The Montoya Minute for the week of Jan 20th
Shell corps are buying up America, Delta dumped jet fuel on Latinx kids in LA, NPR is sanitizing Trump, AB5 exclusions include writers, Bella y Chingona launch!
Let’s talk about syllogisms (Sill-oh-jizz-ums) and enthymems (en-th-uh-memes) shall we?
I know it sounds weird and there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of them. But you actually hear them and use them everyday. It’s really important to know how these work in this political climate. And once you know you’ll be able to spot them and decide for yourself.
Syllogisms are logical statements as defined by Aristotle. They contain a major premise (general statement) and a minor premise (a more specific statement) to create the conclusion.
Example: (general) All men are trash. (specific) Jeff is a man, (conclusion) therefore Jeff is trash. If I just give you the general and specific statements, chances are you can come to the conclusion on your own.
The problem: Not all men are actual trash it’s more of a statement about the normalization of our culture of misogyny.
A syllogism can be factual but generally it’s more like the illusion of reasoning because it asks us to draw conclusions based on combining existing statements. It’s called “deductive reasoning,” a more scientific method would be “inductive reasoning” where facts are determined by repeated observations.
An Enthymeme is a type of syllogism. These are the ones we need to look out for.
Instead of connecting two statements, it keeps one premise implied, meaning both premises do not have valid conclusions like in a syllogism. It is an incomplete argument that asks the reader or listener to draw their own conclusions based on signs as opposed to facts.
Example: I don’t consider myself a feminist. I love men.
Implied premise: Feminists hate men. Women wanting rights is somehow equated with the oppression of men, which makes no sense. But it influences the audience to make certain assumptions about the type of people who support the economic and social empowerment of women.
Know these. Because misusing them allows people/governments/politicians to manipulate people and make them think it was “common sense” or their own idea.
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Sh*t You Need To Know
Unmasking the secret landlords buying up America
The Census Bureau reports that nearly 3 million U.S. homes and 13 million apartment units are owned by LLC, LLP, LP or shell companies – levels of anonymous ownership not seen in American history. The proportion of residential rental properties owned by individuals and families has fallen from 92% in 1991 to 74% in 2015.
The lack of transparency not only represents an opportunity for money laundering, but it also has more prosaic implications. First-time homebuyers are denied the opportunity to buy affordable homes with bank loans because those properties already have been scooped up by shell companies. Tenants can’t figure out to whom to complain when something goes wrong. Local officials don’t know whom to hold responsible for code violations and neighborhood blight.
Damn, we really don’t know who is buying up America. Money laundering by real estate? Interesting.
60 People Treated for Skin Irritation After a Plane Dumps Fuel Over School Near LAX
They really dumped jet fuel on children. Cudahy is a 98% Latinx school in Los Angeles. Would they ever even think of dumping fuel on an elementary school in Westwood or Beverly Hills? Teachers have now filed a lawsuit against Delta, accusing it of negligence.
NPR’s sanitizing of Trump’s Milwaukee rally shows how he’s broken the media
for media outlets that view themselves as above taking sides, attempts to provide a sober, “balanced” look at presidential speeches often end up normalizing things that are decidedly not normal.
A brief report about Trump’s Milwaukee speech that aired Wednesday morning on NPR illustrates this phenomenon. The anchor’s intro framed Trump’s at times disjointed ramblings as a normal political speech that “ranged widely,” and the ensuing report (which originated from member station WUWM Milwaukee Public Radio) characterized his delivery as one in which he “snapped back at Democrats for bringing impeachment proceedings.”
“Trump was taking on Democrats on their own territory,” the reporter said, when in reality Trump heaped abuse on them, for instance, suggesting former Vice President Joe Biden is experiencing memory loss.
When the media normalizes this type of rhetoric we’re now meeting Trump on his playing field. Meaning we’ve taken several steps down into the realm of misused rhetoric, hate, racism, and lies. When someone makes an argument in order for that argument to be valid with a certain audience, we must first agree on the premise. Meaning you must follow my conclusion at least on the most basic level. I’m not going to argue human rights with someone who cannot agree that Black and Brown people are fully human. We would have no basis to begin reasoning with each other. There is no foundation to build an argument. SO let’s say I decide to engage by writing an article that treats Trumps premise as a valid argument. All that does is create the illusion that it is in fact valid discourse, which will open up the door to more crazy talk being treated as valid concerns. It’s a stepping stone on the road to hate crimes, xenophobia, racism, and genocide.
There has been an amendment made to AB5 which would limit freelance writers to 35 articles per publication.
As a freelance writer, I’ve been reeling from the news of this bill. Apparently they’ve now made an exemption for writers but there are tons of other industries that are still being negatively impacted by the bill. The hardest hit will be women.
Translators and interpreters are among many fields affected. Faces of AB5, a Twitter account that critics of the law started, includes many tweets from self-employed people in California who say they have lost work—or their entire businesses—as a direct result of the law.
Many opponents say they started their own businesses because they need more flexibility than traditional jobs allow, to manage family responsibilities, like caregiving, or to cope with disabilities.
You can read more about AB5 here.
Pendeja, You Ain’t Steinbeck: My Bronca with Fake-Ass Social Justice Literature
Ya’ll everyone needs to take the time and read this. It’s kind of long but it’s a spot on literary and social critique of the types of structures that allow outsiders to come in and claim shit that ain’t theirs. It’s also akin to the way white authors exotified colonized people and took it upon themselves to “tell their stories” when they had no licence to do so. Re: Heart of Darkness, A Passage to India, and so much Modern literature. It’s the white colonial gaze being used to define a group of people all over again.
A self-professed gabacha, Jeanine Cummins, wrote a book that sucks. Big time.
Her obra de caca belongs to the great American tradition of doing the following:
Appropriating genius works by people of color
Slapping a coat of mayonesa on them to make palatable to taste buds estados-unidenses and
Repackaging them for mass racially “colorblind” consumption.
Rather than look us in the eye, many gabachos prefer to look down their noses at us. Rather than face that we are their moral and intellectual equals, they happily pity us. Pity is what inspires their sweet tooth for Mexican pain, a craving many of them hide. This denial motivates their spending habits, resulting in a preference for trauma porn that wears a social justice fig leaf. To satisfy this demand, Cummins tossed together American Dirt, a “road thriller” that wears an I’m-giving-a-voice-to-the-voiceless-masses merkin.
YouTube Sh*t
Check out my interview on Bella y Chingona a new platform for women of color to come and share their stories on becoming a jefa. My good friend Bonnie Ayala did my makeup and asked me all kinds of questions about my career journey.
follow @bellaychingona for more on their upcoming interviews! #BellaYChingona
Oh yeah Ruby is in it too!
Music Sh*t
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As I said on IG last week I made a fire early 2000s playlist you can listen to it here if the embedded link doesn’t work.
Tech Sh*t
Your Loudest Engineer Is Not a Genius
When volume and confidence are considered to be the same as competence, we have a big problem. Do we really want a world built by people who all have the same narcissistic communication style? What we need to be asking ourselves is: what type of personality is good for leadership?
See you next week! Like what you read? Like and share por favor!