When logic fails

Almost 30 years ago, I went to see a play that had a profound impact on me. I can't remember the name of it - but the premise was that there was a nun who was going to teach the audience in the same way she teaches her class in school. Four of her former students (now young adults) show up unexpectedly to "help" her. But the plot thickens when it becomes obvious that they're all angry with her and have come back to embarrass her.

One of the former students turns out to be gay. The nun asks him whether he's had sex since he last went to confession and he says "no." At one point, a gun shows up on stage. I forget how it got there, but the nun gets ahold of it and tries to shoot him. The premise being that he's better off dying having gone to confession than after committing a mortal sin.

This scene made me realize how logic, based on a set of ill-founded ideological beliefs, can lead to absurd and perhaps even dangerous conclusions. I was reminded of all that when I saw the hornet's nest that this tweet from Glenn Greenwald stirred up over at Daily Kos today.



I just wanted to shake my head and run away from the whole nonsense. I know that Greenwald is following a path he believes to be logical to arrive at this conclusion. But its all based on bizarre ideological premises. And so we wind up with an equivalence being made between killing Bin Laden and Obama. When you get there, the one thing you can know for certain is that your logic has failed.