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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!tektronix!tekmdp!dadla!dadla-b!hutch
From: hutch@dadla-b.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Abortion, another view.
Message-ID: <491@dadla-b.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 15-Jul-83 13:38:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: dadla-b.491
Posted: Fri Jul 15 13:38:02 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 16-Jul-83 13:42:04 EDT
References: teltone.168
Lines: 41

In regards to David Heppner's quoting of a tract on abortion to this
newsgroup.

David, your article made some interesting points, which I will not
discuss in this inappropriate forum.

Instead, I want to comment on the text of the tract.  I have not seen such
a fine example of propagandistic argument since the last time I read the
Communist rag printed on the Berkeley campus by the CIA as an attempt to
get a handle on "young anarchists".

Specifically:  Graphic description of the procedures used in an abortion
(which were useful information) need not be packaged with such exaggerated
phrasing nor is it necessary to use the tricks of half-truth, the glittering
generality, the loaded phrase, and so on.  Referring to a barely developed
fetus as a "tiny baby" is the same kind of exaggeration used by groups
like GreenPeace, talking about the "helpless, baby seals with their large,
trusting brown eyes".  I have no quarrel with GreenPeace, nor with people who
want to remind us that a fetus is a developing human being, but I resent
the manipulative approach.

The fact that this kind of "persuasion" is being applied to such an improtant
 issue (important, I mean) is a symptom of the kind of wholesale emotional
manipulation which is being used nowadays instead of reasoned argument.

Politicians have to have "image-makers" wo sell them to the public, and
the ones with good image-makers can be senile, dithering, uneducated, ill
informed, vulgar, and incompetent, but with the proper presentation, an
actor with no qualifications can become a governor, or even a president.

Now.  Quiz time.  Can you spot the propaganda devices I used in the preceding
paragraph?  Do you really WANT to have your decisions made for you, not by
reasoning them from the best information you can get, but by indirect appeals
to your emotions, with the intention of changing your mind by swaying your
passions?

In conclusion, Dave, thanks for publishing the INFORMATION, but no thanks
for the format it came in.

Steve Hutchison
Tektronix Logic Analyzers