Patricia Roberts-Miller's Blog, page 19

Privilege, ableism, and the just world model

In a footnote on another post, I mentioned that the just world model is ableist. Someone asked that I explain.

Here’s the explanation.

The “just world model” says that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. It provides a kind of security: you can keep bad things from happening to you. The just world model says that: someone who was assaulted shouldn’t have had an open window (or gotten drunk, or worn that dress), the Black driver should have been more polite, the person who died of a heart attack shouldn’t have been such an over-achiever, the person who got cancer doubted God.

The just world model is a world in which individuals are in perfect and complete control of our lives. It’s a really comforting narrative. It’s magical thinking. It says that if you do this thing and don’t do that thing, you will be protected from disaster.

I have a crank theory that people look at a homeless person and respond in one of two ways: 1) I would never let that happen to me, and that person should just suck it up and get a job; or 2) There but for the grace of God go I.

My crank theory is that acknowledging our common humanity with a homeless person, that something like a TBI could put us in that situation, is terrifying for some people. Some people find the notion that individuals do not have perfect agency unimaginably threatening. Republicanism has embraced the just world model, especially in its attachment to neoliberalism (which is pure just world model), but also in its commitment to the Strict Father Model (if you exert complete control over your children you will raise them to be good).

Various non-partisan ideologies similarly say that, if a bad thing happened to you, you did something to deserve it (anti-vax, a lot of “healthy lifestyle” rhetoric, the idea that people who get cancer or have heart attacks had personality flaws that brought those conditions on). Thus, what might have its origin in an irrational desire to feel more comfortable about how much control we have in our own life ends up enabling a kind of political hardheartedness regardless of Dem v. GOP affiliation.

Regardless of whatever psychological needs the just world model soothes, the consequence of attachment to it is that it drops a sociopathic curtain between us and victims. One of the ways it does so is by closing off any possibility of talking about systemic discrimination.

I work on a campus much of which was built when the assumption was that anyone in a wheelchair shouldn’t be in public. There are steps everywhere. There are steps that aren’t necessary from an engineering perspective, but are there for aesthetic reasons. The way the campus is built means that there is an extra burden on someone who has even the slightest mobility issue—it’s harder for them to be a successful student, staff, or faculty member.

At this campus, being able-bodied gives a person a fair amount of privilege—it’s possible to schedule classes back to back that are in distant buildings, it’s easy to get to office hours regardless of where they are, there’s always a bathroom nearby you can use, you don’t show up to class or meeting already exhausted from negotiating the trip there. The just world model says that you earned that privilege by choosing not to have a disability—the people who are encumbered by the building design brought it on themselves. Since they could simply choose not to be encumbered, it isn’t necessary to do the expensive work of ensuring the buildings are accessible. There isn’t a systemic problem—there are just individuals, all of whom are getting what they deserve. So, the just world. Model simultaneously reinforces privilege and denies its existence.

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Stop calling Biden a “socialist.” It just makes you look silly.

He’s a Third-Way Neoliberal.

The first thing to explain is that “neoliberalism” is not a lefty political/economic ideology. It’s conservative (I’ll explain why it has the word “liberal” in it below). Reagan was the first neoliberal President, and he did the most to reshape American policy as neoliberalist. Clinton, Obama, HRC, and Biden are not and were not socialists. They are “third way neoliberals.”

Here’s why it’s called neoliberalism.

In the late 18th and early 19th century, a political ideology arose that is often called “liberalism.” [1] The New Dictionary of the History of Ideas defines “liberalism:”
“It is widely agreed that fundamental to liberalism is a concern to protect and promote individual liberty. This means that individuals can decide for themselves what to do or believe with respect to particular areas of human activity such as religion or economics. The contrast is with a society in which the society decides what the individual is to do or believe. In those areas of a society in which individual liberty prevails, social outcomes will be the result of a myriad of individual decisions taken by individuals for themselves or in voluntary cooperation with some others.” [2]

It’s useful to distinguish between political and economic liberalism—a point that will take a while to explain.

It’s paradoxical, but important, to understand that all the major political parties and movements in the US endorse political liberalism, or claim to. The disagreement is how to honor individualism, but notice that, in the major policy disagreements, everyone argues from within a frame of promoting individual freedom (gun control is about the freedom to carry a gun or the freedom to speak freely without worrying about shot, the freedom to be LGBTQ+ or the freedom to condemn them).

In the nineteenth century, economic liberalism advocated no governmental intervention in the “free market,” saying that the “free market” would better determine prices, wages, and working conditions. In Britain, this led to the potato famine among other catastrophes. In the US, it led to a cycle of booms and busts, outrageous working conditions, and environmental degradation that tanked the economy (I have to meet a person who advocates this kind of liberalism who knows much of anything about the 19th century economic cycles, working conditions, or the dust bowl). Because liberalism was such a disaster—worldwide—as was shown in 1929, a lot of people started considering other options. There were, loosely, four options that countries chose.

In the early twentieth century, a lot of people argued that liberalism as a political philosophy could be separated from liberalism as an economic philosophy (in other words, economic and political liberalism aren’t necessarily connected). But many people argued (and still do) that the commitment to a political practice (authoritarianism, democracy, monarchy) can’t be separated from an economic practice (mercantilism, autarky, capitalism, and so on). Stalinists and fascists (who have a lot in common, rhetorically) endorsed that (false) notion that political and economic commitment are the same, and insis(ed)t that, if you choose this economic system, you are necessarily choosing that political system.[3] They were wrong, and they’re still wrong, but that’s a different post. [4]

In the 19th and early 20th century, there were a lot of kinds of socialism. That’s why Communist Manifesto spends about a third of the book arguing with other socialists about why they should be their kind of socialist. That’s also why various activists who were conservative in terms of things like sexuality but radical in terms of economic issues sometimes called themselves socialist (such as Dorothy Day), and were not endorsing Stalinism.

In the early twentieth century, a lot of people believed that “individuals can decide for themselves what to do or believe with respect to particular areas of human activity such as religion,” but the government can “intervene” in regard to issues like food safety, accuracy in advertising, fraud, consciously fatal work conditions, exploitative contracts, deliberate manipulations of the market, and so on.

In other countries, this was called democratic socialism, but FDR (if I have my history correct) called it liberalism. Supposedly, he thought that people would reject the “socialism” term, and his political agenda was liberal (but his economic one wasn’t). And he’s right. I can’t even begin to estimate the number of people who say, “SOCIALISM ALWAYS ENDS IN DISASTER” (they do like them some caps lock) when someone wants to reject economic “liberalism.” It simply isn’t true that rejecting economic liberalism ends in disaster, if people maintain political liberalism. On the contrary, if people try to maintain economic liberalism at the expense of political liberalism, disaster ensues.

A society with political, but not economic, liberalism is one that doesn’t require you to have particular religious, ideological, sexual, or even political ideologies, as long as it’s all consenting adults, and there’s no force involved. The basic premise of liberalism is that your right to swing your fist stops at my face, and so a society with political liberalism is always arguing about that point of contact.

Economic liberalism has a different problem. One of the problems is empirical. The contradiction at the heart of economic liberalism is that there is force involved—no market is free. The coercion might be the government coercing businesses into behaving certain ways, businesses coercing each other, businesses coercing employees, employees coercing business. Paradoxically, the only way to maintain the ability of the individual to decide for themselves (the core of liberalism) is if the government intervenes to ensure that the market doesn’t enable some individuals (or corporations) to engage in force.

Economic liberalism as a political program got hammered by the Depression and the needs of a war economy. Post-war, there were people who argued that we’d gone too far in the direction of government intervention in the market, and we needed to go back to economic liberalism. They’re called neoliberals, because it’s a new form of the classical liberalism of the 19th century. They argue that we should let the markets take care of almost everything. As I said, Reagan was a neoliberal.

Some people felt we went too far in the direction of neoliberalism, and, while we didn’t need the governmental intervention of LBJ’s Great Society, a market completely free of government control ground the faces of the poor, destroyed God’s creation, and landed us in unwise (and endless) wars (it’s important to understand how much of this political agenda is religious). The idea was that these goals could be achieved by the government working with the market to establish incentives. This kind of person is typically called a “Third Way Neoliberal.” They want to preserve as much freedom in the markets as is compatible with legitimate community ends. They support capitalism as the most desirable economic system.

Whether that’s possible is an interesting argument. Whether it leads to Stalin’s kind of socialism isn’t.[5] And that’s what Clinton, Obama, HRC, and Biden are and were. Third Way Neoliberals.






[1] There are never just two political ideologies at play in any given era, so people who think, “If you aren’t this, then you must that” are always reasoning fallaciously.
[2] Charvet, John. “Liberalism.” New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, edited by Maryanne Cline Horowitz, vol. 3, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2005, pp. 1262-1269. Accessed 24 June 2020.
[3] Right now, we have this weird situation in which a lot of people who claim to be neoliberal in terms of economic agenda are arguing for fascism in the political agenda. David Neiwert has made that argument about Rush Limbaugh, for instance.
[4] If you want a really good book about the Nazi economy, and how it ended up being not what fascists supposedly want, Adam Tooze’s Wages of Destruction is deeply researched and elegantly argued.
[5] While some democracies have slid into authoritarianism, slowly voting in or allowing increasingly authoritarian policies to stand, they haven’t slowly moved into communism. Communism arises from people being in desperate situations, and there’s a violent revolution of some kind. As someone said, probably Orwell, you have to be in a desperate situation to be willing to give up ownership of your last cow.

The post Stop calling Biden a “socialist.” It just makes you look silly. appeared first on Patricia Roberts-Miller.

Are Trump supporters racist? Yes. Are Biden supporters racist? Yes. Are they equally racist? No.

Far too many people (mostly white)….

…..think that I just did something racist by saying “mostly white.”

People might think that because, if you stop someone on the street and ask them, “what does it mean to be racist?,” a lot of them would say it means:

1) consciously categorizing people by race;

2) and you can know that someone is doing that by “making race an issue” (that is, mentioning race);

3) “stereotyping” a race (that is, making a generalization about it), especially if the generalization is negative;

4) as a consequence of that conscious negative stereotype about the race, treating everyone of that race with aggression and hostility.

It would seem I’ve violated the first through third rule, so, if you think those are good ways of deciding what racism is, I’m racist.

Those actually aren’t good ways of deciding that something is racist (although it’s true that I’m racist). In the first place, these rules imply useless and cognitively impossible solutions to racism. They suggest that the solution to racism is to: not see race; not mention race; not make generalizations about groups, and never consciously behave badly to someone just because of their race.

In the US, we can’t not see race. Race is so important in our culture that saying you don’t see race is like saying you don’t see gender. Unless you are literally blind, you see race and gender. Those are the things we notice about someone immediately. We’re often wrong about someone’s gender, just as we’re often wrong about someone’s “race,” but it’s we can’t help but categorize people. Individuals can resist, but never completely free ourselves of, the culture in which we have been raised. Even Gandhi struggled to free himself of thinking in terms of the caste system. What matters about Gandhi is that he recognized, and acknowledged (publicly) that he wasn’t free of thinking about people from within the caste system, and he tried to account for it.

Aristotle describes ethical action as much like aiming with a bow and arrow. His argument was that every virtue has extremes on either side. It’s a vice to be reckless, and a vice to be cowardly. It’s a vice to be spendthrift, and a vice to be a miser. We all have a tendency toward one extreme or another, just as we are prone to pull to one side or another when aiming a bow and arrow. [1] We need to acknowledge our tendency, so that we can adjust for it. That’s how racism works. We can’t escape it, but we can try to figure out how much it’s making us miss the mark, and adjust for it.

Aristotle’s point is that none of us is born with perfect aim. We can get to ethical actions by acknowledging our tendency to unethical action. The notion that acknowledging (or naming) race makes the action/statement racist guarantees we will not correct our aim. It’s like saying that your shot must have been good because you don’t see misses.

So, are Trump supporters racist? Yes. Are Biden supporters? Yes. They/we are all racist because we’re all Americans and Americans are racist. But not equally so.

Racism isn’t an either/or. It isn’t that we’re racist or not; it’s how racist we are and what we’re doing about it. It’s the fourth (false) criterion for racism that enables racism most effectively.

Racism is an unconscious bias. No one is unbiased. That isn’t how cognition works. You can’t perceive the world without perceiving it in light of what you already believe. Imagine that you’re a white person trying to find an office in a university building. You can find the door to the building because you have a stereotype about how buildings work. You walk past classrooms because you have a stereotype about classrooms. You walk into a room because you have a stereotype (and prejudices) about what an office looks like. For instance, it might say on the door, “Department of Rhetoric,” and you’re looking for that department. You have a prejudice (you have prejudged) that departments put their name on a door.

That’s why the argument that you shouldn’t stereotype groups is nonsense. We stereotype. That’s how we think. The very statement, “Generalizations are bad” is a generalization. Generalizing isn’t the problem.

You walk in to that office. There are several people. Whom do you assume is the executive assistant, and whom do you assume is the Department Chair?

You see a tall white male with slightly graying hair, a short stout Black woman of the same age as the white male, a younger white woman elegantly dressed, a person whose race and gender you can’t immediately identify. Whom do you treat as the receptionist?

Your decisions about whom to treat as the Chair are just as much questions of prejudging, stereotypes, and expectations as your decisions regarding finding the door (and it’s decisions, and not decision—there are a lot of factors). You can rely on your prejudgments, stereotypes, and expectations, or you can decide to treat humans differently from doors. You can’t not have the prejudgments; you can treat know that you have prejudgments and then act differently.

Racism isn’t getting up in the morning and deciding on whose lawn you’ll burn a cross. Racism is assuming the Black woman isn’t the Chair.

Does that mean that the non-racist thing to do is to walk into the office groveling in shame, filled with guilt, hating your whiteness? If you get your information from the GOP-propaganda machine, that’s what you’d think. They say that being anti-racist means being ashamed of being white (something no anti-racist activist has ever said would solve racism). Would walking into that room full of shame for being white change anything about the interaction? If, full of shame, you assumed the white guy was the chair, you’re still racist.

A lot of people assume that racism is a sin of commission, and the common notion about sins of commission is that you know you’re doing something that is a sin and you do it anyway. I think that’s pretty rare in racism. In fact, I’m not sure it’s ever the case.

My experience is that racists—even actual Nazis—don’t (or didn’t) see themselves as acting out of racism. Nazis these days call themselves “racial realists,” the real Nazis claimed that they were acting on the basis of objective and realist science. They think racism is irrational hostility to a race; racists believe that their stereotypes are grounded in data.

They’re grounded in confirmation bias.

Sometimes, racists say that they aren’t racist because their actions–such as wanting to restrict immigration from some group–are grounded in concerns about politics, not race. Therefore, they aren’t racist!

That’s how race-based genocide is justified. Native Americans had to be exterminated because they were a military threat. Jews were, the Nazis said, a political threat, as were Poles, Czechs, and various other non-Aryan “races” of central and eastern Europe. The people who engaged in lynching didn’t say they were doing something racist; they said they were trying to preserve a social order (that was racist). I’ve spent a lot of time crawling around the nastiest of the nastiest racists—both current and historical—and I can’t think of a time when racists called what they were doing “racist.”

In other words, even people engaged in racist-based genocide—the most extreme version of racism–have ways of rationalizing those actions so that they don’t see themselves as committing the sin of racism. Racism never seems to the racist to be a sin of commission because there are ways of pretending it isn’t racism–we pretend it’s about upholding “objective” (actually racist) standards (such as standardized tests, or arrest rates), reducing crime (but really of not being white).

These were exactly the ways that Nazis criminalized being Jewish. Jews were more criminal, they said, and had arrest rates to prove it (because Jews were arrested for things that wouldn’t have resulted in an arrest for non-Jews), science that agreed Jews were essentially criminal, and media that promoted the stereotype of Jews as criminal.

Are Trump supporters racist? Yes, because they support the most openly racist President we’ve had since Wilson. Racism isn’t a binary; it’s a continuum. And Trump is very far on the racist side of the continuum.

Are Biden supporters racist? Yes, because Americans are racist. He isn’t as racist as Trump.

Does it hurt the feelings of Trump supporters to be called racist? Well, then don’t be racist. One way for Trump supporters to show they aren’t racist is for them to condemn Trump’s racism. Until they do, they’re more racist than Biden supporters.

If I’m a shitty driver and regularly run people over, I don’t get to say that I’m just as hurt by being called a shitty driver as the people are hurt by my running them over. If I want to stop being called a shitty driver, I should try to learn to drive better.

[1] If you’re a geek about this kind of thing, and you want a very scholarly, but beautifully written, book about the Athenians of Aristotle’s era and justice, Martha Nussbaum’s Fragility of Goodness changed my world.

The post Are Trump supporters racist? Yes. Are Biden supporters racist? Yes. Are they equally racist? No. appeared first on Patricia Roberts-Miller.

On systemic demagoguery; or, how the media creates and rewards demagogues

There is a narrative that our system of policing is fine; there are just a few bad individuals in every group. That metaphor belies the narrative. Bad apples corrupt a system. As has been shown by representatives of police unions saying that they cannot do their jobs if they are held accountable for killing people in their custody, escalating violent situations, or assaulting people who have done nothing wrong, the system doesn’t allow for justice. Even the defenders of police violence are admitting it’s a job that can’t be done if police are held to the same laws they’re supposed to be enforcing. Police violence isn’t a problem of individuals who choose to do something they know is wrong; it’s about the selection and training of police, how juries are selected, how prosecutors tolerate lying, how bail works (or doesn’t), SCOTUS rulings. We have systemic police violence.

Focussing on Derek Chauvin is simultaneously important and trivial. He isn’t important as an exceptional individual because he isn’t exceptional. If we think he’s exceptional, we miss the point. But that doesn’t make him trivial. He’s important because he’s a sign of how the system operates. While Chauvin should be punished, throwing him out of the police, putting him in jail, that won’t end the problem.

Trump is the Chauvin of demagoguery.

There are people wringing their hands about Trump, including some of the very people who created the rhetorical and media systems that took him on the escalator to the Presidency. They reject Trump, but they haven’t rejected their own demagoguery or their participation in the demagogic media system that enabled his rise.

Trump is important, but not because he’s unique, and not because of his individual intentions. They’re bad; they’re murderous and vindictive and lawless, and he has no intention of being held accountable. And he persistently engages in demagoguery–it’s not only how he argues, but how he governs. But making him the problem, as though we can solve our political problems by making sure Biden gets elected, makes no more sense than thinking police violence has ended now that Chauvin is fired.

Jeffrey Berry and Sharon Sobieraj, in their deeply troubling The Outrage Industry, argue that, “once a candidate is in office, outrage continues to be a path to career advancement [because] research shows that members of Congress who are more extreme in their politics receive more coverage in the mainstream press” (179). Unfortunately, they have the data to support that claim. The media rewards demagoguery with free publicity.

This wasn’t surprising to me. It confirmed a crank theory I’d had since I was in Berkeley in the late seventies and eighties. Or, more precisely, the era when I gave up on TV news. I gave up on TV news for a few reasons.

First, I did the math. In a half-hour news program, there would be fluff, sports, weather, and ads. A half hour would get about six minutes of actually useful news. At that time, the LA Times was a great paper. I could spend that half hour reading the LA Times, and be much more usefully informed than the half hour watching the news. There was also California Journal (it might still exist), a journal with thoughtful bi-partisan information about politics.

Second, even if I abandoned half-hour news programs, and tried to watch longer ones, they were no better. They brought on speakers, but they didn’t bring in the major figures. For instance, at that point Jerry Falwell had a smaller following than, say, the leader of the PCUSA or ELCA (mainstream Protestant organizations). But, when there was a question about religion, media brought on Robertson or Falwell.

Similarly, when it came to issues of race, they’d bring on Al Sharpton, at that point a much less important figure than any of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

The “problem,” from a ratings perspective, was that the leader of a major mainstream Protestant church would say something reasonable, nuanced, and calming; Robertson or Falwell would be polarizing. Some people would hate them; some would love them. But no one would think that what they were saying was too complicated or nuanced to understand. And no one would listen to an interview with them without being outraged. The nuanced, carefully articulated, and calming response on the part of someone who actually (at that time) spoke for more people that the demagogues Robertson or Falwell wouldn’t get the demagogic (us v. them) connection that was more profitable in terms of viewer loyalty that Robertson or Falwell got.

There was a slightly similar “problem” about representation when it came to race. Or, maybe, more accurately, there was the same problem, but with different consequences. My Congressional Rep was Ron Dellums, a fearless badass, and smart af, including about his rhetoric. That was true of most (all?) of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Any one of them spoke for more people than Sharpton did at that point. But the media went to Sharpton.

The irony is that, as far as I can tell, Dellums’ policy agenda was identical to Sharpton’s. So this wasn’t about the media fulfilling the role it often claims of being important for democracy. This was about profiting on the basis of racism, and thereby reinforcing racism. Someone like Dellums would have troubled racists’ perceptions of what black political figures were like. Dellums would have outraged racists in an uncomfortable way that meant they changed the channel. Sharpton didn’t.

This is no criticism of Sharpton. He was and is much more complicated than the “Sharpton” that was invoked (and still is) on reactionary and racist media. The problem isn’t that he went on major media and argued for his view. It’s great that he took that opportunity. The problem is that racist systems try to look not racist by engaging in rhetorically and economically profitable tokenism. Sharpton was right to go on those shows. Those media were wrong for not giving equal time to Dellums, Jordan, and various members of the Black Caucus.

And viewers were wrong, and racist, for not rejecting tokenism. This isn’t about what decisions Sharpton made. This is about a system that profits from racism.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the pleasures of outrage, about why viewers and media choose some kinds of outrage and not others. There are good kinds of outrage. Not only is there the kind of outrage that mobilizes people to do something about oppression, but there is the kind of outrage at finding core beliefs challenged. That’s a very unpleasant outrage. It enables change, it destabilizes ideology, it calls a person to rethink core beliefs. It sucks for ratings, since most people just change the channel. Dellums would have presented that kind of outrage.

Sharpton didn’t. Racists like Sharpton. They like being outraged about him because the media representation of him can fit him into racist narratives (Limbaugh still uses him to stoke racist outrage). They wouldn’t have liked being outraged by Dellums. So, Dellums didn’t get the coverage that Sharpton did; the leaders of the ELCA, PCUSA, and so on didn’t get the coverage that Falwell or Robertson did because the kind of outrage that reinforces in-group/out-group thinking is profitable. The kind of outrage that is the consequence of simplistic in-group/out-group thinking getting violated is not.

Racism is a systemic problem. And it’s profitable because demagoguery is profitable, and racist demagoguery is particularly profitable. Limbaugh’s demagogic racism has made him a millionaire.

We’re in a culture of demagoguery because it’s profitable. Both Trump and Chauvin should both be held accountable for what they’ve done. But holding them, as individuals, accountable won’t do anything to change the system in which they and people like them flourish.

The post On systemic demagoguery; or, how the media creates and rewards demagogues appeared first on Patricia Roberts-Miller.

On systemic demagoguery; or, how the media creates rewards demagogues

There is a narrative that our system of policing is fine; there are just a few bad individuals in every group. That metaphor belies the narrative. Bad apples corrupt a system. As has been shown by representatives of police unions saying that they cannot do their jobs if they are held accountable for killing people in their custody, escalating violent situations, or assaulting people who have done nothing wrong, the system doesn’t allow for justice. Even the defenders of police violence are admitting it’s a job that can’t be done if police are held to the same laws they’re supposed to be enforcing. Police violence isn’t a problem of individuals who choose to do something they know is wrong; it’s about the selection and training of police, how juries are selected, how prosecutors tolerate lying, how bail works (or doesn’t), SCOTUS rulings. We have systemic police violence.

Focussing on Derek Chauvin is simultaneously important and trivial. He isn’t important as an exceptional individual because he isn’t exceptional. If we think he’s exceptional, we miss the point. But that doesn’t make him trivial. He’s important because he’s a sign of how the system operates. While Chauvin should be punished, throwing him out of the police, putting him in jail, that won’t end the problem.

Trump is the Chauvin of demagoguery.

There are people wringing their hands about Trump, including some of the very people who created the rhetorical and media systems that took him on the escalator to the Presidency. They reject Trump, but they haven’t rejected their own demagoguery or their participation in the demagogic media system that enabled his rise.

Trump is important, but not because he’s unique, and not because of his individual intentions. They’re bad; they’re murderous and vindictive and lawless, and he has no intention of being held accountable. And he persistently engages in demagoguery–it’s not only how he argues, but how he governs. But making him the problem, as though we can solve our political problems by making sure Biden gets elected, makes no more sense than thinking police violence has ended now that Chauvin is fired.

Jeffrey Berry and Sharon Sobieraj, in their deeply troubling The Outrage Industry, argue that, “once a candidate is in office, outrage continues to be a path to career advancement [because] research shows that members of Congress who are more extreme in their politics receive more coverage in the mainstream press” (179). Unfortunately, they have the data to support that claim. The media rewards demagoguery with free publicity.

This wasn’t surprising to me. It confirmed a crank theory I’d had since I was in Berkeley in the late seventies and eighties. Or, more precisely, the era when I gave up on TV news. I gave up on TV news for a few reasons.

First, I did the math. In a half-hour news program, there would be fluff, sports, weather, and ads. A half hour would get about six minutes of actually useful news. At that time, the LA Times was a great paper. I could spend that half hour reading the LA Times, and be much more usefully informed than the half hour watching the news. There was also California Journal (it might still exist), a journal with thoughtful bi-partisan information about politics.

Second, even if I abandoned half-hour news programs, and tried to watch longer ones, they were no better. They brought on speakers, but they didn’t bring in the major figures. For instance, at that point Jerry Falwell had a smaller following than, say, the leader of the PCUSA or ELCA (mainstream Protestant organizations). But, when there was a question about religion, media brought on Robertson or Falwell.

Similarly, when it came to issues of race, they’d bring on Al Sharpton, at that point a much less important figure than any of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

The “problem,” from a ratings perspective, was that the leader of a major mainstream Protestant church would say something reasonable, nuanced, and calming; Robertson or Falwell would be polarizing. Some people would hate them; some would love them. But no one would think that what they were saying was too complicated or nuanced to understand. And no one would listen to an interview with them without being outraged. The nuanced, carefully articulated, and calming response on the part of someone who actually (at that time) spoke for more people that the demagogues Robertson or Falwell wouldn’t get the demagogic (us v. them) connection that was more profitable in terms of viewer loyalty that Robertson or Falwell got.

There was a slightly similar “problem” about representation when it came to race. Or, maybe, more accurately, there was the same problem, but with different consequences. My Congressional Rep was Ron Dellums, a fearless badass, and smart af, including about his rhetoric. That was true of most (all?) of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Any one of them spoke for more people than Sharpton did at that point. But the media went to Sharpton.

The irony is that, as far as I can tell, Dellums’ policy agenda was identical to Sharpton’s. So this wasn’t about the media fulfilling the role it often claims of being important for democracy. This was about profiting on the basis of racism, and thereby reinforcing racism. Someone like Dellums would have troubled racists’ perceptions of what black political figures were like. Dellums would have outraged racists in an uncomfortable way that meant they changed the channel. Sharpton didn’t.

This is no criticism of Sharpton. He was and is much more complicated than the “Sharpton” that was invoked (and still is) on reactionary and racist media. The problem isn’t that he went on major media and argued for his view. It’s great that he took that opportunity. The problem is that racist systems try to look not racist by engaging in rhetorically and economically profitable tokenism. Sharpton was right to go on those shows. Those media were wrong for not giving equal time to Dellums, Jordan, and various members of the Black Caucus.

And viewers were wrong, and racist, for not rejecting tokenism. This isn’t about what decisions Sharpton made. This is about a system that profits from racism.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the pleasures of outrage, about why viewers and media choose some kinds of outrage and not others. There are good kinds of outrage. Not only is there the kind of outrage that mobilizes people to do something about oppression, but there is the kind of outrage at finding core beliefs challenged. That’s a very unpleasant outrage. It enables change, it destabilizes ideology, it calls a person to rethink core beliefs. It sucks for ratings, since most people just change the channel. Dellums would have presented that kind of outrage.

Sharpton didn’t. Racists like Sharpton. They like being outraged about him because the media representation of him can fit him into racist narratives (Limbaugh still uses him to stoke racist outrage). They wouldn’t have liked being outraged by Dellums. So, Dellums didn’t get the coverage that Sharpton did; the leaders of the ELCA, PCUSA, and so on didn’t get the coverage that Falwell or Robertson did because the kind of outrage that reinforces in-group/out-group thinking is profitable. The kind of outrage that is the consequence of simplistic in-group/out-group thinking getting violated is not.

Racism is a systemic problem. And it’s profitable because demagoguery is profitable, and racist demagoguery is particularly profitable. Limbaugh’s demagogic racism has made him a millionaire.

We’re in a culture of demagoguery because it’s profitable. Both Trump and Chauvin should both be held accountable for what they’ve done. But holding them, as individuals, accountable won’t do anything to change the system in which they and people like them flourish.

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On systemic demagoguery

There is a narrative that our system of policing is fine; there are just a few bad individuals in every group. That metaphor belies the narrative. Bad apples corrupt a system. As has been shown by representatives of police unions saying that they cannot do their jobs if they are held accountable for killing people in their custody, escalating violent situations, or assaulting people who have done nothing wrong, the system doesn’t allow for justice. Even the defenders of police violence are admitting it’s a job that can’t be done if police are held to the same laws they’re supposed to be enforcing. Police violence isn’t a problem of individuals who choose to do something they know is wrong; it’s about the selection and training of police, how juries are selected, how prosecutors tolerate lying, how bail works (or doesn’t), SCOTUS rulings. We have systemic police violence.

Focussing on Derek Chauvin is simultaneously important and trivial. He isn’t important as an exceptional individual because he isn’t exceptional. If we think he’s exceptional, we miss the point. But that doesn’t make him trivial. He’s important because he’s a sign of how the system operates. While Chauvin should be punished, throwing him out of the police, putting him in jail, that won’t end the problem.

Trump is the Chauvin of demagoguery.

There are people wringing their hands about Trump, including some of the very people who created the rhetorical and media systems that took him on the escalator to the Presidency. They reject Trump, but they haven’t rejected their own demagoguery or their participation in the demagogic media system that enabled his rise.

Trump is important, but not because he’s unique, and not because of his individual intentions. They’re bad; they’re murderous and vindictive and lawless, and he has no intention of being held accountable. And he persistently engages in demagoguery–it’s not only how he argues, but how he governs. But making him the problem, as though we can solve our political problems by making sure Biden gets elected, makes no more sense than thinking police violence has ended now that Chauvin is fired.

Jeffrey Berry and Sharon Sobieraj, in their deeply troubling The Outrage Industry, argue that, “once a candidate is in office, outrage continues to be a path to career advancement [because] research shows that members of Congress who are more extreme in their politics receive more coverage in the mainstream press” (179). Unfortunately, they have the data to support that claim. The media rewards demagoguery with free publicity.

This wasn’t surprising to me. It confirmed a crank theory I’d had since I was in Berkeley in the late seventies and eighties. Or, more precisely, the era when I gave up on TV news. I gave up on TV news for a few reasons.

First, I did the math. In a half-hour news program, there would be fluff, sports, weather, and ads. A half hour would get about six minutes of actually useful news. At that time, the LA Times was a great paper. I could spend that half hour reading the LA Times, and be much more usefully informed than the half hour watching the news. There was also California Journal (it might still exist), a journal with thoughtful bi-partisan information about politics.

Second, even if I abandoned half-hour news programs, and tried to watch longer ones, they were no better. They brought on speakers, but they didn’t bring in the major figures. For instance, at that point Jerry Falwell had a smaller following than, say, the leader of the PCUSA or ELCA (mainstream Protestant organizations). But, when there was a question about religion, media brought on Robertson or Falwell.

Similarly, when it came to issues of race, they’d bring on Al Sharpton, at that point a much less important figure than any of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

The “problem,” from a ratings perspective, was that the leader of a major mainstream Protestant church would say something reasonable, nuanced, and calming; Robertson or Falwell would be polarizing. Some people would hate them; some would love them. But no one would think that what they were saying was too complicated or nuanced to understand. And no one would listen to an interview with them without being outraged. The nuanced, carefully articulated, and calming response on the part of someone who actually (at that time) spoke for more people that the demagogues Robertson or Falwell wouldn’t get the demagogic (us v. them) connection that was more profitable in terms of viewer loyalty that Robertson or Falwell got.

There was a slightly similar “problem” about representation when it came to race. Or, maybe, more accurately, there was the same problem, but with different consequences. My Congressional Rep was Ron Dellums, a fearless badass, and smart af, including about his rhetoric. That was true of most (all?) of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Any one of them spoke for more people than Sharpton did at that point. But the media went to Sharpton.

The irony is that, as far as I can tell, Dellums’ policy agenda was identical to Sharpton’s. So this wasn’t about the media fulfilling the role it often claims of being important for democracy. This was about profiting on the basis of racism, and thereby reinforcing racism. Someone like Dellums would have troubled racists’ perceptions of what black political figures were like. Dellums would have outraged racists in an uncomfortable way that meant they changed the channel. Sharpton didn’t.

This is no criticism of Sharpton. He was and is much more complicated than the “Sharpton” that was invoked (and still is) on reactionary and racist media. The problem isn’t that he went on major media and argued for his view. It’s great that he took that opportunity. The problem is that racist systems try to look not racist by engaging in rhetorically and economically profitable tokenism. Sharpton was right to go on those shows. Those media were wrong for not giving equal time to Dellums, Jordan, and various members of the Black Caucus.

And viewers were wrong, and racist, for not rejecting tokenism. This isn’t about what decisions Sharpton made. This is about a system that profits from racism.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the pleasures of outrage, about why viewers and media choose some kinds of outrage and not others. There are good kinds of outrage. Not only is there the kind of outrage that mobilizes people to do something about oppression, but there is the kind of outrage at finding core beliefs challenged. That’s a very unpleasant outrage. It enables change, it destabilizes ideology, it calls a person to rethink core beliefs. It sucks for ratings, since most people just change the channel. Dellums would have presented that kind of outrage.

Sharpton didn’t. Racists like Sharpton. They like being outraged about him because the media representation of him can fit him into racist narratives (Limbaugh still uses him to stoke racist outrage). They wouldn’t have liked being outraged by Dellums. So, Dellums didn’t get the coverage that Sharpton did; the leaders of the ELCA, PCUSA, and so on didn’t get the coverage that Falwell or Robertson did because the kind of outrage that reinforces in-group/out-group thinking is profitable. The kind of outrage that is the consequence of simplistic in-group/out-group thinking getting violated is not.

Racism is a systemic problem. And it’s profitable because demagoguery is profitable, and racist demagoguery is particularly profitable. Limbaugh’s demagogic racism has made him a millionaire.

We’re in a culture of demagoguery because it’s profitable. Both Trump and Chauvin should both be held accountable for what they’ve done. But holding them, as individuals, accountable won’t do anything to change the system in which they and people like them flourish.

The post On systemic demagoguery appeared first on Patricia Roberts-Miller.

Cancel culture, kids these days, and erasing history

https://www.statesman.com/NEWS/201609...

There’s an argument that gets repeated a lot about the tearing down of statues, and it goes something like this: the extremists destroying statues are trying to erase history because ‘kids these days’ have grown up in “cancel” culture.

The argument is a tangled knot of misrepresentations, misunderstandings, myths, and clichés.

There are a lot of problems with how people talk about “youth today,” but most of them come down to the tendency for old farts to make that generalization on the basis of what we remember (or, more accurately, have chosen to remember) about what we were like as youth. Because, really, that is the comparison. People talking about “kids these days” are rarely people deeply-read in sociology, anthropology, history, let alone history of youth culture. That means we aren’t even pretending to know anything about what youth was like for generations prior to ours. A lot of the commentary of this kind is (and, to be honest, always has been) not on the part of the generation of parents (who have a lot of contact with “kids these days”), but grandparents—that is, people whose knowledge of youth culture is heavily mediated by TV and news.

So, at its base, it’s kind of a jerk move. It’s saying “Although I don’t spend a lot of time with kids these days, and haven’t read any studies about them, and am just relying on a small amount of data and a large amount of outrage media, I feel strongly that they suck because they aren’t as good as I like to think I was.”

Boomers’ outrage about “cancel culture” is exactly that. It’s based on a false comparison. The notion that kids these days grew up in a cancel culture is sort of true, but mostly irrelevant. It’s true that they grew up in a culture in which a public figure, artist, work of art and so on might be suddenly rejected, shunned, or even actively boycotted. If you want to call that cancel culture, fine.

It’s irrelevant as an explanation of anything because every American generation grew up in that culture. The internet made it different, of course, both better and worse. But the fact is that junior high and high school are cancel culture and always have been, with people cancelled for not being cool enough, or wearing the wrong thing, or getting on the wrong side of someone. And public figures, artists, and works of art have been cancelled for all sorts of reasons. Johnny Mathis had to leap back into the closet because his admission of homosexuality not only threatened his career, but led to death threats (in 1982!). Lenny Bruce was very effectively cancelled; Smothers Brothers was literally cancelled; many people in the South cancelled the Democratic Party for supporting Civil Rights; many of the people who complain about cancel culture cancelled “The Dixie Chicks;” Mohammed Ali was cancelled for quite a while; you don’t find a lot of statues for Longstreet in the South or any for Frederick Benteen anywhere.

So, the pearl-clutching about kids these days having invented cancel culture can stop.

“They’re trying to erase history” is a cliché being repeated as part of this argument, and I say it’s a cliché because I don’t think people are really thinking carefully about what they’re saying.

A statue is not history; a statue doesn’t even teach history. It could, in the right context (i.e., a museum), and part of the history would be why the statue was put up, and by whom. Statues aren’t for teaching history; they’re for identifying in-group heroes. Removing a statue doesn’t erase the history; it does erase the honoring of a particular figure in that spot. So, the question to ask is: why was that person honored in that spot at that time by that group? That’s the history we need.

And it’s typically for very specific political reasons important at that moment. For instance, honoring Columbus was about politicians getting the Italian vote . The large number of statues of Confederate heroes, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson put up just after WWI and during the 1950s had to do with celebrating white supremacy, the Confederacy, and slavery. That was the point. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington both owned slaves, (although they both criticized slavery) so statues to them were often put up in response to Brown v. Board. Like the comeback of the CSA battle flag, these statues and monuments were intended to send a pro-slavery, pro-segregation message.

Yes, there is a problem of erasing history in regard to those statues. But it’s on the part of the people who don’t know the history of the statues—why, for instance, is there a statue to a Confederate general in Washington, D.C.? That is, a statue to a traitor? Because the history of that statue is erased (although it’s pretty interesting). And the people who don’t acknowledge that many statues and monuments were put up to defend and advocate racism, such as the ones put up in counter-protest to the Civil Rights movement—they are the ones trying to erase history.

The Civil War was about slavery; a quick read of the “Declarations of Causes” makes that clear. To say it wasn’t about slavery, but about states’ rights is to try to erase history. (There are reasons that some historians balk at saying that slavery alone started the war—it’s more complicated than that, and has to do with the relation of slavery and slave state ideology, political rhetoric, identity, and economy, but no major historian says that the Slave States were seriously committed to the principle of states’ rights, let alone that they went to war for it. The Fugitive Slave Law makes that an impossible argument to make.)

Am I saying they should tear down statues for slavers and racists? Actually, no. I don’t think protesters should tear them down. I think city or state officials should remove them and put them in museums where their history can be told.

When I was young, my mother and one sister and I went on a driving trip. My mother took to calling historical roadside markers “hysterical markers,” since I would cry if she wouldn’t stop at them. My field is history of rhetoric; two years of my graduate program consisted of coursework in the history of rhetorical theory. I had one course in historiography as an undergraduate and two as a graduate student. I love history. A statue to Jefferson Davis isn’t erased by being put in a museum. Jefferson Davis isn’t erased by having his statue defaced or destroyed. History isn’t erased. It’s erased by pretending that isn’t a statue to white supremacy.

[A more scholarly version of this argument will be coming out in “Not Light, but Fire”: Activist Issues and Contemporary Echoes in Nineteenth-Century American Rhetorics, edited by Pat Bizzell and Lisa Zimmerelli.]

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How bullies “joke”

From https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2...

On Sunday, June 21, Brianna Keilar interviewed Tim Murtaugh (Director of Communications for Trump’s 2020 election) about Trump’s speech at the disastrous Tulsa rally. She showed a clip of Trump talking about COVID testing, during which he says, “Here’s the bad part. When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people, you’ll find more cases. So, I said to my people slow the testing down, please.” Here’s the exchange between Keilar and Murtaugh about that clip:

KEILAR: Is that true, he’s asked for the testing to be slowed down?

MURTAUGH: No, it’s not. As a matter of fact, the United States leads the world in testing. We’ve tested more than 25 million Americans —

(CROSSTALK)

KEILAR: So, why is he saying that then?

MURTAUGH: I understand there’s not a lot of a sense of humor at CNN. He was joking. When you expand testing, you will naturally detect the number of cases. That’s the very point he was making. I’m not surprised you’re unable or unwilling to understand the president has a tongue-in-cheek remark there. But that was the point he’s making.

KEILAR: I mean, Tim, 120,000 Americans dead. I do not think that is funny. Do you?

MURTAUGH: He was trying to illustrate the point that when you expand testing —

(CROSSTALK)

KEILAR: You said it’s a joke?

MURTAUGH: — in fact, leading the world. You can often use ironic humor —

(CROSSTALK)

KEILAR: Is it funny, Tim?

MURTAUGH: He was trying to use —

KEILAR: Dead Americans? Unemployed Americans? Is that funny to you?
MURTAUGH: You can ask it 100 different ways. But the point the president was making —

KEILAR: And you won’t answer it. And there’s a reason why.

MURTAUGH: I am answering it. The president was illustrating the point that American testing has expanded to such lengths that we are now detecting more positive cases.

It stands to reason — it stands to reason we will have more positive cases when you do more testing. That’s just a fact.

KEILAR: You are aware that that hospitalization numbers disprove what you are saying. That testing does not solely account for the numbers we’re seeing, including Florida, a state you just held up as a model, which is certainly is not.

It is not funny that Americans are dying. It’s not funny that they’re unemployed.”

This interaction is painfully familiar to anyone who has tried to have a useful conversation (or set a boundary) with a bully. Bullies deliberately hurt a victim, in front of an audience of supporters and enablers, and then escalate the pain by simultaneously acknowledging and denying the deliberate injury. The cruelty is the point; it is the pleasure.

One of the ways that bullies simultaneously deny, acknowledge, and intensify the pain is through saying, “It’s just a joke, and you can’t take a joke.” While acknowledging that you’ve been hurt, and that they know it, they’re saying that they have no intention of apologizing for or even avoiding future instances of the injury. It’s a dominance move—the cruelty is the point. And it isn’t that they don’t care about feelings, or are particularly (or even any) good at taking a joke. Think about how thin-skinned Trump is, or how badly (and often violently) bullies respond when the joke is on them. It’s “Fuck your feelings.”

Murtaugh was claiming that Trump was “just” joking about reducing COVID testing. And Murtaugh got aggressive about it, saying that he wouldn’t expect that CNN would be able to see the joke, being humorless.

This is a talking point on the right (the Proud Boys, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists especially like it): that “liberals” are humorless scolds. (It’s a very gendered insult.) They want to be able to hurt others, without any accountability.

As an aside, I’ll say that I think it’s possible to make jokes about awful subjects—that kind of dark humor is sometimes the only way to keep from crying. But Murtaugh had blocked himself off from that route of defense by having accused CNN of being humorless. Someone engaged in dark humor doesn’t think the situation is humorous; it’s bleak, and dark humor is an admission of just how grim it is.

Keilar responded by naming what he was doing: “I mean, Tim, 120,000 Americans dead. I do not think that is funny. Do you?”

And he fell apart, unable to answer her question. He had tried to make the issue her lack of sense of humor, and she threw it right back at him, drawing attention to the implication: that dead and dying Americans is something people should find humorous. He deflated like a tired balloon.

“He was joking” was how the White House and Trump campaign tried to spin Trump’s statement that he would order a reduction in testing just to make the numbers go down (since the rising numbers make Trump look bad). Trump, however, betrayed them all, saying, “I don’t kid.”

And, in fact, the Trump Administration ended funding for COVID testing in five states. So, Trump wasn’t kidding, and his Administration is reducing testing. Or it isn’t. Some representatives of the Trump Administration are claiming this reduction of funding will not reduce testing (as are many Trump apologists).

So what is going on? They’re contradicting each other. Either Trump was kidding, and he was lying (or forgetting?) when he said he doesn’t kid, or else he wasn’t kidding, and he’s incompetent as a President, unable to get his Administration to do what he has “ordered.” Either way, that isn’t particularly funny.

But what is funny is what happened to Murtaugh. He and other Trump apologists had, again, been left hanging in the breeze, trying to deflect attention away from the chaos of the Trump Administration, and instead ended up looking like lying fools serving a chaotic and impulsive Trump. Joke’s on them.

I said dark humor is sometimes necessary.

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The one rhetoric to rule them all

When people think about rhetorical effectiveness, we imagine ourselves as the audience, and so we tend to universalize from our experience. If it appeals to us, we call it “effective,” as though our judgment is the only one that matters. And we condemn anyone who uses a strategy that doesn’t appeal to us as engaging in “ineffective” rhetoric.

But we really disagree.

Liberals (people who want progressive change, but gradually, and from within existing political, ideological, and media systems) get really uncomfortable with conflict, violations of civility, negative campaigns, what they perceive as “personal attacks.” They turn away from that; they advocate “positive” rhetorical strategies, that find common ground, humanize the opposition, and avoid calling anyone racism.

Some leftists (call them social democrats) think in terms of policies, and so they think that we need to keep the message on policy issues. In my experience, they tend to be more tolerant of conflict than liberals, as long as it’s conflict about policies. (I put myself in this category.) Some leftists (call them heirs to the Enlightenment) believe that they are advocating the right policies, and so we need to slam the opposition (which is anyone who has an even mildly different from them) and hold out for the right policies, refusing any kind of compromise. They advocate finding a political figure who refuses to compromise and promoting that figure.

I could go on. There are lots of other positions conventionally categorized as “leftist” that I’m not talking about. My point isn’t to create an exhaustive taxonomy of “the left,” but to show that people who have a very similar end in terms of policy agenda have very different standards about “effective” rhetoric.

I also think every one of these positions (and a bunch of the ones I’m not listing) is valid. There are times when finding common ground, kindness, and listening is a wonderful approach. Projects like Hands Across the Hills and Divided We Fall are tremendously valuable. But even they show that this deeper and more charitable understanding of people who disagree with us doesn’t generally lead to changing positions on policy issues.

What’s a little misleading about the three examples above is that I’ve only used positions for which there is a match between the rhetorical and political preferences, and that isn’t always the case. (There are people who are deeply committed to the kind of policy agenda often called “far left” and the civility model of rhetoric, for instance.). Sticking with examples where the rhetoric and politics match just makes the topic easier to discuss.

Speaking of which, as I keep saying, I think the whole tendency to reduce our complicated policy and ideological options to left v. right (whether a binary or continuum) is gerfucked. But, because it is the way we talk about politics in the US, that false binary is hard to avoid (much like trying to talk about racism in the US without talking about white v. black).

The media is committed to the left/right binary because it enables the horse race frame, which people mistake as “neutral.” It’s also simply easier. Reporting that relies on analyses of policy agenda is slower, takes more expertise, and requires a deeper understanding of history and politics than journalism majors provide. The left/right binary makes marketing more straightforward, and it’s more profitable. It’s easier to get a loyal audience for a network or outlet (and advertisers like loyal audiences) by appealing to us v. them (right v. left), and generating outrage about Them. Outrage is good for the bottom line.

Paradoxically, living within an informational enclave enables people who are in fact highly factional in our beliefs and behavior to imagine ourselves to be independent thinkers. A person who watches Fox all the time might take pride in their not always agreeing with what they see; sometimes they side with Wall Street Journal (or they brag that they never watch Fox, and get all their information from The Blaze). Or, we might say that Rachel Maddow is too extreme (or not extreme enough), and we’re independent thinkers because we don’t agree with everything in The Nation.

If we accept the false binary (or continuum) then we’re likely to essentialize the opposition (attributing the same beliefs and motives to everyone who disagrees). And that brings us back to the point of this post (you thought I’d lost it): we shouldn’t assume that all audiences are the same. In addition to the fact that we might have wildly different goals in a disagreement (discussed elsewhere), even if we’re talking about trying to persuade someone to agree on a specific policy, the kind of strategy we most prefer might not be the one most effective with them.

Right now, I’m seeing a lot of critics of Trump who are arguing with each other about the best way to try to persuade his supporters to stop supporting him, or at least hold him accountable. There are people who argue we should let the little stuff (his tendency to drink water with two hands) go, and focus on his corruption of democratic institutions (such as reframing SCOTUS decisions in terms of support for him personally, his demands for loyalty), or on his policies. I don’t think we have to choose one.

Some of his supporters are Followers, and, as I’ve argued elsewhere, rational discourse is not the way to persuade them to change their support. Their support doesn’t have a rational basis. Some of his supporters are strategic—they loathe him personally, and are very worried about his policies, but they believe that Joe Biden wants to turn the US into the USSR (except with more homosexuality), and so they sincerely believe they have no choice. I think that’s a position that’s open to persuasion, but it involves persuading them first that they need to get a broader range of sources of information, and that means trying to do something about inoculation. There are people who argue that there is no difference between Biden and Trump, so there’s no point in voting (a stance that benefits Trump more than it does Biden). A fair number of those people are trolls, but not all. I haven’t found that they’re open to rational argumentation, but maybe I haven’t found the right strategies.

People have different reasons for supporting Trump, and are different in terms of what rhetorical strategies will be effective for them. The search for the one rhetoric to rule them all is fruitless.

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The ten rules for rational-critical argumentation

Image from here: https://csl4d.wordpress.com/2017/12/2...

I’ve often mentioned that I think Van Eemeren and Grootendorst’s rules for rational-critical argumentation are useful. But they’re written in a way that makes them really hard to understand, and I’ve long wanted to put them into more straightforward language. I’ve procrastinated doing that because first I have to explain a bunch of things. The first is one that most people don’t even consider: what are we doing when we disagree?

We’re in such a world of neoliberalism that the assumption is that we’re trying to sell each other something, or we’re competing for a market. But the notion that discourse must be a sales pitch is just one way of thinking about disagreement.

I’ve written and re-written about the various ways of thinking about what we might be trying to do when we disagree, and what I’ve written always ends up heady and abstract and hard to follow. So I’m going to go with a flawed analogy, one I’ve lifted from Aristotle.

Let’s think about wrestling. Also, let’s imagine the wrestlers are Winston and Emma (just so I don’t end up in ambiguous pronoun reference).

Why are Winston and Emma wrestling?

They might be wrestling because they’re trying to kill each other. This wrestling has no rules, no limits, and no goal other than the permanent extermination of the other.

They might be wrestling as champions of their communities; they’re not trying to exterminate the other, but to destroy the other’s political power, and generally to gain some specific political outcomes (change in territory, control of the government, exploitative relationships legalized). In other words, this would be modern warfare in light of the possibility of community judgment– post-Geneva convention warfare.

Or, perhaps, they’re wrestling for even more specific policy outcomes. They’re wrestling over who gets the salmon tonight. Tomorrow, they’ll wrestle again for who gets it tomorrow. This kind of wrestling may or may not have limits on what is allowed. If it doesn’t have limits, it’s outcome-specific demagoguery; if it has limits, particularly regarding tone and civility, then it’s decorous argument (note that’s “decorous,” not “rational”).

Perhaps Winston is a bully, or a faux-bully, who talks a lot about how he beat up others, and he’s using that status as a strong guy to recruit others to his group, or encourage them in their bullying. Emma might choose to wrestle with him to show he’s a bully and a fraud. Since this is most effective when it stays within the rules for rational-critical argumentation, I always think of it as the rational-critical alpha roll. (The point isn’t to engage Winston in rational-critical argumentation, since he probably isn’t interested in it, but to show show that he isn’t, and to shame him. Some people argue that’s what Socrates is doing in some dialogues.)

They might be wrestling as part of a for-profit show, in which everything is scripted, and they’re just following their scripts because the pay is great. This is argutainment. The point is the conflict, not resolving it, because the conflict becomes unprofitable the second it’s resolved. So, Emma and Winston have to keep fighting. But that’s also unsatisfying, since the audience will attach to one or the other.

The most profitable version of this scripted wrestling is that Winston is in-group for the audience, and always nearly loses, and rarely loses, and in which Emma cheats egregiously while the ref isn’t looking. Sometimes, after Emma has cheated relentlessly, Winston cheats once and wins. So, his win looks like payback. It’s still scripted, and it’s still really for show.

Another kind of argutainment is so dominant that I think I have to mention it. This is when Emma and Winston don’t actually wrestle at all. Winston wrestles with a plastic doll that has “EMA” written on it (or a man filled with straw) and wins (what a shock). I think of this as straw man argutainment.

Emma and Winston might be members of a college wrestling team, and the point of their wrestling is to bring honor to their college. (Or just to win.) There are lots of rules. This is decorous agonism.

Perhaps they’re friends, and they think it’s fun to wrestle. They each want to win, but not badly enough to hurt the other. There’s no referee because they’ll try to be fair. This is friendly wrangling.

Perhaps they believe that wrestling is a really good sport because it gives a healthy kind of flexibility and strength, and they want to wrestle with each other in order to improve themselves and each other. When we make the analogy to argumentation, this is rational-critical argumentation.

Sometimes Emma and Winston aren’t wrestling with each other at all. This is the tai-chi of argumentation, in which people simply admire the moves an individual makes. This has two types. One is very rigid, and says that there is a right way to make every move, and Emma and Winston can be assessed as to which one most fits the correct form, regardless of whether it’s actually a good way to wrestle. Let’s call this standardized testing. The second is that Emma and Winston each demonstrate the moves they like to make, and they simply watch each other, perhaps learning, perhaps not. I tend to think of that as the expressive model.

Generally, when people set out a list, it’s an expeditio—a list that sets one up for being the right choice. I think every one of these is a valid choice, depending on the circumstances. Every single one is also a bad choice, depending on the circumstances.

[As an aside, I’ll say that one grump I have about scholarship in rhetoric and writing is that it begins by assuming that only one of the above goals is valid, or that we all have to agree as to which is the model we should be promoting. That notion that there is only one kind of correct public discourse is a claim that can’t be defended through rational-critical discourse, which is kind of funny if you have the excessively pedantic sense of humor I have. I’m on the side of people arguing for various goals, various needs, various means, and teaching students that there are those different ways of arguing.]

One more piece of background information before I can get to the ten rules. The market model of knowledge says that the belief that sells the most is the best belief—that’s a version of the argutainment model. It says that the argument that pleases the most people is the best. There is, as far as I can tell, no evidence that claim is anything other than a Moebius strip of justification. Slavery, Nazism, eugenics, surgeons refusing to wash their hands, mullets—all of those meet the market model of belief standard for good belief. It’s a bad model. What’s popular, especially when not all opinions are weighted equally (the market model gives more preference to the opinions held by people with more money), is not necessarily what is ethical, in the long-term best interest of the community, or what the majority of people want.

If Winston and Emma are disagreeing about who should do the dishes, they could see it as a zero-sum argument—they win to the extent that they get the other to do the dishes. Their disagreement then becomes a way to get the other to submit. They’re either in outcome-specific demagoguery or decorous argument still oriented toward getting their way. If Winston and Emma see their disagreement about the dishes as a question of who wins, who gets the other to submit, or who is the better person, they’re seeing the disagreement about the dishes as just one of many instances that are really about a zero-sum contests as to which of them is a better person (or which one is doing more, or sacrificing more).

Fuck that shit. I had that marriage. It was bad.

So, let’s imagine that Winston and Emma disagree deeply but they don’t think the other is evil. They have, basically, two ways of approaching the disagreement that will serve them well. One is the expressive model, in which they each express what they believe, and they try to understand the other. Agreement, persuasion, argumentation—all of those are off the table. It’s just about listening. This way of approaching disagreement is incredibly powerful, as shown by projects like Hands Across the Hills or United We Stand.

That model is about resolving about our serious cultural problems that come from people who breathe deep in a media world that relies on the demonization of others. It’s vexed when it comes to systemic issues, ones that don’t necessarily rely on the conscious intentions or feelings of individuals. Imagine that Winston refuses to wear a mask. He doesn’t intend to infect others or get infected; he thinks that, by doing exactly what his media tells him to do, he’s showing his individuality and independent judgment.

There is no way to get Winston to understand the irrationality of his position (and it is irrational) from within the expressive or argutainment model. From within those models, his position seems fine.

So here we are at the rational-critical model. It isn’t persuasive. It doesn’t work within the market model of discourse. It isn’t about selling anything. It isn’t about making everyone feel good. It isn’t about an agent who gains compliance on the part of the object.

It’s about both Emma and Winston believing, simultaneously, that their positions are so right that they can withstand the strongest counterarguments, and that they might be wrong, so they’re open to disproof. And these are the conditions of disproof. I find that, when I’m talking about this issue, I have to emphasize that these are not the rules everyone has to follow in every conversation (that’s why there’s this long lead up). You can have a great conversation without following these rules. If you’re playing soccer, and you pick up the ball and run with it, you’ve either committed a foul or you aren’t playing soccer any more. You might have just invented rugby.

If I say, “Here are the characteristics of warblers,” someone saying, “But kangaroos aren’t like that” is not actually proving me wrong. Kangaroos are great; I’m not saying they aren’t. But they aren’t warblers.

One more piece of background information. Because we are so polarized, if I say anything about Democrats or Republicans, hot cognition is triggered, so let’s imagine that there are two political parties—one led by Chester (called Chesterians), and the other led by Hubert (Hubertians), and they disagree about the best methods of keeping squirrels (considered by both parties) from getting to the red ball (considered good by both parties). Winston is a Chesterian, and Emma is a Hubertian.

Okay, the rules.

1. Freedom rule
“Parties must not prevent each other from advancing standpoints or from casting doubt on standpoints.”

This rule prohibits argumentum ad baculum—Winston can’t threaten to hurt, fire, or harm Emma for disagreeing with him and still have their discussion be a rational-critical disagreement. Of course, there are lots of situations in which a good and productive disagreement might have Winston telling Emma she is not allowed to make certain arguments. If Emma is CEO and Winston is the company attorney, and Emma advocates a course of action that could get them sued, Winston would be wise to say, “If you advocate that ever again, I will quit as your attorney.” Winston might threaten to fire Emma if she keeps making racist arguments; Winston might threaten to break up with her if she says abusive things to him. It isn’t a rational-critical disagreement, but Winston might be wise to decide that a rational-critical argument was never on the table anyway.

Appeals to emotion aren’t necessarily a problem in rational-critical argumentation. They are fallacious (argumentum ad misericordiam) under some circumstances. If Winston says that it will break his heart if Emma makes certain arguments, and Winston really doesn’t want to hear that argument, he can set that boundary, but it isn’t a rational-critical disagreement from that point on.

In other words, people can set boundaries for discussions; if they can’t agree on those boundaries, then they might need to have a rational-critical disagreement about what those boundaries are. It might not be possible for them to agree on boundaries; it might be an issue that isn’t subject to rational-critical disagreement, or one of the people involved might be incapable of arguing rationally about it.

2. Burden of proof rule
“A party that advances a standpoint is obliged to defend it if asked by the other party to do so.”

In general, the rule of thumb is that the affirmative (“A is B” or “A leads to B”) has the burden of proof because negatives (“A is not B” or “A does not lead to B”) can be hard to prove. For instance, if Emma and Winston are arguing about whether a politician, Hubert, is racist, it’s going to be almost impossible to have a good conversation unless Winston first says why he thinks Hubert is racist (he’s making the affirmative case, affirming that something is true). Then Emma can refute it (since she has the negative case, saying that Winston’s claim is not true). But, once Emma starts to refute that claim, then she has the burden of proof to support whatever claims she is making (such as that Winston has a bad definition of “racist”).

People try to avoid the burden of proof by shifting the stasis (that is, trying to change what the argument is about). Motivism, ad hominem, genetic fallacy, and various fallacies that result from binary thinking fall into this category. If Emma says to Winston, “Oh, you’re just saying that Hubert is racist because you’re a Social Justice Warrior, and you think you’re so woke,” that’s motivism and ad hominem (Emma gets a twofer!). She’s violated this rule because she’s trying to make Winston’s character the issue rather than Hubert’s racism. If Emma believes that only Chesterians think Hubert is racist, and she believes that all Chesterians are socialists, and all socialists are Stalinists, then she might say, “Oh, Hubert is racist? Well, how did that whole gulag thing work out?” and try to engage Winston in a defense of Stalinism. That’s a violation of this rule—she’s trying to make Stalinism the issue.

Most people arguing for conspiracy theories violate this rule—the more that they’re claiming there is a huge coverup, the more likely they are to avoid the burden of proof. People arguing about the existence of God throw the burden of proof back and forth like a long and boring tennis game.

A move that is often (but not always) a violation of this rule is the fallacy of tu quoque (sometimes called the accusation of hypocrisy). If Winston says, “Hubert is racist,” and Emma says, “Well, what about that time that a Chesterian said something racist?” she might be violating the rule. It depends on what claim Winston is making. If Winston is claiming that Chesterians are better than Hubertians, what she’s saying is relevant. If he’s saying that Hubert shouldn’t be in charge of the Senate Committee on Diversity and Inclusion, it’s irrelevant, and a violation of this rule.

This point—what are we arguing about?—is important for understanding fallacies, since a lot of moves are fallacious because they’re irrelevant. If Winston says, “Chester is a young and strong dog who can withstand the stress of protecting the red ball,” then Emma pointing out that Winston has a long history of lying about Chester’s health is relevant. It’s part of a rational-critical argument. But Emma arguing that Winston shouldn’t be believed because he likes Nickelback is an ad hominem since it’s irrelevant.

If Emma points out that Winston has often lied about Chester’s health and so shouldn’t be believed now, and Winston says that Emma really hurt his feelings, and she owes him an apology for hurting his feelings, he’s trying to shift the stasis to the question of his feelings. If he says that Emma shouldn’t criticize him because he recently broke a nail, and he’s really upset about it—it’s either a violation of the first rule (some claims are off the table) or this one. Or both!

3. Standpoint rule
“A party’s attack on a standpoint must relate to the standpoint that has indeed been advanced by the other party.”

This rule prohibits the straw man fallacy—if Emma has a complicated and nuanced argument, and Winston attributes to her a really stupid argument, he’s violated this rule.

People violate this rule while thinking they’re making good arguments for three reasons: first, in-group/out-group thinking (which reduces everything to us v. them); second, and closely related, the tendency to think in paired terms; third, and perhaps most important, inoculation.

In a culture of demagoguery, and we’re in one, people believe that our vexed, complicated, varied, and nuanced world of policy options is reduced to two groups: us and them. Us is narrowly defined, and “Them” is simply anyone who is not Us. The research on us v. them thinking (in-group v. out-group) is clear that people committed to this way of thinking about the world homogenize the out-group. So, if your in-group is Wisconsin Synod Lutherans, and you’re deep in a culture of demagoguery, then you’re quite likely to believe that Evangelical Lutherans, Muslims, atheists, Satanists are pretty much all the same. [1] Therefore, you think you have proven that this ELCA person is bad by presenting an example of something a Satanist did or said. [2]

This rule and the “unexpressed premise rule” have a complicated relationship. In a good argument, people sort them out. In the fallacious version, the unexpressed premise is inferred by identity: the sort of person who argues this is a member of that group, and they also argue that. An example of false inferences from identity would something like this. Imagine that Emma argues that we should be nice to little dogs, and Chesterians are known for hating little dogs, then Winston might infer that she must not be Chesterian. If Chesterians are also known for hating squirrels, then Winston might infer that Emma must like squirrels. (That’s how the false inference about ELCA Lutherans being Satanists works.)

It feels like a logical inference, but only if Winston falsely assumes that all Chesterians are the same. The way his argument works is:
Everyone is either A or B. All A do C. All B do D. Emma does not do C; therefore, she must not be A. Therefore, she must be B; therefore she must do D.

(Everyone is either Chesterian or Hubertian; all Chesterians hate little dogs; Emma does not hate little dogs; therefore, she must be Hubertian; all Hubertians like squirrels; therefore, Emma must like squirrels.)

His whole chain of inferences becomes at best a possible inference if there are options other than A or B (Chesterians or Hubertians), most (but not all) Chesterians hate little dogs, and so on. Winston is attacking Emma on a point not related to the standpoint she actually advanced.

4. Relevance rule
“A party may defend a standpoint only by advancing argumentation relating to that standpoint.”

This rule is pretty straightforward; again, it’s about staying on-topic. It prohibits fallacies of relevance—such as ad hominem, ad misericordiam (irrelevant appeal to pity), ad vericundiam (irrelevant appeal to authority), and non sequitur (the large category of drawing a conclusion that doesn’t follow).

As mentioned above, an attack on the character of an interlocutor isn’t necessarily irrelevant and therefore not necessarily fallacious. Similarly, appeals to emotions or authority aren’t necessarily irrelevant. All arguments have an emotional connection—we disagree because we care about something. If we didn’t care at all—if we had no emotional attachment to the issue—we wouldn’t bother disagreeing. If Winston argues that being nice to little dogs helps squirrels get to the red ball, it’s because he believes that squirrels getting to the red ball is a bad thing. He doesn’t want it to happen. He is afraid of it happening.

If Emma believes that the Chesterian position about little dogs causes unnecessary cruelty to little dogs, then she cares about little dogs; it makes her sad. People who argue that a policy is good because it will save a lot of money or it’s bad because it will cost a lot of money have an affective attachment to money; they like it.

If Winston and Emma are disagreeing about whether little dogs are conspiring with squirrels, and Winston tells a highly emotional story about how a little dog once took food from a Great Dane puppy, that’s a violation of this rule. Not because it’s highly emotional, but because it’s irrelevant.

Appeals to authority are similar. Imagine Emma says, “Little dogs are not involved in the conspiracy; I am personally certain of this.” That’s probably an irrelevant appeal to authority—it’s an appeal to her personal conviction, and her personal conviction is irrelevant. It’s only relevant if she is an expert who has read every study on the issue, and looked at all the evidence. Emma saying, “Well, Ruth has concluded that squirrels are not involved, and she is a Supreme Court justice” (or Nobel prize winner, famous professor at a prestigious university, person with impressive degrees, tremendously successful entrepreneur) is a violation of this rule, since there isn’t a Nobel prize in the squirrel conspiracy.

Similarly, appeals to Scripture, a quote from Einstein, something your stylist told you that her brother-in-law’s chiropractor’s lawyer told him is an irrelevant appeal to authority.

It’s possible to have really fun and interesting conversations in which non-experts speculate on topics, but it’s just shooting the breeze.

The last fallacy of relevance I want to mention (there are lots more) is the big category of non sequitur. There are lots, and many lists of fallacies split them into different kinds. But, basically, they all come down to a tendency we have to think a true argument is a valid argument, and a true argument has the form of “true statement because another true statement.”

Emma might believe that “little dogs are good because many bunnies are fluffy.” Many bunnies are fluffy, but that has nothing to do with whether little dogs are good (although, personally, I do think they are). That argument about bunnies is irrelevant, even if true, so it’s a violation of this rule.

5. Unexpressed premise rule
“A party may not deny premise that he or she has left implicit or falsely present something as a premise that has been left unexpressed by the other party.”

This one is really hard for some people to understand—that an argument they’re making might assume a premise of which they’re unaware. They think that you know what you’re assuming. We’re especially likely to violate this rule when we adopt an argument from another source that sounds good, and we haven’t really thought it through.

I got into this argument recently. Someone said something along the lines of, “Liberals are idiots because they appeal to stereotypes.” That’s appealing to a stereotype, but the argument assumes that appealing to stereotypes is idiotic. So, the person was saying they’re an idiot. I couldn’t get them to understand that their argument logically assumed a premise they didn’t believe. They got mad because they thought I was calling them an idiot, and I couldn’t get them to understand that by their own argument they were an idiot. They were calling themselves an idiot, and that’s what made it a bad argument.

We’re responsible for our premises. A lot of interesting disagreements arise because we disagree about the premises, and so we end up having to talk about things like whether stereotypes are bad, if we can reason without them (we can’t), what distinguishes good from bad stereotypes.

6. Starting point rule
“A party may not falsely present a premise as an accepted starting point nor deny a premise representing an accepted starting point.”

This violation of the rule often goes by the phrase “begging the question” (a phrase that leads to a lot of confusion, since people now use that phrase to refer to something else entirely—when something we’re arguing leads us to have to consider another question), or “assuming what’s at stake.” It’s really a kind of circular argument.

So, if Emma were to say, “Okay, we both agree that size is unrelated to goodness,” that would violate this rule, since Winston assumes size and goodness are related. (Socrates does this all the time in Platonic dialogues, tricking his interlocutor to agree to a premise they don’t actually believe.) Van Eemeren and Grotendoorst give examples of people sliding premises into an argument via adjectives, adverbs, nouns or noun phrases (if Emma were to refer to “the ridiculous notion that size and goodness are related,” “Chester’s dishonestly arguing that,” “the delusion,” or “the proposition only promoted by idiots that…”).

Again, I’m not saying those sorts of moves are prohibited, but when a disagreement is in this realm, it isn’t rational-critical argumentation. It might be useful; it might be productive; it might be necessary. It just isn’t rational-critical.

I’ve run across the second part of this rule less often—when people try to deny a premise that is an accepted starting point (except in the kind of situation discussed in #5, and I don’t think that’s what they mean here). That’s probably because most of my disagreements are in social media, and so when people try to misrepresent the beginning of the argument, it’s easy enough to go up a thread and quote them.

It does happen sometimes—“I never said that…” when they clearly did. When it’s pointed out that they did say it, you can sometimes have a good conversation—they really did express themselves badly, leave out a word, use terms that have different meanings in different contexts. But if they did say it, and they won’t own it, this isn’t a good faith argument at all.

7. Argument scheme rule
“A party may not regard a standpoint as conclusively defended if the defense does not take place by means of an appropriate argumentation scheme that is correctly applied.”

There are a few ways to think of this one, and here I part company with Van Eemeren and Grootendorst. They go on to describe a really limited way of thinking about argumentation that is hard to apply for how people actually think. They don’t seem to imagine disagreements that happen within the messy world of ideological commitments (including religion). I think we are all always within that world.

That we are always arguing from within our ideological commitments doesn’t mean we’re incapable of rational-critical argumentation.

They’re making a crucial point: it isn’t just what you say, but how you’re arguing for it. Winston might argue that little dogs are part of the squirrel conspiracy by:
– relying on a single example of a little dog that was friends with a squirrel;
– finding one quote from The Book of Dog that can be read as condemning little dogs;
– arguing that since Goehring liked little dogs, defending little dogs makes you a Nazi;
– appealing to one study that said little dogs are evil;
– describing a personal experience with a little dog.

These are all argument schemes, ways of arguing.

If Winston is engaged in rational-critical argumentation (or even good faith argumentation—a lower bar, and a different post), then he is committed to viewing those ways of arguing being valid, regardless of what position they support. So, if Emma can provide a single example, find one quote from the Book of Dog, point out Hitler’s love of big dogs, cite one study, describe one personal experience, if Winston is engaged in rational-critical argumentation, he has to abandon his claim or find new evidence.

If Winston won’t abandon the claim or find new evidence, then his argument is grounded in ways of arguing he thinks invalid. Winston is admitting that he is using “argument” to defend a position he will neither abandon nor open to scrutiny.

In my experience, the sort of person who thinks a single example proves them right, but dozens of counter-examples are irrelevant isn’t open to persuasion at all. They’re also total suckers for cons because they tend to reason from in-group loyalty, and so anyone who appears to them to be in-group can sell them a used car with neither engine nor wheels.

8. Validity rule
“A party may only use arguments in its argumentation that are logically valid or capable of being made logically valid by making explicit one or more unexpressed premises.”

For me, this is compressed in the previous rule, since I’ve never run across anyone who violates this rule who didn’t also violate #7. But, basically, if you’re engaged in rational-critical argumentation, you worry about the validity of the arguments you’re making, not just whether you’ve found talking points that make you feel good about the stance you already had.

9. Closure rule
“A failed defense of a standpoint must result in the party that put forward the standpoint retracting it and a conclusive defense of the standpoint must result in the other party retracting its doubt about the standpoint.”

Eh, kind of.

A lot of arguments on social media end up with someone doing their impression of the knight that clearly lost. People need to enter a disagreement with some clear sense as to what it would mean to be proven wrong. If Emma and Winston engage in rational-critical argumentation, and Emma can’t defend her position, she really should say, “Yeah, I can’t defend this.”

And that should be an important moment of self-reflection. But she shouldn’t abandon an important belief just because she “lost” one argument. She should, however, look into why she “lost” it. Perhaps she was relying entirely on arguments her in-group media had told her; perhaps the argument moved fast, and she didn’t notice the skeezy moves of Winston; perhaps she needs to develop a more nuanced argument.

Perhaps she needs to get out of her informational enclave, and try to find and read the smartest opposition arguments.

Yeah, actually, we all need to do that.

10. Usage rule
“A party must not use formulations that are insufficiently clear or confusingly ambiguous and a party must interpret the other party’s formulations as carefully and accurately as possible.”

It’s always puzzled me that Van Eemeren and Grootendorst make this the tenth rule (Habermas makes it the first).

It seems to me that the beginninning of any disagrement is that people mean what they says.

The less charitable is that this rule is silly. I’ve spent years arguing with people, and I’ve rarely run across an individual who is deliberately ambiguous or who chooses to be unclear. People say things that seem clear to us at the time. If someone posts something, and later tries to say they meant something else, we’re litigating rule #6.

There are lots of people who are deliberately ambiguous (“what is is,” “quality,” “natural”), but that doesn’t play well on the internet. There are people who r

But, if you do find yourself arguing with someone who refuses to clarify their position, they’re a jerk. They aren’t just refusing to engage in rational-critical argumentation; they’re also uninteresting.









[1] I’m sorry to say that this is not one of my ridiculous hypotheticals.
[2] It’s all about paired terms, which is another post I need to write, although Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecha already explained it very well.

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