Good Math/Bad Math

Monday, May 15, 2006

Phony Statistics and Nauseating Metaphors

Not exactly on topic, but not entirely off; my old buddy Vox Day is spouting again.

As usual, he spouts some a lot of foul nonsense, but this is particularly over the top. Two quotes from the miserable walking shitbag:


Dear Jorge plans to address the nation tonight, a speech wherein he will almost surely attempt to deceive citizens into believing that he does not wish the mass migration from Mexico to continue unabated. He will likely offer some negligible resources for law enforcement and border security – resources which will never materialize – in return for an amnesty program that will grant American citizenship to the Mexican nationals who have helped lower America's wage rates by 16 percent over the last 32 years.


Nice statistic there, totally unsupported (and unsupportable) by facts. But hey, what's a fake number better for than setting up a good old fashioned bit of vicious scapegoating:


And he will be lying, again, just as he lied when he said: "Massive deportation of the people here is unrealistic – it's just not going to work."

Not only will it work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn't possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don't speak English and are not integrated into American society.


There just aren't words for this... It makes me so angry I can barely type. My relatives were part of that six million that the Germans "got rid of". I know the names of members of my family who were killed. And this shithead is using them as part of a gag-line about what to do about illegal immigrants, as if mass murder of innocent people was/is no big deal.

12 Comments:

  • There a petition or something we can sign to deport him from the human race? He's certainly not acting like any of the humans I know.

    By Blogger Bronze Dog, at 9:00 PM  

  • Ho-ly shiiit. While I have found almost everything I've ever read of Day's to be horribly wrong, if not despicable, I really could not bring myself to believe what I read in this post. I had to go read his article, thinking that I would find some context that made his comment more palatable. But there is no such context. He's really comparing the two situations directly. That's frightening.

    By Blogger Chris, at 10:02 PM  

  • So what happens to Godwin's law when a debater compares /his own/ views to Hitler's?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:15 AM  

  • Reading his blog, this twit just seems to be enjoying the reactions which leads me to believe that his primary motivation for the Nazi analogy was just to bait a reaction.

    Where in the hell did he come up with the "Mexican nationals who have helped lower America's wage rates by 16 percent over the last 32 years." statistic? Most every economic analysis I have seen of illegal immigration shows a small net gain to the economy (albeit with disproportionate negative impacts in certain areas). As someone who tends to think the libertatian arguments are the right ones in most cases, I resent this idiot presenting himself as a "Christian Libertarian".

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:35 AM  

  • In my opinion, the topic of whether or not Dubya is making a mistake in regards to his militarization of the border patrol, is independant of the fact that this character is foolishly comparing the deporting of illegial foreign nationals to the atrocities of the holocaust.

    I could only stand to skim Vox's article, as anything beyond a cursory glance made me want to vomit; so please excuse me for not continuing with this discussion.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 1:20 AM  

  • I think you guys have got it wrong. He writes in the mood of transcendent equivocation where we aren't really sure what his stand on the matter is. It's satire (of whose persuasion?) so thickly veiled as to be near impenetrable. It's literary genius of the rarest variety. 'Twould be who of us to learn from her.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 2:09 AM  

  • thomas -

    Not "more appropriate" at all, but another example would be the forced deportation of Native Americans to Oklahoma back in the Jackson Administration - a little thing called the "Trail of Tears" in our history books.

    Of course, that was also an atrocity where many people died, so its really not a "better" example at all. Except as a reminder that our government has done this sort of thing before, and its only through vigilance that we can prevent them from doing something like it again.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:12 AM  

  • Courtesy of David Neiwert and his blog at Orcinus , the pattern goes like this: First you get nonentities like Vox to say something this outrageous. Then you get evil entities like Coulter to "joke" about it, and Malkin to publish links to it. Instahack links with a little 'tut-tut' thrown in to show he doesn't actually approve of such over-the-top comparisons, but the idea is intriguing, isn't it? Simcox and Gilchrist and the rest of the Minuteman crowd start including calls for mass deportation in their public pronouncements, then Tom Tancredo and the other anti-immigrant mouthpieces pick up on it. Rush and O'Reilly take it from "interesting idea" to "by golly, this is the kind of bold thinking America needs!" and the next thing you know it's getting tossed around on the Sunday talking head shows.

    They've been mainstreaming right-wing crap for years. We could be seeing another meme getting constructed.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:35 AM  

  • So what happens to Godwin's law when a debater compares /his own/ views to Hitler's?

    A singularity?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:09 PM  

  • TW: IIRC, the Greek states used to do it to each other quite frequently around the time of the Pelopponesian war. They'd kick out the current population of a city and install a new one from their own colonists. The evictees would tend to get foisted on their allies.

    I don't know how much pain and suffering all this involved - I think the evictees were generally just happy to be alive. Wiping out entire cities also got fairly common - very Clausewitzian.

    By Blogger Lifewish, at 7:43 AM  

  • I think jackd nails it. While I doubt seriously there is a direct line of conspiracy planning between Vox and that clown O'Reilly, I do think that it is possible for the idea to form in the exact way Jackd highlighted. It seems to happen all the time.

    By Blogger Rev. BigDumbChimp, at 9:29 AM  

  • Vox can't even get his history right, either.

    By Blogger Orac, at 11:58 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home