We’ve come to the end of the analysis of the toxic email from the conservative bloodstream. We’ve seen how these pictures that made up the email have generally worked together to reinforce divisions in American society, often by stripping away context that puts the claims in a more understandable context.
I’ve also dropped a pic or two that seemed to be nothing more than binder. Not every picture is toxic, and, if they were, even the most obtuse reader might find the result overly rich and become suspicious.
Here’s the last pic:
The problem here is false equivalence. Are the assumptions and foundations of these two subjects equivalent?
Given current society, we need to be able to drive to get groceries, go to work, or wallow at the beach.
Guns? Not so much.
Or, better yet … are cars built to kill people? No, of course not, despite the outcry of my friends dedicated to bicycling.
Are guns? Despite the bewailings of target shooters, the bald truth is yes. Guns, in their most primitive form, replaced arrows as weapons of war; their efficiency evolution is driven by their role as weapons of war, even to this day.
This false logic is an example of the difficulties of focusing on the argument as presented, and forgetting that foundations and assumptions are at least as important as is the presented argument. Taken on its face, this presented argument permits the receptive reader to gain that emotional reaction of having superior intellect to their hated fellow Americans; because it is deceptive, because it actively conceals the important assumptions, because it depends on an emotional reaction to conceals its inferior foundation, this sort of argument is emblematic of this entire email: not an honest argument, but instead just deception, designed to increase the size of the abysses that separate us. And that’s what makes this picture, and the entire email, despicable and dishonorable.
Thanks, folks, for reading.
