Seeing Through the Argumentational Haze

Tickling or agitating base-level emotions remains, as it always will, the prime mode of seducing the populace into whatever political swindle is on that week's agenda.  Making someone sad or angry is a primal way to rope him or her into allowing the political class the power to tax or control anything.

Thus, women are to be enraged at their underprivileged status in the workplace, nonexistent as that phenomenon is.  The large business is to be hated as the sky-scraping raiser of prices and greedy hoarder of much needed resources, impossible though that may be.  Women's rights, children's rights, immigrant rights, gay rights, animal rights, etc. must be universally empathized-with and lamented for their lack thereof.

Anything less than cowering before the saints of those causes is itself cause for severe and public reprimanding.  Know your place, citizen.  How else will the political class gain control over these groups and funds with which to line their and their friends' pockets in honor of service toward these "huddled masses?"

But we can't leave out fear, of course, as the ultimate modus operandi of political motivation, particularly for driving a nation's collective mind to accept or, preferably, even desire war.  Be afraid, citizen.  ISIS gona' get you.  Al Qaeda gona' get you.  Saddam, Assad, gone' to too.  Vladimir Putin!  Ebola!

Let us not forget the now-discarded boogeymen either, whose use to the American political class has since ran its course.  The Khorasan Group, Al Nusra, Boko-Haram, the Taliban, Iranian nuclear power, the Chinese economy, the hole in the ozone layer, El Nino - remember that one?, the Red Scare, 1970s oil scare, 1970s global freezing, and of course, today's global warming, which seems to be cooling off.  But don't worry, that one's proven too useful to be going away soon.

Yes, even now as I type the above terms into this blog, some are no longer recognized by the auto-correct dictionary, though they once heavily reverberated in the unhallowed halls of American mainstream media.  Does this serve as evidence of these former "existential threats'" superficiality?  I would say so.

Appealing to the intellect rather than the emotions of others is far less expedient route for governmenteers, seeking to profit from the tax trough.  And indeed, it is the blessing and curse of liberty-minded individuals.  Because that is what it takes - intellectual effort and courage - to "wake up," as they say in corridors and hangouts of the internet where liberty lives.  And though it lives on ventilation and a heart monitor, it burns more zealous every time someone says "no" to the Washington machine of death and suffering.

It is that such seceding of the mind that Americans need.  Peaceful, intellectual secession.  The kind governments hate most.  And one essential tool to be used in that process is education about argument.  When we analyze the quality of arguments the political-class gives for its actions (war, new taxation, monetary policy), it assists in exposing hollow reasoning and therefore corruption.

The chart below was designed by computer programmer Paul Graham, and is called Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement.  The higher one's argument content registers on the triangle, the stronger it is intellectually.  The lower, the opposite.  Politicians generally hang out in the bottom four rungs.  You'd think we'd learn this in their public schools, but of course we do not.