Arguing with Trump supporters II: an unpersuasive negative case isn’t proof of the opposite claim

Arguing with Trump supporters is frustrating because they can look like they’re engaged in argumentation, but they aren’t. They’re using a very old trick of doing everything possible to avoid the burden of proof—that is, the rhetorical responsibility of supporting your claims. They’ll engage in sham outrage if their interlocutor won’t support their claims (or engages in fallacies like ad hominem), and that’s interesting. It’s striking how often a Trump supporter blasts into an argument with insults and then is on the ground crying and screaming if someone insults them. They’re very fragile.

I think there’s something else going on. They really can’t win an argument on an even playing field—one on which everyone is held to the same standards of argumentation—and so they do everything they can to make sure it isn’t level. They evade the responsibilities of argument as though they’re running from a vindictive ex, through sham outrage, motivism, deflection, distraction, and, most of all, trying to position themselves as making the negative case.

Argumentation has two cases—proposing a solution or case, and critiquing the case someone else has made. That is, affirmative (making a case) or negative (saying they haven’t made their case). People get confused as to what a “negative” case is—it isn’t a case saying something is bad; it’s saying that something hasn’t happened. And here’s what people have a lot of trouble understanding: the success of a negative case is not the proof of an affirmative claim. If I fail to prove to your satisfaction that Chester is a bunny, it’s fallacious for you to conclude that Chester is a duck. He might be neither; he might be a bunny, and I put forward a bad case; he might be a bunny, and I put forward a great case, and you aren’t open to persuasion. A successful negative case just that shows that this argument is inadequate.

If Chester says that Trump is a bad President, and Rando destroys that argument, Rando hasn’t shown that Trump is a good President.

“Trump is a good President” is an affirmative case—that’s the case his supporters have completely stopped defending through rational argumentation. Defending that case through rational argumentation would mean that his supporters engage the smartest critics of him while following these rules.

If any Trump supporters read this post, they’ll respond by listing what he’s done that they like (which he may or may not have actually done—they’re strategically misinformed), motivism, straw man, and nutpicking. Not through rational argumentation. That would be proving my point.

In my experience, Trump supporters often make one or more of four moves. First, as I’ve been saying, they can’t rationally defend “Trump is a good President,” so they don’t try—they insist that his critics take on the burden of proof, and they take the stance of a negative case. (And his critics tend to take on that burden, for really interesting reasons—that’s a later post, and if anyone is that interested, and I forget to write it, nag me.)

Second, they often set their own persuasion as the standard of a good argument. I have to say that every person who has done this latter move to me is a white male. Can we cay privilege? [1]

Third, having declared the opposition argument inadequate (because they are unpersuaded), they declare an affirmative victory. They never made an affirmative case, so they can’t have won it.

The fourth move isn’t necessarily the last one (sometimes it’s the first one they make, and they don’t make the others)—it’s to say that the Democrats are bad (you get to abortion and socialism on this road very fast). But Democrats being bad doesn’t mean he’s a good President. He might also be bad.[2] After all, if A is bad, that doesn’t mean not-A is good (that a gorilla is a bad pet doesn’t mean that a lion is a good one). But I think a lot of people really have trouble understanding that absence of proof for one affirmative case is not proof for the opposition affirmative case. Logic is not zero-sum.

Supporting Trump is sloppy Machiavellianism—anything, any argument or any action, that supports him is assumed to be good because their goals are supposedly good. Neither are good, and neither are rationally defensible.


[1] Speaking of privilege, being an actual Professor of Rhetoric, with a specialty in argumentation, means I have some cred when I say that whether a person is or is not making a good argument is something I am better qualified to determine than they are. But, arguing in my actual identity means making it clear that I’m a woman, and I can tell you that white males with no more research than asking their own brains what they think often feel fully qualified to tell me that I am wrong about rhetoric and argumentation.

And here we get back to whether the rules are applied equally. If Rando not being persuaded means the argument is bad, does my not being persuaded by his argument mean his argument is bad?

It doesn’t, of course. But if you ask him that, the two neurons he can get to fire short out. It’s kind of entertaining to see the response. Here again, if Rando is claiming to be Christian, it’s useful to point out that he is failing to do unto others as he would have do unto him.

[2] “He’s a bad President but he’s better than Biden” is not the same claim as “he’s a good President,” nor is it even evidence for that second claim.