Was hyperbole, now strictly true.
Famous and true riposte to Commiejewdyke Hellman by non-commie novelist Mary McCarthy.

"Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the."

At the time when it was written, McCarthy probably meant it as a clever rhetorical flourish.

Now it's a plain literal observation. Modern Commies have made it true.

Conjunctions and articles are effectively enumerators. When you use them, you are forming a list of things, including and excluding certain objects or categories. Misuse gives a false impression of inclusion or exclusion.

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Examples for and:

When you list several things connected by and, you are saying that all of these things exist, and all have the same qualities. When modern commies use phrases like LGBT, they are saying L and G and B and T all exist, and L and G and B and T are living in grinding poverty with no power at all. The predicate is false, of course. L and G and B are among the richest in the world, and they are THE most powerful class. And creates a falsehood when it links the T category to the other three. The other three categories of rich and SUPREMELY powerful people do actually exist, and they are able to blackmail and impoverish and kill and censor the rest of us because they own our culture. But the T category does not exist. There is no such thing, as I've discussed in detail here. By adding an extra category, the basically false predicate appears to be applied to a wider set of humans. And falsely enlarges the domain of the already-false implication.

Opposite misuse of and: Bee colony collapse. After several years it's now clear that the problem has a whole lot of causes, some of which are constant and some of which are new. Parasites and viruses and pesticides and free trade and new beekeeping practices like hauling hives to locations for pollination service. Most news gives the impression that pesticides and, of course, Global Warming, are the only causes. Eliminates most real problems on the real list and adds a nonexistent item.

The most vicious of all ands is the Looooooooooooooooong accumulation of unnecessary non-knowledge on the subject of nature vs nurture. The question was firmly and finally settled in the 1950s by separated twins. Every taste, tendency and talent is roughly half genes and half learning. This is ABSOLUTE. Despite this GENUINELY SETTLED SCIENCE, every tenure-track grad student still finds it necessary to add another and to the series. It's not enough to say that math talent and musical talent and tennis skill and table-tennis skill and ping-pong skill and ping-pong skill with smaller paddles and ping-pong skill with squared-off paddles and ping-pong skill when facing an opponent with red hair are half innate. Nope, we need to know more. What about ping-pong skill when facing an opponent named Steven? What about ping-pong skill when facing an opponent named Stephen? Each of these must be settled separately and added to the series. Yet another and appears today: Now we're adding chimpanzees to the infinite series. Of course there's an obvious motive for maintaining this series. If we keep adding new ands, we don't have to sit back and state the simple absolute truth. Once we state the simple absolute truth, we will have to acknowledge that some ethnic groups are smarter than others, and some ethnic groups have a much greater talent for violence and theft. Acknowledging those obvious facts would destroy the evil heart of leftism, therefore it's Unthink.

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Example for articles (the vs a):

Latest outrage from NSA: Snowden reports that NSA was monitoring specific Muslims in America who hadn't been suspected of any "terrorist" activity. Focusing on the Muslims falsely narrows the fact. In reality an American, i.e. any American you want to name, is monitored. NSA listens to EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE. EVERY FUCKING THING AND EVERY FUCKING ONE. If you are an American, NSA is listening to you.

Global warming shows the opposite misuse. Experts want us to believe that a temperature, i.e. any temperature you care to pick, is BURNING BURNING BURNING FOR OUR SINS AND INIQUITIES AGAINST THE MOST HOLY GODDESS GAIA. In reality the temperature in certain specific areas (especially areas close to the Gulf Stream) is getting warmer, while the temperature in most other areas is either getting cooler or shows no obvious pattern.

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The sneakiest and most widespread grammatical lie wasn't mentioned by McCarthy. If is the nastiest little word. Treating an indicative situation as a subjunctive is practiced by all political factions. A politician or expert will always use this form: "If we don't do X, situation Y will get worse." Reality is always more complex. Four major possibilities: (1) Y is already maxed out.. Can't go any farther. (2) Y is nonexistent. (3) Y is completely unrelated to X. (4) X will actually make Y worse, not better.

The one thing you know for sure is that Y will not be improved by X, so the conditional form is invalid.

Classic example: If we don't fight in Iraq, the terrorists will follow us home. This fits (2) and (4). Terrorists as depicted by the politician don't exist. They are created by FBI stings. Or, if you want to define any angry Iraqi as a terrorist, fighting in Iraq will certainly increase the number of angry Iraqis who want to do us harm.

Subset of the above in today's news: France is trying to impose a new level of internal tyranny. To force the public to accept this new tyranny, the government has trotted out a single "terrorist" who was created by a government sting. If we don't impose this new tyranny, more "terrorists" will emerge. Clearly falls into (2). Threat didn't exist until created by sting.

Another: TARP. If we don't pour trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars into the bulging pockets of super-rich Jews, our economy will collapse. Wrong 3 ways. (1) Our economy was already completely fucked. Financialism and Die-Versity and Enviroterrorism had already killed the goose. (3) Making super-rich Jews even super-richer could not possibly cause any new industries to employ American workers. Super-rich Jews do not invest in production. (4) Wasting trillions in this way fattened the non-productive financial sector even more, giving the financial sector even more power over Die-Versity and Enviro regulations, making it even more impossible than impossible for a few pennies to leak into productive channels.

In today's sciencey news: Some futurist fuckhead says "Cities will die if cars dominate". (1) Cars already dominate. (3) Some car-dominated cities are doing just fine. Others are dying. No correlation.

Labels: Real World Math

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