Erg. I need to use this account for setting up blogs for Nazi Cinema, so I'm going underground for the semester.
Doh!
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
How (not) to make a good argument
As the furor about health care continues, I continue to realize that there are good, and there are bad ways to make a point. Now, I know that this is a sensitive issue, as many think that a single-payer system would be the State getting involved with our private lives. While I respect that concern, comparing the Obama plan to something like, say, T4, just isn't a thought-through argument. Of course, we all know that, should you want to win an argument, you simply need to play the Nazi card.
As a scholar who has done some work on the Holocaust, can I just tell you how often the Nazi card is played incorrectly? If someone were trying to make a point about how the Pharisees were very legalistic, s/he might be inclined to compare them to Nazis. The stereotype is that Nazis (like all Germans) are anal and love to follow the rules.
Negative, striker. Not only did Nazis make up their own laws, many of them contradictory, but they often flouted the law because they were in power.
In the case of health care, the desire to connect Hitler with the perception of a totalitarian state is a strong one, one which needs to be avoided. Germany has far more restrictions on their health care. Its system is something like what the more liberal democrats would like to see in this country--one which ensures equal opportunity to all its citizens, unborn or 100 year old. And if anyone wanted to avoid a totalitarian state, well, I'll give you three guesses who that might be.....
The problem with the Hitler card is that it is both difficult to argue with and that it is a shocker which instills fear in people--of course we want to avoid Hitler. Even if the argument is poorly constructed, the mere presence of Hitler in the argument results in a knee-jerk reaction.
Now, while I could go into explaining why the current heath care bill is not in any way comparable to T4, I hope that folks would have enough sense of mind to stop and ask just what they are being told, rather than buying into the fear mongering. I will, however, give you an example of how the logic gets fuzzy really quickly.
I watched this video all the way through, and was startled to find the link between T4 and Obama. Should you have 20 minutes, go ahead and watch it. Take note of every place that an argument is not being made, but that your conclusion is being lead through your sight or by a reaction. I noticed a few big ones that bothered me, namely the use of concentration camp footage of Jews, Communists, Roma and Sinti when those with mental retardation were being discussed as candidates for euthanasia. We have been so conditioned by footage of the camps that we connect anything grouped with them as inherently evil. While the camps certainly were evil, the leap the video asks you to make avoids having to fully explain the situation to you, the viewer. As a result, they are able to make connections between the heath care boards under T4 and the gas chambers of the death camps no longer has to be made--they've conveniently grouped it all under the same euthanasia program, when in fact T4 (1939-1941) developed independently of (and ended before) the Final Solution first proposed at the Wannsee Conference in 1942. While both are crimes against humanity, they are not the same thing.
Also, many of the murders of the Jews took place not in the camps, but through Einsatzgruppen--something which the film skips over completely.
So what is the link between T4 and Obama?
The fact that the Obama health care plan has a panel of five doctors who decide whether a life is worth living. Now, I've not had a chance to look at what this is referring to, as the film does not cite specific sections of the bill. This, my friends, is problematic. You have to take them at their word. There is no mention of the role of family, of directives (which Obama has gone on record about), or exactly who would be a candidate for this panel. As a result, the viewer cannot decide for him or herself that euthanasia is indeed on the table. The simple coincidence of the number on the panel (here an odd number, ensuring that decisions can be made without a stale-mate) makes the argument for them. They say that Obama uses the Nazi lines on heath care "exactly", but there is not a single quote. Any academic would throw such a paper right out for not substantiating its argument.
The final thing that bothers me about the video is aesthetic--an American with a fake German accent sounds unnecessarily harsh, and the Americans speaking the German words butcher them so badly that I barely understand them; they simply make the words grate the ears. Anything that sounds that bad has to be evil. Just listen to the female reader say "Kraft durch Freude". I'd fail her for pronunciation in German 101.
Should anyone come up with a better argument against the health care bill, I'm happy to hear it. But until you learn how to make an argument properly, please stop learning from past propaganda techniques.
As a scholar who has done some work on the Holocaust, can I just tell you how often the Nazi card is played incorrectly? If someone were trying to make a point about how the Pharisees were very legalistic, s/he might be inclined to compare them to Nazis. The stereotype is that Nazis (like all Germans) are anal and love to follow the rules.
Negative, striker. Not only did Nazis make up their own laws, many of them contradictory, but they often flouted the law because they were in power.
In the case of health care, the desire to connect Hitler with the perception of a totalitarian state is a strong one, one which needs to be avoided. Germany has far more restrictions on their health care. Its system is something like what the more liberal democrats would like to see in this country--one which ensures equal opportunity to all its citizens, unborn or 100 year old. And if anyone wanted to avoid a totalitarian state, well, I'll give you three guesses who that might be.....
The problem with the Hitler card is that it is both difficult to argue with and that it is a shocker which instills fear in people--of course we want to avoid Hitler. Even if the argument is poorly constructed, the mere presence of Hitler in the argument results in a knee-jerk reaction.
Now, while I could go into explaining why the current heath care bill is not in any way comparable to T4, I hope that folks would have enough sense of mind to stop and ask just what they are being told, rather than buying into the fear mongering. I will, however, give you an example of how the logic gets fuzzy really quickly.
I watched this video all the way through, and was startled to find the link between T4 and Obama. Should you have 20 minutes, go ahead and watch it. Take note of every place that an argument is not being made, but that your conclusion is being lead through your sight or by a reaction. I noticed a few big ones that bothered me, namely the use of concentration camp footage of Jews, Communists, Roma and Sinti when those with mental retardation were being discussed as candidates for euthanasia. We have been so conditioned by footage of the camps that we connect anything grouped with them as inherently evil. While the camps certainly were evil, the leap the video asks you to make avoids having to fully explain the situation to you, the viewer. As a result, they are able to make connections between the heath care boards under T4 and the gas chambers of the death camps no longer has to be made--they've conveniently grouped it all under the same euthanasia program, when in fact T4 (1939-1941) developed independently of (and ended before) the Final Solution first proposed at the Wannsee Conference in 1942. While both are crimes against humanity, they are not the same thing.
Also, many of the murders of the Jews took place not in the camps, but through Einsatzgruppen--something which the film skips over completely.
So what is the link between T4 and Obama?
The fact that the Obama health care plan has a panel of five doctors who decide whether a life is worth living. Now, I've not had a chance to look at what this is referring to, as the film does not cite specific sections of the bill. This, my friends, is problematic. You have to take them at their word. There is no mention of the role of family, of directives (which Obama has gone on record about), or exactly who would be a candidate for this panel. As a result, the viewer cannot decide for him or herself that euthanasia is indeed on the table. The simple coincidence of the number on the panel (here an odd number, ensuring that decisions can be made without a stale-mate) makes the argument for them. They say that Obama uses the Nazi lines on heath care "exactly", but there is not a single quote. Any academic would throw such a paper right out for not substantiating its argument.
The final thing that bothers me about the video is aesthetic--an American with a fake German accent sounds unnecessarily harsh, and the Americans speaking the German words butcher them so badly that I barely understand them; they simply make the words grate the ears. Anything that sounds that bad has to be evil. Just listen to the female reader say "Kraft durch Freude". I'd fail her for pronunciation in German 101.
Should anyone come up with a better argument against the health care bill, I'm happy to hear it. But until you learn how to make an argument properly, please stop learning from past propaganda techniques.
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