Hyman’s latest commentary is kinda-sorta about the Clinton Foundation, but mostly about the McCain Institute, and the whole exercise turns into a train wreck in fairly short order. This shouldn’t surprise when, in the midst of nearly daily revelations about the attack on America’s democratic system by a foreign adversary with the intent to elevate Trump to the presidency, Hyman begins his commentary thusly:
“Politicians who craft U.S. policy while accepting foreign donations must be closely scrutinized.”
(Pause for laughter).
The underlying rhetorical goal is obviously to engage in some “muddying of the waters” by throwing out other stories about politicians being overly cozy with foreign countries to dilute the daily damning revelations regarding the Trump/Russia scandal.
Hyman begins with a classic example of lame argumentation: expressing a claim as a conditional phrase so as to both make an assertion while excusing oneself from actually making any support for it: “The Clinton Foundation may have been the biggest pay-for-play scheme in American history.”
As I find myself saying so often in this space, such a rhetorical move wouldn’t pass muster in an essay for a freshman comp course. Indeed, the only “evidence” presented is a hyperlink to one of Hyman’s own previous commentaries alleging a specific (and utterly unsubstantiated) claim of Clinton Foundation meddling. (I’ll follow up on this tangent tomorrow).
Hyman then uses a particular species of the argumentative fallacy of “false attribution,” in which an opinion is backed up by a source that is unqualified in some way, including being anonymous or nonexistent. It’s combined with another implicit fallacy of the argument “ad populum”: claiming something is true because a lot of people believe it.
He says “Critics [of the Clinton Foundation] are drawing parallels to the McCain Institute.” Who these critics are, how many they are, or what these parallels are remain unstated. The rhetorical goal, of course, is to phrase an unsupported accusation as mere reportage.
We should also note the oddness of this statement as a framing device for the commentary. Ostensibly, Hyman is attacking the Clinton Foundation by saying it has been compared with the McCain Institute. The rest of the commentary, however, focuses solely on McCain. The Clinton Foundation doesn’t get another mention. Again, this would be something that would warrant a question mark in the margin of a student paper, with a comment such as “You don’t seem to be supporting your thesis in the body of your paper.”
As to why Hyman’s ire would be focused on McCain, one can only guess. The most likely explanation would seem to be McCain’s relative unpopularity with people devoted to Donald “I like guys who weren’t captured” Trump.
At any rate, I’m not terribly interested in defending McCain or the foundation that carries his name, although it does seem that his role in the organization is primarily honorary. Hyman questions why the Institute would accept donations from some dicey foreign players, and one can even grant these points for the sake of argument. But the implication that somehow McCain himself is overseeing these donations and profiting from them personally is again utterly without support. Indeed, a central bit of disingenuousness in Hyman’s piece is the slick eliding of the distinction between donating to a foundation associated with a politician and donating directly to that politician.
The most risible of Hyman’s arguments, however, is his chiding of the McCain Institute for taking a one million dollar donation from Saudi Arabia.
While such a criticism is, in a vacuum, sensible, it flies in the face of the reality of President Trump’s recent love affair with Saudi Arabia, one that includes pushing a recent sale of a half billion dollars’ worth of weapons to the Saudis, taking credit for that nation’s actions against Qatar, a U.S. military ally, and soft-peddling its role in fomenting terrorism (Osama bin Laden, anyone?).
And who can forget the heartwarming image from the president fondling the Orb of Destiny during his trip to Saudi Arabia?
If, as Hyman suggests, accepting money from Saudi Arabia is “in direct contradiction of the [McCain] Institute’s mission of ‘promot[ing] humanitarian action, human rights and democracy,’ one wonders how he explains Trump’s mollycoddling of the Saudis.
But one would wonder in vain.
No comments:
Post a Comment