Poke the “Internet Celebrity’s” Tricks: So Bad & So Intentional

 Poke the “Internet Celebrity’s” Tricks: So Bad & So Intentional

China Times Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

April 26, 2019

 Translation of an Excerpt

President Tsai Ing-wen has been very busy recently, busy in playing Internet celebrity using the august office of chief of state; she has stood on the front lines in person day after day, lambasting Kaohsiung City Mayor Han Kuo-yu, on the one hand, and rebutting Foxconn Chairman Terry Guo, on the other, going further to undercut Lai Ching-te, her competitor in the party, eliciting many strong verbal exchanges of fire.

The intended targets of President Tsai’s "dialogue" are quasi-presidential candidates with high support ratings in opinion polls; the contents in most cases are not debates on vital public policies, but sound like bickering between men in the street; however, if we carefully observe the contents of the remarks expressed by President Tsai, we will be surprised to discover: this President of the Republic of China goes to great lengths to twist others’ remarks! Because it happens so frequently, it is obviously not an unintended lapse. Why does President Tsai frequently and deliberately twist others' remarks? This is a matter worthy of serious scrutiny.

Why did President Tsai want to intentionally twist others’ remarks? In fact, twisting others’ remarks is a trick of sophistry, a deliberate misguiding in confining issues. Besides this, DPP government high echelons, from President Tsai on down, for a long time in the past, consistently stressed that external forces combined with anti-reform, anti-democracy figures opposed to the DPP want to topple the DPP government. Anti-DPP has surprisingly become anti-reform and anti-democracy, even turning into selling out Taiwan; these are veritably naked personal attacks.

The purpose of President Tsai’s frequent and intentional twisting of other people’s remarks aims of course to win political power by deception. Viewed from the arrangements of Schopenhauer's sophistry, President Tsai's techniques of sophistry are not very subtle, but they are still the means by which the great philosopher wanted to poke and jettison. We should see clearly these tricks of sophistry, rejecting politicians seeking political power by deception through sophistry and twisting the remarks of others.

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