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Whataboutism: What About Our Sanity?

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Susan Lee Schwartz
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It is difficult to say what truth is, but sometimes it is. | Flickr800 Ã-- 600 - 127k - jpg
It is difficult to say what truth is, but sometimes it is. | Flickr800 Ã-- 600 - 127k - jpg
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“Whataboutism has swallowed rational discourse, & the effects are hard to overstate. It is everywhere. a metastasizing conversational abscess infecting our collective frontal lobe. It's a discursive technique that works by asserting false equivalence, obfuscating the topic at hand while also highlighting the hypocrisy of the opposition. It is dangerous because it implies that all actions, regardless of context, share a moral equivalency,” explained John Oliver in a recent skit on Donald Trump’s haphazard methodology. “And since nobody is perfect, all criticism is hypocritical, and everybody should do whatever they want.” If you succumb to a discursive spasm that allows for zero concessions and tramples objective appraisal, it becomes much easier to believe that your own ideology is correct and infallible and that the opposition’s opinions are illegitimate and mad, even inhuman."

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I began teaching in 1963,; Ba and BS in Education -Brooklyn College. I have the equivalent of 2 additional Master's, mainly in Literacy Studies and Graphic Design. I was the only seventh grade teacher of English from 1990 -1999 at East Side (more...)
 

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