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Friday, December 27, 2013

Pajama Boy and leftist rhetorical tactics

It's interesting to note the kind of person Pajama Boy is. It's even more interesting to note that this is the kind of person Obamacare views as representative of who would appeal to those who would buy government healthcare. However, he's not a typical American at all. He's an extremist, an outlier, a Leftist operative. He encapsulates all of what's wrong with the political Left.

In several of my prior posts I have noted how leftists debate. Apparently Pajama Boy employs these tactics as a deliberate strategy This post, which was unattributed, perfectly describes these leftist rhetorical tactics. It's nice to know that other people have noticed this too.
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"The more I argued with them, the better I came to know their dialectic. First they counted on the stupidity of their adversary, and then, when there was no other way out, they themselves simply played stupid. If all this didn't help, they pretended not to understand, or, if challenged, they changed the subject in a hurry, quoted platitudes which, if you accepted them, they immediately related to entirely different matters, and then, if again attacked, gave ground and pretended not to know exactly what you were talking about. Whenever you tried to attack one of these apostles, your hand closed on a jelly-like slime which divided up and poured through your fingers, but in the next moment collected again. But if you really struck one of these fellows so telling a blow that, observed by the audience, he couldn't help but agree, and if you believed that this had taken you at least one step forward, your amazement was great the next day. [He] had not the slightest recollection of the day before, he rattled off his same old nonsense as though nothing at all had happened, and, if indignantly challenged, affected amazement; he couldn't remember a thing, except that he had proved the correctness of his assertions the previous day."
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Although the author ascribes a procession of strategy, in actual fact any of these can manifest at any time as might be convenient to your interlocutor. To recap:

1) The stupidity of their adversary
2) play stupid 
3) Pretend not to understand
4) If challenged, they change the subject
5) They quoted platitudes, often irrelevant or incorrectly applied 
6) If you win a point, the next day, they act as though nothing previously had happened

There are more tactics the Left uses to neuter debate as well, like

1) Personal attacks
2) Logical fallacies, like Straw Men, Appeals to Authority, and Non Sequiturs.
3) Escalating profanity
4) Mocking
5) Accusations that their adversaries are shilling (knowingly or not) for corporate interests
6) Blaming a person's thinking on Fox (Faux) News or the Koch brothers
7) Tacitly granting a point but moving the goalposts in order to make you prove a new point not originally under discussion
8) Never, ever, admit they are wrong.
9) Exiting a debate when they are losing, frequently with a parting insult.

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