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"We" are to blame; it’s "our" fault!

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It will astonish no one to learn that the latest VDH column constitutes a pig’s breakfast of logical fallacies — a messy trough of appeals to belief, appeals to tradition, hasty generalizations and fallacies of composition among others. Even more striking, though, is the sophisticated rhetorical move that probably has a precise name I’ve never actually heard of. The short version is that Hanson — like Pogo — has seen the enemy and he is us. Or, to be more precise, the enemy is “us,” if we define “us” to exclude the following groups:

(1) Americans (not leftists or social democrats, who are really Europeans anyway);
(2) people who appreciate the danger currently facing the “eternal thin veneer of civilization”;
(2a) people who use the word “veneer” in two consecutive paragraphs;
(3) Winston Churchill;
(4) artists who dare to offend Muslims;
(5) the economic non-elites who read the Wall Street Journal;
(6) people who refuse on principle to mock Wal-Mart and fast food restaurants;
(7) Socrates.

In practice, the argument looks something like this:

But our loss of faith in ourselves is now more nihilistic than sarcastic or skeptical, once the restraints of family, religion, popular culture, and public shame disappear. Ever more insulated by our material things from danger, we lack all appreciation of the eternal thin veneer of civilization.

We especially ignore among us those who work each day to keep nature and the darker angels of our own nature at bay. This new obtuseness revolves around a certain mocking by elites of why we have what we have. Instead of appreciating that millions get up at 5 a.m., work at rote jobs, and live proverbial lives of quiet desperation, we tend to laugh at the schlock of Wal-Mart, not admire its amazing ability to bring the veneer of real material prosperity to the poor.

There’s no sense beating up on Hanson for his Green Lanternist absurdities. My question is more technical:

What’s the name of this rhetorical gesture?

If it doesn’t have a name, I’d like to give it one in honor of VDH, because he uses this mode quite a bit in his writings. But I can’t decide on whether it should be called “The Hanson” or “The Victor.” Or maybe it should have another name entirely. And maybe it already does.

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