Naming nonsense

Name calling appears to be the chief weapon of debate at the moment. I think it is important to flush out situations, to try and understand what is happening in our world, and why.

This process often occurs in an absence of clear fact and with a plethora of disinformation or red herrings.

Along the way positions are taken, but I would like to think most of us are intellectually flexible enough to respond to new information or interpretations.

Those red herrings include the mechanism ‘name calling’. We’ve dealt with it here and elsewhere before, it is a corrupt and distracting form, of debate; cheap shots in lieu of substantial input.

Name calling is crippling our ability to debate freely and effectively; not just on blogs but government and media are also driving this nonsense.

The Sydney Morning Herald have been running regular story updates over the past few days which seems a good example of this nonsense.

“An Israeli national accused of murdering an Israeli man in Bondi on Saturday night…”

Five men jumped out of a car, beat the living crap out of another man then stabbed him to death. Not a pleasant scene, but hardy headline news in our violent cities. But hey! The two main protagonists happen to be Israeli nationals.

In a great stretch of imagination, the first headline I saw read “Israeli murder might not be linked to Lebanon’. I paraphrase, there have been many since.

Note the newspaper very carefully avoided calling the men Jews, as that would open them to charges of being anti-Semitic. But so far there is no valid reason, in the cultural melting pot of Sydney, to distinguish nationality. There is no proof that nationality played any role at all in the events.

Now, after umpteen rewrites the story still hasn’t advance far beyond the initial reports. It is a beat up and the sort of story which feeds wrong thinking and this name calling nonsense.

It is so easy to pick on one facet of an argument, relevant and vital in context, and turn that into abuse attack based not on assumption which is bad enough, but on pure distortion.

Analysis, perforce, requires canvassing issues which can, and are, easily be twisted to make a cheap point. When I lapse in my critical analysis I expect and accept that fact to be pointed out, after all the blog community is potentially the greatest collaborative thinking tool I’ve ever known.

One of the most significant values is to pull apart the distortions of politicians and media so that we might get a little closer to seeing the real issues. In that regard there can be no value at all in following their flawed lead for the sake of a cheap shot.

I don’t care what nationality violent street gangs are, it doesn’t make their stupidity or destruction any better or worse. The same goes for those who would destroy whole countries with their violence.