My view on the Occupy Movement as of right now

A family member recently asked me about my view on the Occupy Movement. I thought about it for a few days and realized that I could write 20K words about it in an attempt to explain my views, but that this would take much more time than I have in the midst of a new job, the book project, the Holidays, etc. So, I will let far more knowledgeable and eloquent people speak on my behalf, and call upon one extremely flawed counter-example for contrast.

Here is my view on the Occupy Movement as of right now:

An Entreaty for the New Year

I posted this on Facebook, but not all of us are on Facebook . . .

For all of us who have ever "shared" politically-themed links, or forwarded them via email, there is this timely reminder that we might be full of shit (Plus, see the Errol Morris Op-Doc link I posted not long ago [here]). May our resolutions for the New Year include endeavoring to attempt to try to strive to be less credulous, particularly when our egos & ideologies are involved!

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A rather rapid escalation to ad hominem attacks & similar irrationality

I'm in the midst of an exchange with others on a Linkedin group that I belong to (reproduced here). This experience has motivated me to make the following reflections . . .

If truth statements fall in the wilderness, will a Southern apologist hear it?

Another comment on a Linkedin group I belong to spurred me to post a reply.

Chris Rivait posted a link to his blog that quoted in full the Roanoake Times article Rebel flags barred from Lexington poles outlining the Lexington, Virginia, city council's recent decision not to raise the Confederate battle flag at city-sponsored events:

The arguments have been made thousands of times before. The Confederate flag is a symbol of history and Southern heritage. No, the flag is a symbol of hatred and racism.

In essence, the same arguments dominated a public hearing held Thursday night by the Lexington City Council . . .

The first commenter in this post was a gentleman named Stephen Quick, who linked to his website on which he attempted to defend the representation of the Confederate battle flag. I will leave it up to the reader to navigate to Quick's website to read his interpretation in full.

In reply to Quick, I wrote:

This video clearly wasn't meant for my viewing

This video clearly wasn't made for my benefit, but a loved one forwarded it to me and we got a good chuckle out of it. What entertained us the most was the opening narration--and by "entertained" I mean I found it cringe-worthy to the extent that I just had to laugh before I pulled the rest of my hair out.

Bald Me.

The video illustrates some classic examples of specious arguments and logical fallacies, and because the narration includes the word "history" I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to respond to my loyal reader.[1]

Read my analysis of the narration below the fold, and let me know what you think, but be forewarned: it's about religion . . .

My final thought about "the commons" . . .

(. . . at least in terms of applicability of the metaphor to my book project.)

As part of the process of trying to clarify the topic for my own benefit, I've written three posts analyzing Garrett Hardin's "tragedy of the commons" metaphor (here, here, and here). I've finally read & digested John A. Baden and Douglas S. Noonan, eds., Managing the Commons (2nd ed., Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998) and now know how I'm going to address this metaphor in my book.

The Texas School Board continues its quest to change history

Some on the Texas School Board oppose proportional representation of the history of Islam in world history textbooks. A resolution before the board in September asserted an anti-Christian, pro-Islam bias in K-12 world history textbooks.

The Texas School Board, as a body, has already proven itself to favor misrepresentation in K-12 social science standards.

Some specifics of the shallow-minded ideological machinations of the majority of the Texas School Board here.

What the Texas School Board and its supporters fail to understand is that ignoring, misrepresenting, skewing, or otherwise manipulating historical narratives does not magically transform the resulting fallacy into truth. However, what they do understand is that if they can influence historical narratives to reflect their personal biases and ideology, they can get these inaccurate notions into the minds of K-12 students and create future citizens and voters who are uninformed. As Depeche Mode sings in their song "New Dress":

You can't change the world / But you can change the facts / And when you change the facts / You change points of view / If you change points of view / You may change a vote / And when you change a vote / You may change the world

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Inaccurate and offensive Oregon history

I discovered something quite disappointing the other day when I typed in the search terms "oregon history" into Google. Link # 5 led me to:

http://www.sonofthesouth.net/texas/oregon.htm

On this website I came upon such gems of inaccuracy and offensiveness as . . .

Obama ≠ Castro

American Politics are often frustrating. I find one of the most frustrating things about our politics is that people seeking elective office are compelled to simplify the complexities of their positions in ways that are clear and concise so as to translate as effectively as possible across print, broadcast, and blog media with the goal, of course, of reaching as large an audience as possible (at least 50.1% of those who bother to vote). This isn't the only possible political dynamic, but it's the one that we're faced with.

There are many ways that politicians simplify their message into "talking points," elements of a political platform, "sound bites," etc. To do so doesn't by definition mean that truth is compromised, but it does mean that the full complexity of a given topic is sacrificed to some degree. The potential benefits of simplification are balanced by potential shortcomings. Minimizing complexity can do disservice to a given topic by obscuring power dynamics, leaving out multiple causes, ignoring the role of human agency, perpetuating one logical fallacy or another, etc.

One of the many reasons why I don't have any respect for Sarah Palin (and why I pity her supporters) is that she consistently takes the "low road" as she's simplifying complex realities for her personal, financial, and political purposes. A recent example is how she characterized Fidel Castro's speech regarding the recent passage of health care reform legislation in the U.S.

Toot the "country folk" horn instead

There's a section in the Oregonian editorial below (highlighted in bold italics) that is composed of a number of fallacies and is, therefore, inaccurate in its details. However, in its substance and structure it is illustrative of a few important points.


First, the fallacies:

** "A lot of us country folks . . ." is an argumentum ad populum, or appeal to the people to assert the rightness or correctness of something.

** "A lot of us country folks . . ." is also fallacious because it's based on anecdotal evidence: Where's the data to back up this assertion?

** ". . . as far back as when 'green' was simply a color, not a statement. Back then . . ." is an argumentum ad antiquitatem, or the assertion that a thing is right or good because it's old.

** The sentence "it seems to me that everybody recycling an empty toilet paper roll expects to get a Congressional Gold Medal" is an example of an argumentum ad hominem fallacy: Undermining the value or integrity of an individual or group as a way to support one's argument.

** The letter as a whole illustrates an implied fallacy of bifurcation in that it attempts to set up a false dichotomy: contemporary urban people who think they're being sustainable are not sustainable, whereas "us country folks" are sustainable and have been for a long, long while.

** The letter as a whole also illustrates the straw man fallacy, because by using anecdotes and over-simplifications, the writer misrepresents the position(s) of people trying to incorporate more sustainable practices into contemporary society; these misrepresented positions are then much easier to debunk ("everybody recycling an empty toilet paper roll expects to get a Congressional Gold Medal") than the fully articulated and contextualized positions of the advocates.


Now, some of the interrelated points this editorial illustrates:

** The propensity to over-simplify positions of those they see as opponents (the "straw man" fallacy).

** The propensity to mythologize historical developments ("us country folks have been 'environmentally friendly' as far back as . . .") so as to characterize their position as preferred to another.

** The propensity to assign superior moral attributes to one's point of view ("'common sense,' . . . or just 'the right thing to do'") while belittling another's point of view.

These patterns seem to repeat themselves in all kinds of subject areas debated in the public sphere. It's disheartening. As often as I see this kind of thing, I'm compelled to conclude that a significant portion of the voting public isn't adequately prepared to participate in the democratic process because they lack the critical thinking skills to be more than pawns for one ideologue or another.

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Stop tooting green horn

Thank you so much for your recent report on sustainability. It has greatly inspired me, up to the point to where I seriously considered cancelling my subscription to The Oregonian. You see, taking the weight of Friday's paper at 10.7 ounces as an average, I could save a good 244 pounds of paper each year, maybe even more. (I'll let your green experts figure out how many trees or partial trees that would make).

A lot of us country folks have been "environmentally friendly" as far back as when "green" was simply a color, not a statement. Back then, it was called "common sense," "saving money" or just "the right thing to do" (a k a "decency"), and nobody bragged about it.

Nowadays it seems to me that everybody recycling an empty toilet paper roll expects to get a Congressional Gold Medal. Naturally, they would then loudly broadcast the fact that they recycled the bubble wrap it came in.

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Vietnam veterans & the sputum myth

Jack Shafer wrote an interesting article in Slate.com about the topic of Vietnam War veterans being spat upon. This article provides an overview of Jerry Lembcke's 1998 book on the topic, in which Lembcke "doesn't prove that nobody ever expectorated on a serviceman--you can't prove a negative, after all--he reduces the claim to an urban myth."

Here are some relevant findings:

". . . the myth of the spitting protester predates the Rambo movies, but how many vets--many of whom didn't get the respect they thought they deserved after serving their country--retrofitted this memory after seeing the movie?"

"Lembcke uncovered a whole lot of spitting from the war years, but the published accounts always put the antiwar protester on the receiving side of a blast from a pro-Vietnam counterprotester."

Why does this false story get perpetuated, then? According to Shafer,

"The myth persists because: 1) Those who didn't go to Vietnam--that being most of us--don't dare contradict the "experience" of those who did; 2) the story helps maintain the perfect sense of shame many of us feel about the way we ignored our Vietvets; 3) the press keeps the story in play by uncritically repeating it, as the Times and U.S. News did; and 4) because any fool with 33 cents and the gumption to repeat the myth in his letter to the editor can keep it in circulation."

On The Media aired a segment on this topic as well, and interviewed Lembcke.

Here is a review of Lembcke's book on the website of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The reviewer suggests another reason why the myth was perpetuated:

"Perhaps most important in producing the myth were political machinations. The image of the Vietnam vet in the early 1970s was strongly anti-war. There is no place in the American memory for the factually accurate image of vets throwing their medals back at Congress. This image had to be changed if the United States ever wanted to go to war again."

On the opposite side of these conclusions, here's a lengthy rebuttal of Lembcke's claims, based, in part, on Bob Greene's book Homecoming. I'm not sure what to make of this.

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An example of humanity's propensity (nay, need) to discern meaning out of patterns of any kind

Remember hearing about the direct correlation between Washington Redskins wins/losses in their game immediately preceding a presidential election, and the win/loss of the incumbent party? Fascinating!

Isn't it great how readily we discern meaning and portent from patterns we observe? Sometimes this meaning-making process can be fruitful, sometimes it can lead to delusion, and sometimes it can just be fun & entertaining. In any case, there is meaning to be found when we examine such cases of meaning-making -- unless, of course, I'm just creating my own meaning in all of this, which may, itself, provide us some meaning about the ways in which I create my own meaning, which may mean something.*

Here are some thought-provoking words from snopes.com that I couldn't have written more clearly and concisely:

"Our desire to understand and assert some control over the world around us is often manifested by our attempts to find predictive signs that enable us to prognosticate events -- even when there is no seeming connection between predictor and event. Sometimes one natural phenomenon supposedly forecasts another, as in the belief that a groundhog's seeing his shadow on February 2 portends another six weeks of winter. In other instances the linkage is between affairs of mankind, as in the superstition that the winners of football's Super Bowl augurs that year's stock market performance (or vice-versa)."

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* Or, maybe not.

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Half-cocked, perhaps?

An interesting thing happened to me on my way to posting the information below with the title "What can Palin's regurgitation of mythology tell us about contemporary conservatism?": I think I may have gotten all worked-up for nothing! Or, more accurately, I may have gotten all worked up about a topic that deserves discussing, but for the wrong reason.

There's a first time for everything, I suppose.*

What has happened is that I read a post on EotAW about yet another example of Sarah Palin playing loose with the facts in her new book. I'm definitely left-of-center (maybe even a bit left of that, at times), but I do hold as sacrosanct the Golden Rule, as well as the Golden Rule of History -- which is, of course, to let the evidence speak for itself -- so when I hear examples of people trying to manipulate other people through their words and actions, I get all bristly. The EotAW post seemed to me another example of Palin's lies.

However, if you read the comment thread, you'll find that the issue is still in question, but it does seem that the original post may very well be incorrect. I look forward to if and when this question is resolved, and I'll post again here as soon as I get some kind of confirmation, one way or the other.

(I do still find that Jay C's comment I quote below holds a lot of truth, but that's for another post.)

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* Wink-wink!

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Here's a fascinating bit of information on Alaskan history that shows another example of how deeply incorrect Sarah Palin can be. I had heard that Alaska was called "Seward's Folly," but I didn't know that this characterization had been de-bunked, until I read the linked post -- then again, I've never been the governor of Alaska, so I need not have known.

As davenoon writes:

"since Sarah Palin’s entire schtick requires an audience that believes the myth — that believes, for example, that we can drill the shit out of the state without wrecking its ecology — I’m not surprised that she believes it as well. It’s certainly not the only bit of nonsense she’s peddling, but it’s a revealing bit at that."

Jay C responds in a comment:

"not only is clinging to the “Seward’s Folly” myth an easy way for Alaskans (of any political persuasion) to retroactively 'justify' their State, and/or residence there; but it is also an easy way for Gov. Palin to evoke one of the fundamental appeals of the modern conservative Movement: i.e., a sense of victimization. Or more precisely, a sense of being unjustifiably victimized for holding ideas that they feel should be mainstream norms (but are actually out on the fringes)."

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