Originally Posted by shakran

Let's step back a second and look at Moosenose's arguments, because they are a classic example of how the Republicans are whipping the hell out of the Democrats.

He says (paraphrasing all of these) "Other countries don't have the right to interfere with our domestic policy"

So we say "But we're interfereing with the domestic policy of all these countries"

And then he says "You can't have it both ways. Either we can be the world police or we can't."


Now if you look at that example Moosenose is neatly shifting the topic of the argument while appearing to keep arguing the same thing. At first the argument was about whether or not OTHER countries have the right to be annoyed with the US for crapping out the environment. He didn't think so which is fine.

But when we pointed out that we seem to think we have the right to tell those other countries how to run THEIR governments, he rebutted with something that had nothing whatsoever to do with the original topic. Complete shift in argument.


Now you might be asking why this is important, and it's here that I want to make it clear I'm not singling out Moosenose. See, this is a tactic used by just about every member of Bush's cabinet during press conferences, and it's one widely used by republicans in general, and frankly it's a brilliant one. You can continue to make it sound like you're arguing one point when in fact you're arguing something completely different. This makes it easy to dupe the public into thinking you think one way when in fact you think the opposite. If you came right out and said it (in this example, "I don't think anyone can tell us what to do, but we can certainly tell everyone else what to do because we're big and strong") people would object. But if you couch it in the right terms, people won't get it, and they'll support you.

It's this kind of debate that is why the Republican political machine is so successful: They're willing to do and say anything necessary to get elected, whether it's deceitful or not.

And it's this kind of debate that the public, and especially the democrats, need to be aware of if they want to have a prayer of ending the current dangerous political situaiton.