Bad Argumentation

It struck me, as I watched the argument between Michael Moore and Sanjay Gupta, that this is a superb example of the bad argumentation that goes on all the time in American media.

Watch the intro:



Then watch the exchange between Moore and Gupta:

Part One


Part Two


Part Three


What is interesting is how the arguments run down to "I'm right because I have the best facts" versus "No you cherry-pick the facts". I think where the argument needs to go is to interrogate a key assumption: why is it necessary to be consistent with one's sources of fact for a position to be valid? Michael Moore skips over this entirely and Sanjay Gupta keeps insisting on this criteria -"consistency of sources" - as the measure of what's honest or effective argumentation.

What is required is an inquiry into the faith we hold in wholes.

"Guaranteed translatability, given homogeneity, systematic coherence in their absolute forms, this is surely what renders the injunction, the inheritance, and the future - in a word the other - impossible. There must be disjunction, interruption, the heterogeneous if at least there must be, if there must be a chance given to any "there must be" whatsoever ...." (Derrida, Specters of Marx)