Opinion: Poisoning The Well
10 November 2019	Buz Williams
"…the Democrats and their Main Stream Media lackeys have had a month to poison the well of public perception."
"Poisoning the well" is the logical fallacy used by demagogs, charlatans and corrupt politicians to attack an opponent before he has a chance to defend himself. The easiest way to explain this fallacy is to give an example: A corrupt politician stands up at the start of a debate and says, "I have to warn those of you listening to this debate, that my opponent is an habitual liar. When it is his turn to speak, he will accuse me of crimes of which he alone is guilty. He will proclaim his innocence, but since you already know how he disdains the truth, his statements will only confirm his wrongdoing."
When the other guy gets up for his turn, the crowd is already suspect of whatever he says because the corrupt politician has "poisoned the well" against him before he even had a chance to defend himself. What can he say to defend himself since the audience has already been told he's a liar and a crook.
This is exactly what Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats have done with their faux impeachment investigation. On September 24 of this year, Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, announced that the House was going to start an impeachment inquiry. Normally, this investigation would be assigned to the House Judicial Committee since impeachment is basically a legal matter. Pelosi didn't do that. She assigned it to the House Intelligence Committee.
There are probably two reasons Pelosi assigned it to the Intelligence rather than the Judicial Committee: one, she might consider Jerry Nadler, Chairman of the Judicial Committee, to be an incompetent buffoon, and she may feel that the Intelligence Committee Chairman, Adam Schiff is a much more experienced liar, considering all the mendacious whoppers he told about the Russian/Trump collusion probe.
Second, there would be no logical reason to close the Judicial Committee's hearings to the public. On the other hand, the Intelligence Committee could deny public access to the impeachment hearings to safeguard "top secret information" or what defense attorneys in criminal courts call exculpatory evidence Exculpatory evidence is information that shows the defendant might be innocent of the accused crime.
Why wouldn't Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats want the impeachment hearings to be open to public scrutiny? Because transparency is the polar opposite of poisoning the well. With all of the restrictions placed on Republicans during the Intelligence Committee hearings, even after the formal vote listing new rules for the hearings, at the end of October, the public could see for themselves what a one-sided kangaroo court the Democrats set up to railroad the President toward impeachment.
The way the hearings were set up in the Intelligence Committee, Chairman Schiff was able to tell the press any testimony that made the President look bad. If you noticed, he never released any information or testimony that contradicted the testimony he released. There had to some, even though the President couldn't have his attorneys in the hearings and the Republicans couldn't call any witnesses.
Now the House has voted for the formal impeachment inquiry that supposedly gives the President some safeguards, although this is disputed. The point, though, is that the Democrats and their Main Stream Media lackeys have had a month to poison the well of public perception. With most American's natural desire for fair play, let's pray that the Democrats well poisoning will backfire this time.
Buz Williams
Buz Blog
Richard F. "Buz" Williams was born into a police family. His father, both grandfathers, a great uncle and a cousin were all on the Los Angeles Police Department and he also had an uncle on the Hawthorne, California Police Department. Buz served for 29 years on the Long Beach, California Police Department were he worked Patrol, Juvenile, Vice, Auto Theft and Gangs. He retired in December of 2002. Buz has been married to his wife Judi for 44 years. They have two grown sons who live in Southern California with their families, which include two daughter-in-laws, three grandsons and a granddaughter. Buz and Judi have lived in Prescott since 2004.
Website: https://www.facebook.com/BuzCop
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