Last week, someone called our home. Sherry answered. She was asked this question (roughly):
"How you feel about the plan to surrender in Iraq?"
"Surrender" was the operative word. As if the request being made by most people in the U.S. to reduce our troop involvement and set Iraq on a course towards self-government was "surrender."
Sherry got a bit animated in her response. What did the caller mean by "surrender?" "Surrender" means raising your hands and submitting to arrest or imprisonment. Or it means signing a treaty that marks you as the loser in a conflict. We're not advocating either of those, and neither are any of the people who disagree with the direction of the administration's policy in Iraq.
No, this caller is part of the coordinated campaign [1] to paint anyone who disagrees with the administration as a scared, unpatriotic loser. When Sherry voiced her opinion, strongly, the caller suggested she "Settle down."
Settle down? You asked how she felt! She told you! She told you that your question was inflammatory and biased.
Yet, somehow, I bet that call fed into a poll which will show that Sherry was just one of some small percentage who were "in favor" of the "policy of surrender."
To clarify Twain's classification of the three kinds of lies: "Lies, damned lies, and statistics supporting damned lies." [2]
[1] I suggest we create a new term for this sort of tactic. Considering the perfecter of the technique, maybe the term could be "krovism." It's a mutated form of the virulent "McCarthyism" which survives if the population of neoreactionaries is high enough.
[2]Or perhaps more accurately credited to Disraeli, as Twain did.
1 comment:
Good for Sherry for stating her opinions and feelings. And not succumbing to manipulation.
In terms of logical fallacies--would this kind of question be a "straw man?" or is that something else?
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