People who say you shouldn’t post about politics on FB just don’t want to see they might be wrong
[Image is from here.]
There are lots of memes floating around that make fun of anyone posting about politics on FB. The argument is that it’s a waste of time because there is no way your political meme will change someone’s mind. This argument seems to make sense because it relies on folk rhetorical theory (that is, how most people think persuasion works). Folk rhetorical theory is that persuasion happens when you read (or listen to) something that is different from what you believe, and after reading (or listening to) that text you abandon your belief in favor of this one. If you didn’t change your mind in that moment, then there was no persuasion.
The folk (or lay) model of persuasion is that you change your belief because you are presented with a text that has a new set of beliefs. If you don’t change your beliefs to that new set, then that text was not persuasive.
And, of course, it rarely happens that a person changes their mind because of being given new data. Thus, by the folk model of persuasion, persuasion never actually happens.
A lot of scholars and teachers of rhetoric have that definition of persuasion, and can cite empirical scholarship showing that people are rarely persuaded to change their minds on important issues by being given new claims or reading one piece [and, no, I’m not linking to them because I am not giving them the clicks]. Those people then conclude that persuasion can’t happen, or that persuasion is never based on facts (if the subjects in the experiment are given “facts” and don’t change their minds). Those sorts of claims perfectly confirm Wayne Booth’s argument in Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent—that dominant notions of belief fall into two categories. People believe that their beliefs are completely rational and grounded in facts OR they believe that beliefs are arbitrary and irrational; people generally toggle between the two.
That leaping from one claim about belief to a contradictory one perfectly summarizes my experiences arguing with assholes—they initially claim that their beliefs are objective and rational claims about the universe; when that claim becomes untenable, (and they have to admit that their assertions are false) they resort to the claim that everyone is prejudiced and irrational.
That isn’t actually how beliefs work–that is the rational/irrational split, a way of thinking about belief that comes from the 19th century (with a few earlier reps, like Descartes). Our “beliefs” are actually a complicated multi-modal tapestry of who we think we are, what benefits us in the moment, what helps us feel better about that thing we did or would like to do, performances of in-group loyalty, aspirational claims about what we would like to believe (that might include claims of fairness and rationality), and our passionate and pathetic need to be confirmed in our sense that we are good people with good judgment.
The folk model of persuasion takes nothing of that into consideration. It says that we are an agent of our own knowledge, who, thoroughly objectively, considers the evidence presented to us. It says that such an agent, presented with good evidence, would change position.
Or, since so few people will change position when presented with new evidence, it’s all irrational and arbitrary commitment to the group.
The folk model of persuasion says that either people change their minds on the basis of new data or it’s all arbitrary emotional commitment.
Since there is so much data that the first claim is false, many people claim that the second must be true–that beliefs are completely irrational.
The folk model of persuasion is vexed—while it’s true that people rarely change their minds (and probably never on important issues) by seeing one meme or post, people do change their minds. A lot. (A certain kind of person—the kind to whom their sense of self as someone who always “sees through the bullshit” will rarely admit to having changed their mind, but they do.)
In addition, the arguments that no one changes their mind on the basis of data often provide data from experiments to prove their point. This is called the pragmatic fallacy. They’re providing data in order to persuade people that no one changes their mind on the basis of data.
Anti-empiricists who want to argue about how anything resembling reason is wrong can’t put forward a reasonable argument as to why they’re right (insofar as their arguments rely on empirical research being reliable), and so that whole realm of in-group loyalty performance is uninteresting.
What matters about FB memes and posts, though, isn’t whether a single one changes anyone’s mind (it probably doesn’t). What matters is what those posts mean for propaganda enclaves.
We are in a culture of demagoguery, in which large numbers of people only consume media that confirms their perception that They are awful and We are great. In a polarized media, as Matt Levendusky elegantly shows, people are getting actually different information, most of it negative about the out-group. If you’re in a lefty enclave, you hear about every assistant dog-catcher who did something wrong, if s/he’s GOP. If you’re in a GOP enclave, you hear about every assistant dog-catcher who did something wrong, if s/he’s Dem. So, regardless of the in-group informational enclave in which you live, you sincerely believe that the other party is filled with skeezy corrupt people because your informational imagination is filled with instances of Them being bad, and you never hear about Us being bad.
Posting political memes and links simultaneously enforces and undermines propaganda bubbles. Your perception of your group as entirely good would be vexed by seeing memes and posts about instances of your in-group behaving badly, even if you won’t admit at the moment you see them that they do trouble your desire believe the in-group pure. Instead of admitting that they complicate things, you’re likely to post about how Facebook memes and political posts are useless–they bother you.
Propaganda is a fragile soap bubble that pops when exposed to disconfirming information. Propaganda works by repetition, by its audience working to remain within that bubble. Propaganda says, “Everyone believes this.” So, if someone relying on propaganda is faced with a person who doesn’t believe “this,” they have cognitive dissonance. The easiest way to resolve this dissonance is by dismissing the evidence on the grounds that its source is “biased” (a hilariously bad argument when it’s made by people who rely entirely on partisan media). The more that people who normally live within a partisan bubble are exposed to people they know who post plausible refutations about their in-group beliefs, the more that democracy wins.
Democracy is about people of different beliefs coming together to argue about which policy is best for the nation as a whole.
Trump is a not-very-bright authoritarian who wants a single-party state that would do what he wants, and he is supported by people who don’t want a democracy. Some of them want a timocracy (in which rich people would determine the policies), some want a theocracy (in which their very specific, and Scripturally problematic reading of the Bible would be dominant), some imagine a racist and fascist state that would privilege people like them.
At this point, Trump has two sources of power: Machiavellian support on the part of patriarchal conservative Christians, and charismatic leadership.
The people who vote on the basis of opposition to legal abortion are virtue signalling (or performance of in-group loyalty). They don’t actually want to reduce abortion; they just want to look really moral on the basis of wanting abortion criminalized.
If people were genuinely interested in reducing abortion , they would support cheap and easy access to birth control. If opposition to birth control is really about controlling women’s sexuality, they wouldn’t support cheap and easy access to birth control. Guess which they do. Politicians who are clearly using birth control in their lives don’t want others to have access to it. This is a profoundly irrational commitment and purely in-group loyalty performance.
People trying to undermine the GOP’s use of abortion as a wedge issue shouldn’t be posting memes about women’s right to their own bodies (because it won’t work–it is not a premise they have), but data about access to birth control and the consequent reduction of abortion. The GOP stance on abortion is logically incoherent, even to the level of individuals (political figures who are clearly using birth control to keep from having to think about an abortion are supporting birth control restrictions, thereby ensuring more abortions). So posting memes and links about how reducing abortion means increasing access to birth control is a whack to the vine of irrational argument.
Trump gets support from conservative “Christians” because they have always supported the most racist and patriarchal candidate there is. And that’s who he is. Posting memes about how Christ was neither racist nor patriarchal is another whack to their foundation. It will make them mad, and that’s how you know it’s working.
Trump’s second source of consistent support is pure charismatic leadership. He acknowledged this when he said he could shoot someone and get away with it. Charismatic leadership relies on the belief that the leader has supernaturally good judgment in all realms. But it also panders to the belief that people can see who someone really is. It is a relationship–people think that this figure purely identifies with them, and so this political figure will take care of them. I choose to put my faith in Chester Burnette because he seems to me exactly like me–he gets me. Once I’ve put my faith in him, then my sense of my self as a person with good judgment is entangled in his performance.
What I can’t answer is the question: under what conditions would I admit that I was wrong to support Chester’s policy regarding X?
And, more importantly, under what conditions would I admit that I was wrong to support Chester?
People whose political positions are completely irrational can’t answer either question, and the charismatic leadership relationship is completely irrational.
His base believes that they are victims (of all sorts of things), and that Trump is the one to understand their plight. People who are in a charismatic leadership relationship with Trump believe he’s a great negotiator, he cares about regular people, he’ll clean the swamp, he’s making people respect the US.
For them, all politics is us v. them, and Trump is getting “us” to win. And he’s getting “us” to win to the extent that he’s getting “them” mad. It’s a zero-sum. Anything that hurts “them” (“libruls”) or makes them unhappy feels like a win if you think in zero-sum terms. That zero-sum thinking means you can be talked into shooting yourself in the face just in order to gross out a librul. It political kamikaze action.
This is the worst way to think about politics. The US is us. Good political deliberation is never zero-sum–getting them to lose doesn’t mean you win. But, that is Trump’s whole message, and his (false) narrative about himself–that every situation is him winning and others losing. And if others lose, his in-group wins. In a healthy democracy, political issues aren’t about a zero-sum among groups, but political deliberation about our options.
So, how do we try to reframe the argument away from a zero-sum between “conservatives” and “liberals” to democratic deliberation? Unhappily, one of the ways is undermining the irrational charismatic leadership relationship that a lot of people have for Trump.
Imagine that you have a FB audience that includes people who love, hate, and are ambivalent about Trump. Posting a meme that shows Trump with a Hitler mustache will make your Trump-hating in-group happy, and persuade the others that criticism of Trump is just irrational hate (and make them happy). Posting a meme that says that Trump is not a self-made man, however, will make your in-group happy, and be a mild chip into the foundation of Trump’s popularity. They’ll rail and rant, and talk about Clinton’s emails but it’s still a chip. Posting an article with the headline about Trump not being a self-made man will do even more (especially if it’s from a conservative site). Again, they’ll rail and rant and talk about Clinton’s emails and Benghazeeeeee (claims easily refuted by pointed out that Trump has already done worse, at which point they’ll say ABORTION).
People change their minds (note the number of people who now claim they didn’t support the Iraq invasion, or the bizarre claim that conservative Christians are trying to make about their role in pro-slavery and pro-segregation rhetoric), but persuasion on big issues happens over a long period of time, and by being exposed to information that contradicts what their propaganda tells them.
In other words, yes, post political memes and links on FB. But don’t post ones that are assertions about identity–post ones that either refute opposition claims (Trump is a good businessman, Trump cares about the little guy) or raise issues of rabid factionalism (would you defend this action if a Dem did it).
I think there are reasons to advocate conservativism, libertarianism, and all sorts of other views with which I disagree. I think a group reasons best when we are diverse and we reason together. That is democratic deliberation, and anyone who isn’t in favor of diverse groups contributing to the argument is not in favor of democracy.
The GOP has abandoned democratic deliberation in favor of a vision of a single-party state. Their argument is that Trump should make all decisions.
Posting articles and memes about how bad Trump’s judgment is undermines that power.
Do it.
People post that sharing political memes and posts are useless because those memes bother them. They should be bothered.
Do it.
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