Misleading claims and deceptive communication patterns

¶ … Philosophy of Misleading

The art of Misleading has evolved from the art of rhetoric, to the philosophy of misleading in large part as a result of contemporary society's theological and political perceptions that have, today, created a deep canyon between the liberal right and the conservative left. This canyon is deepened by advertising media and news media, like Fox and CNN, which are blatantly politically aligned, and which reiterates the misleading political rhetoric to create a false party philosophy because there really are no lines of distinction between the political right and left.

The current debate on healthcare in America is one example of turning the art of rhetoric into the philosophy of misleading. Both sides play on the Aristotelian philosophy that:

"The excellence of body is health, and that in such a way that those using their bodies are free from disease -- many men are healthy (as Herodicus is said to have been) whom none would call happy for their health, because of their abstinence from either all or most human activities (Aristotle, Lance-Tancred, 1991, p. 89)."

While the politicians and their aligned media supporters attempt to discredit one another, they all mislead the public. They cite the same issues -- preexisting conditions is a favorite -- but they do not mention the key words "managed care," which is built on a philosophy that less is better (Birenbaum, 1997, p. 13). Both sides fail to mention the role of managed care, which is built into President Barack Obama's proposal for healthcare reform, and which has an underlying corporate profit agenda (Birenbaum, 2002, p. 37). While President Obama chastises insurance companies and big business for excessive corporate bonuses, his plan would in fact further enrich healthcare insurance companies by requiring people to purchase healthcare plans, thereby increasing the profitability of those insurance companies, which already have earned billions in profit since the takeover of the industry by managed care.

Instead of mentioning managed care, the political leaders, and their news media supporters, instead present "preexisting illness" as the nemesis of access to quality healthcare. While that is indeed perhaps the nemesis of people who have gone uninsured or have experienced a gap in coverage, it is not what prevents people who are insured from accessing quality care and services: it is managed care, because it oversees the benefits of group plans, denying coverage based on diagnostic outcomes (Birenbaum, 1997, p. 13). People who are uninsured, if they are required to buy health coverage under Obama's plan would still be denied access to services based on diagnostic outcomes. Therefore, it is misleading, and deliberately so, to infer that Obama's plan would allow people to choose their healthcare providers, because they would have that choice only so far as the managed care plan provided them select providers to choose from; and preexisting conditions are null and void to people with health insurance under the Health Insurance Privacy and Portability Act (HIPPA). Portability protects insured people from preexisting exclusions, and it is actually a duplication under HIPPA, because it existed long before HIPPA under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA).

Using the example of healthcare reform and debate, it has been demonstrated how politicians and politically aligned media have twisted the art of rhetoric into the philosophy of misleading. To further demonstrate, to the extent that further demonstration is needed, we turn, once again to Aristotelian philosophy as it pertains to the political and politically aligned media's conveyance of policy in the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Aristotle's elements of honor state:

"The elements of honour are: sacrifices, memorials both in verse and without metre, rewards, sanctuaries, precedence, tombs, statutes, public maintenance, barbarian practices, such as genuflection and standing back, and gifts, which are valued by all recipients. Indeed, a gift is a surrender of property and an indication of status, which is why it is sought by the mercenary and the ambitious, providing as it does what they both seek, as the mercenary are after possessions and the ambitious are after status (Aristotle, Lawson-Tancred, p. 89)."

The wars begun after September 11, 2001, have long ceased to be about bringing to justice the perpetrators of evil and destruction, and have become the mechanisms to obtaining possessions (material wealth) for politically aligned news media, and the elevation to status for the right and the left public officials who gain support and attention for saying the right things, whether or not they truly believe in what they are saying; which is misleading. The military assuages the loss and grief of fallen soldiers by awarding posthumous medals-of-honor and folded flags that draped the coffins of their loved ones.

Religious leaders around the world are not exempt from the philosophy of misleading, and like politicians they employ the Aristotelian philosophies in order to bend the minds of their followers. Aristotle says:

"Good works pertain either to safety and the necessities of existence, or to wealth, or to some one of the other good things, whose possession is not easy either in general or in that place or at that time -- many men seem to attain status for seemingly slight services, but this is due to the times and places (p. 89)."