Pensive wrote:
I find it interesting that such an avowed realist (you) are complaining so much about the means to gaining support for a position. Assuming for the moment that your argument holds some weight, I'd think that a "realist" would recognize such rhetorical tactics as a very practical way of gaining enough power and clout to shape the world in some meaningful way; you ought to be applauding him and his insight into how best to enable his dreams. Instead you seem quite bound to the (ultimately arbitrary and meaningless) ideals of the rules of debating.
I think you're confusing realism with pragmatism. Although, honestly, neither exactly fits what I'm talking about.
To me, the method is the most important thing. Why we do something is just as important as what we do. This is critically important in a democratic society since getting people to do the "right thing for the wrong reasons" is inherently dangerous, since they can now equally do the wrong thing. If I've trained my population to respond to rhetoric in order to get them to do what I want (which is what folks like Chomsky seem to be going after), then there's nothing to prevent said population from responding to someone else's rhetoric and doing something disastrous.
If the population (or at least a significant portion of them) isn't able to make reasonable decisions based on the information before them, then the decisions they do make are basically up to the winds of fate. Whoever comes up with the most clever sounding words or who can appeal to whether hot-button triggers the population has been trained to respond to, can get them to support *anything* since they've been primed to simply hand power to whomever "wins" within that context.
Too much separation between the action being proposed and the reasons for that action can result in a population that can no longer distinguish a truly good idea from a truly bad one. They simply go with whoever sounds best. I'm certainly not expecting that everyone can engage in good rational thinking, but by encouraging it, we're setting ourselves up for some serious problems. And when those who should be engaging in some kind of intellectual debate willfully replace rhetoric for reason, then who's driving the bus?
Someone has to step up and apply some reason to our decisions. This role has traditionally been filled by the thinkers and social leaders of society. They set the "tone" of the national debate, and by their choice of words and deeds, pass the context of any given issue to the masses. But it seems like somewhere along the line, intellectualism has been replaced with dogmatic regurgitation. And when those whom the rest of society is supposed to take their cues from are arguing bogus issues with bogus logic based more on wordplay and "gotcha" rules, it does the entire process no good.
It's no wonder that so few people seem to be able to even recognize, much less understand, a good coherent argument today. They've been programmed to respond in an almost pavolvian way to particular soundbites instead. They cheer or boo based on those things, and not what's actually being said. And that's a serious problem...
