Originally Posted by
Banzai
I don't believe I am being silly.
I do believe I am sick of listening to people invoke Nazis to make points. Maybe I have Nazi overload thanks to this White House and Faux News.
But using Nazis as metaphors and rhetorical devices is cheap, fallacious, and intellectually dishonest. You use the example not just for the record...but also to caricaturize and even lampoon the opposition...in this case genec and the video. Nazis as a rhetorical device is an effort to invalidate the opposing argument (or validate your own) by simple virtue of a terrible and arbitrary/fictitious attribution.
You could indeed have mentioned Edward Bernays...or you could have simply made your point about the propagandistic (in your view) elements of the video, and sought to prove that point. However, you chose Goebels for the attribution. It's "dirty pool" to use an old saying. It also makes me disregard you and your arguments because you resort to such rhetoric. And by the way, I'm not one of those who are inherently against your arguments (until possibly now) because I don't/didn't know enough about them. However, now my motivation to learn more is dead...why should I care about the opinions of someone who tries to make a point through bad rhetoric? Now I also wonder how many straw men and appeals to authority you use on a daily basis.
Cheap, dishonest, and intellectually weak.
You have got your logic all backwards. Had I stated that Joseph Goebels, whose name arouses angry emotions in you, would have given professional approval to the propaganda video being discussed, I could understand your anger at the thought that somebody as notorious as Goebels would have approved of the video. However, I stated the exact opposite, that the video did not meet Goebels's standard of effectiveness. Since I stated that Goebels, whose name arouses anger in you, would have thought the video ineffective, I find it much less reasonable for you to complain. After all, he of whom you dislike even the mention, and presumably disapprove of (as do I), would dislike that of which you approve. I don't find it worth complaining when my enemy dislikes those things of which I approve; I expect that to be the normal situation.