I Sound Like Those People Who Say Things

Here I am, typing in the little box. This little box is kind of intimidating. A lot of space here. Nothing going on. Just the little cursor and me and an unlimited amount of white space. I wonder if it's actually unlimited.

I wonder if a person could post a whole novel in this white space. Not that I have a novel or even anything novel-length, but even so. I wonder if blogger ever cuts you off. "That's enough of you."

I hated twitter. Resented it mightly. Not only did I have trouble discerning how it was differently useful than facebook, I always supposed it was for people who didn't have very elaborate thoughts and therefore didn't need much space to express them. The character limit struck me as enforced middling. Forced abbreviation. Keep your idea simple or don't express it at all. Concision is important, but abbrevation is something else.

Plech.

Write every day.

That's why they say. The people who tell other people what to do to improve their writing.

"What should I do if I want to be a writer?"

"Write every day."

To be a writer, write. That's what they say. Thanks for nothing, people who say things.

But here I am. Writing for the sake of it.

Some people have achievement fantasies about writing. They suppose writing is for everyone what it was for them--a matter of practice, habit, training. It's an issue of muscle memory as much as any vocation or avocation. The road to excellence in writing is the same as the road to excellence in Kung Fu or ice skating. How people can say this is beyond me. I suspect it has to do with encouraging people who lack native talent. I think people who lack native talent can become good--or at least better--writers through something like "practice," but nevertheless, some people with no experience at all can pick up a pen or sit down at a keyboard and turn out extraordinary things. Their fundamental understanding of language and their relationship to it is writing-friendly. Their practice has been in their speech and their ears and their world-viewing habits. Some people, simply, need no practice at all to write well.

I have never heard of anyone who came to excellent Kung Fu or ice skating by accident.

But still, folks persist. "If you want to write well, you need to practice writing." Maybe I should not rag on them. It's probably true for a large percentage of aspiring writers. People who come to writing organically, automatically, and without effort are probably in a strict and small minority.

But I wonder if people who do come to writing naturally ever practice their way to mediocrity.

Like, if you come to writing naturally, and you sit down and do it, and study it and slowly begin throwing out your quirks of language, undo your habits of voice, what results? The lowest common denominator?

Maybe Dean Koontz was, by nature, an incredible experimental poet. Now he's out there writing airport suspense. (Is Dean Koontz still alive?)

My personal feeling is that writing well has more to do with reading than writing.

Maybe I'm just another sayer, saying things are true because they have been true in my experience.

Maybe it's because I started out as a poet. Poets can tell, immediately, if other poets do not read much poetry. Good poets, almost universally, read incredible amounts of poetry. "Good" is subjective. Okay, let me put it this way instead: People who write bad poetry usually have very little experience or interest in reading poetry. "Bad" seems like it should be subjective, but God as my witness, there is unequivocally bad poetry out there. I refuse to hedge or barter in that respect.

Still, reading a lot of poetry is no guarantee that you're going to write well. I'm just saying it can't hurt.

It has something to do with using your eyes to develop an ear. A strange phenomenon. True, a lot of people who read poetry read it aloud to themselves as part of the reading process. That's what they have been told to do by the same sayers who say things like "write every day."

"You really need to read poetry aloud to appreciate it. Reading aloud should be part of any poetry-reading experience."

I don't believe that, either.

I don't read poetry aloud, and I don't write poetry that is intended to be read aloud. Nevertheless, I consider myself acutely aware of rhythm, cadence, and sound. Eye sound? Somewhere in here...I chose "without effort" rather than "effortlessly" because "effortlessly" offended my ear. My eye-ear. Too much "ly" happening. I deleted it and typed something else. No real reason. Nothing wrong with it syntactically, but I didn't like the look-sound of it.

And I might add, too, that--and I think most poets would agree--being a good poet has more to do with being a good editor and arranger than with being a good writer. Maybe all writing is that way to an extent, but poetry is, for sure, created mostly with the use of an Exacto knife. And maybe a chainsaw before that.

Writing is mysterious. When it rolls, it's a zen-like experience. You don't write it so much as it manifests. When it's not rolling, it comes haltingly, jerking, tremoring. It has Parkinson's disease. In this case, it comes, in large part, in someone else's voice. A voice I learned when I was acutely unsure of myself and my prose. Short sentences, short paragraphs, leaping all over the place. It's Brad Listi.

Not always, not everywhere, but this voice is predominantly borrowed. When in doubt about what to wear, let someone else dress you. Steal someone else's look. They look good in it, so it's probably safe, even if it's not "you." It will do for now.

For the record, I consider myself a very average writer. None of this is meant to say, "I'm so great and I got this way by _____." I have to offer that disclaimer. I can think of no reason why anyone should believe anything I say except that I have put uncommon amounts of thought into it. I could be totally wrong. No idea what's going on. Just another sayer, saying things.

I hope I will be able to shake this cloak. If I'm going to get to the business of writing again, I have to be careful what I read and how much. I'm a mimic by nature. Totally affected.

Starting Over Again...Again

Almost a year.

I haven't written anything here for nearly a year.

I don't think I've even looked at this site since I posted the punk blog. I have no memory of writing the punk blog.

I just read it, riveted. This Becky chick is pretty cool. She likes the same things I like, talks the way I talk, finds the same kinds of things interesting that I do, even appears to own the same book on punk that I do.

What a bad ass. She's my new favorite person in the world.

She said some pretty stupid shit, though, too. Woah. Way back when. Even recently. What a dumbass.

As the archives indicate, I have had this blog for some time. As they also indicate, my updates have been sporadic at best. I started this blog when I was a community college student, a know-nothing. A snot-nosed, know-it-all ne'er-do-well. I started it to entertain myself when I was working as a tutor in my community college's writing center. My primary audience, initially, was my boss in the writing center and some of her blogger friends.

Posts from that time are safe, relatively uninteresting. I was, all things considered, an internet n00b. Certainly a writing noob. I will appear less cynical, mostly, and less jaded in those posts. I wasn't. I was just worried that if I said much of what I really thought, people would think I was rotten and potentially insane.

At some point, I quit worrying about that. At some point, the cat came out of the bag, and it was no longer worth the trouble to write about pop culture, stupid things, things I didn't necessarily dislike but that didn't really interest me. Some time after I started this blog, I started blogging on Myspace. I started blogging in other places.

I was going to be a writer. I was going to network. I was going to get down to business.

I amassed followers. Fans. I was even approached once in a bar by a total stranger who stopped me, using my name, and gave me a hug, telling me how much she loved my blog.

It made me wildly uncomfortable. In hindsight, it was probably the first indication that I didn't really know what I was doing and that I might not like what I was getting into.

A little-known fact about me: As willing as I am to broadcast thoughts, opinions, incidents in a place like facebook, part of me is intensely private. I'm a secret-keeper by nature. Both my own secrets and other people's. Secretive, I suppose, is the word. In wide-open social situations, I tend to affect a persona. It's not intentional, and it's not that it's not ME, necessarily, but it's a select part of me. It's a diversion, in a way. Pay no attention to the woman behind the curtain. I am the great and powerful OZ.

Sure we all do it.

Sure, it's part of being human and living a social existence.

But my persona has a distinct flavor. And usually, eventually, maintaining it wears me out.

I left Myspace because...well, in large part because it was malfunctioning a lot, and I got sick of losing my blogs.

But also because I had amassed too many friends. Too many perfect strangers. Too many eyes. I couldn't say what I wanted to say because I couldn't remember who was watching anymore. I was a writer with too many readers.

I fled. I basically quit writing, except for here, occasionally, and only really after I was convinced that nobody was listening anymore.

I went to facebook to start over. I was very choosy about who I friended. Then, slowly but surely, I started to amass too many friends again. Again, I can't really remember who's looking.

I'm not plotting a facebook suicide, but you can expect to find more of what I'm thinking here rather than there. If I invited you here, it was purposeful--deliberate. Some of you have been with me since Myspace (Darian, Eber, Listi, Lori, Amanda, so on. You know who you are, and, man, I love you guys. *sniff*).

One of you is from the way-back days of AAP--the only one who knows me primarily as a poet (what's up, Doc!). Some of you are newish to me, but nevertheless dear, so I hope you'll continue to make the trek over from time to time to read. I think when I left Myspace, I gave notice to my subscribers that I was moving, encouraging people to follow me here, but not many came along. That was kind of by design, I think; I think I knew I would lose them. But in this case, I definitely want you guys around.

I'm going to try to post more regularly. Going to try to get over my spooked feelings and normalize. I'll be done with school in the spring and that should create time for more blogging.

No need to publicize or share. In fact, please don't. I don't mean to imply that there will be some clamoring for access to my blog or that I'm all that great, but there are too many people that I'd prefer not know that I have a blog. Many people. People who you might think I wouldn't mind having around but who I really don't want around. I don't plan on posting scandal or anything. Or maybe I do, who knows. But I like to know who's looking.

Death or Glory

Punk.

I like it. I like the music and the overall gestalt. I'm not punk. Maybe in spirit, but not in any kind of measurable way.

I got an excellent book for Christmas. A coffee table book--an illustrated history of punk in the US and Britain.

It is unduly obsessed with the Sex Pistols, in my opinion. It seems to hold them, essentially, at the center of the punk world. From certain turns of phrase, it would appear that the compiler of the book is British (or many of the writers are), so I suppose this is to be expected. The never-ending debate exists: Is Punk an American or British phenomenon?

People tend to side with their own country, or whichever country they prefer in general, or, in an attempt to negotiate and compromise, they will say that American and British punk were, in fact, two separate musical movements and that to compare them requires some kind of faulty assumption.

I don't know about that.

I know that the two bands that usually end up at the center of the debate are The Ramones and the Sex Pistols and that these two bands are, in many ways, quite different.

Johnny (Lydon) Rotten sure thought so, anyway. For the most part, I think, when people insist that American and British punk are totally separate, they're parroting a statement made by the ever-opinionated, ever-indignant Rotten himself--a statement that arose in any number of variations (and continues to arise) over the course of his career.

"The New York scene has nothing to do with us. It's a waste of time."

In the end, I think that American and British cultures were just different enough to choose slightly different bands to exalt. Different bands were the preferred "face" as chosen by the people, but I don't think the music itself is fundamentally disparate.

Interesting fact:

John Lydon contracted meningitis as a child and fell into a coma for six months. When he awoke, he had forgotten almost everything he knew, including how to read, how to perform simple day-to-day tasks, and even a fair amount of his vocabulary. He was mercilessly teased in school (dummy, moron, etc.) and has walked with a hunchback ever since his illness because the needles they stuck in his spine to drain infected fluid did some kind of permanent damage to his posture.

He says he also suspects he was pretty well brain damaged in the process.

Another interesting fact:

Johnny Rotten was painfully shy and was described as such by people who knew him even at the height of his punk career. Contemporary interviews don't show much indication of this, but apparently, he had a habit of turning bright red--stammering--whenever strangers spoke to him.

Odd. Unexpected.

This maniac:


Hiding behind his mummy's skirts.

The boy ain't right.

Said Sid Vicious (who, at the time he met Rotten, was a "fashion-conscious" David Bowie fanatic) of Johnny Rotten:

"He was the vilest geezer I'd ever met...everyone hated him. Everyone hated me, too. We hated each other, but no one else would talk to us."

Heh.

Rotten says he thought Vicious was "a wanker."

Anyway. It's an interesting book. Most early Punk bands name Iggy and the Stooges as a primary (if not ultimate) influence. Does this make Punk an American phenomenon? Who knows. It's a fascinating thing, no matter who is trying to take credit for it.

Interesting fact #3: Iggy Pop was to be approached to lead the Sex Pistols, but he was in a mental institution at the time.

And while the painfully shy Rotten was hiding in corners backstage after exploding onstage, the band he constantly derided for its conscious image-crafting and apparent commercial pop-sellout--the Ramones--had a shy, hunch-backed lead singer and a tragic bassist who was hopelessly addicted to heroin.

The bands, in the end, come up looking an awful lot alike. All the more need, then, to insist upon differences, I suppose.

I also suppose that if people said this to Lydon, they would be--immediately and in no uncertain terms--told to go fuck themselves with a bowie knife.

Which is another sort of beautiful thing about Punk. No need for excuses or explanation. Just fuck off. If you can't understand why, that's your problem. Figure it out. You might not find THE answer, but AN answer is probably good enough. That is, there are plenty to choose from.

The book also contains a large-ish section on Green Day. A band who is, in my opinion, sort of the epitome of good punk gone bad.

Nevertheless, they are part of the legacy.

Billy Joe Armstrong has said that part of what Green Day's critics call "selling out" was simply a function of his (and the band's) getting older--maturing.

I was just telling my husband yesterday that I thought it was the stupidest excuse I'd ever heard.

Because SOME bands managed to write mature punk music right from the beginning. It wasn't ALL youthful, wasted exuberance. And when it isn't, it doesn't have to be an over-produced rock opera (American Idiot, indeed).

No. Mature, musically competent, intelligent punk is not impossible. There was, of course, the almighty Joe Strummer and The Clash.

Also this. My personal favorite.

Try again, Billy, you deserter.

A couple more videos, just for fun.

Anarchy in the U.K. (pre-Vicious)

Blitzkreig Bop

Colleges have more smart people--and also more idiots--than the general population.

What have I been doing? Nothing. And everything. Work and school consume my life, and when the weekend comes, I always think I'll write a blog, but I never do. I don't even do the things I SHOULD be doing, like homework.

No.

I sit on the couch and drool.

When I'm overwhelmed, I seize up. Shut down. Check out. Stall.

I just sit in one spot and thing about all the things I should be doing.

I did not watch the debate. I was not lying when I said that I was over that shit. Unless one of these candidates dies, walks on water, or becomes embroiled in some scandal involving behavior more disgusting than politics (short of pedophilia, it's tough to do), my mind is made up.

The economy? I'm siding with Obama:

"Meh. I'll talk about it when it's over."

I've got a government job. When the socialists take over, all I have to do is keep a low profile so they don't hang me and my craaaazy free market ideals for treason.

Fucking bastards.

I already can't tell my coworkers about my conservative lean. Not at a University. No way, Jose. I love that this institution--this supposed bastion of liberal, open exchange and tolerance--is one of the most severely ideologically segregated and, ultimately, oppressive intellectual environments to be found anywhere, save, maybe, a KKK rally.

Living in a communist country can't be all that different.

So I'll be fine. Most politicians, however, will be executed...not the priority ones, really...but a start is a start. You know what they say about beggars and choosers.

My classes are awful.

My lit class is full of undergrads run wild. The grad student teacher has no control over the class and discussions last fully two hours, featuring such razor-sharp insight as:

"Well, I know if I were in the author's position, I would be upset."

Sympathy, to the best of my knowledge, is not a literary device, theory, or analytical method, but shit.

Maybe they changed things since last spring.

There are more characters in this class. A fellow who called the indignant rants of De las Casas "fact" which he would have "no reason to fabricate." A girl from Alaska who can never shut up about how "America" doesn't apply to Alaskans. A humorless, beady-eyed music snob who seems to take every ounce of her analytical theory from Gloria Steinem and some loose consortium of other third-wave feminists who, if amassed, would look very much like the "Womanist" group from the movie PCU.

...this penis party's got to go, hey hey! ho ho!


I think I'll keep it to one class next semester.

If you can't stand the heat, no problem. Winter is almost here.

I am beyond anger. Beyond indignation. Beyond labor-intensive attempts at deciphering--for myself or anyone else--the embarrassing behavior of politicians and their henchmen. I'm just tired.

It's just not worth it. People are going to vote for who they're going to vote for at this point. There is but a small--perhaps indecisive, perhaps shrewd--demographic of truly undecided voters, and my feeling is that these are people who will make a game-time decision based on their own pocketbooks and their own immediate concerns. Maybe they are people who will simply vote against whichever pig wears the lipstick last. Maybe it will be the last frenzied minutes of this circus-posing-as-serious-business that will cement their choices: Maybe they will decide, at the 11th hour, that they dislike Cindy McCain's expensive wardrobe or Michelle Obama's smug grin. Maybe they will go into the booth and flip a coin. Part of me wonders if this isn't just as sound a decision-making process as any other their more decisive countrymen might have used.

Maybe they will actually believe that "community organizer" is code for "black person." Everything is code for either black person or woman these days, no? The sensitivity on racism/sexist radars is turned to 11, and it is sometimes difficult to remember that only a very small portion of the statements earning these hysterical labels now would pass for racist or sexist in a non-election year (or I hope they would not, but who knows the future).

Paterson's comments really put an end to any debate that might have existed as to whether or not this is the single most absurd--and ultimately, insulting--campaign cycle in recent memory.

The Washington establishment, to which--do not delude yourself--McCain and Obama both very soundly belong (if they did not, they would never, and I mean NEVER have been nominated) is but a joke. It is a bunch of very wealthy, very spoiled, very powerful, and very manipulative people biting, clawing, and pulling hair in a playground popularity fight of global proportions. The insult comes when either candidate looks the American people in the camera lens and says, straight-faced...with all seriousness... "Well, HE started it." The disappointment comes, for me at least, when people stare back through the live feed and believe it.

For either candidate to deny that he is in on the federal joke represents such an obvious assumption about the stupidity and gullibility of the American people, I'm surprised more people aren't pissed off. But they're really not. Mostly they're just happy to gobble it up, wash it down with some blue or red kool aid, and defend party platforms and other delusions the same way anyone defends adopted ideologies that he doesn't really understand: As a zealot--a person uninterested in logic and entirely overcome with emotion.

In any event, that small handful of truly undecided voters are not people who I'm going to convince with all my philosophy-heavy, big-picture, academic approachs to the election.

I can't say this will be the last time I'll ever mention the election, but this will be the last blog dedicated almost entirely to it. It's tiring. It's pointless.

The academic year is on, and I start a new full-time job on Monday. This means four 12-14 hour days a week for me and, ulimately, that I will simply not have the time or energy to invest in scrutinizing what new clowns either party might loose from their car.

Despite all this activity, though, fall has always been my winding-down time. Winter in MN is--for me at least--a kind of still, quiet haven. A stasis or waiting. I keep busy enough, like anyone, with school and work, but winter forces a person to pay attention to other, more basic things, too--heat, cold, family, home. At this point, I welcome it.

Disagreement on your part does not constitute hypocrisy on my part.

Sarah Palin isn't perfect.

Mostly because nobody is.

The GOP thinks she's perfect, at least insofar as a VP candidate goes, and that may be true, more or less.

But I would like to examine one version of one of the most popular arguments against her, as presented by the concerned DFL soccer moms of America.

Okay they're not an official group (at least not that I know of), but they do seem to have a loose confederation, and they're all over the comment boards of every news post about Sarah Palin with empty-headed offerings like this one:

Certainly one must be concerned with the radical firing of state employees, the ridiculous book banning and the daughters pregnancy. Not to mention the committee to 49 state the USA. I am much more concerned with the delightful birth of her beloved Downs syndrome son. I run a special needs program and have for 25 years and I truly love the DS children. Their potential is remarkable. But one child with this disability is a life long job in itself. My concern is as mother how she could subject her family to such scrutiny and leave so little time for working personally with her sons development. She has a lot on her plate...too much for my taste if she were to have to run the country as President. My plea would be to step down for her child's sake. Not to mention her teenage daughters recent exposure to millions...quite unfair to willingly have the family laundry dried out so publicly...

-Tracy somebody-or-other

"Certainly," we must be concerned about the daughter's pregnancy(?) (and oh yeah, a couple of things that have actual political implications), but what should we REALLY care about?

Why she's not at home where she belongs: in her housecoat, rattling pots & pans, and hovering over her baby.

This has got to be some kind of fucking joke. I don't even want to begin on what kind of fire and brimstone would rain down upon any conservative who said something so completely and utterly sexist about a liberal candidate. I don't even want to begin on what kind of fire and brimstone I'd rain down on a fellow conservative for saying such a thing, let alone a liberal. The truth is that no one would say this to my, or any other modern, intelligent woman's face (conservative or liberal), because they would have their head, immediately and unceremoniously, ripped right from their body.

And rightfully so.

Why people think the result would be any different online, I cannot begin to know. The hypocrisy is staggering.

I won't bother about "exposing" her teenage daughter to scrutiny. It wasn't Sarah who dragged her daughter into this. Someone ask the bloggers (those that insisted Trig was Bristol's child) who they think dragged Bristol into this. Every single letter of the above comment is nothing more than desperate, sanctimonious, moralizing bullshit. I though that was our turf, Tracy, you dumb box.

(That, friends, is how you do sexism right. I mean, if you're going to go for it, go for it. Throw a vagina reference in there.)

Anyway. I just had to get that out. The good news is that, aside from these apparently closeted social conservatives, most liberals (and especially women) are as repelled and disgusted by these kinds of arguments as conservatives are.

There may be hope for this country yet. At least women are willing to cross party lines to stick up for each other.

It's an interesting thing, hypocrisy. We all do it, yet we have no problem trying to elevate it to the status of a moral sin. In politics, some would have you believe that it is the single most atrocious sin. The implication being that anyone who is hypocritical cannot or should not run for office, be elected, or ever be trusted about anything.

Naturally, this is ridiculous. This rules out the entire population of planet earth. But there is a sort of method to the madness.

I suppose if you can successfully argue that hypocrisy is the most vile of all sins, and anyone who ever does (or has done) anything that contradicts their own moral standards is a hypocrite, then not only will people want to avoid hypocrisy, but the only way for a person to do so is to hold no moral standard to begin with.

Unadulterated, untempered relativism.

Of course, the truth of the matter is that this theory is hopelessly flawed. Because even the (expressed, if not always practiced) liberal values of compassion, tolerance, equality, humaneness, and the like are presented as moral values. So we'd have to abandon those, too.

What to do, what to do? I suppose we'll just have to accept that all of us, including our political candidates, are hypocrites by the strictest definition. This doesn't mean we don't have to strive to avoid hypocrisy, and it still means that habitual hypocrisy is something to be concerned about, but it doesn't mean that every incident of hypocrisy is grounds for disqualification and proof of the worthlessness or untrustworthiness of a person.

So, even Tracy up there, hypocritical (presuming she believes sexism is bad), oblivious, and, frankly, stupid as she may be in this case, may still be a worthwhile person of an essentially decent and trustworthy nature. Of course, if the hypocrisy of her position is pointed out to her and she refuses to acknowledge it, refuses to amend her course, makes no attempt to reconcile the contradiction, or otherwise maintains that this position is somehow compatible with its antithesis, then she is not only a habitual hypocrite, but someone who is in a partisan pissing-contest-induced state of utter and risible denial.

Of course, hypocrisy is largely dependent on one's interpretation of a moral holding. Some argue that if someone says they are "pro-life," they are hypocritical to support a war. Of course, to those that are pro-life, one has very little to do with the other. The hypocrisy lies in one interpretation of a tag-line--a nickname for a position on abortion. An actual act of hypocrisy in this case would be if someone who is pro-life has an abortion or encourages someone else to have one. One has to redefine "pro-life" to include situations that its proponents do not claim it applies to in order to make it about war or the death penalty, or anything else.

Of course, from a logical standpoint, you can't be a hypocrite if the moral value you are offending is not one you hold or claim to hold. Someone else assigning a value to you, then claiming you violate it, is their doing, not yours. The comparison is negated on a technicality: A fetus is generally not taking up arms against or otherwise directly threatening the national security of the USA.

Of course I am pro-choice, however disgusted I may be that the world is such that I have to be, and although the irony of pro-life, pro-war does not escape me, I realize that is all it is. Irony. Of course, the reverse is also true--there is some irony in being anti-war and pro-choice, even if the pro-abortion moniker (pro-choice) is not quite so primed for the comparison as the anti-abortion one is.

Again, the difference lies in a technicality: The belief that a fetus isn't a life.

It is this holding that saves THIS camp from hypocrisy. They, like pro-lifers, do not actually hold the belief necessary for them to be hypocrites. It must be ascribed to them. One has to say, "Well, I believe a fetus is a life, therefore, you are a hypocrite."

Uh uh. Nope.

That's not how it works.

These types of arguments look good on a picket sign, and they sound good in the middle of a heated debate or amidst the rhetoric of a political speech, but if any person making such claims is ever really confronted and asked to describe how the opposition's stance on war is hypocritical because of their stance on abortion, they are going to run into this problem.

Most people will be so confounded that they will run up against their "final vocabulary" and be forced to end it there. Either that, or they will be forced to admit that their opponent is not, technically, hypocritical.

A "final vocabulary" is the point to which most (if not all) of us will arrive in any extended argument. It is the place at which we can no longer explain ourselves logically and resort to statements like, "Well, it's just what I believe," or "Well, that's just wrong." It may be comprised of statements of belief, positive or negative, statements of ideology, accusations against the opponent...whatever it is, it is characterized by the speaker's inability or unwillingness to offer further rational proof of his or her claims. Each person will have a set of ready-made final vocabularies that come up again and again, no matter what specific argument he or she is in. Final vocabularies, in effect, are used to slam shut the door of a debate to protect one's ideological or intellectual holdings against a potentially unpleasant realization or an embarrassing revelation.

So there you have it, I guess. An example of the kind of logic running (or attempting to run) behind the rhetoric.

I offer it as an alternative to my last blog, which was too long and way too technical. But I maintain that it is good for people to be aware of these mechanisms as they watch the political discourse, and besides that, it's just fun to watch it all go down when you know exactly what kind of crap everybody's trying to pull and see how easily most of the population will simply eat it up.

The economy is in the shitter and my opponent is a poopy-head; therefore, I will be a good president. (And other fallacies).

I said my next blog would be about logic fallacies in politics. And it will. But I have to talk, first, about McCain's VP pick.

It's at once dangerous and brilliant. Mostly, it's brilliant in theory and dangerous in practice. Not dangerous in the sense that she is somehow a dangerous person to have in power, but dangerous in the sense that I'm not sure how well the theory will translate when it comes to the average voter.

Historically speaking, a candidate's VP choice doesn't make much difference in their poll standing. VP choices are generally hedges against a presidential candidate's perceived weaknesses and seem to be picked more for their ability to consternate detractors than for their ability to win supporters.

Obama's weakness is experience, he got a guy drenched in foreign policy credentials. McCain's weakness is his age and rich white guy status, so he gets a young, somewhat unconventional woman with a Native American husband who has lived, essentially, a blue-collar life.

There's really very little debate to be had about why each candidate picked the running mate they did.

What starts to get interesting is the way parties react to the opposition's choice.

Of course, the DFL's reaction (which I presume the GOP knew and hoped would be their reaction) has been, "She has no experience!"

The clouds begin to mass, and suddenly, from the GOP, comes a shit storm of the DFL's own arguments...utterly backfiring on them.

The only potential for the GOP's arguments against Obama to backfire is sort of shot down; if the DFL wants to say, "Oh! I thought you couldn't put an inexperienced person in the White House, you hypocrites!" the McCain campaign only has to say, "We're not trying to make HER the president."

The only place left for the DFL to go is McCain's age. As if it's some foregone conclusion that he will die the minute he is inaugurated, and this woman, with not a minute of experience, will suddenly be thrust into the presidency.

This is the beginning of what is referred to, in logic, as a slippery slope. In a slippery slope, a series of unlikely or reaching consequences are alleged without proof that they will happen, in order to make a flawed argument or conclusion seem plausible.

Although it's not impossible that McCain might not make it too far into his presidency, it is highly unlikely. It is most likely that McCain will live for at least four years, even more likely he will live for three, and so on. At that point, Palin will have all kinds of experience--in the very White House itself--should something happen to McCain. So the GOP should have no trouble rebutting this criticism. Unless McCain's health begins to fail in some major way, lending credence, beyond his age, to the argument that he is not be long for this world, the argument is basically defunct. At least the way the DFL is presenting it now.

This is what makes the choice brilliant. Strategically, she's virtually bulletproof; it is easy for the DFL to criticize her inexperience, but it will be difficult for them to avoid sounding foolish or hypocritical when they do.

So--the slippery slope. One logical fallacy that crops up in political debates.

Two fallacies that get thrown around a lot are the Red Herring and the Straw Man.

The two names are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same.

In a Straw Man fallacy, an opponent counters an argument by proving some conclusion that, as valid or correct as it may be, is inconsequential or unrelated to the actual argument at hand. He has knocked down a doppelganger--a"straw man"--rather than his actual opponent.

If a person were to look at this blog so far and say, "Well, Palin wants to overturn Roe vs. Wade, and if she succeeds, it will crush civil liberties, increase poverty, and increase crime," they will have slain a straw man.

The assertions made about her abortion stance may be true, or they may not be true, but it doesn't really matter. The rebuttal is based on a misunderstanding of my argument. It has no bearing on the argument I was making, which was that Palin was a savvy choice from a strategic standpoint.

Straw Men are usually unintentional. An opponent misunderstands or reads too far into an argument (in this case, a person may have viewed my argument as an endorsement of Palin's social policies) and responds to (maybe even wins) an argument that, for all practical purposes, exists only in his/her head.

The Red Herring can be characterized as the intentional version of the Straw Man, and the line between the two isn't always clear. In simplest terms, however, a Red Herring argument is simply the act of utterly changing the subject. It is used to divert attention away from an argument that a person is unprepared for, not knowledgeable about, or simply finds inconvenient or disadvantageous to his/her cause.

Both the Straw Man and the Red Herring could be characterized as the beefy, sophisticated cousins of the non-sequitur (literally, "It does not follow"). Non-sequitur refers to an argument in which the claims do not lead to the conclusion.

A very simple example:

Apples are a kind of fruit.
Apples grow on trees.

Therefore, logging is bad.

The first two claims are true, and the conclusion may even be true, but nothing is proven and we have no reason to be persuaded because the claims and the conclusions are unrelated. The argument, regardless of the conclusion's truth value, is worthless.

Post-Hoc fallacies are arguments that confuse chronology with cause-and-effect.

It's beyond rampant in politics. It may even be the trademark fallacy of politics. If it doesn't win the "favorite fallacy of politicians" award, then it comes in second only to the false dichotomy.

Post Hoc arguments assert that just because one event preceded another, the first event caused the second event.

An over-the-top example: After I was born, the Cold War came to an end; therefore, my birth put an end to the Cold War.

In politics, Post Hoc arguments tend to hand credit or blame to politicians for anything and everything that happens after she/he takes office, whether or not she/he was actually responsible for it. In some cases, these arguments prove out. In the many cases, the reality is much more complicated than anyone wants to admit.

Another fallacy of oversimplification (my category...utterly unofficial) is the false dichotomy.

In logic, "dichotomy" refers to an either/or statement. By their very nature, either/or statements require that if one element is false, the other must be true. A false dichotomy is an argument that offers only two outcomes, choices, or solutions where there are actually three or more.

A simple example might be: "He's late. He is either dead or he is cheating on me."

Of course, there are a million other reasons why he might be late.

In politics, the false dichotomy usually pits a deeply unsavory option against one that is less offensive--making the choice seem obvious, but ignoring all other possible scenarios.

An example: "You either oppose abortion or you have no respect for life."

Obviously, there is a whole vast sea of grey area that is not being acknowledged in this bifurcation (bifurcate means to split in two and is just another word for "dichotomy").

Another example of false dichotomy is the rarely admitted, though widely held belief that anyone who is not a Democrat is a Republican and vice versa. Aside from the most militant of line-toeing party loyalists, few people will admit that they are guilty of this assumption, but a good 90% of people in this country operate under it every single day, despite themselves.

Last, but certainly not least, are the appeals.

Appeals to convention/tradition, appeals to emotion, appeals to authority, appeals to consensus...the list goes on.

They are called appeals rather than arguments, because they really aren't arguments. They are mostly one-liners. They are intended to win you over without debate--they are pleas, essentially, to simply accept the veracity of something. An appeal to authority might look like this:

Appeal to anonymous authority:
"They say (or "scientists say" or "experts say")that a penny dropped from 15 stories up will kill the person it hits."

Appeal to known authority:

"Prof. Schmoe said that we are living in a new Reich."

If either of these are meant to inspire credulity in the listener, then they are appeals to authority. "So-and-so (who is in a position of authority or respect) has said it, so it must be true."

A statement like, "Most scientists agree" is at once an appeal to authority and consensus. It asks you believe something simply because a bunch of people agree that it is true.

Of course, scientists can be wrong, and the fact that more than one person agrees on a statement does not change or prove the truth value of the statement. In short, a thing is just as true (or just as false) whether 1 person or 5,000 people say it.

Statements like, "Nobody believes that anymore," are simply the negative image of an appeal to consensus. It is the same thing.

A subset of appeals to consensus are appeals to common practice. A child who is caught shoplifting --Jimmy, let's say--would be using this kind of appeal if he said, "But Bobby and Susie did it, too!" Of course, it doesn't matter who else did it. It is still wrong, and all this means is that Bobby and Susie are just as wrong as Jimmy.

Appeals to emotions speak for themselves. Appeals to fear, appeals to loyalty, appeals to guilt...I shouldn't have to explain the prominent role of these things in politics.

Last but not least, there are the non-arguments.

Any sentence that begins with "I think" or "I believe" is not an argument and cannot be treated as an argument (at least not to any productive end). The reason is this: When a sentence begins this way, the statement made is that a person believes or thinks something...NOT that whatever they think is correct.

If someone says to me, "I believe that God exists," there is nothing I can really say. Any argument that would logically follow from this statement would have to be about whether or not they believe as they say they do. If someone says they believe or think something, you just have to take their word for it--unless you are a mind reader.

If a person says, "I believe that God exists," what I can do is ask them why they believe what they do in the hopes that they will offer up an objective assertion at some point, but other than that...if logic is to be maintained, all that can be said is, "Okay."

This is far from a complete list of all the logical fallacies. But being aware of them will help you, hopefully, sort the wheat from the chaffe in all these long-winded political speeches. In fact, speech writers and advisers often have training in the strategic use of fallacy as a rhetorical tool by which a politician can convince you to vote for them without actually telling you what they will do with your vote.

You may find, as I have, that whole speeches, and actually most of the volleys between politicians, are made up of nothing but loose stringings-together of fallacies and appeals that have nothing in common but their abiding contempt for their opponent.

So.

It's your vote. They know about fallacies and how to use them. Now you know, too. Good luck.

Welcome, travelers!

Congrats to those of you who have managed to survive the long and arduous journey from Myspace.

No doubt you are tired, hungry, and have blisters on your clicky finger from the extra work.

Well, I can't do anything about any of that.

But I can tell you what this blog is, why I created it, and make all the proper excuses for anything stupid, trite, or boring I may have written 3 years ago: It was 3 years ago. That is my excuse.

Anyway, about this blog:

I can't remember exactly what my reason was for calling it "Peeling Onions." I think it had something to do with my hyper-analytical personality--my habit of picking away at things until there is nothing left...my persistent hope that I will be able to get to the "core" or meat of it all, only to find that the core is not much, and even then, to discover that the core itself has a million layers.

And somewhere along the way, I make myself cry?

I don't know. It is what it is. I'm sure it made more sense to me back then.

I'm curious to see who follows me here, which is why I'm beginning with this post rather than the logical fallacies one.

I just want to do a quick roll call and find out who, exactly, I'm writing for (besides myself, of course). So, those of you who followed me from Myspace, please speak up, and heck, if any of my old readers from this blog are still listening, you should speak up, too.

It is a brave new world here on blogger. A world of merciful autosaves...a world free of clattering, cumbersome features I will never use. It may also be a world in which you have to register to comment, but I'm not sure. If so, BE BRAVE! Remember you will only have to do it once.

Next up: How to avoid being played like a fiddle by politicians, graduate students, and other long-winded hucksters.