Welcome to European Tribune. It's gone a bit quiet around here these days, but it's still going.
Display:
So is any blatantly false paradox a more catchy narrative than the <yawn> truth?
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Thu Sep 23rd, 2010 at 03:22:32 PM EST
[ Parent ]
It's not blatantly false - it's clever use of pseudo-logic to subvert an obvious take-away point, and to turn a real success into an apparent failure.

It's standard practice from the US right to take strengths and turn them into apparent weaknesses.

It would be foolish and naive not to assume that the same thing can't happen in the European media.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Thu Sep 23rd, 2010 at 03:40:00 PM EST
[ Parent ]
No argument from me on turning strengths into weaknesses, and no illusions on my part about the European media. But it is blatantly false because wind is in itself a renewable - as you said, it "makes absolutely no sense as a rational argument".

The question then being why it really matters that a bunch of dickheads prefer this nonsense to less nonsense.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Thu Sep 23rd, 2010 at 04:03:10 PM EST
[ Parent ]
They prefer because it's persuasive.

Facts != persuasion. Persuasion can be slimy, misleading, indirect, and criminally dishonest. In the hands of the Right it often is.

That doesn't stop it being an effective influence on opinion, and ultimately on policy.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Thu Sep 23rd, 2010 at 04:13:27 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Display:

Occasional Series