Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP 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