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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Mehdi Hasan
Read between
March 1 - March 5, 2024
“I have often before now been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire, and never more so than by your present change of mind in the matter of Mytilene.”
“haste and passion” were the two biggest obstacles to “good counsel.”
I prefer not to avoid arguments. I seek them out. Rush toward them. Relish and savor them.
“Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory. He who enjoys it wields a power more durable than that of a great king.”
“It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.”
He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.
This is how you make an argument in front of a skeptical audience. You have to be able to adapt, you have to be agile, and to do that, you have to know your audience and cater to it.
Remember: anytime an audience is present, you cannot, cannot, afford to ignore them or take them for granted.
The key benefit of knowing your audience is that it grants you the ability to modify the language you use to make your case.
And these strategies speak to the hardest part of public speaking: adapting. Whenever you take the spotlight—proverbially or literally—you need to be flexible. Be willing to customize your presentation—even the shape of your arguments—to whoever it is you want to win over.
So remember: cite facts, figures, and quotes that not only bolster your own argument but also appeal to the specific audience in front of you.
“Don’t take my word for it,” I said (always a useful phrase in front of a skeptical audience). “Just two weeks ago, in the Daily Telegraph newspaper, the leading right-wing, conservative British journalist and columnist, Fraser Nelson, editor of the right-wing Spectator magazine, published a piece headlined ‘The British Muslim Is Truly One among Us—and Proud to Be So.’ Nelson wrote, and I quote: ‘The integration of Muslims can now be seen as one of the great success stories of modern Britain.’” Their ears pricked up when they heard the word conservative
Pay close attention to your first sentence if you want anyone else to pay attention to what you have to say. Surprise your audience with a striking one-liner, an irresistible question, or a visceral story.
Remember, the goal is to get your audience on your side, especially in a debate. The point is to change not your opponent’s mind but the minds of those watching and listening in the audience.
As speech coach Fia Fasbinder has pointed out, eye contact “makes the audience feel heard and involves them in your presentation.” It is, Fasbinder says, “the nonverbal equivalent of saying somebody’s name aloud.”
Sure, facts might not care about any of those feelings, but consider this: our feelings rarely care about the facts.
He called these his three proofs or “modes” of persuasion: ethos, pathos, and logos.
Aristotle says that in pathos-based arguments, “persuasion may come through the hearers, when the speech stirs their emotions. Our judgements when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile.”
In fact, this is where I differ from the great Aristotle. He tended to give equal treatment to all three of his modes of persuasion. But the reality is that pathos beats logos almost every time.
“Humans are not either thinking machines or feeling machines,” says Damasio, “but rather feeling machines that think.”
A story about a single child, with a name and a face, in need of help, has a much bigger and more direct impact on our level of empathy than a story about millions of nameless and faceless people in need. That’s pathos over logos in a nutshell.
The Holy Quran says: “Bring your proof, if you are truthful.” The Holy Bible says: “But test everything; hold fast what is good.”
Receipts don’t just end interviews; they can end careers.
What do I mean by this? Be on the lookout for moments in an argument where you can undermine your opponent’s claims by citing as your receipt something they themselves said earlier. Listen for contradictions in their argument, and highlight any inconsistencies on their part. Doing so in real time can put them on the defensive.
Delayed gratification is often the key to deploying receipts. You might want to show all your evidence early on, but it’s almost always better to wait for the right time, for that moment where it will have the biggest impact and undercut your opponent’s argument.
I don’t usually muddy these waters in freshman composition, but the fact is that ad hominem arguments are very often the best and most logical responses to another person’s claims. This is true because most arguers place their own character, expertise, or credibility at issue when they make a claim. If somebody supports an argument with a pro hominem argument (which we normally call an “appeal to authority”) then the ad hominem argument becomes both a necessary and a proper response.
The abusive ad hominem is all about the reputation of your opponent. It’s all about their ethos. If an opponent is not a good or honest person, if they’ve been unreliable or fallacious in the past, that should affect how an audience considers their present argument. So, say that!
The critics, though, are mistaken here—or at least being absolutist. Because the point of the circumstantial ad hominem is not to dismiss an argument out of hand but to make sure we apply extra scrutiny to the person making the argument. The point, writes philosopher David Hitchcock, is to be aware of and on guard for possible bias. To avoid being naive or getting duped.
Put away your logic textbook. We have to treat the argumentum ad hominem, as the philosopher Alan Brinton has argued, “as primarily a rhetorical phenomenon rather than as primarily a logical one.” Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, and we should view the utility of ad hominem arguments through that lens,
The best plan, in my view, is to challenge your opponent’s three Cs—their character, their credentials, and their claims. If all three crumble, they’re going down.
It may be one of the best-kept secrets when it comes to rhetoric: winning a debate or argument isn’t just about speaking well, it’s about listening well, too.
Listening requires absorbing, processing, and comprehending what you’ve just heard. You’re consciously and actively engaged in the process.
Here is Dwight Eisenhower in his “Chance for Peace” speech in 1953. Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
Introduction Body Conclusion In the Body, make sure you present three main arguments. In the Conclusion, make sure you summarize and repeat those three main arguments. Now, you might already be aware that having a structure for your argument is vital. (And if you didn’t, now you do!) The Rule of Three, though, offers the perfect structure.
Or there’s my own personal favorite: making a Political, an Economic, and a Moral argument for or against something. In my experience, that always seems to hit the spot.
Three arguments. Three items. Three points. As Dlugan puts it, “Limit yourself to your best three points.
So how do we apply these principles to argument and debate? We often think that the key to winning an argument is to not back down. To double down, even, when confronted with an awkward rebuttal or powerful counterpoint. Nothing could be further from the truth.
This will throw them off—flip them on their back, metaphorically speaking. You’ll diffuse their passion and energy with your curveball concession. To an audience, you then come across as more reasonable and rational, which is how you want to present yourself prior to making your own bespoke counterarguments (and counterattacks!).
There is, of course, a technical Greek term for this rhetorical technique: synchoresis. The Collins English Dictionary defines it as “the act or an instance of conceding an argument in order to make a stronger one.”
Humans don’t make decisions, or conclusions, based on facts alone. We interpret those facts, and doing so requires context and background; our conclusions depend on how we “frame” a particular situation. Frames, say experts, are the “filters” our brains use to try and process and interpret information in any given setting. Do we frame abortion as an attack on the right to life for the unborn child, or as a woman’s right to choose what she does with her own body? We could start off in either direction using the same set of facts. It all depends on the frame we choose to rely on,
you can also question the premise behind a motion. If it says, “The occupation is undermining liberal democracy in Israel,” you could add: “Well, who said Israel was a liberal democracy in the first place?” If a motion says, “Should the West intervene in Syria?” you could argue: “Well, why do we assume the West isn’t already intervening in Syria?”
“Resisting a more powerful opponent will result in your defeat, whilst adjusting to and evading your opponent’s attack will cause him to lose his balance, his power will be reduced, and you will defeat him.”
Perhaps unbeknownst to himself, Trump was engaging in what has become known in debating circles as the Gish Gallop. This is a speaking method that involves, to quote the Urban Dictionary, “spewing so much bullshit in such a short span that your opponent can’t address let alone counter all of it.”
Steve Bannon, in an interview with journalist Michael Lewis in 2018, summed up the rationale behind the then president’s approach. “The Democrats don’t matter,” Bannon told Lewis. “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”
This is the key point that you need to take away from this chapter: the “nonsense” is a feature, not a bug, of the Gish Gallop.
It’s the same today with the climate change deniers or the antivaxxers, especially in online forums—no matter the number of fact checks and corrections, they continue to relentlessly push extraordinary amounts of misinformation and disinformation into the public consciousness.
Referring to Steve Bannon’s quote about “flooding the zone with shit,” the writer and author Jonathan Rauch once remarked: “This is not about persuasion: This is about disorientation.”
“Don’t expect to counter Russia’s fire hose of falsehood with the squirt gun of truth. Instead, put raincoats on those at whom the fire hose is aimed.” If your job in an argument with a Gish Galloper is to “put raincoats” on your audience, that begins by making your audience aware of what they’re being subjected to. Point out the speed at which your opponent is speaking, and the laundry list of lies that they’ve just recited aloud in record time. You can even point out that your opponent is using a propagandistic move straight out of the Kremlin playbook. Or point out that your opponent is
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(The fact-checkers at the Washington Post would later calculate that the forty-fifth president of the United States made 30,573 false claims during his four years in office—almost certainly a conservative underestimate.)
Did you catch the three-step process in that exchange? I picked my battle (steel mills!); I didn’t budge (“I know it’s difficult for you; I know you want to try and defend him”); and I called out the Gallop (“You want to go on because you know it’s a lie”).
