Fasgaya – Lies and dirty tricks to win eletions: Our debates:

31 DECEMBER 2018

  

Robert Ringer, the American icon, writes:

“Incurable debater has the potential to frustrate and exhaust you to the point of causing you to surrender even when you know you’re right.”

He goes on to summarize the ‘Ten Dirty Tricks of Debating, the most commonly used tools of the incurable debater’ in one of his famous blogs. I am listing below some of them where our great democratic and secular opposition in India fits in like a bullet:

“Dirty Trick No. 1: The False Premise

Basing one’s argument on a false premise is one of the oldest tricks of clever debaters. It’s a mainstay of most political debates, wherein politicians find they can slide a false premise by sitcom-damaged brains without much effort. Worse, supposedly opposing parties begin most of their debates with joint false premises, thus giving viewers all the more reason to assume that such premises are correct.”

I was trying to list some of those events that happened in our country that have been proved as utterly false, though at the time they were happening many thought or brainwashed to think – even by the media- to be true :

- PM faked his education certificate.

- Loya conspiracy.

- Semen balloons.

- Church attacks.

Junaid beef angle.

Kathua "apologists".

Reservations ended!

SC/ST Atrocities Act ended!

No tax benefits of demonetization.

Bank deposit panic.

NDA created NPAs.

Surgical strikes are fake.

Even the ones that are not totally false are not totally true either. Like GST, demonetization etc. Some positives and negatives present in these but only the negatives are harped on, telling a whole lot of lies in the process of proving the negatives.

Dirty Trick No. 2: Using the Desired Conclusion as a Premise

“Using the desired conclusion as a premise — sometimes referred to as an a prioriargument — is just a bold version of basing one’s arguments on false premises. The debater who employs this tactic merely restates his own conclusion as though it were a fact.”

Christian Michel trial by ED: The comments by the Congress party. The desired conclusion here is that the ED is vindictive as per directions of Govt. The fact remains nobody was brought to trial for the Sikh genocide in Delhi because the then Govt. was ensuring the trials did not happen. And even in Michel’s case the previous govt. had ensured the event is hushed up and but for this Govt. we would not have had him for any trial as has happened for several years after the scam.

In fact, most of the cases mentioned under point no.1 above falls under this category as well.