GOOD POINT, WRONG ARGUMENT
Sep. 24th, 2011 11:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogCurrently making the rounds amongst the liberal friends in my Facebook feed: this infomeme from MoveOn.
The quote comes from a video of Elizabeth Warren – who is challenging Scott Brown’s Senate seat – campaigning in August and talking about taxing the rich and the rich crying “class warfare”.
And every time this pic pops up, I get cranky and have to force myself to adhere to my “no politics” rule on the Fbooks – and thus take it out on you lovely people here on the LJs.
I don’t have anything against Warren herself – I don’t know much about her, but she seems bright enough and tends to make sense the few times I’ve heard her talk. And she scares the holy f*** out of Rush Limbaugh, which is always a good thing to be able to say about yrself.
And technically I agree with the quote itself, though I think the term “social contract” is misused. I suspect she’s not literally talking aboutSocial Contract Theory so much as the basic rationale for having a taxation system in the first place. At the very least, the US has always functioned on the general acceptance of the idea that some kind of taxation system must exist if we want a functioning democratic government, and that society benefits from a public commons funded by tax money that enables it to function and thrive – roads, education, security, etc. So I do get the basic point she’s trying to make, and it’s a point worth making.
The problem is that the whole tax-the-rich/class warfare debate she’s referring to isn't really about that. As far as I know, apart from the hardcore Libertarian dingbats who’ve read too much Ayn Rand (and too selectively), most conservative politicians aren’t arguing that the rich shouldn’t have to pay a hunk forward so much as they’re haggling over the size of the hunk, and the kinds of stuff that hunk ought to be paying for.
So Warren is basically applying a good point to the wrong argument – or so it seems. The video cuts off at that point, and it’s possible she went on to expand on that point.
But that’s not what’s being circulated. MoveOn has selected an out-of-context statement on a complex issue and turned it into a tidy, digestible and viral info-meme as though it neatly sums up the entire problem and how you should feel about it.
Which would be fine if it actually did that. But it doesn’t. It’s distraction propaganda that dumbs down the issue and sends people off on irrelevant tangents, which is a disservice to whatever political movement it’s trying to advance in the first place, to say nothing of Warren herself.
Which, you know, annoys me and crap.
Stay on topic,
This is dF
The quote comes from a video of Elizabeth Warren – who is challenging Scott Brown’s Senate seat – campaigning in August and talking about taxing the rich and the rich crying “class warfare”.
And every time this pic pops up, I get cranky and have to force myself to adhere to my “no politics” rule on the Fbooks – and thus take it out on you lovely people here on the LJs.
I don’t have anything against Warren herself – I don’t know much about her, but she seems bright enough and tends to make sense the few times I’ve heard her talk. And she scares the holy f*** out of Rush Limbaugh, which is always a good thing to be able to say about yrself.
And technically I agree with the quote itself, though I think the term “social contract” is misused. I suspect she’s not literally talking aboutSocial Contract Theory so much as the basic rationale for having a taxation system in the first place. At the very least, the US has always functioned on the general acceptance of the idea that some kind of taxation system must exist if we want a functioning democratic government, and that society benefits from a public commons funded by tax money that enables it to function and thrive – roads, education, security, etc. So I do get the basic point she’s trying to make, and it’s a point worth making.
The problem is that the whole tax-the-rich/class warfare debate she’s referring to isn't really about that. As far as I know, apart from the hardcore Libertarian dingbats who’ve read too much Ayn Rand (and too selectively), most conservative politicians aren’t arguing that the rich shouldn’t have to pay a hunk forward so much as they’re haggling over the size of the hunk, and the kinds of stuff that hunk ought to be paying for.
So Warren is basically applying a good point to the wrong argument – or so it seems. The video cuts off at that point, and it’s possible she went on to expand on that point.
But that’s not what’s being circulated. MoveOn has selected an out-of-context statement on a complex issue and turned it into a tidy, digestible and viral info-meme as though it neatly sums up the entire problem and how you should feel about it.
Which would be fine if it actually did that. But it doesn’t. It’s distraction propaganda that dumbs down the issue and sends people off on irrelevant tangents, which is a disservice to whatever political movement it’s trying to advance in the first place, to say nothing of Warren herself.
Which, you know, annoys me and crap.
Stay on topic,
This is dF
