When it comes to political arguments, getting together and shouting slogans is a time-honored tradition. I’m a political independent whose seen the responses to both sides, and to my view, the message matters. If you don’t get it right, the political independents, as well as the opposing side of the argument, begin to discount you. I know that my evaluation process includes the knowledge that both sides start with a disdain, even loathing, for the other side, and while they may have good intellectual arguments behind those walls of muck they’re hiding behind, it takes some digging and – almost literally – nose holding to get there.
Source: Labor 411
So here’s a particularly execrable example of this from the liberal side. It commits a particular type of logic error, the name of which escapes me, of “if a then b; b, therefore a“. The situation, in fact, is quite complex. There is resource scarcity, skilled labor scarcity, demand, competition, and other factors which will influence prices up or down. And everyone knows this.
I mean, this poster is really quite an appalling specimen that is almost designed to bring down an avalanche of disrespect for all the wrong reasons.
The counter-argument might be that this poster isn’t meant to convince the other side, but rather to rally the liberal side against corporate greed. This is my Arts Editor’s position, in fact. The problem is that if the argument is this bad, then your own side becomes dispirited. Leaders of both the actual and would-be varieties are permitted errors, but not obvious errors that make the other side laugh and sneer.
And that’s really the problem, isn’t it? The first step to convincing the other side to take you seriously is to present arguments that are convincing and, if you’re lucky, are borne out by reality. This isn’t one of those arguments. It’s damaging to the liberal’s side. And that’s a shame, because the liberal side has a lot of good arguments to present. There’s no need to adopt bad ones like this.
