A lot of people are sharing this post, and it’s wrong. Students were tremendously supportive of Nazis. (I think they were also supportive of Mussolini and Franco, but I haven’t read much about them, so I might be wrong.)
More important, this post appeals to the fantasy that complicated political situations are actually simple. It says they’re really a binary between a group with perfect insight and the right understanding, and a ruling class that is a Disney villain. That way of thinking about politics shuts down our ability to argue with one another reasonably about policy options. As it is intended to do.
There are evil groups and evil policies, but, if I were going to say that there is a good law of history it would be: no framing of any major policy conflict as binary of two groups (one right and the other evil) has ever been just, accurate, useful, or helpful.
I’m open to counter-examples, but, since thinking about this framing of politics has been something I’ve been studying for forty years, I’m pretty confident that there isn’t one.
So, if you think you know of a time when a major policy issue was a binary between two sides–of two groups (one right and the other evil) –I’d love to hear about it.
I often read a subreddit AmItheAsshole. People write in describing some incident where they think they were right, but someone tells them they behaved badly, and they’re asking for judgment.
For instance, there was recently a post by someone who said that his girlfriend dithered and delayed in the morning, and therefore regularly drove well over the speed limit in order to get to work on time. The Original Poster (OP) told her that her speeding was unsafe, and that she should get up earlier. She ignored him. She got a lot of speeding tickets. When she had gotten so many speeding tickets that she was about to lose her license, she told the OP that he should claim he was driving her car at the time of the last ticket–that he was the one speeding. That would cost him a lot of money (directly and indirectly) but it would enable her to keep speeding, since she could keep her license. He refused. She said he was the asshole because now she would not be able to drive to work. She told him that he would have to drive her to work, since he had caused this situation. He refused.
He was unwilling to take the hit of increased insurance rates and having to drive her to work just because she had ignored everything he warned her about, and had chosen to make really bad decisions. She said he was the asshole, since her current situation—having to take public transportation to work—what the consequence of a decision he’d made.
So, who is the asshole?
AITA is really a subreddit about blame and responsibility, and commenters are invited to make one of several judgments: YTA (you’re the asshole) meaning you, and you alone are responsible for this situation. In other words, the OP is responsible for her losing her license. Or, there’s NTA (not the asshole) meaning that there is an asshole (a person whose bad behavior led to this situation) but it isn’t the person who posted the question (for instance, the girlfriend who dithers in the morning). NAH (no assholes here) meaning that it’s a bad situation but not because anyone behaved badly. ESH (everyone sucks here) meaning that this situation came about because everyone is awful.
Clearly, she hadn’t learned from this situation. She had no intention of driving any differently. She didn’t see the consequences of her behavior as…well, the consequences of her behavior. She thought someone else should step in and save her, so that she could continue to be irresponsible. Technically speaking, OP could have kept her from losing her license. But she would never have been in that situation had she been more responsible about her time management.
I taught college writing for about forty years. And, when I was the teacher of record, I sometimes had a student who was flunking my class (because they hadn’t turned in any work, they’d plagiarized, what they did turn in had little relation to the assignments, and so on), and they would say to me, “If I flunk this class, I’ll be kicked out of college; because of you, I’ll be thrown out of college.” Technically speaking, my flunking them might be the final straw, and so, if I didn’t flunk them, they could stay in college, until they flunked the next class.
But, if they hadn’t flunked (and weren’t flunking) lots of other classes, what grade I gave them wouldn’t matter. What I did only mattered because of the situation they’d gotten themselves into. I didn’t force them to flunk; I didn’t keep them from doing the work. Like the girlfriend who regularly violated speed limits, the situation they were in–about to flunk out of college–was the predictable consequence of choices they’d made.
The claim that Democrats are responsible for the House impasse reads to me like an AITA post. So, imagine that the Republicans claiming that the House inability to get any work done is the fault of the Democrats wrote in to AITA. What would the judgment be?
Demagoguery means reducing complicated, nuanced, and uncertain policy issues to questions of fanatical loyalty to us (including refusing to look at any non-fanatically in-group media) and Them (everyone else). Demagoguery means refusing to compromise. The GOP has promoted an anti-government demagoguery since the 80s. The basic message of that demagoguery is that the government is the cause of all problems, so shutting down the government would be good. No reasonable person believes that, but it’s been a winning frame for the GOP. So, they’ve spend forty years promoting it.
The GOP decided to engage in a kind of gerrymandering that meant that winning a primary rewarded the most demagogic candidate. The GOP (and its media enablers) decided to reward demagoguery. The GOP decided to refuse to hold its most demagogic members accountable for anything, ranging from an attempted to coup to sex-trafficking underage girls.
And now, having enabled the election of people who think refusal to compromise is a good thing, whose policy agenda is entirely negative and fairly incoherent, and who couldn’t reason their way out of a paper bag if both ends were open and there were flashing EXIT signs, but who are fanatical and in districts that would elect a dead dog if it had R next to its name, the GOP is realizing that they’re held hostage by unreasonable people.
And they think the Dems should save them.
That girlfriend thought the OP should take the hit. She thought he should lie, take the insurance hit, and pay the fine, so that she could keep speeding.
From here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SetNFqcayeA
A common description of the LBJ Administration decision-making regarding Vietnam was that it was an instance of “groupthink”—that decision-makers in the administration were unwilling to disagree with one another (e.g, Irving Janis Groupthink). Another description is that the administration was excessively optimistic, duped, or otherwise unwilling to consider reasonably the likelihood of success.
It turns out it was much more complicated than that. I was looking for times that decision-makers used the cudgel of “but appeasement!” to deflect reasonable dissent, and came across this exchange.
In June of 1965, Westmoreland had asked for additional troops, arguing that escalating US involvement would “give us a substantial and hard hitting offensive capability on the ground to convince the VC that they cannot win.”
George Ball argued that escalation was a mistake. In a July 1, 1965 memo, for instance, he said,
“So long as our forces are restricted to advising and assisting the South Vietnamese, the struggle will remain a civil war between Asian peoples. Once we deploy substantial numbers of troops in combat it will become a war between the U.S. and a large part of the population of South Vietnam, organized and directed from North Vietnam and backed by the resources of both Moscow and Peiping. “The decision you face now, therefore, is crucial. Once large numbers of U.S. troops are committed to direct combat, they will begin to take heavy casualties in a war they are ill‐equipped to fight in a non‐cooperative if not downright hostile countryside. “Once we suffer large casualties, we will have started a well‐nigh irreversible process. Our involvement will be so great that we cannot—without national humiliation—stop short of achieving our complete objectives. Of the two possibilities I think humiliation would be more likely than the achievement of our objectives—even after we have paid terrible costs.”
On July 20, 1965, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara sent a memo to LBJ arguing for raising US personnel in Vietnam from 75k to 175k (perhaps even 200k). On July 21, 1965, LBJ and his advisors met to discuss that memo. I was surprised by the transcript of the meeting. It doesn’t show ideal deliberation, but it does show that LBJ wanted to hear what Ball said, and wanted options considered. Ball was invited to make his argument, and LBJ specifically asked McNamara to reply to them. He also asked for a second meeting just to discuss Ball’s argument. The transcript of both meetings is fascinating, but this exchange (from the afternoon meeting) is particularly important for thinking about deliberation.
Ball: We can’t win. Long protracted. The most we can hope for is messy conclusion. There remains a great danger of intrusion by Chicoms. Problem of long war in US: 1. Korean experience was galling one. Correlation between Korean casualties and public opinion (Ball showed Pres. a chart)5 showed support stabilized at 50%. As casualties increase, pressure to strike at jugular of the NVN will become very great. 2. World opinion. If we could win in a year’s time—win decisively—world opinion would be alright. However, if long and protracted we will suffer because a great power cannot beat guerrillas. 3. National politics. Every great captain in history is not afraid to make a tactical withdrawal if conditions are unfavorable to him. The enemy cannot even be seen; he is indigenous to the country. Have serious doubt if an army of westerners can fight orientals in Asian jungle and succeed. President: This is important—can westerners, in absence of intelligence, successfully fight orientals in jungle rice-paddies? I want McNamara and Wheeler to seriously ponder this question. Ball: I think we have all underestimated the seriousness of this situation. Like giving cobalt treatment to a terminal cancer case. I think a long protracted war will disclose our weakness, not our strength. The least harmful way to cut losses in SVN is to let the government decide it doesn’t want us to stay there. Therefore, put such proposals to SVN government that they can’t accept, then it would move into a neutralist position—and I have no illusions that after we were asked to leave, SVN would be under Hanoi control. What about Thailand? It would be our main problem. Thailand has proven a good ally so far—though history shows it has never been a staunch ally. If we wanted to make a stand in Thailand, we might be able to make it. Another problem would be South Korea. We have two divisions there now. There would be a problem with Taiwan, but as long as Generalissimo is there, they have no place to go. Indonesia is a problem—insofar as Malaysia. There we might have to help the British in military way. [Page 195] Japan thinks we are propping up a lifeless government and are on a sticky wicket. Between long war and cutting our losses, the Japanese would go for the latter (all this on Japan according to Reischauer). President: Wouldn’t all those countries say Uncle Sam is a paper tiger—wouldn’t we lose credibility breaking the word of three presidents—if we set it up as you proposed. It would seem to be an irreparable blow. But, I gather you don’t think so. Ball: The worse blow would be that the mightiest power in the world is unable to defeat guerrillas. President: Then you are not basically troubled by what the world would say about pulling out? Ball: If we were actively helping a country with a stable, viable government, it would be a vastly different story. Western Europeans look at us as if we got ourselves into an imprudent fashion [situation]. [….] President: Two basic troublings: 1. That Westerners can ever win in Asia. 2. Don’t see how you can fight a war under direction of other people whose government changes every month. Now go ahead, George, and make your other points. Ball: The cost, as well as our Western European allies, is not relevant to their situation. What they are concerned about is their own security—troops in Berlin have real meaning, none in VN. President: Are you saying pulling out of Korea would be akin to pulling out of Vietnam? Bundy: It is not analogous. We had a status quo in Korea. It would not be that way in Vietnam. Ball: We will pay a higher cost in Vietnam. This is a decision one makes against an alternative. On one hand—long protracted war, costly, NVN is digging in for long term. This is their life and driving force. Chinese are taking long term view—ordering blood plasma from Japan. On the other hand—short-term losses. On balance, come out ahead of McNamara plan. Distasteful on either hand. Bundy: Two important questions to be raised—I agree with the main thrust of McNamara. It is the function of my staff to argue both sides. To Ball’s argument: The difficulty in adopting it now would be a radical switch without evidence that it should be done. It goes in the face of all we have said and done. His whole analytical argument gives no weight to loss suffered by other side. A great many elements in his argument are correct. We need to make clear this is a somber matter—that it will not be quick—no single action will bring quick victory. I think it is clear that we are not going to be thrown out. Ball: My problem is not that we don’t get thrown out, but that we get bogged down and don’t win. Bundy: I would sum up: The world, the country, and the VN would have alarming reactions if we got out. Rusk: If the Communist world finds out we will not pursue our commitment to the end, I don’t know where they will stay their hand. I am more optimistic than some of my colleagues. I don’t believe the VC have made large advances among the VN people. We can’t worry about massive casualties when we say we can’t find the enemy. I don’t see great casualties unless the Chinese come in. Lodge: There is a greater threat to World War III if we don’t go in. Similarity to our indolence at Munich.
As I said it’s far from ideal deliberation, but it isn’t as bad as I’d expected. LBJ wanted disagreement, and wanted people to take Ball’s arguments seriously. And they didn’t. It wasn’t groupthink; it was something more complicated.
Ball’s concerns were legitimate and prescient, and he got shut down. Because Munich.
Some time in the 1980s, my father said that he had always been opposed to the Vietnam War. My brother asked, appropriately enough, “Then who the hell was that man in our house in the 60s?”
That story is a little gem of how persuasion happens, and how people deny it.
I have a friend who was raised in a fundagelical world, who has changed zir mind on the question of religion, and who cites various studies to say that people aren’t persuaded by studies. That’s interesting.
For reasons I can’t explain, far too much research about persuasion involves giving people who are strongly committed to a point of view new information and then concluding that they’re idiots for not changing their minds. They would be idiots for changing their mind because they’re given new information while in a lab. They would be idiots for changing their mind because they get one source that tells them that they’re wrong.
We change our minds, but, at least on big issues, it happens slowly, due to a lot of factors, and we often don’t notice because we forget what we once believed.
Many years ago, I started asking students about times they had changed their minds. Slightly fewer many years ago, I stopped asking because I got the same answers over and over. And what my students told me was much like what books like Leaving the Fold, books by and about people who have left cults, changed their minds about Hell or creationism, and various friends said. They rarely described an instance when they changed their mind on an important issue because they were given one fact or one argument. Often, they dug in under those circumstances—temporarily.
But we do change our minds, and there are lots of ways that happens, and the best of them are about a long, slow process of recognition that a belief is unsustainable.[1] Rob Schenck’s Costly Grace reads much like memoirs of people who left cults, or who changed their minds about evolution or Hell. They heard the counterarguments for years, and dismissed them for years, but, at some point, maintaining faith in creationism, the cult, the leader of the cult, just took too much work.
But why that moment? I think that people change their minds in different ways partially because our commitments come from different passions.
In another post I wrote about how some people are Followers. They want to be part of a group that is winning all the time (or, paradoxically, that is victimized). They will stop being part of that group when it fails to satisfy that need for totalized belonging, or when they can no longer maintain the narrative that their group is pounding on Goliath. At that point, they’ll suddenly forget that they were ever part of the group (or claim that, in their hearts, they always dissented, something Arendt noted about many Germans after Hitler was defeated).
Some people are passionate about their ideology, and are relentless at proving everyone else wrong by showing, deductively, that those people are wrong. They do so by arguing from their own premises and then cherry-picking data to support that ideology. They deflect (generally through various attempts at stasis shift) if you point out that their beliefs are non-falsifiable. These are the people that Philip Tetlock described as hedgehogs. Not only are hedgehogs wrong a lot—they don’t do better than a monkey throwing darts—but they don’t remember being wrong because they misremember their original predictions. The consequence is that they can’t learn from their mistakes.
Some people have created a career or public identity about advocating a particular faction, ideology, product, and are passionate about defending every step into charlatanism they take in the course of defending that cult, faction, ideology. Interestingly enough, it’s often these people who do end up changing their minds, and what they describe is a kind of “straw that breaks the camel’s back” situation. People who leave cults often describe a sudden moment when they say, “I just can’t do this.” And then they see all the things that led up to that moment. A collection of memoirs of people who abandoned creationism has several that specifically mention discovering the large overlap in DNA between humans and primates as the data that pushed them over the edge. But, again, that data was the final push–it wasn’t the only one.
Some people are passionate about politics, and about various political goals (theocracy, democratic socialism, libertarianism, neoliberalism, anarchy, third-way neoliberalism, originalism) and are willing to compromise to achieve the goals of their political ideology. In my experience, people like this are relatively open to new information about means, and so they look as though they’re much more open to persuasion, but even they won’t abandon a long-time commitment because of one argument or one piece of data—they too shift position only after a lot of data.
At this point, I think that supporting Trump is in the first and third category. There is plenty of evidence that he is mentally unstable, thin-skinned, corrupt, unethical, vindictive, racist, authoritarian, dishonest, and even dangerous. There really isn’t a deductive argument to make for him, since he doesn’t have a consistent commitment to (or expression of) any economic, political, or judicial theory, and he certainly doesn’t have a principled commitment to any particular religious view. It’s all about what helps him in the moment, in terms of his ego and wealth. That’s why defenders of his keep getting their defenses entangled, and end up engaging in kettle logic. (I never borrowed your kettle, it had a whole in it when I borrowed it, and it was fine when I returned it.)
The consequence of Trump’s pure narcissism (and mental instability) and lack of principled commitment to any consistent ideology is that Trump regularly contradicts himself, as well as talking points his supporters have been loyally repeating, abandons policies they’ve been passionately advocating on his behalf, and leaves them defending statements that are nearly indefensible. What a lot of Trump critics might not realize is that Trump keeps leaving his loyal supporters looking stupid, fanatical, gullible, or some combination of all three. He isn’t even giving them good talking points, and many of the defenses and deflections are embarrassing.
For a long time, I was hesitant to shame them, since an important part of the pro-GOP rhetoric is that “libruls” look down on regular people like them. I was worried that expressing contempt for the embarrassingly bad (internally contradictory, incoherent, counterfactual, revisionist) talking points would reinforce that talking point. And I think that’s a judgment that people have to make on an individual basis, to the extent that they are talking about Trump with people they know well—should they avoid coming across as contemptuous?
But for strangers, I think that shaming can work because it brings to the forefront that Trump is setting his followers up to be embarrassed. That means he is, if not actually failing, at least not fully succeeding at what a leader is supposed to do for his followers. The whole point in being a loyal follower is that the leader rewards that loyalty. The follower gets honor and success by proxy, by being a member of a group that is crushing it. That success by proxy comes from Trump’s continual success, his stigginit to the libs, and his giving them rhetorical tactics that will make “libs” look dumb. Instead, he’s making them look dumb. So, pointing out that their loyal repetition of pro-Trump talking points is making them look foolish is putting more straw on that camel’s back.
Supporting Trump, I’m saying, is at this point largely a question of loyalty. Pointing out that their loyalty is neither returned nor rewarded is the strategy that I think will eventually work. But it will take a lot of repetition.
[1] Conversions to cults, otoh, involve a sudden embrace of this cult’s narrative, one that erases all ambiguity and uncertainty.
Aristotle argued that if people who disagree argue as hard as they can, and the people making the arguments have equal skill, then the truth will prevail. And that’s not a bad argument. It might be a little idealistic. After all, there are lots of situations in which the people arguing (the rhetors) might not have equal skill: a 300-dollar an hour attorney v. you. But, if you’re talking about rhetors who have all the money they need, then Aristotle’s argument makes sense.
People with lots of resources making true arguments don’t worry about their audience being exposed to false arguments because, on the whole, people are sensible, and if the audience is shown something true and something false, they can find the truth. So, a major media source, call it Chester News, doesn’t have to worry about people watching other media, unless watching other media will enable Chester News viewers to realize they’re being lied to. A lot.
People who are lying, however, need to make sure you don’t read other sources because then you’ll figure out they’re lying. So, they spend as much time telling you their lies as they do telling you not to tune in to anyone who might disagree.
Con artists (this book is really interesting about con games), like abusers and cult figures, first isolate you. They spend a lot of time telling you what They believe. The “They” here is a fabricated version of various out-groups that lumps them all into one false image that is both much stronger and weaker than any of the groups are—weaker in the sense that their arguments aren’t presented, but just straw man versions of them, stronger in the sense that They are presented as well-organized, powerful, and incredibly dangerous. Chester News might give cherry-picked quotes or data that, in context, don’t mean what they claim, and they don’t give you the sources so that you can see the full quote in context. Similarly, they give you the clip of This Person (who represents They) saying something outrageous, but they don’t give you a link where you could watch it in context.
And Chester news will, as Benkler et al. and Levendusky show, insist you not listen to anyone else, especially not to any They sources. Why?
It’s like the worst moments in junior high, when someone tells you, “Terry said this terrible thing about you, but don’t ask them about it, because I’ll get in trouble.” If you were sensible, you learned not to listen to them. Don’t believe what Fox tells you “liberals” believe, unless they link to direct sources, and you look at those sources in full context. And don’t believe what MSNBC tells you Fox is arguing, unless they link to direct sources, and you look at those sources in full context.
If the Fox case about impeachment were as good as they claim, they would give you all the sources. They would show you the whole videos, all the documents, all the speeches. They don’t. Fox, Trump, and the GOP are all admitting that they can’t defend themselves if all the evidence is open to their base. That’s important.
And, c’mon, we all know what it means when someone won’t let you look at the data. We’ve all had someone tell us, “Here’s the bill, and I won’t actually explain why I’m right.” And we know it means that they’re lying.
We aren’t talking about someone prying into potential irrelevant details. We’re talking about testimony regarding what Trump said in a phone call. If Trump did nothing wrong in the phone call, then all the people privy to that phone call could testify and he would be exonerated. If they can’t testify, then why not? If Fox won’t let you see that evidence, or the arguments about it, why not? If they had a slam dunk for their interpretation, you know they would share it. They won’t because they’re afraid of it.
If Fox won’t let you see the evidence, their case sucks.
That’s rhetoric 101.
There is no principle here to which any GOP wants to commit. Had HRC won, and had all of this played out, but with HRC substituted for Trump, y’all would be screaming for blood.
And that is how democracies die. They die when people value faction over principle. If we value democracy, we hold our party to the same standards we hold the other party. Otherwise, we’re looking at Athens as it imploded. We’re valuing party loyalty above anything— the truth, fairness, the law, any principles. And if we’re supporting a party whose claims are so weak that they have to make sure their base doesn’t have any direct contact with the opposition arguments, then we’re in real trouble.
I’ve been thinking about Thucydides a lot lately, especially the passage in which he describes the train wreck that politics in the Greek world became.
He says that city-states became rabidly factional, such that people began to value behavior they used to condemn, and condemn behavior that used to be valued, such as deliberation, careful attention to decisions, looking into issues, reasonable caution—those were all dismissed as cowardly and unmanly. A culture that once equated good education with skill in deliberation and war (as in Pericles’ “Funeral Oration” toward the beginning of the war with Sparta), now condemned thinking. Thucydides says,
“Irrational recklessness was now considered courageous commitment, hesitation while looking to the future was high-styled cowardice, moderation was a cover for lack of manhood, while senseless anger now helped to define a true man, and deliberation for security was a specious excuse for dereliction. The man of violent temper was always credible, anyone opposing him was suspect. [.…] Quite simply, one was praised for outracing everyone else to commit a crime. […]Kinship became alien compared with party affiliation, because the latter led to drastic action with less hesitation. For party meetings did not take place to use the benefit of existing laws, but to find advantage in breaking them. [….] Men responded to reasonable words from their opponents with defensive actions if they had the advantage, and not with magnanimity. Revenge mattered more than not being harmed in the first place. And if there were actually reconciliations under oath, they occurred because of both sides’ lack of alternatives, and lasted only as long as neither found some other source of power. [….] All this was caused by leadership based on greed and ambition and led in turn to fanaticism once men were committed to the power struggle. For the leading men in the cities, through their emphasis on an attractive slogan for each side—political equality for the masses, the moderation of aristocracy—treated as their prize the public interest to which they paid lip service and, competing by every means to get the better of one another, boldly committed atrocities and processed to still worse acts of revenge, stopping at limits set by neither justice nor the city’s interest but by the gratification of their parties at every stage, and whether by condemnations through unjust voting or by acquiring superiority in brute force, both sides were ready to justify to the utmost their immediate hopes of victory. And so neither side acted with piety, but those who managed to accomplish something hateful by using honorable arguments were more highly regarded. The citizens in the middle, either because they had not taken sides or because begrudged their survival, were destroyed by both factions.” (3.82, Lattimore translation)
This image is from here: https://www.snowflakevictory.com/
There is a pro-Trump website telling Trump supporters “how to win an argument with your liberal relatives.” One of the main arguments for Trump was (and is) that he would get the best people to work for and with him. So, this is the argument that the best people make for Trump, or, in other words, the best argument for Trump. Does this “best arguments for Trump” webpage have good arguments?
makes claims supported with good evidence, and so presents sources for claims;
can identify the conditions under which they would change their mind;
has claims that are logically connected, avoids fallacies, and applies standards across groups (so, for instance, if you want to say that you are appalled at feeding squirrels, you are just as appalled at in-group squirrel-feeding as you are at out-group squirrel-feeding);
engages the best out-group arguments, or, engaging a specific set of claims that aren’t good arguments, then at least the out-group claims are being presented accurately.
Engaging in rational argumentation isn’t very hard, and it’s easy to do if you’ve actually got a good argument. Rational argumentation isn’t about what claims you make, and whether they seem true to people who already agree, nor whether people making the claims think they’re unemotional. Rational argumentation involves a fairly low bar; it’s just the list above. And that list isn’t controversial.
If you take it out the realm of politics (where people are especially tribal), then it’s clear that “rational argumentation” is actually “sensible ways to think about conflict.” Imagine that you have a boss who says that you should be fired because reasons. You’d be outraged (justifiably) if your boss couldn’t cite sources, was just operating from in-group bias, unfairly represented what you’d said, and wasn’t listening. That’s a shitty boss. And it’s reasonable for you to ask that your boss make a decision about firing you rationally.
That’s a shitty boss because it’s a person who is making decisions badly. And we’ve all had that boss. What would it be like if we extrapolated from that shitty boss, who made decisions badly, to our own tendency to make decisions badly? What if we’re all the shitty boss?
But back to the Trump page—does it present good arguments? It fails every one of the criteria for rational argumentation.
For instance, it not only fails to link to sources to support its claims but it never links to an opposition.
Why not? Why not link to data that would support the claims it’s making? Why not link to the opposition with their, supposedly, terrible arguments? Well, perhaps because it can’t because then it would be clear how false the page’s claims are. Take one example. On two of the links, the claim is that “the 2020 Democrats are the ones who want to strip you of your private, employer-provided health insurance!” (“Trump approach”) That’s a lie in two different ways. First, some of the main candidates argue for something, single-payer health care, that might cause people to choose not to get health insurance from their employment, but instead from the government-based insurance—that’s what the pro-Trump healthcare page goes on to argue. So, the Dems don’t “want” to strip people of their private insurance—some Dem candidates want to give people a choice. (Sanders is the only one who has unequivocally said he would get rid of private insurance, not something, by the way, that a President can do without Congress.) If, as the pro-Trump page claims, so many people leave private insurance that the rates become unmanageable that would be because the government-funded insurance program is better than the private. In other words, this argument is an admission that the current system is inadequate.
There is only one place that the site gives a link—to Biden saying that he insisted that a Ukrainian prosecutor get fired. The page admits that this claim has been debunked, but without any explanation or argument¬, insists it’s true. That isn’t an argument: that’s just direct contradiction.
That argument about Biden and the Ukraine is fallacious in that it is tu quoque (or, “you did it too!”). Whether Biden asked that the Ukrainian prosecutor be fired in order to prevent an investigation of his son’s activities has no relevance to whether Trump told Ukraine that he would withhold foreign aid (which he did, in his version of the phone call). Whether Trump is now refusing to allow people to testify in a trial—that is, obstructing justice—has nothing to do with anything Biden did. Tu quoque is how little kids argue—when caught with a hand in the cookie jar, claiming that little Billy also stole cookies is irrelevant. You might both have stolen cookies. But that’s a fallacy that runs throughout the pages—Trump’s reducing environmental protections is good because China is bad. Trump’s healthcare plan is good because the Democrats’ is bad. They might both be bad.
The set of claims about Ukraine has another fallacy that runs throughout the site: it says that “under President Obama, Ukraine never received this kind of lethal military aid AT ALL. It is thanks to President Trump, that the Ukrainians are getting the aid in the first place.” That is an example of the fallacy of equivocation (also called the fallacy of ambiguity), of an argument that is technically correct, but deliberately misleading (much like Bill Clinton’s “it depends upon what is is”). It looks as though it’s saying that Ukraine never got military aid from Obama AT ALL, something that is false. Technically, it’s saying that Ukraine never got “this kind” or “the aid”—meaning the Javelin missiles. That’s technically true, just as it was technically true that Clinton was not, at the very moment, having sex with an intern. But it’s misleading.
It’s hard to argue with someone engaged in equivocation, since it necessitates getting into the technicalities—that’s why people who aren’t arguing in good faith (that is, whose minds are not open to persuasion) engage in it.
Another common strategy of this site is to give Trump credit for what Obama or other Presidents did. For instance, the page on the environment begins, “America’s environmental record is one of the strongest in the world and the U.S. has also been a world leader in reducing carbon emissions for over a decade. We have the cleanest air on record and remain a global leader for access to clean drinking water.” Notice that this claim is vague, and so hard to disprove (like an ad that says, “We have the best prices”—compared to whom?): what record? Not the world record. It’s seventh. It isn’t even clear to me that the US now has the cleanest air in its record. But we can’t know what the claim is because it gives no sources. Similarly, the claim that “President Trump has taken important steps to restore, preserve, and protect our land, air, and waters” is unsupported, unexplained, and unsourced.
To the extent that the air is cleaner, it’s because of what was done in the past, by other people, particularly Obama, but also the Congress that passed the Clean Air Act and the 1990 Amendments.
The final problem with the page that I’ll mention (I could go on) is one that contributes significantly to the demagoguery of the page (and it is demagoguery): the implication is that anyone who disagrees with Trump is a “liberal,” and that simplyisn’ttrue. A large number of people who believe that Trump should be convicted are conservative.
In short, the page doesn’t engage in rational argumentation. It doesn’t even engage in argument. So, would someone following the script provided by this webpage win any argument with any “liberal”? No. Because they wouldn’t be arguing. They’d be making claims, claims that are sometimes false, often misleading, almost always unsourced, and always unsupported, but never argued.
A person who followed this script and claimed to have won the argument would be like someone who claimed to have won a chess game because they turned over the board and fed the pieces to the dog.
If Trump can’t be supported with rational argumentation, then maybe it isn’t rational to support him.
I’m a scholar of train wrecks in public deliberation—times that communities came to bad decisions, although they had all the time, information, and counter-arguments necessary to come to better ones.
And, although they smear across eras, cultures, and particular situations (but all more or less within what is considered the “Western Tradition”), they share the same characteristic: the communities abandoned policy argumentation in favor of thinking of the variegated, nuanced spectrum of policy options actually open to them as a binary between right (loyal, ethical, in-group) and wrong (treacherous, unethical, out-group). That is, demagoguery.
There was, often, a legitimate need, a serious problem. There was also a situation in which the community had multiple—not just two—policy options available to them. But, when people tried to argue about multiple plans, the response was for people to argue that the need was great, and that we must do this thing. And they treated people who wanted to argue about the plan as people who wanted to do nothing.
That was Cleon’s argument. His opponent wanted retribution (severe, in fact) against the rebellious Mytileneans. Cleon wanted genocide, and he framed his opponents’ argument as doing nothing. Cleon briefly argued solvency (being brutal would terrify other “allied” states into submission) and the feasibility argument was pretty clear (I mean, they could kill all the Mytileneans whom they didn’t sell into slavery and raze the city—as the Athenians would in regard to Milos), but he didn’t even acknowledge the potential unintended consequences. His argument was, in an enthymeme, “We should kill all male Mytileneans and sell everyone else into slavery because the rebellion endangered the empire.” In other words, “My policy is good because the need is real.” That enthymeme has an appalling major premise: that Athenians should commit genocide against any city-state that has people whose actions endanger the Athenian empire.
Nor did he engage the arguments his opponents actually made. Diodotus, who argued against Cleon, didn’t disagree about the need–he, too, was outraged about the Mytileneans revolt; he had a different plan. He certainly didn’t advocate doing nothing.
This might all seem very weird, and very distant, but it isn’t. We are always in the world of Cleon and Diodotus–a world in which we can decide that our policies should be about exterminating anyone we think dangerous, and in which we declare any dissidents from that policy to be corrupt on the grounds that, if they disagree with our policy, they don’t care about the need (Cleon’s position); or a world in which we argue the advantages and disadvantages of our various policy options (Diodotus’ position).
After 9/11, I found myself arguing with many people about the proposed invasion of Afghanistan. 9/11 was appalling, and terrifying. It was an extraordinary act of violence against the US, but I didn’t think that invading Afghanistan would solve the problem of anti-US terrorism. I didn’t see why that was the right plan. Clearly, something had to be done, but it seemed to me that solving the problem of terrorism couldn’t be solved by invading one country, especially when it wasn’t even the country from whom the terrorists had come. I was asking for good old affirmative case construction, in which people argue on the stases of feasibility, solvency, and unintended consequences of their plan.
And, over and over, the people with whom I was arguing emphasized the need (as though I disagreed about that) and then said something like, “We must do something” and sometimes went on to argue that doing nothing was a terrible plan. I agreed with the need, and I never advocated doing nothing—I didn’t like their plan. Our situation in regard to Afghanistan was never invade Afghanistan or do nothing. It was never invade Iraq or do nothing.
In the train wrecks I study, that false frame of “do this thing or do nothing” won the rhetorical contest. Arguments about policy were thoroughly evaded in favor of rhetoric that associated one group (the real Athenians, Christians, Southerners, Germans, Americans, progressives, Democrats, Republicans, animal lovers, dog lovers, Austinites) with one policy, ignoring that that group had a lot of policy options.
Being convinced that the need is real never means that you are necessarily committed to this policy. That’s demagoguery.
We are, as citizens in a democracy, never exempted from arguing policy. To say we are is to promote demagoguery.
In my train wrecks, and my own experience trying to argue with people about why we shouldn’t invade Afghanistan NOW, people who want to argue about our policy options (rather than believe that this need means there is only one possible policy option) are told, quite clearly, that they aren’t taking the issue seriously. That’s what I was told, over and over. That’s what Cleon said to (and about) Diodotus: Cleon said that Diodotus didn’t think what the Mytileneans had done was bad. That’s what the pro-invasion media said—any dissent from this policy was only on the part of people who didn’t take the need seriously, who didn’t care about terrorism, or who actively helped it.
You either supported Bush’s very odd and problematic policy, or you supported terrorism. And that was, and always is, a false binary. A demagogic binary.
When I tried to argue that invading Afghanistan wasn’t necessarily a good policy, I was lectured about the need. Over and over and fucking over. That there is a legitimate, pressing, and even urgent need doesn’t mean this policy is right. This policy has to be defended on its merits, as opposed to other policy options—not as against doing nothing.
Diodotus wasn’t arguing for doing nothing; I wasn’t arguing for doing nothing in regard to 9/11.
At one point in time, my husband and I lived in a part of Kansas City with problematic water. A guy selling water filters came out and talked to us about how terrible the water was. He could never explain why his company’s filter was any better than our other options. The water really was bad, but that doesn’t mean his company’s filter was right. Our choice was not his policy or doing nothing.
A few years ago, a Texas state legislator argued that teen pregnancy is bad, and therefore we should ban suggestive cheerleading. Teen pregnancy should be reduced, but that doesn’t mean that banning suggestive cheerleading is a good policy. He was never able to argue that his plan solved the problem, was feasible, or didn’t have consequences worse than the problem he was trying to solve. What he could argue was that teen pregnancy was bad, and thereby frame anyone who wanted to point out how bad his policy was as a person who didn’t care about teen pregnancy (or liked suggestive cheerleading).
Anti-abortion rhetoric works by advertising the number of abortions and insisting that the only possible solution is banning abortion and restricting information about effective birth control. The number of abortions really is troubling; there is a need. But banning abortion and demonizing birth control (their plan) doesn’t solve that need. Itworsens it.
Were people really concerned about reducing abortion, and were they people who considered reducing abortion the most important value, they would model policies on places that have reduced abortions. They don’t. They insist that if you don’t want to ban abortion, you don’t care about the number of abortions (when, in fact, there are better policies for reducing abortion). We don’t have a world in which we either have our current number of abortions or we ban it, but that is the world they promote. It’s a world of the false dilemma—either you agree with my policy or you want to do nothing. That was Cleon’s argument; that was the argument for invading Iraq.
I think impeaching Trump immediately is not the best policy. That doesn’t mean I misunderstand the need to impeach Trump. Showing that Trump needs to be impeached immediately is not the same as showing that Trump needs to be impeached. People who are arguing for Trump immediately aren’t supporting their case by showing that Trump should be impeached. They need to engage in the policy stases.
My belief that we shouldn’t impeach Trump for a while (perhaps as late as March) doesn’t mean I think people who believe we should impeach him immediately are bad, stupid, or irrational. That guy in Kansas City really might have had the best water filter. But his arguing need over and over didn’t show that his plan was the best. It really might be the best policy to impeach Trump immediately, and that case is made through engaging, reasonably and fairly, the arguments for engaging him later. It is not made by reasserting the need.
That Trump should be impeached is not actually proof that he should be impeached immediately. That there is a need doesn’t mean that this policy is right. And, really, that’s the larger point I’m trying to make continually: our culture needs to engage in policy argumentation. Instead, we have a demagogic world in which people argue need, and then say, if you acknowledge this need, you must support this policy. If you reject the policy, you must be a person who fails to recognize the need.
People arguing for delaying impeachment aren’t arguing for doing nothing. We aren’t arguing about whether to impeach Trump; we’re arguing about when. That’s a good argument to have. Because arguing policy is always a good policy.
Trump will get impeached, and then this argument will appear to be over. But it won’t really. The argument about argument will be with us: arguing need doesn’t exempt you from arguing plan. That there is a need doesn’t mean only one plan has merit.
[image from here: https://www.blackcarnews.com/article/train-wreck]
I have a visceral aversion to binaries, and therefore to any argument that claims something can be divided into two. Yet, the more that I study train wrecks in public deliberation, the more that I think there really might be a binary.
It isn’t, though, that there are two kinds of people, or our political options are usefully divided into two (or a continuum of the two), but that it might be that the ways that people assess claims can be (more or less) divided into two.
Imagine that I say that Chester Burnette is the right candidate for President. That’s a claim.
We can assess that claim through the filter of assuming that the in-group is the only group with legitimate claims, objective views, good evidence. So, we look at a claim and accept it (as “objective” or “true”) or reject it (as “biased” or “false”) purely on the basis of whether it supports/contradicts what we already believe, and/or is from a source we consider loyal to the in-group.
We stride through our vexed, complicated, nuanced world confident that we, only we, are people who see things clearly. And we see things so clearly that we refuse to see things that might suggest we aren’t seeing things clearly.
Most of us spend most of our time striding through social media this way.
We assess arguments and claims on the basis of whether the people making them are in-group or out-group, they support in-group v. out-group beliefs.
Or, we can assess every political argument on the grounds of the stases of policy argumentation, which means that we apply standards of rational argumentation equally across groups.
If you look at our political landscape through the lens of proto-demagoguery, then you spend your political life drinking deep from the genetic fallacy (any information that complicates or contradicts the in-group talking points or that criticizes an in-group political figure can be dismissed because it comes from a non-in-group source).
I think there are times that the source of information is relevant to assessing the information, but it’s always a secondary consideration. The first consideration is what their evidence is.
Imagine that you have a cousin who always has a new get-rich-quick scheme. After two or three of those schemes have blown up and lost him a lot of money, you can conclude he has bad judgment and ignore him. It’s the genetic fallacy if you refuse to consider his evidence because he supports Trump; it isn’t the genetic fallacy if he’s consistently been wrong, repeatedly shared false memes and debunked claims, and often misrepresents things he’s read. It’s rational to abandon a source, not because it’s out-group, but because it’s consistently irrational.
After you’ve been burned a few times by a source, you can conclude you won’t rely on it anymore (for me, that would be RawStory, The Drudge Report, PETA, Mother Jones, The Blaze, Rush Limbaugh, and various other sources). I still read them, but I never believe anything I say without checking their sources (which is complicated if they don’t give their sources, and some of them don’t).
I think it’s valid to conclude that PETA is just completely unreliable as a source. But, concluding that PETA is completely unreliable (and, honestly, I think it is) doesn’t mean that criticisms of animal testing, Big Agra, or our reliance on beef are invalid.
To argue that all criticisms of animal testing are invalid because those criticisms are made by PETA and PETA can’t make a rational argument to save its life is an irrational argument. And yet that’s how far too much of our political world works. And, just to be clear, PETA cannot make an irrational argument to save its life. It’s kind of a bad car crash for me–if I want to find an example of a fallacy, and I’m teaching, I just go to PETA. I know I’ll find it there.
And I say this as someone committed to animal rescue, opposed to (almost all) animal testing, vegetarianism.
Our world is not PETA or no restrictions on animal experimentation. Our world is not the NRA or Obama personally kicking down your doors to take your guns. Our political world is not a world of binaries and identities. You don’t have to choose between PETA and all animal experimentation all the time; you don’t have to choose between the NRA and Obama personally kicking down your door to take your guns.
I don’t believe we are in a political world of left v. right. I think that model is not only false, but toxically so. I think it’s like saying that all colors are either yellow or blue. You could organize all colors that way, just as you could organize all the things in your house as square or round, or all animals as bunnies or ants. You could do it, and that binary would be self-fulfilling, but the important questions would be: why that binary? Is that a useful binary? If it’s useful, to whom?
The binary is self-fulfilling insofar as, were we in a world in which all animals were categorized as bunnies or ants, then that would seem natural.
Our political world is no more “left” v. “right” than the animal world is bunnies v. ants.
And here is the important point: so what? Even were our world actually bunnies v. ants that wouldn’t mean we should argue about policies in terms of a zero-sum between bunnies and ants.
I shouldn’t assess the claim that Chester Burnette would be a great President purely on the basis of whether in-group media supports him, nor whether he feels in-group to me. I should consider his policies, whether his voting record suggests he really supports those policies, and what various media say about him. And I shouldn’t decide to dismiss any criticism of him on the basis that only bad people criticize him.
It’s perfectly fair to decide that some sources are engaged in bad faith argumentation, but that they are critical of the in-group or an in-group candidate is not adequate evidence. If I firmly, thoroughly, and completely believe that squirrels are evil because they are trying to get to the red ball (the basic belief of my favorite dog) that doesn’t actually mean that it is rational for me to frame my entire world in terms of pro- or anti-squirrel.
It’s fine for me to be passionate about squirrels; it’s fine for me to ask every political figure about his stance on squirrels. I have that right. But having that right and having a rational argument aren’t the same thing.
If you dismiss every source (or rhetor) who disagrees with what you think is true without considering their arguments, then you are not engaged in rational argumentation. (It’s fine to dismiss some sources and rhetors, either because they’re consistently wrong and you’re done with them –me and PETA–or because they never engage in argumentation to support their point. Oh, wait, that was PETA again.)
All sources should be held to the same standards. If a source consistently fails to represent the opposition(s) fairly, engage in internally consistent arguments, make falsifiable claims, you can decide it’s an unreliable source, not engaged in good faith argumentation. But you’re making that assessment on the basis of how they argue, not what they argue or who they are.
If you read something that says your admired political figure has done something wrong, and you dismiss it as “biased,” since it was critical of your admired political figure, you’re the one who is biased. If you aren’t willing to listen to the most fierce criticism of your political group and figure, then your political position is not a rational position about policies. You’re just a person screaming in the bleachers for your team.
I study train wrecks in public deliberation, and they’re all times when the people making decisions lived and breathed a world of demagoguery. In that world, the media says, “This policy is right because there is a legitimate need, and if you disagree with this policy then you don’t acknowledge the severity of the need.”
At one point in time, my husband and I lived in a part of Kansas City we knew had issues with the water supply. We asked a water filter salesperson to come out and talk to us about their filter. The salesman went on and on about how bad the water was, but was struck dumb when we asked about how and whether his filter would solve the problem better than other filters available to us.
That the water was bad doesn’t mean his company’s product was the right solution.
And, really, that’s what people need to understand about decision making. That there is a legitimate need doesn’t mean that this policy is the solution.
In a culture of demagoguery, we argue about only two points: whether there is a need, and the moral quality of the two groups. So, there is the bizarre (and disastrous) assumption that, once you’ve identified the need, then you decide to hand the problem over to the people who seem trustworthy–in other words, appearing to be authentically in-group.
What I’ve come to believe is that, when you put together those two ways of thinking about political deliberation—we only argue need; we dismiss any criticisms of the in-group policy as “biased—you get train wrecks.
I think Trump’s stance regarding China is just such a train wreck. There is a legitimate need, but neither Trump nor his supporters have put together a good argument as to how his plan solves the problem, is feasible, and doesn’t have unintended consequencesworse than the problem he’s solving (which is the major critique of his flopping around), and even his critics aren’t arguing policy.
Trump doesn’t have a coherent plan, so it’s hard to argue why it’s a good one, and it’s hard to argue against it, but his critics could point that out. Instead, most anti-Trump media seem engaged in two-minutes hate about Trump, Republicans, and conservatives.
And that is a culture of demagoguery.
But, it’s important to note that people all over the politicalspectrum (there aren’t two sides) agree that the need argument is strong. It’s an observable fact China engages in and allows intellectual property theft , and that’s what this trade war is about . The arguments for being tougher with China involve violations of copyright —things that have nothing to do with working class people. There are reasonablearguments that the US needs a different set of policies regarding China.
The water in our part of Kansas City really was bad. That didn’t mean this product was good.
What China is doing is bad, but that doesn’t mean Trump’s policy is right. So, what are the arguments for how what he is doing will solve the problem?
I’ve really tried to find arguments defending his policies, and they’re all need arguments—that what he’s doing is right because China is bad. That is, his policy is right because the need is real.
That’s an irrational argument, and an evasion of policy deliberation.
I’m finding a strong consensus that he’s handling foreign affairs, especially economic, badly, even among normally GOP- standard bearing sites. Here’s Foreign Affairs. Here’s the Cato Institute. And even American Enterprise, which supports a “tough” stance, says Trump’s policy goals are unclear, and advocates other policies (click on the links). The Wall Street Journal says Trump is losing the trade war with China, partially because it’s working from a “shopping list.”
The very conservative organization Heritage says Trump’s policies are bad. What’s odd is that while many pro-Trump media are arguing Trump’s policies are correct because the need is real (an evasion of rational policy argumentation) many reactionary, free-market, and self-identified conservative sites are the ones engaged in policy argumentation, arguing that Trump’s policies are the wrong strategies–they’re engaged in policy argumentation.
And even media that defend getting “tough” on China aren’t defending his current strategies.
As far as I can tell, no one is engaged in rational policy argumentation defending Trump’s policies regarding China, and that’s important.
And, equally important, the anti-Trump public sphere is not engaged in policy argumentation attacking his policies. This is an exception.
I’ve prowled around various anti-Trump sites and found all sorts of arguments about how Trump’s tariffs are bad because is bad, his policies are grifting since he’s protected his daughter, and other evasions of policy argumentation.
What’s wrong with our political situation is not that GOPpers, who are evil, are in control, nor that Liberals, who are evil, are in control. Nor is our political situation bad because “both sides are just as bad.”
There is, of course, the “horse race” coverage, that reframes policy issues as a race between the two side, and engages in motivism—thereby accepting the demagogic premise that politics is a zero-sum battle between two sides.
There aren’t two sides. Our world is not one in which there is a side that says that China is just fine so we need to do nothing and another side that says China is bad so we need to support Trump’s actions.
The world of politics is a world of uncertainty, nuance, and luck that says we should engage in rational policy argumentation about our various policy options regarding China and not reduce every political issue to “liberals” v. “conservatives”—aka, “us v. them.”
As citizens in a democracy we are not faced with the issue of whether Trump is a good or bad person, whether Democrats are better or worse people than Republicans. We are faced with the issue of how to deliberate effectively about issues that aren’t usefully reduced to us v. them.
What matters about Trump’s policies is that they are policies. Let’s argue about them.
