Don't Hate Him Because He's Beautiful

If you're going to attack president Obama, fine. Just attack him on what he is and is not doing, please. Don't just make shit up and blame it on him. I heard from someone again today blaming the current deficit mess on the President. HE DIDN'T MAKE THE MESS, HE SIMPLY INHERITED IT, OKAY?

After the eight years of the Bush administration, I'm the last one to tell people that they have no right to criticize the president. I am not as happy with President Obama as I had hoped to be. And I am freely criticizing the president for those things that I don't like. But if you find yourself resorting to death panels, or the deficit, or his being born in Kenya or calling him a socialist, then recognize that your argument is weak, and it won't stand.

Let me give you a for instance.

I spent the years from 2000 until... well, it'll probably never stop frankly, criticizing the “presidency” of George W. Bush. When someone resorted to an ad hominem attack on him (he's stupid, he's a puppet, whatever) I would defend him against that, because those are not only in my opinion wrong, but they are also weak arguments. So what DO I criticize him on?

1)Irregularities in the 2000 presidential election. I'm not going to go over them again here (I hear you sigh with relief) but they are there and they are numerous. And instead of doing the honorable thing and insisting that all of these irregularities be ironed out before took office, he sued to stop people from examining the irregularities.
2)Wasting our time, our money and the lives of our young men and women in a war that did nothing to protect America. For my money, this is his biggest crime.
3)Using imagery from the 9/11 attacks in his re-election campaign in 2004. Despite his promise to capture and punish the people who committed the crime, he discovered that these men were more important to him as boogeymen. 9/11 wasn't a victory for George W. Bush, and his using the images from the attack to play on people's emotions for re-election was reprehensible to me.
4)Suspending the rights of people arrested during this time. And this is something that Obama administration is not overturning fast enough to suit me. When people would “defend” him by reminding us that Lincoln suspended habeus corpus during the civil war, I remind THEM that the Constitution actually ALLOWS the president to suspend this right in two instances: insurrection and invasion. Mr. Bush faced neither of these. President Lincoln faced insurrection.

See how that works?

Yes, it takes time and brainpower to figure these things out. Yes, it would just be easier to say that GWB was an idiotic puppet who was elected because of his name instead of any of his qualities, but it wouldn't be intellectually honest.

Even, honest to God, if the reason that you oppose president Obama is his race... just own that. Have the sheer, unadulterated balls to say that you don't like him because he's black. Personally, I think that's shallow and fatuous, but at least it's intellectually honest.

Let's start by explaining the problems with these arguments when it comes to logical argument. There are several logical flaws that render an argument invalid, and the republicans seem determined to use every one of them.

STRAW MAN: This is where, when you can't argue based on the facts, you build another argument that has nothing to DO with the facts and demolish it. So, for instance, “Obama shouldn't even be president because he was born in Kenya.” As long as we can pay attention that that scarecrow, to that straw man, then the real facts of what he's doing in office can just go to the side.

ARGUMENT FROM AUTHORITY: Someone who should know told me, so it must be true. For instance, “I don't know what's in the Obama health care bill, but John Boehner says it's a bad bill, and he should know, so I'm against it.”

I can't remember the other logical flaws right now. I'll add them later with examples if I remember.

One last note. For the record. I know that modern republicans won't let what they “know” be swayed by little things like facts or information. But... for the record. According to the US Department of the treasury, in 2000 when Mr. Bush wasn't elected president, the deficit was about 5 and a half trillion dollars. In 2001, the year that he assumed office, it had gone up to about 5.8 trillion. In 2008, the year the President Obama was elected, the deficit was around 10 trillion. In other words, it almost doubled. In President Obama's first year in office, 2009, it increased by another trillion and a half. But honest to God, did anyone expect that somehow in his first year in office the President would manage to to stop and reverse that particular train?

Peace.

Rev Randal