"The May 16 news article “Months later, bitter anger over the Capitol riot lingers in the House” said that Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) “have nothing but ill will between them.” This false equivalency on the part of The Post has got to stop. It’s unacceptable."Greene is the one who is harassing and attacking Ocasio-Cortez. Greene is the source of the ill will."
A false equivalency is a common rhetorical fallacy and one that writers need to pay attention to. In a lot of informal debate, there is a tendency to simply brand all sides of an issue as contemptible and equally suspect. For instance, it's peculiarly American to simply brand all politicians and other government officials as selfish and even evil.
"A plague on both your houses," as Mercutio would say.
False equivalence has to be measured by degree or "order of magnitude," which is why we need carefully researched arguments to sort through the fallacies.
It is possible that the two representatives the letter writer mentions don't like each other and that each has attacked the other. But the question of degree remains.
Effective arguments explore the differences rather than simply lumping everything into one category.
Even Mercutio, anguished by his imminent death when he was accidentally stabbed by Tybalt when Romeo tried to break up the silly duel, would likely criticize his friend Romeo less than Tybalt. Neither were his kin but he clearly hung out with Romeo's group. Mostly, he is angry that he is dying.
The letter writer in today's Post is making a claim that needs much more support, don't you think? Letters in a publication tend to be very short... too short to fully develop an argument.
In fact, just browsing through any online letters in any mass medium will demonstrate the lack of support in claims, and that means the letters are basically just provocative starting points. We can and should be much better in our own arguments.
No comments:
Post a Comment