Today I learnt a new term
for politicians who defensively lie
about their political opposition,
though I knew how the lie worked
before I learnt the term; 'strawmaning'.
The lie works the following way
Politician A 'I propose proposition X'
Politician B 'You do know Politician A that Proposition Y won't work?'.
In this verbal process Politician B simultaneously
misrepresents and discredits Politician A's proposal
and criticises the now distorted idea for being weak,
furthering giving themselves credit for being right
and making their opponent seem wrong
whilst avoiding sharing what might have been
an internally consistent position all along.
This process has both driven and confounded
the negotiations for Brexit from the beginning
and along with false assumptions in the UK
about how absolute absolute rule in the UK ever was
has brought politics and representative democracy
to a stand-still where the gain-sayers of whatever is proposed
stop all they dislike, and produce no position of their own.
No comments:
Post a Comment