[lbo-talk] holy moly

[Sean Andrews]

> [WS:] It sounds like a more polite version of Ward Churchill's "little
> Eichmans" thesis.  The problem with such arguments is their fundamental
> logical fallacy resulting from the fact that they are ex post facto
> rationalizations and attributions of responsibility, instead of empirical
> determinations of actual responsibility.  They are really chasing chimeras
> and figments of imagination, untethered by any empirical evidence of lack
> thereof.

Ummm except that there are huge factories that manufacture these
weapons (a few of which he visits in the course of the film) that
legislators try to get built in their districts and at which people
decide to work.  I'm a bit confused about how we're supposed to be
personally responsible for all our economic choices, to take personal
responsibility for our actions, etc. but when those choices lead to
people getting bombed, the connection between those two things is off.
 It's a fairly empirical connection, so far as I can tell.  (Churchill
isn't relevant at all to the conversation except as a tool of ad
hominem attack in your argument) Certainly the degrees of
responsiblity increase as one heads up the ladder, and the other
options chosen between are certainly relevant, but they hardly make
drawing some lines between competing interests and end results
irrelevant. In any case, that isn't the argument of the film.

> To claim a person's responsibility of the sort that you claim, you need to
> show two things: (i) that the person had the capacity of making or at least
> influencing actual decisions that led to the outcome in question (as opposed
> to being a mere spectator or even a cheerleader); and (ii) that the person
> had, or should have had, knowledge of the negative outcome of that decision.
>

Have you seen the film?  As with many documentaries, it isn't really
making one argument and the discussion of defense industry is only one
part of it.  Further, he's not blaming anyone, he's just showing that
it is a deeply embedded system that would be difficult to change now
that it's in place. As for whether one is responsible if one helps to
make bombs that get dropped by US warplanes or guns sold to warlords,
I guess that's a moral burden those folks work out for themselves.
But I don't think the logical backflips you've just performed do a
whole lot to completely exonerate anyone.

Again, none of this is the point of the film. Just trying to clarify
the two sentences I wrote above that have led you to the lengthy
thesis for why it is a suspect film with a fallacious argument.  The
film is supposed to give viewers an idea of just how extensive the
military-industrial connection is to US policy making--and our
everyday lives. I don't think there's all that much that's contentious
about that except, perhaps, the charming faith it seems to have that
there is still some democratic (small "d") oversight that could change
it.