Friday, April 2, 2021

If you are not allowed to make the argument, make the contrast

I have a sense I wish I could figure out how to measure and validate whether it is true or not.

All through the Trump presidency it was simply a simplistic bludgeoning of Trump by the mainstream media.  There was no investigative reporting, no detailed examination of policies, no editorials on the merits of a policy.  It was all simply a matter of illegitimate presidency, Russian collusion, Ukraine, etc.  All hoaxes in the end but not before consuming ink and digits, dominating the attention span, overwhelming any actual factual reporting out there.

Then there was an ebb tide at the election and the dynamic switched to suppressing election news, hiding damaging stories, de-platforming critics, etc.  Repugnant but not unexpected.

But it seems like there is a slightly different dynamic in recent months.  It is less about conservatives or Republicans making more effective arguments.  It seems like the focus is increasingly some form of rhetorical jujitsu.  Don't attack the mainstream media; make it obvious where there are logical discontinuities.

Here is an example. 

Biden has taken to misrepresenting a recently passed Georgia election security law for rhetorical and partisan advantage.  There is nothing either illegal about the law nor nefarious about the goals.  All citizens should be able to vote and all citizens should be confident that their votes are indeed counted.  Nobody who is not permitted to vote should have a vote counted.  

There is an obvious tension between the goal of restricting illicit voters and making it optimally easy for citizens to vote, but it is one that can be resolved without too great difficulty.

My point is not to debate why Biden is making the misrepresentation of the law or argue the relative merits of the new law.

My point is that usually you would see that sort of argument in the MSM and various media.  To a small but declining extent, you still see some of that, but not much of that.

Instead what I seeing more of is the more simplistic rhetorical strategy of making someone's position most obviously ridiculous.

Biden is calling for a boycott of sports events in Georgia based on the new law.  It seems an inappropriate thing for a sitting President to do, given that no one has made the argument to a court of law that the new law is illegal.   Why would the president seek to punish those who have not committed a crime.

But that's just normal sordid, dirty politics.

What is interesting is AG Hamilton's jibe.  If the appropriate response to a bad election law, why not apply that principal everywhere?  China has among the most obvious and worst election abuses (see recent Hong Kong history) much less what they are doing to Uighurs.  If Georgia should be punished for an election law, why not a major perpetrator like China.

I understand why not, but the contrast between wanting to economically punish a state for a duly passed law while giving carte blanche to a repressive authoritarian regime is an bad look.  All AG Hamilton is doing is drawing attention to the obvious inconsistency rather than making the factual argument that Biden is simply wrong in his assertions.

Maybe that tactic has always been there and I am only now noticing it, but it sure seems more frequent than it used to be.

UPDATE:  Here's another example.

 

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