Tracy MacMaster commented on John Clarke’s post
This exactly. Thanks John Clarke .
To what was MacMaster referring? To Clarke’s post concerning the “bullshit asymmetry principle.” I quote from John Clarke:
A FB friend put up a post that deals with the ‘bullshit asymmetry principle.’ This holds that ‘the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it.’
This got me thinking about how official spokespersons often use correct but dislocated facts to mislead people and justify huge injustices. In my years with OCAP, whenever a person died of the cold on the streets of Toronto, you could be sure that some hack from City Hall would dutifully declare that there were empty shelter beds available that night.
To those familiar with the actual situation, it would be immediate clear that:
A. The overcrowded and unbearably tense conditions in the shelters ensured that some people would stay outside because they couldn’t face them.
B. Under such impossible conditions, the shelter system frequently resorts to administrative measures and significant numbers of people can’t access the shelters because they have been barred from using them.
C. The fact that some beds were available in the system as a whole doesn’t mean that they could be accessed by everyone. Some empty beds in the men’s shelters didn’t do anything for women or families.
D. If the shelters are operating at full capacity levels, they will fill up early and those seeking a place will be told nothing is available. If a check is made late at night, no doubt some of those who did book a bed won’t have shown up for any number of reasons and there will actually be a few vacant spaces. That, however, doesn’t alter the fact that significant numbers of people were turned away and left on the streets.
This is, I think, a compelling example of the bullshit asymmetry principle at work. The points that I set out are entirely true but, in the official discourse arena, they are doomed to fail. Try making them to a group of indifferent if not hostile politicians on a City Council committee or advancing them in a media interview. An official spokesperson with ‘expert’ credentials has stated clearly that beds were available and your efforts to show why this doesn’t settle the matter seem as convoluted as they are unwelcome to those with decision making powers.Sadly, the truth must deal with complexity and contradiction, while the lie can be compellingly simple and straightforward.
Sadly, the truth must deal with complexity and contradiction, while the lie can be compellingly simple and straightforward.
I added the quote from Wikipedia to elaborate on the meaning of the bullshit asymmetry principle:
Brandolini’s law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, is an internet adage coined in 2013 that emphasizes the effort of debunking misinformation, in comparison to the relative ease of creating it in the first place. The law states the following:
“The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.”
The rise of easy popularization of ideas through the internet has greatly increased the relevant examples, but the asymmetry principle itself has long been recognize.
Unfortunately, the principle does not just apply to official statements but to much of the social-democratic or social-reformist left–and this includes MacMaster’s apparent agreement with Clarke.
In my post on this principle, I stated the following:
Given the bullshit asymmetry principle, we can target a number of phrases from the social-democratic or social-reformist left that involve this principle:
- decent wages
- fair wages
- good jobs
- decent work
- decent jobs
- fair contract
- fair collective agreement
- fairness
- free collective bargaining (with the implication that it results in decent or fair wages, good jobs or decent work or decent jobs)
- middle class (which includes all the above categories)
- corporations should pay their fair share of taxes.
- Good public sector or public services vs. bad private sector
- Social justice
These phrases have been created by social reformers or social democrats with little thought behind them, but to refute such phrases that hide the reality of workers’ lives and experiences requires an enormous amount of effort (to which this blog attests).
Has MacMaster used such bullshit phrases? Yes, she has. As I wrote in another post:
When I tried to bring up the issue of whether striking brewery workers could ever except to obtain “a fair deal, good jobs, pension security and fair benefits” (verbatim by Tracy MacMaster, (union steward, former president of the Greater Toronto Area Council, to which are affiliated 35 local unions of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU)), and former vice president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU)), I was met with hostility.
MacMaster, like many social democrats or social reformers and unionists, self-righteously engage in condemnation of others without engaging in any self-criticism of their own cliches. It is simply faith in the collective-bargaining system that permits them to refer to such phrases as “a fair deal,” “good jobs,” “fair benefits” and the like. It requires an enormous expenditure of energy to show that such phrases hide the reality of oppression and exploitation (see, for example, an analysis of the rate of exploitation of Labatt brewery workers, among other brewery workers who, ultimately, work for AB InBev (a Belgium multinational corporation) (The Rate of Exploitation of AB (Anheuser-Busch) InBev NV (Including Labatt) Workers).
It is useless trying to convince such faith-based beliefs in the sanctity of collective-bargaining. There is no such thing as a “fair deal,” “good jobs” or “fair benefits.” MacMaster herself engages in asymmetrical bullshit, which the radical left need to criticize constantly in order to reveal the reality which workers experience daily.
The Abolitionary 