Perspective, the Fundamental Basis of Logic and Reasoning.

For some time now, certain of my better educated (masters and doctor-degreed) friends have insisted that I devote some of this site to logical and mathematical exposure of the media's propagandist approach to news. A recent segment on the O'Reilly Factor, Fox News, night before last has convinced me to comply. I suppose the fact that I was watching something like that requires some kind of explanation. The fact is, I've been helping a high school teacher friend find examples of media bias and propagandist mind-bending, and that's how I happened to watch O'Reilly hectoring one "guest" after another (ill manners seem to be characteristic these days of the petty intellectual). In O'Reilly's affected reasoning, after all, to watch and listen is to lend support.

The fact is, viewers of this kind of insidious and Goebbelsian persuasion might easily expose it for the mendacity it is. So why don't they? Why would anyone choose to employ a calculator or computer, for instance, that clearly functions seldom and poorly, and gives wrong answers and faulty information? The easily demonstrated fact is that propagandists like Fox News and the other major television networks exploit the benighted educational state of the "American" (there are thirty-four nations in this hemisphere, you know) public. Some years ago, while traveling for the United States Judo Association, I did a number of surveys in the nature of those first reported by columnist James Kilpatrick. I found that one person in 50,000 could so much as define the word "epistemology." That, for the reader's information, is the study of the nature of knowledge, its origin, limits, foundations, and validity. Logic, like epistemology, is a philosophic science, the science of correct thinking. In fact, it might be good to list the related schools of philosophy, in order that we might know which of the several we happen to be using for a tool in what follows. The philosophic sciences are:

Ontology, the science of the nature of being "in general." Epistemology, the science dealing with the problems of knowledge. Psychology, the science of dealing with "rational" or "philosophical" psychology, dealing with man as a "being." Theodicy, the science of God, First Cause, and Creator - sometimes called "natural theology." Logic, the science of correct thinking. Ethics, the science dealing with human acts, sometimes called "moral philosophy." Politics, the science of man's social ends, including the forms of state organization. Axiology, the science which studies the general nature of "value." Aesthetics, the science which studies value judgments having to do with beauty as distinguished from the moral or useful.

Basically, moreover, there are just three laws of logic:
1. The Law of Contradiction; i.e., contradictory statements (per ex., A is B; A is not B are contradictory statements) cannot both be true.
2. The Law of Identity; i.e., everything is what it is.
3. The Law of Excluded Middle; i.e., of two contradictory statements, one must be true, the other false.

If you think these trite, you haven't been listening to our media, or for that matter, our present administration and their bewildered and muddled leader (the man is a veritable reincarnation of Mrs. Malaprop). Next, we need to recognize the classic fallacies of logic. They are too many to list here, but a good (excellent, in fact) dissertation on them may be found at http://www.fallacyfiles.org/. Today's politically sycophant media is a study, and an object lesson, in logical fallacy. Take all the logical fallacy from the reasoning implied in television's ubiquitous commercials, and there would be little left. The same can be said for political—especially presidential—campaigns.

Finally, mathematics, especially in its statistical application, is a devastating measure where combating the relentless propagandist lying of business, the media, and the federal version of government are concerned. I have already used Fox News' O'Reilly Factor host Bill O'Reilly's muddled logic having to do with Jane Turner and Cindy Sheehan as an example of challenged reasoning and the rhetorical pratfall that resulted (that his redneck pseudo-patriot fans will nonetheless continue to dote on him merely serves to demonstrate the necessity for what I propose to do here). Let's begin with math. Daily, we are regaled with numbers, most having to do with federal spending of taxpayer dollars, that are simply incomprehensible. They are incomprehensible—and their recitation to a stupefied public therefore cynical in the extreme—because all comprehension is dependent upon perspective. Without perspective, certain knowledge about the identity and value of things, there is schizophrenia. Insanity.

Allow me to elucidate. How much is a billion dollars? That will it buy? What does it cost (all money value relates to what is required to earn—i.e., exchange effort or property for it). When a man like Bill Gates is said to earn $65,000 an hour, what does it mean? What is the value of $484 a second? What can one do with that amount of money? We are told that Iraq is worth the nearly 2,000 lives we have paid for it. What is Iraq worth in dollars? What is life worth? To whom?

Let us consider, since I mentioned it, Iraq and its costs. First, what is the life of a soldier worth? Well, a jury found recently that the life of 59 year old Robert Ernst was worth $253,000,000—two hundred, fifty three million dollars. That jurors also found the manufacturers of the painkiller VIOXX negligent might be compared to the now exposed errors (or "torts"—a "tort" being the breach of a civil duty owed to another, and requiring a response in "damages"—money) in the administration's reasons for acting in a manner which resulted in the soldiers' deaths. Using the Ernst case as a modulus (he was 59, meaning he had much less life, and therefore value, left than most of the soldiers in question), the lives of 2,000 (the U.S. admits 253 "private military company"—i.e., CIA— soldiers have been killed) of our young men and women are worth approximately, and at very least, $506,000,000,000—five hundred, six billion dollars.

In other words, were the parents of the young men and women killed and injured in Iraq to sue successfully in an American court, they might expect to be awarded $506,000,000,000 by the jury.

If we include in our costs the monetary "damages" owed our wounded soldiers by their negligent, culpable, or malfeasant Department of Defense commanders, we might also use our civil legal system and jury awards for injury as a modulus. Without explaining the methods plaintiff's attorneys use for assessing damages (they are well known and promulgated), we may assess the average damages per soldier at $1,000,000. Inasmuch as approximately 6,000 soldiers have been wounded, we have a figure of $6,000,000,000—six billion dollars. The total liabilities having only to do with personal loss and suffering, therefore, is $512,000,000,000—five hundred, twelve billion dollars.

Material costs thus far are in excess of $200,000,000,000—two hundred billion dollars. Additionally, the US has pledged $100,000,000,000—one hundred billion (that's absurd, incidentally, witness the costs of a single hurricane here recently). Thusly, if we included only these casts (and there are obviously many more), the cost of the war thus far is $812,000,000,000—eight hundred, twelve billion dollars.

Now, for further assessment, we must return to the axiological question of value. To the disinterested taxpayer—I mean the "American" willing to spend the life of his neighbors' son or daughter—our $812,000,000,000 figure may be acceptable. Everything, to a capitalist, after all, has its monetary price. But what is the value of a son or daughter to his or her mother? Or his or her father? What is the axiological value of a future brain or heart surgeon, a Doctor Jonas Salk, a state-of-the-art Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez or Mother Theresa, to our society?

And so on. What is the axiological value of U.S. pride, the need to win? Or the need to evade having to admit error, and hide defeat? How much does that depend upon identification of who is paying the costs? What are the ethical considerations—what has the Iraq war and our manner of justifying it done to our national mores and morality? How does one justify the killing and maiming of tens—now hundreds, actually—of thousands of Iraqi citizens, in order to save what is now clearly a smaller number from death and torture at the hands of a dictator? We have now reported the deaths of more persons due the war than that claimed before the war due Saddam Hussein's brutality. What are the psychological considerations—what has the war and our manner of justifying it done to the mentality and world view of our children? What are the political considerations—what has the Iraq war's acceleration of the U.S. presidency's rise to imperial status done to our legal system and government structure? How much damage has been done to our confidence, and therefore, our trust in government (no one, not even his political or fraternal supporters, not even his siblings, actually trusts a convicted liar).

What is the logic of attacking Iraq? To save "American" lives? To prevent or reduce monetary or economic losses? To demonstrate the tactical skill and projected power of our military? To establish a democracy in an Arab country? To fight the necessary battle elsewhere? The casualty figures due the war are here. Do the numbers. The economic and dollar costs are here. Do the numbers. Even the "doctored," "cooked," and "spun" media reports of the war's conduct thus far make the relative competence and efficiency of our military clear and ineluctable. Consider the history of the Islamic nations and peoples, read their religious works regarding democracy. There is no logical way to reconcile the two. See the three fundamental laws of logic here. Finally, to split our forces by sending a large part of our defense forces to Iraq, spending hundred of billions of defense dollars there, while leaving our gates and borders at home open to hordes of aliens breaching them and refusing to spend even niggardly amounts for prevention requires no Vegetius, de Saxe, Frederick the Great, or Clausewitz for analysis.

This, then, has been an effort to provide perspective. Perspective is the sine qua non for intelligent reasoning. There is no way to measure anything without a known standard for comparison. Let me conclude with the following observation. As a nation, we do stupid things like invade Vietnam and Iraq—Grenada and Panama (did you realize we suffered more casualties in Grenado than the Cubans did?—see what I mean by a dissimulating media?), too—because the government and its sycophant media engage relentlessly in destroying perspective (the reason you don't see the coffins coming home from Iraq). In the future, I will do all I can to provide perspective. I will, for instance, compute how many of the world's sick and starving children could be saved from their plight by the cost of one bombing raid, aircraft carrier, or the like. I will explain the effect on our economy of a single member of society who "earns" five hundred dollars a second. I will calculate the effective cost of legislation like the new energy bill on the price of gas at the pump (Did you know that the price of gas in the U.S. per gallon is more than nine dollars? You've already paid more than six dollars, in order to make the price today only three. It's the capitalism, dopey.) Et cetera. Perspective. It's time someone told you—"America."