of history. Imply that
something just cannot happen because it has never happened before.
Variations:
- "It can't happen here."
- "It hasn't happened yet."
- "It always happens this way, so it
can't happen that way."
- "These
people have never done such a thing before, so
they won't do it now."
Note that the statement that "It never
happened before" does not really need to be true. This technique
will work just fine if your audience is ignorant of the fact that
"it" actually did happen before.
- I Didn't See
It Happen, So It Never Happened
Claim that something never happened, or something does not exist,
because you have not seen it.
As Carl Sagan said, "Absence of evidence
is not evidence of absence." Just because you haven't seen any
intelligent extra-terrestrials yet doesn't prove that they don't
exist.
Sexual exploitation is a problem in
Alcoholics Anonymous. The evidence is overwhelming. The criminal
behavior of A.A. groups like the Midtown
Group in Washington DC has even been reported on
television and in national magazines like Newsweek. Nevertheless,
A.A. members who are in denial about the whole thing use the
argument "I never saw it happen. It never happened in our group, so
it never happened."
This logical fallacy also ignores the
logical problem that you cannot prove a negative. Just because you
haven't seen something does not prove that it doesn't exist. For
example, you cannot prove that Santa Claus does not exist. Just
because you didn't see him doesn't prove that he doesn't exist. Even
if you went to the North Pole looking for him and didn't find him,
doesn't prove that he doesn't exist. Santa could have been
vacationing in Hawaii then.
I have never seen Sophia Loren, Dustin
Hoffman, or Robert Redford either, so I guess they don't exist. Oh
sure, I've seen pictures of them, but those pictures could have been
faked, just like the photos of Santa Claus. You see the problem.
This could go on forever.
- Argue
Inevitability
Declare that something is inevitable, or unavoidable. This technique
can weaken opposition to a certain plan or suggested course of action.
( "If it
is going to happen anyway, there is no sense in wasting a lot of
time and energy fighting it.")
- "It's Our Destiny."
- "It's fate. It's inevitable."
- "It's the unavoidable consequence of
things that have already been done."
- "It's the Force Of History." — "Communism teaches
us that we must overthrow the rich people and seize all of
their property and kill them all and spread Communism
everywhere because Dialectical Materialism teaches us that
the Revolution of the Proletariat is inevitable — the 'Force
of History' cannot be stopped."
- "History is on our side."
- "It's God's Will."
- "We are stuck with continuing the
war, now that we have started it."
- "A clash between the Christian and
Islamic cultures was inevitable."
- Pollyanna's
Ploy — Unbridled Optimism
Just proclaim that everything is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, no
matter what is really happening.
- Chicken
Little's Pessimism
Scream that we live in the worst of all possible worlds and things are
still getting even worse. We are all going to Hell in a bucket.
This technique is of course simply the
opposite of the Pollyanna Ploy. Ignore all good news and emphasize
the negative.
The Earth is
degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound.
Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants
to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the
world is fast approaching.
== Assyrian tablet, c. 2800 BC |
- Generalize,
and the Sweeping Generality
Project grand, sweeping generalizations from minimal information:
- Extrapolate sweeping generalities from
just a few facts.
"I
know three Martians, and all three of them are sleazy and
dishonest and underhanded and will cheat you whenever they get
a chance. Therefore all Martians are dishonest and
untrustworthy."
- Claim that a few examples characterize
the whole. When a few Catholics attended meetings of Frank
Buchman's Oxford Group cult
religion, Buchman declared that Catholics had no problem with his
version of Christian theology, and that the Catholic Church
approved of his organization. (Not so, the Vatican
banned Buchman's groups, repeatedly.)
- Apply general patterns or stereotypes
to specific cases:
"You
are a skeptic, so you just can't understand how people
experience God."
The Sweeping Generality is a kind of
exaggeration — Take something that is partially true, or only true
in some cases, and make a universal statement out of it. For
example, the former Miss USA got out of a rehab facility, and with
her head still full of cult slogans, went on the Jay Leno show and
annnounced:
"Everything that comes
out of the mouth of an alcoholic or an addict is a lie."
== Miss USA, Tara Conner, on the Jay Leno Show, 2 February
2007.
Now it is true that addicts or alcoholics
who are in a bad way, in the depths of their addiction, will often
lie to get more of whatever their favorite drug is. But no way is everything that they
say a lie. Nor is their addiction the only motivation
in their lives. Nor are all addicts
and alcoholics so desperate, and lying to get something.
What is funny there is that Miss Conner invoked "The Cretan's Paradox" without
realizing it.
That is the paradox created by
Epimenides, a Greek from Crete, who went before the Spartans
and announced, "All Cretans are liars." The Spartans thought
that was pretty funny, but they didn't realize the gotcha:
- The speaker Epimenides was
himself a Cretan, from Crete.
- Therefore he must be a liar.
- But if he is a liar, then he was
lying when he said that all Cretans are liars.
- So Cretans are not liars.
- So Epimenides must have been
telling the truth when he said that all Cretans are liars.
- Therefore, Cretans must be
liars.
- Therefore Epimenides must be a
liar...
- So Epimenides was lying when he
said that all Cretans are liars.
- So Cretans are not liars.
- ... etc. ... 'Round and 'round
forever.
When
Tara Conner confessed to Jay Leno that she was an alcoholic,
and then declared that everything that comes out of the mouth
of an alcoholic or an addict is a lie, she was creating the
same paradox. And Jay Leno knew it. He was actually wincing in
pain as Tara Conner went on and on about how bad alcoholics
are.
Likewise, A.A. makes sweeping
generalizations about alcoholics:
- "I
know of a hundred alcoholics who simply cannot learn to drink
moderately. Their drinking always spins out of control.
Therefore no alcoholics can ever learn to drink moderately and
we should not even discuss the subject."
- Bill Wilson and a few of the other
early A.A. members had arrogant, domineering, egotistical,
grandiose personalities, so Bill declared that all
alcoholics in the world had gigantic puffed-up
self-centered strutting-peacock egos who thought that they were
too big and too good to need God. Dr. Harry
Tiebout, Bill Wilson's psychiatrist, said of Bill: "he had been trying to
live out the infantilely grandiose demands of 'His Majesty
the Baby.'" So Bill wrote of all
alcoholics in general:
When
A.A. was quite young, a number of eminent psychologists and
doctors made an exhaustive study of a good-sized group of
so-called problem drinkers. The doctors weren't trying to find
how different we were from one another; they sought to find
whatever personality traits, if any, this group of alcoholics
had in common. They finally came up with a conclusion that
shocked the A.A. members of that time. These distinguished men
had the nerve to say that most of the alcoholics under
investigation were still childish, emotionally sensitive, and
grandiose.
How we alcoholics did resent that verdict!
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions,
William G. Wilson, pages 122-123.
The
primary fact that we fail to recognize is our total inability
to form a true partnership with another human being. Our
egomania digs two disastrous pitfalls. Either we insist upon
dominating people we know, or we depend on them far too much.
... When we habitually try to manipulate others to our own
willful desires, they revolt, and resist us heavily. Then we
develop hurt feelings, a sense of persecution, and a desire to
retaliate. ... Of true brotherhood we had small
comprehension.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions,
William G. Wilson, page 53.
...our
crippling handicap has been our lack of humility. ...
That basic ingredient of all humility, a desire to seek and
do God's will, was missing.
Twelve
Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page
71-72.
- And
Bill's disciples make the same mistake:
In
most Twelve Step literature, the addictive self is called the
"ego." Whenever I hear or read the word ego,
I substitute the words addictive
self.
The goal of a Fourth Step is to deflate the ego — or, in
other words, to deflate the addictive self. The addictive self
is marked by grandiosity (addicted people feel that they are
more than or better than everyone else) and self-centeredness
(they believe that they are the center of the universe and
there is little room left for anyone or anything else).
Understanding
the Twelve Steps, Terence T. Gorski, page 81.
...
those addicted to alcohol behave as though they were the
center of their universe or their own God.
Spirituality:
The key to recovery from alcoholism, Warfield,
Robert D.; Goldstein, Marc B., Counseling
& Values, April 1996, Vol. 40, Issue 3, page 196.
A.A.
members agree that while it is not necessary to believe in a
personal God, it is important for alcoholics to realize that they themselves are not God! That
is, they are not the center of the universe, nor are they
running the show.
Drug-Impaired
Professionals, Robert Holman Coombs, Page 217. (Italics
in the original.)
Apparently, none of those authors can
see the simple obvious fact that it really is possible to feel
bad, and want to consume some alcohol or other drug to feel
better, without suffering from delusions
of grandeur and believing that you are God.
Alcoholics are not all clones of Bill Wilson. Alcoholics don't
all have Bill Wilson's mental illness. Alcoholics are not all
the same.
- Take Quotes
Out Of Context
It's like this:
Suppose that the police are interrogating a guy about a bank
robbery. He responds with, "What?! Are you trying
to claim that I shot the bank teller?"
If you lift just the five words "I shot the bank teller" out
of that sentence, it turns the question into a confession of guilt.
It completely reverses the meaning of the words. That is quoting out
of context.
Here
is a good example of quoting out of context to create a desired
impression:
In August of 1936, the religious cult
leader Frank Buchman
gave an interview to William A. H. Birnie, a newspaper
reporter from the New York World-Telegram,
wherein he stated, "I
thank heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler, who built a front line
of defense against the anti-Christ of Communism."
Read the entire
interview here.
While writing their history of Alcoholics
Anonymous and biography of the founder William G. Wilson, the staff
at Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. used the propaganda
technique of taking quotes
out of context, as well as some other propaganda techniques,
to cover up the fact that Bill Wilson's spiritual teacher was a Nazi
sympathizer. Charles Bufe described the AAWS machinations this way:
| It's
worth noting that Bill Wilson and his fellow AAs-to-be must have
known about this interview, which caused a public furor,
yet they continued to work as part of the Oxford Groups
for more than another year in New York and another three
years in Akron.
It's also worth noting that
AA, in its official "Conference-approved" biography of
Bill Wilson, Pass
It On, treats this matter in what can only be
described as a dishonest manner. This is all the more
surprising and disappointing in that the book's dust
jacket proclaims, "Every word is documented, every
source checked."
In the section of Pass It On dealing
with Buchman's remarks, the anonymous author states:
In
August [1936], the New York World-Telegram published
an article about Buchman, charging that he was
pro-Nazi. The newspaper quoted Buchman as saying:
"Thank Heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler who built
a front-line defense against the Anti-Christ of
Communism. Think what it would mean to the world if
Hitler surrendered to God. Through such a man, God
could control a nation and solve every problem.
Human problems aren't economic, they're moral, and
they can't be solved by immoral measures."
While most discussion of the incident, even by
Buchman's critics, have since vindicated him, the
article brought the group into public controversy.
[PASS IT ON: The story of
Bill Wilson and how the A.A. message reached the
world, authorship credited to 'anonymous',
actually written by Alcoholics Anonymous World
Services, Inc. staff, pages 170-171.]
There are several
remarkable features in this passage. The first is that
the World
Telegram piece is referred to as an
"article" when in fact it was an interview in
which Buchman's comments comprised well over half the
text, with almost all of the remaining text consisting
of descriptive passages, transitions between Buchman's
statements, and uncontroversial background information
on Buchman and the Oxford Group Movement. There is a
tremendous difference between an "article" in which
Buchman was "charged" with being pro-Nazi and an interview in
which he himself clearly expressed pro-Nazi opinions,
a fact which undoubtedly was not lost on the author of
AA's official Wilson biography.
Another remarkable feature
of the passage just quoted from Pass
It On is that Buchman's statements
are carefully edited to put his best possible face
forward. The anonymous AA author took fragments
separated by hundreds of words and patched them
together as if they were a single statement, while
dropping a number of words within the fragments. For
example, by dropping the word "But" before the words
"think what it would mean ... ," the author made the
fragments appear to fit together snugly — thus hiding
the fact that the "statement" is a patchwork.
In normal literary
practice, it's considered proper to separate
patched-together fragments with ellipses if the
intervening material doesn't alter the meaning of the
quoted material. If the intervening material does
alter the meaning, as it does in the "statement" cited
in Pass It
On, it's considered unethical to quote it even
with ellipses, and blatantly dishonest to quote it as
if it were a single unitary statement. It should also
be noted that the author of Pass
It On quoted Buchman's "statement"
in such a way as to leave the impression that it was
the only such
"statement" in the "article."
Perhaps most remarkably,
the anonymous AA author concludes that, "most
discussions of the incident, even by Buchman's
critics, have since vindicated him." One remarkable
aspect of this statement is its deliberate fuzziness.
What was Buchman "vindicated" of? Of making pro-Nazi
statements? Of being pro-Nazi? Our AA author leaves
that crucial matter unresolved.
Further,
I've done my best to read all of
the widely
circulated criticisms of Buchman's
remarks, and none"vindicate"
him of making pro-Nazi statements.
— Charles Bufe, in his book Alcoholics Anonymous: Cult
or Cure
|
Oh well, so much for the A.A. practice of
"rigorous honesty" (Big Book, page
58).
- Claim That
Quotes Are Taken Out Of Context
This is just the opposite of taking quotes out of context: Try to
reject all quotes that you don't like by screaming, "You are quoting out of
context!"
No matter how
long and detailed the quote is, and no matter how much context
is included with the quote, just dismiss allquotes
that you don't like as being "taken out of
context."
Politicians use this trick whenever they
are caught in a lie or a flip-flop.
- Begging The
Question
Get the desired answer by how the question is phrased.
Consider these two questions:
- Do you favor reducing property taxes?
- Do you favor drastically reducing
funding to schools and emergency services?
Most people will answer "Yes" to the
first question, and "No" to the second.
The problem is, they are the very same question, as the citizens of
Oregon are now painfully discovering. The Oregon voters answered
"yes" to the first question in past elections, and now they are
faced with the consequences: not enough money for schools and
emergency services.
Similarly, A.A. recruiters ask
alcoholics,
"Well,
wouldn't you like to escape from your addiction and be healthy
and happy and free?"
— But they really mean,
"Wouldn't
you like to join Alcoholics Anonymous and go to our meetings for
the rest of your life?"
Variations on Begging The Question
include:
- The Chicken and Egg Argument
- Circular Definition
- Circular Reasoning
- Ciruculus in Demonstrando
- Petitio Principii
- Reasoning in a circle
- Meaningless
Question
Ask meaningless questions, like:
"What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?"
The Japanese Zen masters had a great
answer for such questions: "Mu." "Mu" means neither "yes" nor "no";
it means something like, "I reject your bogus question."
For example, one student asked the
master, "Does a dog have Buddha-nature?", and the master simply
answered, "Mu!"
- Play the
Victim, and Self-Victimization
Claim that you are the victim, not the offender. No matter what
happened, or who did what to whom, claim that you are the victim of
all kinds of attacks, and nasty conspiracies, and slander and libel,
and on and on.
Politicians use this trick often. A
politician will attack his opponent with all kinds of criticism,
denunciations and slander, and even blatant lies, and when the
opponent fights back and counter-attacks, the first politician takes
on a wounded look and complains how unfair it is for his opponent to
be so vicious.
Other examples:
- "She seduced me. It's all her fault.
She came on to me. It's her fault, and now I'm getting all of the
blame."
- "Poland attacked Germany. We are just
defending ourselves." — Adolf Hitler, 1939.
- "The Gays are demanding special rights
and priveleges. They are undermining the institution of marriage.
They are an attack on our family values."
All
of those Hollywood stars and "celebrities" who repeatedly get
married and divorced two weeks later couldn't possibly be
underminding the institution of marriage, could they?
- Claim to Have
Special or Secret Knowledge
Claim to have knowledge that isn't available to the listeners, or to
ordinary people.
If you disagree with the way a crazy
preacher is completely distorting and twisting the meaning of a
Biblical passage, he might sneer at your ignorance and declare,
"Well, you'd understand it if you read it in the original Greek."
(See Elmer Gantry, by
Sinclair Lewis.)
While running for President, Richard
Nixon bragged that he had a secret plan for ending the War in
Vietnam. He couldn't tell anybody what it was, because it was a
secret. But if you would just vote for him, he would end the war.
Well, he did eventually end the war, but in the final analysis, his
secret plan was just "Kill another million Vietnamese and
Cambodian civilians, and then give up and go home."
Other handy claims are:
- "You'll never understand; you weren't
there."
- "You are the wrong generation; you
can't know how it feels."
- "You don't know; you have never
experienced... (whatever)."
- "You don't have access to my sources
of information (which I can't tell you about because it's all
classified)."
In
speaking about patterns of cult behavior in many of our government
institutions, Dr. Arthur Deikman wrote:
Secrecy supports cult-like behavior, as we saw in the Life
Force group, where the hierarchy was maintained through limiting
access to information. Secrecy functions not only to cover up
unethical activities from outside eyes, but also to increase
authoritarian control over the larger group. By promoting the idea
that the leader or the in-group have special information and
expertise, they remove themselves from criticism and justify the
exclusion of others from the decision-making process.
In the case of religious cults the special information and
expertise is described as divine inspiration or enlightenment. The
cult leader's presumed higher state precludes lower beings from
judging his or her actions. Similar claims are made in government
where special knowledge of the enemy or secret technical
information is said to justify decisions that would otherwise be
objected to on moral or even practical grounds.
The
Wrong Way Home, Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in
American Society, Arthur J. Deikman, M.D., page 145.
The
former pretender to the throne in Washington D.C. claimed to have
special knowledge of what Saddam Hussein had been doing that
required that we eliminate him in a "pre-emptive" attack that
resembled Adolf Hitler's 1939 "defense of Germany" from Poland and
its horse-mounted cavalry... But we don't get to see what that
special information is, before we attack... Will it be any better
than Nixon's plan to end the war in Vietnam? Only the body count
will say for sure.
And
now that the war is over (Shrub said so on that aircraft carrier,
remember?), we still haven't seen the "special intelligence" that
warned Bush that he had to invade Iraq to defend America, nor have
we seen the Weapons Of Mass Destruction that allegedly threatened
America. So just what was the real reason for the invasion?
Don't
accept, "To liberate Iraq." The USA does not have the right to
bomb and invade countries whose leaders we do not like, to
"liberate" them. That is what the Communists used to say — that
they were "liberating" countries. Like how Stalin liberated
Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia,
Romania. And like how Khrushchev then liberated Hungary again.
"Liberate" is what China says it did to Tibet. Besides, that is
not what the Bush administration said in the beginning, to get us
into the war. They were claiming that Saddam had lots of
yellow-cake uranium from Niger, remember? Well he didn't. And
stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction, which he didn't.
UPDATE,
2004.06.19, The September 11 Commission released their report that
said that there was simply no evidence that Saddam Hussein had
ever cooperated with Al Queda to commit terrorist acts against the
United States. So acting Vice President Cheney went on television
and said that they were wrong, and that he knew more about it than
the Commission did.
Oh? Did Dick
Cheney withhold critical facts from the 9/11 Commission? Did he
lie to them? No wonder he refused to give his testimony under
oath...
The 9/11 Commission immediately asked for the vital
information that Cheney had withheld from the Commission, but
Cheney refused to give them anything more. What a great patriot.
Likewise, Alcoholics Anonymous old-timers
tell newcomers that "You
don't know, and can't understand, how the magical Twelve Steps
make people quit drinking" (because the
newcomers are too new in their sobriety, and their thinking is
alcoholic). Only the experienced old-timers understand it. But if
the newcomers will just practice the Twelve Steps for a few years,
then they will begin to see...
That is really a very common line that
many cults use. They are forever explaining that you just don't
know, and can't understand, the peace and tranquility and
happiness and serenity and cosmic wisdom and divine enlightenment
that comes from doing the cult's practices for years and years....
"But if you just faithfully do all of our practices — thoroughly
follow our path — for a year, then you will see the light..."
Look at this emotional claim that A.A.
old-timers know more than other people:
Re: Should interventionists use the
word
Decon, One of the signs of an intelligent — well educated person
is their ability to use tact and deplomacy, yes when I type I have
typos for two reasons because I don't see well, and I don't spell
well. Neither one of which have one darned thing to do with my
knowledge or ability to deal with alcoholics and drug addicts —
You ask what qualifies me to speak for other alcoholics. 40 years
of drinking and 17 years of helping others get off of it. You know
what statistics you either read or make up I don't know which. But
untill you hold a seizuring alcoholic under a bridge, praying to
God the ambulance gets there before it's too late. When you start
sitting up all nite with a alcoholicin DT's strapped down to a
hospital bed in a county hospital because he had no insurance to
go anywhere else. When the police call you in the middle of the
night to come down and ID a body of a drug addicted
prostitute,that has no identification but has your card from a
faith based rehab in her pocket — because you gave it her the last
time she got out of jail. And no one know anything but her street
name. When a addict strug out on drugs and alcohol calls you to
come because they need you and by the time you get there they are
dead on the bath-room floor of a cheap motel room. When you get a
call from a thirteen year old child who's parents have already
introduced her to drugs and alcohol and has her out on the streets
hooking for them, and one of the other girls gives her a phone# to
call for someone who will help her. When you live all of this for
17 years then you can ask me what my qualifications are. Untill
then I suggest you put a sock in it, because you know nothing
about the real face of addiction.
http://community.aetv.com/service/displayDiscussionThreads.kickAction?as=119137&w=267410&d=341884&d-1169404-p=11
The writer claimed to have special
knowledge — many years of experience in dealing with addicts and
alcoholics — but he provided zero information about how well his
methods of treating those problems actually work. From the list of
deaths, apparently not very well. And his emotional lecture begs the
question: "How many of those people might still be alive if he had
offered them something better than cult religion?"
- Bad Math
Use bad mathematics in calculating things.
One recent Internet hoax was a statement
that listed a whole lot of crimes committed by members of Congress.
The unknown author then calculated the crime rate of Congress as
being several times higher than the average crime rate of the
American people, ostensibly proving that all of those politicians
are a bunch of crooks.
Be that as it may, the error was: The
author listed all of the crimes ever committed by anyone who had
been a member of Congress in the recent past, but calculated the
crime rate as if all of those crimes were committed by just the
current 535 members of Congress in just one year. Hey Presto! The
result was a grossly inflated crime rate for the members of
Congress.
We could list lots of
examples of Bill Wilson's bad mathematics in
computing the A.A. success rate, but we have already covered that in
several other places.
- The Gambler's
Fallacy
Imagine that objects must obey the law of averages.
If you toss a coin and it has come down
heads three times in a row, you believe that it must come down tails
the next time, because "The Law of Averages" dictates that the coin
has to even things out.
Wrong. The odds of the coin coming down
heads again are still 50-50. The coin has no memory. The coin does
not remember how it came down the last several times, and so choose
to come down the other way the next time. The coin is just an
inanimate piece of metal that spins and comes down one way or
another.
What people often misunderstand about
"The Law of Averages" is that the Law of Averages only explains
history, it does not cause things to happen. That is, the Law of
Averages says that over the long haul, the dice will come up certain
numbers certain percentages of times. But the dice do not have to
obey the Law of Averages. They do not have to roll a certain way so
as to satisfy the Law of Averages in the short term. The Law of
Averages just says that over the long haul, certain numbers tend to
come up certain percentages of times.
Similarly, the Law of Averages says that
over the long run, a roulette wheel will tend to come up red and
black an even number of times. But the wheel does not have to
produce an equal number of reds and blacks in a short period of
time. And if the wheel comes up red ten times in a row, a gambler
has no way of knowing that this run merely balances out a run of ten
blacks that the wheel did last week.
That brings up another interesting
phenomenon: Brownian Motion. That is the motion observed in a
particle resting on the surface of the water. If you place a really
tiny, almost microscopic particle of something on the surface of
water, it will jiggle around from being randomly struck by molecules
of water that are whizzing around in the liquid. (And the warmer the
water is, the more and the faster the molecules whiz around.)
In theory, you would expect the particle
to stay still. That is, because it is randomly hit by water
molecules coming from the left or right, front or back, the particle
should just jiggle left and right, forwards and back, and stay in
the same place. At least, you would think it should, theoretically.
But that isn't what happens. What really happens is that the
particle will get shoved around over long distances because the
random strikes are not even. For a while, it may get hit by more
molecules from the left than the right, so it gets shoved to the
right. Then it gets hit from behind more than from in front, so it
creeps forwards. It will do a random walk that can cover suprisingly
large distances, and it may never return to its original position.
Someone who believes that the water molecules must obey the Law of
Averages will watch in frustration as the particle just wanders off
in another direction, and never returns to its starting point, even
though the strikes from the left and right and front and back are
"supposed to even out".
There are some obvious easy exceptions to
the "Law of Averages". If a certain district has voted Republican
for the last 40 years, there is no reason to believe that they will
suddenly vote Democratic, just to even things out. And the solid
Democratic district will not suddenly vote Republican just to even
things out. In those cases, the "Law of Averages" just does not
apply. Other factors, like habit and entrenched attitudes, determine
the outcome. So that brings up another logical fallacy: Mistaken
Assumption of Randomness.
- Mistaken
Assumption of Randomness
This fallacy is the mistake of assuming that things are random when
they are not, and that the odds are even when they are not.
As described in the example above, the
outcome of elections in certain districts is anything but random,
and it would be a mistake to assume that Democrats and Republicans
have an even chance in every district. There are many non-random
factors that determine outcomes, like tradition, custom, habit,
ingrained beliefs and preferences, culture, and even style and
fashion.
There are many non-random things that
determine why people do things, and it would be a big mistake to
assume that their behavior is random.
- Use the
Passive Voice
Instead of using the active voice and directly declaring who did what
or who said what, use the passive voice where stuff just sort of
happens, where something gets done by an invisible unnamed somebody...
- "Mistakes were made."
- "It is believed that..."
- "It is rumored that..."
- "It is often said that..."
- "Huge gains are predicted for..."
Obviously,
we have to ask,
- Who is doing what, who is saying
what, and who believes what?
- What are their credentials? Do they
really know anything?
- Do they lie or tell the truth?
- What ax do they have to grind?
- What reason do we have to care what
they think or what they say?
The true-believer Buchmanite T. Willard
Hunter tried to rationalize
away the issue of Frank Buchman's homosexuality —
that is, the sexual orientation of Frank the
vicious homophobe — with these words:
Because
he never married and because of some aspects of appearance and
manner, innuendoes
would turn up in the press about his own
orientation.
He was in good company. Similar charges have been leveled against
Ruth and Naomi, David and Jonathan, Jesus and John, Paul and
Timothy. ... Whether or not the suggestions have a basis in
fact, it
is possible a case can be made that some of
the most powerful and creative personalities in history have had
this predilection. It
is sometimes said that the greatest saints
were the most highly sexed.
World
Changing Through Life Changing: The Story of Frank Buchman and
Moral Re-Armament; A Thesis for the Degree of Master of Sacred
Theology at Andover Newton Theological School, T. Willard
Hunter, 1977, pages 130-131.
Hunter used the passive voice a lot:
- ...innuendoes would turn up... All
by themselves?
- ...charges have been leveled... By
whom?
- ...a case can be made that... Made
by whom?
- It is sometimes said that... Said
by whom?
Mr. Hunter would have us believe that
because some unnamed people allegedly accused Jesus Christ of
homosexuality, and because some other unnamed people supposedly
claimed that the greatest saints were highly sexed, that it was okay
for Frank Buchman to be a vicious hateful homophobic hypocrite.
A radio advertisement for vitamins says,
"Dr. Sawbones, a recognized authority on blah-blah..." Recognized by
whom? What medical school or university or council of doctors
recognized Dr. Sawbones as an authority on anything? We got no
actual evidence that Dr. Sawbones knows anything, just a
passive-voice declaration that Dr. Sawbones has been "recognized".
In the recent flap over the U.S. military
secretly paying for propaganda stories to appear in Iraqi
newspapers, we got these lines:
"Faults
Are Acknowledged in Program That Pays Iraqi Newspapers."
"Secret Program May Have Erred, Pentagon Says"
'A top Pentagon official said Friday that "transgressions" may
have occurred in a secret military program that pays Iraqi
newspapers to publish information ...'
Mark Mazzetti, Los
Angeles Times, 3 December 2005.
"Secret
Program may have erred..." — Gee, the program
erred all by itself?
Alcoholics
Anonymous propaganda uses this technique often:
- "...it
is widely believed that not including a Twelve-Step program in a
treatment plan can put a recovering addict on the road to
relapse."
The
Recovery Book, Al J. Mooney M.D., Arlene Eisenberg,
and Howard Eisenberg, pages 40-41.
It
is widely believed by whom, besides a few hard-core
true-believer A.A. members?
It is certainly not
believed by the doctors who know the facts.
- "AA
has burgeoned and today is widely considered the most successful
existing method for supporting sobriety..."
http://www.naturalhealthnotebook.com/
Is
widely considered successful by whom? (The web site largely
touts natural herbal cures and alternative healing practices,
so I guess it must be the same people as the ones who buy
things like diluted homeopathic remedies...)
- "It
is believed in the study of 12-Step recovery processes that the
mutual disclosures of members fosters processes of belonging and
commitment to the collective goal of drug and alcohol
abstinence."
Keep
coming back! Narcotics Anonymous narrative and
recovering-addict identity, Adam Rafalovich, Contemporary Drug Problems,
Spring 1999, v26, i1.
Again,
who believes it?
- Use Slanted
Language
Recently (2012.02.20), the FBI raided a
house in Portland, Oregon, for cyber-crimes. When the FBI wouldn't
give the story to a TV news reporter (KOIN, Channel 6), he declared,
"The FBI failed to give further information..." Not, "the FBI chose
to release no further details," or "The FBI chose to maintain case
confidentiality for now," no, the FBI "failed to
provide information." How's that for getting back at someone who
won't give you a juicy story?
When Princeton University President John
Hibben banned Frank Buchman and his organization from the Princeton
campus for explicit sexual confessions and sensational sexual
revelations, Hibben
explained his actions to newspaper reporters in a
press conference. Peter Howard, a fanatical follower of Buchman,
wrote of the event this way:
At
Princeton, when the opposition appeared, the President, Dr.
Hibben, allowed himself to be quoted as saying that so long as he
was President there was no place for Dr. Buchman's work in the
University.
Innocent
Men, Peter Howard, page 89.
President Hibben did not passively "allow
himself to be quoted" — he deliberately, clearly declared his
position in a public statement to the press.
Also notice the use of passive language,
where some vague "opposition" supposedly just mysteriously
"appeared" from somewhere, rather than it being a case of
intelligent people strongly objecting to Frank Buchman's behavior
and treatment of students, and teaching bizarre occult theology, and
all of the lurid talk about sex. Some of
Buchman's critics commented that the sexual
confessions at Oxford Group meetings were "as satisfying to the
listeners as the original sin was to the confessors."
- Use
Inflamatory Language
Use terminology and words that are guaranteed to excite passions and
raise emotions.
Think of Mark Antony's classic speech at
Caesar's funeral in Shakespeare's play Julius
Caesar:
Good
friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up
To such a sudden flood of mutiny.
...
I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts.
I am no orator, as Brutus is...
...
For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,
Action, not utterance, nor the power of speech
To stir men's blood; I only speak right on.
I tell you that which you yourselves do know,
Show you sweet Caesar's wounds, poor poor dumb mouths,
and bid them speak for me. But were I Brutus,
and Brutus Antony, there were an Antony
Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue
In every wound of Caesar that should move
The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.
|
- Refute By
Example
This is a valid debating technique. Find exceptions to the rule or
generalization to prove it false. If, for example, someone declares
that "All ducks are white", you can answer, "No, that's wrong. Think
of Mallard ducks, or Ringnecks, or Harlequin Ducks, or Wood Ducks.
None of them are white."
Similarly, when A.A. people recite the
line,
"RARELY HAVE we seen
a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path",
we can answer:
"No, Bill Wilson was
lying when he wrote that. Think about:
- the Big
Book co-author Henry
Parkhurst,
- and the second A.A. woman Florence
Rankin,
- and the enthusiastic A.A. recruiters Jackie and Paddy,
- and Lillian
Roth, the famous childhood movie star and singer who
founded Alcoholics Anonymous in New Zealand, only to die drunk
herself,
- and Doctor Bob's son-in-law Ernie
Galbraith, "A.A. Number Four", the constantly-relapsing
older philanderer whom the autocratic Doctor Robert Smith forced
on his adopted daughter Sue Smith,
- and then think about Bill's own
recruiter Ebby
Thacher, who sucked Bill into the Oxford Group cult, only
to relapse and die drunk himself,
— just to name the first
half-dozen failures who come to mind.
We can also say:
"Lois Wilson's private secretary, Francis Hartigan, reported
that more than
half of the authors of the autobiographical
stories in the first edition of the Big
Book relapsed and returned to drinking, and
Bill Wilson knew it, because he kept the first copy of the Big Book that came
off of the presses, in which he checked off the names of the
authors as they relapsed and left A.A..
"Dick B., the well-known A.A. historian, reports that the
entire New York group, the one run by Bill Wilson, had a horrendous
relapse rate.
"And in more modern times we have many scientific studies,
including those by
Prof. George Vaillant of Harvard University, who is a member
of the Board of Trustees of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services,
Inc., which reveal that A.A. has a terrible failure rate —
basically, 100% — and an 'appalling' death rate to go with it."
What Bill Wilson really should have
written is:
"RARELY HAVE we seen
a person succeed who
has thoroughly followed our path."
- Refute By
Exposing Contradiction
This is another valid debating technique. Show that a statement is
false or at least unreliable by exposing a contradiction with other
statements or facts.
For example, Bill Wilson wrote in the Big Book that 75
percent of the newcomers to A.A. got sobered up:
Of alcoholics
who came to A.A. and really tried, 50% got sober at once and
remained that way; 25% sobered up after some relapses, and among
the remainder, those who stayed on with A.A. showed improvement.
Bill Wilson, in the
Foreword to the Second Edition of "The Big Book", Alcoholics Anonymous, page XX,
1955.
But Bill Wilson
contradicted himself many times:
- Minimization
and Denial
Go into denial and refuse to face the truth, or admit the truth.
Believe in fantasies or fairy tales rather than the facts. Try to
minimize undesired facts.
Minimization and denial is a kind of
dishonesty. Criminals often use it to try to explain away the
seriousness of their crimes: "That's no big deal. It's nothing new.
Doesn't everybody do that?"
Minimization
and Denial is the technique that a lot of
alcoholics and cigarette smokers use to declare that they don't
really need to quit drinking or smoking — they minimize the
seriousness of their problem — "Maybe
I'm over-doing it a little bit right now, but frankly I'm not
ready to quit just yet" — or they deny that they even
have a problem — "Problem? What problem? I can quit any
time I want."
Another name for denial is "The Ostrich
Syndrome" — that behavior where someone just sticks his head into
the sand and refuses to see the problem. — And where someone just
refuses to see and to take responsibility for a situation. The
ultimate personification of such mental midgetry was Sgt. Schultz,
the immortal bumbler of TV's "Hogan's Heroes": "I know nothing! I
see nothing! NOTHING!"
For example, Alcoholics Anonymous claims
that you can have "any God of your understanding", and A.A. members
brag and joke about worshipping a doorknob, a rock, a mountain or a
motorcycle, and some even use a cat or a parakeet as their "god".
When this was mentioned in a discussion, an A.A. defender replied: "I would never pray to a
doorknob and I never got that other than it simply means something
other than yourself. I rather suspect that got started as a tongue
in cheek reference."
That is denial.
A variation on the Denial is
the line, "There is no evidence..." — just denying and ignoring all
unwanted evidence — as in, "There is no evidence
that eating genetically-modified food crops causes health
problems." Oh yes there is. The safety
assurance studies submitted to show the safety of GMOs actually
suggest hepatobiliary and renal toxicity:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=hammond+safety+assurance
And an additional strategy is to prevent any undesired evidence from
coming into existence, like how Monsanto refuses to allow research
to be conducted on their patented genetically-modified crops, to see
whether they are really harmful to wildlife, honeybees, livestock or
humans.
Cults use this technique a lot, to
explain away their every fault and flaw. Occasionally, they will
even mention that their "enemies" have accused them of being a cult,
and laugh and explain, "It's just that some of our recruiters have been
really enthusiastic about getting new people to come to meetings.
That's all there is to it." (That is the rap I
heard in Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism, which really is a cult.)
When
cult members, or true
believers in any cause, for that
matter, are confronted with information that is contrary
to their beliefs, they go through a predictable set of
reactions:
- Denial.
They will deny that the information is true, and
reject it: "That can't possibly be true. No, I
don't believe that. Where did you hear that?"
Arianna Huffington
described a fanatic as someone who simply rejects
and disregards all information that conflicts with
his chosen beliefs.
If you give them
enough supporting evidence to make denial
impossible, then they will progress to stage 2:
- Minimization
and rationalization. They will minimize the
importance of the information, and claim that it
doesn't matter, or just try to rationalize it
all away:
"Well,
it doesn't matter anyway. That's just a trivial
detail. Don't most religious leaders do that?
Churches, schools, corporations, everything is a
cult, so it doesn't matter. Besides, he deserves a
few of the simple pleasures of life, after all..."
(Like
all of the money, all of the girls, all of the
drugs, and then all of the boys — Rev.
Jim Jones, People's Temple.)
If you present them
with convincing information that it really is an
important point, and does matter, then they will
progress to stage 3:
- Blanking.
True Believers will just blank their minds, and turn
off, and refuse to hear anything more that you say.
Sometimes they will even physically leave, walking or
running away, to avoid hearing anything more.
Jon Atack described how blanking is taught to
Scientologists: 'If the criticism cannot be silenced,
then the scientologist should cease all
communication with the critic, or "disconnect".'19
Alternatively, if
they don't blank out, then they will experience a
change in viewpoint where they begin to see things
from your viewpoint. They will suddenly wake up and
"see the light." Whether they will blank out or
change their minds depends on their willingness to
change their opinions and beliefs, and willingness
to accept the truth.
(The fanatic says, "I
won't allow my opinions to be swayed by mere
facts.")
Notice how when cults and other dogmatic
organizations teach blanking to their members, they
diguise it as a self-defense technique:
"Those
critics are trying to hurt you (by telling you the
truth).
They are trying to make you lose faith (in the
leader or the cult).
Don't let them do it to you."
Amway teaches its soap distributors
that their worst enemies are their friends and
family members who try to talk a little common sense
into them:
"Don't
let them plant doubts in you."
"Don't let them steal your dreams."
|
There are a zillion flavors of
minimization and denial.
- Dismiss undesired information as
trivial nit-picking. For example, when people point out the flaws
of a program or design, a defender of that program or design may
answer: "Isn't
all of that comparison and scrutiny with a magnification glass
going much too far for this forum?"
- Dismiss information as unimportant. "That's old hat.
Everybody knows that. It doesn't matter."
- When someone complained about black
dots and artifacts that a digital camera inserted into his
pictures, a defender of the camera posted: "Make a print and tell us how much of a problem
it is." That is minimizing and denying the
problem. Making prints on paper is not the ultimate goal of all
photography. Just because a cheap low-resolution printer will mask
defects in images does not make those defects okay.
- When members of a group or
organization behave abominably, defenders of the group will argue
that the problem is "just a few bad apples".
- In his recent Washington Post article
about the murderous Khmer Rouge campaign of mass murder unleashed
in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, Alex Hinton wrote:
"I
interviewed former prison guards who told me with downcast
eyes that they didn't do anything and, besides, they were only
following orders."
Alex Hinton, " We
Can't Let the Khmer Rouge Escape", The Washington Post,
Friday, August 4, 2006; A17
Politicians and pundits for political
parties often use variations of the minimization
and denial technique:
- "Oh heck, all politicians lie and
deceive. It just comes with the territory. It's part of the job.
You just have to do it. It's no big deal."
- "Oh
heck, all politicians take bribes and gifts and agree to vote a
certain way in trade for money. It's called 'campaign
contributions'. You have to do it, or you won't get re-elected.
It's no big deal."
Rush Limbaugh gave us a great example of minimization and denial in
trying to dismiss the torture and murder of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison as a
trivial matter — "It
was just like a college fraternity prank. ... You ever heard of
emotional release? You ever heard of the need to blow off some
steam? ... Who died?"
(Actually, several prisoners died from overdose of torture,
and the Pentagon reported that two more were deliberately murdered.)
Rush Limbaugh also used minimization and
denial to explain away his own addiction to pain-killers, after
recommending the death sentence for junkies:
"I'm
not like a junkie. I only took legal prescription pain-killers."
Yes, but Limbaugh didn't have a prescription for all of those drugs,
so the drugs weren't legal. And they were bought on the black market,
just the same as how every other junkie gets his illegal drugs.
George W. Bush, on his failure to capture
Osama bin Laden:
"I
don't know where he is. I don't think about him much any more."
During the U.S. Senate Hearings on the Abu Ghraib torture and
abuse (2004.05.11), the Al-Jazeera news
network showed a video tape of hooded men executing an American
prisoner — Nicholas Berg — by chopping off his head with a big
knife. The killers declared that the execution was done in
retaliation for the torture and killing of prisoners in Abu Ghraib.
A Republican Senator responded "I don't believe this happened in a 'one-for-one'.
That kind of stuff happens anyway."
The Senator ignored the simple fact that such a ceremonial execution
of an American prisoner had never happened in Iraq before. The
Iraqis even hospitalized Jessica Lynch until she was rescued,
remember?
UPDATE:
2004.06.18 — Now the Al Queda terrorists in Saudi Arabia have
announced that the Americans whom they kidnap will be treated in
the same manner as the prisoners in Abu
Ghraib prison...
Meanwhile, the Washington weasles had a
truckload of minimization and denial and rationalizations to offer
us:
- It wasn't really torture. It wasn't
that bad. It was just some forceful interrogation.
- It was justified.
- It was necessary to get intelligence.
- They are the bad guys. It's okay to do
it to them.
- It wasn't anything like the other
side's beheadings.
- It's just being overblown by the
Democrats.
— All of which simply declare that torture of prisoners is really okay
now, and that the Geneva Convention is "quaint" and obsolete. We used
to consider countries that tortured prisoners of war to be barbarians,
and declare that they needed to learn some Christian morals. Now it's
the so-called "Christians" who are doing it.
In March of 2006, a videotape came out that clearly showed White
House officials receiving emphatic warnings that Hurricane Katrina
could and would top the levees and flood New Orleans and cause a
major disaster — warnings that the Bush Administration blithely
ignored. G. W. Bush went on vacation, and went to a birthday party
in Arizona where he pretended to play a guitar.
A White House spokesman responded to the tape by saying, "There is nothing new or
insightful on the video." White House, 2 March 2006.
During a debate on the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer, about the
firing of Mary McCarthy for revealing the existence of secret CIA
prisons in foreign countries, to which people were "disappeared" —
secretly kidnapped, renditioned, and tortured, which is several war
crimes — one Republican talking head, Richard Kerr, a former CIA
deputy director, declared:
"Well, first of all,
I'm not absolutely sure that I agree with the idea that these are
crimes, an international crime." (PBS News
Hour, 24 Apr 2006).
So, kidnapping people who might be innocent, and imprisoning them
without a trial, and torturing them, even torturing them to death,
is not a crime under the Bush administration? When did we rewrite
those laws?
Declaring that "it's over, and nobody cares" is another kind of
minimization. Politicians use this one whenever they can get away
with it, to try to stop debate on a touchy subject. For example,
when the American people discovered that George Bush had lied about
the extent of warrantless surveillance of Americans that was going
on — that the NSA was even collecting information about millions of
phone calls made purely within the USA and between loyal Americans,
not involving Al Quada, even while huge class-action lawsuits were
being filed against the phone companies who gave out the phone
records without a court warrant, the Republican talking heads went
on the political talk shows Friday night on PBS (2006.05.12) and
declared that "It's over. The furor has died down. It's all a big
nothing. The American people don't care."
| Likewise,
in the current furor (1 October 2006) over Congressman
Mark Foley (R-FL) sending very sexually explicit
homosexually invitational emails to very young male
Congressional pages — messages that one page described as
"Sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, ... (for 13 'sicks') —
Republican leaders have declared "It's time
to move on", when Democratic Congressmen
asked for the resignations of those Republican leaders who
knew what was going on because the under-age pages
reported it to them, but the Republican leaders just
convered it all up and allowed Foley to continue that
behavior.
And, using the minimization
tactic some more, the Republican leaders are now
describing Rep. Foley's predatory homosexual emails as
merely "overly friendly" and "acting as a mentor." White
House Press Secretary Tony Snow said it was merely an
issue of "simply naughty emails."
|
Another kind of denial is depersonalization —
personally detaching from a problem or situation — the attitude that
the big problem has nothing to do with you, or isn't really your
responsibility. Donald Rumsfeld half-admitted that the U.S. military
campaign in Iraq was not going well: "If I were grading, I would say we probably deserve
a D or D+ as a country." (TIME, Apr 3-9, 2006)
Excuse
me Rummy, but the failure is yours, not America's, and yes, this
test counts.
A.A. defenders use the minimization
and denial technique a lot to explain that A.A.
doesn't really have a dishonesty
problem, and doesn't really need to get off it and start
telling the truth. And A.A. doesn't really have a humongous
failure rate. And A.A. isn't really a cult religion.
Likewise, A.A. true believers attempt to
dismiss the A.A. 95% drop-out rate in just the first year as "the
myth of the 5% retention rate", as if the drop-out rate had been
somehow disproven and wasn't real. (It's real.)
In a debate, you can use the Minimization and Denial technique
to defend Alcoholics Anonymous like this: Whenever your opponent
says something that you don't like, or don't want to hear, just
reply with one of these standard answers:
- "It's unimportant because it happened
so long ago."
- "People have been criticizing AA
forever; what's new there?"
- "Just because you found a hundred
groups where sponsors
sexually harass the new pretty women members doesn't
mean that it is a universal characteristic of A.A., or that it happens
everywhere, or that you can fault all of A.A. for it. You
can't generalize like that. No group has any control over any
other group."
- "Each A.A. meeting is a little
different. Look around and you'll find one that suits you..."
- "What appears to be a contradiction is
just a paradox, just a wonderful paradox."
- "I suspect that the whole story is a
hoax made up by the anti-A.A. people, just to discredit A.A.."
- "But the A.A. program is free. Where
else can you find such a good recovery program for free?"
[Answer: SMART,
WFS, MFS, or SOS.]
- "That's just another A.A.-basher, on
an anti-A.A. pogrom again."
- "That doesn't matter — it's irrelevant
— it isn't the real A.A., because it isn't a Council-approved
activity."
[Actually, everything
that A.A. members do at an A.A. meeting, or while recruiting and
proselytizing, or in a sponsor/sponsee relationship, is "the
real A.A.".]
- "That doesn't matter — it's irrelevant
— it isn't the real A.A., because it's against The Traditions."
[Again, the real A.A.
is everything that A.A. members really do at an A.A. meeting, or
while recruiting and promoting A.A., or in a sponsor/sponsee
relationship, not what the Traditions say they are supposed to be doing.]
- "That doesn't matter — it's irrelevant
— it isn't the real A.A., because not all groups do it."
- "That does not happen in our group."
- "I never saw that."
- "That is not the real AA."
- "We are not aware of any dangerous
situation."
- "That's beside the point..."
(When it is the point.)
- "You can't blame A.A. for the harm
that some members do. They aren't supposed to be doing those
things." ("But
we will gladly take all of the credit for the good things that
some other members do.")
- "What you are complaining about isn't
the real A.A.. A.A. has just gone downhill a little lately. What
you were exposed to is what AA has turned into, not what it used
to be."
- "So what if it's a cult? All religions
are cults. Everything is a cult. It doesn't matter."
- "That misbehavior is being done by the
treatment centers, not A.A., so you can't blame A.A. for that."
(But the treatment
centers are staffed and run by true-believer 12-Steppers who are
using the treatment centers to shove the 12-Step religion on
vulnerable sick people, so that is also another part of "the
real A.A.".)
- "That [13th-stepping, rape, murder,
abuse, exploitation, robbery] was just an isolated incident."
- "We don't take any position on outside
issues." ("And
we will call anything that we don't want to hear about an
'outside issue'.")
- "I cannot think of any belief,
doctrine, institution or philosophy of any kind that is free from
abuse."
- "I understand that the numbers are
flat and the success rate has deteriorated over the last few
decades. But that's just because people are not 'working the
program' right."
Rather
than admitting that 'the program' never ever worked right, and
that Bill
Wilson's bragging about a great success rate was
just another lie.
- "That is of no interest to anyone but
some A.A.-bashers. You people just keep digging up hundreds and
hundreds of pieces of garbage like that because you are trying to
discredit A.A.."
- "That story is just a hoax. It's full
of factual errors. Somebody with a resentment cooked it up and
sent it out. It would be a waste of time to even respond to it."
[Which saves the
speaker from having to come up with any actual facts to back up
his sweeping statements. Now he can run away without having to
prove his statements, which also makes it a hit-and-run
attack.]
- "That hasn't been proven. There hasn't
been enough scientific research. That has never been fully
proven."
- "That can't be confirmed." "That
hasn't been fully verified."
[No matter how much
supporting and corroborating evidence there is, just stubbornly
maintain that the point can't be confirmed, or hasn't been
"fully verified", or hasn't been proved.]
[Ah, but if
Bill Wilson said something, then A.A. true believers consider it
automatically "confirmed" and unquestionably true.]
- "I don't even know how we got
side-tracked into wasting our time talking about this trivial
detail."
- "I don't know why he spends so much
time on this stuff. What's he trying to prove?"
- "The A.A.-bashers just hate us, that's
all."
- "So what if the founders of A.A.
committed all kinds of crimes and offenses and promoted cult
religion and fascism? Every successful group makes mistakes in its
infancy."
- "You are quoting out of context!"
[No matter
how long and detailed the quote is, and no matter how much
context is included with the quote, just dismissall quotes
that you don't like as being "taken out
of context."]
- "When I read your statement about
young people seeking new answers while old people want to preserve
the values that they have, I knew you were nuts. You must be a
very young and foolish person to believe such a thing."
- "I've got 20 years in A.A., and while
I can't speak for A.A. because nobody speaks for A.A., I must
say..."
(First he establishes
his credentials, 20 years, to give himself the authority to
speak for A.A., and then he spends the next five minutes
speaking for A.A., and singing the praises of A.A., while
claiming that he is "not speaking for A.A.".)
- "I wasn't trying to win an argument
with you, but one more thing I have to say is..."
- "Yes, BUT!..."
- "I'm not paying any attention to what
you say."
(That is an example
of blanking.)
- When
you are losing an argument badly, ignore your opponent's points,
and terminate the discussion by using a quote from Bill Wilson, "I'm resigning from
the debating society!" which implies that
you are superior to your opponent because you aren't wasting
your time arguing over trivialities any more.
(That is another example of blanking.)
- And so is: "You are still going
on about this several hours later, and I don't really give a
shit about it at present."
- Instant
Denial
A variation on the denial technique is Instant
Denial: Say something, and then immediately deny that you said
it.
Peter Howard, the fascist
disciple of Frank Buchman who assumed the
leadership of the Oxford Groups/MRA organization after Buchman's
death, attacked Frank Buchman's critics with these words:
...Christians
forget that Christ was crucified not because he was wrong but
because He was right. There was one of Christ's contemporaries
who, while agreeing that the work being done was good, always
disagreed with the methods and thought he could do things better.
He was critical of the way money was spent, critical of the
company Christ kept, critical of his comrades. His name was Judas.
This is not to suggest that Buchman was like Christ or that
all his critics are like Judas....
Britain
and the Beast, Peter Howard, 1963, page 106.
Peter Howard clearly suggested that Frank
Buchman's critics were acting just like Judas, and then Howard
immediately denied it, and declared that he wasn't suggesting it.
Howard also implied that Frank Buchman was right, just like Jesus
was, and then Howard denied that too.
People who are promoting Alcoholics
Anonymous use the same Instant
Denial technique, too. Here, the speaker denies
it before he says it:
"This
is not a commercial for A.A. Frankly, A.A. is not for everybody.
But A.A. saved my life, and only through A.A. was I able to learn
how to survive my disease."
So it
is a commercial for A.A., and A.A. is the only way after
all.
(And the speaker was also assuming a
couple of major premises — that alcoholism is a
disease, rather than behavior, and that A.A. has a working cure for
that disease, rather than a horrendous
failure rate.)
A variation on this Instant
Denial technique is to say something and then
immediately declare that you didn't mean it.
Another variation is the one that you see
lawyers using in TV shows all of the time: A clever lawyer asks an
improper question, and then immediately withdraws it. A lawyer will
attack a witness with a question like,
"Isn't it true that
you hated your husband and wanted him dead?"
The opposing attorney will scream, "Objection, your Honor!"
And the first lawyer answers, "I withdraw the question, your Honor."
Even if the judge says, "Let that question be stricken from the record. The
jury will disregard the question.", the harm has already
been done.
- Understatement
Understatement is a kind of minimization.
When news reporters discovered that New
Mexico Governor Bill Richardson was making false claims on his
resumé, and had been for forty years, when he claimed that he had
been drafted to pitch for the Kansas City Athletics in 1966,
allegedly before "an injury compelled him to bow out of baseball",
Richardson answered:
"After
being notified of the situation and after researching the
matter... I came to the conclusion that I was not drafted by the
A's."
(TIME, Nov 28
to Dec 4, 2005)
- Not As Bad As
The "Not As Bad As" ploy
is a kind of minimization and denial. The debater declares that
whatever is being criticized is not nearly as bad as something really
awful:
- That isn't nearly as bad as what the
Nazis did to the Jews.
- The censorship of the press that we
have to endure isn't nearly as bad as what goes on in Russia.
- Our politicians aren't nearly as
corrupt as the ones in Africa and Asia.
- Alcoholics Anonymous isn't nearly as
bad as the People's Temple or the Branch Davidians or Heaven's
Gate. Now those were really some nasty cults.
- Admit a Small
Fault to Cover a Big Denial
Likewise, confess a small error to cover a large one. Or confess a
minor vice to create the appearance of having no bad ones. Confess
small transgressions to create the appearance of humility and
repentence and honesty.
Some "pious" people are often eager to
loudly confess their small shortcomings in order to fool others into
believing that they have no larger ones.
We confess our
little faults to persuade people that we have no large
ones.
== François de La Rochefoucauld |
In the Oxford Group confession sessions, members
routinely confessed to having been jealous of someone, or
having smoked a cigarette, or having worn makeup, or any of several
other petty imperfections, but they just didn't confess any large
crimes like grand larceny or fraud or murder or treason (like killing
Leftists in street fighting in Oxford and London, and supporting
Adolf Hitler before and during World War II, and dodging the
draft to avoid serving in the British Army and
fighting the Nazis...)
Similarly,
President
Bush today said mistakes were made in planning for the Iraq
invasion, but he defended the troop level he ordered in the
initial strike, saying he would have committed the same number if
given a second chance.
Recalling
his pre-war conversations with Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the
invasion and is now retired, Bush told a business group in
Irvine, Calif.: "The level that he suggested was the troop level
necessary to do the job, and I support it strongly."
( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/24/AR2006042400850_pf.html)
Also notice the use of the passive
voice: "mistakes were made..." What mistakes? Were made by
whom? Was George actually admitting that he screwed up? Or was he
just shoving the blame onto Gen. Tommy Franks?
- False
Comparison
You can make something appear to be larger or smaller, or better or
worse, by comparing it to something else.
Late-night TV infomercials and shopping
channel "auctions" habitually declare, "You would expect to pay $XXX, but here the cost to
you is only $yyy."
Wrong. I would never "expect" to pay the
numbers that they announce. I always think that their phony
"expected" prices are absurdly high.
A variation on that rap is "value" — "This complete package is
a $200 value, but now, in this special offer, it will only cost
you $34.95."
A similar advertising trick is to compare
your product to a competitors worst low-end model — the wimpy, weak,
lowest-price shoddy loser model — and then call your product "high
power" and "superior" (when it is really only average).
- Give a
Non-reason Reason
Give reasons for things that are not reasons for things.
For example,
- "That's just the way it is."
- "Because."
- "That's the way it's always been
done."
- "I'm sure the Leader has his reasons."
(Or the Elders, or the Priests, or whomever...)
- "It's a tradition."
- Divert
Attention — Change the Subject
If you have nothing to say, distract them. Misdirect attention.
- The old saying is, "Drag a Red Herring
across the trail."
- The Madison Avenue advertising gurus
say, "If you have nothing to say, sing it."
- When you are losing a point, change
the subject. Start talking about something else, anything else,
where you at least can't lose because there isn't anything to
lose.
- When asked a very embarassing question
in a political debate, claim that you have already fully answered
that question before, and change the subject.
(Like, "Did G. W. Bush desert from his Air National Guard unit in
a time of war? Why didn't he show up for his flight physical? Why
did his commanding officer ground him?" Was young Lt. Bush busted
for cocaine in Texas and forced to do community service? ...And
then the whole thing was covered up because Daddy was a
Congressman...)
- Claim, "I've already dealt with
that", and change the subject.
or
- Claim, "I already apologized for
that", and change the subject.
- Dismiss a critic and change the
subject with a condescending remark like, "Why don't you quit
stirring the pot and move on?"
If a conversation or debate leads into a
discussion of the American use of chemical weapons during the
Vietnam War, immediately bring up the story of "Yellow
Rain", a rather paranoid rumor about the U.S.A. spraying
poison from the air on American defectors, a story that turned out
to be groundless. Ignore the much larger, undeniably true story of
tens of thousands of Vietnamese women giving birth to deformed
babies as a result of being sprayed with the poisonous defoliant Agent Orange. Also ignore the many
American G.I.s who came back from Vietnam suffering from Agent
Orange poisoning. Just keep mentioning "Yellow
Rain", as if the falseness of that one story proves that the
American forces didn't use chemical weapons on Vietnam.
Senate
investigators have been trying, for more than two years now, to get
information about Enron's involvement with the White House and
national energy policy planning. The White House has consistently
refused to hand over the information. When the Senate investigating
committee issued subpoenas, a White House spokesman replied, "Such
subpoenas are premature. The investigation is just politically
motivated."
Question: When would the Administration
feel that it was not "premature"
or "political" to investigate the actions of the occupants of the
White House while they were helping a criminal gang like Enron? A
hundred years from now?
Some of the key phrases that indicate a
change of subject are:
- "Well, let's get down to the real
issue..."
- "The bottom line is..."
- "Now look at the real facts here..."
When used in
response to a question, all of them mean, "I'm not going to answer your question. I'm changing
the subject and diverting attention and won't even talk about your
question."
A good one that I heard on Al Franken's
radio show (20 April 2004) was: A ditto-head was claiming that rich
Democrats do not really care about the poor. When asked for proof of
that statement, he answered, "Well, let's look at the results of their
programs."
Whoops! Stop right
there. That's a different issue. That is changing the subject. The
effectiveness of any help-the-poor program does not prove or
disprove how much someone cares about
the poor.
Now
one could claim that an ineffective program shows that someone was
inept or incompetent at designing or administering programs, but
that is a very different issue. That does not prove how much
someone cares or doesn't care.
And
such an accusation may be groundless because it completely ignores
issues like funding. Was the program really ineffective or badly
designed or poorly managed, or was it just grossly underfunded by
the Republican Congress that even cut Veteran's benefits and
closed V.A. hospitals while it sent the troops off to war in Iraq? (Hint: It's the later
cause.)
The
U.S. Senate hearings on the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison
(2004.05.11) provide us with another example of misdirection of
attention: Instead of talking about the horrors that the pictures
showed, one Republican Senator went off on a tangent complaining
about how the pictures had been taken improperly by a soldier who
had no authority to do so — he had used his own privately-owned
digital camera, and had no orders from his superiors to take the
pictures, so his taking of the pictures violated the military
regulations regarding how military prisons were to be operated....
Never mind the fact that torturing,
raping, and murdering prisoners was also against those same
military regulations....
(And that political stunt is also an obvious attempt to "Kill the
Messenger" — just attack the whistle-blower who dared to
document the illegal abuses.)
Ah
politics, isn't it wonderful?
Not to be outdone, another Republican
Senator started waxing eloquent about what a great job our soldiers
are doing, and how we shouldn't distract our men, or the Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, from "the more important job of defending America from
terrorism."
Right. Stopping the practice of war
crimes is just an annoying little distraction keeping us from
doing what is really important. Our efforts to stop terrorism
won't be undermined by the entire Arab and Moslem world seeing
us as a bunch of vicious, racist, religious-bigot Nazis who
torture innocent men and women; no, not at all....
Over in the A.A. arena, one of Bill Wilson's standard stunts was,
when someone like Clarence Snyder would criticize
Wilsonfor massive fraud and felonious
dishonesty, Wilson would reply with something like, "My, how
those alcoholics love to squabble and argue. Being the argumentative
lot that they are, they just love to challenge
authority."
Doctor
Bob also gave us a great example of diverting attention, back in the
early days of the Oxford Group, before Alcoholics Anonymous got
started. Henrietta Seiberling was trying to get Doctor Bob to quit
drinking. She said that she had received "Guidance" that
"Bob must not touch one drop of alcohol", and she told Doctor Bob
about it.
He answered, "Henrietta, I don't understand this thing
[alcoholism]. Nobody understands
it."18
Doctor
Bob changed the subject from "not drinking alcohol" to something
abstract and inconsequential like "understanding alcoholism",
because he didn't want to talk about actually
really quitting drinking. He also tried to imply that
because "nobody understood alcoholism", it wasn't possible to quit
drinking, so there was no sense in even wasting any time trying.
Cute avoidance technique, huh?
Similarly, if a critic of A.A. says:
"An awful lot of state and federal courts have now
ruled that Alcoholics Anonymous is a religious organization, or
engages in religious activities, as defined by Constitutional law.
The most interesting one happened just a few months ago, when a judge threw
out a murder conviction because the killer
confessed to the murder in an A.A. meeting, and one of the other
members reported it to the police. The judge ruled that 'sharing' in an A.A.
meeting is a form of protected confession in a religious ceremony,
just like confessing your sins to the priest in a Catholic
Church."
a Stepper can divert attention by
answering:
"I don't think that is an appropriate subject of
discussion in this context. We don't get involved in outside
issues. I was just getting to how to use the Seventh Step to cure people's
instincts for security and society. Let's concentrate on
that."
Or:
"It isn't fair of you to attack A.A. when no one
can answer, because nobody speaks for A.A.. Go pick on somebody
who can fight back."
If someone starts talking about the corruption
and dishonesty at the A.A. headquarters, a Stepper can change
the subject by saying, "Well, that's a different issue. Let's not get into
that now. Let's just read page 49 of the Big
Book and talk about that."
And don't forget obfuscation. That is
also an effective way to divert attention, by confusing and clouding
an issue, and muddying the waters so thoroughly that you can't even
see it:
"The judge was completely off base, and his
judgement was totally wrong, because there are no priests in
Alcoholics Anonymous. I mean, who's the priest in a meeting, and
who are you confessing your sins to?"
That bogus argument ignores the obvious
fact that you can confess something to someone besides an ordained
priest. (Just ask any criminal who ever confessed something to the
police.) And you can have a religious ceremony without a priest.
Lots of churches, like the Quakers, for instance, don't have any
ordained clergy. Everybody in the church is free to speak when the
spirit moves him.
You can also divert attention with slogans. A.A. does that a lot. If
someone is asking pointed, critical questions about the illogical
parts of the A.A. program, trying to understand how the whole thing
is supposed to work, the old-timers answer:
- "Utilize, Don't Analyze."
- "Stop Your Stinkin' Thinkin'."
- "Your best thinking got you here."
- "You know, sometimes you can be too
smart for your own good."
- "You don't have to understand how
electricity works in order to use it."
- "Nobody is too stupid to get the
program, but some people are too intelligent."
All of those slogans are designed to keep
newcomers from thinking, and discovering how flawed, crazy,
illogical and irrational the A.A. program really is.
Another
common A.A. diversion is to accuse the speaker of being angry. A.A.
true believers actually think that someone is automatically wrong if
he is at all angry, no matter how
outrageous the sins or crimes that have angered the speaker,
because"Nothing,
absolutely nothing happens in God's world by mistake." (Big
Book, 3rd Edition, page 449.)
Bill
Wilson wrote that you are always
wrong if you are "disturbed", and that alcoholics cannot
handle anger:
It
is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter
what the cause, there is something wrong with
us. If somebody hurts us and we are sore, we are in the
wrong also.
Twelve
Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 90.
["Gee,
duh... somebody just shot my friend dead in the middle of the
street, and raped my girlfriend, and kicked my dog. But I'm not
going to get disturbed about it, because Bill Wilson says that if
I did, it would axiomatically mean that there is something
spiritually wrong with me... Duh..."]
So the point of the discussion gets lost
in an argument about whether the speaker is angry, and whether it is
okay to be angry. Where it really gets funny is when the believers
cop an attitude like,
"Well, you're angry,
so that makes everything you say invalid. That takes care of you.
We don't have to listen to anything else that you say, because you
admitted that you were angry."
(Look here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here.)
- Prove
Something Else
This is a kind of diversion tactic.
"If
you can't prove what you want to prove, demonstrate
something else and pretend that they are the same
thing."
== Darrell Huff, How
to Lie with Statistics, p. 74
|
Alcoholics Anonymous uses this trick
often. If someone criticizes A.A. for failing to sober us
alcoholics, A.A. members cite the large sales figures for the A.A. Big Book, and claim that those
numbers prove that A.A. is a big success.
Likewise, they also cite the membership
numbers — a claimed 2 million — as proof that A.A. works. They
supply no evidence to show what percentage of those members are
sober, or newcomers, or repeat relapsers, or insane...
- "Well, all I
know is..."
When you list a bunch of points for your
side, your opponent says, "Well,
all I know is..." That is a diversionary tactic —
an attempt to ignore all of the facts that you just mentioned, and
divert attention to something else that he or she would rather talk
about.
- The Positive
Accomplishments Sidestep
This is a kind of diversion tactic. When criticized, avoid the point
and change the subject by citing some positive accomplishments.
When George W. Bush is criticized for his
failures in war, like, "You didn't catch Osama bin Laden, and you
didn't find any Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Iraq is
degenerating into civil war!", he answers:
- "But we got rid of the Taliban."
- "But we established democracy."
- "But we got rid of a dictator."
- "But we established freedom. Freedom
is on the march."
- Declare
Victory
When facing criticism, like for incompetence and failure, just
suddenly, arbitrarily declare victory. Another name for this behavior
is "triumphalism".
For instance, on December 10, 2008,
Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson had to explain to the
Congressional Oversight Panel how TARP had been implemented, and
what had been accomplished with the $350,000,000,000 that had been
allocated so far. Never mind the facts that unemployment was still
going up — a lot — and nationwide, the economic conditions were
worsening — a lot. And middle-class homes were still being
foreclosed on — a lot. Paulson just declared victory and announced
that things were much better
because the TED spread was smaller.
The TED spread is the difference between
the interest rate on the 3-month U.S. Treasury bills and on the
3-month "LIBOR" — the interest rate that commercial banks charge for
lending each other money in Europe. It is basically a measure of how
nervous the big financial players are about lending each other
money. So, because Americans weren't much more nervous than
Europeans this month, Paulson declared victory and implied that we
had gotten good results from our $350 billion worth of bailout to
Wall Street banks and gamblers.
- Red Herring
A Red Herring Fallacy is
a distraction technique where you talk about one subject and then
immediatly blame an unrelated topic or group as a cause or correlation
to it.
Another explanation of the Red Herring is: A Red
Herring is a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in
order to divert attention from the original issue. The basic idea is
to "win" an argument by leading attention away from the argument and
to another topic. This sort of "reasoning" has the following form:
- Topic A is under discussion.
- Topic B is introduced under the guise
of being relevant to topic A (when topic B is actually not
relevant to topic A).
- Topic A is abandoned.
This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious
because merely changing the topic of discussion hardly counts as an
argument against a claim.
Examples of Red Herring:
- "Teachers shouldn't make students wear
school uniforms. The Nazis made children wear uniforms too!"
- "We admit that this measure is
popular. But we also urge you to note that there are so many bond
issues on this ballot that the whole thing is getting ridiculous."
- "Argument" for a tax cut:
"You know, I've begun to think that there is some merit in the
Republican's tax cut plan. I suggest that you come up with
something like it, because if we Democrats are going to survive as
a party, we have got to show that we are as tough-minded as the
Republicans, since that is what the public wants."
- "Argument" for making grad school
requirements stricter:
"I think there is great merit in making the requirements stricter
for the graduate students. I recommend that you support it, too.
After all, we are in a budget crisis and we do not want our
salaries affected."
(Thanks to
"Dr. Herring" for that one.)
- The Personal
Loyalty Red Herring
This is another kind of diversion tactic. Change the issue into a test
of loyalty. When George Bush is criticized, he declares,
- "You're either with us or you're
against us."
- "Who are you going to side with, the
patriotic Americans, or the terrorists?"
A variation on this tactic is demanding
promises of loyalty from others as a way of manipulating them. When
the future Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels married his
sweetheart Magda, Adolf Hitler said, "I wish you a lifetime of
happiness and hope you will remain my good friend." It was supposed
to be Goebbels' day of happiness, but Hitler managed to turn it
around and make it about himself.
(Goebbels replied that he would remain
Hitler's friend, and that Magda would help him keep that promise.
Goebbels did keep it too, right up to the minute in the bunker in
Berlin when he killed his wife and children and then committed
suicide at the same time as Hitler and Eva Braun did.)
- The Story
Sourcing Distraction
This is yet another kind of diversion tactic. Instead of answering
cricism, attack the source of the information:
- Bush declared: "Who leaked that? We
are going to find those leakers and take care of them." (Ignore
the fact that George Bush and his staff turned out to be the
leakers.)
- "You read that in the liberal media?"
- "This is Washington. People say all
kinds of things."
- "That's the kind of language you might
expect to hear from the sovereign leader of an Arab country." —
That was Joshua Bolten, the White House Chief of Staff, explaining
why the Prime Minister of Lebanon objected to Israel bombing his
country. (Meet The Press, NBC, 23
July 2006)
When
six retired U.S. generals criticized Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld for incompetence and demanded his resignation (April 2006),
the White House shills complained that it was "inappropriate" for
retired generals to criticize Rumsfeld's conduct of the war — trying
to imply that the criticism was somehow invalid because it came from
retired generals — and that they were too late, anyway. Oh really?
So when is it
appropriate for generals to raise objections and condemn
politicians' stupidity?
- While they are still in uniform? (Thus
violating the sacred American principle that the U.S. military
always obeys civilian authority so that we don't degenerate into a
banana republic that is run by a murdering Colonel Manuel Norriega
or General Augusto Pinochet?) General McArthur was fired by
President Truman for criticizing the President and his policies
while still serving in uniform.
- Or never? Do men lose the right to
criticize bumbling conduct of a war if they once served in the
military?
Actually, who would be more entitled to have an opinion on the
subject?
- The Drama
Queen, the Prima Donna Ploy
This ploy is also a kind of diversion of
attention. Switch the focus to oneself and one's own immense
problems.
"People
always come up to me and say that my smoking
is bothering them... Well, it's killing me!"
== Wendy Liebman
|
For example, if a captain of industry is
accused:
ACCUSATION: "You are polluting the water and air and land and
destroying the very ability of the biosphere to continue
supporting human life."
ANSWER: "Hey!
Don't you think I'm trying? Do you have any idea how hard it is to
balance the interests of profit and ecology?
Why are you always blaming us CEOs?
Do you have any idea how demanding the stockholders are?
Do you realize how quickly they will replace me if I don't produce
the maximum profit?"
— None of which answers the accusation of
him being a polluter.
Bill Wilson used this stunt like this:
When they wrote the opening chapters of the "Big Book" Alcoholics Anonymous, Henry
Parkhurst and Bill Wilson were partners. But Wilson refused to give
Parkhurst fair credit for what he wrote, and eventually cheated
Parkhurst out of everything. Disillusioned
and disappointed at the betrayal, Parkhurst relapsed.
When Henry Parkhurst came around drunk
and begging for money, asking to be paid for some furniture that he
had left in the office, Wilson talked him out of his shares in the
publishing company that would publish the Big
Book — shares that would have eventually made
Parkhurst a moderately wealthy man. Wilson also denied Parkhurst any
share in the royalties from the Big
Book, using the excuse that Parkhurst had returned to
drinking.
And Wilson didn't try to save his
friend's life. Henry Parkhurst was the friend that Bill and Lois
turned to when they were homeless because the bank foreclosed on
their 182 Clinton Street house. Henry was their friend then, and
Bill and Lois moved in with Parkhurst. But when Parkhurst needed
some friendship and help in return, Wilson robbed Parkhurst and then
left him to die drunk and pennyless, alone. Which he did.
Then Wilson complained about how hard it
was to take, that Parkhurst was gone.
...At
length he broke down completely and went on a terrific bender
after four years of sobriety. He never again showed any real sign
of recovery, and he went on drinking until his death recently.
Considering what he had done for the book, and the further fact
that he was one of our first New York members, this was hard to
take.
Alcoholics
Anonymous Comes Of Age, William G. Wilson, page 179.
What
about how hard it was for Henry Parkhurst to take?
Bill Wilson really was a drama queen.
- "I'm so
offended."
Reject an opponent's point by claiming to be offended. This is a kind
of drama queen ploy.
During a Presidential debaite, candidate
John Kerry mentioned the fact that Liz Cheney was a Lesbian, and
argued for a more tolerant world. That was after Liz Cheney had
revealed her Lesbian sexual orientation to the whole world in the
press and on radio and TV.
Liz Cheney and her mother both
immediately went on TV and complained that they were "so offended"
that John Kerry would say such a thing.
- Claim that
"It's unfair."
For example, Romeny defenders complain:
"It's unfair of the Obama campaign to demand that Romney release a
dozen years of his tax returns, like Obama did."
This petulant complaint goes well with the Drama Queen
Ploy "I'm so offended."
- Answer A
Question That Was Not Asked (To Avoid Answering One That Was Asked)
When asked an embarassing question, answer a different question.
This technique is closely related to the
previous item "creating a diversion", but it has twists of its own.
Politicians routinely use this trick to avoid answering the tough
questions. Really skilled politicians actually use this technique to
turn hard questions to their advantage — they will answer the
question that they really wish had been asked, so that they can go
on and on about how great their accomplishments have been lately.
For
example: The Oxford Group cult leader Frank Buchman attracted a lot
of attention and criticism back in the nineteen-thirties for
associating with high-ranking Nazis like the Gestapo
chief Heinrich Himmler. Buchman's faithful follower and
apologist Peter Howard wrote that Buchman never met Hitler (which was
probably untrue), and then added:
Nor
was Buchman an intimate of Himmler or of any other member of the
Nazi hierarchy.
The
Mystery of Moral Re-Armament; A Study of Frank Buchman and His
Movement, Tom Driberg, 1965, page 66.
Nobody was asking whether Frank Buchman
and Heinrich Himmler got in bed together; they were asking how
sympathetic Frank Buchman was to the Nazi philosophy and goals. But
Peter Howard didn't want to talk about that, so he just declared
that Buchman and Himmler were not "intimate".
Peter Howard used this technique after
World War II when he triumphantly produced a letter from the
Secretary of the U.S. Air Force that declared that the Moral
Re-Armament organization (the renamed Oxford Group) was not a bunch
of pacifists. Nobody had accused MRA of being pacifists. (Not ever,
that I know of.) They were accused of being fascists, Nazi-like, Nazi-sympathizers, draft dodgers,
and chicken-hawk
"super-patriots", but not pacifists. Peter Howard's "proof"
that MRA was not pacifistic did not prove that MRA was not fascistic
in nature, or that they weren't chicken-hawk draft-dodgers or Nazi
sympathizers.
For another example, at a press
conference, when George W. Bush was asked about the torture of
prisoners in Abu Ghraibprison,
Bush answered the question by talking about how wonderful freedom
is, and how "we" are bringing freedom to the people of Iraq, and how
just a small minority of the Iraqi people hated freedom... That's
changing the subject and answering a different question.
The
press conference is a duty the president [G. W. Bush]
generally avoids, and approaches only with apparent
great discomfort. As he casually confessed at the
Associated Press annual luncheon on April 21, 2004, "I
kind of like ducking questions, and I would be glad to
duck any questions, like my mother once told me to do."
His responses generally conform to a number of different
input-control strategies. He turns his awkward and
memorized answers to any question into a question
itself, and then answers that instead
of the original one.
Bush
On The Couch, Justin A. Frank, M.D., page 125. |
- Answer a
Question With A Question
Do not — simply do not —
answer your opponent's question. Immediately counter-attack with
another question that may or may not be relevant to the subject under
discussion.
In a recent discussion in a newsgroup,
one fellow was declaring that Alcoholics Anonymous had been designed
to make people quit drinking. I responded by pointing out that A.A.
had not been "designed" that way at all — that in fact Frank Buchman
had developed those cult
religion practices to grow his own cult, and Bill
Wilson simply split off and took over a branch of Buchman's cult —
the "Alcoholic Squadron of the Oxford Group".
The other fellow replied, "Do you go to A.A.
meetings?"
- Monopolizing
the Question (Hypophora)
Ask a question and then immediately give the answer.
"Who was sent to us to redeem us?
Jesus, of course!"
"What is the only solution for
alcoholism? It's Alcoholics Anonymous, of course."
- Surfeit of
Questions (Plurium Interrogationum)
Demand a simple answer when this is not possible:
"Okay,
if God didn't create the universe, tell me how it got here."
(The obvious answer is
another question: "But who
created God? How did God get here?")
- Obfuscate
Confuse and cloud an issue, so that the original point gets lost. This
can often be accomplished by overloading the listeners with myriad
details or irrelevant facts. False facts are especially good. Then you
can get distracted by arguing over the validity of the false facts.
- "You don't know what the technical
issues are. The fix that you desire may not be as simple as you
think. Don't assume that you are smarter than the Olympus
Corporation's engineers. I mean, if they haven't done that fix
in all of these years, what makes you think that it's easy to
do?"
(Answer: It was
Olympus corporate policy to not fix or enable camera features
like Focus Confirmation and Image Stabilization with legacy
lenses, not an engineering problem. Olympus just wanted to
force people to buy new Olympus lenses, by making the old
lenses harder to use.)
- "A.A.
meetings can't be confession sessions. I mean, who is the
priest? You can't be confessing if there isn't a priest."
(Answer: You can
confess things to anybody, not just a priest. Like, you can
confess to the police, or a wife, or a friend...
- Obfuscate
With Bureaucritese
Bureaucrats and politicians have a
special incomprehensible language all their own, which makes
communicating with them, or understanding them, difficult or
impossible. They are skilled at using it to not answer questions and
not give real explanations:
- We will take that under advisement.
- We will look into it.
- Top people are investigating it.
- We are working on a contingency plan.
- We will consider that a priority
issue.
- The Subcommmittee For Superwidgets is
working on that.
- That will be addressed in the next
five-year plan.
- Confuse With
Technicalese
This one is pretty obvious — just confuse the issue with a lot of
technical-sounding garbage that means little or nothing.
"Today's Terrorist Level Color is Chartreuse with Pink Polka-Dots.
Do not panic. In fact, do nothing."
(The
only Terror Color I'm really sure about is Yellow. That's the
level where George W. Bush parks his ass safely 5000 miles behind
the front lines and then bravely yells, "Bring 'em on!")
- Attack
Without Appearing To Attack By Using Paralipsis or Apophasis
Paralipsis is a
rhetorical figure of speech wherein the speaker or writer invokes a
subject by denying that it should be invoked.
Paralepsis is almost the
same thing — a pretended or apparent omission where a speaker artfully
pretends to pass by what he really mentions, as in: "I will not speak of my
adversary's scandalous venality and rapacity, his brutal conduct, or
his treachery and malice."
Apophasis is denial of
one's intention to speak of a subject that is at the same time named
or insinuated, as in, "I
shall not mention Caesar's avarice, nor his cunning, nor his
morality."
- "I don't want to stoop to calling my
opponent names like bribe-taker and war-profiteer, so I won't."
- "I would tell you about my
opponent's predilection for under-age girls, but it would be
unkind of me to publicly embarrass those innocent girls."
- "It
would be unfair of me to bring my opponent's family into the
debate by telling you things like the fact that my opponent's
wife is an alcoholic and his lesbian daughter smokes crack
cocaine, so I won't talk about those things."
- Passive-Aggressive
Attack
Use subtle passive attack modes.
- "Oh, it isn't like I need my fair
share of the credit. That would just inflate my ego."
- "Did I say that you are an ungrateful
child? Don't worry about me. I'll just sit here and freeze and
starve in the dark."
- "So go ahead and refuse to attend
Al-Anon meetings. It isn't like I need any support from my family
or anything. It won't be your fault if I relapse again."
- Sarcasm,
Condescension, and Patronizing Attitudes
This is easy to understand.
Another form of the superior
condescending technique is giving people nicknames, especially
demeaning nicknames. Call a black woman "Brown Sugar". A guy who
wears glasses is "Four-eyes". A man who belongs to any of several
Eastern religions is "Rag-head". And so on.
- Adopt an air
of superiority
Claim that you are better-educated and more intelligent than your
decadent and immoral opponent. Claim that you are a far superior
example of manhood (or womanhood). Adopt a superior Puritan attitude,
or a superior "open-minded" attitude. Flaunt your church membership,
or your business connections, or your friends in high places.
This technique is a natural for people
who suffer from Narcissistic
Personality Disorder.
"I am much more
intelligent than my opponent. And more moral. And more
respectable. And more trustworthy. Also better educated. And
better-looking. And more charismatic. And more fun. I don't know
why my opponent in this debate even bothers to open his mouth
and embarrass himself."
- Damn with
Faint Praise
Praise someone, but make the praise so small that it is actually a
subtle criticism. Or praise only some small unimportant aspect of a
person's endeavor, leaving an implied criticism of the endeavor.
- "What I
really like about my opponent is that she can make me laugh."
- "While
running a billion-dollar government program, he keeps a tidy
desk, and his hair is always neatly groomed, and his shoes are
shined."
- Reductio
Ad Absurdum
This means, "reduce to absurdity." Take a point, and exaggerate it
until it is ridiculous, to show that the original idea was stupid or
wrong. For example, start with this
story from the Big
Book:
Whether the family goes on a spiritual basis or not, the
alcoholic member has to if he would recover. The others must be
convinced of his new status beyond the shadow of a doubt. Seeing
is believing to most families who have lived with a drinker.
Here is a case in point: One of our friends is a heavy
smoker and coffee drinker. There was no doubt he over-indulged.
Seeing this, and meaning to be helpful, his wife commenced to
admonish him about it. He admitted he was overdoing these things,
but frankly said that he was not ready to stop. His wife is one of
those persons who really feels there is something rather sinful
about these commodities, so she nagged, and her intolerance
finally threw him into a fit of anger. He got drunk.
Of course our friend was wrong — dead wrong. He had to
painfully admit that and mend his spiritual fences. Though he is
now a most effective member of Alcoholics Anonymous, he still
smokes and drinks coffee, but neither his wife nor anyone else
stands in judgement. She sees she was wrong to make a burning
issue out of such a matter when his more serious ailments were
being rapidly cured.
The Big Book, William G. Wilson, page
135.
And then attack it like this:
Notice the
powerful hidden assumption in this sentence:
"He
admitted he was overdoing these things, but frankly
said that he was not ready to stop."
Oh? Somebody can continue doing whatever he is doing
just because he frankly says
that he isn't ready to stop?
- When was the last time
that you heard an A.A. member accept that as a good
excuse for someone to continue drinking? Can the
alcoholic say, "I know I'm over-doing it right now,
but frankly,
I'm not ready to stop just yet", and keep right on
drinking forever?
- If you catch someone
robbing your house, can the burglar say, "I know I'm
over-doing it right now, but frankly,
I'm not ready to stop just yet" and keep on robbing
forever?
- And, if the guy next
door has a bad habit of molesting 10-year-old little
girls during full moons, can he say, "I know I'm
over-doing it, but frankly,
I'm just not ready to stop right now" and keep on
molesting children forever?
|
Logically, there is not any connection
between molesting little girls and smoking cigarettes, or between
smoking and robbing houses, but there doesn't need to be. The point
is to exaggerate the "Frankly,
I'm not ready to stop" excuse to the point where
it becomes absurd, to show the falseness of that argument.
Also note the use of another technique in
that quote, one that we might call Context
Shift or Biased
Viewpoint:
- The author Bill Wilson used Slanted
Language — he refered to the man in the
story as "our friend" and "a most effective member of Alcoholics
Anonymous", even after he got drunk and threw his angry screaming
temper tantrum. (So it's also a Stroking
Ploy.)
His clean and sober wife, on the other hand, was called "one of
those persons." You know, one of those
nagging wivesthat you get away from by going to an A.A.
meeting...
- Likewise, Bill wrote that "her
intolerance finally threw him into a fit of anger."
Wanting your husband to live and be healthy is "intolerance"?
Was she also "intolerant" when she wanted him to quit drinking
himself to death?
- And she didn't throw him into a fit of
anger; he willingly walked right into it by his own choice, to put
on a big loud drunken show of anger that would scare her off and
make her quit "nagging him" to quit smoking.
Bill
Wilson's goal was to promote a feeling of "us good old boys versus
the nagging wives", which is just one of
Bill's many attacks on his wife.3 And
it's also an example of the creation of a "granfalloon",
a distinguishing characteristic that will define and unite a group.
And also note the use of yet another
propaganda technique: "Assume The
Major Premise." Look at this sentence:
"She sees she was
wrong to make a burning issue out of such a matter when his more
serious ailments were being rapidly cured."
Wilson actually managed to do it twice, and pack two lies
into one sentence:
- She was wrong to try to get him to
quit smoking.
- His more serious ailments were being
rapidly cured.
First off, she wasn't wrong. Bill Wilson
was just a hard-core chain smoker who didn't ever
quit smoking, not even when he had burned out his lungs and gotten
fatal emphysema, and he hated his wife Lois nagging him, so he
said that she was wrong to try to get him to quit smoking. (For that
matter, Bill also said that his wife Lois
was wrong to nag him to quit drinking.)
Then, what "more serious ailments were
being rapidly cured"? His alcoholism? No way. He just used alcohol
as a blackmail weapon when she tried to get him to quit smoking. He
used alcohol to get his own way, and he holds that weapon in reserve
for use against her again. At any time, he can blackmail her with
more threats to relapse and drink if she doesn't let him have his
own way. He is still using alcohol as an easy solution to his
problems. But Bill Wilson arbitrarily declared that "his more
serious ailments were being rapidly cured", because Bill wanted to
make the A.A. program look good.
- Rationalize
This one is great, an old classic. Rationalization. No matter what you
or somebody else did, you can always rationalize it, and justify it
somehow, and put a happy face on it.
For instance,
- "Tommy did it. O.J. got away with it.
So I should be able to do it too."
- "I did it for the children."
- "Well, he did his best."
- When politicians are caught telling
lies about their opponents, they rationalize,
"Well,
the other side did it first."
Or,
"Well,
my opponents do it all of the time. I have to fight fire with
fire or else I'll lose."
- Politicians also rationalize their
lies and distortions by saying,
"But
we will lose the election if we tell the voters the truth. We
are using dirty tricks for the good of America."
They overlook the obvious objection that if they will
lose elections by telling the American people the truth, then
maybe they are pushing the wrong programs. They certainly are not
supporting democracy — democracy requires that the voters know
what they are really voting for.
- And when they get caught with their
hand in the cookie jar, they say,
"Well,
it's the system. That's just how it is done. Everybody's doing
it. You have to cooperate with the system and not make waves.
Go along to get along..."
| The
Bush administration is having to do a lot of
rationalizing, lately. "We have to
invade Iraq and take out Saddam Hussein because he
threatens us with an imminent attack with Weapons of
Mass Destruction," they said.
Tony Blair even said that Saddam had a 45-minute-to-launch
capability.
But you know what happened.
No WMD. Nothing. Not even close. No yellow-cake uranium
from Niger. Not even one missile that could hit England,
never mind the USA. So they rationalized, "Well,
we had to stop Saddam from giving WMD to al Qaeda.
It's because of September 11."
But there were no such
weapons. And even more importantly,
- Saddam Hussein hated al
Qaeda and al Qaeda hated Saddam.
- They never worked
together, and Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with
September 11.
- Osama bin Laden is a
fundamentalist religious fanatic, and Saddam Hussein
was a secular military dictator who killed the Islamic
religious extremists who made trouble for him. They
didn't get along at all.
- Osama bin Laden even made
a videotape shortly before the USA attacked Iraq,
telling the Islamic radicals to ignore Saddam Hussein
because he wasn't a friend.
So the Bush administration
rationalized, "Well, at
least we got rid of a bad guy. Now Iraq can have
democracy and freedom."
But you know what happened.
Ayatollah al Sistani demanded real democracy and an
elected government, immediately. You know, one man, one
vote, and all of that old American stuff. But the
Bushies said, "Oh,
noooo! You can't do that! You will elect the wrong
people! I'll tell you what: You can have an election
where you can only vote for the candidates that we
choose. On second thought, why don't we just forget
about that whole democracy thing for a while. We
will just appoint a council of rulers for you."
So they rationalized, "Well,
at least we got rid of the bad guy. Saddam Hussein
was torturing and killing his own people."
But you know what happened.
- Torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison.
- Rapes of women prisoners.
- The homosexual rape of a
teenage boy.
- At least 35 deaths of
prisoners while under interrogation (overly
enthusiastic questioning), and 2 known deliberate
murders.
- Lots of pictures.
- Naked men stacked in
pyramids.
- Sadistic torture.
- Police dogs biting them.
- Photographs of naked women
prisoners taking showers.
- A 70-year-old Iraqi woman
stripped naked, shoved to the floor, and ridden like a
donkey by a British soldier.
- Unreleased video tapes,
perhaps even showing Iraqi women being raped and Iraqi
male prisoners being murdered.
- Pornography films: Reports
of a video tape showing a certain U.S. Army woman
having consensual sex with her boyfriend in front of
Iraqi prisoners.
- Snuff films. Really hot
stuff, much better than what you can get at your local
adult bookstore.
[Wow, the U.S. Army snuff films are even
better than the Mexican ones. Heck, they're even
better than Mel Gibson's The
Passion of the Christ — you know, "Mad Max and Jesus Meet
the Road Warrior in the Thunderdome, and the Road
Warrior Wins".]
How will they rationalize
their way out of this one? "Well,
they were bad guys. We grabbed them off of the
streets because they looked at us cross-eyed. Maybe
his second cousin took a pot-shot at us. They don't
appreciate the freedom we are giving them. Besides,
we need to get information out of them. It's just
part of the 'softening-up' process, before
interrogation."
But you know what happened.
The U.S. military generals admitted, in the U.S. Senate
Hearings (2004-05-11), that 70 to 90 percent of the
prisoners in Abu
Ghraib prison were innocent, just
grabbed by mistake in sweeps of the streets.
So how will they rationalize
their way out of this one?
"Well,
those abuse things were only done by a few bad
apples."
- — In spite of the fact
that it was done by both American and British soldiers
in several different prisons over a long span of time,
and there are thousands of
pictures that document an on-going program of abuse,
and now an American colonel has sworn that the
commanding general in charge of intelligence watched
it being done.
UPDATE, 2004.05.11: Oh
heck, now al Qaeda is making snuff films too. They
just chopped the head off of Nicholas Berg, as
revenge for abuses in Abu
Ghraib, they say. What a bunch of disgusting
copy-cats.
|
Alcoholics Anonymous also teaches us how to rationalize.
- For example, if a critic says, "Bill
Wilson cheated on his wife Lois a lot, both before and
after sobriety. He took sexual advantage of sick women who
came to A.A. seeking help to avoid death from alcohol. Bill
even had the gall to be routinely unfaithful to Lois while she
was working in a department store to support his lazy ass. And
Bill even used the Alcoholics Anonymous headquarters as an
employment agency for his many mistresses who couldn't even
type. That is hardly what I would call a good spiritual role
model."
You can answer, "It just goes to
show that Bill Wilson was human, and not a saint, and that's
wonderful, because it means that ordinary people like you
and I can recover, too. So Bill
Wilson had to be human, and not a saint, so that he
could help others. It was the Will of God."
- Likewise: "All of that vague,
confusing, grandiose, contradictory stuff that Bill Wilson
wrote in the Big
Book is okay. Even if Bill wasn't a great
writer, that book will still save your life. Eventually, you
will be able to figure out what it means."
- And: "Bill Wilson had to
steal the Big Book publishing
fund and the copyright of the Big
Book, in order
to keep Henry Parkhurst from stealing it. It's what the
other A.A. members wanted Bill to do."
- Exchange A
Term
Exchange a term in your opponent's argument, thereby redefining the
debate to better suit your own prejudices.
Back in the nineteen-sixties, when
proponents of psychedelic drugs spoke of visions of paradise,
critical newspaper editors changed the wording to visions of an
"inferno".17
Those women who desire control over their
reproductive lives call their goal "Pro-Choice", and they call their
opponents "anti-abortion". The opponents of abortion, on the other
hand, call themselves "Pro-Life", while calling their opponents
"pro-abortion people".
Con artists who are trying to get people
to participate in illegal chain letters and pyramid sales schemes
brag, "I made $3000 in my first week." What we call criminal fraud,
they call "making money".
When the Chinese People's Army attacked
and conquered Tibet, and brutally murdered great numbers of innocent
people, the Chinese leaders called it "the liberation of Tibet",
while we call it "the invasion of Tibet".
Likewise, George W. Bush calls the
invasion of Iraq "giving them freedom" and "liberating them from a
dictator" (accompanied by a only a little "collateral damage"),
while the Iraqi resistance calls it the invasion and occupation of
their country, accompanied by the murder of their families,
children, and neighbors by the massive use of firepower and dropping
cluster bombs in civilian neighborhoods during Donald Rumsfeld's Shock And Awe bombing.
G. W. Bush complains that "foreign
fighters" and "terrorists" have come into Iraq from the outside and
are making trouble. The Iraqis say that they are the "freedom
fighters", and that the Americans are the "foreign fighters" and the
"terrorists" who came from other countries to enforce the will of
the Bush family and their oil company friends with "Shock and Awe"
bombing.
Likewise,
in Israel:
The
formula is simple: suicide in the West is thought to be caused by
despair, hoplessness, panic, and mental illness, so we assume that
such must be the case among Moslems. To date, we have been unable
to see the issue through any but Western eyes, and so have missed
recognizing that the young Palestinian bombers are seen by large
numbers of Muslims as heroes who are willing to sacrifice their
lives — in martyrdom, not suicide attacks — for a cause that is
greater than themselves and sanctioned by their God. What the West
sees as tragic brutality practiced by despairing or deviant
individuals is perceived in much of the Moslem world as a heroic
act of self-sacrifice, patriotism, and worship, an act to be
greeted not with condemnation and revulsion, but with awe,
respect, and a determination to emulate. Moreover, it is an act
Muslims deem a just military response to Israel's fifty-plus-year
occupation of Palestine and its relegation of three generations of
Palestinians to refugee [concentration] camps.
Thus, American's evil suicide bombers can also be seen as
Islam's martyr-heroes, men and women following in the steps and
under the guidance of their prophet and according to the revealed
word of their God.
Imperial
Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, Anonymous,
pages 135-136.
| In
March of 2006, there was a flap at the Washington Post
about a right-wing blogger, Ben Domenech, getting hired to
write opinion pieces for the online edition. Some critics
who investigated his background quickly discovered a
history of plagiarism in his writings.
A Washington Post spokesman
commented that he "wasn't aware of those allegations."
Someone posted to a forum,
'Is not being "aware of allegations" the same
as not being aware of the facts?'
|
In another recent example, a local
politician declared, "My opponent has spent $400 million on his
political agenda." The so-called "political agenda" was health care
for people, and unemployment compensation for the unemployed people,
and other social services like that. (Portland, Oregon, KGW Straight Talk, 2011.04.10)
Alcoholics Anonymous constantly uses this
technique. Talk to them about the harmful cult practices that are
embodied in the Twelve
Steps, and they will respond by calling the Twelve Steps
"spiritual principles". The Twelve
Steps are practices,
notprinciples. The Twelve
Steps are specific practices for people to do, things like
surrendering your will and confessing your sins, and hearing the
voices of spirits or gods or something while conducting
séances, not guidelines for a spiritual life.
- Frame The
Argument
This is very closely related to Exchange
A Term; in fact, they are often identical. You can re-frame an
argument by exchanging a term and redefining the debate in terms that
you like better.
When someone says that conservative
politics should be about preserving the Constitution Of The United
States and the Bill Of Rights that our Founders gave us, twist the
argument around to "defending the country from terrorists who don't
deserve Constitutional protections". Suddenly it becomes okay to
violate loyal Americans' rights because terrorists don't deserve any
rights.
Comcast uses this technique when they cry
about heavy users of the Internet stealing bandwidth from other
users, as in "Those
people who download movies are slowing down the Internet for
everybody else."
The truth is, Comcast is saddled with a very limited
technology: sharing a cable — trying to cram all of the data
communications of a neighborhood into one single thin cable, which
means that the available bandwidth is inherently very limited. You
can only cram so much data through one piece of wire. And the more
customers who share that cable, the less bandwidth each customer
gets, so the slower it gets.
But rather than admit that Comcast cannot supply sufficient
bandwidth to meet their customers' needs and desires — to whom
Comcast has sold "high speed connections" — Comcast frames the
argument as some heavy users taking too much. "They are taking more than their fair share. Things
would be fine if nobody used very much."
(That also smacks of
finding a scapegoat to blame: It
isn't Comcast's fault for not investing in infrastructure and
building a good network; it's the fault of users who want to
actually use the connection that they paid for.)
| Propaganda
Trick of the Day: President Obama's press conference, 20
December 2013:
While he was trying to
minimize the damage caused by revelations that the NSA
is spying on everybody's phone calls all of the time,
and a Federal judge declared that the NSA surveillance
program was an illegal violation of the American
peoples' Constitutional protection against unwarranted
searches, President Obama said, "...Whatever benefits
this program has, may be outweighed by the concerns that
people have..." (about their privacy and rights). Obama
didn't say, "outweighed by the gravity of egregious
violation of our Constitutional rights", he only said
that some nervous nellies were "concerned". As if there
was really nothing wrong going on, it's just those silly
people who worry, and now Obama has to soothe their hurt
feelings.
Those childish worrying twits
are such a bother. Having secret police spying on
everybody all of the time didn't hurt the people in Nazi
Germany or Communist Russia, now did it? Didn't the
Gestapo and the KGB do a good job of defending their
countries, and respecting their peoples' rights?
You can trust the secret
police. Really. They always have your best interests at
heart.
|
Alcoholics Anonymous likes to frame
opposition to A.A. in terms of "the atheists versus the Christian
believers". But they are framing the argument in false terms.
Alcoholics Anonymous theology is not Christian at all — it is grossly
heretical, and conflicts with Christianity in many major ways.
Opponents of Alcoholics Anonymous would
do well to re-frame the argument in terms of "the heretical
anti-Christian nonsense of A.A. versus everyday common sense."
- Argue with
Unrealistic Hypothetical Situations
Imagine a guy who is in the process of
committing suicide by hanging himself. He is standing on a chair,
and tying the noose up to something. His cross nagging wife looks on
and asks, "Where would we be if everybody did that?"
- Misrepresent
Your Opponent's Position, or Mischaracterize Your Opponent, or
Mischaracterize His Statements or Questions
For example: The Committee for Scientific
Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) is an
organization that does just what its title sounds like: it
investigates claims of the paranormal. That often results in its
debunking some phony psychics and quack healers and various other
fakes and charlatans.
That really annoyed some people who
didn't like to see their favorite scams exposed. They fired back by
declaring that,
"CSICOP
[is] a defensive league of American Scientists whose basic aim is
to argue that the paranormal does not exist, and is an invention
of cranks and wierdos."
Skeptical
Inquirer, Nov/Dec 2001, page 67.
That is a mischaracterization of CSICOP.
Such mischaracterization is standard
behavior for the Bush administration. In April, 2007, when Congress
put into a funding bill a non-binding resolution asking for the
withdrawal of troops from Iraq, George W. Bush declared, "I will strongly reject
an artificial timetable withdrawal, and/or Washington politicians
trying to tell those who wear the uniform how to do their job."
- As if there was a "non-artificial" or
"natural" time-table for withdrawal from Iraq?
- And isn't George W. Bush the biggest
politician in Washington who is telling the generals what to do?
Isn't he the Commander In Chief, as well as "the decider"?
(Bush routinely hides behind the generals, and says that he is
"supporting them" when things aren't going well. But he is the one
who is giving the orders.)
Likewise, Vice President Cheney declared: "Some Democratic leaders
seem to believe that blind opposition to the new strategy in Iraq
is good politics."
- Is opposition to the administration's
policies "blind", or a well-informed and well-thought-out,
considered, rational response to four years of failure?
- What new strategy? "The Surge" is just
sending in a few more troops. This "new strategy" comes from the
administration that, way back at the beginning of the war, fired
the generals who said that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
wasn't sending in enough troops to do the job properly. Remember
General Shinseki, who was fired for declaring to Congress that
Rumsfeld was not sending in nearly enough troops to accomplish the
job?
(Will those generals who were right all along get their jobs back
and get another star for being right? Not likely. G. W. Bush gives
more stars to those generals who say that he is right about
everything.)
- And Cheney declares that the
opposition must be rooted in "politics". The opposition couldn't
possibly be based on principles and intelligent, realistic,
well-thought-out decision-making, presumably because reasonable
American people cannot possibly have good cause for disagreeing
with the administration, even after four years of shifting goals
and lies and incompetence, and cover-ups and misinformation and
fabricated stories, and secret prisons and renditions and torture
and war crimes and declaring the Geneva Convention "quaint", and
the loss of far more troops in Iraq than Americans killed and
maimed on 9/11.
- Nit-Pick and
Split Hairs
This is easy to understand. Everybody knows what nit-picking is:
"Hah! You misspelled Henrietta Seiberling's name!
That totally blows your credibility. Now I'm not going to believe
anything else you say."
Yeh, right. As if you were planning to
before that unfortunate misspelling... :-)
- Quibble
Quibble over irrelevant tiny details, quibble over the definitions of
words, quibble over anything you can find that will divert attention
from your opponent's points.
For example, when Alexander Litvinenko,
the Russian defector, former Russian spy, and author of tell-all
books about the new Russian spy agencies, was poisoned with
the rare radioactive metal Polonium for
persistently criticizing the Russian president/dictator Vladimir
Putin, Putin claimed that he didn't do it, that he had nothing to do
with it, because the British medical documents did not show "that it
was a result of violence, this is not a violent death, so there is
no ground for speculations of this kind." To argue that poisoning
somebody with a radioactive substance is not a "violent" act is
quibbling over the definitions of words. It was still murder most
foul.
Another kind of quibbling is quibbling
over terms, like "legitimate", as in "legitimate rape", or
"legitimate claims" against BP. We all remember the flap over a
Republican candidate (Aiken) arguing that women didn't get pregnant
from "legitimate rape". And earlier, BP, the British oil company,
declared that it was paying for all "legitimate claims" of damage
from their oil spill. But they didn't explain what kinds of hoops
ruined people had to jump through to prove that their claims were
"legitimate". And how does a girl prove that her rape was
"legitimate", rather than illegitimate?
On another note, one critic of mine
actually spent several letters quibbling over whether President
Lincoln ever told a joke that contained
the word "ass", as in "maybe
those generals will get off of their asses and do something"...
That critic tried to claim that everything I said in my web site was
all wrong because he was sure that Abraham Lincoln — the rough
home-spun frontiersman — would never use crude words in jokes.
- Hit And Run
Launch an attack on your opponent, and then run away before your
opponent can counter-attack or ask you to prove your accusations.
"That
story is all wrong. It's full of factual errors. It is so stupid
that would be a waste of time to even respond to it. It doesn't
even warrant an answer. I'm not going to waste any more time on
this stupid argument. I'm out of here."
Now you can run away without actually
answering any of your opponent's points, or supplying any facts to
back up your sweeping statements and denunciations.
(And,
if your opponent refutes your statements after you have left, and
supplies a lot of facts to prove that he is correct, you can later
accuse him of talking about you behind your back, and of attacking
you when you couldn't defend yourself, which implies that he is a
coward. That stratagem has sweet touches of ad
hominem and blame the
victim in it.)
- Hifalutin'
Denunciations
Denounce your opponent with vague,
grand-sounding generalized accusations that don't have very specific
meanings:
- "the proposal shows a failure of
initiative"...
- "his program shows a failure of
imagination"...
- "he exhibits a lack of vision"...
What the heck does any of that really mean, in plain English?
- Make
Unreasonable Demands
For example: Demand that your opponent
write his whole autobiography to show us that his life is okay
without doing the Twelve Steps.
The Oxford Group cult leader Frank
Buchman used this trick this way:
The
world needs a miracle. Miracles of science have been the wonder of
the age. But they have not brought peace and happiness to the
nations. A miracle of the spirit is what we need.
Frank Buchman,
speaking at Kronberg, Denmark, Whit Sunday, 1935, quoted in
Remaking the World, the speeches of
Frank Buchman, Frank N. D. Buchman, page 157.
For Frank Buchman to demand that science
do everything from end the Great Depression to prevent World War Two
was unreasonable. It isn't the job of "the miracles of science" like
penicillin or the light bulb to do that. Nevertheless, Buchman then
declared that his religion was the only answer,
because "science" didn't meet his demands.
One contemporary booster of Alcoholics
Anonymous used that trick like this: When I stated that 93% of the drug
and alcohol treatment facililities in the USA use the 12-Step
approach, he demanded a list of all of those facilities,
including the names of the owners, addresses, and phone numbers.
- Make False
Demands
For example: Demand that your opponent
prove that his life is still full of "Serenity
and Gratitude", in spite of his not doing the Twelve Steps.
That
demand is false because normal, sane, people do not judge their
lives by how much "Serenity and Gratitude" they have; nor do they
believe that a good life must be emotionally flat, without any of
the other emotions like the passions, the love and the anger, the
agony and the ecstasy, that make us greater than the rocks.
- Shift the
Burden of Proof Onto Your Opponent
Make all kinds of unsubstantiated statements and claims, and when your
opponent objects and challenges those statements, say, "Do some research on the
subject and you will see that what I am saying is true."
It is the job of
the person who is making the statements and claims to do the
research and supply the evidence to support his assertions.
- Double
Standards
This is a well-known propaganda and debating technique. One standard
or set of rules applies to one group, and a very different set of
rules applies to another group. Also known as hypocrisy, when the easier,
looser, standards apply to oneself.
For example:
- Men who philander are called "real
ladies' men", while women who philander are considered whores.
- Men are "demanding bosses", while
similar women are "bitches".
- Men who climb the corporate ladder
while sleeping with several women are "normal, healthy,
hard-working achievers", while women who do the same are guilty of
"sleeping their way to the top."
- Poor people who get money from the
government are "takers", and "leeches getting handouts", but rich
people who get millions or billions of dollars from the government
are "smart businessmen".
- The extremist Right-winger Senators
and Congressmen say that extending unemployment benefits for poor
unemployed people removes their incentive to go get a job. (Ignore
the fact that there are not enough jobs to go around.) But giving
hundreds of billions of dollars to Wall Street gamblers to bail
them out after they lost gigantic bets does not remove their
incentive to act responsibly, and stop gambling with other
people's money.
- Similarly, "Conservative" politicians
say that giving money to poor people in various aid programs
removes their incentive to strive and succeed in life. Those lazy
poor people won't work hard and accomplish great things if they
aren't hungry. But letting rich people's children inherit millions
or billions of dollars tax-free does not remove their incentive to
work hard and excel.
- Poor people whose houses are
foreclosed were financially irresponsible, and they deserve to
lose their homes. But ultra-rich bankers who gambled and bet
everything and lost and bankrupted their banks are "too big to
fail", and must be bailed out with the poor taxpayers' money "for
the good of us all."
- Police officers and judges who take
bribes are corrupt criminals, but Senators and Congressmen who
take bribes to vote a certain way are "great statesmen who are
serving their nation".
- A.A. members talk constantly about God
and "Higher Power", and declare that God is keeping them from
drinking, and doing all kinds of wonderful things for them,
granting their wishes and doing favors for them, and they don't
consider that excessive, or obsession with religion. But when
somebody else talks about God, and even dares to mention Jesus
Christ, the A.A.
members attack him as a "Bible-beating
fundamentalist", and tell him to "take it to Church".
(Conversely, if somebody does not
talk about God, and declare that "Higher Power" and "A.A.
spirituality" are keeping him sober, then he is accused of being
an agnostic or an atheist. That is a Double-Bind.)
- When A.A. members lie, cheat,
and thirteen-step under-age girls who came to
A.A. seeking help for a drug or alcohol problem, that's okay,
because "We
are not saints." But when a non-member does
those things, he is a criminal who should go to jail.
- Demand an
Uneven Burden of Proof
Use very different standards of proof for opposite sides of an
argument.
For example: Exhaustively fact-check and
nit-pick an opponent's statements, but do not challenge outrageous
claims made by friends and allies.
Another example: demand very strong,
iron-clad, absolute proof for an opponent's statements, while
insisting that the flimsiest of evidence proves one's own statements
to be true.
Alcoholics Anonymous is a past master of
this stunt. In the opinion of Alcoholics Anonymous pundits:
-
- If one person quits drinking while
attending A.A. meetings, then that "proves" that A.A. works.
- The numerous A.A. members who
relapse do not prove that A.A. doesn't work.
-
- If one person relapses, even once,
while not attending
A.A. meetings, then that "proves" that nobody can do it alone.
- The numerous "do-it-yourself"
people who succeed in getting sober and staying sober without
A.A. meetings do not prove that people can get sober without
Alcoholics Anonymous, because those people might relapse
some day. A.A. boosters do not ask whether the other sober
A.A. members are likely to eventually relapse. (Nor do they
bother to keep count of those who did.)
-
- If someone has a bad drinking
problem and he quits drinking while going to A.A. meetings,
then that proves that he was a real alcoholic and A.A. works.
- If someone has a bad drinking
problem and he quits drinking without going to A.A. meetings,
then that proves that he was not a real alcoholic. (The
Real Scotsman Fallacy) It doesn't prove that
alcoholics can quit drinking without A.A.
- Demand Uneven
Standards of Acceptance
Demand very different standards of acceptance and tolerance for
statements and beliefs from opposite sides of an argument. This is a
variation on the technique of demanding
an uneven burden of proof.
For example,
- Demand that your opponents accept your
statements and illogical beliefs in the name of open-mindedness
and tolerance, while simultaneously attacking and shredding your
opponents' statements and beliefs, and being very intolerant of
other peoples' opinions.
- Call other peoples' criticism of your
policies and attitudes "prejudiced, narrow-minded, and
intolerant", while freely criticizing your opponents' policies and
attitudes.
- Harshly criticize other people's
religions and beliefs, while demanding that people respect your
religion and not criticize it. (Alcoholics Anonymous does this one
often.)
- Complain that your opponents are
inconsiderate and don't care whose feelings they hurt with harsh
criticism, while having no such problems with criticizing others.
(That is also an example of hypocrisy.)
- Specious
Argument
When you can't think of anything better to say, make a specious
argument.
For example, during a debate about Mary
McCarthy, the CIA analyst who revealed the existence of illegal
secret CIA prisons in foreign countries where kidnapped people were
held incommunicado and tortured, Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst,
called such activities war crimes and declared that McCarthy was
obligated to reveal the existence of such activities. Richard Kerr,
a former CIA assistant director and current Bush administration
apologist, argued that if McCarthy had moral objections to such
projects, she should have resigned her position and then criticized
the policy but without revealing any classified information. Kerr
didn't bother to mention that even if she resigned, McCarthy would
still be barred by the National Secrets Act from revealing the
existence of the secret illegal prisons and torture centers, so her
resigning in silent protest would accomplish nothing. (PBS News
Hour, 24 Apr 2006).
- Spurious
Agreement
An utterance, typically with a strong emotional content, designed to
establish a false sense of agreement: "Don't you want to live
forever?" This is an attempt to placate an
opponent in a debate.
Amway recruiters ask, "Don't you want
financial security?"
Bill Wilson taught Alcoholics Anonymous
recruiters to use this technique on prospects who had religious
beliefs that were different from Bill's:
Your
prospect may belong to a religious denomination. His religious
education and training may be far superior to yours. In that case
he is going to wonder how you can add anything to what he already
knows. But he will be curious to learn why his own convictions
have not worked and why yours seem to work so well. He may be an
example of the truth that faith alone is insufficient.
...
Admit that he probably knows more about it [religion] than you do,
but call to his attention the fact that however deep his faith and
knowledge, he could not have applied it or he would not drink.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G.
Wilson, page 93.
Bill Wilson does not think that the
prospect knows more about religion than he does — Bill thinks that
the prospective new recruit is wrong about everything. Bill only
pretends to agree with the prospect long enough to sell him on the
A.A. religion.
Bill Wilson is actually saying that the
other guy's religion is worthless because it didn't keep him from
drinking. Bill stubbornly ignored the obvious implication that, by
that logic, all of the
relapsers in Alcoholics Anonymous prove that Bill
Wilson's religion is also worthless.
- Escape via
Ignorance
When stuck with an unanswerable question, allude to an existing answer
unknown to either party: "Maybe I can't answer
your point, but any of the Elders at our congregation could." (But
then the elders forget to come and answer the questions...)
Similarly, you can dismiss all arguments
put forth so far by arguing, "I wish we had an
expert here, who really knew about these things."
- Escape to the
Future
When stuck with an unanswerable question, allude to an answer that
will allegedly become known at a future date.
Jehovah's Witnesses argue: "Maybe
I can't answer your point, but we Witnesses are told to 'Wait on
Jehovah' when we encounter things we can't understand. He
eventually provides us with the answers."8
Note that no time limit is specified.
A defender of a particular brand of
camera deflected criticism of the camera with the remark, "Just
pick up the camera and shoot with it and then decide." —
Which did not actually answer the questions and criticisms at all.
The speaker imagined that people would like the camera, and not
notice the defects and shortcomings, if they just handled and used
the camera.
- Escape via
Relativism
Dismiss an irrefutable argument as simply a point of view:
"Well,
that's just your opinion."
This can interrupt and sabotage a chain of logic.
Another common phrase is,
"Everybody
has their own opinion"
— as if every opinion is backed up with equally valid or equally
compelling evidence.
And another is, "Anyone can present a
pro/con to an argument."
"Every
point does not have equal weight. Lies should not get
the same weight as truth."
== Daniel Zwerdling, PBS Exposé,
2007.08.28
"All
opinions are not created equal."
== Tavis Smiley, PBS, in interview with Mary Wilson,
2012.12.14
|
A native who didn't understand how
genetic analysis of people revealed the origins and migrations of
the earliest human races said, "You have your creation myths, and we have ours.
Why should your myths be more true than ours?"
The logical fallacy
there is of course trying to assert that studying and decoding the
human genome is merely a "creation myth".
A letter from
an A.A. member criticized my analysis of
treatment programs (A.A. versus non-A.A.) by writing:
If
there are 10 interpretations of an event, you ... accept the one
that suits your beliefs, and ignore all the others.
The writer simply assumed that all opinions had equal merit, and that
all interpretations of failed treatment programs' results were equally
valid. He even ignored the fact that a Trustee of Alcoholics Anonymous
World Services, Inc., Doctor George E.
Vaillant, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, was the
doctor who reported that his A.A-based treatment program had failed to
help the alcoholics, and that, by Vaillant's own admission, for eight
years his A.A.-based treatment program had an "appalling" death rate
in spite of his persistent attempts to make A.A. produce good results.
The critic also ignored the obvious fact that whether people are dead
isn't just a matter of someone's opinion.
Other examples:
- "Leave
AA on the table for those who choose to try it." —
as if A.A. is just as good as any other treatment for alcohol or
drug problems, and should get equal consideration.
- "The
goal is to get sober — you can take 45 to Dallas or you can take
35 to Dallas — you still get to Dallas anyway." —
as if A.A. is just as effective as any other treatment. It isn't.
There are several variations on this escape via relativism technique:
- Declare that both sides of any issue
should get equal representation, as if arguments for or against
slavery or freedom have equal merit, and should get equal time and
space. So should arguments for and against justice or injustice,
peace or war, celibacy or child-molestation, racial discrimination
or equality, or good or evil. Just demand that everything gets
equal consideration. "We have to consider both sides of the issue
now. The other side might have a point."
- Demand that presentations and news
coverage not be "biased". Again, both good and reprehensible
positions should be given equal time and consideration, in the
interest of "fairness". If one side has overwhelming evidence and
good arguments in its favor, just don't mention all of that stuff
— only feature a few arguments from each side, for "balanced"
coverage.
- Declare that the issue is
"controversial". The goal is to leave the impression that we can't
really decide the issue and arrive at a conclusion, and determine
the truth, because there are just too many conflicting opinions.
(As if all of those different opinions were equally valid and
really worth considering.)
That ploy uses antirationalism.
Antirationalism is the idea that there are no such things as
valid, reliable facts or hard indisputable evidence, just
various conflicting opinions. Speakers who are pushing
antirationalism argue that "It's just my opinion versus your opinion, and
it's all so controversial that we can't decide anything for
sure. You never really know anything for sure, do you?"
And the
people who don't wish for anything to be decided are the
people who do not have enough facts, or any facts, to back up
their arguments and support their opinions, and who are losing
the debate. "So
let's agree to disagree, and not decide anything," they
say.
For example, when an A.A. booster was
presented with evidence that A.A.-based treatment does not work,
he replied:
"Yes
you are rite [sic.] you can
find almost anything on the internet, but just because it
there doesn't mean it's true. There are many who claim there
was not Holocaust, that it was all in the Jews imagination. I
got in a rather heated conflict with someone over that. I said
that I guess the numbers tatooed on my father's arm was his
imagination. I am of the belief that I could care less how you
get sober as long as you get there. If you believe that
sitting in a corner 3 hours a day repeating multiflication
tables will get and keep you sober — you try it and it works
then repeat all you want — it's ok — however if it dosn't work
then try something else — till you find what does. Everyone is
different — and everyone should be able to choose for
themselves which type of recovery road they want to take."
http://community.aetv.com/service/displayDiscussionThreads.kickAction?as=119137&w=267410&d=341884&d-1169404-p=10
Yes,
everyone should be able to choose their recovery program — I'm
very opposed to sentencing people to A.A. meetings — but
people should be told the truth about A.A. recovery, and the
truth about the other treatment modalities too. Telling them Rarely
have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our
path is just lying to sick people.
- Claiming that experiences are relative
is another variation on the same escape:
"Oh, that was just
your experience. Other people experienced the opposite."
As in,
"Maybe you got
robbed and raped by that cult, but that was just your
experience. Tom, Dick, and Harry say that they really like the
organization."
(Yeh,
and they especially like it when they
get to be the privileged old-timer guys who are doing the
robbing and raping of newcomers...)
- Another variation on this technique is
dismissing criticism of something by saying, "Your mileage may vary...", as if
someone's bad experiences with something are just a personal
problem, irrelevant to other people.
As in, "Sally
may not have liked it, but Joe liked it..."
- And another variation on this
technique is to dismiss someone's statements or complaints as
"just an opinion", or "just a viewpoint". Recently, a Veterans'
Administration spokesman dismissed the complaints of a crippled,
blinded veteran of the Iraq War who was not getting full benefits
for his disabilities with this condescending statement, "Well, it's perfectly
understandable that he would have that view." (National Public Radio, All Things Considered, 25 June
2007)
- Escape via
Irrationality
Dismiss an irrefutable argument by claiming a magical or non-logical
answer.
Claim that,
- "Of course it defies simple logic
— it's miraculous."
- "It's a paradox."
- "It's spiritual."
- "It's supernatural."
- "It can't be explained in normal
terms."
"I
find every sect, as far as reason will help them, make
use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out,
'It is a matter of faith, and above reason.'"
John
Locke, An
Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1690 |
One
Alcoholics Anonymous propagandist wrote:
Certainly,
however, the spiritual dimension that is so strong in AA is at
odds with the scientific, medical tradition. Says Dr. Ken: "We
[physicians] tend to be analytical. Spirituality is a gut or
heart-felt experience that certainly can't be scientifically
studied and falls outside our training."
Dr. Whitfield agrees that AA's effectiveness can't be
explained in scientific terms, or tested in controlled studies.
Doctors
in A.A.; the profession's skepticism persists, but MDs in
Alcoholics Anonymous say the 12-Step program could benefit all
physicians, C. Thomas Anderson, American Medical News,
Jan 12, 1990 v33 n2 p33(2)
But the simplest, most obvious reason
that A.A.'s effectiveness cannot be explained or measured in valid
scientific or medical tests is because there is no effectiveness to measure —
A.A. doesn't work at all. To explain that A.A. works in some
mystical, magical manner that cannot be measured or explained is
dishonest. If A.A. works, then groups of alcoholics who get
A.A.-based "treatment" should have a lower death rate than other
groups of alcoholics who get no "treatment" at all. They don't.
And A.A. members should have a lower binge-drinking rate. They don't.
Inducing pleasant "gut or heart-felt
experiences" is not at all the same thing as curing alcoholism or
saving the alcoholics' lives — which is supposed to be the goal of
A.A., but which A.A. does not actually do. So the author is also
using the propaganda tricks of changing the subject, diverting
attention away from the point, and pulling a bait-and-switch
stunt there: First the goal is to save the lives of alcoholics by
making them quit drinking, and then suddenly the goal is to induce
"gut or heart-felt experiences" that can't be measured.
- Pack the
House
— with crowds of sycophant followers, shills, and hand-picked
audiences.
Politicians and phoney gurus often come
attended by an entourage of fawning sycophants, because it makes
them look much more important, like a real leader.
In November of 1922, the Lauzanne
Conference was assembled to revise the Turkish Peace Treaty. When
the British and French representatives, British Foreign Secretary
Lord Curzon and French Prime Minister M. Poincaré, went to see the
very new Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini (who had been in
office only a few weeks),
There, in the Hall of the Grand Hotel, Mussolini awaited them.
He held in his hand a thick black stick, which at that time never
left him, and was surrounded by a phalanx of young Fascist
secretaries of pugnacious appearance, dressed in black shirts and
black fezes with long tassels.
It was a situation for which nothing in the past experience
of the French and British statesmen had prepared them. An exchange
of glacial salutations took place. Then followed a constrained
silence. The Duce broke this by suggesting that his visitors might
like to dine after their journey.
I
Know These Dictators, George Ward Price, page 217.
Politicians also like to pack audiences.
Richard Nixon was infamous for bussing in loads of Young Republicans
to pack the stands at the Republican National Convention so that the
TV cameras would see crowds of enthusiastic young people cheering
for Nixon. George W. Bush always packs audiences with hand-picked,
loyalty-checked sympathizers — he refuses to allow dissenters
anywhere near his rallies and conventions. He isolates them in small
fenced so-called "Free Speech Zones" a mile or so away. (G. W. Bush
has somehow forgotten that all of the United States of America is
supposed to be a free speech zone.)
The
cult leader Frank Buchman used a variation on this trick: Move the
debate to a favorable forum. When someone was arguing with him,
Buchman declared:
"If
you have any objections, the proper place to raise them is on the
convention floor. I will debate you there."21
But the Moral Re-Armament convention was packed with Buchman's loyal
followers, of course. No matter what Buchman said, the audience
would cheer and yell its approval. With the audience acting as the
judge and jury of the debate, Buchman couldn't lose.
Politicians also like to use planted
shills to ask favorable questions in fake town hall meetings or
press conferences. George W. Bush is notorious for doing that.
Recently, Bush's favorite White House shill — "James Gucker" or
"James Gannon" — was a total fraud — a male homosexual "escort", not
a news reporter — who attended White House press conferences while
using an alias (really
great White House security there, yes?), and then asked G. W.
Bush easy cream-puff questions like "How do you manage to deal with the Democrats who
are out of touch with reality?"
Over in the Alcoholics Anonymous world,
Bill Wilson collected sycophant followers like a dog collecting
fleas. As Henrietta
Seiberling complained: "he has his henchmen & ingratiates himself with
those in the dark..."
- Embarrass
Your Opponent
Especially, ask embarrassing questions that your opponent cannot
answer.
Back
in the 1930s, the Oxford Group cult was notorious for self-promotion
and recruiting by using vicious tactics like Beverly Nichols bragged
about in this story. (The embarrassing questions that Oxford
Groupers liked to ask usually pertained to people's private sexual
habits, like masturbation.) Here, Nichols was trying to sell the Oxford
Group practice of public confessions to a vicar:
...
We will assume that we are addressing somebody who is, at least in
theory, a Christian, in order to emphasize the importance of the
Group's attitude to confession and the consciousness of sin.
They have a practice they call 'sharing,' which means that
they confess to one another and not only to God. A lot of cheap
laughs have been gained at the expense of the Group through a
misunderstanding of this practice.
'I regard it as pernicious,' said a very bright young vicar
to me, after I had come down from Oxford. 'It might lead to very
great abuses.'
'Have you ever tried it?'
'Certainly not.'
'Why not? Because it's so unpleasant?'
He began to grow red in the face. 'Are you suggesting that I
shirk confessing my sins in prayer?'
'No. But will you give me a quite honest answer to a
question?'
'Yes,' he said rashly.
'Very well. And when you've answered it, I'd be glad if
you'd tell me, equally honestly, whether it was easier to tell the
truth to me, to a man, face to face, or whether it would have been
easier to shut your eyes and mumble a few polite phrases to God.'
'You are extremely offensive,' said the vicar.
'Not nearly so offensive as I'm going to be.'
I then asked the question.
I did not get an answer. But by the horror in that man's
eyes, I knew the answer he would have given if he had dared.
The
Fool Hath Said, Beverly Nichols, page 163-164.
Beverly Nichols did not actually prove
that there was any virtue in the Oxford Group's practices; nor did
he even supply a good argument; he merely shut down the debate by
embarrassing the other fellow.
(The Oxford Group taught Beverly Nichols
how to be a really insufferable arrogant little prig who smugly
asserted that he had unquestionable truths and who didn't care how
much he hurt other people's feelings in his pursuit of victory in
arguments. But later, Nichols completely reversed his opinion of the
Oxford Group. He discovered that his conversion to the Oxford Group
had all been based on a fraud — that the Oxford
Group had deceived him into joining, and that the whole cult
was just a big con.)
- Obtuseness —
Refuse to See the Point
Just stubbornly refuse to see your opponent's points, no matter how
good his arguments may be. When an opponent makes a point, just ignore
it and pretend that it doesn't exist. Pretend that you didn't hear it;
do not in any way recognize that it even exists.
The psychological escape devices of Minimization and Denial figure
in here too. When confronted with undesired facts, just declare that
it's all a pack of lies, and those are just unimportant details, and
that stuff doesn't matter anyway.
Willful
ignorance is another flavor of such obtuseness.
This technique naturally leads into create
a diversion: Just change the subject and talk about
something else.
- Laugh It Off
When somebody says something that you don't like, just laugh it off.
Refuse to take it seriously. Imply that whatever your opponent just
said is silly, absurd, ridiculous, brain-damaged, or just awfully
darned funny.
This technique is obviously closely
related to Obtuseness,
and also to Humor,
Ridicule and Satire, but it isn't quite the same as
either of them.
Back in the 1930s, the Bishop of
Durham told a story about a foolish member of the
Oxford Group who pledged his love to one girl on Friday, but who
suddenly believed that he had received "Guidance" from God to
propose marriage to a different girl on the following Monday. The
father of the first girl complained to the Bishop:
"The young man had written a
love-letter to his daughter on the Friday, but on the Monday he
had been 'guided' to propose to another girl.
'The father said he wanted a horse-whipping, for his sense
of decency should have come in to check such ungentlemanly
conduct. ... When I told my story at the Group meeting, it
raised a laugh; but it is a serious objection, none the less, for
the story is true."
One
Thing I Know, A. J. Russell (1933), pages 291-292.
The other Oxford Group members did not
wish to seriously consider the flaws in their occult practice
of Guidance (imagining that they were receiving
infallible messages from God), so they just laughed at the sad story
of a girl who was hurt by an Oxford Group member who thoughtlessly
and inconsiderately followed the sudden impulses that he believed he
had received through psychic means. They just wouldn't, or couldn't,
sincerely consider the merits of the criticism, so they just
laughed.
A.A. members use this technique too:
- " BUT
ON THE LIGHTER SIDE, THIS WAS SUCH OUTRAGIOUS IT MADE ME LAUGH.
- "It got
absurd. I was laughed at, literally laughed at, by this
counselor who sounds nothing short of a hyenna when I called
what they're doing to people sad and ridiculous.
- "When i tell
people in meetings that Bill Wilson died of
nicotine addiction which does not sound too spiritual (most are
shocked) and the womanizing thing, they just laugh about it."
- "I went to a
meeting one day a bit late late. I was the only
newcomer there. It had been decided not to hold a regular meeting
because there were no newcomers. I sat at the table with a bunch
of toking smokers who had been around the program for a while. I
stated I did not understand how they could smoke if they were
leading spiritual lives. I can't remember what was said in
response, but I can tell you they belittled me and laughed at me.
These people say they are in the business of saving lives. But I
guess not their own."
- "But I thank
you for making me laugh and see how fucked up
one single man can be."
- "Thanks So
much! ... For the morning laughter with my coffee this
morning!
- "I found your
web site to be the funniest thing I have seen
in a while.
- "the minute
you say that you have recovered from alcoholism
you get laughed at, sneered at, and told you're heading for
relapse haha.
- "Your bait and
switch con game page gave me the best laughs I've
had all week."
- "As soon as I
divulged that "The God of my understanding" is God Almighty (God
The Father, God The Son, God The Holy Spirit) — I noticed a HUGE
change. I experienced being ostrasized, I was keenly made aware
that I was the "joke in the room".... people laughed when I
"shared" anything. I saw people in the room nodding their head,
rolling their eyes at the ceiling, snickering, putting their
finger up to their nose and looking in my direction.
- "You gotta be
kidding me? Snitches to report who is attending or not
attending??? Hahaha!!
- "Finally, your
criticism of the founders of AA is laughable. They're
human beings for god's sake.
- "I doubt
seriously if you have many believers in what you write. It is so
off the wall as to be laughable.
- "All you've
done is give me a good laugh and a quick way to waste 15 minutes
by replying to your response.
- "I get a laugh
out of your paper every time I find my self searching for
answers on the Internet. Your attempt to bam the 12 step program
and the fellowship in the same content is laughable
- "I have just
read through "The Orange Papers" and am intermittently laughing
my ass off or shaking my head saying, "God, that poor f-ed up
soul who wrote this needs help!".
- "Subject: Too
funny
Your site cracks me up.
The amount of misinformation and your obvious lack of
understanding of A.A. and alcoholism is laughable.
- "No one makes
you believe anything either. It is no cult.either. To say it
is is ludicrous and laughable.
- "YOU have
labelled our fellowship.... "Nazi Cult Religion". Everyone
laughed and then we proceeded to discuss more important issues
- "thank you for
the great laugh by calling aa a cult.
- "Bill
acknowledged he wasn't a saint. Why are you pointing that out
after he did? (I am laughing as I write this)
- "Really a
cult? How funny- thanks for the laugh though.
- "As usual, you
have succeeded in making us all laugh.
- "Thanks for
the good laughs, now why don't you get a copy of the big book
and study it and find out what AA is really about.
- Dominate the
Conversation, Talk Non-Stop, and Interrupt Constantly
Just never quit talking, never let up, never give your opponent a
chance to get a word in edgewise. Even shout and scream to drown out
the voice of your opponent.
A variation on this technique is Constant Interruptions —
just interrupt your opponent every time he starts to make a point.
For example, shout "Hold it a second! Hold it a second!" whenever
your opponent starts to make a point, and then shout a stream of
other things — anything — to keep him from finishing his sentence.
This technique is closely related to Obtuseness. It is a technique for
simply not hearing your opponent, and it is an attempt to keep
anybody else from hearing him either.
This technique is not allowed in formal
debates, but you hear it in talk radio and TV panel shows a lot.
This debating technique can be combined
with other debating techniques to Talk
Non-Stop AND Interrupt
Your Opponentwhenever he starts to make a point, AND Divert Attention by
changing the subject AND Launch
Another Personal Attack On Your Opponent to
change the subject and keep him from making his point.
This technique also works well with the
next technique, Bullying
and Intimidation.
- Escape via
Bullying and Intimidation
Whenever you are losing an argument,
- Bluster, yell, scream, act
threatening, make menacing gestures.
- Glare, growl, and make other hostile
facial expressions.
- Use hints of violence to intimidate
and silence your opponent.
- Make your opponents think that you are
dangerously mentally unhinged and will explode in a homocidal rage
if they say something that upsets you.
- Act like Bill O'Reilly and scream, "Shut up! Just shut up!" whenever
someone says something that you don't want to hear.
The
Argument from Intimidation is a confession of
intellectual impotence.
== Ayn
Rand (1905—1982) |
This technique works best when your
debating opponent is half your size. Be very careful when trying
this technique on people who are much larger than you are — they
might not put up with it.
- Shut Down the
Debate
When you can't win the debate, just stop it:
- "Don't be disrespectful."
- "I'm not going to argue with you."
- "Don't be sacreligious."
- "Quit wasting my time with your
nonsense."
- "That isn't worth discussing."
- "I don't have the time for this
bullshit."
Obviously, this trick works best in an
uneven situation where one side has the power to shut down the
debate, as in a parent arguing with a child, or a boss with an
employee, or a powerful politician with a common citizen.
If Jupiter really has moons, and Galileo is
right and the Bible is wrong, then that destroys the Church's claims
that the Bible is the infallible, indisputable Word of God, and that the
Church has a monopoly on God and Truth.
The ideas, "Think for yourself", "see for
yourself", and "trust your own senses, rather than what the 'elders'
tell you" were revolutionary ideas — revolutionary in both the religious
and political spheres. They led to the overthrow of absolute authorities
like The Church and The King, and eventually led to the establishment of
the European democracies. Perhaps the most subversive idea that Martin
Luther came up with was the idea that you could communicate with God
directly, rather than having to use a priest as an intermediary. That
was the kind of stuff about which the Church was really"biased
and unreasonable," because that would ultimately break the power of the
Church — the Church would lose its monopoly on God.
So don't nag your hubby about his drinking,
or else he might become moody and resentful and go spend the night with
his mistress (like Bill did).
Really, it would be a lot easier to believe
in the Tahiti Lagoon Monster, or a Guamanian Godzilla that hides at the
bottom of the Marianas Trench, but nobody is talking about one of them.
The
part that I still haven't been able to figure out
is: "
THE SHAME OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Elon Musk 'had affair with Google founder Sergey Brin's WIFE in December which led to their divorce and end of tech billionaires' friendship' - after Sergey's and Larry Page's secret millions helped Tesla fake Dept of Energy viability to get taxpayer cash exclusive handout
By Jennifer Smith, Chief Reporter
Elon Musk had an affair with Google founder Sergey Brin's wife in December last year, which was the catalyst for their divorce, it has been claimed.
Friends of the pair told The Wall Street Journal on Sunday that Musk's romance with Nicole Shanahan was what prompted the Google billionaire to file for divorce in January.
It's unclear how long the romance lasted but it occurred in the same month that Musk welcomed a baby girl via a surrogate with his ex-girlfriend Grimes, and was a month after he secretly welcomed twins with a former executive from one of his companies.
He started dating current girlfriend Natasha Bassett in February.
Brin, the seventh richest man in the world worth an estimated $93billion, filed for divorce in January, signaling the beginning of one of the most expensive splits in Silicon Valley history.
Sergey Brin filed for divorce in January , a month after his wife Nicole had an affair with Elon Musk. In January, Brin filed for divorce citing 'irreconcilable differences' from his wife. He asked for the docket to be sealed
The reason for the divorce, at the time, was not clear.
He cited 'irreconcilable differences' in divorce papers but asked for the docket to be sealed to protect his young daughter.
The affair brought an abrupt end to Elon and Sergey's years-long friendship; in 2008, Sergey gave $500,000 in funding to Tesla at the height of the financial crisis.
Elon has also spoken fondly of crashing at Sergey's homes. Brin and Shanahan, 37, share a daughter, who was born in 2018.
The Google founder has asked to share custody of her as part of the divorce arrangements, which they are fighting to keep private out of fear that their daughter will be put at risk of 'harassment' or 'kidnapping'.
Musk has not commented on the allegations.
Google and Tesla Motors are partners in actual crimes
- Tesla's Crony Government Subsidies Are The Biggest Taxpayer Rape In History
- The Silicon Valley Mafia Soy Boys believe that driving a Tesla will offset their sexual inadequacies and that allowing Tesla to fail will hurt their political message points- Anti-Tesla activists have tricked the Silicon Valley Mafia into dumping (and wasting) billions of dollars of their VC funds into Tesla stock to pump the NASDAQ valuation listings
- Scientific web data records now prove that Google hid all negative news about Musk and Tesla
Verifiable Facts Now Disclose an Epic Crime In Washington, DC!
Here are the facts, proven in news, law enforcement and public investigations:
** Thousands of articles discuss the possibility that Silicon Valley billionaires may be sociopaths, or otherwise deeply disturbed men who believe they are above the law. These kinds of people have been proven, in many past cases, to resort to extreme and criminal behavior without a second thought.
** Google and Tesla are run by Silicon Valley billionaires.
** Proven by web archives and metrics, the only company in the world that has had all of it's negative articles hidden by Google is Tesla.
** Proven by web archives and metrics, the only company in the world to own a majority, and covert, interest in Tesla is Google, via it's staff and owners.
** Internet records prove that the only company in the world to have it's press releases moved to P8 authority status by Google, even though concurrent negative coverage had a higher volume in every other search engine, and even though they were just Musk's press releases, is Tesla.
** Both Google and Tesla investors spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying for the invasion of Afghanistan and promoted white papers lauding “Trillions of dollars of lithium in Afghanistan” and “Afghanistan is the Saudi Arabia of Lithium”.
** More than any other companies on Earth, Google and Tesla are staged to make the most profits from mining deals in Afghanistan, particularly the mining of lithium, indium and related metals.
** Frank Guistra, Jacques Littlefield and a number of Russian oligarchs are all involved in big Middle East mining and funding Obama's Campaign and Hillary's campaign and got perks from the same in Government deals and were closely associated with Tesla and Google.
** Goldman Sachs is partners with Tesla and Google and made billions by skimming the very deals that crashed in the Steven Chu DOE give-away plus the Tesla and Google stock manipulations.
** Goldman Sachs has been charged with profiteering in the invasion of Afghanistan.
** Goldman Sachs has been charged with criminal-class commodities market manipulation of the very metals, being mined in Afghanistan, that Google and Tesla, Sachs partners, also profit from.
** Google's money guys and Tesla's money guys are either the SAME guys and/or all have financial relationships
** Google, Tesla and Goldman Sachs, using back-door, illicit cash transfer routes were the largest financiers of the Obama campaign.
** None of Elon Musk's companies would be in business without White House intervention and tens of billions of dollars of government handouts.
** In the HSBC “Swiss Leaks” Google, Tesla and White House staff were discovered to have had “slush funds”.
** The head of the Department of Energy, and his staff, were promoted for nomination by the investors of Google and Tesla, who he had a personal and financial beneficiary relationship with.
** Eric Schmidt, the head of Google, has spent more time in the White House dictating national policy and federal hiring decisions (for his own benefit) than all of Congress combined. Schmidt even ordered his staff, and business partners, to be placed in charge of the FCC and U.S. Patent Office.
** Attorney General Eric Holder was promoted for nomination by the investors of Google and Tesla, who he had a personal and financial beneficiary relationship with.
** The financiers of Tesla and Google use “Flash-Boy” algorithm stock market software manipulation services.
** After Steven Chu was thrown out of the Department of Energy for running a kick-back scheme to the very same people, a duplicate scheme was moved to the Department of Transportation to relay cash for “Driver-less Cars” with the core beneficiaries, again, being Google, Tesla and their owners.
** The Afghan failures have cost the U.S. Taxpayers over six trillion dollars and the publication: Pro-Publica, has disclosed a hot bed of corruption deals associated with Afghan kick-backs, that continue to escalate.
** Tesla and Google “driver-less car projects” have been exposed as simply another scam to try to exploit the already failing lithium mining market and deals, because those particular cars use vast amounts of lithium, the mining deals for which are owned by Google and Tesla owners.
** From 2007 to today, Google Internet records prove that Google manipulated election information and public perceptions in order to seek to swing the election to the Obama campaign.
** Thousands of other provable financial, covert stock ownership, family trust fund and shell company disclosures prove that the suspects had a covert, organized, illicit political and business program underway, that they concertedly crafted.
Therefor...
Tesla and Google owners must have funded the Obama election campaign in exchange for the promise of vast monopolies in Afghan mining deals to be exploited in their electric car and Solyndra-type holdings. It is true and verifiable that these three companies funded the campaign and only they got those benefits and all of their competitors were targeted and damaged by the Obama Administration, which has ordered federal investigators not to investigate the matter. This seems to confirm that a trillion dollar kick-back scam was operated by senior White House staff and is the subject of a White House-ordered cover-up.
Elon Musk and Google are some of the biggest contributors of political cash and services to Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Dianne Feinstein.
Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Dianne Feinstein have personally signed off on, and lobbied to give billionaires Elon Musk and Google hundreds of billions of dollars of nearly tax free taxpayer cash for no apparent reason aside from their political connections.
Elon Musk and Google have provided Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Dianne Feinstein with billions of dollars of un-reported political campaign financing in the form of search engine rigging, stock valuation pumps for stocks held by the associates Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Dianne Feinstein and for other in-kind services which have a quantifiable cash value that has never been reported to regulatory authorities.
Elon Musk and Google use off-shore tax evasion tactics and methods advised and managed by the same financial advisors.
Business partners, family members and political associates of Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Dianne Feinstein hold stock in Elon Musk's and Google's companies.
Elon Musk is quoted as saying that he was arranging to have Google buy Elon Musk's Tesla Motors.
Google is quoted as saying that they plan to exclusively use Elon Musk's Space X rockets to launch a shroud of public surveillance satellites around the Earth.
Both Elon Musk and Google are counting on taxpayer funds created by Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Dianne Feinstein through the U.S. Department of Transportation for their “driver-less car projects” which they both happened to have come up with at the same time that the DOT funds were slotted out for them.
Elon Musk's and Google have both exchanged cash and employees with a company called IN-Q-TEL. IN-Q-TEL sells tricky spy services to the CIA, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Columbian drug lords (In-Q-Tel's airplanes were caught with 5 tons of cocaine on-board and Elon Musk's software programmer created and operated SILK ROAD, the world's largest illegal drug network), the DNC, Hillary Clinton's Department of State and other interesting groups. Elon Musk's staff and Google's owners have both publicly applauded IN-Q-TEL's tactics in funding Google and Elon Musk's companies. IN-Q-TEL and it's sister company: New America Foundation both have Elon Musk's and Google's staff on their management teams.
In the entire history of Google, only Elon Musk and Barack Obama have had the documented search engine hype-rigging, manual up-ranking and mood manipulation results as the most synthetically highly manipulated results in all global Google search and positioning presentations. In normal language, this means that Google faked the results for both of these names, in order to operate a contrived PR campaign, while, at the same time, attacking and defaming their competitors.
Elon Musk's and Google's people co-own the stocks of each others companies.
Both Elon Musk and Google have a number of mysterious deaths associated with themselves including the deaths of Rajeev Motwani, Forrest Hayes, Gary D. Conley, David Bird, Karl Slym, Andrew Ingram, Brian M. Finn, Kenneth Bellando, Sarvshreshth Gupta, Kate Matrosova and many more. In each case, the dead person is thought to have had incriminating information on Elon Musk and/or Google.
More people from Google and Elon Musk's holdings got jobs in the White House and at top federal agencies than any other entities in the world.
Elon Musk and Google both have a financial and political need to control profiteering of the war-torn Afghanistan lithium and indium mining conglomerates. Both have deep connections with Russian mobsters who own the mining equipment in those regions. Both contributed technology and funding to implement “Arab Spring” and other political uprisings which would give them more control of those raw materials and both were the biggest recipients of the U.S. Department of Energy Cleantech Cash which was handed out by their friends: Steven Chu, Matt Rogers. Steven Spinner, Allison Spinner who Elon Musk and Google personally lobbied to have appointed to run the U.S. Department of Energy. John Doerr and Kleiner Perkins were the lead investors in all of the suspects. This makes it appear that a trillion dollar payola scam was organized by Elon Musk and Google.
If a major payola scam, using taxpayer dollars, was organized by Elon Musk and Google the very law enforcement agencies who should have arrested them happen to have been controlled by the decisions of Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Dianne Feinstein. Eric Holder, the attorney general, who ran the Department of Justice, in the Obama Administration, had stock relationships with Elon Musk's and Google's companies. Both Eric Holder and Steven Chu, who handed out the Department of Energy cash to them, were handled by the law firm of Covington and Burling who also work with the key business partners of Elon Musk and Google.
When federal investigators wrote Elon Musk's Tesla Motors a demand for a detailed safety investigation of Tesla Motors, Google's lobbyists assisted in getting the investigation terminated and Tesla still has not engaged in a complete independent public safety inspection.
Within minutes of negative news story's appearing about Elon Musk or Google companies, Google always manually hides the negative news story and replaces it with a “fluff story”
about Elon Musk or Google. At the same time, key investors from both groups engage in either/or stock buy-backs and stock-pumps to artificially increase the appearance of stock valuation surges so as to seduce day traders and institutional investors that they should invest. This is fraud and constitutes the use of taxpayer funded companies to defraud taxpayers. The methods of the company called “PollyHop” in the current series of House of Cards, describes the methods used by Musk and Google.
There are quite a number of other common connections between these groups. While all of these similarities may simply be the most extraordinary set of coincidences in history, to the skilled law enforcement investigators who are pursuing this case, the matter calls for more action and less delay.
What Are the Implications Of Google Controlling The U.S. Government?
Opinion by Hiram Walker
- On the illicit insider take-over of the U.S. Administration by sex-crazed, stop-at-nothing Silicon Valley billionaires
Recent research by The Intercept, ( The Android Administration : https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably-close-relationship-with-the-obama-white-house-in-two-charts/ ) China, The EU and most any voter that reads the news, shows that Google’s owners have impregnated the U.S. Government with their people at every level and in every choke-point of the federal decision-making process.
Google has most profoundly taken control of the White House with the largest majority of West Wing staff being Google-connected; most of the White House decisions benefiting Google and harming Google’s adversaries; and a shocking number of private White House meetings and revolving door job give-aways. If this was not a classic government take-over Coup that Eric Schmidt and Larry Page had strategically planned out, then it is the biggest coincidence in human history.
This is like a South American-class over-throw of a government except it used internet servers instead of bazooka’s.
Many people hear these charges and cry: “oh, it is just the Republicans picking on the Democrats again”.. and pass it off as another standard example of party politics. Nothing could be further from the truth. Google is not a Democratic thing. Google is a crazy, warped, billionaire thing. Google does what it does for a very specific goal of power and cash that has very little to do with liberals.
Imagine if you discovered that Satanists had covertly taken over the Catholic Church! This is pretty much the same thing.
Google’s bosses have been involved in a huge number of sex scandals, tax evasion schemes, corporate cheating investigations, privacy abuse and have made some of the most outlandish comments you ever heard from a crazy billionaire. How are these nut-jobs qualified to run the federal government? Google has steered a trillion dollars of taxpayer cash from the U.S. Treasury to it’s bank accounts and not to any taxpayers. Is that the way it is supposed to work?
NO!
To save America, the FBI, or the FTC, should hunt down all of the hundreds of Google insiders and pluck them out of State and Federal administrations.
Google under scrutiny over lobbying influence on …
cached
It also said Google funds about 140 trade associations and other ... Google's reach extends beyond Capitol Hill to the White House itself.
bing google
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201[...]18/google-political-donations-congress
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Google Makes Most of Close Ties to White House Search giant averages a White House meeting a week during Obama administration
bing
http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-mak[...]f-close-ties-to-white-house-1427242076
Google hires a White House aide to handle its policy battles
cached
The trend of White House veterans leaving for tech giants (such as Press ... both a journalist and an official at the International Monetary Fund.
google
http://www.engadget.com/2016/01/13/goo[...]gle-hires-white-house-aide-for-policy/
The revolving door between Google and the White House continues ...
cached
Notable swaps between Google and the White House in the past ... for the US Treasury and International Monetary Fund, and was formerly as ...
google
http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/14/1076[...]hite-house-personnel-caroline-atkinson
Google hires White House economist Atkinson as policy chief
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Google hires White House economist Atkinson as policy chief ... a former International Monetary Fund official who has dual United Kingdom ...
google
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/new[...]n-global-public-policy-chief/78699144/
Google Taps Former White House Economist as Head of ... - Re/code
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Google hired former White House economic affairs adviser Caroline ... a senior executive with the International Monetary Fund and, prior to that ...
google
http://recode.net/2016/01/12/google-ta[...]se-economist-as-head-of-global-policy/
Google Taps White House Aide to Head Public Policy - Digits - WSJ
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Google Taps White House Aide to Head Public Policy ... speaking to reporters as the International Monetary Fund's External Relations Director.
google
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2016/01/12[...]hite-house-aide-to-head-public-policy/
Government subsidies helped Elon Musk attain $13.3 …
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Elon Musk has not denied that his companies received substantial government subsidies, which have been estimated at nearly $5 billion in public assistance.
bing google
http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2015/06/07/g[...]t-subsidies-helped-elon-musk/id=58427/
Elon Musk trashes story that argues Tesla relies on government ...
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If there's a single, major criticism of Elon Musk, it's that he's running ... Elon Musk trashes story that argues Tesla relies on government handouts.
google
http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-mu[...]t-depending-on-government-money-2015-6
Elon Musk is an obvious fraud | DSSK
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all of you have more information than i, but even i know that Elon Musk is not BY FAR not the only company owner that the US government shovels billions in contracts ...
bing
http://www.dssk.press/elon-musk-is-an-obvious-fraud/
Why does Tesla need billions in government handouts? - The Globe ...
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Elon Musk is billed as the new Steve Jobs. His all-electric Tesla cars are iPhones on wheels. The technology is not exactly new—Musk did not ...
google
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-[...]n-government-handouts/article21777601/
Elon Musk fiercely defends $4.9 billion in government ... - Mashable
cached
Be careful how you talk about government handouts provided to Elon Musk's companies or you might just make him angry. And you wouldn't ...
google
http://mashable.com/2015/06/02/elon-musk-government-incentives/
Readers react to Elon Musk's $4.9 billion in government subsidies ...
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Elon Musk's growing empire is fueled by $4.9 billion in government ... It takes a really narrow view of the future to look at this as a handout and ...
google
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/[...]subsidies-comments-20150601-story.html
Inside Elon Musk's $1.4 billion score - Fortune
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Along the way Musk encountered a few surprises, not least that a key figure in this saga is the owner of the legal brothel known as the Mustang Ranch (this is Nevada ...
bing
http://fortune.com/inside-elon-musks-billion-dollar-gigafactory/
Elon Musk Scores Again - WSJ
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-scores-again-1411944767 ..... So Elon gets yet another government handout for a company that doesn't ...
google
http://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-scores-again-1411944767
Tesla's Profitability Hasn't Stopped the Government Handouts - US ...
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Tesla's Government Handouts Are the Gift That Keeps On Giving ... its stocks soaring, making its billionaire CEO Elon Musk even richer than he ...
google
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/ec[...]-hasnt-stopped-the-government-handouts
Elon Musk: “Successful” Only Because of Government Business and ...
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Elon Musk became a billionaire because he was one of the founders of ... is whether any government should make such corporate handouts.
google
http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capol[...]-of-government-business-and-subsidies/
Is Elon Musk Just A Billionaire Welfare King? | OilPrice.com
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Elon Musk has come under fire recently for the large amount of subsidies his ... Tesla isn't Elon Musk's only source of government largesse. .... creators".the percent of "job creators"gettin handouts is roughly100%.big gov is ...
google
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-Gene[...]k-Just-A-Billionaire-Welfare-King.ht
The stealthy, Eric Schmidt-backed startup that's working to put ...
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An under-the-radar startup funded by billionaire Eric Schmidt has become a ... executive chairman of Google parent-company Alphabet—to ensure that Clinton ... startup that's working to put Hillary Clinton in the White House ...
google
http://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-s[...]-working-for-hillary-clinton-campaign/
Google's latest VR video is a trip through the White House during ...
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Google's latest VR video is a trip through the White House during ... Startup Wants To Turn Your $5K Into $2.5 BillionBusiness Insider | Fundrise.
google
http://thenextweb.com/google/2015/12/1[...]ough-the-white-house-during-christmas/
Google hires former White House adviser for its policy team ...
cached
Before her role at the White House, Atkinson worked as a journalist. She has also served as an official with the International Monetary Fund.
google
http://www.slashgear.com/google-hires-[...]-adviser-for-its-policy-team-13423096/
No moral or ethical authority to lead, if that matters anymore.