Episode for Monday, March 19th 2012
at 8:05pm EDT / 5:05pm PDT
TalkShoe.Com Internet Radio - Show id: 113956:
Episode for March 19th 2012: Probation and Parole: Should All Convicted Sex Offenders (CSOs) Be On Permanent Weekly Supervision?
The focus of training and practice this week, similar to last week, is not just communicating your basic memorized talking points but dealing with this week's three common rhetorical fallacies as part of our interview skills practice. Last week, the Blathers character used a list of 14 'dirty rotten tricks' often used by some in the media.
First: This week's substantive questions to ponder:
1. How can we trust that CSOs will act properly without being on supervision by a parole officer?
2. Will life-long parole reduce the level of future sex crimes committed by CSOs?
3. Should CSOs be rounded up and held during certain children related holidays?
4. Should CSOs be required by law to wear bright orange jumpsuits when ever out in public away from their homes?
5. Should parole officers be issued stun-guns and firearms to protect themselves when dealing with convicted sex offenders because CSOs are violent and dangerous.
6. Should CSOs be required to call-in to their life-long parole officer whenever they leave home for any reason?
7. Because all CSOs are the same, should GPS technology be employed to help reduce the sexual violence of Convicted Sex Offenders and then have these criminals pay for the GPS?
8. Should CSOs be required to live in special "sex offender housing" where the building's bright orange color helps parole officers keep sex crimes down as low as possible?
The above questions will be interspersed with issues pertaining to the many sex offender laws that infect public safety policies in the United States. It is expected that you will be responsible for the interweaving of your own activist points of view into the wider range of broad-based issues that may be discussed at many levels considering today's potentially complex politics.
Also, be sure to understand who Blathers' will deploy various fallacies during the program:
What is a Fallacy? Here are some notes that I gleaned off the website http://www.fallacyfiles.org/ and from various blog discussion groups.:
First, we must know the definition of an argument and then from there look into the question of argumentative fallacies. What is an argument? An argument is a series of statements that consist of the presentation of certain facts and some reasoning based on those facts to arrive at a conclusion (can be true or false.)
What is a fallacy (in the rhetorical sense)?
· A fallacy is the presentation of at least one false fact in an argument (statement) where the conclusion is based on that fact.
· A fallacy is the presentation of at least one flawed logical step in an argument (statement) regardless of whether the named facts are all true or not.
Fallacies can have the appearance of being initially persuasive but have a false premise, or false reasoning or a false conclusion based upon the first two parts of an argument.
Here are 3 rhetorical fallacies that Blathers will use against you this next Monday night. Be on your guard.
1. Ad Hominem (abusive) - Relies on the following types premises (often implicit):
a. Any claim that person P makes about subject X is (probably) false because some feature of person P.
b. Any reasoning given by person P gives about subject X is (probably) bad because of some feature of person P.
c. The ad hominem is a fallacy whenever these implicit premises are false or dubious.
2. Guilt by association
a. Person P says something about subject X.
b. Person P is associated with people who say Z, which contradicts subject X.
c. Therefore, person P probably believes in Z instead of X and thus guilty.
d. Keep in mind that vague language can be used to snare you by the "associated with" statement.
3. Appeal to hypocrisy
a. Person P gives argument A for conclusion C.
b. Person P does not believe the conclusion C, or acts in ways that are inconsistent with conclusion C.
c. Therefore , argument A is a bad argument and should be rejected.
d. This tactic s also opens the door for ad hominem attacks against Person P.
e. Example: My support of convicted sex offenders getting a fresh start when released from prison has nothing to do with my never hiring them or renting space to them (I have personal reasons for my personal practices that are outside of the general proposition.)
f. NOTE: For practical purposes, charges of hypocrisy can be deadly, and prevent people from listening to your message or taking you seriously. But it’s still a fallacy to conclude that your arguments are bad or your conclusions are false simply because you’re a hypocrite.
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Also be especially aware of Blathers' usual and routine dirty rotten tricks:
1. Panic Mongering. This goes one step beyond simple fear mongering. With panic mongering, there is never a break from the fear. The idea is to terrify and terrorize the audience during every waking moment. From Muslims to swine flu to recession to homosexuals to immigrants to the rapture itself, the belief over at Fox seems to be that if your fight-or-flight reflexes aren't activated, you aren't alive. This of course raises the question: why terrorize your own audience? Because it is the fastest way to bypasses the rational brain. In other words, when people are afraid, they don't think rationally. And when they can't think rationally, they'll believe anything.
2. Character Assassination/Ad Hominem. Going after the person's credibility, motives, intelligence, character, or, if necessary, sanity. No category of character assassination is off the table and no offense is beneath them. The use of ad hominem attacks are not just against individuals, but entire categories of people in an effort to discredit the ideas of every person who is seen to fall into that category, e.g. "liberals," "hippies," "progressives" etc. This form of argument - if it can be called that - leaves no room for genuine debate over ideas, so by definition, it is undemocratic. Not to mention just plain crass.
3. Projection/Flipping. This one is frustrating for the viewer who is trying to actually follow the argument. It involves taking whatever underhanded tactic you're using and then accusing your opponent of doing it to you first. We see this frequently in the immigration discussion, where anti-racists are accused of racism, or in the climate change debate, where those who argue for human causes of the phenomenon are accused of not having science or facts on their side. It's often called upon when the media host finds themselves on the ropes in the debate.
4. Rewriting History. This is another way of saying that propagandists make the facts fit their worldview. The Downing Street Memos on the Iraq war were a classic example of this on a massive scale, but it happens daily and over smaller issues as well. A recent case in point is Palin's mangling of the Paul Revere ride, which Fox reporters have bent over backward to validate. Why lie about the historical facts, even when they can be demonstrated to be false? Well, because dogmatic minds actually find it easier to reject reality than to update their viewpoints. They will literally rewrite history if it serves their interests. And they'll often speak with such authority that the casual viewer will be tempted to question what they knew as fact.
5. Scapegoating / Othering. This works best when people feel insecure or scared. It's technically a form of both fear mongering and diversion, but it is so pervasive that it deserves its own category. The simple idea is that if you can find a group to blame for social or economic problems, you can then go on to a) justify violence/dehumanization of them, and b) subvert responsibility for any harm that may befall them as a result.
6. Conflating Violence With Power and Opposition to Violence With Weakness. This is more of what I'd call a "meta-frame" (a deeply held belief) than a media technique, but it is manifested in the ways news is reported constantly. For example, terms like "show of strength" are often used to describe acts of repression, such as those by the Iranian regime against the protesters in the summer of 2009. There are several concerning consequences of this form of conflation. First, it has the potential to make people feel falsely emboldened by shows of force - it can turn wars into sporting events. Secondly, especially in the context of American politics, displays of violence - whether manifested in war or debates about the Second Amendment - are seen as noble and (in an especially surreal irony) moral. Violence become synonymous with power, patriotism and piety.
7. Bullying. This is a favorite technique of several Fox commentators. That it continues to be employed demonstrates that it seems to have some efficacy. Bullying and yelling works best on people who come to the conversation with a lack of confidence, either in themselves or their grasp of the subject being discussed. The bully exploits this lack of confidence by berating the guest into submission or compliance. Often, less self-possessed people will feel shame and anxiety when being berated and the quickest way to end the immediate discomfort is to cede authority to the bully. The bully is then able to interpret that as a "win."
8. Confusion. As with the preceding technique, this one works best on an audience that is less confident and self-possessed. The idea is to deliberately confuse the argument, but insist that the logic is airtight and imply that anyone who disagrees is either too dumb or too fanatical to follow along. Less independent minds will interpret the confusion technique as a form of sophisticated thinking, thereby giving the user's claims veracity in the viewer's mind.
9. Populism. This is especially popular in election years. The speakers identifies themselves as one of "the people" and the target of their ire as an enemy of the people. The opponent is always "elitist" or a "bureaucrat" or a "government insider" or some other category that is not the people. The idea is to make the opponent harder to relate to and harder to empathize with. It often goes hand in hand with scapegoating. A common logical fallacy with populism bias when used by the right is that accused "elitists" are almost always liberals - a category of political actors who, by definition, advocate for non-elite groups.
10. Invoking the Christian God. This is similar to othering and populism. With morality politics, the idea is to declare yourself and your allies as patriots, Christians and "real Americans" (those are inseparable categories in this line of thinking) and anyone who challenges them as not. Basically, God loves Fox and Republicans and America. And hates taxes and anyone who doesn't love those other three things. Because the speaker has been benedicted by God to speak on behalf of all Americans, any challenge is perceived as immoral. It's a cheap and easy technique used by all totalitarian entities from states to cults.
11. Saturation. There are three components to effective saturation: being repetitive, being ubiquitous and being consistent. The message must be repeated cover and over, it must be everywhere and it must be shared across commentators: e.g. "Saddam has WMD." Veracity and hard data have no relationship to the efficacy of saturation. There is a psychological effect of being exposed to the same message over and over, regardless of whether it's true or if it even makes sense, e.g., "Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States." If something is said enough times, by enough people, many will come to accept it as truth. Another example is Fox's own slogan of "Fair and Balanced."
12. Disparaging Education. There is an emerging and disturbing lack of reverence for education and intellectualism in many mainstream media discourses. In fact, in some circles (e.g. Fox), higher education is often disparaged as elitist. Having a university credential is perceived by these folks as not a sign of credibility, but of a lack of it. In fact, among some commentators, evidence of intellectual prowess is treated snidely and as anti-American. Education and other evidence of being trained in critical thinking are direct threats to a hive-mind mentality, which is why they are so viscerally demeaned.
13. Guilt by Association. This is a favorite of Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart, both of whom have used it to decimate the careers and lives of many good people. Here's how it works: if your cousin's college roommate's uncle's ex-wife attended a dinner party back in 1984 with Gorbachev's niece's ex-boyfriend's sister, then you, by extension are a communist set on destroying America. Period.
14. Diversion. This is where, when on the ropes, the media commentator suddenly takes the debate in a weird but predictable direction to avoid accountability. This is the point in the discussion where most Fox anchors start comparing the opponent to Saul Alinsky or invoking ACORN or Media Matters, in a desperate attempt to win through guilt by association. Or they'll talk about wanting to focus on "moving forward," as though by analyzing the current state of things or God forbid, how we got to this state of things, you have no regard for the future. Any attempt to bring the discussion back to the issue at hand will likely be called deflection, an ironic use of the technique of projection/flipping.
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Program schedule for "Radio-Role-Play"
Www.Talkshoe.Com -- Show ID: 113956Phone call in: 724-444-7444 -- Show ID: 113956
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- 7:45pm Eastern: Pre-show green room - Learn your talking points (not recorded)
- 8:05pm Eastern: Radio-Role-Play (recorded)
- Post-show green room - constructive criticism and praise (recorded)
