Submitted by jeffpsmith on Wed, 05/21/2008 - 12:19
A frequent rhetorical trick is to oversimplify an issue, and then present to the audience, factfinder, or decisionmaker a false choice, usually with loaded verbiage. Henry Kissinger was a master of the "we have two choices" overdistillation; Donald Rumsfeld would frequently attempt the same thing by re-phrasing a question into an unpalatable option v. what the Administration was doing.
This tack is what one alderman employed in saying Evanston's only option is to "move forward" or else we "slip backward."
Submitted by jeffpsmith on Fri, 05/16/2008 - 00:15
Some Evanston citizens asked me in the fall to provide a synopsis of the 108-page Downtown Evanston Plan now working its way through the Plan Commission. Since it's going to get a lot closer to reality in the next few months, and we now have a better website, I'm publishing an updated version here. It's a long post but closer to 7 pages, not 108.
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