One of the convenient things about believing in a me-first ideology like the conservatism beloved of certain News Ltd writers, is that it requires pretty much no sacrifice. Your opposition to tax increases for the rich conveniently matches your opposition to tax increases for yourself. Your political stance is “what’s good for me”, so it’s not exactly difficult to live up to it.
On the other hand, wealthy lefties can be painted as hypocrites almost by definition. Their compatriots can attack them for their insolent treason to their own class traitors, by highlighting any point on which their self-sacrifice falls short – as it often does, since they’re human beings. And it’s even easier to make them look like hypocrites if you exaggerate what they’re saying: if RICH LEFTY X really believed what he was saying, he’d be living in a cave on nuts and berries!
So they’ll attack those wealthy people who advocate for taxes that would hit themselves hardest as “hypocrites” whilst celebrating the “principled” selfishness of rich people who are simply working to maintain their privilege. It makes no sense for the people who’d benefit from thee public services those taxes would fund to prefer the privileged people who are screwing them over to those who at least want to change; but if you shout HYPOCRITE loudly enough, some people can clearly be induced not to notice.
And air travel is an easy, easy means of making this fatuous argument. We live in a world in which the only reasonable infrastructure for travelling overseas involves aeroplanes. Anti global-warming campaigners might wish for us to develop alternatives, but they’re not here yet. Which leaves them in an unfortunate position: do they just stay home, and greatly lessen their ability to do any good on the subject; or do they do what they can to advocate for environmental causes despite in the short term contributing greenhouse gases to the planet by virtue of their travel?
Andrew Bolt and his friends like to highlight this “dilemma” – only they, with their “screw the environment” stance, may fly the world making their side of the argument. Their opposition? Stay silent or be revealed as hypocrites!
It’s a stupid, unfair line to take – but it plays so very well with those already predisposed to hate the targets.
On the plus side, Andy’s choice of target today might at least help move his sheep towards republicanism.
8 Comments
Well said. The right are the masters of the Strewman argument. And when it comes to logical fallacies there are none better except maybe the ID crowd.
Flying to go speak about the evils of flying = good.
Flying to go on holiday = selfish and evil.
Well, if that’s your opinion, Shab, who are we to argue with you?
It always amazes me that the slightest, tiniest, faintest suggestion that it might be OK to have some tiny amount of concern for the environment is so disgustingly wrong to the Bolt brigade.
These people would presumably be happy for a lead-smelter to open on their doorstep. It was laughable that some of these cretins actually turned on lights and appliances during Earth Hour, in some sort of protest. Presumably they would be happy to have PCB’s poured into their drinking water.
Today’s usual froth is no exception: let’s bring back CFC’s to destroy the ozone layer, because that will fix something we have absolutely no belief in anyway. Jejune’s the word.
When I saw this line-
‘Clarence House aides stress that the trip is at the request of the Government to promote its climate change policies.’ –
I thought, “Hey, perhaps you guys can use that as evidence to support our Governor General’s labor policy promoting junkets”.
You have to hand it to them though.
It works.
If you can’t argue what the opposition is actually saying, simply exaggerate (or totally make it up) what they are saying and then attack that.
And simply don’t link to what they are actually saying so you can not check their actual reasoning.
And most of the winged monkeys don’t even realize they have been had.
Surely, as much damage as air travel is doing to the environment, a couple of flights by world leaders and climate change campaigners is more valuable for the cause than the damage that would’ve been avoided by sitting at home and not doing anything.
There is a lot of pressure on people in Europe and the US to fly less, and I think there is a valuable point in cutting down on unnecessary flight. But I think in Australia we have to recognise that to get to most of the world, or even between Australian capital cities, is impractical using land transport. Although personally I would always avoid flying between Canberra-Sydney. That’s the only Australian route that has similar characteristics to all those short-haul flights in the EU that could be replaced by train or car journeys (eg. London-Paris, London-Edinbugh).