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8/19/2017 9:25 am  #1


"Whataboutism".

Whataboutism,
The practice of short-circuiting an argument by asserting moral equivalency between two things that aren’t necessarily comparable.



Whataboutism: The Cold War tactic, thawed by Putin, is brandished by Donald Trump

By Dan Zak August 18 at 7:00 AM 

What about antifa? What about free speech? What about the guy who shot Steve Scalise? What about the mosque in Minnesota that got bombed? What about North Korea? What about murders in Chicago? What about Ivanka at the G-20? What about Vince Foster? If white pride is bad, then what about gay pride? What about the stock market? What about those 33,000 deleted emails? What about Hitler? What about the Crusades? What about the asteroid that may one day kill us all? What about Benghazi?

What about what about what about.

We’ve gotten very good at what-abouting.

The president has led the way.

His campaign may or may not have conspired with Moscow, but President Trump has routinely employed a durable old Soviet propaganda tactic. Tuesday’s bonkers news conference in New York was Trump’s latest act of “whataboutism,” the practice of short-circuiting an argument by asserting moral equivalency between two things that aren’t necessarily comparable. In this case, the president wondered whether the removal of a statue of Confederate leader Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville — where white supremacists clashed this weekend with counterprotesters — would lead to the teardown of others.


Robert E. Lee? What about George Washington?

“George Washington was a slave owner,” Trump said to journalists in the lobby of his corporate headquarters. “Are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson?”

Using the literal “what about” construction, Trump then went on to blame “both sides” for the violence in Charlottesville.


“What about the ‘alt-left’ that came charging at the, as you say, the ‘alt-right’?” the president said. “Do they have any semblance of guilt?”

For a nanosecond, especially to an uncritical listener, this stab at logic might seem interesting, even thought-provoking, and that’s why it’s a useful political tool. Whataboutism appears to broaden context, to offer a counterpoint, when really it’s diverting blame, muddying the waters and confusing the hell out of rational listeners.

“Not only does it help to deflect your original argument but it also throws you off balance,” says Alexey Kovalev, an independent Russian journalist, on the phone from Moscow. “You’re expecting to be in a civilized argument that doesn’t use cheap tricks like that. You are playing chess and your opponent — while making a lousy move — he just punches you on the nose.”

Vladi­mir Putin has made a national sport of what-abouting. In 2014, when a journalist challenged him on his annexation of Crimea, Putin brought up the U.S. annexation of Texas. The American invasion of Iraq is constantly what-abouted on state television, to excuse all kinds of Russian behavior.


In Edward Snowden, “Russia has found the ultimate whataboutism mascot,” the Atlantic’s Olga Khazan wrote in 2013. “By granting him asylum, Russia casts itself, even if momentarily, as a defender of human rights, and the U.S. as the oppressor.”

The term was first coined as “whataboutery” and “the whatabouts,” in stories about the Irish Republican Army in the 1970s, according to linguist Ben Zimmer. But the practice goes back to the chilly depths of the Cold War.

“An old joke 50 years ago was that if you went to a Stalinist and criticized the Soviet slave-labor camps, the Stalinist would say, ‘Well what about the lynchings in the American South?’” philosopher Noam Chomsky once said.

In 1970, as the Soviet Union made headlines for imprisoning dissidents, Ukrainian artist Viktor Koretsky created a propaganda lithograph titled “American Politics at home and abroad.” It depicted U.S. police beating a black man and a U.S. soldier standing over a dead body, presumably in Vietnam.

In May 1985 the U.S. State Department funded a conference at the Madison Hotel on the fallacy of “moral equivalence,” a philosophical cousin of whataboutism. The goal was to tamp down comparisons of the 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada with the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, among other instances. The actions may be comparable, the State Department implied, but the intentions were not.


“If it is no longer possible to distinguish between freedom and despotism,” said Jeane Kirkpatrick, Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to the United Nations, then “the erosion of the foundation of a distinctively Western, democratic civilization is already far advanced and the situation serious indeed.”


Flash forward 30 years. President Trump’s Twitter feed has been a whataboutism showcase, with Hillary Clinton as the usual target.

April 3: “Did Hillary Clinton ever apologize for receiving the answers to the debate? Just asking!”

June 26: “The real story is that President Obama did NOTHING after being informed in August about Russian meddling.”

July 22: “. . . What about all of the Clinton ties to Russia . . .”

Googling of “Whataboutism” began to climb sharply in November of last year; this week, with Charlottesville, it reached an all-time high. “You look at both sides,” Trump said Tuesday, after saying “what about” three times. “I think there is blame on both sides . . . and nobody wants to say that.”

Some people saw this as brave truth-telling, and as exposing double standards in the media.

“Trump-haters on both sides of the aisle simply cry ‘whataboutism,’ as if it were a magic spell to ward off rational thought,” wrote Joel B. Pollak on the right-wing site Breitbart.com, in an article headlined “The attack on ‘whataboutism’ is a defense of hypocrisy.”

Trump’s most flagrant what-about, though, was used not in defense of himself, but in defense of Russia.

“Putin’s a killer,” Bill O’Reilly said to Trump in a February interview.

“There are a lot of killers,” Trump whatabouted. “We’ve got a lot of killers. What do you think — our country’s so innocent?”

“That’s exactly the kind of argument that Russian propagandists have used for years to justify some of Putin’s most brutal policies,” wrote Michael McFaul, former ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration.

“Moral relativism — ‘whataboutism’ — has always been a favorite weapon of illiberal regimes,” Russian chessmaster and activist Garry Kasparov told the Columbia Journalism Review in March. “For a U.S. president to employ it against his own country is tragic.”

Last edited by Goose (8/19/2017 9:31 am)


We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists. 
 

8/19/2017 9:53 am  #2


Re: "Whataboutism".

Likely we have all done it at some point, BUT all it does is deflect from the question at hand and allows the person an easy out from answering the question or discussing it further. 


"Do not confuse motion and progress, A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress"
 
 

8/19/2017 3:44 pm  #3


Re: "Whataboutism".

If you have no factually valid debate points, you resort to deflection and distraction.

Trump's administration has become the definition of undisciplined chaos.

His ineptitude at being able to perform the job of president of the United States is quickly becoming evident. The longer he remains in Washington, D.C., the more problems our country will face.

Even more members of his own party are becoming increasingly aware of his inability to lead this country.


GOP doubts and anxieties about Trump burst into the open


WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump's racially fraught comments about a deadly neo-Nazi rally have thrust into the open some Republicans' deeply held doubts about his competency and temperament, in an extraordinary public airing of worries and grievances about a sitting president by his own party.

Behind the high-profile denunciations voiced this week by GOP senators once considered Trump allies, scores of other, influential Republicans began to express grave concerns about the state of the Trump presidency. In two dozen interviews with Associated Press reporters across nine states, Republican politicians, party officials, advisers and donors expressed worries about whether Trump has the self-discipline and capability to govern successfully.

Eric Cantor, the former House minority leader from Virginia, said Republicans signaled this week that Trump's handling of the Charlottesville protests was "beyond just a distraction."

"It was a turning point in terms of Republicans being able to say, we're not even going to get close to that," Cantor said.

Chip Lake, a Georgia-based GOP operative who did not vote for Trump in the general election, raised the prospect of the president leaving office before his term is up.

"It's impossible to see a scenario under which this is sustainable under a four-year period," Lake said.

Trump's handling of the protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, has shaken his presidency unlike any of the other self-created crises that have rattled the White House during his seven months in office. Business leaders have bolted from White House councils, wary of being associated with the president. Military leaders distanced themselves from Trump's assertion that "both sides" — the white supremacists and the counter-protesters — were to blame for the violence that left one protester dead. And some members of Trump's own staff were outraged by his combative assertion that there were "very fine people" among those marching with the white supremacists, neo-Nazis and KKK members.

Importantly, the Republicans interviewed did not line up behind some course of action or an organized break with the president. Some expressed hope the recent shakeup of White House advisers might help Trump get back in control of his message and the GOP agenda.

Still, the blistering and blunt statements from some Republicans have marked a new phase. Until now, the party has largely kept its most troubling doubts about Trump to whispered, private conversations, fearful of alienating the president's loyal supporters and upending long-sought GOP policy goals.

Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and a foreign policy ally of the Trump White House, delivered the sharpest criticism of Trump, declaring that the president "has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to" in dealing with crises.

Corker's comments were echoed in the interviews with two dozen Republican officials after Trump expressed his views in Tuesday's press conference. More than half spoke on the record, while the others insisted on anonymity in order to speak candidly about the man who leads their party and remains popular with the majority of GOP voters.

A handful defended Trump without reservation. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, an early supporter of the president, said he "proudly" stands with Trump and said he was succeeding despite a "constant barrage of negative attacks from the left."

But others said recent events had shifted the dynamic between the president and his party.

"I was never one that was convinced that the president had the character to lead this nation, but I was certainly willing to stand by the president on critical issues once he was elected," said Clarence Mingo, a Republican state treasurer candidate in Ohio. "Now, even where good conservative policies are concerned, that progress is all negated because of his inability to say and do the right things on fundamental issues."

In Kentucky, Republican state senator Whitney Westerfield called Trump's comments after the Charlottesville protests "more than a gaffe."

"I'm concerned he seems to firmly believe in what he's saying about it," Westerfield said.

Trump has survived criticism from establishment Republicans before, most notably when GOP lawmakers across the country distanced themselves from him in the final weeks of the campaign following the release of a video in which the former reality television star is heard making predatory sexual comments about women. Many of those same lawmakers ultimately voted for Trump and rallied around his presidency after his stunning victory.

GOP efforts to align with Trump have largely been driven by political realities. The president still commands loyalty among his core supporters, though some recent polls have suggested a slight weakening there. And while his style is often controversial, many of his statements are often in line with those voters' beliefs, including his support after Charlottesville for protecting Confederate monuments.

Brian Westrate, a small business owner in western Wisconsin who is also chairman of the 3rd Congressional District Republican Party, said Trump supporters long ago decided to embrace the unconventional nature of his presidency.

"I don't think that anything has fundamentally changed between now and when the election was," he said. "The president remains an ill-artful, ill-timed speaker who uses Twitter too often. That's not new. ... The president is still the same guy and the left is still the same left."

Some White House officials do privately worry about slippage in Trump's support from congressional Republicans, particularly in the Senate. GOP senators couldn't cobble together the 50 votes needed to pass a health care overhaul and that same math could continue to be a problem in the fall, as Republicans work on reforming the tax code, which is realistically the party's last opportunity to pass major legislation in 2017.

Tom Davis, a Republican state senator representing a coastal South Carolina district, said that when Trump can move beyond the crisis of the moment, he articulates policies that could help the country's economic situation. But Davis said Trump is also part of the reason not much progress has been made.

"To his discredit, he's been maddeningly inconsistent in advancing those policies, which is part of the reason so little has been accomplished in our nation's capital these past six months," Davis said.

Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican strategist who most recently tried to help Jeb Bush win the 2016 GOP presidential primary, said the early optimism some Republicans felt about their ability to leverage Trump's presidency has all but evaporated in the days following the Charlottesville protests.

"Most party regulars have gone from an initial feeling of guarded optimism that Trump would be able to stumble along while Mitch (McConnell) and (Paul) Ryan do the big lifting and pass our Republican agenda to a current feeling of deep frustration and despair," Murphy said.

Last edited by Rongone (8/19/2017 3:52 pm)

 

8/20/2017 10:33 am  #4


Re: "Whataboutism".

I also question Trump's competency and temperament.
The nation simply cannot go on lurching from one melodrama to another for the next four years.
The man has to get a grip ,or for the good of the country, resign.


We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists. 
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