Letters to the Editor
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Poor Pedinska
I am still 8 pages of comments behind. I can't imagine how exhausted all of you must be by now if you are still arguing with this imagined stain upon our collective souls.
No one is arguing with him any more, it having been shown to be quite pointless. Not only does he not know what he is talking about, he apparently doesn't even realize what he is saying.
He is using the same argument that the Bush administration does, that there can be no criticism of the war in Iraq, of Guantánamo, torture, military commissions or even of the administration itself because it emboldens the enemy and gives them comfort, except that he is applying it to Israel, AIPAC, and Jews in general with respect to anti-Semitism.
He has clearly missed his calling — he should be an interrogator for the CIA. Fifteen minutes in a room with him and the most hardened terrorist would beg to tell everything he knows if they will only shut this guy up. His characterization of himself as a whiny Jew doesn't half do him justice. I suspect that in actuality he is the Vogon poet-laureate (h/t to WT via the Chocolate Interrobang).
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Enlighten Us, Oh Great Wise One!
WinSmith:
Paul
Paul, you're an intellectual disgrace. Pearls before swine. Monkeys don't read Nietzsche? Yes they do, Otto, they just don't understand it.
Logical fallacies are simplifications, binary tropes of reductionist thought. That doesn't mean logic doesn't hold sway, only that your inane mathemetical reductions were outdated by the time Benjamin began The Arcades Project.
In which case, it should be child's play for you to show precisely what's wrong with my logic in showing your arguments to be fallacious. I pointed out two fallacies, and described specifically what was wrong with your reasoninig. If I'm so hopelessly outdated, then you surely could have set me straight with one hand tied behind your back. Maybe even both eyes closed, too.
Yet, instead of doing that, you preceeded to attack me (ad hominem, another fallacy, but, then, that's your whole schtick) which is not a terribly instructive approach.
So, enlighten us, oh Great Master! Show us the error of our ways! Show us how you were not arguing disingenuously when I pointed out that you were using the fallacies of
Affirming The Consequent:
http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/10/06/various_items/permalink/7359325abf2d9bea2cdbaa4c52f692ae.html
and Equivocation:
http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/10/06/various_items/permalink/52d85a5411778952c8a1d9406f1fd5e5.html
We are waiting, oh Great Enlightened One!
Prove to us that Black Is White!
We eagerly await thy Divine Instruction!
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Pedinska
I have no problem with jews/Israelis.
I DO have a problem with Jewish members of a lobbyist group with too much influnce in this country who want control Americas' foreign policy-like AIPAC.
I think win has more than made the point that many members of this AIPAC group or sympathetic to it-think that they are beyond blame for any of the war-promoting going on in the Mideast. Glen has stated he thinks they are but one cog in the wheel and I somewhat agree-there have been lots of enablers.
I don't doubt that there are Israelis who want peace-I just wish that they would elect officials who felt the same way. I suspect that they are victims, just as we Americans are-to the massively corrupt military complex.
I also know Israel is a big customer of the US military complex-so to keep it going-it would be beneficial to have a pro-war govt/complete with propaganda machine in the media to feed it-just like us. So to keep Israel in fear of its' neighbors-to NOT have any kind of peace accord just keeps the $$$$ rolling right into the military complex that the neocons see as the only way this economy makes $$$. The propaganda in the media goes along with this by feeding us a steady diet of Brittny news to make us NOT focus on the wars they intend.To keep us from loooking at thier corruption. After all GE, is majorly involved in the military complex also.
To hell with anyone aginst war, against peace,against finding other sources of oil......guess it'll continue until cars are just relics of the last days of oil left scattered throughout our landscape and the earth is just a crater of the ravages of war.
I'm vehemently anti-war and I resent those trying to make false claims to further embroil us in more. If there were not such enablers to the military complex-wars would not be so easy for corrupt governments to launch.
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And the Troll of the Year Award goes to....
WinSmith.
If there is such an award, this would have to be a top nominee. If there isn't, there should be.
Slow day, I guess.
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I've had enough...
When you hold a group to be so sacrosanct that they are above criticism, then you invite and encourage abuse by that group. - Paul Dirks
You also set that group up to be abused by those who won't criticize them but will use them for their own purpose as they "protect" them from criticism.
I believe I have witnessed my first Triple-A, Cat 5, Gold Star, Certified Attention Whore. I wasn't sure that category of folk was well defined before, but it is now. Pages and pages of the serpent swallowing its own tail. No matter how hard you all tried to keep that Whore from choking on him/herself, they were bound and determined to do it anyway.
I'm going back to Duality. It's much more productive, and a higher and better use of your time Paul R. This turkey is third rate, and dishonest at best.
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'Identity' arguments
You neglected to mention in your comment that you're a woman. Therefore, your womanhood is obviously completely unimportant to you and you don't identify as a woman at all.
I am guilty of not noting my blondeness. I've been blonde all my life, so it really doesn't have any 'importance' per se, it just is.
And beyond that, he keeps saying that if my Jewishness were central to my identity, that would somehow have some impact on whether my arguments were anti-semitic.
If my blondeness were central to my intelligence (as some 'humor' would have it), that would somehow have an impact on whether or not I can even argue.
All of this has now been reduced to the level of the painfully obvious and elementary fallacies. I realized that many pages ago and accordingly vowed to stop responding and I ought to have adhered to that.
I'm glad you didn't. And glad Mona jumped into the fray too. Good on ya both.