{"id":3663,"date":"2025-01-30T20:20:20","date_gmt":"2025-01-30T20:20:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/muscularchristianityonline.com\/platform\/?p=3663"},"modified":"2025-01-30T20:21:04","modified_gmt":"2025-01-30T20:21:04","slug":"the-progressive-pentagon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/muscularchristianityonline.com\/platform\/?p=3663","title":{"rendered":"The Progressive Pentagon &#8211; A Practical Guide to Fake News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3664 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/muscularchristianityonline.com\/platform\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/pentagon-297x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"297\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/muscularchristianityonline.com\/platform\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/pentagon-297x300.jpg 297w, https:\/\/muscularchristianityonline.com\/platform\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/pentagon-1021x1030.jpg 1021w, https:\/\/muscularchristianityonline.com\/platform\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/pentagon-80x80.jpg 80w, https:\/\/muscularchristianityonline.com\/platform\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/pentagon-768x775.jpg 768w, https:\/\/muscularchristianityonline.com\/platform\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/pentagon-1523x1536.jpg 1523w, https:\/\/muscularchristianityonline.com\/platform\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/pentagon-2030x2048.jpg 2030w, https:\/\/muscularchristianityonline.com\/platform\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/pentagon-36x36.jpg 36w, https:\/\/muscularchristianityonline.com\/platform\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/pentagon-1487x1500.jpg 1487w, https:\/\/muscularchristianityonline.com\/platform\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/pentagon-699x705.jpg 699w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 297px) 100vw, 297px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>There are five tactics you can be listening for when you&#8217;re being told by someone that they have a point, when in fact they&#8217;ve got something to hide. I call it the &#8220;Perspective Pentagon&#8221; because, taken together, they serve as the way in which the Left both defends it&#8217;s stance and attacks it&#8217;s opponents.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s bogus, but it&#8217;s brilliant.<\/p>\n<p><strong>1) They spend more time attacking their opponent\u2019s character than they do discussing their opponent\u2019s content .<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>By making your opponent look immoral, their platform is interpreted as being immoral as well, regardless of how sound it may be (Matt 11:19; 2 Cor 10:10). When you hear this tactic being used, chances are the person who\u2019s speaking doesn&#8217;t have something to say as much as they have something to hide.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2) They spend more time pretending to be hurt than they do proving that they\u2019re right.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>You can\u2019t criticize someone who\u2019s in pain let alone the person who\u2019s trying to help without immediately being categorized as cruel and insensitive. Because of the way this tactic has the ability to shut down any transparent dialogue, chances are the person who uses this technique can&#8217;t afford to be cornered by a direct question and they have something to hide (Prov 22:13)<\/p>\n<p><strong>3) They spend more time trying to appear honest than they do telling the truth.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>You can be ethical without telling the whole truth. When you\u2019re hearing this tactic being used, it&#8217;s then that credible evidence is usually being dismissed for no good reason because of the way it threatens to expose the truth. Again, this person has something to hide (Matt 4:1-11).<\/p>\n<p><strong>4) They spend more time talking about labels, mobs and crowds than they do a name, a person and a choice. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>You can conceal a person\u2019s lack of judgment by ignoring their individuality and seeing them instead as part of a supposedly virtuous group. You can do the same thing, only in reverse, by refusing to see a person\u2019s virtue and instead see them as part of a sinister collective. Both approaches are part of a heinous tactic that seeks to assign whole demographics a specific morality, regardless of the individuals who do or do not qualify&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and it\u2019s often used by that person who has something to hide (2 Thess 3:10).<\/p>\n<p><strong>5) They spend more time defending bad decisions and demonizing personal responsibility than they do applauding wise choices and holding people accountable for their actions.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Of all the tactics represented by the \u201cProgressive Pentagon,\u201d this is the most obvious in that the person speaking is calling \u201cgood\u201d bad and vice versa. It&#8217;s accomplished by insisting that, as part of a flawed system, there are no &#8220;bad decisions&#8221; because of the way your environment obligates you to fail. Hence, you are not responsible for your actions and it&#8217;s not you that has to change, rather, it&#8217;s the ideals that the current system is based on that need to be altered if not destroyed.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s as nonsensical as it is sinister, yet it is a hallmark of those who have something to hide (Is 5:20).<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>You can remember those five tactics by using this mnemonic:<\/p>\n<div style=\"margin: auto; background-color: #000; color: #fff; padding: 10px; border-radius: 10pt; width: 60%; height: auto; text-align: center; font-weight: bold;\">Mobs of Characters Hurt Honest Decisions<\/div>\n<p>Anytime you hear any of these tactics being deployed, you&#8217;re listening to someone who has something to hide. And generally, what they&#8217;re trying to conceal is either;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the fact that their argument can&#8217;t bear up under the weight of a direct question, or&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>there&#8217;s a darker purpose being accomplished that has nothing to do with the subject matter but is nevertheless advanced by the topic being discussed<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You defeat the &#8220;Pentagon&#8221; by first being aware of it, then you you remind your audience that it&#8217;s not about the way they, &#8220;feel,&#8221; rather, it&#8217;s about what&#8217;s true. You insist on an evaluation of all the facts and as opposed to a manipulation of just some of the facts and you demand specific examples as opposed to a manufactured majority.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, you demonstrate how what&#8217;s being debated is a natural compliment to the sinister agenda that&#8217;s hoping to go unnoticed. You avoid anything that can be potentially dismissed as an outrageous conspiracy, but you don&#8217;t allow the obvious to be dismissed as a meaningless coincidence.<\/p>\n<p>In short&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>You stand.<\/p>\n<p>You speak.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and you silence the evil disguised as compassion and the lie that poses as the truth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are five tactics you can be listening for when you&#8217;re being told by someone that they have a point, when in fact they&#8217;ve got something to hide. I call it the &#8220;Perspective Pentagon&#8221; because, taken together, they serve as the way in which the Left both defends it&#8217;s stance and attacks it&#8217;s opponents. It&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3664,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,22,41],"tags":[102,56,94,101,55,100,99],"class_list":["post-3663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-events","category-discipleship","category-politics","tag-blm","tag-democrats","tag-fake-news","tag-gay-price","tag-liberals","tag-pro-choice","tag-progressive-pentagon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/muscularchristianityonline.com\/platform\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/muscularchristianityonline.com\/platform\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/muscularchristianityonline.com\/platform\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muscularchristianityonline.com\/platform\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muscularchristianityonline.com\/platform\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3663"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/muscularchristianityonline.com\/platform\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3666,"href":"https:\/\/muscularchristianityonline.com\/platform\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3663\/revisions\/3666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muscularchristianityonline.com\/platform\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/muscularchristianityonline.com\/platform\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muscularchristianityonline.com\/platform\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muscularchristianityonline.com\/platform\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}