I am not sure the first post that got me into to this vain of hackery but I am pretty sure it was in response to something posted about Iraq or socialism that was also one sided and I felt I needed to balance out the issue by going to the other side off the argument and that is the fundamental flaw in politics today. People feel the need to argue.
We are told watching the likes of Questions and Answers that we are watching a debate but we are not we are watching an argument. But sides instead of moving to a consensus on an issue often end up moving to the extremes of their positions to defend them.
Take the classic Israel Palestine argument. Few people I guess would fully support
This happens so much in Irish and world politics in is debasing the very institutions they are. During the debate on the Statuary rape crisis. When we really needed the Dail to be the be the legislators to put politics behind them and discuss the issues and the ideas need to fix this. What did we get? We got people playing partisan politics with the issue. Not debating the issue but arguing about who is to blame, vying for the sound bit of the day.
And many of us fall for this, we fall into the partisan trap we go beyond our views because we feel the need to balance the argument and in doing so we become a parody of ourselves. We come the very thing that the parties wants us to become unthinking soldiers to the cause.
So what happens we end up in an election where the issue is. Who will be the next leader is the question not what should the next leader do. We don’t have issue we have faces. Spin and hackery disguised as debate. And people wonder why young people are apathetic to politics
Here is my pledge to you. I will lay my arguments out as honestly as I can and not allow the spin of the politicians blind me. (at least till next week anyway)
6 comments:
Hack away to your heart's content. But seeing as you've admitted to a partisan allegience, please do us the courtesy of telling us to whom it is owed. I'd find your honestly held views far more interesting than a pretense at objectivity.
nice post, very objective and honest. yes it is true, winning an argument and pushing an agenda seem to be far more important then reaching a common truth. Rather then compromise our opinions we reteat to an extreme to defend them, this is evident all over the world (like christian america - why is there hardly no fundamental religious groups in this country? because until recently christianity was not really threatened!!). Look at the north, robbing the northern bank turned out to be a genious political move for sinn fein - it drove unionists to the DUP which in turn of course drove nationalists to sinn fein - the equivalent on the other extreme
Simon,
It's not the hackery that gets to me about your posts - I hate to be a pedant about this, but there are usually a lot of spelling and grammer errors and they're very noticeable. I realise you are dyslexic, but surely a spellchecker would weed out most of the glitches? It often seems as though you hammer a post out without running it through a check for mistakes first...
Just to clarify, that last comment was myself.
I write all my posts in word and run them through a grammer and spell check. And proof read them twice. It is not as easy for me to write stuff as it is for you.
Fair enough Simon.
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