Hello, Idiot!
 |
 |
The introduction to the book is called “How To Use this Book”. At first glance, that might seem like an odd way of phrasing it. I don’t need to be told how to use most books, the obvious exception being instruction manuals. And that’s exactly what Beck is going for here: “I hardly ever read instruction manuals.” Policy books are common, but they aren’t often cast as instruction manuals. What does that imply?
When a person instructs someone, they impart information to them. The instructor is knowledgeable and, importantly, right. The pupil is ignorant. The learned person educates the uninformed. That’s the premise of AwI. Contrast that approach with one more typical of policy texts: persuasion. In that context, the author’s correctness isn’t to be presumed but earned by valid argument.
I admit this is a subtle point, but it is important. First, it is carried throughout the entire text. The correctness of Beck’s position is not to be legitimately questioned. This unburdens it from the rigors of valid argument and makes the fallacies deployed by him seem all that less pernicious. Second, it constitutes a form of appeal to authority, the authority being Beck himself.
The Introduction also gives us our first glimpse of Beck-as-Idiot:
Say hello to the real star of this book: our idiot Friend. As you start reading, you’ll quickly notice that each chapter is formatted as an ongoing conversation between the idiot and me…The idiot’s arguments will always appear in the same bold red font you see above, and my (winning) responses follow.
Here’s the first bit of idiot text:
“HEY, WAIT A SECOND! WHO ARE YOU CALLING AN IDIOT! I THOUGHT YOU WERE MR. COMMON SENSE, NON-PARTISAN, BOTH-PARTIES-STINK … NOW YOU THINK THAT ALL DEMOCRATS ARE IDIOTS?!”
Why, no, he replies. Only people who disagree with me are idiots and there are plenty who are democrats, but also “Republicans, Libertarians, Communists, Anarchists, and members of just about every other political party you can imagine.” And there it is. The idiot argues that Beck claims “all Democrats are idiots”, and so he gets to reply that only some of them are. Classic straw man. What’s worse, from the syllogism he himself puts forward, the only Democrats who aren’t idiots are the ones that agree with him.
Finally, the Introduction closes with a comment about “facts”. As Beck says, “opinions should end where facts begin”. Beck trumpets the 25 pages of citations at the end of the book. Just what constitutes a “fact” worthy of trumping opinion is a sticky point. But that’s for another post on another day.
Next up: Capitalism!
