Your Weekly Dose of Logic: To Misconstrue or Not to Misconstrue

Historical examples exist where certain statements' meanings have been lost in translation, either by accident of perception or purposely to propagandize a situation.

An example of such lie in the Potsdam Declaration of1945; the Allies demanded the Japanese surrender, laying out several conditions which need be met for the surrender to be accepted; somewhere amongst quotations and translations, either Truman himself or the Emperor ended up interpreting such as meaning the "unconditional surrender" of the Japanese people. Needless to say, though Emperor Hirohito wanted peace, such a thought is tantamount to complete subjugation or slavery, and thus the Japanese replied with "mokusatsu", which is also ambiguous, having two meanings in the Japanese language--one meaning to scornfully condemn through contemptuous silence, another meaning to silently consider further. Needless to say, given that the Japanese were the aggressors and had recently stepped up their resistance in the Pacific Theatre, the Allies appropriately (arguably) did not give the Japanese the benefit of the doubt, and continued on with the eventual atomic bombing of Japan.

The point of this is to make clear how easy it is for misinterpretation to be rampant in the telephone game of language. People hear what is said, and based on their preferences in perception, decide the underlying meaning, often negatively misinterpreting statements in politics because they wish to spin topics to their advantage. An example of this lie in the recent issue between Clinton and Obama.

Obama's statement that Reagan was a political figure who was able to make his party one of ideas says nothing of Obama's opinion on the ideas themselves. Out of convenience, Clinton uses the sentiment against Obama, claiming Obama liked Reagan's ideas. There is a logical difference in the statement "ideas" and "good ideas"; one lacks a modification of quality, the other denotes approval. Obama never declared approving of said ideas, and thus it is unfair to claim such. This is a typical straw man fallacy, used to distort statements and beat up what was "supposively" said rather than the actual statement.

Furthermore, Clinton brought up that Obama apparently was for a single payer health care system. There is a logical difference between a conditional statement, such as "if we started from scratch, then single payer would be optimal", and simply declaring "single payer is optimal". One says "if p then q", the other just says "p". This is a suppression of evidence, where one chops off the hypothetical aspect of the statement in order to fit their goal of distorting their adversaries opinion.

Such tactics do a disservice to the public, who are easily motivated by biases to accept these spins as accurate; moreover, this is precisely the type of politicking Obama has railed against in his presidential campaign. It is quite alright to question his record and statements, but it is another thing to spin his record and statements into propaganda as the Clintons have done. As an individual who loathes such sociopathic maneuvering, it discourages me from supporting Hillary Clinton in any national election if she were to be nominated.

Beware of such fallacious distortions and ones possible biases to them (as seen in the historical distortions of the Potsdam Declaration) before accepting them as fact.