To Future Accusations

One wondrously sturdy illusion

In human rhetoric’s bag of tricks

Begins with confirmation bias,

Not as a practice but as a fact—

Humans are more prone to discover

Whatever they’ve already believed.

Now, apply this to your opponent—

Humans being prone to this bias

And you being human, you are prone,

Syllogistically, you see? You see

What you want to see. The tricky part

Is thus to set your opponent off

As if apart from everyone else—

You see only what you want to see.

See? The rest are left in the shadows.

The spotlight is fixed on the bias

Of your opponent, dimming your own.

Move swiftly. The important next step

Is to confuse things by a fusion

Of bias with immoral desire.

This works best when arguing against

Any dark view of human nature

Or the enduring dolor of things.

You see these horrors as persisting

(Or ancient or natural or fixed)

Only because you want to see them,

Which means you want them to continue.

See what we did, just then? Offering

No actual counter-evidence,

You can kneecap a bleak perspective

By thus effectively suggesting

That it stems from sickness in the head,

That any grim prognostication

Simply shows the prognosticator

To be a wicked person wishing

For grim things to continue to win.

We would adduce examples, except

That by giving them we could expose

Ourselves to future accusations.