Fisking Farrar

As an occasional commenter on a Right Wing blog, I'm often perplexed by what seems to be a failure by those who rile at my statements, to argue their point rationally. I comb through their responses, looking for logic, cohesive argument or even something that resembles it, but I'm almost always left wondering it it doesn't exist on the other side of the political ledger.
This morning I looked at Kiwiblog, as the title of Farrar's latest post featured the Green Party. I read his post, which is an inconsequential one, designed only to keep the anti-Green kettle boiling for his readers, and thought to myself, this has no substance or logic to it. I've tried to pull it apart to show where my concerns lie. There's not much point in doing so, I know, but as I've just finished writing an article for the magazine that publishes my gardening advice, having started at 6:30 am, I'm rewarding myself with this frippary. Here's Farrar's post with my comments injected where needed.


"Told you the Greens would adopt them as policy"

(In fact he didn't. He said, "I joked ... would probably end up as Green party policy". Just the first of the 'irrational' statements in this one post)

February 8th, 2014 at 7:00 am by David Farrar


"I joked that the long list of requests from the UN Human Rights Council (which has some of the worst global abusers of human rights on it) would probably end up as Green Party policy."

"My joke may become reality," (Farrar's joke was that the requests would probably..." - how can "would probably" become a reality? Perhaps in Kiwiblogland, this is possible, but in the real world...)  "with Green MP Jan Logie saying we should be concerned that there were 155 recommendations, compared to 64 last time."

(Jan has said we should be concerned. Hang on, no she didn't! I read her post to which Farrar links, and she does not say that at all. Jan asks, "how did this happen?")

"I look forward to the Greens pledging to implement all 155 recommendations if they are in Government!" (Farrar may well "Look forward" but given his sloppy logic and the lack of substance to his writing, it really means nothing at all. My interest in his vacuous post is not that he's such a light-weight :-) but that rationality has been done such a disservice and continues to be served badly on Kiwiblog, Homepaddock, Keeping Stock, Whaleoil and the other loud-hailers of that sort. It's logical thinking and holding a real world-view that I sympathise with. I just don't think thinking gets a fair go out there :-)