Eric Johnson
Jul 25, 2017 · 2 min read

I don’t know why Medium thinks that I might be interested in reading your posts. You don’t appear to be advancing any arguments, just propaganda dressed up as argument. Kudos for using a useful rhetorical structure, though.

Extraordinary claims that the NYT and Washington Post, and many other national news outlets, are getting all these stories wrong — that deserves extraordinary evidence. Extraordinary claims that all of the US intelligence agencies are all lying, and that there wasn’t Russian attempts to tamper with our election — deserves extraordinary evidence. You provide none.

In fact, we have evidence of malfeasance that somehow relates to Russia. We don’t know, yet, whether laws were broken, and whether that was accidental or deliberate. We know for sure that the Trump campaign violated decades of norms about interacting with foreign powers, by failing to contact the FBI when approached. Donald Trump Jr. tweeted his emails about meeting with Russia. At least thirty states have discovered attempts to attack some part of the voting process. Other members of the campaign have taken large chunks of money from Russian sources strongly connected to leadership there. Donald Trump himself lies all the time, and we suspect has taken large loans from Russia (gee, if only he would release his tax returns, and then we’d know). That’s just the stuff that I can think up off the top of my head, that happens to be public, not wanting to waste time on this. Does that make any of what Donald Trump or his campaign staff has done a crime? We don’t know. That’s what an investigation is for. Attempts to stop that investigation are a crime.

Let’s see, ways to avoid substantive arguments:

  • Restate points that are unproven until audience is convinced it must be true (“There’s zero proof of that”) (check)
  • Claim the people who question your viewpoint are irrational, or delusional, or mentally ill (allege name-calling on the part of the opposing side of the argument, name-calling with “Russiagater”) (check)
  • Provide a misleading and or squishy label/metaphor for the question under discussion (“Russia-gate”), so as to lead the argument away from the actual questions (how did members of the Trump campaign interact with Russian actors? How did Russia try to influence the election?)(check)
  • Redefine the a term so as to make argument impossible (“hard verifiable evidence”) (check)
  • Change the subject, either subtly, or overtly. (“claims that the White House has been taken over by the Kremlin”, Syria, WMD) (check)
  • Play the victim (endless string of insults from the opposite side of the argument) (check).
  • Make up facts to build an alternate narrative (investigation has been going on for a long time, vs. reality that previous efforts involved intelligence gathering, not an investigation). Note that not a single claim you make has references to external, reliable sources. (check)

What ever your articles are, they aren’t journalism.

    Eric Johnson

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