Listening with a critical ear
Back when I was in school, I was an inveterate margin-writer. When assigned a textbook to read, I would underline or use a big yellow highlighter to help me learn what I was supposed to. But I also often used my pen to write copiously in the margins.
What I wrote was sometimes approving: Great point! or Beautiful! But far more often it was a disagreement, part of a debate I had with what I saw as errors of fact or logic on the part of the writer. You might say we had a little dialogue going, except the author didn’t hear my side of it.
I was never taught critical thinking in any formal manner, but I seemed to have a natural drive for it. Or maybe I was just an ornery, critical sort.
At any rate, even as a teenager I found political speeches both boring and unsettling. The “boring” part was due to my problem with auditory processing; I’d much rather read them than hear them, unless the speaker happened to be Winston Churchill. But the “unsettling” part was my perception of the simplification and therefore distortion inherent in almost all political speeches.
The speaker is trying to sell something—ordinarily a policy or a plan—and presents it in the best light. All politicians do this. For the listener to perform the critical (in several senses of the word) task of filling in the blanks and realizing what is being left out, distorted, or even misrepresented, it requires a certain cast of mind and a fair amount of knowledge.
We rely at least partly on the written press to do this for us, and if it fails in that duty we are all in trouble. But in addition, to properly listen to and properly evaluate what a politician is saying requires something else: the desire to do so. We must listen with a skeptical mindset, even to politicians we are predisposed to like and agree with. This can be extraordinarily difficult.
But even if we’re listening to an opponent and are therefore motivated to find fault, the ability to evaluate what is actually being said also requires an ability to think critically while processing what is being heard, and to do both simultaneously. Of course, one can always refer to the text later on at leisure (especially now, with the internet). But how many people do this? How many even want to do this? In the end—especially now that the press is nearly worthless in this respect—we all have to rely on the ability of the American people to practice these skills. Otherwise, we fall prey to demagogues.
That has always been one of the problems I see in the Obama presidency. It’s not only that he’s so smooth in his delivery, it’s that he is highly skillful and really quite shameless in the practice of sophistry.
Obama offers straw men, contradictions, misrepresentations, threats, and omissions, all wrapped up in one attractive and articulate package (yes, I know he’s not especially articulate when speaking off-the-cuff, but I’m talking about prepared speeches here). And make no mistake about it, Obama is quite aware of this, and he is counting heavily on the American people to be unable to properly process what he is saying.
To take just a single example, there’s his oft-repeated statement that, under his health plan, if you’re happy with your current insurance you get to keep it. That’s technically true—for now. Obama conveniently ignores all the very convincing arguments that his plan will nevertheless almost inevitably cause private insurance to be squeezed out of the market in the not-too-distant future (see this, for example, for some details).
But more than any other president in recent memory, Obama knows he doesn’t have to answer his critics, or explain why their arguments might be wrong on a factual basis. The key to his assurance is his knowledge of how strongly the MSM is behind him, how eager it is to cover for him and not challenge him. He relied on this situation heavily during the campaign, and he relies on it still. And even though there are a few rumblings and grumblings and cracks in the solid support of the MSM for Obama, for the most part it has held, and there’s every reason to believe it will continue to hold.
Obama also counts on his personal charm. He has tremendous faith in it, and the trajectory of his life has borne him out so far. He also understands the difficulty people have with listening to a speech and critically evaluating it at the same time, especially if they are predisposed to like and trust him.
For far too many Americans, Obama merely has to assert that he is right, soothing the doubts and fears of the populace. That’s why he must characterize those who criticize him as liars and partisan hacks, and why he must “call them out” rather than merely debate them in a respectful and factual manner. If he did the latter, I believe he knows he would lose.
But he doesn’t think he needs to. Obama is betting he can get away with this, and he might very well be correct. In the final analysis, whether he will get away with it or not depends on the ability of the American people to arm itself with knowledge and to think critically.
That’s always been the case. But I believe that never before have we been so alone—so without assistance from the press or our educational system—in this endeavor.
And never before have we had a skillful president so determined to deceive us in so profound a way. Other presidents have deceived us, to be sure. But never about their core agendas or their essence, and I say this for presidents of the Right and the Left, Democrats and Republicans alike. But I have come to believe that this profound deception is exactly what Obama is trying to accomplish, and it is exactly what he meant when he promised us fundamental change without specifying what that change would be.
[ADDENDUM: Here’s some critical thinking from Ann Althouse. And remember, she voted for Obama. Note, also, that she’s responding to Obama’s speech as read, not as performed.]
It is not just him who is so skillful in this regard.
I think the people surrounding him understand all of this very clearly – and his speeches are carefully crafted for him. It is a whole assembled TEAM in the WH, who fully intend to skillfully deceive us and cram through the profound changes they have chatted about in their left-wing college lounge late night bull sessions for years.
What is really scary, is that, in spite of the appearance of ineptness – some of that may simply be a case of employment of long term rather than short term strategy. In other words, the real goal is re-election, and consolidation of power and even more profound and permanant change in the second term.
Look at that first $787 Billion stimulus bill which was crammed through before anybody had any time to pick it apart. A gripe from many has been that most of the monies are not slated to be spent until 2010. Ah….but is that a bug or a feature? Perhaps the goal behind that bill was not to stimulate the economy – but to create a SHORT TERM upswing in 2010 — just in time for voters, who vote with their pocket books – to go to the polls at the mid-terms.
Amid rah rah cheerleading from the Press, who to their IMMENSE relief will be able to (ignorantly) crow that they were right all along in worshiping their hero. I will not be a bit surprised if it is all sunshine and daisies with the economic news, a year from now.
I suspect that the 2012 re-election campaign strategy master plan started to be formulated around mid-November of 2008.
I always thought it was the totalitarian who hand picked and designed his state run media. Now I know its just as likely the other way around.
Not to overstate, b/c these do have limitations, however: we do have blogs, email, social media. These are weapons. W/o them, the Tea Parties don’t happen in the way they did; the Town Halls don’t happen in the way they did; the info doesn’t get out as much as it is getting out.
This is my favorite of all the Town Hall protesters: the “Come and take this $20 from me and use it as a down payment on this health care plan” girl. She is saying: Take my money out in the open, and not in secret like a coward. She is my brave Princess. I want to fight beside her. I might have to walk away from Progressive Flo for her. Maybe. What a quandary.
She blogs as Liberty Belle.
And never before have we had a skillful president so determined to deceive us in so profound a way
neo: That’s exactly how Obama seems to be me. I remember the speeches of Presidents going back to LBJ. Some I agreed with more than others and they all skated the gray areas, but I don’t remember any of them, not even Nixon, who practiced sophistry (that is the word) so openly and unashamedly.
None of Obama’s speeches bear close reading. Yet the media barely notices and worse yet dwells on the fluffy feelgood meringue that Obama adds.
However, there are glimmers that Obama’s free pass from scrutiny is coming to an end. Here the AP fact checks last night’s speech.
oh i have read speeches from around the globe, and have read books on how to play the shenanigans and i recognize the playbook for moves and a different playbook for goals.
But more than any other president in recent memory, Obama knows he doesn’t have to answer his critics, or explain why their arguments might be wrong on a factual basis. The key to his assurance is his knowledge of how strongly the MSM is behind him, how eager it is to cover for him and not challenge him.
as i said before, but recompose;
Among the blind the guy pretending to see can be king. He only has to convince the other blind people that he can see and the one eyed man can’t.
[Once achieving power, blind the one eyed man, and justify it to the others under some hoity toity unfalsefiable ‘science’ like social justice, or marxism to confuse them and get them to acceed to such acts as ‘fairness’]
)“So let there be no doubt: The future belongs to the nation that best educates its citizens – and my fellow Americans, we have everything we need to be that nation. We have the best universities, the most renowned scholars. We have innovative principals and passionate teachers and gifted students, and we have parents whose only priority is their child’s education. … No government policy will make any difference unless we also hold ourselves more accountable as parents.”
if thats so… then why things like this below?
America’s public schools are crippling the economy
http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?05e909ad-768c-4027-8cbf-ef16fcb0595e
The national high school graduation rate, around 73 percent, is lower than it was 40 years ago.
a majority of them are men by the way….
not that any one cares… they is just men…
Or maybe I was just an ornery, critical sort.
You have a Great Soul, Neo. Those tend to have inner drives independent of genetics, family upbringing, or cultural/educational imperatives.
Even in an environment that seeks to repress such tendencies, such a soul will attempt to break out one way or another.
Neo, I always enjoy your writing. This passage of yours reminded me of my recent reading of Robert Conquest’s bio of Stalin: “In the final analysis, whether he will get away with it or not depends on the ability of the American people to arm itself with knowledge and to think critically.”
In the beginning, Stalin, Lenin, and the other Bolshies advanced their cause through discussion that might have been amenable to knowledgeable people with good arguments, but that phase passed pretty quickly once they actually had the reins in their hands.
Let’s hope we don’t go down that road, because reason, which is not much of a tool now in the fight against BHO, will be a very weak reed later.
I am going to focus on one point in your post, that is that Obama is using sleight of hand when he points out that his plan will not make anyone lose the insurance that they now have. Neo states that this statement obscures the fact that with a public option the insurance companies will inexorably squeezed out of the market.
This is true. That is why insurance companies want a mandate but no public competition.
But what Obama and his critics both do not say is that no matter what happens more and more people will lose their insurance. The growth of health care is unsustainable. It has been growing at 2 1/2 percentage points faster than the GDP. Insurance companies are forced to use more and more draconian measures to insure their corporate health.
The employer based insurance policy is buckling under the pressure. More companies are dropping insurance or opting for minimal insurance. The worker has incrementally been funding the rise in cost by suffering no wage gains for years on end and/or by paying more for their insurance through higher deductibles and co-pays, and in addition, more hospitals and medical facilities are dropping contracts with insurers, so that people find that their chosen doctor is no longer covered.
So no matter what, we will all have less choice and less access to health care. And we will pay, either through higher taxes, or through less wages and an increasingly unstable health care system.
I favor consumer cooperatives so that no one is forced to buy individual health care, they can join a group coop that will negotiate with the insurer just like a big corporation does. I favor tort reform, the reintroduction of non-profit health insurance, like Blue Cross/Blue Shield used to be, and some consumer regulation so that insurers cannot cherry pick, or drop people when they become ill.
Obviously the people here on this blog are free market believers but health care does not operate on market rules. Just like drugs like heroin are outlawed because their use deprives the user of free will, so sudden illness or accident deprives the patient of choice in health care.
The $24000 question is how to get health care cost under control. Having single payer does help with administrative cost but the result can be a fairly drab and unresponsive health care delivery system.
I don’t have an answer, I think demographics is driving much of the rise in cost. We are an aging nation and there is not such thing as accepting the end of life without massive medical treatment, often in a lost cause. But we don’t let go of life without a struggle, nor should we.
Brilliant article neo!!! It is oh so very very very important to be critical of your own belief system, as much as we are critical of our opposition or enemies philosophy. There is no mercy for how much it hurts, or how difficult it is, it is simply how we should and must train our minds — except for when it come to doing the greater good of protecting the young and or the innocent or those we are bound to by family, the measure of reason here varies and is up to the individual based on maturity and experience — good luck with this part it’s what life is made of. Always always always think critically, many do it better than me, I do it better than some — we are in pursuit of realism and reality and how to best invest our thoughts and efforts for a more moral and happier world, never ever ever ever rest on a predefined template. However, we don’t have to re-invent the heel either, read the masters of The Enlightenment.
In short, he’s a lawyer.
The democrats were taken over in ’72 by the radical left wing of their party. Carter was an anamoly and his success was largely due to a reaction against Nixon and Ford’s pardoning of Nixon.
After the failure of Carter and Reagan’s election, the democrats moved even further to the left. Since then they hadn’t been able to articulate their true positions because they knew they would be annihilated at the polls.
Clinton was their only success and he posed as a moderate and really became one after his party’s electoral defeat in ’94.
Otherwise all of the democrat’s presidential candidates have progressively hidden more and more of their agendas and even personal histories from the public, lest the public discovers who and what they truely are.
Mondale said he’d raise taxes and was an unabashed liberal and he got creamed. Dukakis, though liberal, tried to pretend he knew something about the private sector, i.e. the so-called Massachusetts miracle, but failed miserably. Gore simply tried to be ‘Son of Clinton.’ All failed.
After 9/11, the wanted to run a war hero or someone with serious military credentials to offset the republican’s advantage on issues on national defense. Enter Kerry, the phony war-hero and even phonier human being. Don’t forget his unbelievably even phonier running-mate, John “the Breck Girl’ Edwards.
Finally, in 2008′ the democrat’s found what they were looking for, a complete cypher. An empty suit who could read off of a teleprompter but had no real record to speak of or examine, was black (or so they would allude, though really only half), well educated and a dyed in the wool leftist who had all the correct leftist patrons. A man who would shamelessly lie and wouldn’t hesitate to throw his grandmother under the bus.
Despite all of the warning signs for those who cared to look, the public bought the snake oil Obama was peddling under a ‘moderate’ disguise. No small thanks to the craven MSM covering for him all the way and abandoning any pretense at objectivity, fairness or honesty.
Only now, and only because it may affect their standard of living are many waking up to who and what Obama really is.
Liberals were never really serious about real change in this country. Or serious only in so much as it didn’t change their lifestyle (god I hate that term). Here’s a quote from Dennis the peasant that sums up much of the liberal and so-called independent parting from Obama’s flock. It’s about Van Jones, but applies equally to Obama.
Now they have voted and fooled others into voting for someone ‘to feel good about themselves.’
I hope they’re enjoying the feeling. The trouble is that the actions of unsereious idiots have very serious repercussions.
In the sales business is the axiom that 80% of speech is non-verbal. Tone of voice, volume, timing, inflection, accent, body language, appearence, etc, can have a much greater impact upon the audience than the actual words.
Compare listening to an Obama speech with reading it, and you see the axiom in action.
I noticed that Obama is is using the word “required” when he talks about the following
[I]f you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.
Frankly, that strikes me as Clintonian. Our gut instinct tells us that even though companies won’t be required to make changes, they probably will for economic survival.
michale: I am proud to say I picked up on that the moment I heard it, here:
Nothing in this plan will require you to change your coverage. Pretty clever, that. The effects, of course, will not come at once.
Neo,
Your note of a profound deception is truly spine-chilling, and I believe that you are absolutely accurate; but here is a ray of hope.
Anyone who has bet against the American system for the last 230 years has placed a losing bet. I believe that this is still true. I believe that built into our society is a genetic love of freedom, success and achievement. I mean that literally.
We are descendants of ancestors who bet their entire lives and left behind everything that was familiar and dear to come to a country they didn’t know and whose language many didn’t even speak. Those who were afraid or comfortable stayed behind and contributed to making Europe the second string team that it is today. Thai and Viet and Indonesian immigrants are doing today what our grandparents did one hundred years ago. These new immigrants are contributing new life to this remarkable gene pool.
The pampered elite understand neither the power of this love of freedom nor how deeply engrained it is in the American psyche. They are like the frightened ancestors who stayed behind, and their own ignorance will come back to haunt them.
They don’t understand that one’s greatest weakness is often generated by one’s greatest strength and because of this shortsightedness, I truly believe that the Obama presidency will implode, in great part a victim of its own hubris.
We’ve had good and bad presidents but I cannot recall an anti-American plant or sleeper being elected, a Communist who is actively undermining our republic. We are in uncharted territory here. At what point will enough Americans awaken to the danger? Right now Ogabe is polling 50%+ disapproval with the usual 30% liberal drone approval. Will voters be fed up enough to throw out enough dhimmicrats to stop Ogabe’s agenda? Will it be in time to avert the worst damage? Will our republic hold? All kinds of scenarios play out in my mind depending on my mood. Ballot box, general strikes, revolution?
It took only a small group of Bolsheviks to grab the power centers of Russia during a time of incredible crisis. We are not Russia but this is surely not the America I grew up in.
God bless America – remember 9/11 forever.
huxley: not all of Nixon’s practices were sophistical. Amoung other things, in 1974 he had an excellent plan for comprehensive healthcare reform– see link below (but then Watergate caught up with him)
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2009/September/03/nixon-proposal.aspx
“”The pampered elite understand neither the power of this love of freedom nor how deeply engrained it is in the American psyche””
T
I think they understand it in a morally inverse way. To them, the system of everyone being responsible for their own self interest is immoral.
We’re witnessing a liberal ideology so immersed in its self righteous dogma that the horrific harm it causes to human lives doesn’t even get considered.
The calculation was that Obama would sweet talk good enough for a bounce in the polls; this in turn would give Congress the courage to pass the bill. Winner: Obama, the deus ex machina to descend and solve all. Losers: A hapless and ineffectual Congress and, of course, the separation of powers.
here is how good we listen..
Bella V. Dodd (1904—1969) was a member of the Communist Party of America (CPUSA) in the 1930s and 1940s.
On March 11, 1953, The New York Times ran a front page article entitled Bella Dodd Asserts Reds Got Presidential Advisory Posts reporting that she “swore before the Senate Internal Security subcommittee today that Communists had got into many legislative offices of Congress and into a number of groups advising the President of the United States.”[1] The New York Times reported on March 8, 1954 that Bella Dodd “…warned yesterday that the “materialistic philosophy,” which she said was now guiding public education, would eventually demoralize the nation.”[2]
In her book, School of Darkness (1954) she states that that Communist Party’s structure “was in reality a device to control the ‘common man'”.[3
we were warned THAT far back…
and yet we did NOTHING…
and now we are asking what can we do?
Well Obama has been in office for about 8 months so in that approximately 240 days he has apparently given over 260 speeches. I feel about him talking like I feel about the song Margaritaville. I was okay with the first five-hundred times I heard it (it’s not a bad song) but I have gotten to hate it – and living in a beach area of Florida if you go to any bar or restaurant (who thinks they will up the “beach” ambiance by hiring some idiot who knows four chords and can barely sing) it would be a good bet that the first line out of his mouth when he starts to sing is “Nibblin’ on sponge cake”. It’s the main reason I don’t have a concealed carry permit – if I did the idiot would be nibblin’ on the end of my .45.
What I am trying to say is “enough is enough”. Don’t these yahoos ever figure out that the more they say the less believable they become.
huxley: not all of Nixon’s practices were sophistical.
md: I didn’t say they were.
My implication, perhaps better made more explicit, was that while Nixon lied outright about Watergate, and one might disagree with him about his policies, he did not generally resort to sophistry as often and as nakedly as Obama.
“…Don’t these yahoos ever figure out that the more they say the less believable they become.”
No.
My experience with people like President Zero has been that they never seem to grasp that some of us just don’t want what they’re selling, no matter how many times they explain it. We understand it perfectly, which is why we don’t want it in the first place.
Obama is a shyster salesman. Its almost like half of America has no clue what that even means. As if they’ve never experienced such patronising and insulting tactics before. I don’t understand nievity and gullibility on such a level in adult people.
Charles Krauthammer calls it “Obamacare 2.0…the ultimate bait and switch,” with rationing the inevitable and eventual end-result:
“…Obamacare 2.0 — promulgating draconian health-insurance regulation that prohibits (a) denying coverage for preexisting conditions, (b) dropping coverage if the client gets sick and (c) capping insurance company reimbursement. What’s not to like? If you have insurance, you’ll never lose it. Nor will your children ever be denied coverage for preexisting conditions. The regulated insurance companies will get two things in return.
“Government will impose an individual mandate that will force the purchase of health insurance on the millions of healthy young people who today forgo it. And government will subsidize all the others who are too poor to buy health insurance. The result? Two enormous new revenue streams created by government for the insurance companies.
“And here’s what makes it so politically seductive: The end result is the liberal dream of universal and guaranteed coverage — but without overt nationalization. It is all done through private insurance companies. Ostensibly private. They will, in reality, have been turned into government utilities. No longer able to control whom they can enroll, whom they can drop and how much they can limit their own liability, they will live off government largess — subsidized premiums from the poor; forced premiums from the young and healthy.
“It’s the perfect finesse — government health care by proxy. And because it’s proxy, and because it will guarantee access to (supposedly) private health insurance — something that enjoys considerable Republican support — it will pass with wide bipartisan backing and give Obama a resounding political victory.
“Isn’t there a catch? Of course there is. This scheme is the ultimate bait-and-switch. The pleasure comes now, the pain later. Government-subsidized universal and virtually unlimited coverage will vastly compound already out-of-control government spending on health care. The financial and budgetary consequences will be catastrophic.
“However, they will not appear immediately. And when they do, the only solution will be rationing. That’s when the liberals will give the FCCCER regulatory power and give you end-of-life counseling.
“But by then, resistance will be feeble. Why? Because at that point the only remaining option will be to give up the benefits we will have become accustomed to. Once granted, guaranteed universal health care is not relinquished. Look at Canada. Look at Britain. They got hooked; now they ration. So will we….”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/27/AR2009082703262.html
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