Friday, August 19, 2016

Take-down …

… It’s Impossible to Count the Things Wrong With the Negligent, Spurious, Distorted New Biography of George W. Bush | Foreign Policy.

When not treating fabricated quotes as revealing facts, Smith makes other errors that further distort his analysis. A favorite rhetorical device he employs is the sweeping historical assertion, along the lines of “never before in American history…” or “not since the presidency of [insert long-ago American president]…” followed by a ritual condemnation of the Bush administration for some sort of egregious deviation from the mainstream of American history. Some of Smith’s assertions are matters of opinion and interpretation that historians can debate, but at times his oracular pronouncements are factually wrong.

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