1] Assume that the "Story"/Narrative/Article read, listened to, etc is Correct.
2] Write down a list of implications (Direct) that are implied by [1].
3] From [2], create a flowchart, mind-map, etc for the most salient implications and their immediate corollaries and implications. This now is the list of "Indirect" implications of our original "Story", Article, etc.
4] Use Reductio Ad Absurdum-centric Abductive Reasoning to whittle down the models built in [3].
5] If there has been a sufficient whittling down; then those salient implications in [2] can now also be destroyed.
6] If [5] is successful, then the original "Story", Narrative, etc can be tossed into the Bin.
Intuitively, some of these steps take a few minutes and seconds at best (especially if the topic is sufficiently trivial). For more nuanced topics and subject areas of greater specialization; a few hours and days may suffice.
Overall, the main tools are Abductive Reasoning coupled with Organizational maps (sometimes mental, sometimes written) and making these two collide.
I've written about the value of abductive reasoning elsewhere (on my gaming blog). I think it's the most important tool in the mental arsenal. It is a tragedy (or perhaps a purposeful evil) that it is not taught or understood more widely.
"Educators" say that they don't cover it early on because the other forms of reasoning (i.e. Inductive and Deductive) need to be covered first so that pupils have good know-how when later on tackling Abductive thinking. But this is just Arse-backwards.
The intuitive framework is neither Deductive (as the philosophers of old claim) nor Inductive (as "natural philosophers"/scientists today claim), but rather Abductive. The Theologian correctly realized this eons ago, for he knew that it was God Almighty who fashioned Man to look not only at "wholes" but also in chunks, which he could then render intelligible if need be.
Deductive systems are mental prisons when exercised to the extreme; as its most ardent users become trapped in the forms, abstracts, etc. Inductive systems meanwhile render their most fervent users into "post Hoc ergo procter hoc" imbeciles. The entire enterprise of "Science" (Natural Philosophers GTOW) is devolving into this all the time.
It is only Abductive reasoning that is Intuitive + Human, and can be exercised to "the extremes" without ruining the user's overall aptitudes and faculties.
Perhaps the inverse problem is more apropos: Who *isn't* using mental shortcuts to avoid debate? Which factions are open minded in these tribal days?
Back when I did politics in Hippyland East (Asheville, NC), the environmental activists were the most open to alternative solutions, especially those from Environmental Defense. From what I see on the net these days, I suspect that the open minded are losing ground to the pure fanatics, but I would still try the green angle were I to do politics on the Left Coast.
Perhaps one tell would be: Who has a sense of humor? Or more precisely, who has humor that involves something other than sneering?
Ironically, the remnants of the old Moral Majority come to mind. The Babylon Bee has become my favorite source of humor these days. But even before the Bee, I noticed that something had changed bigly when I saw how warmly Gary Johnson was received when he spoke at Liberty University.
Perhaps not exactly propaganda, but I would note that many factions have mental shortcuts by which they "win" arguments without addressing them. Here are a few tells for when thinking ends:
For libertarians, "That violates the Principle of Non Aggression."
For Austrian school economists, "That's Scientism."
For Roman Catholics, giving a label to a theological argument stands in for refutation. "That's the ____ heresy." (Austrian school economists often do something similar with Latin phrases or naming philosophical schools.)
Years back, for social conservatives, a toking motion indicated end of argument.
For classical Marxists something about Class Interest -- usually involving the hard to spell B word -- served as a universal refutation.
Today's Left does something similar using "racist" or "patriarchy."
The conspiracy oriented alt right uses nested parentheses.
A certain dark lord ends all debate by calling people he disagrees with "gammas."
I think when you're discussing something with someone within your faction using mental shortcuts makes sense. Using something from this article many of the examples you point to involve pointing out an underlying assumption that you ostensibly share. I don't even know that it is mostly a cognitive shortcut vs. a communication shortcut. Communication being rate limited within a subculture certain assertions can be effective and communicating an entire argument with a word or two. This isn't appropriate discussing something with someone outside your subculture however. Not all of you examples fall into this category, but some do. The last 3 (social conservatism, Marxism, and the modern Left) are all indicative of something different, namely using polylogism to dismiss arguments out of hand. This is unforgivable bullshit IMHO.
Consider, do you present as a Roman Catholic Austrian school libertarian in conversation? If so, people might just assume you share enough assumptions such that the examples you provide are meant to facilitate communication as opposed to end an argument. Alternatively you could just have experience arguing with dipshits that expect you to share your priors without attempting to persuade you of such.
I had presented as a libertarian back in the day. Waffling between consequentialist (liberty makes things better) and axiomatic arguments (all aggression is a priori unacceptable) is endemic within that community. I did it myself when I was younger and knew everything.
My run ins with the Austrian Economics community stem from past attempts at making the Libertarian Party broad based enough to win elections. And yes,, there are a lot of dipshits in the Austrian Economics community. It's a tradition going back to Rothbard.
As for Roman Catholics, I never presented myself as such. The categorizing is just a way to hand wave away an argument.
I'm perhaps a younger version of you ideologically. I think appreciation for the NAP is the broadest based foundation for a common morality, and more or less consistent with the spirit of Americanism. I've been reading your stuff and agree with everything so far. The thing is, applying the NAP gets way less black and white when you're dealing with complex systems where certain policies could be construed as aggressive, especially internationally such that many policies that might seem coercive could really be considered defensive. I don't know that I would feel comfortable abandoning the NAP as it is central to my own morality, but I'm curious to see the full extent of where you're at given our objectives seem to be identical.
And there are other problems with NAP, some of which were even recognized by Rothbard. For example, few if any pieces of real estate have a clear title. Our current wealth distribution is tainted by past injustices. Going to a regime of pure property rights would lock in the effects of past aggressions. On this, the Woke have a bit of a point.
But trashing all property rights in the name of cleaning up past injustices has a huge bundle of problems. Property rights are very useful.
In a future Rule, I will propose just giving every natural born citizen a glop of startup cash upon reaching 19 years old. For well off parents, this would be a tax rebate. For the descendants of the previously persecuted, it would be compensation. For the underserving, it would be a reason to be glad to be an American.
And for reactionaries, it would be a replacement for federal student aid! Right now, the federal government is by far the biggest customer of nearly every university, public or private. As such, meeting diversity quotas is more important than educating students. Federal control of student aid and loans is the ultimate source of Wokeness. It is the fuel for Gender Studies, Critical Race Theory, and Whinocracy in general. If we replace federal student aid with a Universal Inheritance, it would be a boon to liberty even if it costs a half trillion/year.
But it violates the crap out of NAP -- even if the net effect is less total windfall from aggression.
You can't rectify the wrongs of the past without destroying the incentives that lead to peace and prosperity. The idea of a statute of limitations makes sense to me and isn't necessarily inconsistent with the NAP. What limits are there to all of the good ideas for things you can do should you control the printing press? To me this recommendation seems like the call of Boromir to use the one ring. I don't think we get out of this mess without casting the fed and dirigism in general into the fires of mount doom.
Initiating force is bad. But even if you take it as the only bad, there are serious problems with the Zero Aggression Principle. If you abolish the government next Thursday, you will abolish a crap ton of aggression, and invite 17.3 crap tons of new aggression. Rule by gangs, civil war, and/or foreign invasion are not pretty. I'd argue that they are even uglier than the US tax code.
And this is what got many Austrian School economists panties in a wad: with the argument above, I just made a value judgment on behalf of others without Revealed Preference. And in the paragraph above I dared to use a number! SCIENTISM!!! (And yes, my real identity was attacked on the Mises Foundation web site back in the day.) All the way back to a Rothbard paper published in the 50s, the position of many Austrians is one of silly ceteris paribus reasoning.
--
My reading of history indicates that freedom can be quickly lost and requires special conditions to be restored. Atlas Shrugged is an interesting novel, but the John Galt strategy is a terrible one.
My current goal is thus to restore freedoms recently lost and restore the sanctity of the Constitution and the American Way. With some sanity and rule of law restored, we can then safely play with incremental improvements in liberty. (Data point: we came very close to having a third party president right after the Cold War ended. To make things better, make them better. This is the supremely anti-Marxist strategy.)
I think there is a lot of power in how we go about making things better. Adhering to principle when executing means ensures you maintain a moral high ground. This is a real psychological phenomenon that corresponds to tangible benefits in human performance and cognition. Our enemies believe the ends justify the means and why wouldn't they? They believe achieving Utopia is possible. Since there is no Utopia to achieve, the way that we conduct ourselves and how we live our lives and pursue our ends are every bit as critical as the ends we strive for. Also, as I hinted at above, I do believe this is a practical reason for adhering to principles in how they relate to incentives. I will agree that violations of the NAP that are undeniably Constitutional and consistent with Americanism would have to be accepted (begrudgingly), but I can't think of any. This is perhaps something I hope to learn from you, because if there are such issues, I will need to address them personally at the very least.
If we were setting up a new government for our new colony on a virgin planet, I too would worry about precedents.
If we were victorious freedom fighters writing a new constitution while the satanic socialists squeal at their free helicopter rides, I *might* share your concerns, but see possible reasons why now below.
But we are not in such august conditions. We live in a collapsing constitutional republic, with enemies who are plagiarizing the Nazi playbook. The precedents that they are setting far exceed any that I might set by playing realistic politics. And while shooting socialist in self-defense technically satisfies the Non Aggression Principle, playing Realpolitik in lieu of civil war strikes me as the more peaceful approach.
But there is a further moral dimension, one that is apropos even if we were victorious revolutionaries (or reactionaries): there is no completely clear title on any property in this country or any other. What people today own is a combination of rightful earnings and a wide assortment of crimes and subsidies. Most land in this country was not properly purchased from the earlier owners, and even other owners were often the inheritors of land gained via violent conquest. The land distribution also reflects the effects of slavery, New Deal programs, and other assorted injustices. Our wealth distribution reflects subsidies to the Already Rich and penalties for those trying to earn their way upwards.
And where do you draw the line between private property and expected subsidy? Are government bonds private property? How about Social Security payments? How about municipal bonds?
Many libertarian proposals for reneging on government debts constitute enormous retroactive taxes on those too old to pay them.
My conscience is more readily satisfied by my compromise measures than by locking in NAP with a questionable property distribution.
---
With that said, I absolutely agree that we need to move to a regime where people have more skin in the game. Actions should have consequences. Maybe we should buffer the consequences a bit, but there needs to be proper feedback.
Our piecemeal system of reparations through lawsuit lottery violates this principle bigly! It pays people to whine. It pays non whites to be angry racists. One shot reparations based on percent slave ancestry would be far superior., even if expensive. We need to put this crap behind us.
----
Here's a real world example, one I wrote a paper on as an undergraduate taking a class in Soviet history. There were two Russian revolutions in 1917. The first revolutionary government was led by Alexander Kerensky. Kerensky was a big believer in Process and Rule of Law. He was trying to have his provisional government do very little until there was a proper constitutional convention. Meanwhile, the Marxists were chanting "Land. Bread. Peace."
The Marxists won. Kerensky goofed up. Indeed, even without the Marxists, the proper time for land reform would have been BEFORE setting up a proper constitutional government. Better to approximate justice through dictatorial means before locking in the rule of law.
----
We, on the other hand, have a zombie republic lurching along. We cannot do a brute force reset of a revolutionary committee or temporary dictatorship, nor can we get away with suddenly obeying the letter of Constitutional Law. An iterative process is in order.
And when making iterations, we much take into account the system that IS, vs. any ideal system. For example, even if Free Trade is ideal, lowering tariffs is a terrible policy! Given our existing domestic taxes and regulations, nominal Free Trade is actually Subsidized Outsourcing.
Telling factory workers that unions should be voluntary when we have deficits subsidizing the Already Rich, trade policy which subsidizes outsourcing, tax policies which provide enormous loopholes to billionaires, tax and regulatory policies which encourage monopolies, ... doesn't work.
---
And go read our host's back catalog. In one of his earlier articles he had a wonderful take on Ayn Rand's philosophy. Not only do we need to incrementalate towards our target utopia, we need to adjust what that utopia to something human compatible.
I find it helpful to treat all assertions as arguments made by advocates. A good advocate will provide the support for his arguments. A better advocate will also pre-rebut the most compelling expected rebuttals. Most assertions fail this test, causing them to be suspect right off the bat. Then, you go on to review the rebuttals and apply the same test thereto. Finally, you see how well the original assertor responds to the rebuttals. Often there’s no attempt to respond dialectically or at all and the jump is made to the rhetorical, as you point out.
The one distinction I’d make is that using rhetorical arguments are not always ad hominem. I don’t consider ridicule necessarily to be ad hominem. Ridicule is often effective rhetoric provided a dialectical argument is included. Often though it’s rhetoric from start to finish.
The propaganda you describe has always informed my instincts that something untoward was going on, but I had never connected the dots to realize what seems so obvious in retrospect. There's always some evidence, it just might not be persuasive. This is very helpful to acknowledge, thanks!
The steps employed by myself personally:
1] Assume that the "Story"/Narrative/Article read, listened to, etc is Correct.
2] Write down a list of implications (Direct) that are implied by [1].
3] From [2], create a flowchart, mind-map, etc for the most salient implications and their immediate corollaries and implications. This now is the list of "Indirect" implications of our original "Story", Article, etc.
4] Use Reductio Ad Absurdum-centric Abductive Reasoning to whittle down the models built in [3].
5] If there has been a sufficient whittling down; then those salient implications in [2] can now also be destroyed.
6] If [5] is successful, then the original "Story", Narrative, etc can be tossed into the Bin.
Intuitively, some of these steps take a few minutes and seconds at best (especially if the topic is sufficiently trivial). For more nuanced topics and subject areas of greater specialization; a few hours and days may suffice.
Overall, the main tools are Abductive Reasoning coupled with Organizational maps (sometimes mental, sometimes written) and making these two collide.
I've written about the value of abductive reasoning elsewhere (on my gaming blog). I think it's the most important tool in the mental arsenal. It is a tragedy (or perhaps a purposeful evil) that it is not taught or understood more widely.
"Educators" say that they don't cover it early on because the other forms of reasoning (i.e. Inductive and Deductive) need to be covered first so that pupils have good know-how when later on tackling Abductive thinking. But this is just Arse-backwards.
The intuitive framework is neither Deductive (as the philosophers of old claim) nor Inductive (as "natural philosophers"/scientists today claim), but rather Abductive. The Theologian correctly realized this eons ago, for he knew that it was God Almighty who fashioned Man to look not only at "wholes" but also in chunks, which he could then render intelligible if need be.
Deductive systems are mental prisons when exercised to the extreme; as its most ardent users become trapped in the forms, abstracts, etc. Inductive systems meanwhile render their most fervent users into "post Hoc ergo procter hoc" imbeciles. The entire enterprise of "Science" (Natural Philosophers GTOW) is devolving into this all the time.
It is only Abductive reasoning that is Intuitive + Human, and can be exercised to "the extremes" without ruining the user's overall aptitudes and faculties.
Perhaps the inverse problem is more apropos: Who *isn't* using mental shortcuts to avoid debate? Which factions are open minded in these tribal days?
Back when I did politics in Hippyland East (Asheville, NC), the environmental activists were the most open to alternative solutions, especially those from Environmental Defense. From what I see on the net these days, I suspect that the open minded are losing ground to the pure fanatics, but I would still try the green angle were I to do politics on the Left Coast.
Perhaps one tell would be: Who has a sense of humor? Or more precisely, who has humor that involves something other than sneering?
Ironically, the remnants of the old Moral Majority come to mind. The Babylon Bee has become my favorite source of humor these days. But even before the Bee, I noticed that something had changed bigly when I saw how warmly Gary Johnson was received when he spoke at Liberty University.
Perhaps not exactly propaganda, but I would note that many factions have mental shortcuts by which they "win" arguments without addressing them. Here are a few tells for when thinking ends:
For libertarians, "That violates the Principle of Non Aggression."
For Austrian school economists, "That's Scientism."
For Roman Catholics, giving a label to a theological argument stands in for refutation. "That's the ____ heresy." (Austrian school economists often do something similar with Latin phrases or naming philosophical schools.)
Years back, for social conservatives, a toking motion indicated end of argument.
For classical Marxists something about Class Interest -- usually involving the hard to spell B word -- served as a universal refutation.
Today's Left does something similar using "racist" or "patriarchy."
The conspiracy oriented alt right uses nested parentheses.
A certain dark lord ends all debate by calling people he disagrees with "gammas."
I think when you're discussing something with someone within your faction using mental shortcuts makes sense. Using something from this article many of the examples you point to involve pointing out an underlying assumption that you ostensibly share. I don't even know that it is mostly a cognitive shortcut vs. a communication shortcut. Communication being rate limited within a subculture certain assertions can be effective and communicating an entire argument with a word or two. This isn't appropriate discussing something with someone outside your subculture however. Not all of you examples fall into this category, but some do. The last 3 (social conservatism, Marxism, and the modern Left) are all indicative of something different, namely using polylogism to dismiss arguments out of hand. This is unforgivable bullshit IMHO.
Consider, do you present as a Roman Catholic Austrian school libertarian in conversation? If so, people might just assume you share enough assumptions such that the examples you provide are meant to facilitate communication as opposed to end an argument. Alternatively you could just have experience arguing with dipshits that expect you to share your priors without attempting to persuade you of such.
I had presented as a libertarian back in the day. Waffling between consequentialist (liberty makes things better) and axiomatic arguments (all aggression is a priori unacceptable) is endemic within that community. I did it myself when I was younger and knew everything.
My run ins with the Austrian Economics community stem from past attempts at making the Libertarian Party broad based enough to win elections. And yes,, there are a lot of dipshits in the Austrian Economics community. It's a tradition going back to Rothbard.
As for Roman Catholics, I never presented myself as such. The categorizing is just a way to hand wave away an argument.
I'm perhaps a younger version of you ideologically. I think appreciation for the NAP is the broadest based foundation for a common morality, and more or less consistent with the spirit of Americanism. I've been reading your stuff and agree with everything so far. The thing is, applying the NAP gets way less black and white when you're dealing with complex systems where certain policies could be construed as aggressive, especially internationally such that many policies that might seem coercive could really be considered defensive. I don't know that I would feel comfortable abandoning the NAP as it is central to my own morality, but I'm curious to see the full extent of where you're at given our objectives seem to be identical.
And there are other problems with NAP, some of which were even recognized by Rothbard. For example, few if any pieces of real estate have a clear title. Our current wealth distribution is tainted by past injustices. Going to a regime of pure property rights would lock in the effects of past aggressions. On this, the Woke have a bit of a point.
But trashing all property rights in the name of cleaning up past injustices has a huge bundle of problems. Property rights are very useful.
In a future Rule, I will propose just giving every natural born citizen a glop of startup cash upon reaching 19 years old. For well off parents, this would be a tax rebate. For the descendants of the previously persecuted, it would be compensation. For the underserving, it would be a reason to be glad to be an American.
And for reactionaries, it would be a replacement for federal student aid! Right now, the federal government is by far the biggest customer of nearly every university, public or private. As such, meeting diversity quotas is more important than educating students. Federal control of student aid and loans is the ultimate source of Wokeness. It is the fuel for Gender Studies, Critical Race Theory, and Whinocracy in general. If we replace federal student aid with a Universal Inheritance, it would be a boon to liberty even if it costs a half trillion/year.
But it violates the crap out of NAP -- even if the net effect is less total windfall from aggression.
You can't rectify the wrongs of the past without destroying the incentives that lead to peace and prosperity. The idea of a statute of limitations makes sense to me and isn't necessarily inconsistent with the NAP. What limits are there to all of the good ideas for things you can do should you control the printing press? To me this recommendation seems like the call of Boromir to use the one ring. I don't think we get out of this mess without casting the fed and dirigism in general into the fires of mount doom.
Initiating force is bad. But even if you take it as the only bad, there are serious problems with the Zero Aggression Principle. If you abolish the government next Thursday, you will abolish a crap ton of aggression, and invite 17.3 crap tons of new aggression. Rule by gangs, civil war, and/or foreign invasion are not pretty. I'd argue that they are even uglier than the US tax code.
And this is what got many Austrian School economists panties in a wad: with the argument above, I just made a value judgment on behalf of others without Revealed Preference. And in the paragraph above I dared to use a number! SCIENTISM!!! (And yes, my real identity was attacked on the Mises Foundation web site back in the day.) All the way back to a Rothbard paper published in the 50s, the position of many Austrians is one of silly ceteris paribus reasoning.
--
My reading of history indicates that freedom can be quickly lost and requires special conditions to be restored. Atlas Shrugged is an interesting novel, but the John Galt strategy is a terrible one.
My current goal is thus to restore freedoms recently lost and restore the sanctity of the Constitution and the American Way. With some sanity and rule of law restored, we can then safely play with incremental improvements in liberty. (Data point: we came very close to having a third party president right after the Cold War ended. To make things better, make them better. This is the supremely anti-Marxist strategy.)
I think there is a lot of power in how we go about making things better. Adhering to principle when executing means ensures you maintain a moral high ground. This is a real psychological phenomenon that corresponds to tangible benefits in human performance and cognition. Our enemies believe the ends justify the means and why wouldn't they? They believe achieving Utopia is possible. Since there is no Utopia to achieve, the way that we conduct ourselves and how we live our lives and pursue our ends are every bit as critical as the ends we strive for. Also, as I hinted at above, I do believe this is a practical reason for adhering to principles in how they relate to incentives. I will agree that violations of the NAP that are undeniably Constitutional and consistent with Americanism would have to be accepted (begrudgingly), but I can't think of any. This is perhaps something I hope to learn from you, because if there are such issues, I will need to address them personally at the very least.
If we were setting up a new government for our new colony on a virgin planet, I too would worry about precedents.
If we were victorious freedom fighters writing a new constitution while the satanic socialists squeal at their free helicopter rides, I *might* share your concerns, but see possible reasons why now below.
But we are not in such august conditions. We live in a collapsing constitutional republic, with enemies who are plagiarizing the Nazi playbook. The precedents that they are setting far exceed any that I might set by playing realistic politics. And while shooting socialist in self-defense technically satisfies the Non Aggression Principle, playing Realpolitik in lieu of civil war strikes me as the more peaceful approach.
But there is a further moral dimension, one that is apropos even if we were victorious revolutionaries (or reactionaries): there is no completely clear title on any property in this country or any other. What people today own is a combination of rightful earnings and a wide assortment of crimes and subsidies. Most land in this country was not properly purchased from the earlier owners, and even other owners were often the inheritors of land gained via violent conquest. The land distribution also reflects the effects of slavery, New Deal programs, and other assorted injustices. Our wealth distribution reflects subsidies to the Already Rich and penalties for those trying to earn their way upwards.
And where do you draw the line between private property and expected subsidy? Are government bonds private property? How about Social Security payments? How about municipal bonds?
Many libertarian proposals for reneging on government debts constitute enormous retroactive taxes on those too old to pay them.
My conscience is more readily satisfied by my compromise measures than by locking in NAP with a questionable property distribution.
---
With that said, I absolutely agree that we need to move to a regime where people have more skin in the game. Actions should have consequences. Maybe we should buffer the consequences a bit, but there needs to be proper feedback.
Our piecemeal system of reparations through lawsuit lottery violates this principle bigly! It pays people to whine. It pays non whites to be angry racists. One shot reparations based on percent slave ancestry would be far superior., even if expensive. We need to put this crap behind us.
----
Here's a real world example, one I wrote a paper on as an undergraduate taking a class in Soviet history. There were two Russian revolutions in 1917. The first revolutionary government was led by Alexander Kerensky. Kerensky was a big believer in Process and Rule of Law. He was trying to have his provisional government do very little until there was a proper constitutional convention. Meanwhile, the Marxists were chanting "Land. Bread. Peace."
The Marxists won. Kerensky goofed up. Indeed, even without the Marxists, the proper time for land reform would have been BEFORE setting up a proper constitutional government. Better to approximate justice through dictatorial means before locking in the rule of law.
----
We, on the other hand, have a zombie republic lurching along. We cannot do a brute force reset of a revolutionary committee or temporary dictatorship, nor can we get away with suddenly obeying the letter of Constitutional Law. An iterative process is in order.
And when making iterations, we much take into account the system that IS, vs. any ideal system. For example, even if Free Trade is ideal, lowering tariffs is a terrible policy! Given our existing domestic taxes and regulations, nominal Free Trade is actually Subsidized Outsourcing.
https://rulesforreactionaries.substack.com/p/free-trade-isnt
Telling factory workers that unions should be voluntary when we have deficits subsidizing the Already Rich, trade policy which subsidizes outsourcing, tax policies which provide enormous loopholes to billionaires, tax and regulatory policies which encourage monopolies, ... doesn't work.
---
And go read our host's back catalog. In one of his earlier articles he had a wonderful take on Ayn Rand's philosophy. Not only do we need to incrementalate towards our target utopia, we need to adjust what that utopia to something human compatible.
I find it helpful to treat all assertions as arguments made by advocates. A good advocate will provide the support for his arguments. A better advocate will also pre-rebut the most compelling expected rebuttals. Most assertions fail this test, causing them to be suspect right off the bat. Then, you go on to review the rebuttals and apply the same test thereto. Finally, you see how well the original assertor responds to the rebuttals. Often there’s no attempt to respond dialectically or at all and the jump is made to the rhetorical, as you point out.
The one distinction I’d make is that using rhetorical arguments are not always ad hominem. I don’t consider ridicule necessarily to be ad hominem. Ridicule is often effective rhetoric provided a dialectical argument is included. Often though it’s rhetoric from start to finish.
The propaganda you describe has always informed my instincts that something untoward was going on, but I had never connected the dots to realize what seems so obvious in retrospect. There's always some evidence, it just might not be persuasive. This is very helpful to acknowledge, thanks!