[lbo-talk] (The 23%...)

[Eric Beck]

On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 12:15 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Feb 24, 2012, at 1:09 PM, Wojtek S wrote:
>
>>  And the whole direct action
>> mystique that his ethnographic accounts created was gone - it turned
>> into yet another variation on the All-American self-made mythology.
>
> And it evidently leads to fanciful versions of history, where the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were caused by the largely nonexistent successes of Seattle etc. And the antinuke movement led to the wars in Central America. And civil rights led to Vietnam. 9/11, PNAC, the Sandinistas, the Commies disappear. This is a fresh take on American exceptionalism.

Is there are name for this rhetorical device, the one where you
summarize your opponent's views as the thing that you know would be
most diametrically opposed to what they expressly believe? There
should be.

I'm not sure I buy Graeber's fanciful version of history either--seems
like the term overdetermination was created for just this purpose--but
your counterfactuals are also less than convincing: are the manifest
thoughts of elites really what motivates them, and can the actions of
states really be reduced to how certain individuals think about the
world? I say no.