Anatomy of a straw man argument! Please take careful note here, because it is the argumentative style of choice for Elite Iskooled incompetents with deep-seated agendas and intellectual pretensions.
Definition:
"A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal
fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "attack a straw man" is to
create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position."
Pirie, Madsen (2007). How to Win Every Argument: The Use and Abuse of Logic. UK: Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8264-9894-6.
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/strawman.html
Let us see how this applies to all the Elite Iskooled "comprehensive" and "data-based" arguments offered in this post:
1. So the fact that C'garh govt spends so little on the police is not a function of its incompetence/inability/unwillingness o augment capacities, but a perfidy of Leftists/Centre/missionaries!
Beginning the argument with
"So the fact that..." is a dead giveaway of how the Elite Iskooled poster intends to proceed. This becomes readily apparent when
"so the fact that" is followed up with a statement that nobody has made at any time previously in the discussion.
This clearly shows that the Elite Iskooled poster is trying to set up a strawman argument, against an assertion that was never made. By putting words in the mouths of others, he can pretend to be refuting the arguments of others, while covering up his failure to answer the actual arguments that others have made!
Now for a deeper look at the sentence construction used to support this sort of specious argumentation.
The first thing to note carefully, is the way in which the sentence is phrased: according to the Elite Iskooled poster, there can be only two and exactly two reasons why the Chhatisgarh government spends so little on the police: either
(a) incompetence/inability/unwillingness to augment capacities or
(b) perfidy of Leftists/Centre/Missionaries.
This completely ignores the several other constraints which might prevent the Chhatisgarh government from spending more money on police. Among them: being one of the least developed states in the Indian union, and the need to allocate more funds towards economic and social development. (Note that when MMS does the same thing while making concessions to Pakistan, this is hailed as the "highest wisdom"!)
The second thing to note is how the poster tries to undermine the idea of perfidy by Leftists/Centre/Missionaries, by ascribing it specifically to
"Chhatisgarh government's spending inadequate amounts on police augmentation."
An attempt is made to associate something real (perfidy of Leftists/Centre/Missionaries) with something else that it has no direct bearing on (Chhatisgarh's spending decisions). This association is supposed to make the very idea of Leftist/Missionary/Maino perfidy seem ridiculous... but pay attention and you will see who it is that's actually making the association... the Elite Iskooled poster himself, and no one else!
This is a strawman-by-association. I connect a true statement to another statement that appears absurdly disconnected (Leftist/Missionary perfidy to Chhatisgarh budget.) I couch that connection as if I am replying to an argument being made by someone else ("so the fact that..."), when I am in fact the originator of the connection. And then I hold up a connection which I made myself, to ridicule!
The intent of the Elite Iskooled poster here, is to insinuate that because Leftists/Centre/Missionaries did not affect the Chhatisgarh government's spending decisions... therefore Leftists/Centre/Missionaries must have nothing to do with the Maoist problem at all.
And we all know how true that is.
Carrying on:
"The fact that Assam, a state with the around the same ballpark level of tax revenues as C'garh, higher debt burden and a far worse state of the fisc decides to spend more on policing is not a problem of the C'garh govt, but someone else! "
Again, this is a strawman.
Nobody has said that the choice of Assam to spend more money on police than Chhatisgarh, is the "fault" of "someone else." In fact, nobody has said that it is anyone's "fault" at all. Ideally, states make their own decisions on the best way to utilize the funds available to them, under a wide range of circumstances and constraints that apply in each case.
The context in which Assam was mentioned in my post, was in the employment of SULFA against ULFA; what bearing does this supposed “rebuttal” have on that? None at all!
Secondly, note the gratuitous sprinkling of Elite-Iskool puffery which has no relevance to the argument at all, in a rather pathetic attempt to dignify nonsense with the appearance of "expertise" (or maybe "erudition.")
If Assam has a higher debt burden than Chhatisgarh, and its fiscal deficit is far worse than Chhatisgarh... considered by itself, this actually suggests that Chhatisgarh is doing something right compared to Assam, doesn't it??
That Chhatisgarh per se has limited resources and a lot of development demands to balance with its counterinsurgency needs, is not at all changed by the state of Assam's fiscal deficit or debt burden. This strawman is even more vacuuous than most!
"The fact that AP, with a police-to-population ratio lower than C'garh, and a per-capita expdt on police substantially lower than C'garh, does so much better with its anti-inurgency campaign isnt a question of quality of execution, but of differential perfidies!"
This is a more egregious "rebuttal" than all the others, given that I haven't even mentioned AP once in my posts on this topic. Anyway...
The strawman being advanced here is that AP's naxalite insurgency vs. Chhatisgarh's naxalite insurgency are one and the same; but that AP has "done so much better" even though it spends less on police per-capita.
The fallacy, of course, is the implication that the present and historical nature of the naxalite insurgency in both states, and of the relative experience of the administrations in combating naxalite insurgencies in both states, is somehow equivalent. Of course, it isn't... and therefore, as a comparator, it is utterly meaningless.
Also note the self-contradiction between this and other statements. So far, the thrust of the Elite Iskooled poster's arguments has been that Chhatisgarh isn't spending enough on modernizing it's police, as here:
"Of course, the fact that C'garh (along with many other states) fails to utilise Central grants for modernisation also is a Christian/Leftist conspiracy, and not the incompetence of the state govt!
http://www.zeenews.com/news692992.html"
So spending more money on police is conveniently equated with "competence" when it comes to Chhatisgarh, and for that matter Assam... and yet, AP (which spends less money on police per capita than Chhatisgarh) is hailed as doing "so much better" with its anti-insurgency campaign!
To mention the possibility of "differential perfidies", of course, could be considered a Freudian slip coming from a Mainovadi. After all, Chhatisgarh has been an opposition-ruled state for 7 years now; while AP has been ruled by the Congress for an equivalent period (including 5+ years under the crypto-evangelist YS Rajashekhar Reddy.) So it wouldn't really come as a surprise if whoever is behind the maoist insurgencies in the two states, has lowered the pressure in AP while keeping it up in Chhatisgarh!
This is a pattern that one may discern in all opposition-ruled states (including Bihar, WB, Chhatisgarh, Orissa for a period) compared to UPA-ruled states when it comes to the relative intensity of Maoist insurgencies. But that of course, isn't a "data" point visible to Elite-Iskool RANDE who stick their heads in the toilet of Western academia and wait devotedly for a review of their pee-ers!
That Chhatisgarh has managed to keep up one of the highest growth rates in India while combating a severe maoist insurgency, shows if anything an impressively efficient counterinsurgency strategy in terms of "quality of execution".
"Of course, the fact that a richer (and more vastly more indebted) state like Mah has similar per-capita budgetary expdt is symptomatic of the fiscal space available to C'garh is of course too involved a variable to be of comprehension to "non-elite schooled" people..."
Yes, and thank goodness for non-elite schools where hand-waving and jargon have not completely displaced information and common sense as analytical tools. For posters with an agenda, "involved" variables are tools best used to advance the motivated involution of logic.
The fallacy that the Elite-Iskool poster is trying to advance by implication here, is that... somehow... Chhatisgarh has plenty of "fiscal space" because it has as much per-capita budgetary expenditure as Maharashtra. Meanwhile the baseline of where Chhatisgarh is on the development index, vs. where Maharashtra is on the development index, is completely ignored.
Of course, if you live in a jhobadpatti and your boss lives in a mansion, and if you have any intention of improving your life...then you have to make Rs.1,000 go a much longer way than your boss does! This much is obvious to most people, whether or not they went to Elite Iskools.
Apparently this unique view of "fiscal space" is one of those Lehman Brothers/Bear Stearns type perspectives which is responsible for the fine state of mortgage banking in the United States today!
Great, in a nutshell, policy decisions on outlays and execution policies are taken by the the state govt, but the consequences of the outcomes are attibuted to someone else!
The
"nutshell" is a favourite technique of people advancing strawman arguments. By cramming four different specious statements into one
"nutshell", they create a super-strawman which has not even tangential relevance to any argument that was previously advanced.
After all it is easier to misrepresent someone else's arguments when pretending to "summarize" them! Using fewer words is an asset to anyone primarily interested in the manipulation of ambiguity. Unfortunately, it also betrays his astonishing contempt for the intellect and reasoning capacity of all his readers on bharat-rakshak.
"And yes, one sweeping generalisation taking in VDCs, SOGs, SULFA under one blanket, when they individually are different cases - showing great comprehension of India's story of anti-insurgency movements..."
Coming directly after the above
"nutshell", the level of hypocrisy in referring to a
“sweeping generalisation” is just precious!
Not to mention a class-A strawman in itself: Who has said that VDCs, SOGs, SULFA are not "individually different cases"? Has anyone asserted that these are all part of some master-plan, derived from the same template?
Yet, this is the pile of moldy ghaas which our Elite-Iskool poster is proudly and dramatically attacking!
As examples of the strawman fallacy, all the above are real gems... and it is very instructive for us to see this in action, as it is a favourite debating technique of the overground anti-nationals. Transparently incompetent as he is, the Elite-Iskool poster does us all a favour by providing such a wealth of strawmen to examine.
"As stated earlier, axiliary forces like SOG and VDCs have been effective in J&K/Punjab...But Salwa Judum is a different animal altogether, there is no comparison of the two...
Finally a grain of honesty shows itself among the reams of specious rubbish peddled in the guise of "arguments" upto this point!
We have a brazen, bald-faced and completely unsubstantiated assertion... that Salwa Judum is a
"different animal altogether" and bears "no comparison" to VDCs or auxiliary counterinsurgency measures in other states (Why a "different animal" I wonder? Because it is "Hindu"? Because it was raised by a BJP government? No reason—or gods forbid, “data”—is offered!)
Prejudiced, unsubstantiated, unfounded and opinionated though the statement is... it at least gives a clear indication of where the Elite Iskool poster is coming from politically. Next time he asserts that "we are all on the same (India's) side", at least we will have some indication of how seriously to take him.
