Sunday, July 1, 2012

Backwards thinking

An Ace post discovers this in the Roberts decision on ObamaCare.  You know, the Truthers are the same way.

The Truthers believe that 9/11 was an inside job.  But this is backwards thinking.  Why?  The Truthers assumed that the 9/11 event would invariably lead to the 90% approval rating that Bush had for the time directly afterwards.  But why is this assumed?   Could a disastrous plunge in political support have been just as possible?  You would have to see the future with such clarity that you wouldn't need a crystal ball if you could predict mass behavior with such precision.  I strongly doubt that such precision is possible.  Hence, the backward thinking.

The Truthers managed to infect the society with doubt about Bush.  In time, this led to his fall from favor in public opinion polls.

Bush lied and people died was one of the mottoes of the left.  Okay, but how did Bush lie about something that he couldn't have known about?  The only way to know if Saddam had WMD was to actually go there and look.

The left needed to get Bush's numbers down.  So the Truthers needed to plant the seed of doubt and that doubt had to be nurtured by the Bush lied, people died trope.  Both notions require that Bush be godlike in his ability to perceive what no other man can perceive.  But Bush is mortal, and the thinking is flawed, as it is a backwards argument based upon a desired outcome.

Yes, it that was an old argument as an example, but the tactic is the same.  Now the Chief Justice is doing it too.  He is hanging around these people and their bad thinking is infectious:
My guess is that Roberts originally wanted to strike down the mandate but keep the ACA by ruling the mandate was severable. But when the four dissenters would not go along with him on severability, he sided with the liberals and wrote a contorted decision to uphold the law. He was arguing backward from a desired outcome.

No comments: