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Congrats, Occupiers -- You ARE the 1%!

No. That's false. Your thread title is false unless you use a different meaning of "the 1%" than is conventional. This is the fallacy of equivocation.

ETA: And since equivocation depends on an ambiguous term, I've also already shown why it's a problem. Being 1% of the population for a political protest is a very high number. Being 1% and controlling a disproportionately large amount of the nation's wealth is a very low number.

Well, there's no sense in us going around about this.

Once you read the OP, the meaning of the headline is quite clear and there is no equivocation.

And since nobody would believe, even for a minute, that the thread would reveal that the OWS protestors had somehow become multi-millionaires, the idea is ridiculous even at first glance.

Of course, you can persist in believing whatever you care to believe, but you might want to brush up on your understanding of rhetorical fallacies.
 
What OWS is doing is to get their political statements associated in the public's mind with radicalism, disruption, chaos, and lack of responsibility.

Are you sure about that?

Personally, I don't know anyone who feels radicalism, disruption, chaos and lack of responsibility is the answer. Maybe you've met some weird people, no?
 
Since there are no such disclosure laws

That's not the fault of the court, nor is it the court's role to try to remedy that by discarding the constitution. Such laws can be written, but that's not what the OWS people are demanding, they're demanding Citizens United actually be overturned. Which means discarding the first amendment.
 
dc1971 said:
What OWS is doing is to get their political statements associated in the public's mind with radicalism, disruption, chaos, and lack of responsibility.

Are you sure about that?

Personally, I don't know anyone who feels radicalism, disruption, chaos and lack of responsibility is the answer. Maybe you've met some weird people, no?
A bunch of people camping in a public park in protest of big business influencing government doesn't exactly register in the public's mind with radicalism, disruption, chaos, and lack of responsibility. No matter how much some people want it to.
 
That's not the fault of the court, nor is it the court's role to try to remedy that by discarding the constitution. Such laws can be written, but that's not what the OWS people are demanding, they're demanding Citizens United actually be overturned. Which means discarding the first amendment.

Their decision allows for this nondisclosure, whether they intended it or not. I don't agree that they based their decision on Constitutional merit and neither do I agree that the first amendment would be threatened if the case was overturned.
 
Their decision allows for this nondisclosure, whether they intended it or not. I don't agree that they based their decision on Constitutional merit and neither do I agree that the first amendment would be threatened if the case was overturned.
Have you ever read the 1st Amendment?

"Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech"

And why was the Citizens United ruling decided the way it was? Because Congress passed a law abridging the freedom of speech. And not just any speech, but political speech, which should be the most protected kind of speech.

Are you really so anxious to silence those who disagree with you politically that you want to repeal the 1st Amendment at worst or render it meaningless at best?
 
Once you read the OP, the meaning of the headline is quite clear and there is no equivocation.
That's false. Even though the OP explains what you mean, the thread title still is an example of equivocation. The fact that you've introduced an ambiguity is the fallacy I'm talking about.

And since nobody would believe, even for a minute, that the thread would reveal that the OWS protestors had somehow become multi-millionaires, the idea is ridiculous even at first glance.
You think no one has made claims that the OWS protesters are somehow "the 1%" wrt wealth?
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=222818
and
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=223727
The first time I read your thread title, I thought you were trying to make a similar point.


Of course, you can persist in believing whatever you care to believe, but you might want to brush up on your understanding of rhetorical fallacies.
It's not a matter of my having a belief. Referring to "the 1%" in the context of the OWS protesters doesn't mean what you are saying. You're using an unconventional meaning. This is equivocation. At the very least, it makes your thread title misleading. Beyond that it gives your thread an extra "zing" that would be absent if you didn't use this. If what you're saying isn't that they themselves are somehow "the 1%", you lose the added point of accusing them of some sort of hypocrisy--of having become the very thing they're protesting.
 
Since there are no such disclosure laws, it allows for the anonymity.

In the First Amendment freedom of speech, there is no guarantee of anonymity. So I think Congress should pass stricter disclosure laws. (As mentioned, the Citizens United decision did not find disclosure laws unconstitutional.)
 
Watching the beautiful lawns and landscaping transformed into mud and garbage has been rather frustrating to this onlooker.
 
Watching the beautiful lawns and landscaping transformed into mud and garbage has been rather frustrating to this onlooker.

Certainly, damaging public property is wrong and they shouldn't be doing it, regardless of any "good intent."
 
Especially since that may legally make them a riot, according to the US Code.
 
That's false. Even though the OP explains what you mean, the thread title still is an example of equivocation.

No, it's not.

You need to study your tropes and fallacies.

The headline is not ambiguous, it's opaque. Obviously, the Occupy protestors have not inherited billions of dollars and become the wealthiest 1% of Americans. So the meaning can't be literal, but there's no way to figure out from the headline alone what the term "1%" actually does refer to.

When you read the OP, the meaning is clearly stated, so there's still no ambiguity.

Here are a couple of examples of actual equivocation from the current news....

Romney put up a campaign vid in which Obama is heard saying "If we talk about the economy we are going to lose" (or something close to that). Trouble is, that was Obama quoting a McCain staffer.

That's equivocation, because it gives the unmistakable impression that it's a direct quote from Obama, not Obama quoting someone else.

Romney also ridiculed Solyndra by saying they "had robots that whistled Disney songs... I'm not kidding".

No, he wasn't kidding, but he gave the impression that they had something like Disney World's animatronic figures hanging out around the office for entertainment.

In fact, the robots were industrial robots, and the tunes they played served as alarms to the human workers when something needed seeing to.

That's equivocation, making people think one thing when the reality is another by using ambiguous language (e.g. "robot" and "whistle") and leaving out information that would lead people to the correct conclusion while stressing points that lead them to the wrong conclusion.

I haven't done that.

You're using an unconventional meaning. This is equivocation. At the very least, it makes your thread title misleading. Beyond that it gives your thread an extra "zing" that would be absent if you didn't use this. If what you're saying isn't that they themselves are somehow "the 1%", you lose the added point of accusing them of some sort of hypocrisy--of having become the very thing they're protesting.

Using a word in a non-conventional sense is not, in fact, equivocation. That should be clear by now.

The first time I heard someone say "Man, he was Yahweh on the field today", it was certainly an unconventional use of "Yahweh" but I knew exactly what he meant and never thought he believed the guy was literally God.

I hadn't seen those other threads you had read, so I can understand if you saw the header and thought "Here's another one of those", but that's what you're bringing to the table, so you can't accuse me of intending it.

And once you saw what I did mean, then it surely would make no sense to accuse me of equivocation.

What happened was that you made a wrong assumption from the header which was corrected when you read the OP.

That's all.
 
Are you sure about that?

Personally, I don't know anyone who feels radicalism, disruption, chaos and lack of responsibility is the answer. Maybe you've met some weird people, no?

I didn't say that they think that's the answer.

What I'm saying is that by their appearance and behavior, they're causing their issues to be associated with all that in the minds of much of the general public.

It's a tremendous messaging mistake, and a fundamental tactical error.

The Tea Party did not make that error, and even though they had nutty ideas and an unrealistic worldview, they managed to get candidates elected to federal office to push their agenda.

How are the Occupiers working to get their issues addressed, besides being generally obnoxious until someone else does something for them?

I sure hope that they are working for that, but if they are, it's not making nearly as much news as their bad behavior is making.
 
A bunch of people camping in a public park in protest of big business influencing government doesn't exactly register in the public's mind with radicalism, disruption, chaos, and lack of responsibility. No matter how much some people want it to.

Are you forgetting that "some people" are the public, too?

Tell you what, let's you and me do the rounds of the bars and ask people "So what do you think of those Occupy Wall Street protestors?"

Do you really believe that everyone's going to say, "Why, I love those scrappy little protestors, they're great!"?

I can tell you first-hand, that's not what people are saying around here.
 
Watching the beautiful lawns and landscaping transformed into mud and garbage has been rather frustrating to this onlooker.

You must be one of those "some people" Robrob was referring to.
 
Are you forgetting that "some people" are the public, too?

Tell you what, let's you and me do the rounds of the bars and ask people "So what do you think of those Occupy Wall Street protestors?"

Do you really believe that everyone's going to say, "Why, I love those scrappy little protestors, they're great!"?

No, the general public seem to be less bigoted and narrow-minded than your average JREF pigeon-holer. They'll take the opportunity to share their own tales of woe (lost jobs etc) and express sympathy for the movement's aims. That's the kind of reaction I've seen most roving mics evoke, anyway.



'Hitler Reacts to Pepper Spray Meme':

 
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