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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (99066)	2/7/2005 1:15:31 PM
From: bela_ghoulashi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793696

It was just an exercise in technique. I don't seriously think you are anything at all like Lady McBeth. She was just the best example of a purely evil woman I could come up with at the moment, which is what I needed in order to insinuate something truly awful from a few otherwise innocuous points of association. One of those points could be inaccurate, unprovable, or totally outrageous if I had built up enough camouflage and momentum with the others.

To: Lane3 who wrote (99066)	2/7/2005 5:42:56 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793696

A clearer conclusion for the delay, seems to me, is that it just isn't natural to conjure up extensions and focus on and be outraged by them rather than focusing on the comparison actually made. If it were natural, it wouldn't have taken me so long to "get" it. Seems to me. I think for the vast majority of people it is natural to follow the down the line of comparisons to the extension. Strictly speaking the extensions are not contained in the statements themselves nor are they logical conclusions of the statements but not all communication is about logic or strictly spelling out ideas. The technique of comparing one person to another who is a symbol of evil (Hitler most often but there are others, such as Kim Jong Il in this example), is normally done to hint that the person being compared (in this case Bush) is like the other person in more ways than just those explicitly stated. Perhaps not with the idea of implying that Bush is as aggressive, abusive, brutal, and otherwise negative as Hitler or Kim Jong Il, but more that he is like them in those ways but to a lesser extent. If the focus is only on one or two similarities and the common trait or attribute is positive, or if there some natural and obvious reason to compare them I wouldn't normally assume this rhetorical technique is being used. I think the more points of comparison, the more specific or unusual the traits are, the more negative the points compared, the more likely that the speaker/writer/ect. is using this technique. In this case I don't think the author was trying to say that Bush is an abusive dictator but only kills a few people or anything like that, but he was trying to paint Bush with the negative association of Kim Jong Il. Tim