“But they’re faaaaaamily”

If, like me, you’re an avid reader of advice columns, then you know the thought-terminating cliche, “but they’re faaaaaamily.” A thought-terminating cliché is something people say to ourselves that enables us to stop thinking about what otherwise might be a troubling situation. It enables us to resolve cognitive dissonance. This particular thought-terminating cliche comes up when a family member (call them YTA) has repeatedly behaved hurtfully, and the person they’ve hurt (usually the person writing in for advice, so “Letter Writer,” LW) wants the hurting to stop. LW is proposing setting a boundary of some kind, holding YTA accountable, getting some kind of meaningful commitment that YTA will change. LW wants the family to take on the problem that YTA hurts LW.

Often, the family refuses. Getting YTA to stop hurting LW is often part of a family system, and so getting real change would mean rethinking assumptions, changing how the family systems work, dealing directly with uncomfortable things people have been evading. If they aren’t hurt by YTA, then it would be easier just to try to get LW to shut up. The conflict would still be there, but it would only be between LW and YTA.

And here is the moment of truth. A family (or group) can decide that it is committed to principles of treatment–such as reciprocity (everyone does unto others as we would have done unto us)–in which case they would be willing to take on the hard work of ensuring that every individual is going to be treated as we would have done unto us.

Or, the family/group can decide that the conflict is not YTA’s shabby behavior, but LW’s objecting to it. After all, that’s what seems make it everyone’s problem. So, many families and groups treat naming the conflict and naming the shabby behavior as the real problem, and say that this naming so violates in-group loyalty. That’s how a lot of families and groups treat the accusation of intra-group violation of ethical norms (aka, being a shit). Instead of saying the person being a shit is a problem, the person complaining is the problem.

Sometimes YTA apologizes (or is made to apologize), and LW is expected to behave as though the slate is wiped clean—no matter how many times YTA has hurt LW in exactly the same way and apologized, and then gone on to hurt again. It’s reasonable that LW might, especially if YTA has apologized, and hurt again, not think an apology is good enough. A healthy situation would mean that people would want to think about the systems that caused the hurt; an unhealthy one says LW has to “get over” the hurt, even if it’s still happening, and will keep happening. The problem gets reframed as LW being over-sensitive, too focused on the past, unforgiving, and insensitive as to the hurt they’re causing YTA by calling out past behavior.

Having deflected the problem onto LW’s being sensitive or unforgiving, the family can then fleck off any obligation to do anything. If LW resists, and, for instance, doesn’t want to loan YTA money (knowing it will never be paid back), let them move in (knowing they’ll be hurtful and irresponsible), invite them to an important event, and so on, then the family says, “But you can’t treat YTA that way, because they’re faaaaamily.” YTA, so the argument runs, would be or is hurt by LW, and YTA is family, LW is therefore in the wrong.

I have to point out that LW is also faaaaamily, so were family obligations reciprocal, then YTA would be told in no uncertain terms to knock that shit off, but they aren’t. That’s important. This narrative reframes a reasonable description of the situation–YTA has hurt LW and will continue to do so–into YTA being the victim of LW because LW named the behavior out loud and is trying to change it.

What LW wants is in-group accountability, and LW makes themselves out-group simply by asking for it. “But it’s faaaaamily” is a way of saying that in-group members (family) cannot be held accountable—it’s a violation of loyalty to the family to ask for accountability from any member of the family.

Sometimes there’s a minor amount of hand-wringing, and perhaps even a talking-to, but most often LW is framed as doing something that means they “deserve” YTA’s bad treatment, and so BSAB (Both Sides Are Bad).

It’s rarely BSAB; YTA has rarely been hurt by LW as much as LW has been hurt by YTA, but wildly different standards are applied to make the math work. So, for instance, an adult offspring wanting to move out is just as bad as another family member having stolen their identity, a bride not wanting her father to walk her down the aisle is just as bad as his having skedaddled out of financial and emotional obligations for most of her life, and, well, anyone who reads advice columns can list lots of other examples.

Thus, the more that a group values in-group loyalty, the less able they are to manage in-group conflict reasonably, the more hostile they are to holding in-group members accountable, the more hostile they are to anyone who asks for accountability, and the more likely they are to engage in bad math BSAB.

This post isn’t about families. It’s about politics.

When I began working on what’s euphemistically called “the slavery debate,” I discovered that one of the most common post-Civil War narratives was BSAB–the Civil War happened, so this fantasy goes, because slavers and abolitionists were equally fanatical. There’s an interesting history of that narrative. In the antebellum era, it was a repeated (and powerful) argument that enabled people who directly benefited from slavery to claim that they didn’t have a position on it; it died during the Civil War (at least in the North), but sprang up again after the end of Reconstruction with Democrats wanting to get the support of southern states (the Solid South strategy, although people who should have known better, like Oliver Wendall Holmes believed it), It slowly retreated after the Civil Rights movement, but never really surrendered. And I’m seeing it come back.

It’s unmitigated nonsense.

It meant equating criticizing slavery with lynching abolitionists; it meant equating factory work (which was bad) with slavery (which was worse); it meant equating the kind of physical punishment often used with children with the brutality of treatment of enslaved people; it meant equating the sometimes vehement rhetoric of abolitionists with the attempt to make all states into slave states.

But, it’s an attractive narrative for people who believe that loyalty to in-group is the highest value. I think it was Michael Sandel who said that you have to honor Robert E. Lee’s decision to value his loyalty to his state. No, you don’t. Lee valued his loyalty to his state over his loyalty to his country—he was, literally, a traitor to his country, and violated oaths, and he did so in order to protect slavery.

Jonathan Haidt, a conservative, showed that self-identified “conservatives” value in-group loyalty more than self-identified “liberals.” As I’ve argued, I think the “conservative v. liberal” way of describing our policy and political world is either false or non-falsifiable. Tl;dr, the “left v. right” binary or continuum is as useful as describing religious views as Christian v. atheist. You don’t make the Christian/atheist binary more accurate by making it a continuum between the two.

I think a more nuanced research project would complicate (aka show to be bullshit) Haidt’s conclusions (especially his conclusion that in-group loyalty is a good, and “libruls” are wrong not to value it). I think some consideration of the history of appeals to in-group loyalty (aka, scholarship in rhetoric) would show that valuing loyalty is anti-democratic and anti-pluralist. Democracy demands reciprocity; in-group loyalty means being willing to violate reciprocity.

A more useful research program would look at who values in-group loyalty over pluralism and reciprocity, regardless of the media construction of liberal/conservative.

“But they’re faaaamily” is all about violating reciprocity. Refusing to hold in-group members to the same standards as we hold out-group members is just another version of the toxic “But they’re faaaamily.” It’s a refusal to do unto others as we want done unto us; it’s a rejection of the notion of acting on the basis of principles; it’s a skedaddling away from defending our policies reasonably, and therefore an admission that they can’t be defended if we hold in- and out-group members to the same standards.

So, let’s talk about GOP outrage about Hunter Biden, and the refusal on the part of every single GOP politico, pundit, or supporter on social media to hold Trump to the same standards they’re holding Biden.

“But he’s faaaaamily.”