Nazi Party Day, Nuremberg, 1934 Adolf Hitler is the center guy of the three who are facing us and giving the straight-armed salute. Heinrich Himmler is Hitler's right-hand man there. (click on image for larger version)

Speaking of large, powerful armies of disciplined, unthinking, obedient followers, Alcoholics Anonymous seems to have its own too. These quotes are from books of daily meditations for A.A. members published by the A.A. headquarters and Hazelden: "I will center my thoughts on a Higher Power. I will surrender all to his power within me. I will become a soldier for this power, feeling the might of the spiritual army as it exists in my life today. I will allow a wave of spiritual union to connect me through my gratitude, obedience, and discipline to this Higher Power. Let me allow this power to lead me through the orders of the day." Daily Reflections; A Book of Reflections by A.A. members for A.A. members, Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1990, August 27, page 248. I will lock arms today and move forward in the company of those who need me. I need them also. The Promise of a New Day: A Book of Daily Meditations, Karen Casey and Martha Vanceburg, Hazelden, November 4. The interesting thing about pomp, ceremony, and ritual is that it has an irrational appeal. You are asked to accept an organization and its whole package of beliefs and dogma based on beautiful costumes, magnificent surroundings, rituals, ceremonies, and dramatic productions — things that have absolutely nothing to do with whether it is a good or bad organization, has a good or a bad agenda, or has a good or a bad leader. You shouldn't choose your religion or your politics on the basis of who has the most colorful costumes or the most entertaining ceremonies, but a lot of people do. A variation on this technique is lots of hoopla, fun, parties, spiritual jet-setting, get-togethers, conventions, and conferences.

Moonies Mass Marriage Ceremony, 13 Feb 2000

Alcoholics Anonymous has lots of ceremonies and rituals — every meeting is a ceremony where people practice rituals like incanting the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, and praying out loud, as well as reciting several other pieces of standard church dogma at the start of every meeting. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), the ceremonies of A.A. are not nearly as dramatic or colorful as those of the Nazis or the Moonies. Humor and Ridicule Satire is a time-honored political weapon, and a devastating one. Few pompous, stuffed-shirt politicians or other phony leaders can stand much of it. A good joke can be deadlier than a gun when it comes to killing off bad politicians. Unfortunately, Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't have any good jokes about itself. A.A. pretends to have a lot of humor by laughing and joking about everything and anything except the stuff that really matters — like the faults and shortcomings of A.A. itself. A.A. claims to have rules like, "Rule #62: Don't take yourself too damn seriously." (12X12, page 149.) But what that really means is, "You can and should put yourself down, and tell jokes about yourself, and laugh at how stupid you are, but don't you dare ridicule A.A. or its doctrines, or its founders." (I hear that the A.A. true believers go non-linear when you tell them my jokes about A.A.... Too bad; they are missing out on some fun.) Assume The Major Premise People's minds have this peculiarity: Only the most thoughtful of listeners examine major premises — the premises upon which an argument is based. When a doubtful assertion is made, most people will plunge into arguing about the assertion without further thought about the underlying assumptions. For example: in the early part of World War Two, before the U.S.A. had gotten into the war, the Nazis desired to convince the American people that Germany would defeat Britain and win the war. But if they had stated such an idea directly, it would have aroused the suspicions of the American people, who would have argued the point. So, what the Nazis did was spread many stories and arguments about how the U.S.A. should go ahead and trade with a victorious Germany after the war was over: "Whether we like Hitler or not, we will have to deal with him." "If the Nazis win, let's not be sentimental — business is business. It is all an imperialist war anyway." "Europe is just too big for us to ignore, and not trade with, even if Germany is running the whole thing." The listeners may have immediately launched into arguments over whether we should trade with Germany, but few challenged the underlying assumption, the major premise, that Germany would defeat Great Britain. Another example: "Why does America have the best government in the world?" No evidence has been supplied to support the idea that the United States (not "America") has the best government. Many European democracies from Denmark and Sweden to Switzerland would challenge that arrogant assumption. In March of 2005, we are seeing the use of this technique of assuming the major premise in the tragic case of Terri Schiavo, a woman who 14 years earlier suffered a heart attack that stopped the flow of blood to her brain that caused most of her brain to die. Her husband favors stopping life support and letting her go, but Terri's parents and brother (the Schindler family) constantly talk about "saving her" and "keeping her alive" by re-inserting the feeding tube. That is assuming a fact that has not been established — that her brain is still alive — that she can be saved. Her brother has even gone so far in his sadly deluded wishful thinking as to interpret some of her moans as speech declaring that she "wants to live". That is really assuming a lot. Her moans of "Aaaah waaaah" could just as easily mean "I want you to leave me alone and let me die" (although in truth they don't really mean anything at all). Those who favor keeping Terri on life support call it "judicial murder" for the courts to order the feeding tube to be removed in compliance with her husband's wishes. And out in the streets, protesters campaign for the governor or congressmen or judges or the President to "save the life of Terri". What all of those activists erroneously assume is the major premise — that Terri Schiavo can in fact "be saved" and be "kept alive" and that she actually is alive and has a functioning brain — that there is something or somebody left in that body to save. But 14 years of debates and court cases and doctors' examinations and medical tests, as well as the failure of Terri's medical condition to improve in 14 years, have shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that the higher parts of her brain died and liquefied a long time ago, and that she isn't in there any more. There is nobody left to save. The real Terri Schiavo died 14 years ago. [Update: June 2005: The autopsy of Terri Schiavo revealed that her brain had been hopelessly destroyed, and she was brain-dead for 14 years.] (Also note that somebody is using the propaganda technique of Observational Selection on you when they choose what you will see on television. Out of the many, many hours of videotapes that the Schindler family has made, you get to see only a few seconds of images that appear to show Terry Schaivo reacting to her environment or responding to people stroking her face. But a judge who watched 14 hours of the videotapes concluded that she was not aware of her surroundings, and that she was not reacting to stimuli in any conscious manner.) Also see The Effectiveness of the Twelve-Step Treatment for an example of A.A.-Trustee Professor George Vaillant's use of this technique. Petitio Principii — Assume Facts Not In Evidence Petitio Principii is similar to "Assume the major premise". Petitio Principii is "a logical fallacy in which a premise is assumed to be true without warrant, or in which what is to be proved is implicitly taken for granted." In court, lawyers will scream, "Objection, Your Honor! The counsel is assuming facts not in evidence!" "I don't believe in astrology. But then again, I'm a Capricorn, and Capricorns don't believe in astrology." Another facet of "Petitio Principii" is asking questions that are really veiled statements. One of the most famous examples of that is the question, "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" It doesn't matter whether you answer yes or no, you are confessing to having beaten your wife. One of the most annoying things about religious recruiters and proselytizers is how they assume that you are a hopeless sinner, before even bothering to ask about your actual spiritual condition. Their tracts advertise "How To Get On Target", without asking where you are currently aimed. They just assume that you are a disgusting sinner, headed for perdition, going to Hell in a bucket. (And they rationalize their behavior by declaring "All are sinners" — which they conveniently interpret to mean that they are entitled to lecture you about religious matters.) Alcoholics Anonymous uses this technique in many ways. For instance: "When they choose a sponsor, beginners should usually choose someone with four to eight years of Time. Someone with less time may not be experienced enough, while someone with much more time may be too spiritual to relate well to a beginner's problems." If you want to argue with that statement, the usual human thing to do is to start arguing about how many years the ideal sponsor will have, rather than whether one should get a sponsor at all, or whether having many years of Time makes someone more spiritual. That "advice" has many underlying assumptions — premises — none of which are supported by any evidence (and none of which are even true): Beginners should get sponsors. Beginners will benefit from having sponsors. Suitable sponsors will be able to relate to the beginners' problems and help them with those problems. People grow increasingly spiritual from more years of practicing the Twelve Steps and going to A.A. meetings. People with lots of Time are so spiritual and holy that they have moved up to another plane of existence, one that is just too lofty for a beginner to handle, and one from which the terribly holy old-timers may have difficulties relating to the common rabble. None of those assertions have been proven or even clearly stated and supported by evidence and facts. The speaker just shoves it all at us, "under the table", so to speak, as assumed facts that are just incidental to the question of how many years of sobriety a good sponsor should have. In fact, recent research has shown that newcomers do not benefit at all from getting sponsors. In a recent controlled study, a group of new Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous members who got sponsors did no better than another group who didn't get sponsors. But strangely enough, the elder members who chose to become sponsors did better than the other members who did not choose to act as sponsors. (The sponsors were a self-selecting group; not randomly chosen.) It seems that getting their egos stroked, acting as puffed-up, all-wise, all-knowing sponsors, ordering the wimpy newcomers around, helps the sponsors to stay clean and sober, even if it doesn't help the newcomers any. For another example of "assuming the major premise", at Narcotics Anonymous meetings, the group secretary always asks: "Can we see a show of hands of those who have a year or more of clean time to show that this program works?" They never ask, "Can we see a show of hands of those who have a year or more of clean time without doing Bill Wilson's Twelve Steps, to show that his bombastic cult religion nonsense is completely unnecessary?" (FYI: I am one of those hands.   :-)     And I'm not the only one...) In his second book, Bill Wilson wrote about confessing all of one's sins (Step Five) by saying: The real tests of the situation are your own willingness to confide and your full confidence in the one with whom you share your first accurate self-survey. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 61. First accurate self-survey? Says who? Bill Wilson was assuming a lot in declaring that newcomers to A.A. had never done an accurate self-assessment before. How would he know? But then, Bill always assumed that alcoholics were just immoral bums who needed to be reformed with his version of spirituality. Bill Wilson assumed that all A.A. newcomers were strangers to real religion, people without any real morals or spirituality — they were even atheists or agnostics — who knew nothing about God and who had never done any introspection before. Bill also wrongly assumed that wallowing in guilt and only listing negative things — all of one's "defects of character", "moral shortcomings", and "wrongs" — constituted "an accurate self-survey". Also see the Bait And Switch Con Game web page for an example of Bill Wilson using Petitio Principii to convince people that they must believe in his beliefs. Hidden Assumptions Hidden assumptions are much like the previous two kinds of assumptions, Assume The Major Premise, and Petitio Principii, Assume Facts Not In Evidence, but in this technique the assumption is so subtle that it isn't even mentioned. Television infomercials that sell stock market trading computer programs, or options or FOREX trading programs, all try to foist numerous hidden assumptions on the viewers: They assume that stocks, contracts, or other pieces of paper will routinely go up and down in price in neat cycles, and that you will be able to choose a stock, option, or futures contract that will conveniently do so for you. They assume that you or their computer program will be able to pick the correct stock or option and buy it at the lowest price, and then sell it at the highest price. In other words, they assume that you or their program will be able to "time the market". They assume that there is something called a "cash flow" that you can just dip into, as if it were a river of money, and you can just scoop out buckets for yourself. There is no such thing in the financial markets. The reality is that there are a lot of sharp, experienced, professional traders who are buying and selling pieces of paper while haggling over every penny. They often tell you that you can place stop losses on every order. That is true, but you still lose money before the stop loss takes effect. It stops the loss from getting even worse; it doesn't stop you from losing money. And stop loss orders don't always take effect as soon as you wish. In big stock market crashes (like 1929 and 1987), people had to wait a long time, a seeming eternity, while they watched their stock sink like the Titanic, before their sell order was finally filled by a willing buyer — filled at a very low price. (Often, there just aren't a lot of willing buyers around in a stock market crash. Everybody is trying to sell. And you can't sell something until someone else wants to buy it from you.) That infomercial implies that you will only lose a little bit on bad trades because of stop loss orders, while making big profits on lucky trades. ("Stop your loses; let your winnings run.") But that isn't necessarily true or always even possible. And they assume that if you lose a little on one trade, that you will make it up on the next trade. That isn't necessarily true, either. If your luck is bad, you can stumble from one losing trade to another until you run out of money. The infomercial makers assume or imply that the computer program is looking at the same things as the market. It isn't. Computer programs track current trends in prices — in other words, by analyzing the past, up to just a few seconds ago — but the big institutional investors and traders are always buying and selling things based on their vision of the future, as determined by such arcane factors as the prime interest rate, the price of oil, housing starts, unemployment figures, retail sales, and various economic measurements like business profit predictions and the Consumer Confidence Index. The big boys are always looking at the future, while the computer program on your dinky little computer is reacting to the present and past prices. The infomercial makers assume or imply that their computer program can predict the future. Oh really? If it can, why isn't everybody using it? They assume that your trades won't ever influence the market — that your buy and sell orders won't drive prices up or down, no matter how large your orders are. They even assume that ALL of the buy and sell orders of all of the other people who also bought the same computer program won't drive the prices up or down, and that you won't end up in a race with them to see who can get their orders executed first. The infomercials don't mention the fact that if the computer program tells every program user to buy the same stock or option at the same time, the price of the stock or option will jump sharply, and then it won't be a bargain any more. The talking heads in infomercials assume that leverage is good, and that you will profit from it. They happily declare that you can buy stocks, options, and futures contracts on margin — meaning, putting up, in cash, only a small fraction of their actual cost. That allows you to profit by several times as much money if your gamble pays off big. But it also allows you to lose several times as much money if the trade goes sour. In highly-leveraged deals, you can easily lose more than your total investment, and end up owing the broker large sums of money. (Remember Long Term Capital Management.) The salesmen don't mention that ugly fact. The infomercials assume that you can win at the financial markets trading game, even if you are a beginner, just because you bought an easy-to-use computer program. Those TV commercials imply that the big boys in the financial markets are too stupid to buy the same computer program and use it (if only to see what the dumb thing says), and that the big boys are too stupid to hire lots of smart young computer programmers to write even better programs for them (which they have already done). The infomercials assume that it is easy to be right. Many billions of dollars worth of stocks, bonds, options, and futures contracts are bought and sold every day, and every trade is between two people or companies, one of whom buys and one of whom sells. Curiously, both parties in every trade believe that what they are doing is the best thing to do. Every time you buy, the guy who is selling is convinced that you are making a mistake. Every time you sell, the buyer is convinced that you are making a mistake. If you are a beginner who is trading against experienced professionals, who is more likely to be right? Assume Futures or Future Results Stack the deck in an argument by assuming that certain future events or future results will occur. For example, a political candidate can be dismissed with this argument: "Sure, Joe Blow is a great guy and he has some good issues and he says some good stuff. But he can't win, so there is no point in seriously considering him as a candidate." Obviously, if nobody will seriously consider Joe as a candidate, he can't win. (And now, in 2009, do you remember how many people said that the young, black, Junior Senator from Illinois couldn't possibly really win the Presidency, so his campaign was just a joke, and shouldn't be taken seriously?) Fallacy of Presupposition Ask for an explanation of something not yet established: "If evolution is true, then..." Since the study of evolution is a work in progress, one can always find a point of controversy, and challenge the other person to demonstrate that it is true, while assuming that failure to do so proves the entire matter false. Affirmation of the Consequent Improperly validate the key element of an implication: "The Bible says God's people will be happy; we are happy; therefore the Bible speaks truthfully." A.A. does it like this:       "RARELY HAVE we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. To thoroughly follow our path requires absolute abstinence from drinking alcohol. If somebody drinks, then he isn't thoroughly following our path.       "But this one guy didn't drink, so he did thoroughly follow our path, and he stayed sober, so that proves that the program works to keep people from drinking." Irrelevant Conclusion (Ignoratio Elenchi) It's a conclusion that does not follow from the argument: "Jehovah's Witnesses have the true religion because only we do so much door-to-door preaching." If you point out that Mormons also preach in this way, you'll be told that they don't do as much of it, or that their religion is obviously false.9 Likewise, "Alcoholism is bad, really bad, so A.A., which is intended to save alcoholics, is good." That is bad logic. There is no evidence that the A.A. cult religion actually saves anyone. That bogus logic is no different than, "Drug addiction is bad, really bad, so Scientology is good." (Scientology has a front group called "Narconon" that claims to save drug addicts by using Scientology "principles" on them.) "Cancer is bad, really bad, so the Nazi Party is good." (The Nazis really did want to wipe out cancer. See The Nazi War on Cancer by Robert N. Proctor.)       A.A. missionaries like to brag about the scientific studies that have found that there is a genetic factor in alcoholism. They then claim that those studies support the A.A. disease theory of alcoholism. That is another irrelevant conclusion.       The fact that some genes affect a person's susceptibility to alcohol addiction does not make alcoholism a disease any more than my genes for blue-green eyes prove that Blue-Eye-ism is a disease. And I also have the genes for premature graying of the hair, and that isn't a disease either.       Just because someone is more prone to alcohol addiction does not make him powerless over alcohol or unable to control his actions, and it does not make habitual alcohol consumption a disease. Confusion of Beliefs with Facts This includes Substitution of Beliefs for Facts, Insistance that "Beliefs Trump Facts", as if "It's what I believe" is the final answer to an argument, and "Belief Equals Truth", as if something is true because somebody believes it. Dogmatic religious sects with bizarre beliefs are notorious for using this logical fallacy. When you present a true believer member of such a church with facts that contradict his beliefs, he answers, "Well, what we believe is...", and that is supposed to be the end of the argument — the final answer on the subject. The fact that they believe something supposedly makes contradictory facts irrelevant and invalid — contradictory facts are just minor irritants to be ignored and discarded. An aspirin commercial portrayed a man declaring, "Last year I had a heart attack, right there where she is standing. If it hadn't been for Bayer aspirin, who knows? I believe that Bayer aspirin saved my life." No actual medical evidence is supplied to show that aspirin really saved him from death by heart attack, and the commercial doesn't actually say that Bayer aspirin saved the guy's life. We just get his uninformed "belief". (Besides, is that guy for real, or is he just an actor reading a script?) (Note that this is also an example of Sly Suggestions and Proof By Anecdote.) A woman who was campaigning for John McCain in Florida declared, "You've got to understand how bad it will be if we get Obama, and I firmly believe that." NPR (National Public Radio), Morning News, 3 November 2008. That woman's firm belief is not evidence of anything — other than evidence of what her strongly-held opinions happen to be. When a person who is skeptical of Alcoholics Anonymous declares, "The Bible does not say that God will make you quit drinking and restore you to sanity and take care of your will and your life for you and remove all of your defects of character just because you 'turned your life over' and confessed all of your sins to your sponsor." A 12-Step believer answers, "What, don't you believe that God cares about you and wants you to be healthy and happy?" The answer is, "It doesn't matter what I believe about God's feelings and desires, the fact remains that the Bible still does not say that God will do the 12 Steps for you." (In fact, the Bible actually specifically bans several of the practices that are embodied in the 12 Steps.) Another A.A. advocate declared: "I am a firm believer that if someone is ready and is truly an alcoholic of the desperate sort that I was, within this program there is a solution that works." http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/alcoholism-12-step-support/149124-aa-cult.html There, the writer uses both Lying with Qualifiers and Confusion of Beliefs with Facts to declare that the 12-Step program works, he believes, if... A variation on this logical fallacy is, "I'm sure that...", as in, "I'm sure that President Bush had the legal authority to spy on thousands of Americans and tap their phones without a warrant." One political hack's convinced opinion, no matter how sure he is, doesn't change the facts of the matter, or change what is actually in the laws of the USA. Substitute Feelings For Facts Declare that you feel that something is true, and act like that is supporting evidence. "I feel that he is a good man. He has a good heart." "It was the right thing to do. I don't have any qualms about it." The "good heart" argument is one that George W. Bush uses often. When one of Bush's political appointees proves himself to be totally incompetent and unqualified for his job, Bush answers, "He has a good heart." Likewise, President Ronald Reagan used this technique when he declared, "My heart tells me that we did not trade arms for hostages, although my head tells me that we did." And G. W. Bush did the same thing again: After the Intelligence Community released a National Intelligence Estimate that clearly stated that Iran was not building nuclear weapons, and had abandoned their nuclear weapons program many years ago, Bush declared, "I still feel that Iran is a threat." Confusion of Abstractions with Reality This includes Confusing the Map with the Territory. (The territory is the real land; the map is an abstraction drawn on a piece of paper.) We humans are very good at making abstractions to reduce big complex things to small manageable simple ideas. Unfortunately, we are prone to making the error of confusing our abstractions with the actual thing that they represent. Then, "Fighting for the Flag" equals defending one's country from an enemy. (They are not the same thing at all.) Likewise, burning a flag is not burning down America. A funny colored area on a paper map is suddenly worth fighting for, even if "we" do not own it (like Vietnam and Iraq). In a stock market television program, a pundit declared that the current condition of the stock market was, "Liquidity seeking things of value." "Liquidity" is an abstraction, a relative measure of how much money is easily available for loans or purchases of stocks and bonds. Liquidity is not a hairy animal like a bear or a bull that prowls Wall Street seeking something to eat. Now there may have been a few people or institutional investors who were seeking something of value to buy — there are usually at least a few bargain-hunters around — but "Liquidity" was definitely not roaming The Steet. In fact, the sub-prime mortgage debácle soon shattered the confidence of "The Market", and left it very illiquid. (In other words, those people who had some money decided that they would rather keep it than give it to some fast-talking con-artists.) Circular Reasoning (Circulus in Demonstrando) Support a chain of arguments by the arguments it contains, as in: "The Bible is true because it is written by God. The Bible tells us how God wrote the Bible. God doesn't lie, as the Bible tells us, so He wouldn't write a book that is false, would he?" Likewise, "If reading were not supposed to be illegal, then it wouldn't be against the law, would it?" Or, "Smoking marijuana is bad because it is against the law. Smoking marijuana is against the law because it is bad." Or, "You can get rid of the excessive noise from the Olympus E-510 camera's Four-Thirds sensor by running a noise-reduction program that will unfortunately erase all of the fine picture details along with the noise." "But you can get the fine detail back at the expense of increased noise." "Besides, the noise isn't that important." Or, "The Alcoholics Anonymous program works great for the rare few people for whom it works great." Or, "It is okay to lie and exaggerate how many lives A.A. really saves, in order to promote A.A. and get people to join A.A. — the end justifies the means — because A.A. is a wonderful organization that has saved so many lives...." Appeal to Evil Appeal to and arouse the worst parts of people's character. Hate-mongering, demagoguery, rabble-rousing, and similar methods of crowd manipulation can best be accomplished by appealing to the low, base, worst side of people's character — to the faults, vices, fears, and weaknesses of the audience. Various crowds can be wooed by appealing to their greed, anger, jealousy, vanity, fears, racism, sexism, hatred, or lusts. In his classic book on mass religious movements, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer wrote: Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. It pulls and whirls the individual away from his own self, makes him oblivious of his weal and future, frees him of jealousies and self-seeking. He becomes an anonymous particle quivering with a craving to fuse and coalesce with his like into one flaming mass. Heine suggests that what Christian love cannot do is effected by a common hatred.1         Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil. Usually the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil. When Hitler was asked whether he thought the Jew must be destroyed, he answered: "No.... We should have then to invent him. It is essential to have a tangible enemy, not merely an abstract one."2 F.A. Voigt tells of a Japanese mission that arrived in Berlin in 1932 to study the National Socialist movement. Voigt asked a member of the mission what he thought of the movement. He replied: "It is magnificent. I wish we could have something like it in Japan, only we can't, because we haven't got any Jews."3 1. Heinrich Heine, Religion and Philosophy in Germany (London: Trubner & Company, 1882), p. 89. 2. Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Speaks (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1940), p. 234. 3. Fritz August Voigt, Unto Caesar (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1938), p. 301. The True Believer, Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, Eric Hoffer, pages 89 to 90. Senator Joseph McCarthy and his lawyer Roy Cohn used fear of Communists to terrorize the nation and build their careers. They became such vicious demagogues with their "black lists" of names and their accusations of people being Communists, or "Communist sympathizers", or "fellow travelers" that fear of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his staff of mad-dog anti-Communists replaced fear of Communism in many people's minds... Racists inflame their audiences by complaining about all of the "special privileges" that the blacks get through government programs, and complaining that the blacks are "taking over." White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis routinely preach hatred of blacks and Jews, and arouse fear of them by accusing them of giant conspiracies and horrible crimes. Some other politician might appeal to a crowd by arousing their laziness and greed, by promising pork-barrel projects that will put them on easy street. This tactic is routinely used on millionaire industrialists who are promised more lucrative government contracts and lower taxes. Preachers routinely use fear of death and fear of Hell to manipulate their audiences. Some preachers seek to induce disgust and homophobia in their audiences, to make them hate and fear homosexual people. Note that there is always a veiled game of one-upmanship going on in those tirades: "We are special. We are more holy than those other people because we don't do the disgusting things that homosexuals do..." Other evangelists preach hatred of abortionists and women who get abortions, and incite followers to shoot doctors and bomb clinics, in the name of "Preserving Life." A.A. appeals to some bad characteristics, too: Arouse fear of death: "You must either work a strong program or else you will die drunk in a gutter." Unless each A.A. member follows to the best of his ability our suggested Twelve Steps to recovery, he almost certainly signs his own death warrant. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 174. To one who feels he is an atheist or agnostic such an experience seems impossible, but to continue as he is means disaster, especially if he is an alcoholic of the hopeless variety. To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face. The Big Book, William G. Wilson, page 44. "None of us in Alcoholics Anonymous is normal. Our abnormality compels us to go to AA... We all go because we need to. Because the alternative is drastic, either A.A. or death." Delirium Tremens, Stories of Suffering and Transcendence, Ignacio Solares, Hazelden, 2000, page 27. Appeal to vanity, egotism, and lust for power: "We Alcoholics Anonymous people are special, very special. We are so special that we are God's Chosen People. Only unto us has God given the magic gift of healing alcoholics." "I'm so holy that I spend all day, every day, 'Seeking and Doing the Will of God' and practicing these principles in all my affairs (including all of my affairs with my mistresses, just like Bill Wilson did)." "After you have 10 or 20 years of Time, you are like unto a saint, respected, obeyed, and admired by the young. You can have an entire stable of young sponsees doing your bidding." "We really are Chosen. Our years of getting beaten down by alcoholism have prepared us for leadership roles. Now that we number in the millions — not just us, but all of the Twelve-Step groups — we can become a force for change." — One of the A.A. faithful, "sharing" at a meeting. (Presumably, after the peaceful, non-violent coup d'etat, we can have a wonderful alcohol-free country run by a fundamentalist theocracy, just like Iran. Our new Fearless Leader will be the Ayatollah Anonymous, who will enforce the teachings of the Prophet, Bill Wilson.) By the way, did anyone else notice the conflict between "becoming a force for change" and the ban on getting involved in outside issues — Tradition Ten? That "we number in the millions" phrase means just one thing: enough registered voters to swing an election. That's politics, not recovery. Did anyone else notice the embedded egotism and arrogance? Only the alcoholic 12-Steppers are qualified for leadership roles, because of their years of bottle-training. Only they can be "a force for change". And why do we need such big changes now? Apparently, it's because the normal people who were running the world, and keeping things together, for all of those years while we were busy drinking ourselves to death weren't "The Chosen People", and they weren't religious enough, and they haven't been doing a good enough job of running the country in a moral fashion. But just watch the changes after us brain-damaged alcoholics and drug addicts and religious fanatics seize power. "Boy, will the ordinary people have to kiss our asses now. The shoe's going to be on the other foot now... We're really gonna be a force for change now..." The part that I still haven't been able to figure out is: "Exactly how does excessive alcohol consumption prepare us for leadership roles?" And which is better for future leadership, whiskey, wine, or beer? What did Dubya drink? Oh, and do you get bonus points for 20 years of snorting cocaine? Indulge the true believers' love of absolutes: "Bill Wilson was inspired by God when he wrote the Twelve Steps and the Big Book — Bill asked for, and received, Guidance from God, so every word in the Big Book is unquestionably true." "A.A. practices the Oxford Groups' Four Absolutes — 'Absolute Honesty, Absolute Love, Absolute Unselfishness, and Absolute Purity'." "Alcoholics Anonymous is the only possible way to overcome a drinking problem." "You must totally abstain from drinking, or you will be a drunkard — 'One drink, One drunk.'" Alcoholics Anonymous is The Only Way. Indulge lust for sex: "Newcomers are easy marks. They are just freshly detoxed, their heads are still cloudy, and they are very shaky and confused and insecure, so they are easy to fast-talk and pick up." "Every meeting is a cattle call. It's a good place to pick up women even if you aren't an alcoholic or an addict." "Once you have (or can claim to have) enough years of sobriety, you can start sponsoring all of the delicious young things that you want in your bed. Just walk up to them after their first meeting, and ask them if they want the help of a sponsor. And if anyone objects to your behavior, just point out that you have more Time than they do." "Heck, in Mike Q's Midtown Group, the old-timers get their pick of the new underage girls. The girls are even assigned to their new sponsors by the group's elders." With all of those great selling points, do you think we can attract some new members to our "little fellowship"? Appeal to Higher Principles You must do something, or we must support a certain course of action, because some Higher Principle requires it: Social Darwinism teaches us that the big and strong people should eat the small and weak people, because it will improve the species. It's Mother Nature's sacred law, The Survival of the Fittest. There is no sense in helping the small, weak, sickly people, because it will only let them reproduce and pollute the gene pool. The Pope declared that Spain and Portugal should seize all of the native American people's lands because they were heathens and "in rebellion against The One True God", and Spain and Portugal had the moral duty to Christendom and God to convert the natives to Christianity. Manifest Destiny teaches us that white men in the U.S.A. should kill Indians and steal their land because it is the white man's God-given destiny to dominate the continent and build a great nation (— a great white Christian nation, that is). Likewise, Israel currently argues that they have God-given right to steal the Palestinian people's land and water because God gave that land to some Jewish ancestors 4000 years ago — and they didn't lose the deed to the Romans 2000 years ago, like Moses and Jeremiah predicted that the Lord would make happen, if the Israelites weren't good enough: "If you ever make idols, the LORD will be angry, and you won't have long to live, because the LORD will let you be wiped out. Only a few of you will survive, and the LORD will force you to leave the land and will scatter you among the nations." (Deuteronomy 4:26-27) "Israel, today I am giving you the laws and teachings of the LORD your God. And if you don't obey them all, He will put many curses on you.   ... The LORD will let you be defeated by your enemies, and you will scatter in all directions." (Deuteronomy 28:15,25) They sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire. They practiced divination and sorcery and sold themselves to do evil in the eyes of the LORD, provoking him to anger. So the LORD was very angry with Israel and removed them from His presence ... 2 Kings 17:17,18 The LORD said,       People of Judah, I am the LORD your God, but you have refused to obey me, and you didn't change when I punished you. And now, you no longer even pretend to be faithful to me.   ...       You have disobeyed me by putting your disgusting idols in my temple, and now the temple itself is digusting to me. At Topheth in Hinnom Valley you have built alters where you kill your children and burn them as sacrifices to other gods. I would never think of telling you to do this. So watch out! Jeremiah 7:28 and 7:30-32 The LORD said,       I destroyed the land because people disobeyed me and rejected my laws and teachings. They were stubborn and worshiped Baal, just as their ancestors did. So I, the LORD All-Powerful, the God of Israel, promise them poison to eat and drink. I'll scatter them in foreign countries that they and their ancestors have never heard of. Finally, I will send enemy soldiers to kill every last one of them. Jeremiah 9:12-16 Speaking of which, in chapters 2, 3, 7, 13, 17, 20, and 25 of the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses says that the Lord our God commands us faithful followers to practice religious bigotry, racism, mass murder, genocide, and ethnic cleansing, in order to keep people from worshipping the wrong God (which meant, "any God besides the blood-thirsty monster that Moses liked"). "We met Sihon and his army in battle at Jahaz, and the LORD our God helped us defeat them. We killed Sihon, his sons, and everyone else in his army. Then we captured and destroyed every town in Sihon's kingdom, killing everyone, but keeping the livestock and everything else of value." (Deuteronomy 2:32-35) "The LORD our God helped us destroy Og and his army and conquer his entire kingdom of Bashan, including the Argob region. His kingdom had lots of villages and sixty towns... We completely destroyed them all, killing everyone, but keeping the livestock and everything else of value." (Deuteronomy 3:3-7) "... you must destroy them without mercy." (Deuteronomy 7:3) "... you must stone them to death. ... Don't show any pity." (Deuteronomy 13:8-10) "You may hear that some worthless people there have talked everyone there into worshipping other gods... ... you must take your swords and kill every one of them..." (Deuteronomy 13:13-15) "... kill all the men. Take the women and children as slaves..." (Deuteronomy 20:14-15) And then the book of Numbers gives us helpful instructions at this point — it tells us to kill everyone in a neighboring city, even the baby boys, except for the virgin girls, whom we shall keep and turn into our sex slaves: "Moses became angry with the army commanders and said, "I can't believe you let the women live! They are the ones who followed Balaam's advice and invited our people to worship the god Baal-Peor.   ...   You must put to death every boy and all of the women who have ever had sex. But do not kill the young women who have never had sex. You may keep them for yourselves.   ... Moses and Eleazar followed the LORD's instructions, and listed everything that had been taken from the Midianites. The list included   ...   32,000 young women who had never had sex. (Numbers 31:14-35) If Moses' army kept 32,000 young virgins for themselves, then they must have slaughtered a couple of hundred thousand other people — older women, younger girls, men, boys, and infants. If Moses were alive today, he would be taken to the Hague and put on trial for war crimes, right beside Slobodan Milosevik. "Genocide" is the only name for such racist immoral conduct. "Whenever you capture towns in the land the LORD your God is giving you, be sure to kill all the people and animals. ... If you allow them to live, they will persuade you to worship their disgusting gods, and you will be unfaithful to the LORD." (Deuteronomy 20:16-18) "The LORD your God will help you capture the land, and He will give you peace. But when that day comes, you must wipe out Amalek so completely that no one remembers they ever lived." (Deuteronomy 25:19) And then chapter 21 of Deuteronomy, verses 11 to 14, handily teaches us how to make sex slaves out of the surviving enemy women: If she is beautiful enough to make you want her, then cut her hair and fingernails, dress her in Israelite clothes, and give her a month to mourn for her dead husband or father (whom you killed). Then you can drag her into your bed and keep her as your sex slave for as long as you wish (they call it, "marry her"). If you grow tired of her, you can get rid of her at any time you wish (they call it "divorce her"). But if you have had sex with her — "if you have slept with her as your wife" — then you have destroyed her cash value — you have "dishonored her", and you cannot sell her into slavery any more. You will have to give her her freedom — just boot her out into the streets when you are done with her. Oh well, I guess that's just the price of getting laid while keeping people from worshipping the wrong god. Old Nazis tell us that the S.S. had a noble spiritual mission to elevate the human race by protecting and enhancing the purity of the white, blue-eyed, Aryan race. Eliminating the Jews, Blacks, Gays, and Gypsies, and preventing them from further contaminating the gene pool, was only a part of that great program. "And then did the heroic S.S. soldiers smite the disgusting Jewish villages in the land of the Ukraine, completely destroying them all, killing everyone, but keeping the livestock and everything else of value, for the LORD was with them: Gott Sei Mit Uns." Communism teaches us that we must overthrow the rich people and seize all of their property and kill them all and spread Communism everywhere because Dialectical Materialism teaches us that the Revolution of the Proletariat is inevitable — the "Force of History" cannot be stopped. For the sake of "Welfare Reform" and "Compassionate Conservatism", we should kick all of the single mothers off of welfare. It will "teach them to be responsible." In Alcoholics Anonymous, you must quit drinking because God wants you to, so that you can then spend the rest of your life "seeking and doing the Will of God." (Which, according to the Old Testament, might be "Kill all of your neighbors who are not Jewish, except for the virgin girls, whom you may keep as your sex slaves.") Appeal to Authorities (Argumentum ad Verecundiam) Cite and quote all kinds of authorities to support your statements. Also seem to obtain support from famous people who are not present to state their actual opinions. In Herman Melville's classic novel Moby Dick, the crew begged Captain Ahab to stop his suicidal monomaniacal persuit of the white whale. Captain Ahab dismissed the crew's sane advice with the statement:       "There is one God who is Lord over all the seas, and there is one Captain who is lord over all the Pequod. Now get back to your post." Religious proselytizers argue, "Einstein believed in God. Do you think you are smarter than Einstein?" "The Bible says that there were giants in the Earth in those days, so of course dinosaurs lived at the same time as people." Another appeal to an authority: "Professor I.M.A. Bore of the Philadelphia Institute of Phrenology states that Green Eggs and Ham is the most beneficial breakfast there is. Who are you to claim that you know more than Professor Bore?"       I want to conclude with a word about "You gotta believe it 'cause it's in the Bible." You can bet your bottom dollar that the person saying it is not referring to the Sermon on the Mount. Rather he has in mind a passage you have no business believing in — one, for instance, supporting homophobia or gender inequality.       No one says, "You gotta believe it 'cause it's in Shakespeare" or Dante or Goethe or Pushkin. Although not as much as the Bible, these writings still have a lot of authority for a lot of people. The difference is they have no doctrine of authority.       Why, for Christians, should the Bible alone have a doctrine of authority, especially when such doctrines demand either a literalist approach which is unacceptable or something which waffles hopelessly?       Why does the Bible need a doctrine of authority? To compel our allegiance? To make us believe something our reason, experience and conscience reject? How can anything outwardly command us that has not first inwardly claimed us? Besides, nobody thinks all biblical passages are of equal worth, that each represents an axis on which our whole faith pivots. William Sloan Coffin, The Heart Is A Little To The Left; essays on public morality, page 50. William Sloan Coffin served for eighteen years as Chaplain of Yale University, was Senior Minister of Riverside Church, and is President Emeritus of SANE/FREEZE: Campaign for Global Security. And yes, I know, that is another appeal to authorities. Another kind of appeal to authorities is Name Dropping, where the speaker liberally salts and peppers his speech with the names of the famous, rich or powerful people, as if movie stars and millionaires have all of the wisdom of the world. In A.A. history, Dr. Frank Buchman was of course the champion name dropper. He spent his whole life in pursuit of the rich and famous, and dropped their names all over the place. In A.A., the rap is: "Well, Bill Wilson wrote in his second book that if you don't do the Twelve Steps, you are signing your own death warrant, so you had better do all of the Steps all of the time if you want to live. "Joe Blow has twenty years of sobriety, so when he says that six times seven is 48, you'd better believe he's speaking from a wealth of experience." "Bill Wilson wrote in the Big Book that alcoholism is a spiritual disease, so it's a proven fact. "Dr. William D. Silkworth" said that alcoholism is a disease coupled with an allergy, so there is no question about it." "Professor George E. Vaillant of Harvard University says that all alcoholics should join A.A., even though it doesn't work, so they should, of course, for their own spiritual well-being." A variation on Appeal to Authorities is to get a fake expert to say what you want people to hear. Use some bozo who got his Ph.D. from a diploma mill, and call him the greatest expert on the subject in the country, and have him spout your party line. That's what the current anti-abortion movement is doing with their pseudo-scientific claims that abortions harm women's health and drive them to suicide. Their "expert", the "greatest authority on the subject", got his degree from a "non-accredited institution", and his "research" is little more than a collection of anecdotes. (See Bill Moyers, PBS, 20 June 2007.) Another variation on the Appeal to Authorities technique is to falsely quote things that were never said or written, as in "Professor Bore declared in his encyclopedic History of Western Thinkers that unthinking obedience was the easiest path to happiness", when Prof. Bore never said any such thing. Bill Wilson used this stunt when he declared that William James wrote in his Varieties of Religious Experience that spiritual experiences came from "compression at depth". James never said anything like that. Appeal to Force (Argumentum ad Baculum) It is an exploitation of fear: "If you don't believe what we're saying, you will be destroyed by God!"       "You must have faith. It's very important that you believe. Little Susie didn't believe in Santa Claus, so God got mad at Susie and turned Susie's father into an alcoholic who got drunk and beat her. So you'd better believe in Santa if you don't want that to happen to you." (And yes, that example also uses the Proof by Anecdote propaganda technique.) Similarly, if you won't join Alcoholics Anonymous, then the Big Bad Booze Bogeyman will get you: "Alcohol is cunning, baffling, and powerful" and wants to kill you. Your addiction wants to kill you. Your disease wants to kill you. You are powerless over alcohol, so you will relapse and die drunk in a gutter. Your inevitable fate outside of Alcoholics Anonymous is "Jails, Institutions, or Death". Appeal to Popularity — Appeal to the People (Argumentum ad Populum) Claim that something is obviously true because many people are convinced that it is true. "Can you deny that the Bible is the most widely distributed book of all time? Can you deny that most people in this country are Christian? That proves that what we are saying is true." And: "A.A. is considered to be the most successful sobriety program of all time. Most people believe that A.A. is the best solution for alcoholism." Ignore the facts that there was a time when most people believed that the snake pit was the best treatment program for mental illness, and that there was a time when most people believed that the Earth was flat. Appeal to Numbers (Argumentum ad Numerum) Argumentum ad Numerum maintains that the more people who are convinced about something, the more likely it is to be true, and the more people who do something, the more right it is. This trick is close to the trick of "Everybody knows" — "Everybody knows that we are right." "He is admired by thousands of loyal followers." "Millions of bottles sold." "As seen by millions on TV." "More than 1,000,000 sold." "Billions of burgers served." "A mighty army of the Lord." "It's the fastest-growing form of music." Frank Buchman and his Oxford Groups / Moral Re-Armament organization used this propaganda technique constantly — they invariably bragged about how many thousands of people had attended their latest house party or convention, and about how many people had been converted by their latest mission.       I am speaking today to the millions across the world who in these anxious days are increasingly looking to Moral Re-Armament as the one hope for the future. Frank Buchman, 29 October 1939, Remaking the World: The Speeches of Frank Buchman, Frank Buchman, pages 151-154. But there was a flaw in their logic: "In their recent American tour, the Groups on at least three occasions — Detroit, Louisville, and Phoenix — found the work of conversion far harder in towns where they had previously worked: still more significant, at Louisville, where two years previously hundreds had made their surrender, they found only eleven who had remained in any sense active members." The Groups Movement, The Most Rev. John A. Richardson, pages 26-28. Morehouse Publishing Co., Milwaukee, Wis., 1935. Likewise, A.A. supporters claim that Alcoholics Anonymous has more than 2 million members in more than 153 countries world-wide, and they say that more than 13 million copies of the Big Book have been printed, and then they say that those numbers prove that A.A. is a really good organization, and that all of Bill Wilson's religious beliefs must be true and correct, and that the Twelve-Step program must really work great. Such an illogical argument ignores the fact that Hitler had far more than 2 million Nazis, and Stalin had far more than 2 million Communists, but those weren't good organizations, out to save the world. They also sold lots of copies of their books, Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto, but neither Communism nor Nazism was a good philosophy for the betterment of the world, in spite of their many fanatical true believers. And neither of their systems worked, either, in spite of their large numbers of members. Likewise, Scientology and the Moonies also have large numbers of members, and they also sell lots and lots of books, but that doesn't make them good cult religions, either. The large numbers proved nothing except that it is possible to hoodwink a lot of people. And A.A. is a complete failure as a treatment program for alcoholism. It has a very low success rate and a very high death rate. All of the bragging about how many people attend the A.A. meetings is pretty meaningless in the face of the A.A. failure rate and death rate. Dismiss by Numbers This is just the opposite of Appeal To Numbers: Dismiss facts or arguments that you don't like by claiming that they represent very small numbers of people or things. For example, when I complain that a certain computer program or feature or piece of hardware does not work correctly with the Linux operating system, the manufacturer invariably answers that not very many people run Linux, so he doesn't need to bother making his product work right with Linux. Likewise, when I ask for other things to work correctly, and have all of the features that I need to make them useful, the maker often answers that not very many people care about that feature. The same thing applies to politics. Politicians say (in so many words):       "Not very many people really care about that issue, so we won't bother to do anything about it." (Never mind what is actually right or wrong...) Appeal to Averages The speaker appeals to an average that is false or irrelevant. For example, a serial killer might declare, "I may have kidnapped, raped, and murdered half a dozen pretty girls, but there are 150 million American women whom I did not harm in any way, so I really have a very good record, on average." A Congressman or Senator might declare, "Okay, so I got caught taking 100 bribes. But there were 10,000 bribes that I did not accept. (The other Congressmen got them.) So I'm really 99% honest. Really. Honestly." A.A. members use the same technique often: "Oh, yeh, there may be a few cases where sponsors rape their sponsees, and there may be a few thirteenth-steppers preying on the newcomers, and there may have been a few cases where the sponsors told their sponsees not to take their medications, and then the sponsees died, but on average most people get through A.A. without getting raped or killed." Appeal to Antiquity (Argumentum ad Antiquitatem) Validate a proposition by its age. "Give me that Old Time Religion." "People have been worshipping this way for thousands of years." "The Bible has survived for so long that it must be true!" Compare the Bible to the Illiad, Gilgamesh, or the Vedas. They are all older. By the logic of Argumentum ad Antiquitatem, we should all be worshipping the ancient Egyptian gods like Ra — He's far older than Jesus Christ. Dismiss by Antiquity This is the opposite of the previous technique. Dismiss, discount, invalidate, or reject something because it is old. This technique falsely assumes that things are bad or untrue or invalid just because they are old. "I can't believe that you are still using that old stuff." "Man, that's really old. You don't still believe that stuff, do you?" "That's really out of date. Why don't you get some recent studies?" Appeal to Novelty — Newness (Argumentum ad Novitatem) Claim that the newness of a statement proves its validity. This is just the opposite of Appeal to Antiquity. This stunt assumes that the newest thing is the truest thing. Jehovah's Witnesses say: "Yes, there have been errors in the past, but we receive 'New Light' from Brooklyn, and so 'the light keeps growing brighter'. You see how this brings us closer to truth?" Bill Wilson and other A.A. boosters often used this trick to argue that Alcoholics Anonymous was wonderful because it was a great new method of treating alcoholism; not that it was just a recycled old cult religion that had nothing new or original. In all, about two hundred cases of hopeless alcoholism have been dealt with. As will be seen, about fifty percent of these have recovered. This, of course, is unprecedented — never has such a thing happened before. THE ONE HUNDRED MEN CORPORATION Prospectus We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Into Action, pages 83-84. ... the A.A. group is to be understood as an unusually intimate primary group which sponsors, in a potent learning situation, a new way of life — a new subculture. Alcoholics Anonymous: An Interpretation, Milton A. Maxwell, Ph.D., writing in Society, Culture, and Drinking Patterns, David J. Pittman and Charles R. Snyder, editors, page 582. Milton A. Maxwell was a member of the Board of Trustees of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.. Cult religion is not a new subculture. It's a very, very old thing. What is really funny is that today A.A. boosters also like to call A.A. treatment of alcoholism "traditional treatment", and declare that it is the dependable, old, tried-and-true method, so they are trying to use both Appeal to Novelty and Appeal to Antiquity on us at the same time. They are simultaneously trying to claim that Alcoholics Anonymous is the latest, greatest, and best new invention and also the dependable traditional safe old thing. Dismiss by Novelty This technique is just the opposite of the previous one. Invalidate a proposition by its newness. This technique falsely assumes that things are bad or untrue or invalid just because they are new. "Oh no, I'm not going for any of that new nonsense. If it hasn't been tested and proven true for a very long time, then it can't be trusted." "People haven't been using that new method for very long, have they?" "And that was invented, when, last year?" "And how many millions of people has that medicine cured so far?" Appeal to the Exotic Try to make people believe that something is good because it came from distant lands or secret traditions or foreign cultures. Like it was hidden in the Cave of the Ancients in the Himalayan Mountains by celibate monks for ages, but now we have the secret. For example: "American tourist discovers an Ancient Herbal treatment for hair loss on a chance trip to India". Funny that India has even more bald old men than the USA does. Similarly, women are bombarded with ads that proclaim that the French women have secret skin treatments that make them look forever young. I wish it were true.... And a cream for cracked, dry, skin advertizes: "a skin-softening formula known to ancient Mid-Eastern civilizations." So haven't we made any improvements in skin softeners since ancient times? Appeal to Tradition Argue that people should do something or believe something because that's the way it has been done for a very long time — it's traditional. "It's the way we've always done it." "It's our culture." "It's customary." "It's traditional." "It's an ancient belief among our people." "You can't upset everybody by breaking with tradition." "It's a process that's been going on for a long time." "If it was good enough for grandpa, it's good enough for us." "It's the stuff that made America great." "The Founding Fathers believed it." "Give me that old-time religion, it's good enough for me." Treatment centers that use 12-Step quackery on alcoholics and drug addicts like to call 12-Step-based treatment "traditional treatment", even though Alcoholics Anonymous is really only 70 years old, which makes it far from traditional. Burning girls at the stake for witchcraft, and putting the town drunkard in stocks and pillory, now that's traditional treatment. A close relative to the argument that "It's Traditional" is the declaration that "It's Policy", or "It's Corporate Policy". The speaker gives no good reason for his behavior; he just says that "We do it this way because we do it this way." Appeal to Poverty (Argumentum ad Lazarum) Exploit the misconception that money corrupts. (The real proverb is, "The Love of Money is the root of all evil.") "A.A. is just a poor non-profit organization, so it must be a good organization." (Actually, A.A. has a lot of money, and is committing serious crimes to get more.) Appeal to Wealth (Argumentum ad Crumenam) This item is just the opposite of the last one — argue that something is right because it is so rich and powerful and successful: "Well, Micro$uck software must be great stuff — just look at how rich Bill Gates is." The converse is: "If you're so smart, then why aren't you rich?" Appeal to Common Folk Argue that your man is just a regular guy, and what he says is just common folk wisdom. "There ain't nobody here but us good old boys." George W. Bush uses this technique often, in claiming that he is not "an elitist" and not "one of the elite" (in spite of the fact that he was born into a very rich family, attended Yale University, and joined Skull And Bones, one of the most elite, exclusive and powerful fraternities in the world). Bill Wilson used this stunt often: We are average Americans. All sections of this country and many of its occupations are represented, as well as many political, economic, social, and religious backgrounds. The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, page 17. Then Bill tried to pass off his crazy cult religion that he got from the fascist Hitler-praising Dr. Frank Buchman as "regular American": We represent no particular faith or denomination. We are dealing only with general principles common to most denominations. The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, page 17. Appeal To Stupidity Flaunt an anti-intellectual attitude, and belittle knowledge, wisdom, intelligence and education. This technique is closely related to "Common Folks" — "There ain't nobody here but us stupid common folks. I'm just a regular ignorant Joe, just another man of the people." Radio and TV commercials say, "I'm no brain surgeon." "I'm not a rocket scientist." "I don't know how it works, but I know that it works." "I'm no computer whiz but..." (But I'm smart enough to figure out how to give my money to a fast-talking salesman.) "I'm so stupid that I can't tell the difference between margarine and butter." "I'm so stupid that I can't tell the difference between real wood siding and plastic, or between real leather and plastic." "I'm so stupid that I can't tell the difference between real orange juice and chemical soup." "My dog is so stupid that he can't tell the difference between soy beans and bacon." A corollary to this technique is contempt for people who have some intelligence or education. Preachers have been known to declare, "Those elitist people have fancy talk and big words and clever arguments, and they try to make us feel like fools — but they are the real fools " simple faith is better." Unfortunately, lots of politicians win elections with this one: "Ah'm no intellectual. Ah'm just a hard-workin' man of the people. Mah voters don't know nuthin', and neither do Ah. Ah wouldn't be caught dayed with any fancy book-larnin' in me. Back home in Muckshoe, Tayexus, we don't need nuthin' but that good Old-Time Religion..." Acting President George W. Bush was born an instant millionaire and went to Yale University and the Harvard Business School, but now he cleverly pretends to be just a "common folk" dumb hick from Texas, just one of the down-home common people, not one of those digusting "effete" Democrats who know how to read books. Bush says, "I don't read newspapers" and "I don't do nuance." And Alcoholics Anonymous says, "Nobody is too stupid to get the Program, but some people are too intelligent." "Stop Your Stinkin' Thinkin'." "Your best thinking got you here." "Utilize, Don't Analyze." ... we agnostics and atheists chose to believe that our human intelligence was the last word... Rather vain of us, wasn't it? The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, We Agnostics, page 49. Antirationalism Antirationalism is another propaganda trick that is similar to anti-intellectualism, but different in a critical way. Antirationalism promotes the idea that there are no such things as valid, reliable facts or hard evidence, just various conflicting opinions. Speakers who are pushing antirationalism argue that "It's just my opinion versus your opinion, and it's all so controversial that we can't really know anything for sure." A variation on this technique is the old line, "Oh heck, you can never really know for sure what caused it... Maybe it was this, or maybe it was that...", or "Who knows? Maybe it's true. You can never know anything absolutely for sure." That is just a dodge to avoid admitting the truth. Yes, we can know some things for sure: The earth is round, not flat. Bacteria, not evil spirits, cause strep throat and tuberculosis. Sour milk is not caused by witches casting nasty spells. Alcoholism is not a "spiritual disease" which can only be cured by a "Higher Power" (or not even cured, but just postponed). Life isn't all just a vague mystery where maybe one thing is true, or maybe a different thing is true, and everybody has their own opinion, and nobody knows anything for sure. Appeal to Desperation Argue that we Must do something, that we cannot just do nothing, and since we don't know what to do, let's do what I want. Twelve-Step-oriented recovery counselors use this strategem a lot. They argue that "Perhaps the Twelve-Step programs aren't giving us as high a success rate as we would like, but they are the only game in town. We can't just stop treating the alcoholics and drug addicts — we have to do something — so let's continue to push all of our patients into 12-Step meetings, because it's the only thing we've got." Actually, the 12-Step meetings are not the only thing available. There are SMART, SOS, WFS, and MFS meetings, just for starters. And the most successful program of all is people simply quitting alone, on their own, saving their own lives by themselves. But the 12-Step true believers stubbornly ignore that. And of course the counselors ignore that — their jobs are threatened by the successful do-it-yourselfers. Argue from Ignorance (Argumentum ad Ignorantiam) Claim that an idea should be considered valid because there is nothing to prove otherwise: "Nobody ever proved that the miracles in the Bible didn't occur, did they?" And A.A. members argue, "Well, nobody has ever proven that the Twelve Steps cause people to commit suicide, have they? So the Twelve Steps can't be harmful to people's mental health." Actually, Dr. and Harvard Prof. George E. Vaillant, Class A Trustee of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, came pretty close to proving it. He showed that A.A.-based treatment of alcoholics produced a higher death rate than any other method of treating alcoholics. Appeal to Pity (Ad Misericordiam) A clever defense lawyer will argue, "Look at the poor defendant. He has already suffered so much, there is no point in convicting him of his crimes, in spite of the evidence against him." Exploit Wishful Thinking, and Tell Them What They Want To Hear Tell the audience whatever they wish to hear, rather than some unpleasant truths. Many a politician has won an election by using this technique: "Oh heck, the oil isn't going to run out. There is an unlimited supply of oil down there, just waiting for us to find it. You don't need to start planning for a future without cheap oil." "Globalism will bring us a worker's paradise where everybody is happy and rich. It doesn't matter if all of the factories in America get shut down and sold to China. We don't need those old "smoke-stack industries". We can all make a good living by shuffling around pieces of information on computer screens in the wonderful new 'Information Age'." (Except for all of the "service workers", like the janitors and burger-flippers, who will get minimum wage...) "Global warming? What global warming? We don't need to worry about our enormous rate of burning fossil fuels. It's wonderful, how much we get to use. Our standard of living is defined by how much energy we use up. The more, the better." "If we fight the terrorists and other Moslems over there, it will keep them from attacking us over here. We are safe." "Jesus is on our side. He isn't even disturbed by the 30,000 children we have killed in Iraq, because we are in a holy war against Islam and a little collateral damage is unavoidable." (Jesus didn't really say, "Whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.") "Calerpa taxifolia isn't going to destroy the entire ecology of the Mediterranean Ocean. Don't worry. There is nothing to get excited about." Many a guy has gotten laid by using this technique too:       "Oh yeh, baby. Of course I'll love you forever. No doubt about it. Let's do it." Konrad Heiden explained how Adolf Hitler used this technique:       Sometimes Hitler could not decide whether to heap the blame for everything on France or on the Jews.       [Then Heiden gave examples of Hitler giving speeches where he contradicted himself.]       Thus the prophet falsifies his own words. With the deepest conviction he contradicts his deepest convictions. It is as though the various heads of a many-headed beast were biting one another.       The truth is irremediably buried beneath these deceptions and contradictions. How, then, can the speaker expect to put through a single incisive, suitable lie, when from speech to speech, from sentence to sentence, he changes even the lies? Whom does he expect to persuade that he himself believes a single one of these mutually contradictory lies? And to what purpose does he try to spread an opinion among the people, when on the very next day he is going to sacrifice that opinion?       Such questions are asked by those who do not understand propaganda, who regard propaganda as the art of instilling an opinion in the masses. Actually it is the art of receiving an opinion from the masses.       The usual conception of the great propagandist is the commanding, purposive mind, who by magic suggestion subjects an empty animal mass to his will; Marc Anthony, who in a single speech makes a thousand friends out of a thousand enemies. It is in this light that most of our contemporaries view the greatest propagandist of our day, Adolf Hitler, and this is Adolf Hitler's own idea of himself. With the authority of success, he has put over a false theory of the world; the theory that he dominates the minds of millions by tirelessly hammering the same simple statement into them. But this only shows that he never listened to himself very closely, and was never too eager to illuminate his own success. He does not hammer the same simple statement into the minds of millions; on the contrary, he played with the masses and titillated them with the most contradictory assertions. It is this art of contradiction which makes him the greatest and most successful propagandist of his time. He does not dominate the minds of millions, his mind belongs to them. Like a piece of wood floating on the waves, he follows the shifting currents of public opinion. This is his true strength.       The true aim of political propaganda is not to influence, but to study, the masses. The speaker is in constant communication with the masses; he hears an echo, and senses the inner vibration. In forever setting new and contradictory assertions before his audience, Hitler is tapping the outwardly shapeless substance of public opinion with instruments of varying metals and varying weights. When a resonance issues from the depths of the substance, the masses have given him the pitch; he knows in what terms he must finally address them.       Rather than a means of directing the mass mind, propaganda is a technique for riding with the masses. It is not a machine to make wind, but a sail to catch the wind. The mass, however, is a phenomenon of deepest world importance — this leveled conglomeration of fools and wise men, heroes and cowards, proud and humble, the unusual and the average. This mass, with its anonymous intellectual pressure, its unexpected moods and unconscious desires, mirrors and echoes the commanding force of prevailing conditions; it embodies and personifies the necessities and resistances of the objective world; it expresses the silent command of Fate in a mysterious murmur. It is the art of the great propagandist to detect this murmur and translate it into intelligible utterance and convincing action. If he can do this, his utterances and actions may be full of contradictions — because the contradictions lie in the things themselves; they may be deceptive and misleading. The lies of the propagandist reveal the deeper truth of the whole world's cynicism and dishonesty. By his lies the great propagandist involuntarily shows himself to be an honest, self-revealing prophet of the Devil. Der Fuehrer, Konrad Heiden, pages 139-141. It Ought To Be True, So It Is. This logical fallacy is a form of wishful thinking, where people are willing to believe that things are true just because it seems like they ought to be true. People routinely believe in a wide variety of screwy things just because they like the sounds of them, and think that they ought to be true: Higher beings who ride around in flying saucers are here to save us (from our own stupidity). Ghosts of dead saints come and help some people, and save some children from disasters (while letting many others die). Ghosts of dead pets come back and save their former owners from various accidents. The ghost of the Virgin Mary routinely goes around the world making statues bleed, just to increase the faith of the wavering doubters. God has nothing better to do with his time than save alcoholics from themselves by punishing them and "beating them with the whip of alcoholism" and forcing them to join the 12-Step religion. Clever politicians and propagandists will exploit peoples' willingness to believe such things by repeating such stories, which makes the gullible members of the public think that the politician must be really good, and really spiritual. It's Too Terrible To Tell The essense of this technique is: "We know a truth, but it is too terrible to tell, and to do so would harm too many innocent people, so we can't say it, and you shouldn't say it either." This argument was used by the Church in Rome during the Middle Ages to declare that you couldn't tell the truth about all of the crimes and sins of the Church — burning millions of women and girls as witches, molesting the alter boys, selling everything from indulgences to Bishop's offices, and using the Grand Inquisition and heresy trials to silence the critics — "You can't criticize the Church, because if you do, it will destroy the faith of the weak people, and then they won't be able to get into Heaven." Politicians routinely use this technique, too. They believe that we can't hear the truth about things like global warming or peak oil, because if the people really knew the whole truth about what is going on, the people would panic and society would fall apart. The powers that be think that the truth about those things is too terrible to tell, so the politicians don't tell us the truth. Today, with A.A., the rap is: "You can't tell the truth about Alcoholics Anonymous. You shouldn't expose: the deceptive recruiting, the bait-and-switch stunts, the perjury, Bill Wilson's insanity and dishonesty, the goofy, unscientific, grossly wrong ideas about alcoholism, the grossly inflated 'success rate', the complete failure of A.A. as treatment for alcoholism, or the cult religion nonsense, — because if you do, it will make a bunch of the weaker alcoholics relapse and die drunk, and it will all be your fault. If you tell the truth, you will be 'doing an immense disservice to those who are trying to achieve sobriety'." Argue from Adverse Consequences Put pressure on the decision maker by pointing out the dire consequences of an "unfavorable" decision. This includes the Slippery Slope argument. "If we let Viet Nam go, then all of Southeast Asia will fall to Communism like a row of dominoes going down. Then we won't be able to stop Communism. We will lose the whole world." If we curb the power of corporations, we will destroy the American business environment. We can't tell corporations that they don't have God-given civil rights like freedom of speech and freedom to influence voters, or else all of the corporations will flee to foreign countries that treat them better. (Countries like China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvadore — the countries to which they have already moved their factories.) Likewise, we can't enforce environmental protection laws against those same corporations, or else they will move to foreign countries that have no such laws, and that will be the end of America. Bill Wilson used this technique a lot, and Alcoholics Anonymous still does — constantly. Do what they say, or else you will die in agony: Unless each A.A. member follows to the best of his ability our suggested [MY required] Twelve Steps to recovery, he almost certainly signs his own death warrant. His drunkenness and dissolution are not penalties inflicted by people in authority; they result from his personal disobedience to [MY] spiritual principles [cult religion practices]. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 174. "You must go to meetings for your entire life, do the Twelve Steps, and get a sponsor, or else your fate will invariably be 'Jails, Institutions, or Death'." If we skip this vital step, we may not overcome drinking. The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, page 72. In the Big Book, Bill Wilson described a man (who looked an awful lot like Bill Wilson) who became an obsessed religious maniac, spending all of his time with A.A. busy-work, going to meetings and recruiting more members (and not getting a job): Though the family does not fully agree with dad's spiritual activities, they should let him have his head. Even if he displays a certain amount of neglect and irresponsibility towards the family, it is well to let him go as far as he likes in helping other alcoholics. During those first days of convalescence, this will do more to insure his sobriety than anything else. Though some of his manifestations are alarming and disagreeable, we think dad will be on a firmer foundation than the man who is placing business or professional success ahead of spiritual development. He will be less likely to drink again, and anything is preferable to that. The Big Book, 3rd edition, William G. Wilson, Chapter 9, The Family Afterwards, pages 129-130. In other words, the solution is to let him act crazy, even if his behavior is "alarming and disagreeable." Don't bother him with mere reality, or ask him to be sane and responsible. Don't nag him to go get a job. Just let him neglect his family and irresponsibly devote his entire life to Alcoholics Anonymous. — Because if you don't, he might drink again, and "anything is preferable to that." Argue from Beneficial Consequences This is just the opposite of Argue from Adverse Consequences. In this case, argue that people should do what you wish because they will benefit if they do so. For example, "You should believe in God because it will be beneficial to you to do so. You will get feelings of peace and serenity from knowing that you are on the right side of the question. You will get into Heaven after you die." That is bad logic. The reason for believing in God is because one believes that there is such an entity. What benefits someone might get from such a belief is a very different issue. Alcoholics Anonymous uses this technique too: "You should just accept and believe all of the A.A. teachings, and Work A Strong Program, no matter how strange, outlandish, illogical, or heretical the A.A. practices really are, because working the A.A. program will make you sober, happy, and spiritual." "It doesn't matter whether the Steps make sense to you. Just do them and you will get a new life." "Keep Coming Back! It Works!" Apply Time Pressure Apply time pressure to get someone to do something. Advertisements and commercials use this trick all of the time: "This offer is only good for 5 days." "Don't miss this unique opportunity." "This sale ends on Sunday." "Only three days left." "Buy XYZ today. The price will go up tomorrow." "First come, first serve. The early birds will get the best items." "Hurry. When it's gone, it's gone." Bill Wilson used this trick to tell prospective recruits that they had better join A.A. quickly, before they were killed by their "severe affliction" without even realizing what was happening — "many are doomed who never realize their predicament." (The Big Book, 3rd & 4th Editions, William G. Wilson, page 92.) The Real Scotsman Fallacy This logical fallacy discards facts that conflict with a sweeping generalization. It is a kind of observational selection. The Real Scotsman Fallacy works like this: Joe: "All Scotsmen play golf." Fred: "But look at Brian MacGregor over there. He's a Scotsman, and he doesn't play golf." Joe: "Ah, but if he were a real Scotsman, he would play golf." Alcoholics Anonymous uses that fallacy like this: Stepper: "Alcoholics Anonymous is the only way for an alcoholic to overcome alcoholism. All alcoholics simply must join A.A. and work a strong program if they wish to live. Critic: "But look at Terry over there. He didn't join A.A., but he recovered from alcoholism anyway. He has more years of sobriety than lots of you steppers." Stepper: "Oh, but he isn't a real alcoholic. If he were a real alcoholic, then he wouldn't be able to quit drinking without Alcoholics Anonymous and doing the Twelve Steps." "If you can get sober, and stay sober, without Alcoholics Anonymous, then you were never really an alcoholic, just a 'heavy drinker'." Inverse Real Scotsman Fallacy This is very much like the Real Scotsman Fallacy, but works 'backwards'. "Steve B." explained it this way: If I say I can spot homosexuals because they wear pink shirts, and it turns out they are homosexuals, then I'm right and that proves my system of identification is sound. But if I'm wrong and they turn out not to be homosexuals, then I just say "Yes they are, because all people wearing pink shirts are homosexual whether they show any actual signs of homosexuality!" So I'm still right. Similarly, Declare that Joe Blow is an alcoholic because he acts like an alcoholic. If someone responds, "No, he isn't an alcoholic. He doesn't drink alcohol at all. He never drank." The answer is, "Yes, he is so an alcoholic, even if he isn't 'a practicing alcoholic', because he is displaying 'alcoholic thinking'." Inconsistency The way that data is analyzed, or logic is applied, is inconsistent. For example, Congress bases military budgets on worst-case scenarios, but it thriftily ignores scientific projections of environmental dangers because those dangers are not "adequately proven". Likewise, marijuana and LSD are outlawed, and dealers of those drugs receive very harsh prison sentences, because "they might be dangerous", or "they might lead to harder drugs." But dealers of tobacco and alcohol, the two deadliest drugs in America, do not even get a traffic ticket, in spite of the fact that: The annual death toll from tobacco is 420,000 Americans per year. The annual death toll from alcohol is 100,000, plus about 17,000 in drunk-driving automobile accidents (40% of all fatal automobile accidents). The annual death toll from LSD is zero. The annual death toll from marijuana is zero. Rich people argue that we should not give money to poor people, because it acts as a disincentive for them to work hard and accomplish things for themselves. But those same rich people demand repeal of the inheritance tax so that their children can inherit hundreds of millions of dollars untaxed, and they don't see that as a disincentive for their own children to work hard and accomplish things for themselves. The dogmatic fundamentalist true believers say that our scientists are all wrong — even evil — when they talk about evolution; and the believers say that our scientists are immoral when they want to use stem cells to cure our diseases; but then they expect our scientists to be a bunch of real geniuses whose ingenuity and technology is going to save our lives when the world's oil supply runs out. ("Don't worry, they will come up with another great invention and another technological quick fix, just like always.") And, when those true believers get sick, they don't hesitate to run to the hospital and get medical care from those doctors who believe in science, evolution, and stem cell research. America is a land of freedom and inalienable rights that are listed in the Bill of Rights. But if the acting President or the Attorney General labels you an enemy of the people, then you don't have any rights. That is not written in the Constitution, but that's how Bush and Ashcroft read it anyway. Poor young black men who steal $5000 worth of stuff are put in prison for several years because "they are a danger to the community", while rich white men in expensive business suits who steal $50,000,000 get a year of hard time plus some community service because they were "non-violent" when they stole all of the little old ladies' retirement money. Think: Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. Boesky, who was the bigger villain of the pair, got reduced time by snitching on Milken, and then both only served about two years... (Ironically, Boesky is now retired to his yacht in the Caribbean, while Milken has been doing a lot of social work, apparently trying to make some amends.) Watch the Enron investigations for some new villains who will be forced to retire to their winter palaces in Aspen, rich, now that their big pump-and-dump stock swindle is over, Ken Lay with at least $37,683,8872 (perhaps as much as a few hundred millions of dollars), Jeff Skilling with something between $63,000,000 and $70,000,000,2 Andrew Fastow with $60,600,000,2 Michael Kopper with $10,000,000,2 Lou Pai with something between $62,936,552 and $250,000,000,2 Rebecca Mark with $79,000,000,2 Tom White (acting Pres. G. W. Bush's Secretary of the Army) with $14,000,000,2 Ken Rice with $70,000,000,2 while the employees of Enron and the subsidiaries like Pacific Gas and Electric (in Portland, Oregon) that Enron bought and sucked dry, now have no retirement funds at all left. Nothing. And many of those retirees are just too old to go back to work. So what do they do? Join the homeless people, I guess. But those smiling, well-dressed, suit-and-tie, white-collar criminals weren't "violent" when they stole Grandma and Grandpa's retirement funds. And the U.S. government isn't going to replace their retirement funds is it? — Not even the part that was given to the politicians, mostly Republicans, in "campaign contributions". The Republicans are talking about spending the wealth of the nation on a war with oil-rich Iraq, not on taking care of our own old people. The Republicans were all for an extremely expensive bailout of the savings and loan institutions, which happened after, and was caused by, the Republicans deregulating banking, but they won't do a thing for the retirees who got burned by Enron after the Republicans deregulated the natural gas industry. I have many more, far too many to put on this page. Inconsistency just seems to be The Way of the American Politician. Benjamin Franklin once quipped that consistency was the hum-drum of little minds. If that is so, then our politicians in Washington D.C. must be world-class geniuses. A.A. dogma and literature are loaded with inconsistencies and contradictions. For example, We learn from the Big Book that if someone abstains from drinking for thirteen years without going to A.A. or doing the Twelve Steps, and then relapses, it proves that you can't do it without A.A.. But if someone quits drinking for only six months by going to meetings and doing the Twelve Steps, then that proves that A.A. and the Twelve Steps work. (Even though the vast majority of Bill Wilson's new A.A. members either did not quit drinking or soon relapsed, and even though half of the authors of the original Big Book stories returned to drinking, Bill still insisted that his "spiritual" program for sobriety worked great. And Bill Wilson considered all of the non-members who didn't quit drinking as proof that you can't do it alone.) Likewise, according to A.A., if someone does the Twelve Steps and quits drinking, then that proves that the Twelve Steps work for making people quit drinking. But if someone does the Twelve Steps and then relapses, it doesn't prove that the Twelve Steps make people drink. If someone killed himself with alcohol, Bill Wilson considered him a failure and a real loser. But if someone killed himself with tobacco, Bill Wilson considered him "a most effective member of A.A.", someone whose "more serious ailments were being rapidly cured". When someone comes to A.A. meetings and then quits drinking and stays quit, A.A. gleefully claims the credit for the success. But when someone comes to A.A. meetings and then drinks himself to death, A.A. says that it isn't responsible for the failure. And I have plenty more... Compare Apples To Oranges This is similar to the previous item, inconsistency, but has special twists of its own. In a radio commercial for a tax preparation service (Spring 2005), we heard: "Jackson-Hewitt's average refund is $400 more than the average IRS refund." Well of course it is. They are comparing apples to oranges. The average refund from the IRS includes all of the poorest people in the country. You have to actually make some money before you need a professional tax accountant to prepare your tax forms for you, and can pay for it. The average Jackson-Hewitt customer is lots richer than the average minimum-wage janitor or burger-flipper, so of course they get larger refunds. The commercial tries to imply that the larger refund is due to the Jackson-Hewitt accountants' skill in finding deductions, but I suggest that it is due to their customer's higher incomes and higher withholdings, and hence, larger refunds due. Over in "the recovery community", one A.A. defender announced: I am appalled at such blatant misconstrual of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. AA is Spiritual, true, but not religious. An edition of Webster's defines the two as follows: Religion - any system of faith or worship; the outward manifestation of belief in a Supreme or Superior Being; love and obedience toward God; piety; monastyic vow or state; conformity to Biblical precepts; devotion; fidelity. Spiritual - incorporeal; not material; possessing the nature of qualities of a spirit; mental or intellectual; pure; holy; heavenly-minded; not lay or temporal; ecclesiastical; relating to matters of a sacred nature; not worldly; the spiritual nature as oposed to physical. Another edition of Websters (which leaves the Biblical concept out) says: Religion - The worship of God or gods. A belief; a system of doctrines of faith and worship. Spiritual - Not material; Relating to the moral feelings; Pure, holy, sacred. But note that the writer was comparing a noun to an adjective. So of course the noun "religion" sounds much more solid and material than the adjective "spiritual". If we compare the adjective "religious" to the adjective "spiritual", some of the important distinctions vanish. In fact, the words become synonyms: religious: (The American Heritage Dictionary, Second College Edition, 1982.) Of, pertaining to, or teaching religion. Adhering to or manifesting religion, pious. Extremely faithful, conscientious: religious devotion to duty. spiritual: (The American Heritage Dictionary, Second College Edition, 1982.) Of, relating to, consisting of, or having the nature of spirit; not tangible or material. Of, concerned with, or affecting the soul. Of, from, or pertaining to God. Of or belonging to a church or religion; sacred. Pertaining to or having the nature of spirits; supernatural. And Random House says: Spiritual (Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition, 1993.) of or pertaining to sacred things or matters; religious; devotional; sacred. As the judge said in the case of Grandberg v. Ashland County, a 1984 Federal 7th Circuit Court ruling concerning judicially-mandated A.A. attendance: The distinction between religion and spirituality is meaningless, and serves merely to confuse the issue. The converse of comparing apples to oranges is equating them — declaring that they are the same thing — the logical fallacy of False Equality. Special Pleading Special pleading typically refers to the Will of God. There are other "special pleadings," like the Communist's "Force of History" or a misguided environmentalist's "Mother Nature", but God's Will is still the most popular excuse for doing some horrible things. Don't do something because I tell you to do it, but rather, do it because it is the Will of God, and God will be happy if you do it for Him. "Quit drinking", "Do The Twelve Steps", "Shove the Twelve Step religion on every sick person you can get", "Blow Up The World Trade Center and kill thousands of innocent people", or "Launch a Blitzkrieg 'Shock And Awe' bombing campaign on Bhagdad and kill thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians with cluster bombs and the indiscriminate use of overwhelming American firepower" ... Heck, everybody's just doing the Will of God. An Israeli newspaper even quoted George W. Bush as saying that God told him to attack Afghanistan and Iraq... "God told me to strike at al Qaeda, so I struck them; then God told me to strike at Saddam, so I did." Usually, if someone says that God told him to go kill somebody, and then he actually goes and does it, we lock that dangerous nut-case up in a mental hospital for a very long time... Self-Sell This one is so simple and slick that it is brilliant: Instead of trying to cram a particular attitude or belief down the throats of some unwilling recipients, get them to convince themselves of the validity of your ideas. Do something like ask them for their help in promoting a good thing, so that they ask themselves, "How can we convince the general public of the virtues of this program?" "How can we get people to support this worthwhile cause?" They will sell themselves on the idea as they try to sell it to others. For a humorous example of this, see the movie "Cold Turkey" which starred Dick Van Dyke, who acted as a preacher who had to make his whole town quit smoking. The local Neo-Nazis were a particularly tough bunch to get to quit. Van Dyke won them over by enlisting them as smoking-ban enforcers. Their only request: "Can we wear arm-bands?" Another twist on Self-Sell is that whenever a cult sends members out recruiting, those recruiters will end up selling themselves on the cult's dogma when they try to convince others of the truth of the cult's teachings. Smart cult leaders know this, and get new converts out recruiting, fast. It's called "Actionizing." A.A. calls it your "Twelfth Step." The Big Book gives us a clear example of that in the autobiographical story The Vicious Cycle. The author, James Burwell, a former skeptic and unbeliever, described setting up a new A.A. group in Philadelphia, after having been a member in New York City: When I started to tell the boys how we did it in New York and all about the spiritual part of the program, I found that they would not believe me unless I was practicing what I preached. Then I found that as I gave in to this spiritual or personality change I was getting a little more serenity. In telling newcomers how to change their lives and attitudes, all of a sudden I found I was doing a little changing myself. The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Jim Burwell, The Vicious Cycle, page 249. (Yes, that brainwashing program is powerful and works well, doesn't it? It even works on you while you are using it on others...) Repetition for Emphasis (Argumentum ad Nauseam) Drive home an unproven point by repeating it so often that it might become accepted by rote. Adolf Hitler declared in Mein Kampf that effective propaganda must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Hitler wrote: It [propaganda] must repeat those points over and over again until the public believes it. The principles behind propaganda are the same principles of mind control, hypnotic suggestion, and mental programming: distraction and repetition. With propaganda, distraction draws attention away from information that is true and directs attention to information that is false. Repetition of the false information imbeds it in your subconscious mind so that your acceptance of its truth becomes a conditioned response. You accept this information as true without thinking whenever it is presented to you again. "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State." Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." George W. Bush Alcoholics Anonymous has a standard list of unproven (and even disproven) assumptions that they constantly repeat: A.A. is the best, the time-tested, the proven way to recover from alcoholism. Keep Coming Back, It Works! (If you make it work...) Alcoholics need the Twelve Steps to teach them spirituality. They didn't know anything about God before they met the Alcoholics Anonymous recruiter. The Twelve Steps are a great program for quitting drinking. Nobody can do it alone. You need your support group. Alcohol is cunning, baffling, and powerful, and wants to kill you. The Twelve Steps are "simple spiritual principles" (rather than cult practices). God is pleased when you do Bill Wilson's Twelve Steps. "RARELY have we seen a person fail, who has thoroughly followed our path..." Antimetabole An antimetabole is a rhetorical device where you reverse a phrase to get a simplistic slogan that sounds profound, but isn't, like: "Unless you learn to master your rage, your rage will become your master." "When the going gets tough, the tough get going." Alcoholics Anonymous uses this device often, as in, "The program doesn't fail people, people fail the program." "The Steps don't work unless you work the Steps." "The Steps don't work to make you quit drinking; you must quit drinking to work the Steps." "Working the Steps won't make you quit drinking right; quitting drinking will make you work the Steps right." "You don't work the Steps to quit drinking; you quit drinking to work the Steps." "AA does not leave US — We leave AA." Reification Treat something abstract as real. "I know there's a God; I've felt him in my life." This statement can be explained in several ways that do not require an actual god to exist. By that faulty logic, it would be equally valid to say that if I feel nervous while walking in creepy dark alleys in bad parts of town at night, that proves that Satan and vampires are real: "I know they are real; I've felt them breathing down the back of my neck at night." Take Undeserved Credit This is a favorite of politicians. If anything good happens while they are in office, they are quick to take credit for it. (They rationalize that they might as well, because if anything goes wrong, they get the blame for it.) Using this technique, Republicans like to claim that Ronald Reagan somehow 'caused' the fall of the Berlin Wall and the break-up of the Soviet Union, not internal weakness, corruption, and a crumbling infrastructure in the Soviet empire. Frank Buchman's cult used this technique often. Even today, their web site says: Buchman's story starts with a small-town American who sets out "to remake the world" and in the attempt affected the moral and spiritual condition of thousands of people at every level of society throughout the world. From war-torn Europe to civil war in China, from the rise of black nationalist independence movements in Africa to the civil rights hotbed in the U.S, in the lives of great leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Konrad Adenauer, and Harry Truman — Buchman's remarkable influence kept turning up. Advertising for Frank Buchman, A Life, by Garth Lean https://secure.iofc.org/shop/en/resources/shop/?room=3&product=47 Frank Buchman does not get the credit for every civil rights movement in the world just because one of his followers showed up there and parrotted slogans. And Mahatma Gandhi, Konrad Adenauer, and Harry Truman were not followers of Frank Buchman. The truth is that the social-climbing Frank Buchman sought them out, and only talked to them for a few minutes. Buchman only met Gandhi once, in 1915, and Adenauer perhaps a couple of times. Harry Truman declared that he had never talked to Buchman. Truman had sometimes helped Buchman's organization with draft problems, but Truman dropped Buchman like a hot potato when he learned about Buchman's history and Nazi sympathies and draft dodging. Nevertheless, Buchman forever after tried to imply that Mahatma Gandhi, Konrad Adenauer, and Harry Truman were his followers, world leaders who had learned their "spirituality" from Frank Buchman. (See Ghandi here and here, and here, and Adenauer here.) Bill Wilson and A.A. use this technique constantly. If anybody quit drinking after having attended even just a few A.A. meetings, Wilson and A.A. were quick to claim or imply that the recovery was caused by A.A. and the Twelve Steps. (But when those people relapsed later, A.A. had nothing to do with that. 'A.A. caused the sobriety, but it didn't cause the relapse.') Bill Wilson even took the credit for the sobriety of people who finally quit drinking several years after Bill encouraged them to quit. Likewise, another A.A. promoter, Nan Robertson, wrote in her book, "Getting Better Inside Alcoholics Anonymous", that most of the newcomers to Alcoholics Anonymous had already quit drinking, but she credited their sobriety to A.A. anyway. Create A Granfalloon A granfalloon is some distinction or difference which sets members of a group apart from other people who are not part of the group. The purpose of creating a granfalloon is to engender a feeling of "Us versus Them." Sometimes a granfalloon can be a small, trivial difference, and still work. When Hitler was still just a minor fledgeling politician, just beginning to build up his Nazi party, he dressed his followers in brown shirts. Some critics laughed and pointed out that they looked ridiculous. But rather than discouraging Hitler's followers, the criticism made them cling to their group and made them feel more committed to Hitler. Hitler gained a loyal, hard-core cadre just for the price of a few brown shirts. In the book Soul of A New Machine by Tracy Kidder, the author describes how a smart manager organized teams of young computer geniuses, and set them to competing against each other in the creation of a new computer. The hardware designers were called "The Hardy Boys", and the programmers of the machine's internal software, the microcode, were called "The Micro-Kidders." The competition between them was so intense that they worked day and night, seven days a week, to finish the design and make the machine work. All of them argued that they weren't going to let the other guys on their team down, and they weren't going to let the other team outdo them. But the only real difference between the two groups was which part of the design they were working on. But that one tiny difference was enough to cement their loyalty to their group. Andrew Carnegie demonstrated the same cleverness in eliciting greater output from one of his steel mills. He asked the foreman how many units of steel the day shift had produced. Carnegie wrote the answer with chalk in large numbers on the sidewalk where the workers entered the plant, and then simply walked away without explanation. When the night crew came to work, they saw the number on the sidewalk, and asked what it was. Someone told them. The night crew beat that number by a little bit. Early in the morning, Carnegie erased the day crew's number, and chalked in the night crew's output. The day crew saw that number on the sidewalk when they came to work. They worked even harder, and beat the night crew's output. Carnegie chalked in that number. The following night, the night crew beat the day crew again, and Carnegie chalked in that number. That contest of playing off the day crew against the night crew continued for weeks, while output steadily rose. Carnegie never said a word about the workers having to increase their productivity — he just played one group off against another, using no distinction between the two groups except that one worked during the day, and one worked at night. In a beautiful demonstration of creating a granfalloon, teachers who wanted to educate a class about racism created a new, artificial, racial distinction: they separated the class into blue-eyed and brown-eyed people, and declared that the brown-eyed people were superior to the blue-eyed people. "Everybody knows" that blue-eyed people are dishonest and lazy, and can't be trusted, and lie a lot, while "everybody knows" that brown-eyed people are hard-working, honest, and trustworthy... By the end of the day, the two groups almost hated each other, even though it was just a mild one-day demonstration of discrimination. (It's enough to make you wonder about our two-party system of Democrats and Republicans hating each other — how much of their hatred and partisan bickering and investigation of sexual affairs is based on nothing more than the political equivalent of eye color?) A current television commercial for Prilosec® uses a variation of this trick: They ask, "So which day are you on?" and a bunch of people proudly hold up several fingers. The commercial creates a feeling of being "one of the club" among those people who take the medicine. The granfalloon is taking Prilosec. Alcoholics Anonymous obviously uses alcoholism as a granfalloon, to separate their group from everybody else. Every member introduces himself like, "Hi, my name is Harry, and I'm an alcoholic." Then outsiders, non-alcoholics, are called "normal people", "regular people", "normies", or "earth people", and everybody knows that you can't trust them to be accepting or understanding... Likewise, A.A. uses membership in A.A. itself as a granfalloon. Those who do The Twelve Steps are "one of us", the people who understand, the members of the right religion, "The Friends of Bill", while those who don't do The Steps are the other people, those "dry drunks" who aren't our friends and who cannot be trusted. In the Big Book, an A.A. member says of a non-member: "You poor guy. I feel so sorry for you. You're not an alcoholic. You can never know the pure joy of recovering within the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous." The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 334. Spin Doctoring Often, how people take the news depends on how you present it. The TV series The West Wing recently gave us a beautiful illustration of that. The administration had a problem with some new, improved equations for computing the threshold of poverty. The problem was that the new equations said that there were two million more poor people than the old equations did. Nobody wanted to face the next election with two million more poor people than there were when the President took office. Everybody around the White House was stuck in a loop of, "We want to fix the equations, but we don't want there to be more poor people." Then they took the problem to Toby, the resident political hack spin doctor:       "Did I ever tell you about the guy who had a batch of pink salmon that turned white? He canned it up and printed on the label, 'Guaranteed not to turn pink in the can.'       "So the equations have been broken for fifty years? What was the matter with all of the previous administrations? Why didn't those lazy bums fix the problem? This is outrageous! Thank God we finally have a President who is doing his job!       "Remember: 'White Salmon, guaranteed not to turn pink!' By God, I can sell anything!"       In March of 2006, Microsoft found that its new operating system, Vista, was so buggy that they wouldn't be able to bring it to market for the 2006 Christmas season. They publicly announced yet another postponement of the release date until after January of 2007, the umpteenth one in four years of slipping schedules. Putting the best spin-doctor's smiley-face on the situation, Microsoft spokesman and project manager James Allchin said that the Vista delay was the "right thing" to do. (NY Times, 2006.03.27)       As if they had any choice in the matter.       The most unintentionally hilarious quote, however, came from Microsoft marketing executive Brad Goldberg, who told Ziff Davis Media's Microsoft Watch blog that, since people won't be able to get new Windows computers for Christmas in December, there will be another Christmas in January: "January has emerged as almost a second Christmas, with gift cards, sales, etc. It's a new trend." (Washington Post "Personal Tech" 2006.03.27)       Oh yeh, right. The Semi-Attached Figure "If you can't prove what you want to prove, demonstrate something else and pretend that they are the same thing." — Darrel Huff (How to Lie with Statistics, p. 74.) For example, if you can't prove that your nostrum can cure the common cold, advertise that a well-known "independent testing laboratory" has proven that it can kill umpteen zillion germs in a test tube in just a few minutes. Advertise those results by showing a picture of a doctor in a white coat reporting the results. Don't bother to mention the bothersome little fact that killing germs in a test tube isn't the same thing as killing them inside of people. And don't bother to mention the fact that the germs that got zapped in the test tube were something other than cold germs... The real meaning of the one true fact — that the nostrum simply killed some unidentified germs in a test tube, gets lost in the hype. That's a semiattached figure. (And, if you think about it for a minute, plain old Clorox bleach is great for killing germs in a test tube, but if you drink the stuff to get over a cold, you won't...) Similarly, you can easily think of some popular household cleaners whose advertisements imply that your family will be much healthier and more disease-free because their product kills lots of germs on contact. Nobody asks whether those unfortunate germs were actually harmful to humans. The vast majority of bacteria and microbes are really totally harmless, which is why we are still alive. In fact, recent studies have shown that the constant, habitual use of germ-killers on everything, everywhere, is just breeding super-bugs who are immune to our antibiotics, which is a real medical disaster. But an ad that says, "Laboratory testing has shown that our kitchen cleaner kills 300% more germs on contact" sure sounds good, doesn't it? Darrel Huff noted: There are often many ways of expressing any figure. You can, for instance, express exactly the same fact by calling it a one per cent return on sales, a fifteen per cent return on investment, a ten-million-dollar profit, an increase in profits of forty per cent (compared with 1935-39 average), or a decrease of sixty per cent from last year. The method is to choose the one that sounds best for the purpose at hand and trust that few who read it will recognize how imperfectly it reflects the situation. How to Lie with Statistics, Darrel Huff, page 82. For example, if you run a store, and buy an item for 99 cents every morning, and sell it for $1.00 every afternoon, you are only making a 1% profit on sales, which sounds terrible. But in a year of doing that, you make a 368% return on investment (365*100/99), which sounds like you are making out like a bandit. In another example of the semiattached figure, in a management-labor dispute, the management questioned the workers about their gripes against the union. They collected every trivial complaint that had ever been lodged against the union, added up the numbers, and announced that 78% of the workers were "against the union." Obviously, there is a huge difference between disagreeing with the union about something or other, at one time or other, and being against the union representing the workers. "Flying in airplanes must be growing increasingly dangerous, because 500 times as many people were killed in airplane crashes last year (2001) as were killed in 1910." That completely ignores, of course, the truth that the Wright Brothers and friends were the only people flying in 1910, and the September 11, 2001 terrorism that caused multiple airplane crashes was an exceptional situation. Recently, the NBC Evening News used this trick to sensationalize a story about teenagers buying alcohol over the Internet (9 August 2006). They declared that "One in 10 teenagers knows another teenager who has illegally ordered liquor online." That sounds pretty impressive, and it hints that one in 10 teenagers is getting supplied alcohol by another teenager who gets it through the Internet. It sounds impressive, until we realize that if the average teenage knows 100 other teenagers, then only 1 in 1000 teenagers needs to have bought alcohol through the Internet just once in order for that NBC statement to be true. (And if the average teenager knows more than 100 other teenagers, then even fewer teenagers need to have bought alcohol through the Internet.) And just because a teenager knows someone who once bought alcohol through the Internet doesn't mean that he got any of it. When Peter Howard defended the cult leader Frank Buchman and his Moral Re-Armament organization in the booklet Fighters Ever (November, 1941), Howard used the trick of the Semi-Attached Figure in his story about the controversy over drafting Buchman's Moral Re-Armament followers into the British army during World War II. The Buchmanites claimed that the MRA men were all "lay evangelists of an established religion", and as such, should not be drafted, and they got 174 Members of Parliament to sign a motion that asked that the MRA men be given special exemptions to the draft. Peter Howard wrote in his book that "the elected representatives of more than 11,000,000 people" opposed drafting MRA members. Peter Howard implied that all 11 million of those British people were unanimous in their support of draft exemptions for the MRA men, which was nowhere near the truth.15 Furthermore, those 174 Members of Parliament had been elected on the basis of other issues than drafting MRA members, so those 11 million represented British people had never really voted on that particular issue at all. And then, when the whole of the British Parliament voted, and decided not to give the MRA men any special exemptions, Peter Howard did not bother to write that "the elected representatives of all 40 million Britons decided to draft the MRA men just like everybody else". Use Exact Numbers The human mind has the funny peculiarity that exact numbers sound so much more valid than round numbers, even if they aren't accurate, or can't really be applicable. So use exact numbers in arguments, when you wish to impress people. Compare these two statements: 1.) The average American made about $25,000 last year. 2.) The average American made $24,979.37 last year. Which sounds truer? Which sounds more like somebody who knows what he is talking about? (But who was that one "Average American" who made exactly that much, really?) Avoid Specific Numbers This is just the converse of the previous item — Avoid giving specific numbers whenever it would be disadvantageous to do so. Advertisements often do a fancy tap-dance around the prices, and never tell you what it actually costs: "...Installed for less than you would think." The price is "half of what you would expect to pay." (Actually, things never seem to be only half of what I would expect to pay. I am always appalled by the high new price of everything — twice what I would expect to pay.) Hide Behind Others You can mask your intentions and your egotism (or your stupidity) by hiding behind others. Use words like we, us, and our, instead of I, me and my. You can say "We want" instead of "I want," and "We think" instead of "I think." You sound more important if you sound like you represent a group of people, rather than just being one person speaking for yourself. You also sound less selfish when you make demands. Politicians routinely make statements like, "The American people don't want government controlling their health care options." (Never mind the fact that the FDA already does, in many ways.) You aren't supposed to notice that it's the politician who objects to government involvement in health care, not the American people who have little or no health care. The cult leader Dr. Frank N. D. Buchman gave us an example of this propaganda technique when he said, in 1936,       I thank Heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler, who built a front line of defense against the anti-Christ of Communism...       My barber in London told me Hitler saved all Europe from Communism. That's how he felt. So what on earth does the opinion of Frank Buchman's barber have to do with anything? Well, Buchman could put forth the opinion that Hitler had saved all of Europe from Communism while pretending that it was someone else's opinion besides his own. It tended to add weight to his own statements: "See, it isn't just my opinion. My English barber thinks so too." Likewise, when Acting Vice President Dick Cheney cursed and used obscenity on the Senate floor, (19 June 2004), telling Senator Lahey to "Go f**k himself" (or "Go f**k off"), he later tried to rationalize his behavior by explaining that many other Republicans agreed that it was about time that he said that — that they felt that it was "long overdue" (in spite of the fact that using foul language on the Senate floor is against the Senate rules). On Dec. 11, 2003, when Acting President George W. Bush announced that countries which had not participated in the coalition to blow up Iraq would not be able to bid on contracts to rebuild Iraq, he rationalized his actions by saying, "That's what the U.S. taxpayers expect." No, actually, it wasn't what they expected. G. W. Bush didn't bother to mention the extremely dangerous, threatening, Weapons of Mass Destruction ("45 minutes to launch") which the U.S. taxpayers really did expect him to find. Nor did he mention the claimed connections to the al Qaeda terrorists which he had claimed threatened Americans ("Sadam will give al Qaeda a nuke or something.") And the U. S. taxpayers really didn't expect Dick Cheney's friends at the Halliburton corporation to get multi-billion-dollar contracts on a no-bid basis. And the U. S. taxpayers didn't expect war profiteers to empty the national treasury while deceived young men in uniform died for a lie. A variation on this trick of Hiding Behind Others is to imply that lots of people are with you, or lots of people agree with you:       "Thanks for proving to all of us what a fool you are." That sounds far more impressive than,       "I think you are a fool." Bill Wilson constantly used the stunt of hiding behind others: He had the habit of hiding behind others by saying things like "Miss Hock and I" or "Dr. Bob and I." He used to say "A.A. has saved these men and their families," instead of "I, Bill Wilson, saved these men and their families." (Which led to, "So send money to the A.A. office", which really meant "So send money to me.") He used to say that the groups had to send money to the New York headquarters "to pay for our office" instead of "to pay for my living". (In the early days, supporting Bill Wilson in comfort was the major office expense of Alcoholics Anonymous.) When Bill and Lois Wilson were evicted from their house at 182 Clinton Street in New York for non-payment of the mortgage, Bill started a campaign that he called the "Lois W. Home Replacement Fund", and Bill went around trying to con all of the other A.A. members into signing pledges to donate. Bill didn't admit that he wanted the other A.A. members to supply him with a new house; no, it was just for poor old Lois. Bill Wilson would say "You should do our suggested Twelve Steps if you wish to recover" when he really meant, "You must do my required Twelve Steps, which I wrote, if you wish to live". Unless each A.A. member follows to the best of his ability our suggested [MY required] Twelve Steps to recovery, he almost certainly signs his own death warrant. His drunkenness and dissolution are not penalties inflicted by people in authority; they result from his personal disobedience to [MY] spiritual principles [cult religion practices]. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 174. Bill Wilson wrote in the Big Book that the first ten alcoholic members of Bill's new temperance movement would meet each evening, "constantly thinking how they might present their discovery to some newcomer." (Page 159.) "Their discovery" really meant "Bill Wilson's adaptation of Frank Buchman's cult religion." The Preacher's We Veil accusations of others by saying "We" or "Us" when you really mean "You". This is the flip side of hiding behind others — accusing others of things by accusing "us". A preacher will say "we" when he really means "you", as in "We are all sinners; may God have mercy on us" when he really means, "You are sinners; may God have mercy on your miserable worthless asses." It's just human nature for people to defend themselves from direct attacks, and to resent accusations, but they are much more open to what sounds like some sincere talk about "us" and "our shortcomings". Bill Wilson used the preacher's "we" constantly. He wrote: "At some of these [steps] we balked. We thought we could find an easier, softer way. But we could not." The Big Book, William G. Wilson, page 58. "We temporarily cease to grow because we feel satisfied that there is no need for all of A.A.'s [Bill's] Twelve Steps for us. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 113. We "constructively criticized" someone who needed it, when our real motive was to win a useless argument. Or, the person concerned not being present, we thought we were helping others to understand him, when in actuality our true motive was to feel superior by pulling him down. We sometimes hurt those we love because they need to be "taught a lesson," when we really wanted to punish. We were depressed and complained we felt bad, when in fact we were mainly asking for sympathy and attention. This odd trait of mind and emotion, this perverse wish to hide a bad motive underneath a good one, permeates human affairs from top to bottom. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 94. Such a negative, poisonous view of human life. When Bill Wilson wrote Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, he was in the middle of an 11-year case of chronic, deep, crippling, clinical depression. It's easy to see why. If our tempers are consistently bad, we arouse anger in others. If we lie or cheat, we deprive others not only of their worldly goods, but of their emotional security and peace of mind. We really issue them an invitation to become contemptuous and vengeful. If our sex conduct is selfish, we may excite jealousy, misery, and a strong desire to retaliate in kind.         Such gross misbehavior is not by any means a full catalogue of the harms we do. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 94. This is just a never-ending assault on any shreds of self-respect or feelings of self-worth that members may have left. It's cultish guilt induction to the max. There is one more twist to the "we are guilty" accusation, the "I am guilty, but I mean YOU" accusation. Bill Wilson did not use that particular trick himself, but you will hear plenty of it in A.A. meetings: "It took me years to learn to do all Twelve of the Steps, and really work a Strong Program. I just goofed off for my first few years in A.A.. I thought I was doing fine. I thought I knew everything. It took me a long time to wise up and realize that I had to work all of the Steps all of the time." And by implication, you — you stupid beginner — are doing the same thing. You also need to learn that you must work all of the Steps all of the time. But the speaker never offers us any explanation for how he was able to stay dry for so many years without bothering to "Work The Steps" properly. That would be good to know. We could save a lot of lives with that technique: "Just abstain from both alcohol and Alcoholics Anonymous. It'll save both your life and your mind." Put Words Into Other People's Mouths This is a form of hiding behind others, where you make other people appear to be saying what you are really saying. Frank Buchman used this technique in his quote above — "My barber in London told me Hitler saved Europe from Communism. That's how he felt." — and he used it again here:         A Swedish steelworker told me: "Only a spiritual revolution goes far enough to meet the needs of men and industry."         A Labor leader said: "I have seen the Labor Movement triumph and felt in the midst of triumph an emptiness. The Oxford Group gave my life new content. I see in its message the only key to the future of the Labor Movement and of industry the world over." Frank Buchman, speaking at East Ham Town Hall, 29 May 1938, quoted in Remaking the World, the speeches of Frank Buchman, Frank N. D. Buchman, 1949, pages 85-87. Also quoted in: Britain and the Beast, Peter Howard, 1963, pages 107-109. Also see: Drawing-Room Conversion; A Sociological Account of the Oxford Group Movement, Allan W. Eister, Duke University Press, 1950, page 47. Tokenism This is a well-known stunt. A company that does not wish to be accused of racism or sexism hires one Token Negro, or one token woman, and prominently displays the token right out front. Some firms hire a black woman for the receptionist, thus killing two birds with one stone. Bill Wilson published Doctor Silkworth's letter in the Big Book, and used it to imply that the medical establishment strongly approved of Bill's wonderful new plan to cure all of the alcoholics with cult religion. Dr. Silkworth was A.A.'s token doctor. Then Bill added an appendix to the second edition, "The Medical View on A.A.", which listed five more doctors who said something nice about Alcoholics Anonymous. Bill Wilson didn't bother to mention the fact that the American Medical Association reviewed the book Alcoholics Anonymous when it was first published, and they found it to be a bunch of useless old garbage with no merit. That was the real "Medical View" on Alcoholics Anonymous. On October 14, 1939, the Journal of the American Medical Association published the following review of "Alcoholics Anonymous: How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism": The seriousness of the psychiatric and social problem represented by addiction to alcohol is generally underestimated by those not intimately familiar with the tragedies in the families of victims or the resistance addicts offer to any effective treatment. Many psychiatrists regard addiction to alcohol as having a more pessimistic prognosis than schizophrenia. For many years the public was beguiled into believing that short courses of enforced abstinence and catharsis in "institutes" and "rest homes" would do the trick, and now that the failure of such temporizing has become common knowledge, a considerable number of other forms of quack treatment have sprung up. The book under review is a curious combination of organizing propaganda and religious exhortation. It is in no sense a scientific book, although it is introduced by a letter from a physician who claims to know some of the anonymous contributors who have been "cured" of addiction to alcohol and have joined together in an organization which would save other addicts by a kind of religious conversion. The book contains instructions as to how to intrigue the alcoholic addict into the acceptance of divine guidance in place of alcohol in terms strongly reminiscent of Dale Carnegie and the adherents of the Buchman ("Oxford") movement. The one valid thing in the book is the recognition of the seriousness of addiction to alcohol. Other than this, the book has no scientific merit or interest. The doctors at the American Medical Association immediately saw that Bill Wilson's "new spiritual program" was just a clone of Frank Buchman's cult religion. Bill never mentioned any of that. He just said, This work has claimed the attention of prominent doctors and institutions who say without hesitation that in a few years time, as it gains impetous, thousands of hitherto incurable cases may recover. Such people as the chief physician of Charles B. Towns Hospital and psychiatrists of the Johns Hopkins Hospital at Baltimore express such opinions. The One Hundred Men Corporation Prospectus, December 1938, page 4. Note that "the chief physician of Charles B. Towns Hospital" was none other than Dr. William D. Silkworth, the doctor who gave Bill Wilson the quack medicine "belladona cure" while Bill was detoxing from alcohol. So basically, Bill's grandiose claim of many endorsements from the medical community really boils down to just one from his own doctor and a couple from psychiatrists at Johns Hopkins. (Then Bill got a few more for the appendix added onto the second edition of the Big Book — including an endorsement from Dr. Harry Tiebout, Bill's psychiatrist, who also said that Bill Wilson was immature, narcissistic, and grandiose.) And, speaking of tokens, Rev. Sam Shoemaker was Bill's token Protestant minister, and Father Edward Dowling, S.J., was Bill's token Catholic priest. Bill used both of them to try to imply that the theology of A.A. was not bizarre and heretical. Testimonials and Stories This is well-known too. Everybody is doing it. Forest Gump was paid $25,000 to tell everybody that he just loved to play ping-pong with his Flexo-Lite Ping-Pong Paddle, which wasn't true, but Momma said that just a little white lie wouldn't hurt... Sports heroes and movie stars are constantly telling us that we can be so much happier if we just do like they do, and use a certain product... It is an advertising truism that stories sell. A commercial that just tells the true facts about a product will often be a real failure, but a commercial that tells a story can be very convincing — "I just couldn't lose weight; none of the diets worked for me; I was miserable. I didn't dare to go to the beach and appear in public in a bathing suit. Then I discovered the ShrinkFit Diet Program® and now I can wear a size twelve..." I signed up with Insta-match® and in just one day they found me a girl who couldn't wait to jump in bed with me. I recommend that you give your money to Insta-match® too, and you'll be happy just like me... In an infomercial for a stock market trading program, a man declares, "I traded stocks for two hours and made $7000." Wow. That sounds great. We should get in on that right away, shouldn't we, if it is that easy to make big money? Ah, but they didn't tell us how many other times the guy traded stocks for two hours and lost $7000, did they? They just imply that the guy is a very successful trader who is consistently making big profits. And they didn't tell us anything about how the average trader fares. So that also makes it an example of "cherry picking" — just publicizing a few hand-picked spectacular success stories, while ignoring the many more stories of failures. A study of such trading programs conducted by the SEC found that more than 90% of the people who trade stocks and options with such computer programs lose their money, but the advertisers don't tell us that. They just keep broadcasting exciting stories like, "My best trade was when I made $10,000 in three trading days." Cults are notorious for trotting out a chorus line of poster children who all give testimonials about how the cult is just the greatest thing since sliced bread, and it has done such wonderful things for them, and their leader is God's gift to mankind. Alcoholics Anonymous is non-stop testimonials. The last two-thirds of the Big Book is all testimonials, all people telling stories about how they just love A.A. and the Twelve Steps, and how it made their lives so wonderful... But the book does not tell any stories about the millions of other people whom the faith-healing 12-Step religion did not help. The Big Book tells us nothing about all of the people who relapsed and went back out and died drunk — it doesn't even mention the Big Book's co-author Henry Parkhurst, who died drunk. Such a "proof" with testimonials is very one-sided, and only tells half of the story. In addition, there is no actual evidence that those people who did get sober actually got sober because of Alcoholics Anonymous. There is no demonstration of any cause-and-effect relationship between joining A.A. and getting sober. That critical factor is just assumed and glossed over. And every A.A. meeting is more testimonials, people telling their stories, and claiming that A.A. saved their lives, not that they saved their own lives by quitting drinking... And of course you will not hear from any of the other people who found the A.A. program to be of no help, and quit coming back. The Fallacy of One Similarity Two different things are declared to be the same thing based on just one point of similarity (or just a few). For instance, "Your father is authoritarian. The cult leader is authoritarian. Therefore they are just the same, and you should trust the cult leader just like you trust your father." Obviously, you could continue that through a number of other characteristics like, both are men both are balding both have fat bellies but that would still overlook the single most important difference between the two men: The father probably has the best of intentions towards his child, while the cult leader is a psychopath who abuses and exploits people. It's easy to see how this logical fallacy can get extended into stereotyping groups on the basis of just one characteristic: "All of those tree-huggers are opposed to logging this stand of old-growth trees. Therefore, they are all eco-terrorists who will do anything to block progress." Bill Wilson had a dramatic "religious" or "spiritual" or hallucinatory experience, and thought he saw God, when he was sick and detoxing from alcohol in Towns Hospital and getting Dr. Silkworth's "Belladonna Cure" (which was a hallucinogenic drug cocktail), and while also being tormented and indoctrinated by recruiters from Frank Buchman's Oxford Group cult. After reading in William James' book, The Varieties of Religious Experience, that some people have profound religious experiences when they are really down, in despair and great pain, Wilson decided that using the Oxford Groups techniques to put people down, crush their egos, and make them feel powerless and hopeless would recreate his "religious" experience in them. He was wrong. It doesn't work. Bill Wilson made the big mistake of seizing upon a few points of similarity between what happened to him and what he read in James' book, while ignoring the many large differences: James' subjects weren't on hallucinogenic drugs, they weren't suffering from Delirium Tremens while detoxing from alcohol, and they weren't having their minds "changed" by Oxford Group recruiters. The Fallacy of One Dissimilarity This technique is simply the converse of The Fallacy of One Similarity — find one difference between two things, and then declare that they are completely different. For example, "Alcoholics Anonymous cannot be a cult because there isn't a strong leader who commands and controls everybody." That illogic ignores the fact that there are many dozens of different defining characteristics of a cult, and A Charismatic Leader is just one of them. Besides, Alcoholics Anonymous did have a charismatic leader as its founder — Bill Wilson — and a cult does not suddenly stop being a cult just because the leader dies. Bill Wilson is now dead, but A.A. is still ruled by the practices and customs that he established, and through the crazy things that he wrote in his books. If It Looks Like X, Then It Is X. When you find a snake that has red, yellow, and black bands all around it, it's obviously just a harmless king snake. So you pick it up to take it home as a pet. It turns around and bites you and you die. What was the logical error? A coral snake also has red, yellow, and black bands all around it, and it isn't harmless. Similarly, if a man looks like a respectable and honest politician, he must really be one, right? I mean, he's dressed in a fine suit and tie, isn't he? And he gives rousing speaches, doesn't he? — Speaches full of words like God, country, patriotism, and freedom, right? So he must be a great statesman, right? If a TV evangelist has a Bible in one hand, and a cross in the other, and dresses impecably and speaks softly and piously and says all of the right slogans and prays a lot and looks just like a real holy man, then he must be one right? ...Even if he is preaching hatred and the advocating the assassination of somebody he doesn't like. Conversely, if a young black man with a knit cap looks like a hoodlum gang member, then he must be one, right? Many animals take advantage of this confusion of appearances by appearing to be a venomous animal. There are harmless flies that look just like bees or wasps. The predators leave them alone because they don't want to get stung. A Distinction Without A Difference. As in, "He was just a heavy drinker, not a real alcoholic. Okay, he was drinking enough alcohol to wreck his health and his brain and eventually kill himself, but he wasn't a real alcoholic, because he managed to quit drinking without A.A. or the 12 Steps." When Vice President Dick Cheney's former Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby declared that Cheney and Bush had authorized and approved the surreptitious leaking of classified nuclear intelligence information to get back at Joseph C. Wilson IV for reporting that Saddam Hussein didn't get any yellow-cake uranium from Niger, "A senior administration official, speaking on background because White House policy prohibits comment on an active investigation, said Bush sees a distinction between leaks and what he is alleged to have done." ( Washington Post, 2006.04.06) What distinction? Is it not treason if it is the President who subverts national security? Something that would get an ordinary citizen locked up for years in Leavenworth is okay if it is sneakily done by the President for political reasons? Sly Suggestions Plant sly suggestions. Do not make solid statements which can be proven wrong; rather, just suggest that your ideas may be true. Then, often, perhaps a little while later, you might suddenly start assuming that all of your suggestions are really true. This technique is basically the old strategy of first just getting your toe in the door, and then later gradually working your way in. With this technique, the speaker first gets his toe into the door of someone's mind by merely suggesting that an idea may be true (which isn't too hard to accept, because it's only a suggestion that might be true), and then the speaker gradually pushes further in by assuming that the suggestion really is true. For instance: "You may be a winner..." "You may have already won $10,000,000. Just subscribe to a bunch of magazines and see..." "Your opinion may be worth $1000." "This diet plan may be the one that works for you..." "This get-rich-quick scheme may be the answer to all of your problems..." "Science and astrology: Are they really at odds?" Con artists who tout stocks on the stock market say of their latest "hot stock" that a "Big move could happen." (Yes, but will the move be in the direction that you want? It might go down like the Titanic.) "I am predicting, that this web site may be part of a major corporate buyout by Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo in the next 18 months." (First it's a prediction, and then it's just a maybe.) The back cover of Dr. Arthur Janov's ridiculous book "The New Primal Scream: Primal Therapy After 20 Years" advertises: "Scientific Research World-Wide Proves Primal Therapy May Prolong Life by Reducing Stress". Yes, and the discovery of the coelacanth PROVES that Nessie the Loch Ness sea monster MAY be real too, but it's extremely unlikely, for about a dozen good scientific reasons.4 I'm not holding my breath. Notice the broken logic: Scientific blah-blah PROVES that Janov's garbage MAY work. You get an absolute certainty — proof — followed by a vague, uncertain, possibility. And note that the opposite logic is equally valid: Scientific blah-blah PROVES that Janov's garbage MAY NOT work. On December 5, 2005, Condoleeza Rice used the same word game in her attempt to explain to the European countries the illegal American practice of "rendition" — kidnapping people and shipping them to other countries that permit torture, where they will be forcefully interrogated. Condoleeza said that we had always had a problem with "what to do with these individuals whom we know are believed to be terrorists." We get an absolute certainty — she spoke the word "know" with strong emphasis — followed by a vague belief. Condoleeza used the passive voice to declare that some unnamed person believes that some guy is a terrorist. "Yeh, we know with certainty that Joe Blow the village idiot thinks that Abdul is a terrorist." That is Condoleeza's lame-brained justification for violating international law and besmirching the reputation of the United States of America. By the way, I know that some people believe that George W. Bush is a terrorist. And so are Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and General Jerry Boykin. They murder innocent people. A commercial on TV says, "Two years ago, I had a heart attack. Right there where Tina is standing. If it weren't for Bayer aspirin, who knows?" They did not say that Bayer aspirin actually did anything for the guy. They didn't even say that the guy actually took any of it. They just want to strongly hint that aspirin saved the guy's life, because he presumably took some of it while having a heart attack. Bill Wilson was a past master of this technique, and used it frequently: If, when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, you are probably alcoholic. If that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer.       To one who feels he is an atheist or agnostic such an experience seems impossible, but to continue as he is means disaster, especially if he is an alcoholic of the hopeless variety. To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face. The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, page 44. Bill neatly tap-danced and segued from a diagnosis of "you may be sick" and "you might need a spiritual experience" to "you are doomed to an alcoholic death if you don't join my 'spiritual' program", without a single new fact to support the sudden change in medical diagnosis. He just started assuming that all of his previous suggestions were unquestionably true. Then Bill Wilson used the Either/Or propaganda trick to present the reader with only two limited choices — join his cult or die: "To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face." In his second book, Bill Wilson used a Sly Suggestion this way: By now the newcomer has probably arrived at the following conclusions: that his character defects, representing instincts gone astray, have been the primary cause of his drinking and his failure at life... Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 50. Actually, by now, the newcomer has probably come to the conclusion that Bill Wilson was a raving lunatic, and the newcomer has quit going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings altogether. (At least ninety-five percent of the newcomers to A.A. drop out in the first year.) Oh, and Bill Wilson's "primary cause" of drinking is bogus and just so much delusional nonsense — "character defects, representing instincts gone astray". Bill Wilson had a zillion such goofy "primary causes" of drinking and alcoholism, and they were all wrong. Notice how Bill Wilson used Sly Suggestions in this paragraph of instructions to the wives of alcoholics, where Bill did a clever tap-dance and slipped and slid from talking about how the husbands must quit drinking to declaring that the husbands must "discover" Bill's Oxford Group version of God: There is another paralyzing fear. You may be afraid your husband will lose his position; you are thinking of the disgrace and hard times which will befall you and the children. This experience may come to you. Or you may already have had it several times. Should it happen again, regard it in a different light. Maybe it will prove a blessing! It may convince your husband he wants to stop drinking forever. And now you know that he can stop if he will! Time after time, this apparent calamity has been a boon to us, for it opened up a path which led to the discovery of God. The Big Book, 3rd edition, William G. Wilson, To Wives, page 116. Bill Wilson started off talking about how bad it might be if the husband lost his job. Then Bill declared that it might be a blessing... — that such a calamity might provide the impetus for the husband to quit drinking. Then Bill suddenly assumed that his suggestions were true, and totally changed the subject and declared that the husband could quit drinking if he wished to, and concluded that everything was wonderful because so many husbands had found Bill's Buchmanite version of God. So that also makes it a bait-and-switch trick: First the goal is to get the husbands to quit drinking, and then the goal is to get the husbands to "come to believe" in Bill Wilson's religion. Even the commandment to "Work The Steps!" was delivered in this sly back-door manner. On the second page of chapter five of the Big Book (page 59), it says that the Twelve Steps are merely "suggested as a program of recovery." Bill Wilson didn't want to write that. He wanted the Twelve Steps and all of the rest of his dogmatic cult religion to be requirements of membership in A.A., just like how, back in the early days, "surrendering" was required before an alcoholic could attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. But more moderate A.A. members strongly objected to that because they clearly foresaw that Bill Wilson's extreme religiosity was going to drive away many of the very alcoholics whom the program was supposed to help. So, after a loud and long screaming contest, Bill was forced to compromise and write that the Twelve Steps were just "suggested as a program of recovery" (The Big Book, page 59). Bill Wilson did his best to put a smiley-face on the situation by later declaring that his critics "had opened the A.A. door wide to all, even the atheists and agnostics", but Bill was really secretly nursing a resentment. So, on the very first page of the next chapter that he wrote, chapter six, Bill planted a sly suggestion that also used the fear-mongering propaganda technique: "If we skip this vital step, we may not overcome drinking." (The Big Book, William G. Wilson, page 72.) Then again, we might. Heck, I did. In fact, the vast majority of successfully recovering alcoholics do. Bill gave us lots more examples of this mind-bending Sly Suggestions technique. The Big Book is loaded with them. To list just a few more: We asked ourselves this: Are not some of us just as biased and unreasonable about the realm of the spirit as were the ancients about the realm of the material? The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Page 51. If you won't swallow Bill's bull, then maybe you are prejudiced, biased, and unreasonable as all get-out. And be careful not to brand him as an alcoholic. Let him draw his own conclusion.   ...   But insist that if he is severely afflicted, there may be little chance he can recover by himself. The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, page 92. "Maybe you are gonna die. I'm not saying for sure, but maybe you are gonna die if you don't join my 'little fellowship' real soon now." Maybe you have disturbed him about the question of alcoholism. This is all to the good. The more hopeless he feels, the better. He will be more likely to follow your suggestions. The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, page 94. Maybe we are really messing with his mind now. And maybe the whole family should go join the Al-Anon branch of the cult: One more suggestion: Whether the family has spiritual convictions or not, they may do well to examine the principles by which the alcoholic member is trying to live. They can hardly fail to approve these simple principles, though the head of the house still fails somewhat in practicing them. Nothing will help the man who is off on a spiritual tangent so much as the wife who adopts a sane spiritual program, making a better practical use of it. The Big Book, 3rd edition, Chapter 9, The Family Afterward, page 130. Bill Wilson says that the whole family may do well to join his religion, because Father is acting crazy again. "Maybe they will really benefit from Bill's version of Buchmanism." (The religious cult that just drove Daddy crazy.) Bill imagines that they can hardly fail to agree with his program, once they see how wonderful his "simple principles" really are. (Actually, Bill Wilson's "simple principles" were not really "principles", they were Oxford Group cult practices.) Then Bill Wilson lectured the wives of alcoholics, telling them in several different ways not to nag their husbands to quit drinking, and not to nag their husbands to quit smoking, or else, and Bill then made a few more Sly Suggestions: Our next thought is that you should never tell him what he must do about his drinking. If he gets the idea that you are a nag or a killjoy, your chance of accomplishing anything useful may be zero.   ...   This may lead to lonely evenings for you. He may seek someone else to console him — not always another man. Big Book, 3rd Edition, To Wives, page 111. Bill was also using the propaganda trick of Argue From Adverse Consequences there, to put the little woman in her place — "Don't nag your husband to quit drinking, or else he may go off with another woman." We know these suggestions are sometimes difficult to follow, but you will save many a heartbreak if you can succeed in observing them. Your husband may come to appreciate your reasonableness and patience. The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Chapter 8, To Wives, page 111. (Then again, maybe he won't appreciate you at all. Maybe he'll just continue to take advantage of you, like Bill did to Lois.) If this kind of approach does not catch your husband's interest, it may be best to drop the subject, but after a friendly talk your husband will usually revive the topic himself. This may take patient waiting, but it will be worth it. Meanwhile you might try to help the wife of another serious drinker. If you act upon these principles, your husband may stop or moderate. The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Chapter 8, To Wives, page 111. So the husband may quit drinking if the wife stops being a shrill nag? Why, it must be her fault that he drinks. And while you are out recruiting, here is how you handle a drinker who is perhaps not a disgusting atheist: Your prospect may belong to a religious denomination. His religious education and training may be far superior to yours. In that case he is going to wonder how you can add anything to what he already knows. But he will be curious to learn why his own convictions have not worked and why yours seem to work so well. He may be an example of the truth that faith alone is insufficient. The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, page 93. That's a cute twist in the logic: "He may be an example of one of Bill Wilson's unquestionably-true religious beliefs." Bill is subtly slipping in another propaganda technique there: Assume the Major Premise. Just assume that something is true, and talk like it is unquestionably true, because you wish to fool others into believing that it is true, and then divert attention away from that assumption by arguing about something else, like why it is true: He may be an example of the truth that faith alone is insufficient. Then again, he may be an example of the truth that religious beliefs really have very little to do with drinking beer... Bill managed to pack more lies into that paragraph. This one sentence contains no less than two lies: But he will be curious to learn why his own convictions have not worked and why yours seem to work so well. Who says that the other guy's own convictions have not worked? Who says that the goal of all religious beliefs is to keep people from drinking alcohol? I don't remember any of the Ten Commandments saying, "Thou Shalt Not Drink Wine, Beer, Or Hard Liquor". In fact, Christ's first miracle was making wine out of water, wasn't it? Didn't Jesus drink wine at the Last Supper? And don't many Christians drink wine at Communion? Don't Jews drink wine at Seder? So having religious beliefs or convictions does not always bar one from drinking alcohol. And drinking alcohol does not prove that someone's religious convictions have failed. And religious convictions don't "work". They are not supposed to "work". That is, religious convictions are beliefs. They are not machines like cars or computers that are supposed to do things, and supposed to function in a certain manner. And it is not really the job of religious convictions to control people's indulgence in food, sex, drugs, or alcohol. The recruiter's convictions "seem to have worked so well"? That may well be a slick deception. The recruiter could be doing the "Fake It Until You Make It" routine. He may well relapse and die drunk after doing a bunch of enthusiastic recruiting, just like Jackie did in the Big Book, and just like Paddy did, and just like Bill Wilson's own recruiter, Ebby Thacher, did. Lastly, note the underhanded suggestion that the religious beliefs of the A.A. members are better than the beliefs of other religions, because the other religions didn't keep their people from drinking. You know, Bill Wilson just might have been one of the greatest, slickest, most consummate American artists, when it comes to lies, deceit, and propaganda techniques. The A.A. headquarters is still cranking out the same style of propaganda today: Spirituality is an awakening — or is it all the loose ends woven together into a mellow fabric? It's understanding — or is it all the knowledge one need ever know? It's freedom — if you consider fear slavery. It's confidence — or is it the belief that a higher power will see you through any storm or gale? It's adhering to the dictates of your conscience — or is it a deep, genuine, living concern for the people and the planet? Came to Believe, Page 5, A.A. World Services, Inc. Does the A.A. headquarters teach real spirituality, or is it just a load of bombastic bull droppings? Misleading Inference Somebody who is selling a get-rich-quick scheme on late-night TV shows you an accountant's statement that certifies that he is worth more than a million dollars. But there is no evidence that the guy actually made that much money by using his get-rich-quick scheme. He probably made the money by selling the scheme on late-night TV. Likewise, in an infomercial for a stock market trading program, a woman says, "I feel bad when I don't make $1000 a trade." Well okay, but how often does she feel bad? They didn't say anything about that. They imply that she is so successful, and making so much money, that it's an unusual and unhappy day when she doesn't make $1000. But they actually presented us with no evidence to support that assumption. For all we know, that poor woman could be feeling 'really bad' every day. Unsubstantiated Inference and Groundless Claims Peter Howard complained bitterly about the criticism that his favorite cult religion — Frank Buchman's Moral Re-Armament — was getting:         So many people are snobs of intellect. They write well, make money, gain titles or preach splendidly but are helpless and barren when they meet a man in need. They shine before men but change nobody. Britain and the Beast, Peter Howard, 1963, page 112-113. Peter Howard tried to imply that members of his religion really did do a good job of helping people and changing them for the better, while his critics did not. But Peter Howard provided no evidence to support that inference. Actually, Frank Buchman's cult was notorious for also not changing people. People would loudly proclaim that they had been "changed" or "saved" at a big emotional rally or revival meeting or house party, but they were very soon back to their old bad habits, same as usual. Introduce Irrelevant Information as Supporting Evidence Here is an example of using irrelevant information as supporting evidence. The cult leader Frank Buchman was working on converting a college student, and... ...finally the student said: "I'm not going to be a Christian."   ...       Then Frank asked him what he believed.       "Confucius," came the unusual answer.       "Wonderful!" said Frank, deciding to humour him. "Tell me about Confucius."       Frank says his friend did not seem to know much on that subject. But Frank had been to China, and knew that Confucius said he could tell people how to be righteous, but he hadn't the power to make them righteous. Moveover, he had been to Confucius' grave, and been entertained at tea by the seventy-sixth descendant of the Chinese sage and seen the seventy-seventh descendant on the day when he had to wear four coats because of the cold. Frank Buchman, quoted in Experiment With God; Frank Buchman Reconsidered, Gösta Ekman, page 90. The information that Frank Buchman visited the grave of Confucius is totally irrelevant. It does not mean that Buchman knew anything more about Confucianism than the student or anybody else. Likewise, having had tea with a very distant descendant of Confucius is also completely irrelevant trivia, even though it sounds good on the surface. And to talk about having seen an even more distant descendant on a very cold day is absurd. The author also used the propaganda technique of making an Unsubstantiated Inference, implying that Frank Buchman, unlike Confucius, did have "the power to make people righteous". Alas, Frank Buchman had no such power, either. Frank Buchman was able to fool a few young college students and eccentric rich people and make them think that they had been changed for the better, but when it came to the people who really mattered the most and who really needed to get "changed", like Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Goering, Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler, Frank Buchman totally failed to make good Christians out of them. So much for Frank Buchman's "power to make people righteous". (Besides, what happened to free will? If Frank Buchman really had "the power to make people righteous", then wasn't he over-riding other peoples' ability to chose good or evil for themselves?) A variation on this propaganda trick of introducing irrelevant evidence is to state a bunch of irrelevant obvious platitudes, and then claim that they support your program. Yammer a few trite hackneyed irrelevant clichés and slogans like, "People are more important than things", and then conclude that your cult is right about everything. (That was what "Up With People" did.) False Analogy They show you a fried egg and say, "This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs..." No, that isn't my brain. But considering the stupidity of their arguments, that just might really be their brain... Bill Wilson wrote: Near you, alcoholics are dying helplessly like people in a sinking ship. The A.A. Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, William G. Wilson, Chapter 11, "A Vision For You", page 152. No, alcoholics are not like helpless people on a sinking ship. Alcoholics are not powerless over alcohol. They can quit drinking, with or without Alcoholics Anonymous. (Now whether they will quit drinking and save their own lives is another matter.) One A.A. member reported: "My sponsor used to enliken the steppers to survivors of a shipwreck, who all had to row in the same direction, in order to survive. This related to a group conscience. 'What would it look like if everyone rowed in different directions?' was his analogy." Again, that is a bad analogy. Recovering or recovered alcoholics are not trapped in a lifeboat together. They don't have to spend the rest of their lives in an A.A. meeting room, conforming to the group. They can all go in their own directions and get on with their lives. Bill had a zillion false analogies: We are like men who have lost their legs; they never grow new ones. The A.A. Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, William G. Wilson, Chapter 3, "More About Alcoholism", page 30. So, Bill says, you can't ever recover from alcoholism, and you can't ever leave Alcoholics Anonymous. Actually, if alcoholics suffer from an allergic reaction to alcohol, like Doctor Silkworth suggested in the Big Book (page xxvi of 3rd edition; page xxviii of 4th edition), then we are not at all like men who have lost their legs. We are like people who are allergic to a poisonous chemical. So we are better off if we don't consume that poison. Bill continued: The Wright brothers' almost childish faith that they could build a machine which would fly was the mainspring of their accomplishment. Without that, nothing could have happened. We agnostics and atheists were sticking to the idea that self-sufficiency would solve our problems. When others showed us that "God-sufficiency worked with them, we began to feel like those who had insisted the Wrights would never fly. The A.A. Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, William G. Wilson, Chapter 4, "We Agnostics", pages 52-53. No, I don't feel like a stodgy old fool when I hear some superstitious cult members proclaim that they have found a magical panacea — that the cult has solved all of their problems. (Especially not when I read what their real failure rate is.) The alcoholic is like a tornado roaring his way through the lives of others. The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, page 82. That was the behavior of Bill Wilson, not all alcoholics. They suspect father is a bit balmy!         He is not so unbalanced as they might think. Many of us have experienced dad's elation. We have indulged in spiritual intoxication. Like a gaunt prospector, belt drawn in over the ounce of food, our pick struck gold. Joy at our release from a lifetime of frustration knew no bounds. Father feels he has struck something better than gold. For a time he may try to hug the new treasure to himself. He may not see at once that he has barely scratched a limitless lode which will pay dividends only if he mines it for the rest of his life and insists on giving away the entire product. The A.A. Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Chapter 9, "The Family Afterward", pages 128-129. No, a giddy manic-depressive who has become obsessed with a cult religion is not like a prospector who has just found gold. False Equality Say or imply that two things are equal when they are not. "We pretend being religious makes us moral and charitable." When You're Riding Alone, You're Riding With Osama, Bill Maher, page 117. We routinely hear that the economy is improving because a bunch of new jobs were created — as if all jobs are equal — a job is a job, and just having one is wonderful. Someone who lost a high-paying manufacturing job and is now forced to take a low-paying janitorial or burger-flipping job won't agree. We can easily find plenty of examples of this stunt in Bill Wilson's writings: Quitting drinking = joining Alcoholics Anonymous. Quitting Alcoholics Anonymous = returning to a life of drinking, and dying drunk in a gutter. A.A. activities = "recovery". A.A. activities = "spiritual progress". (Big Book, pages 100 and 127.) The A.A. program = "treatment" of alcoholism. And Professor Vaillant used the reverse equality: "treatment" of alcoholism = sending patients to Alcoholics Anonymous. Doing Bill's Twelve Steps = "spiritual development". Doing Bill's Twelve Steps = "spiritual growth". Believing in God = agreeing with Bill Wilson's cult religion beliefs. "Having faith" = believing Bill's bull. Choosing sobriety = accepting Bill Wilson's Twelve Steps (and vice versa). (Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age, p. 28.) A.A. = sobriety. When they tell you "Don't let anything come before your sobriety", that really means "You must put A.A. before everything else in your life." "Helping others selflessly" = going recruiting for A.A. (Big Book, page 97.) "Putting other people's welfare ahead of your own" = going recruiting for Alcoholics Anonymous. (Big Book, page 94.) "Keeping spiritually active" = going recruiting for Alcoholics Anonymous. (Big Book, page 156.) Behavior of which 12-Steppers disapprove = "spiritual disease". Surrendering your mind and your will to the cult = "transcendence of ego". Slavish dependence on A.A. equals "true independence of the spirit." (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 36. Bill Wilson's "spiritual principles" = God's spiritual principles. Bill Wilson's cult practices = God's spiritual principles. Bill Wilson's strange ideas of God = God. Bill Wilson's favorite cult religion = "simple principles". "Having faith in God" = believing what Bill Wilson says. The voices in Bill's head = the voice of God. Or, the voices in Bill's head = the voices of spirits of long-dead people — medieval priests and Nantucket whalers. Bill Wilson's funny state of mind = "restored to sanity by God". Accepting the authoritarian structure and extreme demands of a pro-Nazi cult religion = "getting good". Using your own intelligence and will power to run your own life and take care of yourself = "playing God". Rejecting Bill's bull = being "unreasoningly prejudiced". Being a slave of the A.A. God = freedom: First of all, we had to quit playing God. It didn't work. Next, we decided that hereafter in this drama of life, God was going to be our Director. He is the Principal; we are His agents. He is the Father, and we are His children. Most good ideas are simple, and this concept was the keystone of the new and triumphant arch through which we passed to freedom. A.A. Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Chapter 5, How It Works, page 62. Many years of drunkenness = expertise about alcoholism and sobriety.       At an A.A. meeting, a member declares that A.A. is good for achieving sobriety, because: "There's an aggregate of two thousand years of drinking experience in this meeting room. If we don't understand alcoholism, then nobody does." Wrong. Bad logic. Expertise in getting drunk does not equal expertise in getting other people sober. Heck, just look at the guys drinking under the bridge — they might have even more years of experience in drinking, because they never stopped — they must really understand drinking — but they haven't gotten anybody else sober lately, have they? Double Bind A double bind is a trap where you are damned if you do, and damned if you don't. The classic double binds are the tests for whether a woman is a witch: Throw her into a river or pond, and ....       If she sinks and drowns, she was innocent.       But if she floats and lives, then she's guilty (because the Devil is holding her up), so she gets burned at the stake. Likewise,       If she confesses (under torture) to being a witch, then she is one.       If she denies being a witch, then that proves that she is an evil witch who lies about being a witch. Closer to home, Alcoholics Anonymous says that       If you say that you are an alcoholic, then you obviously are one.       If you deny being an alcoholic, then that proves that you are a dishonest alcoholic who is in denial. The Hazelden Little Red Book teaches us that this is a "symptom" that indicates "mental illness": — Taking that first drink with the idea that "this time I'll control it." The Little Red Book, Hazelden, page 28. Oh? Is the opposite true? Is it a sign of good mental health if you think "This time I won't control it. This time I'll just get totally smashed, drunk as a skunk, and righteously ripped..."? Bill Wilson gave us another good example of a double bind earlier, when he declared that we were selfish and unspiritual if we committed a bunch of sins and crimes, and we were also selfish and unspiritual if we didn't commit a bunch of sins and crimes, because, in the second case, we were just selfishly avoiding punishment. Damned if you do, and damned if you don't. Another common Alcoholics Anonymous double bind is: "If I don't feel like going to a meeting, I usually NEED to." If you feel like going to a meeting, you should go to a meeting. If you don't feel like going to a meeting, you should go to a meeting. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Either way, they insist that you should spend your evening at one of their meetings. Danny M. Wilcox teaches us, in his book of A.A. dogma, that alcoholics are "people pleasers": They spoke of the things they had been willing to do to please other people in their lives.       The need to please others and the perceived failure to do so were often cited as among the main reasons they drank. Generally, these members exhibited obvious anxiety concerning the opinion of other people, which really emphasizes our social needs as human beings. Alcoholic Thinking: Language, Culture, and Belief in Alcoholics Anonymous, Danny M. Wilcox, page 86. But five pages later, Wilcox also wrote that being selfish and not caring how other people feel is a sign of alcoholism: "Selfishness, self-centeredness! That is the root cause of all our problems" (AA 1976: 62). Everything revolves around self-centeredness.   ...   Amazingly, when first introduced to AA most members said that they did not think that they were especially self-centered. Some of them thought it patently ridiculous to suggest that they were interested only in themselves, since they could cite plenty of examples of their generosity and concern for others.   ...       Most members said that their selfishness just got worse as their dependence on alcohol increased. Alcoholic Thinking: Language, Culture, and Belief in Alcoholics Anonymous, Danny M. Wilcox, page 91-92. So, you are an alcoholic if you care what other people think and feel, and you are an alcoholic if you don't care what other people think and feel. Damned if you do, and damned if you don't. They use the same trap on those people who are children of alcoholics: If you strive to please yourself, that proves you are a selfish, self-seeking alcoholic, and you need to join Alcoholics Anonymous and do the Twelve Steps. If you strive to please other people, that proves you are a neurotic "people-pleasing" Adult Child Of an Alcoholic, and you need to join Al-Anon or ACOA and do the Twelve Steps. Damned if you do, and damned if you don't. You can't get out of it without joining some 12-Step group and doing the guilt-inducing Twelve Steps. For that matter, as Bill sees it, you can't ever escape from the Twelve Steps. Just being related to an alcoholic dooms you to having to do Bill Wilson's Twelve Steps for the rest of your life: If you drink alcohol, like your relative, you have to join Alcoholics Anonymous and do the Twelve Steps. If you don't drink alcohol, you have to join Al-Anon or ACOA and do the Twelve Steps to treat your "spiritual disease" of "codependency". Project Future From Past Assume that history repeats itself, and just because something happened before, it will happen the same way again. Especially, make the mistake of attributing the causes of events to only one or two factors, while ignoring a lot of other factors. For instance, "The last three times we had a full moon in Aquarius, the stock of XYZ went up. So let's bet big on XYZ the next full moon. It's a can't-lose deal." The people who use astrology to try to predict the stock market die broke, just like all of the other cycle-trackers and wave-finders. A corollary to projecting the future from the past is the notion that history repeats itself. You will often hear someone arguing that we must do a certain thing, or follow a certain path, because that was the best thing to do back in 1938 in response to Hitler (or some such thing). While it is wise to learn from history, it is also wise to learn that history does not necessarily repeat itself. One wit declared that history doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes. False Analysis Of History Misinterpret history to make it look different than it really was, to create the impression that something happened which didn't. For instance, some people say that Adolf Hitler was a military genius, who just went too far in killing the Jews. He was only beaten, they say, because America overwhelmed Germany with supplies and equipment. Fact: Adolf Hitler was a military fool. He constantly over-rode the decisions of his generals, who grumbled about the war being run by Corporal Hitler. Hitler lost battle after battle, and lost millions of troops, by stupidly attacking the wrong places at the wrong time, and refusing to retreat and save his armies when necessary.       And the Russians bore the brunt of the war, not the Western Allies. The fighting on the Russian Front was an unbelievable nightmare, featuring Russian human-wave attacks by the "punishment brigades". They lost many, many millions of people — something like 14 million — and gave a whole new meaning to the term "cannon fodder", while the USA only lost about a quarter of a million men. The Moral Re-Armament cult leader Frank Buchman declared: "We finance our work as [George] Washington financed his revolution — on our knees." Moral Re-Armament: What Is It?, page 106. That is just so much nonsense. George Washington most assuredly did not finance the American revolution on his knees. He often had to beg the Continental Congress to cough up some more cash and guns and supplies, but he didn't do it on his knees. And the old painting that portrays George Washington praying on his knees at Valley Forge perpetuates a myth. What George Washington really said was, "I have examined the religion of the Christians, and the Jews, and the Musselman (Islam), and in none of them do I find any virtue." So much for financing the American Revolution on his knees. The Buchmanites repeated that false analysis of history while they continued to harangue people to donate more money: Maybe you should give everything you've got. People did two hundred years ago when this country had to finance the Revolution. Born To Upturn The World: The people who are making the Sing-Out explosion, "Up With People", David Allen, pub. 1967, Pace Publications, page 71. No, they didn't. Similarly, the often-heard claims that the United States of America is a nation that was founded on "Christian Principles" or is "based on Christianity" are also false. The Founding Fathers were very careful to not incorporate any religion into the Constitution of the United States. They had already tasted a State-enforced religion in England — the Church of England — and they didn't want any more of that, so the Founding Fathers created the "absolute firewall" of separation between Church and State. And where some colonies like Massachusetts and Maryland already had laws that enforced one religion over another (death to Jews), they had to nullify those laws in order to be part of the United States. Another popular misinterpretation of American history is to say that the Vietnam War happened because America was defending democracy in Vietnam... There wasn't any democracy in Vietnam. There were a bunch of murdering heroin-dealing generals running the southern half of the country. The USA was fighting to keep control of the country, and keep its puppet dictators in power, and to protect American investments, but not to protect democracy or freedom. The truth is that there was never a free and fair election while the USA dominated Vietnam. President Eisenhower wrote in his memoirs that it was obvious that Ho Chi Minh would win any fair popular election by a landslide, so the promised elections were not held. Years later, they held some "elections" that were just stage-managed affairs with only American-approved condidates allowed to run. And of course the American selection, like the murderous Colonel Nguyen Kao Ky, was always the winner. Even today, we still have a few racists in the USA whose analysis of history is a bit warped — they will tell you that the kindly Southern slave owners took good care of their slaves and gave them everything that they needed. Why, those poor pathetic blacks would have been lost without their kindly masters taking such good care of them... A popular variation on false history is to proclaim that current society is decadent and immoral, not at all like the good old days when everything was wonderful. But any reasonable analysis of history shows that things have often been far worse than they are now, no matter whether you are talking about sexual looseness, drug addiction, lawlessness, alcoholism, or social upheaval. One of my favorite quotes on this subject was found in an ancient Egyptian tomb, built 4000 years ago: "Alas, the whole world is derelict. Children no longer obey their parents." From dogmatic religious moralists, we often get raps like,       "The Roman Empire collapsed because of immorality and bread and circuses for the masses." The speaker ignores the fact that the whole premise of the Roman empire was immoral. It was basically "Rob, enslave, and murder others because you can get away with it — you are bigger and stronger and more vicious than they are, and you have better steel swords. Such conquest of other people is 'glorious'."       The Romans even invented crucifixion to punish and terrorize those people who objected to being slaves of the Romans and giving all of their wealth to the Roman soldiers.       The "immorality" argument also ignores many other possible causes of the decline of the Roman Empire, particularly the fact that most of the later Roman Emperors appear to have been suffering from lead poisoning and were insane. Lead dishes were fashionable for the rich back then, and they even piped in their running water in lead pipes, so many of them suffered from brain damage caused by a lifetime of lead poisoning. Some of those Roman emperors were raving lunatics. It shows, when you read their history. But the "immorality" argument ignores all of those other important facts, and just tries to substitute a simplistic cause for a complex process.       And then there was the problem that Rome had a big silver mine in Spain. They mined it heavily for a long time, and used the silver to pay the entire Roman army. But when the miners dug to a certain depth, they hit an underground stream and the mine flooded. They could not ever get the water out of the mine, and the mine was finished. No more silver for Rome; no more silver for the army. When they got no more pay, the Roman soldiers deserted. Then the Vandals walked into Rome, and that was the end of the Roman Empire. Somehow, the "immorality" seems to have been largely irrelevant. For every complicated problem there is a simple and wrong solution. == H. L. Mencken UPDATE: 2005.02.14: It's Valentine's Day, from which we learn another bit of the history of Rome: Emperor Claudius outlawed marriage because he believed that unmarried young men made better warriors. (At least they were in a much nastier mood because they weren't getting laid much.) A courageous priest named Valentine performed secret marriages for young couples of lovers anyway. When Claudius found out, he had Valentine killed. (And much later, Valentine was declared to be a saint, the patron saint of lovers.)       Nero fiddled while Rome burned... Caligula killed everybody who bothered him, including his favorite teacher and his own mother. Constantine suffocated his wife and murdered his son. Claudius outlawed marriage... Those later Roman Emperors were mad as hatters.       — Which in turn is another example of insanity caused by heavy metal poisoning: English hatters used vials of mercury as weights to shape hats, and after 20 years of inhaling mercury vapors, their brains were gone and they were raving lunatics. See Alice in Wonderland for the story of one mad hatter. And what will really tweak the noses of the religious fanatics is pointing out the fact that the Roman Empire did not collapse and fall apart until it adopted Christianity as the official state religion. As long as the Romans kept throwing the Christians to the lions, they were okay. But when the Emperor Constantin converted to Christianity and made Christianity the official state religion of Rome, and suppressed all other religions,20 the days of the Roman Empire were numbered. Apparently God was okay with the Roman Empire being Pagan, but when they turned Christian, God got rid of them. Does that mean that if the United States adopts Christianity as its official state religion, that the American empire will decline and fall too? Bill Wilson similarly misinterpreted the history of temperance movements. He declared that organizations like the Washingtonian Society and Women's Christian Temperance Movement were failures that didn't sober up any drinkers, and that Bill's Alcoholics Anonymous program was the first working sobriety program in history. Nothing could be further from the truth. Bill wasn't the first, and A.A. doesn't work. And the reason that those other temperance organizations didn't spread like cancers is because they were not evil mind-controlling cults that convinced their followers that they absolutely must go recruiting or else they will die. Also see the example of Hypnotic Bait And Switch for another example of the false analysis of history. It's Never Happened Before This is also an appeal to a false analysis of history. Imply that something just cannot happen because it has never happened before. Variations: "It can't happen here." "It hasn't happened yet." "It always happens this way, so it can't happen that way." "These people have never done such a thing before, so they won't do it now." Note that the statement that "It never happened before" does not really need to be true. This technique will work just fine if your audience is ignorant of the fact that "it" actually did happen before. I Didn't See It Happen, So It Never Happened Claim that something never happened, or something does not exist, because you have not seen it. As Carl Sagan said, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Just because you haven't seen any intelligent extra-terrestrials yet doesn't prove that they don't exist. Sexual exploitation is a problem in Alcoholics Anonymous. The evidence is overwhelming. The criminal behavior of A.A. groups like the Midtown Group in Washington DC has even been reported on television and in national magazines like Newsweek. Nevertheless, A.A. members who are in denial about the whole thing use the argument "I never saw it happen. It never happened in our group, so it never happened." This logical fallacy also ignores the logical problem that you cannot prove a negative. Just because you haven't seen something does not prove that it doesn't exist. For example, you cannot prove that Santa Claus does not exist. Just because you didn't see him doesn't prove that he doesn't exist. Even if you went to the North Pole looking for him and didn't find him, doesn't prove that he doesn't exist. Santa could have been vacationing in Hawaii then. I have never seen Sophia Loren, Dustin Hoffman, or Robert Redford either, so I guess they don't exist. Oh sure, I've seen pictures of them, but those pictures could have been faked, just like the photos of Santa Claus. You see the problem. This could go on forever. Argue Inevitability Declare that something is inevitable, or unavoidable. This technique can weaken opposition to a certain plan or suggested course of action. ( "If it is going to happen anyway, there is no sense in wasting a lot of time and energy fighting it.") "It's Our Destiny." "It's fate. It's inevitable." "It's the unavoidable consequence of things that have already been done." "It's the Force Of History." — "Communism teaches us that we must overthrow the rich people and seize all of their property and kill them all and spread Communism everywhere because Dialectical Materialism teaches us that the Revolution of the Proletariat is inevitable — the 'Force of History' cannot be stopped." "History is on our side." "It's God's Will." "We are stuck with continuing the war, now that we have started it." "A clash between the Christian and Islamic cultures was inevitable." Pollyanna's Ploy — Unbridled Optimism Just proclaim that everything is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, no matter what is really happening. Back in 1978, the U.S. Government General Accouting Office investigated the Saudi Arabian oil supply, just trying to figure out whether we were in any danger of insufficient supplies sometime in the future: Search for New Oilfields or New Wells The GAO investigative team was told that "prospects for additional oil discoveries were considered to be good."   ...       In hindsight, Aramco's optimism about exploration prospects would prove unfounded. After 25 years of increasingly intense geological and geophysical efforts and equally intense exploratory drilling, Saudi Arabia failed to discover any significant new fields other than the series of complex, lower-productivity, tight reservoirs in the Hawtah Trend. History would prove, absent some major new discovery beyond 2005, that the last great oilfield in Saudi Arabia was found close to a decade before the GAO report was submitted to Congress. Rate of Oil Production Aramco's [the Arab-American oil company's] management, however, assured the GAO inspectors that most oilfields in Saudi Arabia were not rate sensitive, and that the rate at which each Saudi giant field was produced would not reduce the ultimate oil recovery from the field. The only risk Aramco's management saw from accidentally overproducing a field was an increase in the field's final production cost.       The Aramco experts who spoke to the GAO team confidently told these investigators that current production in at least some key fields could possibly be increased by as much as 50 percent or more without significantly affecting the ultimate volume of recoverable oil. This optimism also proved unfounded. Twilight in the Desert, Matthew R. Simmons, page 73. In 1982, OPEC stopped reporting oil production data. And politicans are currently yammering, "The Surge is working. Things are wonderful in Iraq. Victory is just around the corner. Just a few more years..." Chicken Little's Pessimism Scream that we live in the worst of all possible worlds and things are still getting even worse. We are all going to Hell in a bucket. This technique is of course simply the opposite of the Pollyanna Ploy. Ignore all good news and emphasize the negative. The Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching. == Assyrian tablet, c. 2800 BC Generalize, and the Sweeping Generality Project grand, sweeping generalizations from minimal information: Extrapolate sweeping generalities from just a few facts. "I know three Martians, and all three of them are sleazy and dishonest and underhanded and will cheat you whenever they get a chance. Therefore all Martians are dishonest and untrustworthy." Apply general patterns or stereotypes to specific cases: "You are a skeptic, so you just can't understand how people experience God." The Sweeping Generality is a kind of exaggeration — Take something that is partially true, or only true in some cases, and make a universal statement out of it. For example, the former Miss USA got out of a rehab facility, and with her head still full of cult slogans, went on the Jay Leno show and annnounced: "Everything that comes out of the mouth of an alcoholic or an addict is a lie." == Miss USA, Tara Conner, on the Jay Leno Show, 2 February 2007. Now it is true that addicts or alcoholics who are in a bad way, in the depths of their addiction, will often lie to get more of whatever their favorite drug is. But no way is everything that they say a lie. Nor is their addiction the only motivation in their lives. Nor are all addicts and alcoholics so desperate, and lying to get something. What is funny there is that Miss Conner invoked "The Cretan's Paradox" without realizing it. That is the paradox created by Epimenides, a Greek from Crete, who went before the Spartans and announced, "All Cretans are liars." The Spartans thought that was pretty funny, but they didn't realize the gotcha: The speaker Epimenides was himself a Cretan, from Crete. Therefore he must be a liar. But if he is a liar, then he was lying when he said that all Cretans are liars. So Cretans are not liars. So Epimenides must have been telling the truth when he said that all Cretans are liars. Therefore, Cretans must be liars. Therefore Epimenides must be a liar... So Epimenides was lying when he said that all Cretans are liars. So Cretans are not liars. ... etc. ... 'Round and 'round forever. When Tara Conner confessed to Jay Leno that she was an alcoholic, and then declared that everything that comes out of the mouth of an alcoholic or an addict is a lie, she was creating the same paradox. And Jay Leno knew it. He was actually wincing in pain as Tara Conner went on and on about how bad alcoholics are. Likewise, A.A. makes sweeping generalizations about alcoholics: "I know of a hundred alcoholics who simply cannot learn to drink moderately. Their drinking always spins out of control. Therefore no alcoholics can ever learn to drink moderately and we should not even discuss the subject." Bill Wilson and a few of the other early A.A. members had arrogant, domineering, egotistical, grandiose personalities, so Bill declared that all alcoholics in the world had gigantic puffed-up self-centered strutting-peacock egos who thought that they were too big and too good to need God. Dr. Harry Tiebout, Bill Wilson's psychiatrist, said of Bill: "he had been trying to live out the infantilely grandiose demands of 'His Majesty the Baby.'" So Bill wrote of all alcoholics in general: When A.A. was quite young, a number of eminent psychologists and doctors made an exhaustive study of a good-sized group of so-called problem drinkers. The doctors weren't trying to find how different we were from one another; they sought to find whatever personality traits, if any, this group of alcoholics had in common. They finally came up with a conclusion that shocked the A.A. members of that time. These distinguished men had the nerve to say that most of the alcoholics under investigation were still childish, emotionally sensitive, and grandiose.       How we alcoholics did resent that verdict! Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, pages 122-123. The primary fact that we fail to recognize is our total inability to form a true partnership with another human being. Our egomania digs two disastrous pitfalls. Either we insist upon dominating people we know, or we depend on them far too much.   ...   When we habitually try to manipulate others to our own willful desires, they revolt, and resist us heavily. Then we develop hurt feelings, a sense of persecution, and a desire to retaliate.   ...   Of true brotherhood we had small comprehension. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 53. ...our crippling handicap has been our lack of humility.   ... That basic ingredient of all humility, a desire to seek and do God's will, was missing. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 71-72. And Bill's disciples make the same mistake: In most Twelve Step literature, the addictive self is called the "ego." Whenever I hear or read the word ego, I substitute the words addictive self.       The goal of a Fourth Step is to deflate the ego — or, in other words, to deflate the addictive self. The addictive self is marked by grandiosity (addicted people feel that they are more than or better than everyone else) and self-centeredness (they believe that they are the center of the universe and there is little room left for anyone or anything else). Understanding the Twelve Steps, Terence T. Gorski, page 81. ... those addicted to alcohol behave as though they were the center of their universe or their own God. Spirituality: The key to recovery from alcoholism, Warfield, Robert D.; Goldstein, Marc B., Counseling & Values, April 1996, Vol. 40, Issue 3, page 196. A.A. members agree that while it is not necessary to believe in a personal God, it is important for alcoholics to realize that they themselves are not God! That is, they are not the center of the universe, nor are they running the show. Drug-Impaired Professionals, Robert Holman Coombs, Page 217. (Italics in the original.) Apparently, none of those authors can see the simple obvious fact that it really is possible to feel bad, and want to consume some alcohol or other drug to feel better, without suffering from delusions of grandeur and believing that you are God. Alcoholics are not all clones of Bill Wilson. Alcoholics don't all have Bill Wilson's mental illness. Alcoholics are not all the same. Take Quotes Out Of Context It's like this: Suppose that the police are interrogating a guy about a bank robbery. He responds with, "What?! Are you trying to claim that I shot the bank teller?" If you lift just the five words "I shot the bank teller" out of that sentence, it turns the question into a confession of guilt. It completely reverses the meaning of the words. That is quoting out of context. Here is a good example of quoting out of context to create a desired impression: In August of 1936, the religious cult leader Frank Buchman gave an interview to William A. H. Birnie, a newspaper reporter from the New York World-Telegram, wherein he stated, "I thank heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler, who built a front line of defense against the anti-Christ of Communism." Read the entire interview here. While writing their history of Alcoholics Anonymous and biography of the founder William G. Wilson, the staff at Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. used the propaganda technique of taking quotes out of context, as well as some other propaganda techniques, to cover up the fact that Bill Wilson's spiritual teacher was a Nazi sympathizer. Charles Bufe described the AAWS machinations this way: It's worth noting that Bill Wilson and his fellow AAs-to-be must have known about this interview, which caused a public furor, yet they continued to work as part of the Oxford Groups for more than another year in New York and another three years in Akron. It's also worth noting that AA, in its official "Conference-approved" biography of Bill Wilson, Pass It On, treats this matter in what can only be described as a dishonest manner. This is all the more surprising and disappointing in that the book's dust jacket proclaims, "Every word is documented, every source checked." In the section of Pass It On dealing with Buchman's remarks, the anonymous author states:       In August [1936], the New York World-Telegram published an article about Buchman, charging that he was pro-Nazi. The newspaper quoted Buchman as saying: "Thank Heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler who built a front-line defense against the Anti-Christ of Communism. Think what it would mean to the world if Hitler surrendered to God. Through such a man, God could control a nation and solve every problem. Human problems aren't economic, they're moral, and they can't be solved by immoral measures."       While most discussion of the incident, even by Buchman's critics, have since vindicated him, the article brought the group into public controversy. [PASS IT ON: The story of Bill Wilson and how the A.A. message reached the world, authorship credited to 'anonymous', actually written by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. staff, pages 170-171.] There are several remarkable features in this passage. The first is that the World Telegram piece is referred to as an "article" when in fact it was an interview in which Buchman's comments comprised well over half the text, with almost all of the remaining text consisting of descriptive passages, transitions between Buchman's statements, and uncontroversial background information on Buchman and the Oxford Group Movement. There is a tremendous difference between an "article" in which Buchman was "charged" with being pro-Nazi and an interview in which he himself clearly expressed pro-Nazi opinions, a fact which undoubtedly was not lost on the author of AA's official Wilson biography. Another remarkable feature of the passage just quoted from Pass It On is that Buchman's statements are carefully edited to put his best possible face forward. The anonymous AA author took fragments separated by hundreds of words and patched them together as if they were a single statement, while dropping a number of words within the fragments. For example, by dropping the word "But" before the words "think what it would mean ... ," the author made the fragments appear to fit together snugly — thus hiding the fact that the "statement" is a patchwork. In normal literary practice, it's considered proper to separate patched-together fragments with ellipses if the intervening material doesn't alter the meaning of the quoted material. If the intervening material does alter the meaning, as it does in the "statement" cited in Pass It On, it's considered unethical to quote it even with ellipses, and blatantly dishonest to quote it as if it were a single unitary statement. It should also be noted that the author of Pass It On quoted Buchman's "statement" in such a way as to leave the impression that it was the only such "statement" in the "article." Perhaps most remarkably, the anonymous AA author concludes that, "most discussions of the incident, even by Buchman's critics, have since vindicated him." One remarkable aspect of this statement is its deliberate fuzziness. What was Buchman "vindicated" of? Of making pro-Nazi statements? Of being pro-Nazi? Our AA author leaves that crucial matter unresolved. Further, I've done my best to read all of the widely circulated criticisms of Buchman's remarks, and none "vindicate" him of making pro-Nazi statements. — Charles Bufe, in his book Alcoholics Anonymous: Cult or Cure Oh well, so much for the A.A. practice of "rigorous honesty" (Big Book, page 58). Begging The Question Get the desired answer by how the question is phrased. Consider these two questions: Do you favor reducing property taxes? Do you favor drastically reducing funding to schools and emergency services? Most people will answer "Yes" to the first question, and "No" to the second. The problem is, they are the very same question, as the citizens of Oregon are now painfully discovering. The Oregon voters answered "yes" to the first question in past elections, and now they are faced with the consequences: not enough money for schools and emergency services. Similarly, A.A. recruiters ask alcoholics, "Well, wouldn't you like to escape from your addiction and be healthy and happy and free?" — But they really mean, "Wouldn't you like to join Alcoholics Anonymous and go to our meetings for the rest of your life?" Meaningless Question Ask meaningless questions, like: "What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?" The Japanese Zen masters had a great answer for such questions: "Mu." "Mu" means neither "yes" nor "no"; it means something like, "I reject your bogus question." For example, one student asked the master, "Does a dog have Buddha-nature?", and the master simply answered, "Mu!" Blame The Victim If a crime is committed against someone, blame the victim instead of the perpetrator. When something goes wrong, blame the victim rather than the cause of the problem. Trial lawyers love to use this one: "That bastard deserved to get murdered. He had it coming. His killer did the world a favor." Or, "She deserved to get raped. She was asking for it. Look at the sexy way she dressed. Everybody knew that she was a loose woman." That is part of the classic "Nuts and Sluts" defense — claim that the woman who got raped is crazy and a whore (so presumably, it doesn't matter that she claims that she was raped). "You were just gullible and asking for it..." Or, "John Kerry deserves to get attacked with lies and smears committed by the 'Swift Boat Veterans for Truth'. He brought it on himself by daring to mention his war record." Sometimes this technique is used very subtley. Get a load of what a merchant says when his company goofs and ships the wrong part to a customer: "RMA #: 106260 - Wrong Item Received" Note — wrong item recieved by customer, not wrong part shipped by merchant. Bill Wilson and A.A. are masters of this stunt. Bill Wilson wrote these lies in the Big Book, and they are read out loud at the start of every A.A. meeting: RARELY HAVE we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average. There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest. ... At some of these [steps] we balked. We thought we could find an easier, softer way. But we could not. The A.A. Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, William G. Wilson, Chapter 5, "How It Works", page 58. If the hocus-pocus voodoo-medicine cult religion program of Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't work, and doesn't really help you to quit drinking, then it's all your own fault because you are so bad, so dishonest and lazy, and selfish and manipulative, always seeking an easier, softer way — "The program doesn't fail people; people fail the program." Play the Victim, and Self-Victimization Claim that you are the victim, not the offender. No matter what happened, or who did what to whom, claim that you are the victim of all kinds of attacks, and nasty conspiracies, and slander and libel, and on and on. Politicians use this trick often. A politician will attack his opponent with all kinds of criticism, denunciations and slander, and even blatant lies, and when the opponent fights back and counter-attacks, the first politician takes on a wounded look and complains how unfair it is for his opponent to be so vicious. Other examples: "She seduced me. It's all her fault. She came on to me. It's her fault, and now I'm getting all of the blame." "Poland attacked Germany. We are just defending ourselves." — Adolf Hitler, 1939. "The Gays are demanding special rights and priveleges. They are undermining the institution of marriage. They are an attack on family values." All of those Hollywood stars and "celebrities" who repeatedly get married and divorced two weeks later couldn't possibly be underminding the institution of marriage, could they? Claim to Have Special or Secret Knowledge Claim to have knowledge that isn't available to the listeners, or to ordinary people. If you disagree with the way a crazy preacher is completely distorting and twisting the meaning of a Biblical passage, he might sneer at your ignorance and declare, "Well, you'd understand it if you read it in the original Greek." (See Elmer Gantry, by Sinclair Lewis.) While running for President, Richard Nixon bragged that he had a secret plan for ending the War in Vietnam. He couldn't tell anybody what it was, because it was a secret. But if you would just vote for him, he would end the war. Well, he did eventually end the war, but in the final analysis, his secret plan was just "Kill another million Vietnamese and Cambodian civilians, and then give up and go home." Other handy claims are: "You'll never understand; you weren't there." "You are the wrong generation; you can't know how it feels." "You don't know; you have never experienced... (whatever)." "You don't have access to my sources of information (which I can't tell you about because it's all classified)." In speaking about patterns of cult behavior in many of our government institutions, Dr. Arthur Deikman wrote:       Secrecy supports cult-like behavior, as we saw in the Life Force group, where the hierarchy was maintained through limiting access to information. Secrecy functions not only to cover up unethical activities from outside eyes, but also to increase authoritarian control over the larger group. By promoting the idea that the leader or the in-group have special information and expertise, they remove themselves from criticism and justify the exclusion of others from the decision-making process.       In the case of religious cults the special information and expertise is described as divine inspiration or enlightenment. The cult leader's presumed higher state precludes lower beings from judging his or her actions. Similar claims are made in government where special knowledge of the enemy or secret technical information is said to justify decisions that would otherwise be objected to on moral or even practical grounds. The Wrong Way Home, Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in American Society, Arthur J. Deikman, M.D., page 145. The former pretender to the throne in Washington D.C. claimed to have special knowledge of what Saddam Hussein had been doing that required that we eliminate him in a "pre-emptive" attack that resembled Adolf Hitler's 1939 "defense of Germany" from Poland and its horse-mounted cavalry... But we don't get to see what that special information is, before we attack... Will it be any better than Nixon's plan to end the war in Vietnam? Only the body count will say for sure. And now that the war is over (Shrub said so on that aircraft carrier, remember?), we still haven't seen the "special intelligence" that warned Bush that he had to invade Iraq to defend America, nor have we seen the Weapons Of Mass Destruction that allegedly threatened America. So just what was the real reason for the invasion? Don't accept, "To liberate Iraq." The USA does not have the right to bomb and invade countries whose leaders we do not like, to "liberate" them. That is what the Communists used to say — that they were "liberating" countries. Like how Stalin liberated Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania. And like how Khrushchev then liberated Hungary again. "Liberate" is what China says it did to Tibet. Besides, that is not what the Bush administration said in the beginning, to get us into the war. They were claiming that Saddam had lots of yellow-cake uranium from Niger, remember? Well he didn't. And stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction, which he didn't. UPDATE, 2004.06.19, The September 11 Commission released their report that said that there was simply no evidence that Saddam Hussein had ever cooperated with Al Queda to commit terrorist acts against the United States. So acting Vice President Cheney went on television and said that they were wrong, and that he knew more about it than the Commission did. Oh? Did Dick Cheney withhold critical facts from the 9/11 Commission? Did he lie to them? No wonder he refused to give his testimony under oath... The 9/11 Commission immediately asked for the vital information that Cheney had withheld from the Commission, but Cheney refused to give them anything more. What a great patriot. Likewise, Alcoholics Anonymous old-timers tell newcomers that "You don't know, and can't understand, how the magical Twelve Steps make people quit drinking" (because the newcomers are too new in their sobriety, and their thinking is alcoholic). Only the experienced old-timers understand it. But if the newcomers will just practice the Twelve Steps for a few years, then they will begin to see... That is really a very common line that many cults use. They are forever explaining that you just don't know, and can't understand, the peace and tranquility and happiness and serenity and cosmic wisdom and divine enlightenment that comes from doing the cult's practices for years and years.... "But if you just faithfully do all of our practices — thoroughly follow our path — for a year, then you will see the light..." Look at this emotional claim that A.A. old-timers know more than other people: Re: Should interventionists use the word Decon, One of the signs of an intelligent — well educated person is their ability to use tact and deplomacy, yes when I type I have typos for two reasons because I don't see well, and I don't spell well. Neither one of which have one darned thing to do with my knowledge or ability to deal with alcoholics and drug addicts — You ask what qualifies me to speak for other alcoholics. 40 years of drinking and 17 years of helping others get off of it. You know what statistics you either read or make up I don't know which. But untill you hold a seizuring alcoholic under a bridge, praying to God the ambulance gets there before it's too late. When you start sitting up all nite with a alcoholicin DT's strapped down to a hospital bed in a county hospital because he had no insurance to go anywhere else. When the police call you in the middle of the night to come down and ID a body of a drug addicted prostitute,that has no identification but has your card from a faith based rehab in her pocket — because you gave it her the last time she got out of jail. And no one know anything but her street name. When a addict strug out on drugs and alcohol calls you to come because they need you and by the time you get there they are dead on the bath-room floor of a cheap motel room. When you get a call from a thirteen year old child who's parents have already introduced her to drugs and alcohol and has her out on the streets hooking for them, and one of the other girls gives her a phone# to call for someone who will help her. When you live all of this for 17 years then you can ask me what my qualifications are. Untill then I suggest you put a sock in it, because you know nothing about the real face of addiction. http://community.aetv.com/service/displayDiscussionThreads.kickAction?as=119137&w=267410&d=341884&d-1169404-p=11 The writer claimed to have special knowledge — many years of experience in dealing with addicts and alcoholics — but he provided zero information about how well his methods of treating those problems actually work. From the list of deaths, apparently not very well. And his emotional lecture begs the question: "How many of those people might still be alive if he had offered them something better than cult religion?" Bad Math Use bad mathematics in calculating things. One recent Internet hoax was a statement that listed a whole lot of crimes committed by members of Congress. The unknown author then calculated the crime rate of Congress as being several times higher than the average crime rate of the American people, ostensibly proving that all of those politicians are a bunch of crooks. Be that as it may, the error was: The author listed all of the crimes ever committed by anyone who had been a member of Congress in the recent past, but calculated the crime rate as if all of those crimes were committed by just the current 535 members of Congress in just one year. Hey Presto! The result was a grossly inflated crime rate for the members of Congress. We could list lots of examples of Bill Wilson's bad mathematics in computing the A.A. success rate, but we have already covered that in several other places. Use the Passive Voice Instead of using the active voice and directly declaring who did what or who said what, use the passive voice where stuff just sort of happens, where something gets done by an invisible unnamed somebody... "Mistakes were made." "It is believed that..." "It is rumored that..." "It is often said that..." "Huge gains are predicted for..." Obviously, we have to ask, Who is doing what, who is saying what, and who believes what? What are their credentials? Do they really know anything? Do they lie or tell the truth? What ax do they have to grind? What reason do we have to care what they think or what they say? The true-believer Buchmanite T. Willard Hunter tried to rationalize away the issue of Frank Buchman's homosexuality — that is, the sexual orientation of Frank the vicious homophobe — with these words: Because he never married and because of some aspects of appearance and manner, innuendoes would turn up in the press about his own orientation.       He was in good company. Similar charges have been leveled against Ruth and Naomi, David and Jonathan, Jesus and John, Paul and Timothy.   ...   Whether or not the suggestions have a basis in fact, it is possible a case can be made that some of the most powerful and creative personalities in history have had this predilection. It is sometimes said that the greatest saints were the most highly sexed. World Changing Through Life Changing: The Story of Frank Buchman and Moral Re-Armament; A Thesis for the Degree of Master of Sacred Theology at Andover Newton Theological School, T. Willard Hunter, 1977, pages 130-131. Hunter used the passive voice a lot: ...innuendoes would turn up...       All by themselves? ...charges have been leveled...       By whom? ...a case can be made that...       Made by whom? It is sometimes said that...       Said by whom? Mr. Hunter would have us believe that because some unnamed people allegedly accused Jesus Christ of homosexuality, and because some other unnamed people supposedly claimed that the greatest saints were highly sexed, that it was okay for Frank Buchman to be a vicious hateful homophobic hypocrite. In the recent flap over the U.S. military secretly paying for propaganda stories to appear in Iraqi newspapers, we got these lines: "Faults Are Acknowledged in Program That Pays Iraqi Newspapers." "Secret Program May Have Erred, Pentagon Says" 'A top Pentagon official said Friday that "transgressions" may have occurred in a secret military program that pays Iraqi newspapers to publish information ...' Mark Mazzetti, Los Angeles Times, 3 December 2005. "Secret Program may have erred..." — Gee, the program erred all by itself? Alcoholics Anonymous propaganda uses this technique often: "...it is widely believed that not including a Twelve-Step program in a treatment plan can put a recovering addict on the road to relapse." The Recovery Book, Al J. Mooney M.D., Arlene Eisenberg, and Howard Eisenberg, pages 40-41. It is widely believed by whom, besides a few hard-core true-believer A.A. members? It is certainly not believed by the doctors who know the facts. "AA has burgeoned and today is widely considered the most successful existing method for supporting sobriety..." http://www.naturalhealthnotebook.com/ Is widely considered successful by whom? (The web site largely touts natural herbal cures and alternative healing practices, so I guess it must be the same people as the ones who buy things like homeopathic remedies...) "It is believed in the study of 12-Step recovery processes that the mutual disclosures of members fosters processes of belonging and commitment to the collective goal of drug and alcohol abstinence." Keep coming back! Narcotics Anonymous narrative and recovering-addict identity, Adam Rafalovich, Contemporary Drug Problems, Spring 1999, v26, i1. Again, who believes it? Use Slanted Language Recently (2012.02.20), the FBI raided a house in Portland, Oregon, for cyber-crimes. When the FBI wouldn't give the story to a TV news reporter (KOIN, Channel 6), he declared, "The FBI failed to give further information..." Not, "the FBI chose to release no further details," or "The FBI chose to maintain case confidentiality for now," no, the FBI "failed to provide information." How's that for getting back at someone who won't give you a juicy story? When Princeton University President John Hibben banned Frank Buchman and his organization from the Princeton campus for explicit sexual revelations, he explained his actions to newspaper reporters in a press conference. Peter Howard, a fanatical follower of Buchman, wrote of the event this way: At Princeton, when the opposition appeared, the President, Dr. Hibben, allowed himself to be quoted as saying that so long as he was President there was no place for Dr. Buchman's work in the University. Innocent Men, Peter Howard, page 89. President Hibben did not passively "allow himself to be quoted" — he deliberately, clearly declared his position in a public statement to the press. Also notice the use of passive language, where some vague "opposition" supposedly just mysteriously "appeared", rather than it being a case of intelligent people strongly objecting to Frank Buchman's behavior and treatment of students, and the lurid talk about sex. (Some of Buchman's critics commented that the sexual confessions at Oxford Group meetings were "as satisfying to the listeners as the original sin was to the confessors." Use Inflamatory Language Use terminology and words that are guaranteed to excite passions and raise emotions. Think of Mark Antony's classic speech at Caesar's funeral in Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar: Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up To such a sudden flood of mutiny. ... I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts. I am no orator, as Brutus is... ... For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, Action, not utterance, nor the power of speech To stir men's blood; I only speak right on. I tell you that which you yourselves do know, Show you sweet Caesar's wounds, poor poor dumb mouths, and bid them speak for me. But were I Brutus, and Brutus Antony, there were an Antony Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue In every wound of Caesar that should move The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny. DEBATING TECHNIQUES: Refute By Example This is a valid debating technique. Find exceptions to the rule or generalization to prove it false. If, for example, someone declares that "All ducks are white", you can answer, "No, that's wrong. Think of Mallard ducks, or Ringnecks, or Harlequin Ducks, or Wood Ducks. None of them are white." Similarly, when A.A. people recite the line, "RARELY HAVE we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path", we can answer: "No, Bill Wilson was lying when he wrote that. Think about: the Big Book co-author Henry Parkhurst, and the second A.A. woman Florence Rankin, and the enthusiastic A.A. recruiters Jackie and Paddy, and Lillian Roth, the famous childhood movie star and singer who founded Alcoholics Anonymous in New Zealand, only to die drunk herself, and Doctor Bob's son-in-law Ernie Galbraith, "A.A. Number Four", the constantly-relapsing older philanderer whom the autocratic Doctor Robert Smith forced on his adopted daughter Sue Smith, and then think about Bill's own recruiter Ebby Thacher, who sucked Bill into the Oxford Group cult, only to relapse and die drunk himself, — just to name the first half-dozen failures who come to mind. We can also say:       "Lois Wilson's private secretary, Francis Hartigan, reported that more than half of the authors of the autobiographical stories in the first edition of the Big Book relapsed and returned to drinking, and Bill Wilson knew it, because he kept the first copy of the Big Book that came off of the presses, in which he checked off the names of the authors as they relapsed and left A.A..       "Dick B., the well-known A.A. historian, reports that the entire New York group, the one run by Bill Wilson, had a horrendous relapse rate.       "And in more modern times we have many scientific studies, including those by Prof. George Vaillant of Harvard University, who is a member of the Board of Trustees of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., which reveal that A.A. has a terrible failure rate — basically, 100% — and an 'appalling' death rate to go with it." What Bill Wilson really should have written is: "RARELY HAVE we seen a person succeed who has thoroughly followed our path." Refute By Exposing Contradiction This is another valid debating technique. Show that a statement is false or at least unreliable by exposing a contradiction with other statements or facts. For example, Bill Wilson wrote in the Big Book that 75 percent of the newcomers to A.A. got sobered up: Of alcoholics who came to A.A. and really tried, 50% got sober at once and remained that way; 25% sobered up after some relapses, and among the remainder, those who stayed on with A.A. showed improvement. Bill Wilson, in the Foreword to the Second Edition of "The Big Book", Alcoholics Anonymous, page XX, 1955. But Bill Wilson contradicted himself many times: At a memorial service for Dr. Bob, Bill Wilson actually bragged about the pathetically low success rate of the whole A.A. program. (Bill was making himself out to be a long-suffering hero, working tirelessly to promote Alcoholics Anonymous.) Bill described the early days of A.A. this way: You have no conception these days of how much failure we had. You had to cull over hundreds of these drunks to get a handful to take the bait. Bill Wilson, at the memorial service for Dr. Bob, Nov. 15, 1952; file available here. When he wrote his history of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1957, Bill Wilson admitted that the early A.A. program had been a disaster: At first nearly every alcoholic we approached began to slip, if indeed he sobered up at all. Others would stay dry six months or maybe a year and then take a skid. This was always a genuine catastrophe. Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age, William G. Wilson, (1957), page 97. And Nell Wing, a secretary of Alcoholics Anonymous for 35 years, and Bill Wilson's personal secretary for many of those years, as well as A.A.'s first archivist, reported: "There were alcoholics in the hospitals of whom A.A. could touch and help only about five percent. The doctors started giving them a dose of LSD, so that the resistance would be broken down. And they had about fifteen percent recoveries." Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age, William G. Wilson, (1957), page 370. (It would appear that LSD is three times as effective as Alcoholics Anonymous for treating alcoholism. Unfortunately, that doesn't work either, in the long run. Minimization and Denial Minimization and denial is a kind of dishonesty. It is the technique that a lot of alcoholics and cigarette smokers use to declare that they don't really need to quit drinking or smoking — they minimize the seriousness of their problem — "Maybe I'm over-doing it a little bit right now, but frankly I'm not ready to quit just yet" — or they deny that they even have a problem — "Problem? What problem? I can quit any time I want." Another name for denial is "The Ostrich Syndrome" — that behavior where someone just sticks his head into the sand and refuses to see the problem. — And where someone just refuses to see and to take responsibility for a situation. The ultimate personification of such mental midgetry was Sgt. Schultz, the immortal bumbler of TV's "Hogan's Heroes": "I know nothing! I see nothing! NOTHING!" Cults use this technique a lot, to explain away their every fault and flaw. Occasionally, they will even mention that their "enemies" have accused them of being a cult, and laugh and explain, "It's just that some of our recruiters have been really enthusiastic about getting new people to come to meetings. That's all there is to it." (That is the rap I heard in Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism, which really is a cult.) When cult members, or true believers in any cause, for that matter, are confronted with information that is contrary to their beliefs, they go through a predictable set of reactions: Denial. They will deny that the information is true, and reject it: "That can't possibly be true. No, I don't believe that. Where did you hear that?" Arianna Huffington described a fanatic as someone who simply rejects and disregards all information that conflicts with his chosen beliefs.       If you give them enough supporting evidence to make denial impossible, then they will progress to stage 2: Minimization and rationalization. They will minimize the importance of the information, and claim that it doesn't matter, or just try to rationalize it all away:       "Well, it doesn't matter anyway. That's just a trivial detail. Don't most religious leaders do that? Churches, schools, corporations, everything is a cult, so it doesn't matter. Besides, he deserves a few of the simple pleasures of life, after all..." (Like all of the money, all of the girls, all of the drugs, and then all of the boys — Rev. Jim Jones, People's Temple.)       If you present them with convincing information that it really is an important point, and does matter, then they will progress to stage 3: Blanking. True Believers will just blank their minds, and turn off, and refuse to hear anything more that you say. Sometimes they will even physically leave, walking or running away, to avoid hearing anything more.       Jon Atack described how blanking is taught to Scientologists: 'If the criticism cannot be silenced, then the scientologist should cease all communication with the critic, or "disconnect".'19       Alternatively, if they don't blank out, then they will experience a change in viewpoint where they begin to see things from your viewpoint. They will suddenly wake up and "see the light." Whether they will blank out or change their minds depends on their willingness to change their opinions and beliefs, and willingness to accept the truth. (The fanatic says, "I won't allow my opinions to be swayed by mere facts.") Notice how when cults and other dogmatic organizations teach blanking to their members, they diguise it as a self-defense technique: "Those critics are trying to hurt you (by telling you the truth). They are trying to make you lose faith (in the leader or the cult). Don't let them do it to you." Amway teaches its soap distributors that their worst enemies are their friends and family members who try to talk a little common sense into them: "Don't let them plant doubts in you." "Don't let them steal your dreams." There are a zillion flavors of minimization and denial. When people point out the flaws of a program or design, a defender of that program or design may answer: "Isn't all of that comparison and scrutiny with a magnification glass going much too far for this forum?" When someone complained about black dots and artifacts that a digital camera inserted into his pictures, a defender of the camera posted: "Make a print and tell us how much of a problem it is." That is minimizing and denying the problem. Making prints on paper is not the ultimate goal of all photography. Just because a cheap low-resolution printer will mask defects in images does not make those defects okay. In his recent Washington Post article about the murderous Khmer Rouge campaign of mass murder unleashed in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, Alex Hinton wrote: "I interviewed former prison guards who told me with downcast eyes that they didn't do anything and, besides, they were only following orders." Alex Hinton, "We Can't Let the Khmer Rouge Escape", The Washington Post, Friday, August 4, 2006; A17 Politicians and pundits for political parties often use variations of the minimization and denial technique: "Oh heck, all politicians lie and deceive. It just comes with the territory. It's part of the job. You just have to do it. It's no big deal." "Oh heck, all politicians take bribes and gifts and agree to vote a certain way in trade for money. It's called 'campaign contributions'. You have to do it, or you won't get re-elected. It's no big deal." Rush Limbaugh gave us a great example of minimization and denial in trying to dismiss the torture and murder of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison as a trivial matter — "It was just like a college fraternity prank. ... You ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of the need to blow off some steam? ... Who died?" (Actually, several prisoners died from overdose of torture, and the Pentagon reported that two more were deliberately murdered.) Rush Limbaugh also used minimization and denial to explain away his own addiction to pain-killers, after recommending the death sentence for junkies: "I'm not like a junkie. I only took legal prescription pain-killers." Yes, but Limbaugh didn't have a prescription for all of those drugs, so the drugs weren't legal. And they were bought on the black market, just the same as how every other junkie gets his illegal drugs. George W. Bush, on his failure to capture Osama bin Laden: "I don't know where he is. I don't think about him much any more." During the U.S. Senate Hearings on the Abu Ghraib torture and abuse (2004.05.11), the Al-Jazeera news network showed a video tape of hooded men executing an American prisoner — Nicholas Berg — by chopping off his head with a big knife. The killers declared that the execution was done in retaliation for the torture and killing of prisoners in Abu Ghraib. A Republican Senator responded "I don't believe this happened in a 'one-for-one'. That kind of stuff happens anyway." The Senator ignored the simple fact that such a ceremonial execution of an American prisoner had never happened in Iraq before. The Iraqis even hospitalized Jessica Lynch until she was rescued, remember? UPDATE: 2004.06.18 — Now the Al Queda terrorists in Saudi Arabia have announced that the Americans whom they kidnap will be treated in the same manner as the prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison... Meanwhile, the Washington weasles had a truckload of minimization and denial and rationalizations to offer us: It wasn't really torture. It wasn't that bad. It was just some forceful interrogation. It was justified. It was necessary to get intelligence. They are the bad guys. It's okay to do it to them. It wasn't anything like the other side's beheadings. It's just being overblown by the Democrats. — All of which simply declare that torture of prisoners is really okay now, and that the Geneva Convention is "quaint" and obsolete. We used to consider countries that tortured prisoners of war to be barbarians, and declare that they needed to learn some Christian morals. Now it's the so-called "Christians" who are doing it. In March of 2006, a videotape came out that clearly showed White House officials receiving emphatic warnings that Hurricane Katrina could and would top the levees and flood New Orleans and cause a major disaster — warnings that the Bush Administration blithely ignored. G. W. Bush went on vacation, and went to a birthday party in Arizona where he pretended to play a guitar. A White House spokesman responded to the tape by saying, "There is nothing new or insightful on the video." White House, 2 March 2006. During a debate on the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer, about the firing of Mary McCarthy for revealing the existence of secret CIA prisons in foreign countries, to which people were "disappeared" — secretly kidnapped, renditioned, and tortured, which is several war crimes — one Republican talking head, Richard Kerr, a former CIA deputy director, declared: "Well, first of all, I'm not absolutely sure that I agree with the idea that these are crimes, an international crime." (PBS News Hour, 24 Apr 2006). So, kidnapping people who might be innocent, and imprisoning them without a trial, and torturing them, even torturing them to death, is not a crime under the Bush administration? When did we rewrite those laws? Declaring that "it's over, and nobody cares" is another kind of minimization. Politicians use this one whenever they can get away with it, to try to stop debate on a touchy subject. For example, when the American people discovered that George Bush had lied about the extent of warrantless surveillance of Americans that was going on — that the NSA was even collecting information about millions of phone calls made purely within the USA and between loyal Americans, not involving Al Quada, even while huge class-action lawsuits were being filed against the phone companies who gave out the phone records without a court warrant, the Republican talking heads went on the political talk shows Friday night on PBS (2006.05.12) and declared that "It's over. The furor has died down. It's all a big nothing. The American people don't care." Likewise, in the current furor (1 October 2006) over Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) sending very sexually explicit homosexually invitational emails to very young male Congressional pages — messages that one page described as "Sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, ... (for 13 'sicks') — Republican leaders have declared "It's time to move on", when Democratic Congressmen asked for the resignations of those Republican leaders who knew what was going on because the under-age pages reported it to them, but the Republican leaders just convered it all up and allowed Foley to continue that behavior. And, using the minimization tactic some more, the Republican leaders are now describing Rep. Foley's predatory homosexual emails as merely "overly friendly" and "acting as a mentor." White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said it was merely an issue of "simply naughty emails." Another kind of denial is depersonalization — personally detaching from a problem or situation — the attitude that the big problem has nothing to do with you, or isn't really your responsibility. Donald Rumsfeld half-admitted that the U.S. military campaign in Iraq was not going well: "If I were grading, I would say we probably deserve a D or D+ as a country." (TIME, Apr 3-9, 2006) Excuse me Rummy, but the failure is yours, not America's, and yes, this test counts. A.A. defenders use the minimization and denial technique a lot to explain that A.A. doesn't really have a dishonesty problem, and doesn't really need to get off it and start telling the truth. And A.A. doesn't really have a humongous failure rate. And A.A. isn't really a cult religion. Likewise, A.A. true believers attempt to dismiss the A.A. 95% drop-out rate in just the first year as "the myth of the 5% retention rate", as if the drop-out rate had been somehow disproven and wasn't real. (It's real.) In a debate, you can use the Minimization and Denial technique to defend Alcoholics Anonymous like this: Whenever your opponent says something that you don't like, or don't want to hear, just reply with one of these standard answers: "It's unimportant because it happened so long ago." "People have been criticizing AA forever; what's new there?" "Just because you found a hundred groups where sponsors sexually harass the new pretty women members doesn't mean that it is a universal characteristic of A.A., or that it happens everywhere, or that you can fault all of A.A. for it. You can't generalize like that. No group has any control over any other group." "Each A.A. meeting is a little different. Look around and you'll find one that suits you..." "What appears to be a contradiction is just a paradox, just a wonderful paradox." "I suspect that the whole story is a hoax made up by the anti-A.A. people, just to discredit A.A.." "But the A.A. program is free. Where else can you find such a good recovery program for free?" [Answer: SMART, WFS, MFS, or SOS.] "That's just another A.A.-basher, on an anti-A.A. pogrom again." "That doesn't matter — it's irrelevant — it isn't the real A.A., because it isn't a Council-approved activity." [Actually, everything that A.A. members do at an A.A. meeting, or while recruiting and proselytizing, or in a sponsor/sponsee relationship, is "the real A.A.".] "That doesn't matter — it's irrelevant — it isn't the real A.A., because it's against The Traditions." [Again, the real A.A. is everything that A.A. members really do at an A.A. meeting, or while recruiting and promoting A.A., or in a sponsor/sponsee relationship, not what the Traditions say they are supposed to be doing.] "That doesn't matter — it's irrelevant — it isn't the real A.A., because not all groups do it." "That does not happen in our group." "I never saw that." "That is not the real AA." "We are not aware of any dangerous situation." "That's beside the point..." (When it is the point.) "You can't blame A.A. for the harm that some members do. They aren't supposed to be doing those things." ("But we will gladly take all of the credit for the good things that some other members do.") "What you are complaining about isn't the real A.A..   A.A. has just gone downhill a little lately. What you were exposed to is what AA has turned into, not what it used to be." "So what if it's a cult? All religions are cults. Everything is a cult. It doesn't matter." "That misbehavior is being done by the treatment centers, not A.A., so you can't blame A.A. for that." (But the treatment centers are staffed and run by true-believer 12-Steppers who are using the treatment centers to shove the 12-Step religion on vulnerable sick people, so that is also another part of "the real A.A.".) "That [13th-stepping, rape, murder, abuse, exploitation, robbery] was just an isolated incident." "We don't take any position on outside issues." ("And we will call anything that we don't want to hear about an 'outside issue'.") "I cannot think of any belief, doctrine, institution or philosophy of any kind that is free from abuse." "I understand that the numbers are flat and the success rate has deteriorated over the last few decades. But that's just because people are not 'working the program' right." Rather than admitting that 'the program' never ever worked right, and that Bill Wilson's bragging about a great success rate was just another lie. "That is of no interest to anyone but some A.A.-bashers. You people just keep digging up hundreds and hundreds of pieces of garbage like that because you are trying to discredit A.A.." "That story is just a hoax. It's full of factual errors. Somebody with a resentment cooked it up and sent it out. It would be a waste of time to even respond to it." [Which saves the speaker from having to come up with any actual facts to back up his sweeping statements. Now he can run away without having to prove his statements, which also makes it a hit-and-run attack.] "That hasn't been proven. There hasn't been enough scientific research. That has never been fully proven." "That can't be confirmed."   "That hasn't been fully verified." [No matter how much supporting and corroborating evidence there is, just stubbornly maintain that the point can't be confirmed, or hasn't been "fully verified", or hasn't been proved.] [Ah, but if Bill Wilson said something, then A.A. true believers consider it automatically "confirmed" and unquestionably true.] "I don't even know how we got side-tracked into wasting our time talking about this trivial detail." "I don't know why he spends so much time on this stuff. What's he trying to prove?" "The A.A.-bashers just hate us, that's all." "So what if the founders of A.A. committed all kinds of crimes and offenses and promoted cult religion and fascism? Every successful group makes mistakes in its infancy." "You are quoting out of context!" [No matter how long and detailed the quote is, and no matter how much context is included with the quote, just dismiss all quotes that you don't like as being "taken out of context."] "When I read your statement about young people seeking new answers while old people want to preserve the values that they have, I knew you were nuts. You must be a very young and foolish person to believe such a thing." "I've got 20 years in A.A., and while I can't speak for A.A. because nobody speaks for A.A., I must say..." (First he establishes his credentials, 20 years, to give himself the authority to speak for A.A., and then he spends the next five minutes speaking for A.A., and singing the praises of A.A., while claiming that he is "not speaking for A.A.".) "I wasn't trying to win an argument with you, but one more thing I have to say is..." "Yes, BUT!..." "I'm not paying any attention to what you say." (That is an example of blanking.) When you are losing an argument badly, ignore your opponent's points, and terminate the discussion by using a quote from Bill Wilson, "I'm resigning from the debating society!" which implies that you are superior to your opponent because you aren't wasting your time arguing over trivialities any more. (That is another example of blanking.) And so is: "You are still going on about this several hours later, and I don't really give a shit about it at present." Instant Denial A variation on the denial technique is Instant Denial: Say something, and then immediately deny that you said it. Peter Howard, the fascist disciple of Frank Buchman who assumed the leadership of the Oxford Groups/MRA organization after Buchman's death, attacked Frank Buchman's critics with these words: ...Christians forget that Christ was crucified not because he was wrong but because He was right. There was one of Christ's contemporaries who, while agreeing that the work being done was good, always disagreed with the methods and thought he could do things better. He was critical of the way money was spent, critical of the company Christ kept, critical of his comrades. His name was Judas.       This is not to suggest that Buchman was like Christ or that all his critics are like Judas.... Britain and the Beast, Peter Howard, 1963, page 106. Peter Howard clearly suggested that Frank Buchman's critics were acting just like Judas, and then Howard immediately denied it, and declared that he wasn't suggesting it. Howard also implied that Frank Buchman was right, just like Jesus was, and then Howard denied that too. People who are promoting Alcoholics Anonymous use the same Instant Denial technique, too. Here, the speaker denies it before he says it: "This is not a commercial for A.A. Frankly, A.A. is not for everybody. But A.A. saved my life, and only through A.A. was I able to learn how to survive my disease." So it is a commercial for A.A., and A.A. is the only way after all. (And the speaker was also assuming a couple of major premises — that alcoholism is a disease, rather than behavior, and that A.A. has a working cure for that disease, rather than a horrendous failure rate.) A variation on this Instant Denial technique is to say something and then immediately declare that you didn't mean it. Another variation is the one that you see lawyers using in TV shows all of the time: A clever lawyer asks an improper question, and then immediately withdraws it. A lawyer will attack a witness with a question like, "Isn't it true that you hated your husband and wanted him dead?" The opposing attorney will scream, "Objection, your Honor!" And the first lawyer answers, "I withdraw the question, your Honor." Even if the judge says, "Let that question be stricken from the record. The jury will disregard the question.", the harm has already been done. Understatement Understatement is a kind of minimization. When news reporters discovered that New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson was making false claims on his resumé, and had been for forty years, when he claimed that he had been drafted to pitch for the Kansas City Athletics in 1966, allegedly before "an injury compelled him to bow out of baseball", Richardson answered:       "After being notified of the situation and after researching the matter... I came to the conclusion that I was not drafted by the A's." (TIME, Nov 28 to Dec 4, 2005) Not As Bad As The "Not As Bad As" ploy is a kind of minimization and denial. The debater declares that whatever is being criticized is not nearly as bad as something really awful: That isn't nearly as bad as what the Nazis did to the Jews. The censorship of the press that we have to endure isn't nearly as bad as what goes on in Russia. Our politicians aren't nearly as corrupt as the ones in Africa and Asia. Alcoholics Anonymous isn't nearly as bad as the People's Temple or the Branch Davidians or Heaven's Gate. Now those were really some nasty cults. Admit a Small Fault to Cover a Big Denial Likewise, confess a small error to cover a large one. Or confess a minor vice to create the appearance of having no bad ones. Confess small transgressions to create the appearance of humility and repentence and honesty. Some "pious" people are often eager to loudly confess their small shortcomings in order to fool others into believing that they have no larger ones. We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones. == François de La Rochefoucauld In the Oxford Group confession sessions, members routinely confessed to having been jealous of someone, or having smoked a cigarette, or having worn makeup, or any of several other petty imperfections, but they just didn't confess any large crimes like grand larceny or fraud or murder or treason (like killing Leftists in street fighting in Oxford and London, and supporting Adolf Hitler before and during World War II, and dodging the draft to avoid serving in the British Army and fighting the Nazis...) Similarly, President Bush today said mistakes were made in planning for the Iraq invasion, but he defended the troop level he ordered in the initial strike, saying he would have committed the same number if given a second chance. Recalling his pre-war conversations with Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the invasion and is now retired, Bush told a business group in Irvine, Calif.: "The level that he suggested was the troop level necessary to do the job, and I support it strongly." ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/24/AR2006042400850_pf.html) Also notice the use of the passive voice: "mistakes were made..." What mistakes? Were made by whom? Was George actually admitting that he screwed up? Or was he just shoving the blame onto Gen. Tommy Franks? False Comparison You can make something appear to be larger or smaller, or better or worse, by comparing it to something else. Late-night TV infomercials and shopping channel "auctions" habitually declare, "You would expect to pay $XXX, but here the cost to you is only $yyy." Wrong. I would never "expect" to pay the numbers that they announce. I always think that their phony "expected" prices are absurdly high. A variation on that rap is "value" — "This complete package is a $200 value, but now, in this special offer, it will only cost you $34.95." A similar advertising trick is to compare your product to a competitors worst low-end model — the wimpy, weak, lowest-price shoddy loser model — and then call your product "high power" and "superior" (when it is really only average). Give a Non-reason Reason Give reasons for things that are not reasons for things. For example, "That's just the way it is." "Because." "That's the way it's always been done." "I'm sure the Leader has his reasons." (Or the Elders, or the Priests, or whomever...) "It's a tradition." Divert Attention — Change the Subject If you have nothing to say, distract them. Misdirect attention. The old saying is, "Drag a Red Herring across the trail." The Madison Avenue advertising gurus say, "If you have nothing to say, sing it." When you are losing a point, change the subject. Start talking about something else, anything else, where you at least can't lose because there isn't anything to lose. When asked a very embarassing question in a political debate, claim that you have already fully answered that question before, and change the subject. (Like, "Did G. W. Bush desert from his Air National Guard unit in a time of war? Why didn't he show up for his flight physical? Why did his commanding officer ground him?" Was young Lt. Bush busted for cocaine in Texas and forced to do community service? ...And then the whole thing was covered up because Daddy was a Congressman...) Claim, "I've already dealt with that", and change the subject. or Claim, "I already apologized for that", and change the subject. Dismiss a critic and change the subject with a condescending remark like, "Why don't you quit stirring the pot and move on?" If a conversation or debate leads into a discussion of the American use of chemical weapons during the Vietnam War, immediately bring up the story of "Yellow Rain", a rather paranoid rumor about the U.S.A. spraying poison from the air on American defectors, a story that turned out to be groundless. Ignore the much larger, undeniably true story of tens of thousands of Vietnamese women giving birth to deformed babies as a result of being sprayed with the poisonous defoliant Agent Orange. Also ignore the many American G.I.s who came back from Vietnam suffering from Agent Orange poisoning. Just keep mentioning "Yellow Rain", as if the falseness of that one story proves that the American forces didn't use chemical weapons on Vietnam. Senate investigators have been trying, for more than two years now, to get information about Enron's involvement with the White House and national energy policy planning. The White House has consistently refused to hand over the information. When the Senate investigating committee issued subpoenas, a White House spokesman replied, "Such subpoenas are premature. The investigation is just politically motivated." Question: When would the Administration feel that it was not "premature" or "political" to investigate the actions of the occupants of the White House while they were helping a criminal gang like Enron? A hundred years from now? Some of the key phrases that indicate a change of subject are: "Well, let's get down to the real issue..." "The bottom line is..." "Now look at the real facts here..." When used in response to a question, all of them mean, "I'm not going to answer your question. I'm changing the subject and diverting attention and won't even talk about your question." A good one that I heard on Al Franken's radio show (20 April 2004) was: A ditto-head was claiming that rich Democrats do not really care about the poor. When asked for proof of that statement, he answered, "Well, let's look at the results of their programs." Whoops! Stop right there. That's a different issue. That is changing the subject. The effectiveness of any help-the-poor program does not prove or disprove how much someone cares about the poor. Now one could claim that an ineffective program shows that someone was inept or incompetent at designing or administering programs, but that is a very different issue. That does not prove how much someone cares or doesn't care. And such an accusation may be groundless because it completely ignores issues like funding. Was the program really ineffective or badly designed or poorly managed, or was it just grossly underfunded by the Republican Congress that even cut Veteran's benefits and closed V.A. hospitals while it sent the troops off to war in Iraq? (Hint: It's the later cause.) The U.S. Senate hearings on the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison (2004.05.11) provide us with another example of misdirection of attention: Instead of talking about the horrors that the pictures showed, one Republican Senator went off on a tangent complaining about how the pictures had been taken improperly by a soldier who had no authority to do so — he had used his own privately-owned digital camera, and had no orders from his superiors to take the pictures, so his taking of the pictures violated the military regulations regarding how military prisons were to be operated.... Never mind the fact that torturing, raping, and murdering prisoners was also against those same military regulations.... (And that political stunt is also an obvious attempt to "Kill the Messenger" — just attack the whistle-blower who dared to document the illegal abuses.) Ah politics, isn't it wonderful? Not to be outdone, another Republican Senator started waxing eloquent about what a great job our soldiers are doing, and how we shouldn't distract our men, or the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, from "the more important job of defending America from terrorism." Right. Stopping the practice of war crimes is just an annoying little distraction keeping us from doing what is really important. Our efforts to stop terrorism won't be undermined by the entire Arab and Moslem world seeing us as a bunch of vicious, racist, religious-bigot Nazis who torture innocent men and women; no, not at all.... Over in the A.A. arena, one of Bill Wilson's standard stunts was, when someone like Clarence Snyder would criticize Wilson for massive fraud and felonious dishonesty, Wilson would reply with something like, "My, how those alcoholics love to squabble and argue. Being the argumentative lot that they are, they just love to challenge authority." Doctor Bob also gave us a great example of diverting attention, back in the early days of the Oxford Group, before Alcoholics Anonymous got started. Henrietta Seiberling was trying to get Doctor Bob to quit drinking. She said that she had received "Guidance" that "Bob must not touch one drop of alcohol", and she told Doctor Bob about it.       He answered, "Henrietta, I don't understand this thing [alcoholism]. Nobody understands it."18 Doctor Bob changed the subject from "not drinking alcohol" to something abstract and inconsequential like "understanding alcoholism", because he didn't want to talk about actually really quitting drinking. He also tried to imply that because "nobody understood alcoholism", it wasn't possible to quit drinking, so there was no sense in even wasting any time trying. Cute avoidance technique, huh? Similarly, if a critic of A.A. says: "An awful lot of state and federal courts have now ruled that Alcoholics Anonymous is a religious organization, or engages in religious activities, as defined by Constitutional law. The most interesting one happened just a few months ago, when a judge threw out a murder conviction because the killer confessed to the murder in an A.A. meeting, and one of the other members reported it to the police. The judge ruled that 'sharing' in an A.A. meeting is a form of protected confession in a religious ceremony, just like confessing your sins to the priest in a Catholic Church." a Stepper can divert attention by answering: "I don't think that is an appropriate subject of discussion in this context. We don't get involved in outside issues. I was just getting to how to use the Seventh Step to cure people's instincts for security and society. Let's concentrate on that." Or: "It isn't fair of you to attack A.A. when no one can answer, because nobody speaks for A.A.. Go pick on somebody who can fight back." If someone starts talking about the corruption and dishonesty at the A.A. headquarters, a Stepper can change the subject by saying, "Well, that's a different issue. Let's not get into that now. Let's just read page 49 of the Big Book and talk about that." And don't forget obfuscation. That is also an effective way to divert attention, by confusing and clouding an issue, and muddying the waters so thoroughly that you can't even see it: "The judge was completely off base, and his judgement was totally wrong, because there are no priests in Alcoholics Anonymous. I mean, who's the priest in a meeting, and who are you confessing your sins to?" That bogus argument ignores the obvious fact that you can confess something to someone besides an ordained priest. (Just ask any criminal who ever confessed something to the police.) And you can have a religious ceremony without a priest. Lots of churches, like the Quakers, for instance, don't have any ordained clergy. Everybody in the church is free to speak when the spirit moves him. You can also divert attention with slogans. A.A. does that a lot. If someone is asking pointed, critical questions about the illogical parts of the A.A. program, trying to understand how the whole thing is supposed to work, the old-timers answer: "Utilize, Don't Analyze." "Stop Your Stinkin' Thinkin'." "Your best thinking got you here." "You know, sometimes you can be too smart for your own good." "You don't have to understand how electricity works in order to use it." "Nobody is too stupid to get the program, but some people are too intelligent." All of those slogans are designed to keep newcomers from thinking, and discovering how flawed, crazy, illogical and irrational the A.A. program really is. Another common A.A. diversion is to accuse the speaker of being angry. A.A. true believers actually think that someone is automatically wrong if he is at all angry, no matter how outrageous the sins or crimes that have angered the speaker, because "Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God's world by mistake." (Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 449.) Bill Wilson wrote that you are always wrong if you are "disturbed", and that alcoholics cannot handle anger: It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us. If somebody hurts us and we are sore, we are in the wrong also. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 90. ["Gee, duh... somebody just shot my friend dead in the middle of the street, and raped my girlfriend, and kicked my dog. But I'm not going to get disturbed about it, because Bill Wilson says that if I did, it would axiomatically mean that there is something spiritually wrong with me... Duh..."] So the point of the discussion gets lost in an argument about whether the speaker is angry, and whether it is okay to be angry. Where it really gets funny is when the believers cop an attitude like, "Well, you're angry, so that makes everything you say invalid. That takes care of you. We don't have to listen to anything else that you say, because you admitted that you were angry." (Look here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here.) The Positive Accomplishments Sidestep This is a kind of diversion tactic. When criticized, avoid the point and change the subject by citing some positive accomplishments. When George W. Bush is criticized for his failures in war, like, "You didn't catch Osama bin Laden, and you didn't find any Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Iraq is degenerating into civil war!", he answers: "But we got rid of the Taliban." "But we established democracy." "But we got rid of a dictator." "But we established freedom. Freedom is on the march." Declare Victory When facing criticism, like for incompetence and failure, just suddenly, arbitrarily declare victory. For instance, on December 10, 2008, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson had to explain to the Congressional Oversight Panel how TARP had been implemented, and what had been accomplished with the $350,000,000,000 that had been allocated so far. Never mind the facts that unemployment was still going up — a lot — and nationwide, the economic conditions were worsening — a lot. Paulson just declared victory and announced that things were much better because the TED spread was smaller. The TED spread is the difference between the interest rate on the 3-month U.S. Treasury bills and on the 3-month "LIBOR" — the interest rate that commercial banks charge for lending each other money in Europe. It is basically a measure of how nervous the big financial players are about lending each other money. So, because Americans weren't much more nervous than Europeans this month, Paulson declared victory and implied that we had gotten good results from our $350 billion worth of bailout to Wall Street banks. Red Herring A Red Herring Fallacy is a distraction technique where you talk about one subject and then immediatly blame an unrelated topic or group as a cause or correlation to it. Another explanation of the Red Herring is: A Red Herring is a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. The basic idea is to "win" an argument by leading attention away from the argument and to another topic. This sort of "reasoning" has the following form: Topic A is under discussion. Topic B is introduced under the guise of being relevant to topic A (when topic B is actually not relevant to topic A). Topic A is abandoned. This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because merely changing the topic of discussion hardly counts as an argument against a claim. Examples of Red Herring: "Teachers shouldn't make students wear school uniforms. The Nazis made children wear uniforms too!" "We admit that this measure is popular. But we also urge you to note that there are so many bond issues on this ballot that the whole thing is getting ridiculous." "Argument" for a tax cut: "You know, I've begun to think that there is some merit in the Republican's tax cut plan. I suggest that you come up with something like it, because if we Democrats are going to survive as a party, we have got to show that we are as tough-minded as the Republicans, since that is what the public wants." "Argument" for making grad school requirements stricter: "I think there is great merit in making the requirements stricter for the graduate students. I recommend that you support it, too. After all, we are in a budget crisis and we do not want our salaries affected." (Thanks to "Dr. Herring" for that one.) The Personal Loyalty Red Herring This is another kind of diversion tactic. Change the issue into a test of loyalty. When George Bush is criticized, he declares, "You're either with us or you're against us." "Who are you going to side with, the patriotic Americans, or the terrorists?" A variation on this tactic is demanding promises of loyalty from others as a way of manipulating them. When the future Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels married his sweetheart Magda, Adolf Hitler said, "I wish you a lifetime of happiness and hope you will remain my good friend." It was supposed to be Goebbels' day of happiness, but Hitler managed to turn it around and make it about himself. (Goebbels replied that he would remain Hitler's friend, and that Magda would help him keep that promise. Goebbels did keep it too, right up to the minute in the bunker in Berlin when he killed his wife and children and then committed suicide at the same time as Hitler and Eva Braun did.) The Story Sourcing Distraction This is yet another kind of diversion tactic. Instead of answering cricism, attack the source of the information: Bush declared: "Who leaked that? We are going to find those leakers and take care of them." (Ignore the fact that George Bush and his staff turned out to be the leakers.) "You read that in the liberal media?" "This is Washington. People say all kinds of things." "That's the kind of language you might expect to hear from the sovereign leader of an Arab country." — That was Joshua Bolten, the White House Chief of Staff, explaining why the Prime Minister of Lebanon objected to Israel bombing his country. (Meet The Press, NBC, 23 July 2006) When six retired U.S. generals criticized Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for incompetence and demanded his resignation (April 2006), the White House shills complained that it was "inappropriate" for retired generals to criticize Rumsfeld's conduct of the war — trying to imply that the criticism was somehow invalid because it came from retired generals — and that they were too late, anyway. Oh really? So when is it appropriate for generals to raise objections and condemn politicians' stupidity? While they are still in uniform? (Thus violating the sacred American principle that the U.S. military always obeys civilian authority so that we don't degenerate into a banana republic that is run by a murdering Colonel Manuel Norriega or General Augusto Pinochet?) General McArthur was fired by President Truman for criticizing the President and his policies while still serving in uniform. Or never? Do men lose the right to criticize bumbling conduct of a war if they once served in the military? Actually, who would be more entitled to have an opinion on the subject? The Drama Queen, the Prima Donna Ploy This ploy is also a kind of diversion of attention. Switch the focus to oneself and one's own immense problems. "People always come up to me and say that my smoking is bothering them... Well, it's killing me!" == Wendy Liebman For example, if a captain of industry is accused: ACCUSATION: "You are polluting the water and air and land and destroying the very ability of the biosphere to continue supporting human life." ANSWER: "Hey! Don't you think I'm trying? Do you have any idea how hard it is to balance the interests of profit and ecology? Why are you always blaming us CEOs? Do you have any idea how demanding the stockholders are? Do you realize how quickly they will replace me if I don't produce the maximum profit?" — None of which answers the accusation of him being a polluter. Bill Wilson used this stunt like this: When they wrote the opening chapters of the "Big Book" Alcoholics Anonymous, Henry Parkhurst and Bill Wilson were partners. But Wilson refused to give Parkhurst fair credit for what he wrote, and eventually cheated Parkhurst out of everything. Disillusioned and disappointed at the betrayal, Parkhurst relapsed. When Henry Parkhurst came around drunk and begging for money, asking to be paid for some furniture that he had left in the office, Wilson talked him out of his shares in the publishing company that would publish the Big Book — shares that would have eventually made Parkhurst a moderately wealthy man. Wilson also denied Parkhurst any share in the royalties from the Big Book, using the excuse that Parkhurst had returned to drinking. And Wilson didn't try to save his friend's life. Henry Parkhurst was the friend that Bill and Lois turned to when they were homeless because the bank foreclosed on their 182 Clinton Street house. Henry was their friend then, and Bill and Lois moved in with Parkhurst. But when Parkhurst needed some friendship and help in return, Wilson robbed Parkhurst and then left him to die drunk and pennyless, alone. Which he did. Then Wilson complained about how hard it was to take, that Parkhurst was gone. ...At length he broke down completely and went on a terrific bender after four years of sobriety. He never again showed any real sign of recovery, and he went on drinking until his death recently. Considering what he had done for the book, and the further fact that he was one of our first New York members, this was hard to take. Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age, William G. Wilson, page 179. What about how hard it was for Henry Parkhurst to take? Bill Wilson really was a drama queen. Deflect Criticism and Blame By Deligitimizing It As in, "That's just campaign talk." (So ignore it.) After the Wall Street melt-down, we heard. "I don't think that this is the time to be pointing fingers." "We don't want to get into the blame game." — which just means, "Let's not talk about who screwed up big time." "Let's not prosecute the criminals." You heard a lot of that kind of talk in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. You also hear it in relation to the quagmire in Iraq. On May 18, 2007, former President Jimmy Carter criticized the Bush administration, saying that President George W. Bush's administration is "the worst in history" when it comes to international relations. Carter, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, criticized Bush: "We now have endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war where we go to war with another nation militarily, even though our own security is not directly threatened, if we want to change the regime there or if we fear that some time in the future our security might be endangered. But that's been a radical departure from all previous administration policies." Carter's harshest assessment was of the White House's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which helped religious charities receive $2.15 billion in federal grants in fiscal year 2005 alone: "The policy from the White House has been to allocate funds to religious institutions, even those that channel those funds exclusively to their own particular group of believers in a particular religion. Those things in my opinion are quite disturbing. As a traditional Baptist, I've always believed in separation of church and state and honored that premise when I was president, and so have all other presidents, I might say, except this one." Republican National Committee spokeswoman Amber Wilkerson questioned why Carter, who teaches Sunday School in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, would attack Bush: "Apparently, Sunday mornings in Plains for former President Carter includes hurling reckless accusations at your fellow man. It's hard to take a lecture on foreign policy seriously from President Carter considering he's the same person who challenged Ronald Reagan's strategy for the Cold War." Notice that she did not actually answer any of President Carter's criticisms of Bush's policies and actions. She just attacked the source of the criticism, and tried to imply that Carter had no legitimate grounds for criticizing Bush, and therefore the criticism was invalid. And of course Ms. Wilkerson also used the ad hominem technique, personally attacking President Carter, as well as completely reversing reality. She accused Carter of "hurling reckless accusations at your fellow man" when she was actually the one who was doing that. Carter did not "hurl reckless accusations"; Carter spoke about the American tradition of never attacking first and never deliberately starting wars and never being the aggressor, and the American tradition of separation of church and state. And Carter spoke about how the current Bush administration had violated those policies. But she didn't want to talk about that, so she attacked President Carter personally, and said that it's hard to take him seriously. Deligitimize Criticism and Rebuttal in Advance Devalue, delegitimize, and reject responses in advance of them happening. For instance: Oh, don't mention Prof. Falken's study. Everybody knows he's nuts. (Slander.) I don't want to start an argument... (So don't contradict what I'm saying.) Bill Wilson used this technique too: Some will become quite annoyed if there is talk about immorality, let alone sin. But all who are in the least reasonable will agree upon one point: that there is plenty wrong with us alcoholics... Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William Wilson, pages 48, 49. So if you don't want to go along with Bill Wilson's hatred of those disgusting sinful alcoholics, then you are being "unreasonable". Bill Wilson did it again here, in a different way, as he taught people how to conduct séances and channel God and get messages and work orders and power from God:       ... Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision.   ...   We are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for a while. What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration becomes a working part of the mind. Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God, it is not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times. We might pay for this presumption in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas. Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. The Big Book, 3rd edition, William G. Wilson, pages 86 to 87. Bill Wilson declared that if somebody started acting crazy from doing Step 11 because he was convinced that God was telling him to do insane things, that wasn't the fault of Bill's occult practices — that was just a beginner who had not learned how to be a good psychic yet. So don't criticize Bill's superstitious practices; there is nothing wrong with them. It's just the beginners' fault. Spurious Delegitimization of Evidence or Criticism Attempt to delegitimize annoying and inconvenient little facts and evidence by a variety of techniques like bad logic, slurs, and innuendo. Similarly, dismiss criticism as invalid without actually answering it. For instance: "That report has been discredited." (Passive voice. Discredited by whom? When? Where?) "That report is old." (Reject by age.) "That information is considered invalid." (Passive voice, nobody there. Considered invalid by whom?) "That's the tenth time you've mentioned that. Will you get off it?" (Repetion doesn't make information become untrue.) "Everybody considers that book worthless." (Appeal to "everybody knows".) "You are criticising the Church's coverups of child-molesting priests because you are bigoted and prejudiced and just against the Church." "You are criticizing Israel's mistreatment of the Palestinian people because you are anti-Semitic and racist." "Your criticism is hurting the feelings of a billion believers." "You criticise Catholics but you wouldn't do the same to religion X..." "You criticise Islam but you wouldn't do the same to Christians or Jews..." "I'm offended by your accusations." "Quit trying to stir up trouble." Spurious Rejection of a Question Use invalid or spurious reasons for rejecting a question that you don't wish to answer. For example: "That question was a trap!" "That question is unfair!" "That's none of your business!" "You can't ask about the A.A. success rate because A.A. is not a treatment program and A.A. doesn't keep records." Answer A Question That Was Not Asked (To Avoid Answering One That Was Asked) When asked an embarassing question, answer a different question. This technique is closely related to the previous item "creating a diversion", but it has twists of its own. Politicians routinely use this trick to avoid answering the tough questions. Really skilled politicians actually use this technique to turn hard questions to their advantage — they will answer the question that they really wish had been asked, so that they can go on and on about how great their accomplishments have been lately. For example: The Oxford Group cult leader Frank Buchman attracted a lot of attention and criticism back in the nineteen-thirties for associating with high-ranking Nazis like the Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler. Buchman's faithful follower and apologist Peter Howard wrote that Buchman never met Hitler (which was probably untrue), and then added: Nor was Buchman an intimate of Himmler or of any other member of the Nazi hierarchy. The Mystery of Moral Re-Armament; A Study of Frank Buchman and His Movement, Tom Driberg, 1965, page 66. Nobody was asking whether Frank Buchman and Heinrich Himmler got in bed together; they were asking how sympathetic Frank Buchman was to the Nazi philosophy and goals. But Peter Howard didn't want to talk about that, so he just declared that Buchman and Himmler were not "intimate". Peter Howard used this technique after World War II when he triumphantly produced a letter from the Secretary of the U.S. Air Force that declared that the Moral Re-Armament organization (the renamed Oxford Group) was not a bunch of pacifists. Nobody had accused MRA of being pacifists. (Not ever, that I know of.) They were accused of being fascists, Nazi-like, Nazi-sympathizers, draft dodgers, and chicken-hawk "super-patriots", but not pacifists. Peter Howard's "proof" that MRA was not pacifistic did not prove that MRA was not fascistic in nature, or that they weren't chicken-hawk draft-dodgers or Nazi sympathizers. For another example, at a press conference, when George W. Bush was asked about the torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, Bush answered the question by talking about how wonderful freedom is, and how "we" are bringing freedom to the people of Iraq, and how just a small minority of the Iraqi people hated freedom... That's changing the subject and answering a different question. The press conference is a duty the president [G. W. Bush] generally avoids, and approaches only with apparent great discomfort. As he casually confessed at the Associated Press annual luncheon on April 21, 2004, "I kind of like ducking questions, and I would be glad to duck any questions, like my mother once told me to do." His responses generally conform to a number of different input-control strategies. He turns his awkward and memorized answers to any question into a question itself, and then answers that instead of the original one. Bush On The Couch, Justin A. Frank, M.D., page 125. Answer a Question With A Question Do not — simply do not — answer your opponent's question. Immediately counter-attack with another question that may or may not be relevant to the subject under discussion. In a recent discussion in a newsgroup, one fellow was declaring that Alcoholics Anonymous had been designed to make people quit drinking. I responded by pointing out that A.A. had not been "designed" that way at all — that in fact Frank Buchman had developed those cult religion practices to grow his own cult, and Bill Wilson simply split off and took over a branch of Buchman's cult — the "Alcoholic Squadron of the Oxford Group". The other fellow replied, "Do you go to A.A. meetings?" Monopolizing the Question (Hypophora) Ask a question and then immediately give the answer. "Who was sent to us to redeem us? Jesus, of course!" "What is the only solution for alcoholism? It's Alcoholics Anonymous, of course." Surfeit of Questions (Plurium Interrogationum) Demand a simple answer when this is not possible: "Okay, if God didn't create the universe, tell me how it got here." (The obvious answer is another question: "But who created God? How did God get here?") Obfuscate Confuse and cloud an issue, so that the original point gets lost. This can often be accomplished by overloading the listeners with myriad details or irrelevant facts. False facts are especially good. Then you can get distracted by arguing over the validity of the false facts. "You don't know what the technical issues are. The fix that you desire may not be as simple as you think. Don't assume that you are smarter than the Olympus Corporation's engineers. I mean, if they haven't done that fix in all of these years, what makes you think that it's easy to do?" (Answer: It was Olympus corporate policy to not fix or enable camera features like Focus Confirmation and Image Stabilization with legacy lenses, not an engineering problem. Olympus just wanted to force people to buy new Olympus lenses, by making the old lenses harder to use.) "A.A. meetings can't be confession sessions. I mean, who is the priest? You can't be confessing if there isn't a priest." (Answer: You can confess things to anybody, not just a priest. Like, you can confess to the police, or a wife, or a friend... Attack Without Appearing To Attack By Using Paralipsis or Apophasis Paralipsis is a rhetorical figure of speech wherein the speaker or writer invokes a subject by denying that it should be invoked. Paralepsis is almost the same thing — a pretended or apparent omission where a speaker artfully pretends to pass by what he really mentions, as in: "I will not speak of my adversary's scandalous venality and rapacity, his brutal conduct, or his treachery and malice." Apophasis is denial of one's intention to speak of a subject that is at the same time named or insinuated, as in, "I shall not mention Caesar's avarice, nor his cunning, nor his morality." "I don't want to stoop to calling my opponent names like bribe-taker and war-profiteer, so I won't." "I would tell you about my opponent's predilection for under-age girls, but it would be unkind of me to publicly embarrass those innocent girls." "It would be unfair of me to bring my opponent's family into the debate by telling you things like the fact that my opponent's wife is an alcoholic and his lesbian daughter smokes crack cocaine, so I won't talk about those things." Passive-Aggressive Attack Use subtle passive attack modes. "Oh, it isn't like I need my fair share of the credit. That would just inflate my ego." "Did I say that you are an ungrateful child? Don't worry about me. I'll just sit here and freeze and starve in the dark." "So go ahead and refuse to attend Al-Anon meetings. It isn't like I need any support from my family or anything. It won't be your fault if I relapse again." Sarcasm, Condescension, and Patronizing Attitudes This is easy to understand. A debater declares, "Oh dear. Another ill-informed critic. Would someone please explain it to him?" Dismiss a critic with, "You really like the sound of your own voice, don't you?" Arnold Schwartzenegger used to sneer at his political opponents and call them "girly-men". (He doesn't any more; it back-fired.) On Meet The Press, Sunday, December 21, 2003, Representative Tom Delay (R-TX) was asked about General Wesley Clark's statement that he would have persisted in hunting for Osama bin Laden, rather than get distracted chasing Saddam Hussein [who did not attack the U.S.A. on September 11), and that he, Clark, would have gotten Osama by now if he had been in charge. Tom Delay's answer: "Sometimes it is easier to find Osama [bin Laden] than it is to find Wesley Clark's foreign policy. ... What he says doesn't hold a whole lot of weight with me." Note that Rep. Delay didn't actually answer any of General Clark's statements; he just tried to dismiss them with a condescending sneer. Ronald Reagan is famous for having used this technique in the Presidential debates with Jimmy Carter. After Carter made a point, Reagan laughed it off with, "There you go again." Reagan didn't bother to actually refute Carter's statement, because he couldn't. Note that laughing something off (or pretending to laugh) is a subtle form of the Condescension technique. When British reports of a leaked document from a meeting of George W. Bush and Tony Blair revealed that Bush had expressed an interest in bombing the headquarters of the Arab television news network Al Jazeera, White House spokesman Scott McClellan answered, "We are not interested in dignifying something so outlandish and inconceivable with a response." When critics called this a classic non-denial denial, a White House official said the allegations were false and "absurd". (TIME, Nov 28 to Dec 4 2005) When a photographer complained that his Canon camera does not have in-body image stabilization, a defender of Canon cameras declared, "Take a breath joe!! Really man, you don't need in-body IS, you just have to cut down on the caffeine." Alcoholics Anonymous provides us with a wealth of examples of this technique — A.A. is almost "Condescension Incorporated". If you are picky and hesitant about deciding which old-timer you wish to have as your sponsor, they will slap you with condescending remarks like: "Maybe she's trying to break all known records of the time it's taken somebody to find a sponsor." An Al-Anon slogan: "It's what you learn after you know it all that counts." "You think you are qualified to criticize A.A.? How many millions of drunks have you sobered up?" "He is suffering from terminal uniqueness." "Nobody is too stupid to get the program, but some people are too intelligent." "You think too much." "Your best thinking got you here." "Now you know everything, huh?" "You need to pray more." "My, my. Don't we have a resentment?" "You are in denial." "Damn, Brennan! Did A.A. run over your dog or something?" "Gosh. Calm down. Maybe a drink would help?" "You are so full of bologna or yourself or something..." "This has to be a joke post." "You'll eventually learn and join us." "He's one of those people who wants to spend the rest of his life crying about how much A.A. hurt him." "I read your criticism of A.A.. Very cute. Now why don't you buy a copy of the Big Book and find out what it's all about?" "Go back under your bridge." "He has collected a wealth of anti-A.A. material on his web site. Maybe next year he'll get a life." "Oh God! Just what we need. Another Ken Ragge clone!" "You anti-AA guys are a bunch of pussies who couldn't handle the responsibility that goes with being a member of AA." When someone angrily criticizes A.A. for harming sick people, say, "I admire your level of serenity." When presented with annoying facts, respond: "Oh that guy! Do you expect me to believe anything he says?" This exchange occurred in a newsgroup: Q: Friends, I am scheduled to make a presentation on the 3rd Tradition this month, and so far, I have been unable to find out when the word: "sincere" was removed from the text of the Tradition. Can any of you be of help? A: What difference does it make? Are you "presenting" to a bunch of lawyers? http://groups.google.com/group/alt.recovery.addiction.alcoholism/msg/2d9a96d050fadbe4 Is the message there that new members are not supposed to ask too many discerning questions about the history of Alcoholics Anonymous? A critic who thought that I was an atheist wrote: Some suggest that only those truly freed by the possession of exceptional intelligence can find peace in the absence of faith, yet so many intellectual giants — Hawking, Einstein, Bohr, MacLuan, Marquez, Rushdie, Friedman et al. all possess and follow their own brand of faith, and worship (gasp!) in loose cults — such as Catholicism, Judaism, Islam etc... despite the attendant irrational and delusional qualities required thereto.       I suspect you must be smarter than them all. God/Allah/Tao/Buddha/Vishnu et al. bless you. (Curiously, when I explained to the critic that I was neither an atheist nor an agnostic, he then switched sides and declared that he was actually a skeptic. Go figure.) Damn with Faint Praise Praise someone, but make the praise so small that it is actually a subtle criticism. Or praise only some small unimportant aspect of a person's endeavor, leaving an implied criticism of the endeavor. "What I really like about my opponent is that she can make me laugh." "While running a billion-dollar government program, he keeps a tidy desk, and his hair is always neatly groomed, and his shoes are shined." Reductio Ad Absurdum This means, "reduce to absurdity." Take a point, and exaggerate it until it is ridiculous, to show that the original idea was stupid or wrong. For example, start with this story from the Big Book:       Whether the family goes on a spiritual basis or not, the alcoholic member has to if he would recover. The others must be convinced of his new status beyond the shadow of a doubt. Seeing is believing to most families who have lived with a drinker.       Here is a case in point: One of our friends is a heavy smoker and coffee drinker. There was no doubt he over-indulged. Seeing this, and meaning to be helpful, his wife commenced to admonish him about it. He admitted he was overdoing these things, but frankly said that he was not ready to stop. His wife is one of those persons who really feels there is something rather sinful about these commodities, so she nagged, and her intolerance finally threw him into a fit of anger. He got drunk.       Of course our friend was wrong — dead wrong. He had to painfully admit that and mend his spiritual fences. Though he is now a most effective member of Alcoholics Anonymous, he still smokes and drinks coffee, but neither his wife nor anyone else stands in judgement. She sees she was wrong to make a burning issue out of such a matter when his more serious ailments were being rapidly cured. The Big Book, William G. Wilson, page 135. And then attack it like this: Notice the powerful hidden assumption in this sentence: "He admitted he was overdoing these things, but frankly said that he was not ready to stop." Oh? Somebody can continue doing whatever he is doing just because he frankly says that he isn't ready to stop? When was the last time that you heard an A.A. member accept that as a good excuse for someone to continue drinking? Can the alcoholic say, "I know I'm over-doing it right now, but frankly, I'm not ready to stop just yet", and keep right on drinking forever? If you catch someone robbing your house, can the burglar say, "I know I'm over-doing it right now, but frankly, I'm not ready to stop just yet" and keep on robbing forever? And, if the guy next door has a bad habit of molesting 10-year-old little girls during full moons, can he say, "I know I'm over-doing it, but frankly, I'm just not ready to stop right now" and keep on molesting children forever? Logically, there is not any connection between molesting little girls and smoking cigarettes, or between smoking and robbing houses, but there doesn't need to be. The point is to exaggerate the "Frankly, I'm not ready to stop" excuse to the point where it becomes absurd, to show the falseness of that argument. Also note the use of another technique in that quote, one that we might call Context Shift or Biased Viewpoint: The author Bill Wilson used Slanted Language — he refered to the man in the story as "our friend" and "a most effective member of Alcoholics Anonymous", even after he got drunk and threw his angry screaming temper tantrum. (So it's also a Stroking Ploy.) His clean and sober wife, on the other hand, was called "one of those persons." You know, one of those nagging wives that you get away from by going to an A.A. meeting... Likewise, Bill wrote that "her intolerance finally threw him into a fit of anger." Wanting your husband to live and be healthy is "intolerance"? Was she also "intolerant" when she wanted him to quit drinking himself to death? And she didn't throw him into a fit of anger; he willingly walked right into it by his own choice, to put on a big loud drunken show of anger that would scare her off and make her quit "nagging him" to quit smoking. Bill Wilson's goal was to promote a feeling of "us good old boys versus the nagging wives", which is just one of Bill's many attacks on his wife.3 And it's also an example of the creation of a "granfalloon", a distinguishing characteristic that will define and unite a group. And also note the use of yet another propaganda technique: "Assume The Major Premise." Look at this sentence: "She sees she was wrong to make a burning issue out of such a matter when his more serious ailments were being rapidly cured." Wilson actually managed to do it twice, and pack two lies into one sentence: She was wrong to try to get him to quit smoking. His more serious ailments were being rapidly cured. First off, she wasn't wrong. Bill Wilson was just a hard-core chain smoker who didn't ever quit smoking, not even when he had burned out his lungs and gotten fatal emphysema, and he hated his wife Lois nagging him, so he said that she was wrong to try to get him to quit smoking. (For that matter, Bill also said that his wife Lois was wrong to nag him to quit drinking.) Then, what "more serious ailments were being rapidly cured"? His alcoholism? No way. He just used alcohol as a blackmail weapon when she tried to get him to quit smoking. He used alcohol to get his own way, and he holds that weapon in reserve for use against her again. At any time, he can blackmail her with more threats to relapse and drink if she doesn't let him have his own way. He is still using alcohol as an easy solution to his problems. But Bill Wilson arbitrarily declared that "his more serious ailments were being rapidly cured", because Bill wanted to make the A.A. program look good. Rationalize This one is great, an old classic. Rationalization. No matter what you or somebody else did, you can always rationalize it, and justify it somehow, and put a happy face on it. For instance, "Tommy did it. O.J. got away with it. So I should be able to do it too." "I did it for the children." When politicians are caught telling lies about their opponents, they rationalize, "Well, the other side did it first." Or, "Well, my opponents do it all of the time. I have to fight fire with fire or else I'll lose." Politicians also rationalize their lies and distortions by saying, "But we will lose the election if we tell the voters the truth. We are using dirty tricks for the good of America." They overlook the obvious objection that if they will lose elections by telling the American people the truth, then maybe they are pushing the wrong programs. They certainly are not supporting democracy — democracy requires that the voters know what they are really voting for. And when they get caught with their hand in the cookie jar, they say, "Well, it's the system. That's just how it is done. Everybody's doing it. You have to cooperate with the system and not make waves. Go along to get along..." The Bush administration is having to do a lot of rationalizing, lately. "We have to invade Iraq and take out Saddam Hussein because he threatens us with an imminent attack with Weapons of Mass Destruction," they said. Tony Blair even said that Saddam had a 45-minute-to-launch capability. But you know what happened. No WMD. Nothing. Not even close. No yellow-cake uranium from Niger. Not even one missile that could hit England, never mind the USA. So they rationalized, "Well, we had to stop Saddam from giving WMD to al Qaeda. It's because of September 11." But there were no such weapons. And even more importantly, Saddam Hussein hated al Qaeda and al Qaeda hated Saddam. They never worked together, and Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with September 11. Osama bin Laden is a fundamentalist religious fanatic, and Saddam Hussein was a secular military dictator who killed the Islamic religious extremists who made trouble for him. They didn't get along at all. Osama bin Laden even made a videotape shortly before the USA attacked Iraq, telling the Islamic radicals to ignore Saddam Hussein because he wasn't a friend. So the Bush administration rationalized, "Well, at least we got rid of a bad guy. Now Iraq can have democracy and freedom." But you know what happened. Ayatollah al Sistani demanded real democracy and an elected government, immediately. You know, one man, one vote, and all of that old American stuff. But the Bushies said, "Oh, noooo! You can't do that! You will elect the wrong people! I'll tell you what: You can have an election where you can only vote for the candidates that we choose. On second thought, why don't we just forget about that whole democracy thing for a while. We will just appoint a council of rulers for you." So they rationalized, "Well, at least we got rid of the bad guy. Saddam Hussein was torturing and killing his own people." But you know what happened. Torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison. Rapes of women prisoners. The homosexual rape of a teenage boy. At least 35 deaths of prisoners while under interrogation (overly enthusiastic questioning), and 2 known deliberate murders. Lots of pictures. Naked men stacked in pyramids. Sadistic torture. Police dogs biting them. Photographs of naked women prisoners taking showers. A 70-year-old Iraqi woman stripped naked, shoved to the floor, and ridden like a donkey by a British soldier. Unreleased video tapes, perhaps even showing Iraqi women being raped and Iraqi male prisoners being murdered. Pornography films: Reports of a video tape showing a certain U.S. Army woman having consensual sex with her boyfriend in front of Iraqi prisoners. Snuff films. Really hot stuff, much better than what you can get at your local adult bookstore. [Wow, the U.S. Army snuff films are even better than the Mexican ones. Heck, they're even better than Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ — you know, "Mad Max and Jesus Meet the Road Warrior in the Thunderdome, and the Road Warrior Wins".] How will they rationalize their way out of this one? "Well, they were bad guys. We grabbed them off of the streets because they looked at us cross-eyed. Maybe his second cousin took a pot-shot at us. They don't appreciate the freedom we are giving them. Besides, we need to get information out of them. It's just part of the 'softening-up' process, before interrogation." But you know what happened. The U.S. military generals admitted, in the U.S. Senate Hearings (2004-05-11), that 70 to 90 percent of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison were innocent, just grabbed by mistake in sweeps of the streets. So how will they rationalize their way out of this one? "Well, those abuse things were only done by a few bad apples." — In spite of the fact that it was done by both American and British soldiers in several different prisons over a long span of time, and there are thousands of pictures that document an on-going program of abuse, and now an American colonel has sworn that the commanding general in charge of intelligence watched it being done. UPDATE, 2004.05.11: Oh heck, now al Qaeda is making snuff films too. They just chopped the head off of Nicholas Berg, as revenge for abuses in Abu Ghraib, they say. What a bunch of disgusting copy-cats. Alcoholics Anonymous also teaches us how to rationalize. For example, if a critic says, "Bill Wilson cheated on his wife Lois a lot, both before and after sobriety. He took sexual advantage of sick women who came to A.A. seeking help to avoid death from alcohol. Bill even had the gall to be routinely unfaithful to Lois while she was working in a department store to support his lazy ass. And Bill even used the Alcoholics Anonymous headquarters as an employment agency for his many mistresses who couldn't even type. That is hardly what I would call a good spiritual role model." You can answer, "It just goes to show that Bill Wilson was human, and not a saint, and that's wonderful, because it means that ordinary people like you and I can recover, too. So Bill Wilson had to be human, and not a saint, so that he could help others. It was the Will of God." Likewise: "All of that vague, confusing, grandiose, contradictory stuff that Bill Wilson wrote in the Big Book is okay. Even if Bill wasn't a great writer, that book will still save your life. Eventually, you will be able to figure out what it means." And: "Bill Wilson had to steal the Big Book publishing fund and the copyright of the Big Book, in order to keep Henry Parkhurst from stealing it. It's what the other A.A. members wanted Bill to do." Exchange A Term Exchange a term in your opponent's argument, thereby redefining the debate to better suit your own prejudices. Back in the nineteen-sixties, when proponents of psychedelic drugs spoke of visions of paradise, critical newspaper editors changed the wording to visions of an "inferno".17 Those women who desire control over their reproductive lives call their goal "Pro-Choice", and they call their opponents "anti-abortion". The opponents of abortion, on the other hand, call themselves "Pro-Life", while calling their opponents "pro-abortion people". Con artists who are trying to get people to participate in illegal chain letters and pyramid sales schemes brag, "I made $3000 in my first week." What we call criminal fraud, they call "making money". When the Chinese People's Army attacked and conquered Tibet, and brutally murdered great numbers of innocent people, the Chinese leaders called it "the liberation of Tibet", while we call it "the invasion of Tibet". Likewise, George W. Bush calls the invasion of Iraq "giving them freedom" and "liberating them from a dictator" (accompanied by a only a little "collateral damage"), while the Iraqi resistance calls it the invasion and occupation of their country, accompanied by the murder of their families, children, and neighbors by the massive use of firepower and dropping cluster bombs in civilian neighborhoods during Donald Rumsfeld's Shock And Awe bombing. G. W. Bush complains that "foreign fighters" and "terrorists" have come into Iraq from the outside and are making trouble. The Iraqis say that they are the "freedom fighters", and that the Americans are the "foreign fighters" and the "terrorists" who came from other countries to enforce the will of the Bush family and their oil company friends with "Shock and Awe" bombing. Likewise, in Israel: The formula is simple: suicide in the West is thought to be caused by despair, hoplessness, panic, and mental illness, so we assume that such must be the case among Moslems. To date, we have been unable to see the issue through any but Western eyes, and so have missed recognizing that the young Palestinian bombers are seen by large numbers of Muslims as heroes who are willing to sacrifice their lives — in martyrdom, not suicide attacks — for a cause that is greater than themselves and sanctioned by their God. What the West sees as tragic brutality practiced by despairing or deviant individuals is perceived in much of the Moslem world as a heroic act of self-sacrifice, patriotism, and worship, an act to be greeted not with condemnation and revulsion, but with awe, respect, and a determination to emulate. Moreover, it is an act Muslims deem a just military response to Israel's fifty-plus-year occupation of Palestine and its relegation of three generations of Palestinians to refugee [concentration] camps.       Thus, American's evil suicide bombers can also be seen as Islam's martyr-heroes, men and women following in the steps and under the guidance of their prophet and according to the revealed word of their God. Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, Anonymous, pages 135-136. In March of 2006, there was a flap at the Washington Post about a right-wing blogger, Ben Domenech, getting hired to write opinion pieces for the online edition. Some critics who investigated his background quickly discovered a history of plagiarism in his writings. A Washington Post spokesman commented that he "wasn't aware of those allegations." Someone posted to a forum, 'Is not being "aware of allegations" the same as not being aware of the facts?' In another recent example, a local politician declared, "My opponent has spent $400 million on his political agenda." The so-called "political agenda" was health care for people, and unemployment compensation for the unemployed people, and other social services like that. (Portland, Oregon, KGW Straight Talk, 2011.04.10) Alcoholics Anonymous constantly uses this technique. Talk to them about the harmful cult practices that are embodied in the Twelve Steps, and they will respond by calling the Twelve Steps "spiritual principles". The Twelve Steps are practices, not principles. The Twelve Steps are specific practices for people to do, things like surrendering your will and confessing your sins, and hearing the voices of spirits or gods or something while conducting séances, not guidelines for a spiritual life. Frame The Argument This is very closely related to Exchange A Term; in fact, they are often identical. You can re-frame an argument by exchanging a term and redefining the debate in terms that you like better. When someone says that conservative politics should be about preserving the Constitution Of The United States and the Bill Of Rights that our Founders gave us, twist the argument around to "defending the country from terrorists who don't deserve Constitutional protections". Comcast uses this technique when they cry about heavy users of the Internet stealing bandwidth from other users, as in "Those people who download movies are slowing down the Internet for everybody else."       The truth is, Comcast is saddled with a very limited technology: sharing a cable — trying to cram all of the data communications of a neighborhood into one single thin cable, which means that the available bandwidth is inherently very limited. You can only cram so much data through one piece of wire. And the more customers who share that cable, the less bandwidth each customer gets, so the slower it gets.       But rather than admit that Comcast cannot supply sufficient bandwidth to meet their customers' needs and desires — to whom Comcast has sold "high speed connections" — Comcast frames the argument as some heavy users taking too much. "They are taking more than their fair share. Things would be fine if nobody used very much." (That also smacks of finding a scapegoat to blame: It isn't Comcast's fault for not investing in infrastructure and building a good network; it's the fault of users who want to actually use the connection that they paid for.) Alcoholics Anonymous likes to frame opposition to A.A. in terms of "the atheists versus the Christian believers". But they are framing the argument in false terms. Alcoholics Anonymous theology is not Christian at all — it is grossly heretical, and conflicts with Christianity in many major ways. Opponents of Alcoholics Anonymous would do well to re-frame the argument in terms of "the heretical anti-Christian nonsense of A.A. versus everyday common sense." Argue with Unrealistic Hypothetical Situations Imagine a guy who is in the process of committing suicide by hanging himself. He is standing on a chair, and tying the noose up to something. His cross nagging wife looks on and asks, "Where would we be if everybody did that?" Misrepresent Your Opponent's Position, or Mischaracterize Your Opponent, or Mischaracterize His Statements or Questions For example: The Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) is an organization that does just what its title sounds like: it investigates claims of the paranormal. That often results in its debunking some phony psychics and quack healers and various other fakes and charlatans. That really annoyed some people who didn't like to see their favorite scams exposed. They fired back by declaring that, "CSICOP [is] a defensive league of American Scientists whose basic aim is to argue that the paranormal does not exist, and is an invention of cranks and wierdos." Skeptical Inquirer, Nov/Dec 2001, page 67. That is a mischaracterization of CSICOP. Such mischaracterization is standard behavior for the Bush administration. In April, 2007, when Congress put into a funding bill a non-binding resolution asking for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, George W. Bush declared, "I will strongly reject an artificial timetable withdrawal, and/or Washington politicians trying to tell those who wear the uniform how to do their job." As if there was a "non-artificial" or "natural" time-table for withdrawal from Iraq? And isn't George W. Bush the biggest politician in Washington who is telling the generals what to do? Isn't he the Commander In Chief, as well as "the decider"? (Bush routinely hides behind the generals, and says that he is "supporting them" when things aren't going well. But he is the one who is giving the orders.) Likewise, Vice President Cheney declared: "Some Democratic leaders seem to believe that blind opposition to the new strategy in Iraq is good politics." Is opposition to the administration's policies "blind", or a well-informed and well-thought-out, considered, rational response to four years of failure? What new strategy? "The Surge" is just sending in a few more troops. This "new strategy" comes from the administration that, way back at the beginning of the war, fired the generals who said that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wasn't sending in enough troops to do the job properly. (Will those generals who were right all along get their jobs back and get another star for being right? Not likely. G. W. Bush gives more stars to those generals who say that he is right about everything.) And Cheney declares that the opposition must be rooted in "politics". The opposition couldn't possibly be based on principles and intelligent, realistic, well-thought-out decision-making, presumably because reasonable American people cannot possibly have good cause for disagreeing with the administration, even after four years of shifting goals and lies and incompetence, and cover-ups and misinformation and fabricated stories, and secret prisons and renditions and torture and war crimes and declaring the Geneva Convention "quaint", and the loss of far more troops in Iraq than Americans killed and maimed on 9/11. Nit-Pick and Split Hairs This is easy to understand. Everybody knows what nit-picking is: "Hah! You misspelled Henrietta Seiberling's name! That totally blows your credibility. Now I'm not going to believe anything else you say." Yeh, right. As if you were planning to before that unfortunate misspelling... :-) Quibble Quibble over irrelevant tiny details, quibble over the definitions of words, quibble over anything you can find that will divert attention from your opponent's points. For example, when Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian defector, former Russian spy, and author of tell-all books about the new Russian spy agencies, was poisoned with the rare radioactive metal Polonium for persistently criticizing the Russian president/dictator Vladimir Putin, Putin claimed that he didn't do it, that he had nothing to do with it, because the British medical documents did not show "that it was a result of violence, this is not a violent death, so there is no ground for speculations of this kind." To argue that poisoning somebody with a radioactive substance is not a "violent" act is quibbling over the definitions of words. It was still murder most foul. On another note, one critic of mine actually spent several letters quibbling over whether President Lincoln ever told a joke that contained the word "ass", as in "maybe those generals will get off of their asses and do something"... That critic tried to claim that everything I said in my web site was all wrong because he was sure that Abraham Lincoln — the rough home-spun frontiersman — would never use crude words in jokes. Hit And Run Launch an attack on your opponent, and then run away before your opponent can counter-attack or ask you to prove your accusations. "That story is all wrong. It's full of factual errors. It is so stupid that would be a waste of time to even respond to it. It doesn't even warrant an answer. I'm not going to waste any more time on this stupid argument. I'm out of here." Now you can run away without actually answering any of your opponent's points, or supplying any facts to back up your sweeping statements and denunciations. (And, if your opponent refutes your statements after you have left, and supplies a lot of facts to prove that he is correct, you can later accuse him of talking about you behind your back, and of attacking you when you couldn't defend yourself, which implies that he is a coward. That stratagem has sweet touches of ad hominem and blame the victim in it.) Hifalutin' Denunciations Denounce your opponent with vague, grand-sounding generalized accusations that don't have very specific meanings: "the proposal shows a failure of initiative"... "his program shows a failure of imagination"... "he exhibits a lack of vision"... What the heck does any of that really mean, in plain English? Make Unreasonable Demands For example: Demand that your opponent write his whole autobiography to show us that his life is okay without doing the Twelve Steps. The Oxford Group cult leader Frank Buchman used this trick this way: The world needs a miracle. Miracles of science have been the wonder of the age. But they have not brought peace and happiness to the nations. A miracle of the spirit is what we need. Frank Buchman, speaking at Kronberg, Denmark, Whit Sunday, 1935, quoted in Remaking the World, the speeches of Frank Buchman, Frank N. D. Buchman, page 157. For Frank Buchman to demand that science do everything from end the Great Depression to prevent World War Two was unreasonable. It isn't the job of "the miracles of science" like penicillin or the light bulb to do that. Nevertheless, Buchman then declared that his religion was the only answer, because "science" didn't meet his demands. One contemporary booster of Alcoholics Anonymous used that trick like this: When I stated that 93% of the drug and alcohol treatment facililities in the USA use the 12-Step approach, he demanded a list of all of those facilities, including the names of the owners, addresses, and phone numbers. Make False Demands For example: Demand that your opponent prove that his life is still full of "Serenity and Gratitude", in spite of his not doing the Twelve Steps. That demand is false because normal, sane, people do not judge their lives by how much "Serenity and Gratitude" they have; nor do they believe that a good life must be emotionally flat, without any of the other emotions like the passions, the love and the anger, the agony and the ecstasy, that make us greater than the rocks. Shift the Burden of Proof Onto Your Opponent Make all kinds of unsubstantiated statements and claims, and when your opponent objects and challenges those statements, say, "Do some research on the subject and you will see that what I am saying is true." It is the job of the person who is making the statements and claims to do the research and supply the evidence to support his assertions. Double Standards This is a well-known propaganda and debating technique. One standard or set of rules applies to one group, and a very different set of rules apply to a different group. For example, men who philander are called "real ladies' men", while women who philander are considered whores. A.A. members talk constantly about God and "Higher Power", and declare that God is keeping them from drinking, and doing all kinds of wonderful things for them, and they don't consider that excessive, or obsession with religion. But when somebody else talks about God, and even dares to mention Jesus Christ, the A.A. members attack him as a "Bible-beating fundamentalist", and tell him to "take it to Church". (Conversely, if somebody does not talk about God, and declare that "Higher Power" and "A.A. spirituality" are keeping him sober, then he is accused of being an agnostic or an atheist. That is a Double-Bind.) When A.A. members lie, cheat, and thirteen-step under-age girls who came to A.A. seeking help for a drug or alcohol problem, that's okay, because "We are not saints." But when a non-member does those things, he is a criminal who should go to jail. Demand an Uneven Burden of Proof Use very different standards of proof for opposite sides of an argument. For example: Exhaustively fact-check and nit-pick an opponent's statements, but do not challenge outrageous claims made by friends and allies. Another example: demand very strong, iron-clad, absolute proof for an opponent's statements, while insisting that the flimsiest of evidence proves one's own statements to be true. Alcoholics Anonymous is a past master of this stunt. In the opinion of Alcoholics Anonymous pundits: If one person quits drinking while attending A.A. meetings, then that "proves" that A.A. works. The numerous A.A. members who relapse do not prove that A.A. doesn't work. If one person relapses, even once, while not attending A.A. meetings, then that "proves" that nobody can do it alone. The numerous "do-it-yourself" people who succeed in getting sober and staying sober without A.A. meetings do not prove that people can get sober without Alcoholics Anonymous, because those people might relapse some day. A.A. boosters do not ask whether the other A.A. members are likely to eventually relapse. Demand Uneven Standards of Acceptance Demand very different standards of acceptance and tolerance for statements and beliefs from opposite sides of an argument. This is a variation on the technique of demanding an uneven burden of proof. For example, Demand that your opponents accept your statements and illogical beliefs in the name of open-mindedness and tolerance, while simultaneously attacking and shredding your opponents' statements and beliefs, and being very intolerant of other peoples' opinions. Call other peoples' criticism of your policies and attitudes "prejudiced, narrow-minded, and intolerant", while freely criticizing your opponents' policies and attitudes. Complain that your opponents are inconsiderate and don't care whose feelings they hurt with harsh criticism, while having no such problems with criticizing others. Specious Argument When you can't think of anything better to say, make a specious argument. For example, during a debate about Mary McCarthy, the CIA analyst who revealed the existence of illegal secret CIA prisons in foreign countries where kidnapped people were held incommunicado and tortured, Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst, called such activities war crimes and declared that McCarthy was obligated to reveal the existence of such activities. Richard Kerr, a former CIA assistant director and current Bush administration apologist, argued that if McCarthy had moral objections to such projects, she should have resigned her position and then criticized the policy but without revealing any classified information. Kerr didn't bother to mention that even if she resigned, McCarthy would still be barred by the National Secrets Act from revealing the existence of the secret illegal prisons and torture centers, so her resigning in silent protest would accomplish nothing. (PBS News Hour, 24 Apr 2006). Spurious Agreement An utterance, typically with a strong emotional content, designed to establish a false sense of agreement: "Don't you want to live forever?" This is an attempt to placate an opponent in a debate. Amway recruiters ask, "Don't you want financial security?" Bill Wilson taught Alcoholics Anonymous recruiters to use this technique on prospects who had religious beliefs that were different from Bill's: Your prospect may belong to a religious denomination. His religious education and training may be far superior to yours. In that case he is going to wonder how you can add anything to what he already knows. But he will be curious to learn why his own convictions have not worked and why yours seem to work so well. He may be an example of the truth that faith alone is insufficient. ... Admit that he probably knows more about it [religion] than you do, but call to his attention the fact that however deep his faith and knowledge, he could not have applied it or he would not drink. The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, page 93. Bill Wilson does not think that the prospect knows more about religion than he does — Bill thinks that the prospective new recruit is wrong about everything. Bill only pretends to agree with the prospect long enough to sell him on the A.A. religion. Bill Wilson is actually saying that the other guy's religion is worthless because it didn't keep him from drinking. Bill stubbornly ignored the obvious implication that, by that logic, all of the relapsers in Alcoholics Anonymous prove that Bill Wilson's religion is also worthless. Escape via Ignorance When stuck with an unanswerable question, allude to an existing answer unknown to either party: "Maybe I can't answer your point, but any of the Elders at our congregation could." (But then the elders forget to come and answer the questions...) Similarly, you can dismiss all arguments put forth so far by arguing, "I wish we had an expert here, who really knew about these things." Escape to the Future When stuck with an unanswerable question, allude to an answer that will allegedly become known at a future date. Jehovah's Witnesses argue: "Maybe I can't answer your point, but we Witnesses are told to 'Wait on Jehovah' when we encounter things we can't understand. He eventually provides us with the answers."8 Note that no time limit is specified. A defender of a particular brand of camera deflected criticism of the camera with the remark, "Just pick up the camera and shoot with it and then decide." — Which did not actually answer the questions and criticisms at all. The speaker imagined that people would like the camera, and not notice the defects and shortcomings, if they just handled and used the camera. Escape via Relativism Dismiss an irrefutable argument as simply a point of view: "Well, that's just your opinion." This can interrupt and sabotage a chain of logic. Another common phrase is, "Everybody has their own opinion" — as if every opinion is backed up with equally valid or equally compelling evidence. "Every point does not have equal weight. Lies should not get the same weight as truth." == Daniel Zwerdling, PBS Exposé, 2007.08.28 A letter from an A.A. member criticized my analysis of treatment programs (A.A. versus non-A.A.) by writing: If there are 10 interpretations of an event, you ... accept the one that suits your beliefs, and ignore all the others. The writer simply assumed that all opinions had equal merit, and that all interpretations of failed treatment programs' results were equally valid. He even ignored the fact that a Trustee of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., Doctor George E. Vaillant, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, was the doctor who reported that his A.A-based treatment program had failed to help the alcoholics, and that, by Vaillant's own admission, for eight years his A.A.-based treatment program had an "appalling" death rate in spite of his persistent attempts to make A.A. produce good results. The critic also ignored the obvious fact that whether people are dead isn't just a matter of someone's opinion. Other examples: "Leave AA on the table for those who choose to try it." — as if A.A. is just as good as any other treatment for alcohol or drug problems, and should get equal consideration. "The goal is to get sober — you can take 45 to Dallas or you can take 35 to Dallas — you still get to Dallas anyway." — as if A.A. is just as effective as any other treatment. It isn't. There are several variations on this escape via relativism technique: Declare that the issue is "controversial". The goal is to leave the impression that we can't really decide the issue and arrive at a conclusion, and determine the truth, because there are just too many conflicting opinions. (As if all of those different opinions were equally valid and really worth considering.) That ploy uses antirationalism. Antirationalism is the idea that there are no such things as valid, reliable facts or hard evidence, just various conflicting opinions. Speakers who are pushing antirationalism argue that "It's just my opinion versus your opinion, and it's all so controversial that we can't decide anything for sure." And the people who don't wish for anything to be decided are the people who do not have enough facts, or any facts, to back up their arguments and support their opinions, and who are losing the debate. "So let's agree to disagree, and not decide anything," they say. For example, when an A.A. booster was presented with evidence that A.A.-based treatment does not work, he replied: "Yes you are rite you can find almost anything on the internet, but just because it there doesn't mean it's true. There are many who claim there was not Holocaust, that it was all in the Jews imagination. I got in a rather heated conflict with someone over that. I said that I guess the numbers tatooed on my father's arm was his imagination. I am of the belief that I could care less how you get sober as long as you get there. If you believe that sitting in a corner 3 hours a day repeating multiflication tables will get and keep you sober — you try it and it works then repeat all you want — it's ok — however if it dosn't work then try something else — till you find what does. Everyone is different — and everyone should be able to choose for themselves which type of recovery road they want to take." http://community.aetv.com/service/displayDiscussionThreads.kickAction?as=119137&w=267410&d=341884&d-1169404-p=10 Yes, everyone should be able to choose their recovery program — I'm very opposed to sentencing people to A.A. meetings — but people should be told the truth about A.A. recovery, and the truth about the other treatment modalities too. Telling them Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path is just lying to sick people. Claiming that experiences are relative is another variation on the same escape: "Oh, that was just your experience. Other people experienced the opposite." As in, "Maybe you got robbed and raped by that cult, but that was just your experience. Tom, Dick, and Harry say that they really like the organization." (Yeh, and they especially like it when they get to be the privileged old-timer guys who are doing the robbing and raping of newcomers...) Another variation on this technique is dismissing criticism of something by saying, "Your mileage may vary...", as if someone's bad experiences with something are just a personal problem, irrelevant to other people. As in, "Sally may not have liked it, but Joe liked it..." And another variation on this technique is to dismiss someone's statements or complaints as "just an opinion", or "just a viewpoint". Recently, a Veterans' Administration spokesman dismissed the complaints of a crippled, blinded veteran of the Iraq War who was not getting full benefits for his disabilities with this condescending statement, "Well, it's perfectly understandable that he would have that view." (National Public Radio, All Things Considered, 25 June 2007) Escape via Irrationality Dismiss an irrefutable argument by claiming a magical or non-logical answer. Claim that, "Of course it defies simple logic — it's miraculous." "It's a paradox." "It's spiritual." "It's supernatural." "It can't be explained in normal terms." "I find every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, 'It is a matter of faith, and above reason.'" John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1690 One Alcoholics Anonymous propagandist wrote: Certainly, however, the spiritual dimension that is so strong in AA is at odds with the scientific, medical tradition. Says Dr. Ken: "We [physicians] tend to be analytical. Spirituality is a gut or heart-felt experience that certainly can't be scientifically studied and falls outside our training."       Dr. Whitfield agrees that AA's effectiveness can't be explained in scientific terms, or tested in controlled studies. Doctors in A.A.; the profession's skepticism persists, but MDs in Alcoholics Anonymous say the 12-Step program could benefit all physicians, C. Thomas Anderson, American Medical News, Jan 12, 1990 v33 n2 p33(2) But the simplest, most obvious reason that A.A.'s effectiveness cannot be explained or measured in valid scientific or medical tests is because there is no effectiveness to measure — A.A. doesn't work at all. To explain that A.A. works in some mystical, magical manner that cannot be measured or explained is dishonest. If A.A. works, then groups of alcoholics who get A.A.-based "treatment" should have a lower death rate than other groups of alcoholics who get no "treatment" at all. They don't. And A.A. members should have a lower binge-drinking rate. They don't. Inducing pleasant "gut or heart-felt experiences" is not at all the same thing as curing alcoholism or saving the alcoholics' lives — which is supposed to be the goal of A.A., but which A.A. does not actually do. So the author is also using the propaganda tricks of changing the subject, diverting attention away from the point, and pulling a bait-and-switch stunt there: First the goal is to save the lives of alcoholics by making them quit drinking, and then suddenly the goal is to induce "gut or heart-felt experiences" that can't be measured. Pack the House — with crowds of sycophant followers, shills, and hand-picked audiences. Politicians and phoney gurus often come attended by an entourage of fawning sycophants, because it makes them look much more important, like a real leader. In November of 1922, the Lauzanne Conference was assembled to revise the Turkish Peace Treaty. When the British and French representatives, British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon and French Prime Minister M. Poincaré, went to see the very new Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini (who had been in office only a few weeks),       There, in the Hall of the Grand Hotel, Mussolini awaited them. He held in his hand a thick black stick, which at that time never left him, and was surrounded by a phalanx of young Fascist secretaries of pugnacious appearance, dressed in black shirts and black fezes with long tassels.       It was a situation for which nothing in the past experience of the French and British statesmen had prepared them. An exchange of glacial salutations took place. Then followed a constrained silence. The Duce broke this by suggesting that his visitors might like to dine after their journey. I Know These Dictators, George Ward Price, page 217. Politicians also like to pack audiences. Richard Nixon was infamous for bussing in loads of Young Republicans to pack the stands at the Republican National Convention so that the TV cameras would see crowds of enthusiastic young people cheering for Nixon. George W. Bush always packs audiences with hand-picked, loyalty-checked sympathizers — he refuses to allow dissenters anywhere near his rallies and conventions. He isolates them in small fenced so-called "Free Speech Zones" a mile or so away. (G. W. Bush has somehow forgotten that all of the United States of America is supposed to be a free speech zone.) The cult leader Frank Buchman used a variation on this trick: Move the debate to a favorable forum. When someone was arguing with him, Buchman declared:       "If you have any objections, the proper place to raise them is on the convention floor. I will debate you there."21 But the Moral Re-Armament convention was packed with Buchman's loyal followers, of course. No matter what Buchman said, the audience would cheer and yell its approval. With the audience acting as the judge and jury of the debate, Buchman couldn't lose. Politicians also like to use planted shills to ask favorable questions in fake town hall meetings or press conferences. George W. Bush is notorious for doing that. Recently, Bush's favorite White House shill — "James Gucker" or "James Gannon" — was a total fraud — a male homosexual "escort", not a news reporter — who attended White House press conferences while using an alias (really great White House security there, yes?), and then asked G. W. Bush easy cream-puff questions like "How do you manage to deal with the Democrats who are out of touch with reality?" Over in the Alcoholics Anonymous world, Bill Wilson collected sycophant followers like a dog collecting fleas. As Henrietta Seiberling complained: "he has his henchmen & ingratiates himself with those in the dark..." Embarrass Your Opponent Especially, ask embarrassing questions that your opponent cannot answer. Back in the 1930s, the Oxford Group cult was notorious for self-promotion and recruiting by using vicious tactics like Beverly Nichols bragged about in this story. (The embarrassing questions that Oxford Groupers liked to ask usually pertained to people's private sexual habits, like masturbation.) Here, Nichols was trying to sell the Oxford Group practice of public confessions to a vicar: ... We will assume that we are addressing somebody who is, at least in theory, a Christian, in order to emphasize the importance of the Group's attitude to confession and the consciousness of sin.       They have a practice they call 'sharing,' which means that they confess to one another and not only to God. A lot of cheap laughs have been gained at the expense of the Group through a misunderstanding of this practice.       'I regard it as pernicious,' said a very bright young vicar to me, after I had come down from Oxford. 'It might lead to very great abuses.'       'Have you ever tried it?'       'Certainly not.'       'Why not? Because it's so unpleasant?'       He began to grow red in the face. 'Are you suggesting that I shirk confessing my sins in prayer?'       'No. But will you give me a quite honest answer to a question?'       'Yes,' he said rashly.       'Very well. And when you've answered it, I'd be glad if you'd tell me, equally honestly, whether it was easier to tell the truth to me, to a man, face to face, or whether it would have been easier to shut your eyes and mumble a few polite phrases to God.'       'You are extremely offensive,' said the vicar.       'Not nearly so offensive as I'm going to be.'       I then asked the question.       I did not get an answer. But by the horror in that man's eyes, I knew the answer he would have given if he had dared. The Fool Hath Said, Beverly Nichols, page 163-164. Beverly Nichols did not actually prove that there was any virtue in the Oxford Group's practices; nor did he even supply a good argument; he merely shut down the debate by embarrassing the other fellow. (The Oxford Group taught Beverly Nichols how to be a really insufferable arrogant little prig who smugly asserted that he had unquestionable truths and who didn't care how much he hurt other people's feelings in his pursuit of victory in arguments. But later, Nichols completely reversed his opinion of the Oxford Group. He discovered that his conversion to the Oxford Group had all been based on a fraud — that the Oxford Group had deceived him into joining, and that the whole cult was just a big con.) Obtuseness — Refuse to See the Point Just stubbornly refuse to see your opponent's points, no matter how good his arguments may be. When an opponent makes a point, just ignore it and pretend that it doesn't exist. Pretend that you didn't hear it; do not in any way recognize that it even exists. fake it til ou make it lying? again , example please You didn't give me an example of how faking it til you make it is bad/lying. I know all your other "facts" — you really don't need to repeat yourself — seriously — you have made your points clear. I would like an example, however , on the faking ... part. Because I really do use this technique often and am wondering how it is lying. http://community.aetv.com/service/displayDiscussionThreads.kickAction?as=119137&w=267410&d=341884&d-1169404-p=7 "What I see here is opinion — the same thing can be printed on a web site for the other side. There is no proof of anything here." — when presented with actual documented facts. I Have never once heard the word God in four years and hundreds of meetings. I live in NYC and maybe it's different here. — when every A.A. meeting is begun by reciting the religious dogma from Big Book pages 58 through 60, which includes the 12 Steps, where people surrender their wills and lives to God and beg God to save them and remove their defects, and God supposedly talks to them in séances and gives them power... and also restores them to sanity. http://community.aetv.com/service/displayDiscussionThreads.kickAction?as=119137&w=267410&d=341884&d-1169404-p=8 Willful ignorance is another flavor of such obtuseness. This technique naturally leads into create a diversion: Just change the subject and talk about something else. Laugh It Off When somebody says something that you don't like, just laugh it off. Refuse to take it seriously. Imply that whatever your opponent just said is silly, absurd, ridiculous, brain-damaged, or just awfully darned funny. This technique is obviously closely related to Obtuseness, and also to Humor, Ridicule and Satire, but it isn't quite the same as either of them. Back in the 1930s, the Bishop of Durham told a story about a foolish member of the Oxford Group who pledged his love to one girl on Friday, but who suddenly believed that he had received "Guidance" from God to propose marriage to a different girl on the following Monday. The father of the first girl complained to the Bishop:       "The young man had written a love-letter to his daughter on the Friday, but on the Monday he had been 'guided' to propose to another girl.       'The father said he wanted a horse-whipping, for his sense of decency should have come in to check such ungentlemanly conduct.   ...   When I told my story at the Group meeting, it raised a laugh; but it is a serious objection, none the less, for the story is true." One Thing I Know, A. J. Russell (1933), pages 291-292. The other Oxford Group members did not wish to seriously consider the flaws in their occult practice of Guidance (imagining that they were receiving infallible messages from God), so they just laughed at the sad story of a girl who was hurt by an Oxford Group member who thoughtlessly and inconsiderately followed the sudden impulses that he believed he had received through psychic means. They just wouldn't, or couldn't, sincerely consider the merits of the criticism, so they just laughed. "I'm so offended." Reject an opponent's point by claiming to be offended. During a Presidential debaite, candidate John Kerry mentioned the fact that Liz Cheney was a Lesbian, and argued for a more tolerant world. That was after Liz Cheney had revealed her Lesbian sexual orientation to the whole world in the press and on radio and TV. Liz Cheney and her mother both immediately went on TV and complained that they were "so offended" that John Kerry would say such a thing. Dominate the Conversation, Talk Non-Stop, and Interrupt Constantly Just never quit talking, never let up, never give your opponent a chance to get a word in edgewise. Even shout and scream to drown out the voice of your opponent. A variation on this technique is Constant Interruptions — just interrupt your opponent every time he starts to make a point. For example, shout "Hold it a second! Hold it a second!" whenever your opponent starts to make a point, and then shout a stream of other things — anything — to keep him from finishing his sentence. This technique is closely related to Obtuseness. It is a technique for simply not hearing your opponent, and it is an attempt to keep anybody else from hearing him either. This technique is not allowed in formal debates, but you hear it in talk radio and TV panel shows a lot. This debating technique can be combined with other debating techniques to Talk Non-Stop AND Interrupt Your Opponent whenever he starts to make a point, AND Divert Attention by changing the subject AND Launch Another Personal Attack On Your Opponent to change the subject and keep him from making his point. This technique also works well with the next technique, Bullying and Intimidation. Escape via Bullying and Intimidation Whenever you are losing an argument, Bluster, yell, scream, act threatening, make menacing gestures. Glare, growl, and make other hostile facial expressions. Use hints of violence to intimidate and silence your opponent. Make your opponents think that you are dangerously mentally unhinged and will explode in a homocidal rage if they say something that upsets you. Act like Bill O'Reilly and scream, "Shut up! Just shut up!" whenever someone says something that you don't want to hear. The Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence. == Ayn Rand (1905 - 1982) This technique works best when your debating opponent is half your size. Be very careful when trying this technique on people who are much larger than you are — they might not put up with it. Footnotes: 1) RE: The "ancients", meaning the Roman Catholic Church authorities in the Middle Ages, were "biased and unreasonable" about the "realm of the spirit." They would not tolerate any "spiritual", religious, or philosophical ideas that were different from their own. They opposed science because science described the world in a different way than the Bible did, like Galileo saying that Jupiter had moons, which the authors of the Bible failed to mention, and science asked people to use their own eyes and brains to see the world for themselves, rather than to have blind faith in what was written in the Bible, or to have blind faith in what some priest said. If Jupiter really has moons, and Galileo is right and the Bible is wrong, then that destroys the Church's claims that the Bible is the infallible, indisputable Word of God, and that the Church has a monopoly on God and Truth. The ideas, "Think for yourself", "see for yourself", and "trust your own senses, rather than what the 'elders' tell you" were revolutionary ideas — revolutionary in both the religious and political spheres. They led to the overthrow of absolute authorities like The Church and The King, and eventually led to the establishment of the European democracies. Perhaps the most subversive idea that Martin Luther came up with was the idea that you could communicate with God directly, rather than having to use a priest as an intermediary. That was the kind of stuff about which the Church was really "biased and unreasonable," because that would ultimately break the power of the Church — the Church would lose its monopoly on God. 2) Insiders Cash Out, Newsweek Magazine, Jan 21, 2002, page 23. Also: the NBC Evening News, and ABC Evening News, both on February 7, 2002. And: the 60 Minutes television news program, April 14, 2002. The Newsweek article gives these figures: Ken Lay with $37,683,887, Jeff Skilling with $14,480,755, and Lou Pai with $62,936,552. The NBC Evening News listed Andrew Fastow with $30 million, and the ABC Evening News listed Michael Kopper with $30 million, and stated that Jeffrey Skilling had gotten $70 million from the sale of his worthless hyped Enron stock when he quit Enron. 60 Minutes described how Rebecca Mark cashed in her Enron shares for $79 million after robbing the nation of India for everything she could get. The National Public Radio morning news on May 8, 2002, reported that Senate testimony the previous day revealed that Andrew Fastow had made $45 million from deals with off-the-books Enron subsidiaries. The fascinating book The Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind gave the following numbers: Ken Rice, $53 million (page 299), later up to $70 million (page 335) Tom White (G. W. Bush's Secretary of the Army) $14 million (page 302) Lou Pai sold $250 million worth of Enron stock, more than anybody else at the company (page 334) Jeff Skilling $70 million (page 350) Andy Fastow got $60.6 million out of his "Special Purpose Entities" (off-the-balance-sheet limited partnerships) which he used to hide Enron losses from stockholders and investors. He had earlier said that it was $45 million, but he was understating the facts. (page 366) The Nightly Business Report on public television, 19 February 2004, stated that Jeffrey Skilling was charged in the government's indictment with getting $63 million from the sale of his Enron stock just four months before Enron collapsed in bankruptcy. That's quite a pump-and-dump scheme they pulled... 3) Bill Wilson really had a thing about his wife nagging him. In the Big Book, he also wrote these instructions to wives of alcoholics: The first principle of success is that you should never be angry. ...       Our next thought is that you should never tell him what he must do about his drinking. If he gets the idea that you are a nag or a killjoy, your chance of accomplishing anything useful may be zero.   ...   This may lead to lonely evenings for you. He may seek someone else to console him — not always another man. The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 111. So don't nag your hubby about his drinking, or else he might become moody and resentful and go spend the night with his mistress (like Bill did). 4) You want logic about Nessie? How about: The small coelacanth had two entire oceans to hide in, while the large Loch Ness monster only has a small lake. (Loch Ness is small, compared to the American Great Lakes, or Lake Victoria in Africa, or Lake Baikal in Russia, none of which seems to host a living dinosaur.) The same problem applies to their food supply. Nessie would only have the fish in a lake to eat, while the coelacanth had an entire ocean to munch on. Then the food supply problem gets much worse: To avoid extinction, there would obviously have to be at least two living Loch Ness monsters at all times, so they would need twice as much fish to eat. But then they would have offspring, and those kids need to eat too, so now they need even more food. Somebody did the math on it and figured out that they would strip the lake of all fish pretty quickly. There goes the monster. Starvation will kill it. The population problem is much worse than that, even. A species that is reduced to two adults and two offspring will probably die out. Lack of genetic diversity. Or some random disease, sometime in the last 60 million years. Or just bad luck — lose one of the breeding pair due to an accident, and it's all over. Or a drought for a few years, or something. Or what if, for just one generation, they have only male offspring? That's almost a certainty, eventually. Lots of families have 3 or 4 sons, and no daughters, just by random chance. If that happens to the Loch Ness family just one time, ever, at any time in history, then they are extinct. The real rules of the game of life say that you have to have lots of individuals, at least thousands, and preferably millions or billions (like us), if you want your species to continue. The Loch Ness has been searched, very thoroughly searched, using fancy electronic equipment, and still, no monster. On the other hand, once some ichthyologists learned that coelacanths really did exist, by seeing just one dead, decomposing one, they posted a reward for some more, and within a dozen years, the fishermen brought them several. Seek ye and ye shall find, if it exists. People have been looking for Nessie for a long time, and still, no Nessie. If Nessie is really left over from the age of the dinosaurs, she would probably be a cold-blooded reptile. But the Loch Ness is a very cold lake, not a tropical swamp. Nessie would freeze up and be stiff as a board, unless she evolved anti-freeze blood. If Nessie is a warm-blooded animal, then she needs to eat and burn even more fish to keep her body warm. Now we are back to the food supply problem. If Nessie really lives in the North Sea, and just visits Loch Ness through the river that flows from the Loch to the North Sea, then it is unlikely that no one ever saw Nessie in the river. The river isn't big or deep, so it isn't a good hiding place for a large dinosaur. And the North Sea is notorious for being very cold, so now we are back to the body temperature problem. Animals die and leave corpses or bones. Nobody has ever found even one little bone from any Loch Ness monster. Really, it would be a lot easier to believe in the Tahiti Lagoon Monster, or a Guamanian Godzilla that hides at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, but nobody is talking about one of them. 5) The CIA did some of the orginal experiments with LSD, back in the 1950s and 1960s, and even gave those fun-loving crazies like Ken Kesey their first doses of LSD. The book Acid Dreams: the CIA, LSD, and the sixties rebellion, by Lee and Shlain describes a lot of that stuff. And guess where the CIA was giving civilians LSD without their knowledge: San Francisco. Gee, no wonder that city got a little funny in the sixties... :-) The book In the Sleep Room, by Anne Collins, tells how the CIA went to Canada and did the same things there in the 1950s and 1960s:       Behind the doors of the so-called sleep room on Ward 2 South, Dr. Ewen Cameron, the director of Montreal's Allan Memorial Institute, exposed dozens of his own patients to barbaric treatments from which some have never recovered. Operating under the belief that he could wipe brains clean of "bad" behaviour and program in new behavior, Cameron kept patients in a chemical sleep for weeks and months at a time, exposed them to massive amounts of electro-shock and drugs such as LSD, and forced them to listen to tape-recorded messages repeated endlessly through headphones.       Cameron was not alone in his desire to reprogram the human brain. The U.S. intelligence establishment found in him an eager collaborator, and funded his work substantially and covertly. In the Sleep Room, Anne Collins, 1988, 1997, back cover. The book won the Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction. 6) The Making Of A Moonie: Brainwashing Or Choice?, by Eileen Barker, pages 111-114. 7) Terminology from "Debating with Jehovah's Witnesses", by Timothy Campbell. http://members.aol.com/beyondjw/dwjw.htm 8) ibid. 9) ibid. 10) ibid. 11) The National Treatment Center Study conducted by the University of Georgia found that 93 percent of the more than 400 representative alcohol treatment programs surveyed were based on the twelve steps of A.A.. See: Alcohol Treatment: When Faith-based Options Aren't Enough, By: Fletcher, Anne M., Humanist, 00187399, Nov/Dec2001, Vol. 61, Issue 6. Also see: National Treatment Center Study Report by Paul Roman and Terry Blum, Institute for Behavioral Research, Athens, Georgia, 1997. 12) Baer, Robert, Sleeping With The Devil; How Washington Sold Our Soul For Saudi Crude, page 151. Robert Baer is an ex-CIA agent who is knowledgeable about the Middle East. He wrote: We buy oil from Saudi Arabia, refine it, and put it in our automobiles, and a certain small percentage of what we pay for it ends up funding terrorist acts against America and American institutions at home and abroad. With the money it earns from oil sales, the Saudi royal family purchases arms from us to protect itself from within and without, but mostly from within. We sell the Saudis those arms knowing that X amount of the purchase price will go to the astronomical "commissions" paid to the very few Saudis who control the arms industry, and of that X amount, a smaller Y amount will go to funding Saudi-based groups that intend to do harm to the West, because otherwise, those same groups might do harm back home in the sunny suburbs of, say, Riyadh. page 151.       In 1979, 127 Saudi troops and 117 Saudi insurgents died in a pitched two-week battle after Wahhabi fanatics seized the Grand Mosque at Mecca. The insurgents carried the same message that Wahhabi clergy are preaching today: The House of Sa'ud is defiling Islam. (As one Saudi diplomat said memorably in the wake of 9/11, "What shocks me most is why they hit America and not us.") King Khalid was on the throne when the Grand Mosque was seized. Not anxious to duplicate his experience, King Fahd gave $25 billion [Note: Billion, with a b] to expanding and modernizing the holy shrines at Mecca and Medina, and billions more to the new universities that are turning out Islamic scholars who have no jobs waiting other than agitating people against the West and their immediate benefactor.       The massive public-works projects at Mecca and Medina had an immediate financial beneficiary: the Bakr bin Laden family, which oversaw the construction and restoration and pocketed billions in payments and commissions, a portion — maybe a large one — of which undoubtedly found its way to cousin Osama, al Qaeda, and other violent fundamentalist groups. That's the way things work in Saudi Arabia today: It's an end game. The only question is when does the end come. page 166. 13) See the 14th page of photographs between pages 196 and 197 in the book The Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind. You get a photograph of Alan Greenspan accepting the Enron "award" from Ken Lay. 14) See McCarthy, The Man, The Senator, The "ISM" by Jack Anderson and Ronald W. May (1952), pages 174-175. On February 9, 1950, at Wheeling, West Virginia, Sen. Joe McCarthy waved a piece of paper in the air and claimed that it was a list of 205 Communists who worked in the State Department. The next day, in Denver, Colorado, the list was "205 bad security risks". The day after that, in Salt Lake City, the list had become "57 card-carrying Communists". Several days later, the number was 81. McCarthy never produced any of those lists, not even when he was pointedly asked to do so by the Senate subcommittees that were investigating McCarthy's charges. Eventually, after a period of national terror that hurt a lot of innocent people, Joe McCarthy was censured by the U.S. Senate for bad conduct. 15) Tom Driberg, The Mystery of Moral Re-Armament, pages 112-113. 16) The Chris Matthews Show, NBC, 6:30 AM Saturday Morning, May 8, 2004. George W. Bush went to Ohio and spoke before a friendly, invitation-only crowd. Obviously, that creates the appearance that Bush is popular and everybody likes him. 17) Jay Stevens, Storming Heaven, page 8. 18) Ernest Kurtz, Not God, page 28. 19) Jon Atack, Scientology: Religion or Intelligence Agency? The view from the lion's den, A paper by Jon Atack, delivered at the Dialog Centre International conference in Berlin, October 1995. 20) Cornel West, Democracy Matters, page 147. West gives us a good discussion of how much Emperor Constantin actually damaged and perverted Christianity when he made it the official state religion of Rome. 21) Arthur Strong, Preview of a New World, page 126. 22) Extreme Oil, Public Broadcasting System, 11 July 2005. 23) Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, 1989, page 1440. Bibliography: "The Big Book", really: Alcoholics Anonymous, Third Edition. (written by William G. Wilson, Henry Parkhurst, Joe Worth, and 40 or so others; published as 'anonymous.') Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. New York, NY. ISBN: 0-916856-00-3 Dewey: 362.29 A347 1976 Alcoholics Anonymous, Fourth Edition     published as "anonymous", but really written by William G. Wilson, Henry Parkhurst, Joe Worth, and many other people. Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. New York, NY, 2001. ISBN: 1-893007-16-2 Dewey: 362.29 A347 2001 "12X12" = Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, by 'anonymous' ; (The real authors were William G. Wilson and Tom Powers.) Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. New York, NY, 1952, 1953, 1984. ISBN: 0-916856-01-1 (larger older hard cover edition, 1984) LCCN: 53-5454 also: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. New York, NY, 2000. ISBN: 0-916856-06-2 (smaller hard cover edition, 2000) LCCN: 53-5454 Dewey: 362.2928 T969 1965 Not-God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous     Ernest Kurtz Hazelden Educational Foundation, Center City, MN, 1979. ISBN: 0-899-486065-8 or ISBN: 0-89486-065-8 (pbk.) LC: HV5278 LCCN: 79-88264 Dewey: 362.2/9286 or 362.29286 K87 1979 This is a very pro-A.A., toe-the-party-line history of Alcoholics Anonymous, but it is still a valuable resource for a wealth of historical facts and details. The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark     Carl Sagan Random House, New York, 1995. ISBN: 0-394-53512-X Dewey: 001.9 S129d This book is a beauty. Carl Sagan always was easy to read, highly informative, and clear, and this book lives up to his reputation. This book includes "the baloney detector", which is a list of deceitful propaganda techniques that gave me the idea for this web page. How To Lie With Statistics     Darrell Huff W. W. Norton & Company, New York and London, 1954, 1982. ISBN: 0-393-31072-8 Dewey: 519.5 H84 This is a beautiful little classic that explains a lot of the deceptions and propaganda stunts that you can pull with statistics, and some other methods, too, like "The Gee-Whiz Graph", "The One-Dimensional Picture", and "Post Hoc Rides Again". Recommended. Propaganda, the Formation of Men's Attitudes     Jacques Ellul Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1965. LCC 64-17708 Dewey: 301.1523 E47p Propaganda Comes Of Age     Michael Choukas Public Affairs Press, Washington, D.C., 1965. LCC 65-27072 Dewey: 301.1523 C45 Untruth, Why the Conventional Wisdom is (Almost Always) Wrong     Robert J. Samuelson Random House, Inc., New York, 2001. ISBN: 0-8129-9164-8 Dewey: 303.375 S193u 2001 http://www.atrandom.com Brave New World Revisited     Aldous Huxley Harper & Rowe, New York, 1958. Perennial Classics, HarperPerennial, HarperCollins Publishers, 2000. ISBN: 0-06-095551-1 Dewey: 824 H986br Channels of Propaganda     J. Michael Sproule EDINFO Press, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47407, 1994. ISBN: 0-927516-34-9 (cloth) ISBN: 0-927516-61-6 (paperback) Dewey: 303.375 S771c Plagues of the Mind, The New Epidemic of False Knowledge     Bruce S. Thornton ISI Books, Wilmington, Delaware, 1999 ISBN: 1-882926-34-X Dewey: 001.2 T513p 1999 Official Lies, How Washington Misleads Us     James T. Bennett & Thomas J. DiLorenzo Groom Books, Alexandria, VA, 1992. ISBN: 0-9632701-0-9 LCC 92-072083 Dewey: 351.00819 B471o Total Propaganda, From Mass Culture to Popular Culture     Alex Edelstein Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, Mahwah, New Jersey, London, 1997. ISBN: 0-8058-0891-4 (cloth); ISBN: 0-8058-0892-2 (paperback) Dewey: 302.23 E21t Brainwashing, From Pavlov to Powers,     Edward Hunter Originally published by Farrar, Straus, & Cudahy, Inc., 1956. Reprinted by The Bookmailer, Inc., 30 West Price Street, Linden, New Jersey, 1958, 1965. LCCN: 56-7817 and 60-53397 Dewey: 131.33 H91 This book is very good. It is a classic. And the book is fascinating and a good read. It really gives you the feeling of being there and going through the brainwashing to which the American, British, and other United Nations soldiers were subjected during the Korean War. It also clearly explains just how the brainwashing worked and how some men succumbed to it, and some successfully resisted it. It also turns out that this was the first book on Communist brainwashing published, and Hunter was actually the author who coined the term "brainwashing" — it's just a translation of the Chinese phrase Hsi Nao, which Mao Tse Tung (aka Mao Zhe Dhong) and gang used to denote the idea of washing away the vestiges of the old system (literally "cleansing the mind") in the process of being re-educated to assume one's place in the new Communist society. The Hidden Persuaders     Vance Packard David McKay Company, Inc., New York, 1957. Dewey: 659.1 P12 This book is an old classic. It was quite revolutionary in its day. It particularly exposed how the modern mass media, like TV, were using sophisticated psychological manipulation of the audience's minds to sell products. (Gasp! You mean they do that?) Age of Propaganda, The Everyday Use And Abuse of Persuasion     Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson, University of California at Santa Cruz. W. H. Freeman and Co., New York, 1992. ISBN: 0-7167-2210-0 (hardcover), ISBN: 0-7167-2211-9 (paperback) Dewey: 303.375 P912a This book is especially clear and readable. Recommended. The Bush Dyslexicon, Observations on a National Disorder     Mark Crispin Miller W.W. Norton and Company, New York and London, 2001. ISBN: 0-393-04183-2 Dewey: 973.931 M649b 2001 The Betrayal of America, How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President     Vincent Bugliosi Thunder Mouth Press / Nation Books, New York, 2001. ISBN: 1-56025-355-X Dewey: 342.075 B931b 2001 Supreme Injustice, How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000     Alan M. Dershowitz Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2001. ISBN: 0-19-514827-4 Dewey: 342.075 D438s 2001 Stupid White Men... and other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation     Michael Moore ReganBooks, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 2001. ISBN: 0-06-039245-2 Dewey 973.929 M823s 2001 Funny, true, a good read. Michael Moore's slant on everything from the Bush family coup to the Dumbing of America. The True Believer, Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements     Eric Hoffer Harper & Rowe, Publishers, New York and Evanston, 1951. Dewey: 301.1582 H69 This book is a blockbuster. Hoffer wrote it half a century ago, but it reads like a description of this afternoon's latest cult. This is one of those beautiful all-time classics that we see too seldom. Quotes: hatred as a unifying force effective cult doctrines In the Sleep Room     Anne Collins Key Porter Books Limited, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 1988, 1997. ISBN: 1-55013-937-0 LC: RC339.52.C34C64 LCCN: C97-932042-9 Dewey: 616.89'0092 or 616.89 C712i 1997 Quite a blockbuster. Documents immoral and illegal research into mind control and brainwashing financed by the CIA in Canada. See the description above. Acid Dreams: the CIA, LSD, and the sixties rebellion     Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain Grove Press, 1985. ISBN: 0394550137 ISBN: 039462081X (1st Evergreen ed.) LC: HV5822 .L9L44 1985 and Acid Dreams: the complete social history of LSD: the CIA, the sixties, and beyond     Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain Evergreen Press, 1992. ISBN: 0802130623 LC: HV5822 .L9L45 1992 This book is fascinating. It tells how the CIA was one of the first investigators of LSD. They hoped it would make a great truth serum, or at least a good incapacitating agent — something that would render enemy soldiers helpless, and give us "war without killing". They did a lot of experimenting with it, trying it on everybody from themselves to unaware civilians in San Francisco. They even gave Ken Kesey his first dose. So bone up on your history, kiddies. Before there was the Grateful Dead and the Merry Pranksters, there was the CIA. Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream     Jay Stevens The Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 1987. ISBN: 0-87113-076-9 LC: HV5822.L9S74 1987 LCCN: 87-1191 Dewey: 306.1 A large and complete history, from a fair and balanced viewpoint. A fascinating stroll down memory lane for some of us. The Making Of A Moonie: Brainwashing Or Choice?     Eileen Barker Basil Blackwell Publisher Ltd., Oxford, UK, 1984. ISBN: 0-631-13246-5 LC: BX9750.S4B37 1984 LCCN: 84-12414 Dewey: 289.9 B225m Quite good. Rather than just sensationalizing the Moonies, or grandly proclaiming that cults can brainwash people in a few days, like some extremist anti-cult people and professional "deprogrammers" do, the author really delves into how the recruiting and indoctrination mind games work, and how much the victim cooperates with the program (or doesn't cooperate). The author also reveals that the recruiters' success rate was actually only about 0.005% (page 147). Obviously, most people had no problems resisting the mind games. The author even gets into psychoanalyzing the members, revealing that many of them had mental problems before joining the Moonies, and suggesting that that was why they joined. This book is a breath of sanity in a field that needs more. Frank Buchman's Secret     Peter Howard Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1961. Dewey: 248 H85f More praise of Frank Buchman from Peter Howard. Peter Howard is the man who took over the leadership of Moral Re-Armament when Frank Buchman died. As you can imagine, he was a true believer and had nothing but praise for Buchman. This book is some of the most outrageous, grandiose, propaganda you will find — cult propaganda written by one of the cult leaders. Some pretty intense garbage. If you wish to look straight into the mouth of the Beast, this book will give you a good view. Some quotes: either/or propaganda technique unprovable statements Dynamic Out Of Silence: Frank Buchman's relevance today     Theophil Spoerri Grosvenor Books, London, 1976. Originally published as Dynamik aus der Stille, Caux Verlag, Luzern, Switzerland, 1971. ISBN: 0-901269-19-0 Pure propaganda. A falsified and sanitized history of Frank Buchman and his various "movements". "12-Step programs help maintain abstinence"     R. Fiorentine The Brown University Digest of Addiction Theory and Application, Sept 1999, v18 i9 p1. "Debating with Jehovah's Witnesses"     Timothy Campbell http://members.aol.com/beyondjw/dwjw.htm Oxford and the Groups     Rev. G. F. Allen, John Maud, Miss B. E. Gwyer, C. R. Morris, W. H. Auden, R. H. S. Crossman, Dr. L. P. Jacks, Rev. E. R. Micklem, Rev. J. W. C. Wand, Rev. M. C. D'Arcy, S.J., Prof. L. W. Grensted; Edited by R. H. S. Crossman Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1934. LC: BV4915.C7 This is a great little book; very informative. It consists of essays from both leaders of the Oxford Groups like Rev. G. F. Allen, and criticisms of the Groups from critics like R. H. S. Crossman. It gives you a first-hand look at the Groups from several viewpoints, a snap-shot in time of the thinking of contemporaries, before Buchman's public praise of Adolf Hitler. The Fine Art of Propaganda: a study of Father Coughlin's Speeches     The Institute for Propaganda Analysis; editted by Alfred McClung Lee and Elizabeth Briant Lee Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1939. LC: HM263.I54 A great little book that disects the hate-mongering speeches of Father Coughlin and exposes the propaganda techniques that he used. They reduce the list of the many possible logical fallacies and propaganda tricks to just this short list that was in Father Coughlin's toolbox: Name Calling — giving an idea or a person a bad name Glittering Generality — create over-generalized positive images and stereotypes Transfer (also known as Association) — gaining respectability or admiration by association with something else that is widely admired or respected Testimonial — people tell stories that praise the propagandist's favorite cause Plain Folks — it's just us regular plain good-old-boys; nothing to get upset about Card Stacking — also called Monopolistic Card Stacking — it's stacking the odds in your favor by carefully arranging the "facts" while excluding undesired facts Band Wagon — the same thing as "Everybody's doing it", or "Everybody knows", or "Everybody believes"... The Smartest Guys in the Room; The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron     Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind Portfolio, The Penguin Group, New York, 2003. ISBN: 1-59184-008-2 Dewey: 333.79 M163s 2003 LC: HD9502.U54E5763 2003 A great book, a fascinating story of brilliance, greed, ambition, arrogance, and dishonesty. Cold Turkey     A movie starring Dick Van Dyke and Bob Newhart A great comedy, a classic. The basic plotline is that a backwoods town is dying because the military base closed. Bob Newhart plays an evil tobacco executive who wants to become the 'Alfred Nobel' of smoking by offering an huge prize to any town that totally quits smoking for a month (which he doesn't believe any town will ever be able to do). Dick Van Dyke plays the preacher of the dying town, who decides that winning the prize is the only way to get the town back on its feet. The results are both very funny and very true. It's a great spoof on smoking and addiction. See ref here. McCarthy, The Man, The Senator, The "ISM"     Jack Anderson and Ronald W. May The Beacon Press, Boston, 1952. LCCN: 52-11115 Dewey: B M1225A A pretty good analysis of Senator Joe McCarthy and his methods. Because this book was published in 1952, it does not tell the end of the story — the Army-McCarthy hearings and the Senate's censure of McCarthy. Democracy Matters; Winning the Fight Against Imperialism     Cornel West The Penguin Press, New York, 2004. ISBN: 1-59420-029-7 LC: JC423.W384 2004 Dewey: 321.8 W516d 2004 A great book. Gives about the clearest analysis that I've seen of the current predicament and threats to the survival of our democracy. Also offers a higher, clearer, moral vision of the future than I see anybody else offering. Sleeping With The Devil; How Washington Sold Our Soul For Saudi Crude     Robert Baer Crown Publishers, New York, 2003. ISBN: 1-4000-5021-9 Dewey: 327.538 B141s 2003 Robert Baer is a former CIA agent who has a lot of expertise about the Middle East. He has written a very disturbing and revealing book here, which basically says that the days of the House of Sa'ud are numbered, and when it goes, so does our dependable oil supply.       Baer says that the Saudi royal family is paying off the terrorists and extreme Islamic fundamentalists to keep them from attacking the royal family, but that is an "end game" — only a matter of buying time while the terrorist organizations grow richer and more powerful, and the non-royal population of the country becomes poorer and increasingly dissatisfied with the extravagant profligate behavior of the thousands of high-living Saudi princes. Baer says that there are 30,000 royals in Saudi Arabia, and they have a population explosion problem: each prince has a dozen or two wives, and many have 50 to 70 children, and all of the royal children expect and demand a life of opulent luxury while the common people can't even get a job. At that birth rate, in another generation, there could be many hundreds of thousands of royals for the oil dole to support — and the money has actually already run out.       The hey-day when Saudi Arabia had more money than sand is gone. Now they are borrowing money to keep the circus going. Sooner or later, the situation will become unstable and blow up. And Baer shows us many reasons why the time will probably be sooner than later.       And yes, the money that financed the 9/11 attacks on the USA came from Saudi Arabia. And the Washington politicians know it, or should know it, but they are too busy taking big campaign contributions and other huge payoffs from the Saudis to make a fuss about the situation in Saudi Arabia — "sleeping with the devil". But the times they are a'changin'. See quotes above. Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, Anonymous     (His real name is Mike Shoyer — he later broke his anonymity.) Brassey's Inc., Washington, D.C., 2004. ISBN: 1-57488-849-8 LC: HV6432.I47 2004 Dewey: 973.931 I3445 2004 or 973.931—dc22 A fascinating and disturbing book. The author, a CIA agent who prefered to remain anonymous, makes a very good case for the USA being in big trouble because of arrogance, ignorance, and stupidity in the highest offices. He says that we do not clearly see our enemies because we insist on stereotyping them and seeing them through Western eyes, rather than on their own terms. What we call suicide bombers they call heroes who are going straight to Heaven. The author says that our conduct of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is so incompetent and unrealistic that defeat is inevitable — that in Afghanistan, it has already happened. Monumental hubris and insane arrogance led American leaders to think that they could easily defeat, with just a few troops, a little precision bombing, and a short war, the very Afghani freedom fighters who had just defeated the Soviet Army. The Soviets had already learned the hard way that it isn't that easy, but the arrogant Washington neo-Cons didn't listen, look, or learn. This is a good book for those who are interested in current politics and the "war on terrorism". Quote: here. Also see the larger bibliography from the Cult Test. Search the Orange Papers Click Fruit for Menu Last updated 25 April 2012. The most recent version of this file can be found at http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-propaganda.html