Fair and Balanced.  If you don’t quickly insert a counterclaim into your assertion, not only your claim, but you, our dear ad hominem Reader, will be shouted to pieces.

God help us if we aren’t Fair and Balanced. Nothing equals the trump power of the shrill accusation that a claim is not “fair and balanced” in sanctioning its contemptuous dismissal. Our paperwork will not be processed at all if it isn’t accompanied by the proper credential: an opposing “view.”

You, our dear Reader, know what we think of those who dismiss ideas because they are not “moderate” and “balanced” and “centrist.” And if you don’t, by gosh, you will find this essay to be well paired with our previous essay: http://www.takebackourlanguage.com/blog/2009/05/09/when-there-is-nothing-moderate-about-the-horrors-you-oppose-how-can-you-be-a-moderate/1559

Here’s how it goes. Our assertion can only be credible if we fairly present a balancing, opposing view. In fact- no observation can be valid if we do not supply its negation (in the space provided).

“Then there’s the problem of “balance” – the idea that reporters must give roughly equal space to two different “sides” of a controversy. When applied to science, especially in politicized areas, this media norm becomes extremely problematic. Should journalists really grant equal time to the small band of scientists who deny the causal relationship between HIV and AIDS when the vast majority of researchers accept the connection between the two? Should they split column space between the few remaining global warming “skeptics” and the scientific experts who affirm the phenomenon’s human causation? Again, experienced science journalists will know best how to cover such stories and will be aware of the scientific community’s very justifiable abhorrence of unthinking “balance.””

Chris Mooney & Sheril Kirschenbaum: “Unpopular Science”. The Nation (August 17, 2009 ed.). (Our emphasis.) http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090817/mooney_kirshenbaum

To be considered scientific, assertions are subject in principle to the possibility of disproof: that there is conceivable evidence that would contradict them. (We promise to supply later some proper citations of Stephen Popper and Thomas Kuhn).

The inversion of this is of particular value to thoughtful inquiry: that assertions for which there is no conceivable evidence that might disprove them are not regarded as “scientific.” This is useful: They are not  “disprovable ” (and hence not scientific). But this leads to an unfortunate shorthand reference: hence, scientific claims ARE “disprovable.” We think this shorthand is a linguistic mutilation and terribly unfortunate.

Popular usage has bastardized and perverted this. Anti-scientists seem to rely on an uncritical popular vulnerability to the idea that something can only be considered scientific if there is some evidence that contradicts it. Hence, a “thing” can only be regarded as credible -or “true”- if it is equally –and credibly- “untrue.” “Disprovable.” At will. Have been and will be disproved.

Theories. Let’s reclaim this word for ourselves so we can go back to using it in real, sober, reasoning deliberation. Overlooked in popular discourse is the condition that “scientific” theories (like evolution and climate change) that are regarded as credible -not to say “true”- do not have substantial evidence that contradicts them. They are not disproved.

Look at the injury this does not only to science, but also to public discourse (and language itself). Science, and very scientificness, are mangled and reduced to nonsensical rubble. By the way, the notional “the exception that proves the rule” is bullshit. Rules don’t have exceptions and exceptions don’t prove anything. Don’t get us started.

And who profits by this? Those who would hack away at intellectual honesty to advance ideological aims achieve this jaw-dropping perversity: nothing can claim to be “true” or valid or meaningful unless it stands there, proudly, with its arm around its own self-proclamation that it is untrue! Good god!

Science and the scientific are categorically defined as inherently contradictory and self-disproving. One cannot recruit a claim for scientific (or rational) validity for any assertion without suggesting that there is (equally scientific!) “evidence” to the contrary.

Thus- looky! we can discount, disdain and ridicule any scientific claim. Because it is… scientific. And we can dismiss science itself. Logic and rational discourse too. While we are at it. As ridiculous, naïve and stupidly self-contradictory. Woa!

That would be really perverse and insane, wouldn’t it? Any claim to truth is simultaneously and symmetrically a claim to untruth?  That, Reader, is what we have done.

Whatever else you, Reader, might do, don’t allow these people to fool you into allowing them to make claims based on “logic” or “reason” or “evidence,” or for god’s sake, “truth. They gave up claims to that kind of “truth” way too long ago for us to brook that bullshit. They have no claims to such things. We are more than justified, nay obligated, to shout them to pieces. We must save them from the embarrassment of their own screaming hypocrisy. Oh and, of course, you’ll agree that we must all applaud Bill Mahr’s film Religulous.

Please. Dismiss without evidence that which cannot be presented with evidence. Give no credence to the idea that these ideas or people operate within the realm of reason and proofs. They don’t, and it is a disservice to honest intellectual discourse to be fooled into responding. They attempt to make it look like the unfounded belief and the reasoned, supported argument have the same standing. They don’t.

By all means. Examine ideas rationally and with reason. Subject them to skepticism, contradiction, counterargument and disproof. Take seriously all ideas that claim to meaning, truth, validity, and mere usefulness. With intellectual integrity and honesty, feel free to discredit them. This our beloved search for meaning, and it is its own truth. This is the kind of truth we most admire.

But do not accept as “controversy” the shrill idiocies of extremists who challenge what we know. So many “things” are simply… uncontroversial. And so many are simply… true. Reject without argument assertions that an “opposing point of view” makes them controversial, or untrue… and vilify you, Reader, as not “fair and balanced.”

Dismiss, without reason, argument or recourse to sense, those who would deflect, dismiss and silence the obvious with refractory, schizoid and insane demands that you be “fair and balanced.”

“These anti-democratic forces will use fear, chaos and hatred…” Chris Hedges

“At no period in American history has our democracy been in such peril or the possibility of totalitarianism as real. Our way of life is over. Our profligate consumption is finished. Our children will never have the standard of living we had. This is the bleak future. This is reality.” 

…

“There are powerful corporate entities, fearful of losing their influence and wealth, arrayed against us.  They are waiting for a moment to strike, a national crisis that will allow them, in the name of national security and moral renewal, to take complete control. The tools are in place. These antidemocratic forces, which will seek to make an alliance with the Christian Right and other extremists, will use fear, chaos, the hatred for the ruling elites, and the specter of left-wing dissent and terrorism to impose draconian controls to extinguish our democracy. And while they do it, they will be waving the American flag, chanting patriotic slogans, promising law and order, and clutching the Christian cross. By then, exhausted and broken, we may have lost the power to resist.” Pp 189

Hedges, Christopher: Empire Of Illusion (New York: Nation Books 2009) pp 145, pp 189

“Hateful, Rude or Ignorant Remarks Are The Music Of A Free Society…” Daniel Gilbert

“We live in a world in which people are censured, demoted, imprisoned, beheaded, simply because they have opened their mouths, flapped their lips, and vibrated some air. Yes, those vibrations can make us feel sad or stupid or alienated. Tough shit. That’s the price of admission to the marketplace of ideas. Hateful, blasphemous, prejudiced, vulgar, rude or ignorant remarks are the music of a free society, and the relentless patter of idiots is how we know we’re in one. When all the words in our public conversation are fair, good, and true, it’s time to make a run for the fence.

Daniel Gilbert. In The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007. Dave Eggers (Ed.) Houghton Mifflin, New York: 2007. pp129-30.

“Social Transformations That Threaten Without Enlightening:” William Brustein

“”It can be said of such strata [the lower middle class] that they are less actors than acted upon by social transformations which threaten without enlightening them; that they are dependent, vulnerable, and politically reactive under stress; and that, lacking a preexisting political church which might explain their plight to them, their instinctive response to dangerously stressful social change is to support those candidates and movements who can most effectively promise them that such change will be stopped.”"

William Brustein, The Social Origins Of The Nazi Party 1925-1933 Pp 7

“HITLERIAN REVELS IN MADISON SQUARE GARDEN:” William Goldston

“Organizations such as William Dudley Pelley’s Silver Shirts (SS) attracted thousands of members with a program of frank Fascism and anti-semitism. Father Coughlin… had organized the Christian Front as a Jew-baiting fascist group whose members held rifle practice weekly at their camp in New Jersey. Fritz Kuhn’s German-America Bund was able to attract 20,000 people to its Hitlerian revels in Madison Square Garden.”

Robert Goldston, The Great Depression: The United States In The Thirties (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968). pp 237

Susan Jacoby, Quoting Lyman Beecher:

“Beecher declared that men “who have been cast down from affluence to poverty should not grunt and grumble, but bear matters unflinchingly. They should never forget that they are men, even though they die of hunger. An Indian, uncivilized though he was, never flinched when fire was applied to his body. The manly way to meet misfortune is to go down boldly to poverty.” “(Lyman Beecher was Minister of the Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn. He was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s father.)

Cited in Susan Jacoby: The Age of American Unreason. Random House: New York, 2008. pp. 73.

DISTURBING ATTACK ON FEMINISM: The Insidiousness of the Palin Circus

Friday, 05 September 2008. Heard on “Talk Of the Nation” on NPR.

A woman is interviewed about her perceptions of Governor Sarah Palin and her voting intentions. She describes how a media pundit has raised questions about Governor Palin’s suitability as prospective Vice President because of her family circumstances. The interviewee is offended that these questions are being raised about Governor Palin. The offending question suggests that Palin may have especially demanding and conflicting claims on her time and attention, since she is a parent, a member of a family, and a woman.

“Conservatives” abound in breathless, exuberant joy about the choice of ms. Palin, specifically because she is a woman and mother. Certainly, no questions are raised about this. Great stuff. Church, kids and jello-mould. Moose-mould. Great things are made of what these, specifically sexist, differences bring to her suitability as a candidate. Her presumed leadership, her integrity, her strength, her judgment, her compassion, must be at least in part conditions of her gender, of her sex. So it is argued. Most importantly though, they are a result, a true, causal result, of the fact that her experience in the world is different because she is a woman. This is the most profoundly sexist, and hypocritical, premise of all. She is good, she is better, she is sanctified, because she is a woman, and women live in a different world from men. There is no other logic here. It can only be so.

But wait- it is an unconscionable, damnable sexist attack on this woman to ask whether her world and how she lives in it is relevant to her selection as a running-mate! Running-mate. Hmmm. Gonna runnem-down them carry-boos. Killem. ‘N eatem. Feedem childrens.

And! Her experience as a person who gives birth makes her extremist religious beliefs, and her positions on matters of public health policy, categorically different from those of men. Even extremist, fundamentalist Men claim to decide such things on the basis of sober, detached consideration about the public merits of policies; avowedly moral consideration, but presumably reasoned nonetheless.

But Ms. Palin’s passions, beliefs, intractability and extremism are unquestionable, honorable, unchallengeable, even sacred somehow, because they come from someplace in her body other than her head. Her beliefs are sacral; hence they cannot be wrong. How could Motherhood be wrong? Clearly, the extremism of Ms. Palin is not an opinion or a belief or a good heavens a policy position. Or ideological or “partisan.” It is Something Else- and the entry of this Something Else into a presidential election is decidedly ominous and dangerous.

If these are matters of public policy that are subject to appropriate consideration and debate among responsible citizens, is not Ms. Palin excluded from such deliberations? I mean, how fuckin’ sexist is that? How many goddamn ways do you want this, people?

The interviewee avers that the questions raised –the questions themselves- are reprehensible and prejudicial. She then says that the event has caused her to be more likely to vote for McCain in the Presidential election. No questions are raised about this woman’s teleology by the interviewer. But we think it might be stupid. It’s not because she’s a woman. It’s because she’s stupid.

In observing this, we have had a moment of clarity about how political persuasion works. In our popular lexicon, we can understand this as “push” marketing.

McCain, his political party, his associates and affiliations, the policies and the positions he advocates, and the consequences of his possible election have not been raised in this dialogue. Yet, the interviewee describes a significant, perhaps determinant, experience in her voting decision.

This woman is now more likely to vote for candidate McCain, on the basis of something said by a television “journalist.” That person does not appear at all in the radio piece I heard. She must be a woman, though.

Firstly, we think this is a dangerously ignorant and inappropriate way to decide such things. While this was not obviously apparent to the interviewer, the interviewee, and to NPR as an editorial mechanism, we hope that it is clear to you.

It is the privilege of television “journalists” to state their inane prejudices and tautological conclusions without reflection, or reason, or support of any basis in reality. Often they proffer them as “questions.” We claim the same privilege in stating, without evidence,  that the “journalist” in question is ignorant, wrong, offensive, immature and rude. This may not be true, but so be it. We don’t care. It is our privilege to be wrong. But perhaps we should phrase it as a question. As long a we can avoid claims that we are Not Fair or Balanced…

Of course, I do not mean to suggest that the questions raised by this “journalist,” in themselves, are inappropriate. Likelihood is, they are meaningful and important questions, and help illuminate the issue. Questions are good. Great questions. Necessary questions. She must be a woman. Most questions are not “irresponsible” unless they are ideological statements cloaked as questions. Then, they are unequivocally and categorically dishonest, deceitful and wrong, whatever the ideological position. This happens all the time. Especially among these here so-called “journalists.”

We can hope that the voter in question is simply rejecting, in an entirely appropriate indignance, this whole way of conducting our public conversation and selecting of who will represent us. Hurray! But confusion reigneth beneath, and the ultimate effect on her thinking –and on her acting as a serious member of a polity- is contradictory, wrong and very, very damaging.

The interviewee has been influenced in her voting decision by her distaste for the conduct of this “journalist.” Without referring to her own beliefs or her self-interest. She is so off the hook! Like the jury that acquitted O. J. Cut-Throat Simpson. Just like it.

Let’s call this “Push” Electioneering. She votes, based on her dislike of someone she do not know, whom she has never met, of whose opinion she have a very low regard (and is objectively of no consequence at all), who has offended her, and who has nothing, literally nothing, to do with the opinions and intentions of any candidates. Someone who she believes to be ignorant, wrong, offensive, immature and rude.

Basing one’s decision on whom to vote for on such bullshit is wrong. II guess not so obviously so, though, unless we tease this thing apart. We’re clear, though, right? This is Bad decision-making?

In our public discourse, it is implicit and unquestioned that events like this, and the reporting of them, are a meaningful part of our public conversation about how we will govern ourselves. This is “journalism.” Does this suggest that the “reporting” of this, the airing of the interview itself, is a newsworthy and responsible, even significant, part of what we are to know and how we are to decide? More, does it suggest that this important “journalism” might in itself affect how others vote? Wow.

Wow. This is what we humbly submit may be called “Push” Electioneering. You and I, having listened to this third-hand “journalistic report,” will decide how to vote. We’ll decide who will be President of the United States, in distaste, in our rejection of the final, crowning stupidity and offensiveness of some person on television, whom we don’t know and will never meet, who has no proper role in how we govern ourselves, and whom we categorically disrespect and distrust. Appropriately distrust. And whose actual interview we never heard.

So much for “Push” Electioneering. Let’s look at the “political” dynamics of this.

Questions are raised about whether Ms. Palin may have been chosen in order to appeal to supporters of Ms. Clinton, disaffected (“pushed”) by their bitterness about candidate Obama’s nomination. The suggestion is implicit, that bitterness, specifically on the part of women, will affect how votes are made. Republican electioneers believe this to be so. The choice of  Ms. Palin supports the conclusion.

Questions are raised whether this may be a “political” choice on the part of the McCain campaign, as opposed to a “governing” choice. It is implied that if this is so, it is unsavory, but why or how is never examined. Why indeed? Why might we care, why might it matter, if a Presidential candidate does such things? If it matters, especially if it is wrong, how should we understand it? Do we infer that a better choice than Ms. Palin would result from a more responsible decision? That Ms. Palin is an irresponsible choice? A wrong choice? Yes, it does. A Wrong Choice. The veiled suggestion of such things, but not their exposure and analysis, might be the work of “journalists;” NPR in this case.

Difficult analysis such as this is needed to excavate how questions, inferences, and possible answers about matters such as the choice of Ms. Palin are truly sexist. They truly do violence to honest public understanding and debate about real issues.

But don’t overlook the grim but unexamined sexism in the grounding of the whole sequence in suppositions about the bitterness and irrationality of woman supporters of Ms. Clinton. Ms. Clinton is obviously right in her refusal to engage in this whole matter of accusations of prejudice, sexism and personal acrimony surrounding Ms. Palin.

The selection of Ms. Palin as a running-mate for McCain is much more insidious, clever and destructive of public discourse than appears from events like the interview described above.

Take a look. People are angry. Tropes, old wounds, stereotypical assumptions, old lies and dissimulations about feminism and  the Right and the Left are upside down, confused, muddled and now seemingly unstable. Sexism, raw and ugly, is an invited guest in this campaign, and it is indiscriminately damaging our public process and injuring us all. But it wears a nice, new pantsuit of sheep’s clothing.

Right reactionaries are defending and espousing “feminism.” They are decrying supposed attacks on a woman, made supposedly because she is a woman.

Clinton supporters are infantilized, derogated and further embittered. They are allegedly “pushed” by right-reactionary trivialization of the substance of feminism and its commitments.

Left critical thinkers (and “journalists”) are demonized not only as sexist, but as low, deceitful, cynical (and hypocritical) manipulators, stooping to blunt personal attacks to “play politics.”  To “win” without regard to the principles and commitments that actually distinguish “liberals” from “conservatives.” As we know, painting the left as cynically hypocritical manipulators is an opinion-management technique that obscures and whitewashes the deceit and hypocrisy of the right. (See our essay Liberal Bias.)

We submit the following.

The choice of Ms. Palin is more insidiously cynical, deceptive and sexist than we could have iunderstood, without examining what is happening now. Tossed into the presidential campaign, irresponsibly and dangerously, it has clouded, disrupted, confused and veiled the commitments and convictions of all liberation politics. It has undermined and simultaneously obscured the foundations of liberation, of inclusion, of the entire post-colonial project. It is far more dangerous than first appeared to the history and unity of movements of resistance to the reactionary powers that impoverish and disenfranchise us.

This is discursive, rhetorical deceit at its best. Simultaneously, in one super-swell fell swoop, the unity and solidarity of feminism, liberalism, progressivism and liberation politics in general have all been confused, obscured and erased. Worse, the language of feminism and the voices of resistance in general, have been co-opted, hijacked, contaminated and ultimately possibly silenced by “conservatives.” Listen to the indignance, the anger, the pain and resentment in the voices of this interviewee, and our “journalists,” about the avowed prejudiced transgressions of the “liberal left media.” We now see the incredible power of “Push” Electioneering.

We all owe a monumental debt to feminism and to feminists, whether or not we see it or know it or accept it. Losing any of the power, the meaning, the substance and the ennobling history of what feminism has brought to the politics of inclusion and liberation would be an enormous and unrecuperable loss. To us, this looks like a profoundly critical moment. Let’s not overlook the dangers of this kind of subversion of public discourse and theft of our language.