The view from America, by Don McMahon
Recently, while surfing a few AFC websites and blogs, I noticed that some bloggers were writing the most insane and non-sensical irrationalities I had ever seen on a website. During my regular sorties onto the net, I have had the opportunity to engage with alt-right gun-toting Christians and fundamentalist Republicans, as well as pure radical Democrats and middle of the road Independents.
There are three paradigms that Trump and his supporters use and strangely enough, they are often copied by anti-Arsenal attackers, whose basic principle of argument is to avoid presenting any supporting evidence and at the same time using misdirection and misinformation to try and fool the unwary into accepting their views. It is the same approach as the media take. Here are a few examples;
- One media headline screams, in capitals, ¨Fans will be incensed by Wenger’s choice of striker¨. All the fans or maybe 2-3 fanboys? Why incensed, why not mystified or bemused? Hyperbole at its worst combined with flagrant charlatanism, since the media aren’t mind-readers!
- A disreputable pundit publicly states that Ozil will join PSG in January while Ozil himself publicly denies any such rumour-mongering. But the damage has been done.
Here are the nefarious and unethical Trumpisms, identified by and adapted from the Last Week Tonight show with John Oliver, which the anti-Arsenal crowds have adopted from the Donald:
1: Whataboutism
This technique is based on the idea that if there is criticism of a particularly repugnant event in Football by a pro-Arsenal/pro Wenger site like UA ,then the Arsenal hater will, rather than ask why this occurred, refer to the claim that Arsenal have done the same in the past.
For example, let us say that Wenger criticizes a referee for missing a crucial call (like offside). The Arsenal hater will say, ¨what about when Arsenal got an offside goal against XYZ club in 2016, Wenger never complained then? ¨ We call this a red herring where I come from and it is used by politicians and criminals to try and distract the questioner from his or her original purpose, thus allowing the person to avoid responding to the original issue.
2: Fake News
Trump has perfected this technique or ruse by labelling ANYTHING he doesn’t like as ¨fake news¨, in other words fabrication and misinformation. Interestingly enough the Soviets had liberally applied this skill back in the worst period of the Cold War.
In football, the Arsenal hater will spread a rumour that there is dissension in the dressing room, that Alexis had a bust-up on the training ground with Wenger, etc. The essence of this relies on the almost certain credibility the naïve, the ignorant and the Arsenal haters will award to such unproven and easily contested misinformation.
The media use this everyday when they quote each other as the source of such news, rather incestuously quoting each other as the ¨reliable source¨!
3: Delegitimizing the scientific and expert analysis
This is specific to Trump’s entire life view. He uses it to demean the media, he refers to scientific proof as ¨opinions¨ and he regards experts as just like anyone else, whose feeling are just as legitimate as hard evidence from a highly respected scientist.
The football version arrives when a clearly amateurish argument is presented to counter a strong statistical or analytical one, as if they two were of equivalent value.
UA has presented overwhelming video and analytical evidence, from both Arsenal supporting referees AND officials supporting other clubs, that there is something seriously wrong with the PGMOL and the EPL. So If Walter writes that a linesman missed a crucial offside leading to a goal being scored against Arsenal, a deligitimizer will respond by saying that UA and its numerous bloggers are suffering from rampant paranoia or that it all evens out in the end or that their expert view is that it was onside, or that we should all stop blaming our losses on the officials, or that statistics can prove anything and are easily manipulated, or that Walter is rabidly biased (despite his status as an experienced referee), ad nauseam.
In my view UA has to be very careful and vigilant when confronting these strategies and are totally justified in calling them out. Despite personal attacks and demeaning criticism from a small percentage of our UA followers, I and I am equally sure Tony, Walter and other contributors, will always opt for the truth in which ever form it comes.
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Hi Don.
In my opinion I don’t think Trump is ill but I think he is limited in his ability to think about all the aspects of a problem. I would stress this is my opinion and I am not saying you are wrong.
In our own daily life we dont always completely think through a situation.
I watched the the three debates with Donald Duck the issue Trump and Mrs Clinton I was amazed as to how much Trump was allowed to get away with.
Example ‘I am going to build a wall and Mexico will pay for it.’ He went around the country making this claim.
As far I know he was cheered to the roof in some places for this but he was never asked ‘How are you going to make Mexico pay for the wall?’ Now he says the reality that you the tax payer will pay for it.
This morning the supermarket I witnessed limited thinking someone refused to do something that others would have done with just a little more thought that could have been done.
Meanwhile Donald Duck Trump triumphants over all to the downfall of everyone but himself.
I can’t believe some of the adverts that are appearing on this website. I can only assume you’ve been hacked. I’m on holiday in the US and I get a repeated one from the “conceal and carry” gun lobby people. I can’t believe you’ve in any way encouraged that. There is also a moving banner at the bottom, which is pointless and distracted. Please do something about it, or at least make some sort of statement. I’m put off using this site, which is a shame.
Don, are you by this your article posting implying it’s because of the bloggetters anti-Arsenal bloggettring that has made Arsenal to miss out on the Premier League Title for 13 seasons running?
To my own understanding, the PL Title win failings by Arsenal occasioned for 13 seasons is beyond to apportioned blames to the bloggetters for causing it. To me, I see these failings have been caused principally by the Gunners who have played for Arsenal in those past 13 seasons as the major cause for these failings due to their lack of consistency in top quality performance all round through the season campaigns. For, it’s only when the players in the team performed consistently by winning at least 80 – 85 % of the 38 Premier League games and drawing a few number of the remaining 20 – 25 %, but lost just a handful of 2 – 3 games, then it could become the EPL champions.
But having said this, the hierarchies at Arsenal cannot be exonerated from these 13 seasons PL Title win failings at Arsenal but could be deemed as fait accompli for their failings to make sure Arsenal first team is staffed with top quality players in every position in the team. Thus, seen giving the team a strong chance to compete strongly for the PL Title win and not leave winning it to chance to happen as Leicester City unexpectedly won it 2 seasons back by chance with the array of one or two top quality and some quality players in the rank and file of their first team squad.
As it is on ground now at Arsenal, their current 25 man first team is being made up of only 4 top quality players of: Sanchez, Oezil, Lacazette and Koscielny and maybe Mustafi. But some of the remaining Gunners in the 25 are quality players while a few numbers of the remaining of them are squad players taking on substitute roles for the Gunners on the bench during matches.
As a result of the inadequacy of the Arsenal management to staff the Gunners first team squad with top quality players with at least with 8 – 9 top quality players one of which should be a world class one, it can only be perceived Arsenal will win this season’s Premier League Title by chance because of the inadequacy in staffing their first team with sufficient number of top quality players in the region of at least 8.
Nevertheless, I believe Arsenal can win this season’s Premier League Title if for the first time in as in many seasons they can have a 10 PL games winning run that begun with their victory over Spurs last weekend and end it with a win over WBA on 31st Dec. Then from there we will see what will happen next. More so, as Le Prof is likely to add one new top quality players to his first team squad to bring their numbers to 5 or 6 to strengthened his team as he keeps Sanchez and Oezil also at the club after January.
Not-so-subtle link of Trump with the techniques of Communists, which is itself a common technique of the hard left. (Ad Hominem labelling in the absence of credible argument ie: “You’re a racist/fascist/homophobe/communist etc.”) This is currently the method du jour of our media and I’m convinced Arsenal fans struggle with this, despite many of them being Lefties themselves. (How many right wing London clubs are left? Millwall, West Ham maybe, although they’re now so watered down since Snob Brady sucked the life out the club. Chelsea Lite.)
What makes an expert, Don? Of course it’s all opinion. A devout Christian will look at the Hadron Collider and say “God made that all happen”. Can you prove them wrong? Of course not. You can’t prove God exists or doesn’t exist conclusively. Science is as corruptible as anything else – very naïve to think otherwise. Scientific research needs constant funding. Who supplies the money? Often very wealthy individuals or organisations who have a political or social agenda. Mathematics is the basis for all science and is just a belief system created by men to satisfactorily explain what they cannot understand. Like religion. It all comes down – like refereeing decisions in Arsenal matches – to a case of perception being reality. This website seeks to delegitimize the PGMO by suggesting they are corrupt, unprofessional and not to be trusted, the same accusation Trump levels at the media, which by the way he’s staggeringly late to the party on. Conspiracy theorists have been saying for decades there’s something deeply wrong with the papers. They aren’t Communists either Don. You mentioned UA had presented ‘overwhelming analytical evidence’…so have those who maintain the climate change scam has bugger all to do with carbon emissions and everything to do with solar cycles. However, the media and the lemmings denounce this as nonsense, even when those ‘scientists’ on the climate change bandwagon are caught out providing hokey evidence or research which is patently false.
Flares
You engage in the same nonsense you pretend to deplore. “Mathematics……..is just a belief system to satisfactorily explain what they cannot understand”. So 1 plus 1 does not equal 2? Or is it just that I don’t understand? Solipsistic tripe.
OT: U18 vs the Tottenspud
Almost no twits about this game, I’ve no idea who started, or who was on the beach. But, we have this at the end of the game:
> What a performance, lads ? Our under-18s beat Tottenham 6-0 today – with this Xavier Amaechi strike the pick of the bunch ?
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OT: Early games
To win, or possibly tie, I am looking for Stoke, Brighton, Newcastle, Swansea and WBA. For the later game, I’m looking for a tie. For Sunday, I am looking for Everton, us and Huddersfield to win.
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I see a few medja stories about Gabriel being unhappy with his time at Arsenal. I didn’t read any, just seen the snippets Google produces. As near as I can tell, they are all wrong. Wenger had little or nothing to do with him not getting a chance. Most of the problems mentioned in these snippets are the aaa non-fans.
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Do we know the officials for tomorrow yet?
And I see Andrew now has a page up on the officials for Sunday.
And yet dear Don is trumpetting himself. I think you take the siege mentality honours. Plain weird and politically askew. ps Save over 90 quid with this voucher! Ha ha!
climatic….what are you smoking?
Flares ……quid erat demonstrabimus!
Horsefeathers!
Don , I did catch that show and was at the same time thinking of the similarities with the so called Arsenal fans .
Just glad that they don’t get to make major descions for the club.
Unlike the USA .
I truly believed that after Bush the younger , Americans would never again vote in another moron !
Here is an old saying which you can fill in your own pet dislikes –
‘ When God limited ……….. intelligence , he forgot to limit their stupidity.’
Check out these quotes , especially the second one.
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/42923140-reasons-to-stay-alive
{APPLAUSE}
football.london has an article out. The title is about Arsenal fans being jailed, the article goes on to talk about bans as well. The article does also go on to talk a bit about other teams, but the focus seems to very much be Arsenal. What is disappointing, is that the article doesn’t seem to indicate whether there are similar article about other teams in the London area.
Which doesn’t really sound fair.
Myron Cockerham…..wa once again who famously said, isn’t there a Groucho Marx film called that? I refer you to Groucho’s famous statement: ¨I wouldn’t want to be a member of a club who would have me as a member!¨