Patricia Roberts-Miller

More on niceness

Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and advocate of race-based mass imprisonment

In a previous post, I said this: “For some, there are rules about rhetorical practices. There is, for instance, the “niceness” crowd. These are people who believe that policy discourse specifically, and public discourse generally, should avoid vehemence of any sort, even including vehement criticism. It’s very much about tone—there should be no “name-calling,” “personal attacks” (they generally have a very broad and misguided understanding of ad hominem), “offensive” language. They sincerely believe that we can and should get through every conflict without hurting someone’s feelings, or making them feel bad. Their assessment of the “civility” of the discourse is largely affective—how they feel in response to something that is said.”

And I was asked about it, especially the last part, so I’ll try to explain it better.

We have a tendency to assess the tone of a piece by our own affective response. So, if we feel attacked by something we read, heard, or saw, we characterize the “tone” as aggressive. If we feel threatened, then the “tone” was threatening. We are also likely to believe that the intention of the piece was to threaten or attack.

There are actually a lot of leaps in that path—it assumes not only that our reaction is a consequence of the text, but that our interpretation of the text is a reliable measure of intention. Every leap is problematic.

As Aristotle pointed out, we have beliefs about a speaker, and those beliefs influence how we react to what the speaker says. If an in-group rhetor makes a vehement speech with name-calling and threats toward an out-group, we don’t feel threatened. So, by the process above, we will not characterize the speech as threatening, even if it explicitly threatens an out-group. We’ll perceive the threats as not really serious, perhaps figurative or simply hyperbolic. In other words, we’ll say that the speaker didn’t really intend to threaten.

If, however, it’s an out-group rhetor, and the threats are about our in-group, we will feel threatened, and we will perceive the threats as real and sincerely made.

In short, judging the tone of a piece by our affective response guarantees that we will hold ourselves and in-group rhetors to lower standards than we hold out-group rhetors. (Probably while claiming the moral highground.)

Affective response is also strongly influenced by assumptions about what is appropriate for a group. Here’s what I mean by that. I’ve drifted around the digitally-connected world for a long time, and I’m argumentative. In some situations my gender has been clear, in others ambiguous, and in some I deliberately had a male name. I have often been tone policed (that is, told I was being too aggressive) but only when the interlocutor knew I’m a woman. I have never been tone policed when the interlocutor thought I was male. Not a single time.

When tone policed, I took to asking the officer, “When was the last time you tone policed a male?” I never got an answer.

Race also plays into this. Obama was (and still is) tone policed far more than white politicians, even by self-identified “liberals.” Pundits will complain about “immigrants” criticizing America (by “immigrants” they mean native-born children or grand-children of immigrants), saying those figures have no “right” to do so, but only if they disagree with the criticism. They didn’t see Trump’s vehement criticism of America as unpatriotic, if he was in-group for them, even though he is a grandchild of an immigrant, and was extremely critical of America.

Anti-slavery petitions were often written, signed, and submitted by women, and many of them were as deferential as it was possible to be while still being critical of an institution, but slavers complained about their tone, and about feeling attacked by them. Much of that had to do with an inability to take criticism (slavers were very thin-skinned) but also by a sense of outrage at a disruption of hierarchy (women criticizing men). Earl Warren’s tone in the internment hearings was not vehement or extreme (there was much hedging and qualifying) but the policy he was advocating was hateful and extreme–regardless of his feelings, or the feelings of his interlocutors.

There are a few other ways that notions of “niceness” can do real damage. For instance, it’s pretty common to have a family gathering in which it is acceptable for someone to say something racist, sexist, highly political, deliberately hurtful, or offensive but not acceptable for anyone to disagree with it, let alone point out that it’s racist, sexist, and so on. The person who names the harm is the one who is blamed for “starting a fight.” As with the anti-slavery petitions, the rules of niceness only go one way.

That inconsistent application of rules of discourse enables bullying; it is harmful and hurtful.

I’m not saying that we should argue with everyone at every opportunity—even I don’t do that—, but that standards of niceness have to be applied equally, or they aren’t actually very nice at all. This is complicated right now because the unofficial slogan of the GOP is “fuck your feelings.” And people who vote GOP are voting for a party headed by someone who is deliberately hurtful, insulting, and offensive. So, I do think it’s a little vexed to say that people to be careful about the feelings of GOP supporters.

In short, notions of decorum, civility, and niceness are often grounded in affective reaction, and that affective reaction is informed by in-group favoritism, unspoken norms about deference, and just generally ways of holding different people to different standards. It’s also sometimes informed by a squick about conflict. There are strategic reasons that one might choose the route of niceness (that is, evading conflict), even in a situation in which the rules are inconsistently applied, but it’s inaccurate and often harmful to pretend that rules of niceness are universal or universally ethical.

Stop Mapping Politics

terrible map — https://www.reddit.com/r/terriblemaps/comments/1xg9trj/my_opinion_ofassociation_with_european_countries/

Imagine that there is a tendency to talk about animals in terms of a binary: those that live on land, and those that live in water. There are obviously problems with that—what about amphibians? The response might be that we can make the model more accurate by making it a continuum rather than a binary. So, we have tortoises at one end and whales at the other and amphibians would be in the middle. But, what about birds? What about animals that live on things that float in the water? We can keep trying to find a place for every animal on the continuum, or we might decide to introduce another axis. But the most important question is not: where does each animal go on this map, but what the hell are we trying to do with this taxonomy? What is the purpose of the map?

If we’re interested in how various animals might be affected by global warming, then the land/sea axis is not useful, but others might be, such as degrees of adaptability in species, or a map that shows what species are most likely to lose water sources. If we’re trying to trace lines of evolution, then we’d have a very different map. There isn’t one taxonomy of animals that is useful for every purpose.

I have frequently argued that we shouldn’t talk about our complicated world of policy options in terms of a binary or continuum of identity. And I’m often asked: well, how should we map out politics? That is, how should we come up with a taxonomy of political affinities?

And my answer is: we shouldn’t.

The goal of a two-dimensional model of political affinities is to create a simple and simplistic way of categorizing people. Why are we trying to do that? What good does that way of thinking about politics do?

I’ll start with what harm it does. By making policy commitments a question of identity we sabotage policy deliberation. And that’s often the goal.

Instead of the difficult and sometimes tedious work of thinking and talking about policies in terms of need, feasibility, solvency, costs, options, compromise, and so on, instead of policy disagreements being about the policies, we can simply dismiss people who disagree with us on the grounds that they’re a bad kind of person. It makes marketing of candidates and policies easier, since a policy or candidate can get sold to the public on the grounds that a sort of person (liberal, conservative, Christian, libertarian, and so on) must necessarily buy that policy/candidate.

I’m not saying we can’t map anything about policy preferences, voting patterns, rhetorical practices, or all sorts of other very interesting and potentially useful specific characteristics, any more than I’m saying we can’t create useful taxonomies of animals. I’m taking issue with the tendency to impose one map of voters or American as though it applies in all situations and includes all the relevant variables–that policy, ideology, and identity are necessarily connected. I’m not proposing a different taxonomy or map. I’m not proposing one with multiple axes. I’m proposing that we argue policies.

The binary or single-axis model of politics also makes media coverage much easier. It probably arose from the odd models of “objectivity” in much American political coverage, models that framed assessment of policies as “biased” and the horse race model as “objective.” For instance, to report that Chester Burnette said that Hubert Sumlin collaborated with squirrels is “objective,” but to point out that Burnette accuses every single opponent of being a squirrel conspirator is “biased.” For reasons that remain puzzling to me, speculating on Burnette’s motives for the accusation is “objective” (the horse race frame).

A reporter doesn’t have to study squirrels or investigate the facts about a conspiracy in order to report that Burnette accused Sumlin, or to speculate what political motives were behind that accusation. And describing a political conflict as pro- v. anti-squirrel is much more attention-getting than doing the close analysis that would be actually helpful for voters.

In addition, the continuum model is useful for marketing because it evades deliberation in favor of a simplistic model of decision-making. If one sees the purpose of the public sphere as selling a policy or candidate, then presenting the situation as absolutely clear, very simple, and a binary of good/bad is the most attractive for political figures.

The whole situation is far more complicated than a single axis can capture because there are at least four areas that matter, and people all over the map of each area. I’ll mention just four: rhetorical preferences, models of governance, policy orientations, models of citizenship,.

Rhetoric. The models of governance and policies have a strong connection to how we think about rhetoric. I’ve talked about policy deliberation, but one model of policy rhetoric is that it is never deliberative (the “power determines policy” model)—people are always looking out for their own interests—so public discourse is, at best, negotiation and bargaining. The governing elite settle on a policy through dominance and aggression and then take it to the public, where the policy is sold to the public, again with no holds barred.

Even models of governance that assume elites who deliberate reasonably often assume that it is purely marketing once it is taken to the public. The public only has the option for a thumbs-up or down, but no deliberation because they (we) aren’t capable of deliberating.

For some, there are rules about rhetorical practices. There is, for instance, the “niceness” crowd. These are people who believe that policy discourse specifically, and public discourse generally, should avoid vehemence of any sort, even including vehement criticism. It’s very much about tone—there should be no “name-calling,” “personal attacks” (they generally have a very broad and misguided understanding of ad hominem), “offensive” language. They sincerely believe that we can and should get through every conflict without hurting someone’s feelings, or making them feel bad. Their assessment of the “civility” of the discourse is largely affective—how they feel in response to something that is said.

I have to point out that “niceness” is often confused with “reasonable” or “rational,” although it is not necessarily either, and reasonable/rational discourse is not necessarily very nice. (This confusion is the consequence of the rational/irrational split.) They often argue that this method of discourse is much more effective. It sometimes is. It sometimes isn’t. It tends to be more effective in cases of minor disagreements or fairly straightforward misunderstandings, and it can be very effective for lowering the temperature. It’s a very good strategy in interpersonal conflicts.

In public policy, however, it is often unintentionally conservative, although niceness is often advocated by people who consider themselves liberal or progressive. And I think that self-identification is sincere. But, as both Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King observed, power doesn’t give up power without a fight. Issues of “tone” are often determined by status—as even John Stuart Mill noted, people lower in status get held to higher standards of civility and deference. Tone policing rolls downhill.

Advocates of “niceness” often end up blaming victims for not having been nice enough, with the argument that had people behaved with “civility” then everything would have worked out fine. Many critics of abolition took issue with their tone, even though deliberately nice treatises critical of slavery were condemned just as vehemently as the vehement ones. So, there were vehement condemnations of abolitionists’ vehemence, and for a long time the historical narrative was that proslavery rhetoric and policies became more extreme because abolitionists provoked them. Tone policing rolls downhill.

This is getting long enough, so I’ll simply mention a few other ways of thinking about public rhetoric. Even people who agree it should be deliberative (rather than marketing, for instance) disagree about the rules of deliberation. Should personal experience be included, should it be entirely grounded in technocratic expertise, should advertising campaigns about elections or public policies have monetary limits, should some forms of media be held to standards of fairness?

Governance. This one is the old argument—should a government be oriented toward authoritarianism, pluralism, egalitarianism, and, if so, by what criteria (religious, technocratic, military, ethnic, economic, ancestral, etc.)? If power is to be shared, on what grounds and through what methods (e.g., direct v. representative, direct election of representatives, frequent v. infrequent elections, pure democracy, mixed government, shared on some kinds of issues but not others, shared among institutions)? At the center of disagreements about governance is the question of pluralism: is there a position from which the Truth is obvious (in which case people in that position should have most if not all of the power), or do we get to better policies in multiple perspectives are included?

Policies. Obviously, there’s considerable overlap with governance, but the distinction is that governance is a kind of meta-policies (how policies will be determined, debated, and enforced, not what the policies are). Policy disagreements are generally about the distribution of goods—security, healthcare, rights, education, infrastructure, and so on. As with governance, there is often an ideological conflict between fairness and privilege. Should policies privilege the already privileged, strive to increase egalitarianism, apply equally regardless of privilege? There are also questions about whether policies should be oriented toward the long-term consequences, or we should let the future look after itself. Similarly, should people try to think about policies in terms of the potential impacts on everyone, or is it all just a free-for-all battle with no hold barred? Power determines policy.

Citizenship. Many people assume that citizenship should be restricted to people like themselves (anti-pluralist), whereas others argue for the benefits of diversity. There are overlaps with models of governance and rhetoric, in that some people believe that only certain kinds of people (landowners, wealthy people, men, people of a certain religion—it’s always their in-group) are capable of the kind of deliberation necessary for policy determination. Many people assume that diversity creates conflict, and therefore citizens must be uniform. However, since the conflicts that arise from diversity are almost always on the part of people who are trying to homogenize or purify the group, it isn’t diversity that creates conflict, but fear of diversity. In addition to different ideas about who can be a good citizen, there’s considerable disagreement as to what a good citizen does, and here we’re back at the questions above (think about long-term or short-term, look out for themselves, look out for everyone, be active in politics, be active only in areas of politics in which they’re expert, rely on their gut for decisions, carefully investigate policy questions).

These are all just a few of the variables in how people think about politics. And, just to be clear, my goal is not to propose a better or more accurate map of political identities. My point is that any single map is not helpful for having a world in which we can agree to disagree productively. We need to argue policies.

Notes from the 2026 Texas Tribune Festival

photo of speaker and interviewer at Tribfest

I thought I’d do a brief description of some of the panels I went to at the Texas Tribune Festival. The TribFest (as it’s called) is policy wonk heaven. It’s three days of panels and interviews on policy questions. While there are often some big names there, the really interesting panels are the very, very wonky ones—on affordability policies in Texas, the situation for Texas gas and oil, what it’s like to be Muslim in Texas, health insurance policy options, new treatments for veterans with PTSD.

So, here are some interesting things that came up in the panels I attended.

Being Muslim in Texas. Fear-mongering about sharia law is still a winner for the Texas GOP, although none of the fear-mongerers bother to define—it’s a capacious and yet empty signifier. And sometimes just petty and ridiculous. One speaker mentioned that Abbott is trying to prohibit the building of ablution stations in Texas airports. The Texas GOP mini-convention had some kind of controversy about whether Muslim delegates should even be seated. And there’s a proposal to ban halal foods.

Beyond the Battlefield. This was about new treatments for veterans’ debilitating depression, PTSD, substance abuse (with the hope of it expanding) . Texas has actually been very progressive on it, although there are obstacles, and, at this point, people have to go to Mexico for it. One of the speakers was someone who has a non-profit that tries to raise money to send veterans for the treatment.

Oil, Gas and What Comes Next. Prohibiting the exportation of diesel was an extraordinarily short-sighted, clueless, and just plain ignorant policy idea. (Which is why I assume it was quietly dropped.) All the panelists agreed on that. It wouldn’t reduce prices as a whole, even of just diesel, because of transportation routes. It might reduce diesel prices in the Gulf Coast area for a few weeks, but would cause a rise in the price of all forms of oil. Refineries can’t just produce one produce, so the moratorium would simply make them reduce the amount of oil they’re refining, with the consequence that diesel, jet fuel, and gasoline would all go up in price. In addition, the US would lose the European market to China.

The chaotic nature of the current administration makes long-term planning impossible. People are dubious about investing in pricey sources of oil because the Strait might open up at any minute, and producers would be sitting on an oversupply. And producers want to keep the supply low. In addition, the ICE raids, and the fear they’ve caused (including among citizens—this was a theme at the conference), are making it hard to find crews for construction (of any kind). There’s a lot of private equity in the Permian Basin, and they want a quick turnaround on any investments.

There are some interesting possibilities, such as using CO2 instead of water for fracking, which might help reduce global warming. This was one of many panels where there was a person completely drinking the Kool Aid of technodeterminism.

How to Tell Texas’ Story. All three panelists simply assumed that the point of public history (museums, archives, trade books—no one talked about TEA standards) is to inspire people. For me, a penny dropped when I realized that. If you see the goal of history as inspiring people, then the impulse is to whitewash it, or engage in tokenism, and that explains the hostility to Indigenous Peoples’ Day, or any honesty about slavery and Texas.

What Art Builds. This was just a completely feel-good panel. I loved it.

The Battle for South Texas. The consensus is that the Biden Administration didn’t pay any attention to the border, and there really were very serious problems that alienated South Texas voters. One speaker argued that they also resented being forced to vote for a candidate they didn’t have the opportunity to choose, and someone pointed out the popularity of Fox and talk radio in that area. Yet, now they are faced with the consequence of ICE raids in terms of people not being willing to leave the house, or call the police when a crime is committed, and so on. And this fear includes people who are following the laws regarding getting citizenship. One speaker said that people who aren’t worried about immigration are worried about water. The Texas GOP is promising to lower taxes, but has made it clear they intend to force a raise appraisal values. As one speaker said, “The GOP is good at marketing, but they suck at governing.” One speaker pointed out an important rhetorical problem. A lot of “left” populism is about the rich v. others, and that doesn’t land well because a lot of people want to be rich. Pro-GOP populism relies on an elite that is defined economically, but ideologically, so that populism lands better. That has me thinking a lot.

Expanding Housing Supply and Affordability in Texas. Everyone on the panel was in favor of increased building as a solution, on the assumption that more housing on the market reduces the price, thereby making housing more affordable. Adler said something along the lines of, “Everyone wants Austin to remain exactly the way it was the day they arrived.” Which, yeah. And rents in Austin have dropped 19%, but no one said anything about the possibility of overbuilding, or what percentage of this new housing is “affordable.”

Water and the Future of Corpus Christi. Yipes. This summer, Corpus Christi almost ran out of drinking water. Their reservoirs were at 7% capacity, and they were draining the aquifers, with the consequence that the water had high levels of heavy metals and so on. It had been known for years that this might happen, but people just kept kicking the can down the road. One speaker said that any City Council member who advocated instituting water restrictions much earlier was likely to lose their seat. Industry uses about 60% of the water, and the city lost seven major projects over this, and had their credit downgraded. Had the highest level of restriction been imposed, it would have affected seven counties, but there was a good rain in July. One speaker said that the Texas Water Plan (done many years ago) predicted that the major issue would be too much water. I will say that I heard several GOPpers openly talk about global warming.

The Next Disaster. At this panel, for instance. This was almost entirely about the July 4th 2025 disaster, with a brief mention that the area was again flooded in July of 2026. There were various explanations as to why notifications didn’t go out, people underestimated the seriousness of the situation, and I was a little frustrated that one person seemed to be saying there wasn’t much to be done. I was gobsmacked to learn that the position of County Emergency Coordinator has no requirements for training or certification; it’s appointed by a judge.

The Promise of the Constitution. This was bleak, not because the speakers were depressing, but because I’m not sure they were taking seriously enough what the administration is doing. One speaker did say that they think we need to stop talking about narcissism—the problem with this Administration is that it’s nihilist. Yep.

The Latino Vote. There was an article in the NYTimes that had pretty the same take as the people on this panel. One point that was made any time the question of Latino voters came up is that Latinos were taken for granted by the Dems for years, and so no real effort was made. But the GOP made the effort. It’s just very unclear.

Although there was more, my brain was full, and the panels I was thinking of attending were all going to be very depressing, so I went home at this point.

Friends in Nazi Places

Viktor Klemperer was Jewish, and married to a woman not categorized as Jewish by the Nazi laws. He kept a diary during the Nazi era, and wrote a book called The Language of the Third Reich. It’s an interesting book especially in light of Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem. Arendt’s argument is often misrepresented (it’s one of those books more referred to than read). One of the most interesting aspects of her observations is that Eichmann didn’t think about what he was doing—ever. She wasn’t defending him by making that observation, nor by pointing out that his level of antisemitism was pretty much the norm. She was pointing out that a common understanding of evil—a person who intends to do what they themselves believe to be evil, and who does so out of pathological hatred for others—isn’t useful for a world where evil actions might be the result of careerism, a desire to fit in, and, most important, thoughtlessness. That is, just not really being open to thinking about one’s actions from the perspective of others.

The distinction is between evil as an issue of intent and an issue of actions. She never defended Eichmann, nor argued that what he did was not evil. But, people committed to restricting evil to intention (not just intending to do something, but intending to do something one believes to be evil) get very, very angry at the idea that we might do evil without intending to do so. (My crank theory is that it has to do with notions about sin.)

[As an aside, I’ll mention that this is the same line of argument that many people have about racism, especially systemic, cultural, unconscious, or implicit racism. They see racism as a sin, and sin as something for which a person will be held accountable. And they believe that one should only be held accountable for deliberate decisions. So, they insist that there can’t be any such thing as racism coming from thoughtlessness.]

But back to Eichmann. Important to Arendt’s observation is that Eichmann’s use of language helped him not to think. Fifteen years later he was still using the euphemisms Nazis employed to obscure what they were doing, to enable people not to think about it. And that’s one of the points that Klemperer makes about Nazi language (it’s a great book, and I highly recommend it).

It wasn’t just the language of course, but also the propaganda that also reinforced the general message: have faith in Hitler, and dismiss any information that might be disloyal to him. Don’t even think about it. What this meant, as Klemperer says, is that people with whom he’d been friends for years were committed to not thinking about what Hitler’s policies meant to people like Klemperer. Klemperer describes trying to talk to a longtime friend who is so thrilled with the new Germany that she cannot think about what his policies really involve, with what is actually happening. When Klemperer brings up concerns, she says that Klemperer is overreacting:

You are allowing yourself to get upset at this moment, and allowing yourself to be distracted from what really matters by minor embarrassments and blemishes which can scarcely be avoided during periods of such radical change. In no time at all you will judge things quite differently. (98)

A few months later, she has completely converted to unshakeable faith in Hitler, and to not holding him accountable, or even constrained. And she has come to talk like a Nazi. (Ryan Skinnell has a great discussion of this interaction in his forthcoming book.) Something similar happens with a friend that Klemperer calls “T.” Klemperer realizes that T. has become a Hitler faithful when T. uses the term Strafexpedition, which Klemperer recognizes as a term from the genocidal war against the Herero and Nama (for more on this, see The Kaiser’s Holocaust).

These stories of Klemperer stick with me because it’s a powerful and troubling description of watching people choosing, moment by moment, word by word, and act by act, to stop thinking about what they’re doing from any perspective other than fanatical faith in a leader who cannot be constrained, held accountable, or held to the same standards as others. It’s like a horror movie when you want to scream, “Don’t go in the basement!”

Thoughtlessness, as Arendt insists over and over, has nothing to do with intelligence, and thinking isn’t the same as believing, justifying, defending, or explaining. Nor is it either empathy or sympathy. It is trying to look at one’s own thoughts from outside of them (Hartouni has a great description, especially 74-77). It is thinking about one’s thinking.

Arendt was a very smart and very well-read woman, and I fully believe that she was able to think about her thinking (as is shown by her often changing her stance on things), but it’s hard for most of us without some kind of direct contact with other points of view. That’s what Klemperer did. That’s what a lot of people can’t do. It’s what neither T. nor Paula could do.

And I’ve yet to meet a Trump supporters who can.

Like Paula, they rely on what their ingroup media tells them Other people think, desire, advocate, and do. And they refuse to look at any information that might complicated their faith. Like Paula, they dismiss incidents and actions as “minor” or “exaggerated” or “distractions.”

That’s what really worries me about them. And it’s why I often suggest sharing media with sources cited that can be checked if you have Trump supporters in your world. It may be seeds over a wall, but it also might be a chip in the wall itself.

Necessary Beliefs

Photos from and early 20th century book on health, showing a man and a woman you should not marry.

For fun, I like to read Golden Age mysteries, and so recently picked up The Wrong Murder Mystery (Charles Barry) which was published in 1933. The book begins with a public controversy caused by a judge advocating legalized euthanasia for the incurably ill “surrounded with a number of safeguards” such as “consent of the person concerned, given before a magistrate” and he goes on to say:

I can even imagine cases where I should legalise euthanasis for persons not actually suffering from disease. I am aware that the religious bodies on this country will probably not agree with this opinion and that they will in all probability take exception to it, but—ahem!—we are not governed in this country by the ecclesiastical authorities—yet. (12)

The first sentence of this last quote shows the judge to be the kind of person who would escalate from what amounts to assisted suicide to Nazi-style eugenics.

A character who is appalled by the judge’s comments explain to another why the judge believes what he does:

A good many very honourable and estimable people have been brought up not on Christian principles at all but on pagan, materialistic lines, and to them the idea of human suffering from illness or any other cause is more abhorrent than the idea of ending that suffering by legalized painless death. Mind you, even we—you and I—would put a bullet in the head of a horse with a broken back, and when you have been brought up to look on man as merely an animal whose brain has been developed a bit more than that of the horse, you can’t be said to be a moral or mental pervert if you show signs of wanting to apply the same medicine to human beings. (37-38)

In other words, the judge’s stance on euthanasia and eugenics is framed as the necessary consequence of his believing in Darwinism. It’s also worth noting that various characters in the book assume that there is a necessary connection between beliefs and group identity. For instance, “ecclesiastical authorities” are the ones preventing euthanasia. And, when one character abandons his support for euthanasia, it’s causally associated with his converting to Catholicism and coming to believe in an immortal soul.

I’ve written a fair amount about demagoguery as a strategy to prevent or shut down deliberation on an issue, and pointed out that it isn’t necessarily deliberate. People engaged in demagoguery often do so because they sincerely believe there is no need for deliberation—the correct course of action is obvious to good people. One of the factors that can contribute to lack of faith in the benefit of deliberation is the assumption that beliefs have necessary consequences, an assumption that invites us to believe that conflicts are between people who good premises and people who have bad ones—that is, all policy conflicts are really group identity conflicts. And, of course, why would one deliberate with people who have been raised to have bad premises?

My point is: beliefs have consequences, but they aren’t necessary consequences.

To explain that point, I have to explain a bit about euthanasia and eugenics. (If you’re already familiar with the history of eugenics and euthanasia in the US, you can skip this next paragraph—it’s just making the oft-made observation that being religious didn’t necessarily guarantee opposition to eugenics, and believing in Darwinian evolution didn’t necessarily guarantee support.)

By 1933, eugenics was mainstream in science education. It ranged from what we would consider genetics to ways of thinking about genetics that implied eliminationist policies. The latter form assumed that antisocial behaviors were the consequence of genetics, and was often associated with a sense that the cream of the genetic crop had been eradicated by the bloodbath of WWI (in Europe) or was being diluted and displaced by lower races/ethnicities (in the US). Therefore, the argument ran, people should be encouraged to marry people with good genes and discouraged from marrying people genetically destined to have inferior offspring (the so-called “positive eugenics”). “Negative eugenics” involved forced sterilization. Both negative and positive eugenics advocated the criminalization of “mixed race” marriages.

While the official stance of the Catholic church was in opposition to sterilization (or birth control more generally) and euthanasia, there was no formal objection to Nazi Germany’s policies of sterilization and extermination of various groups, and minimal protest to euthanasia. In the United States, forced sterilization and segregation were defended on both “scientific” and “religious” grounds. One of the most famous advocates of eugenics, Francis Galton, continued to practice religion, and some eugenicists insisted that their policies were compatible with Christianity (citing passages such as the one about thorns not being allowed to grow in desirable crops). And not all people who believed in evolution were supporters of eugenics, such as Franz Boas. Germany was a very religious country when the Nazis came into power. Being religious didn’t necessarily prevent one from supporting Nazis, or becoming someone who would engage in mass murder (see, for instance, Ordinary Men or Theologians under Hitler).

Were I Queen of the Universe, something emphasized in K-12 schooling would be understanding the distinction between “B was caused by A” and “A necessarily causes B” (or “B necessarily follows from A”). The first is a narrative about a specific or perhaps even common set of events, and the second is the declaration of a determined cause-effect relationship. The glass I was holding fell to the ground because of gravity, but that doesn’t mean that gravity will cause every glass I hold to fall to the ground—there are other factors. It gets even more tenuous when we introduce identity. I am a resident of Texas, and I often spill my coffee, but my being Texan doesn’t cause me to spill coffee, and my spilling coffee doesn’t cause me to live in Texas.

So, why do people so often assume necessary connections between beliefs and between beliefs and group identity?

I’d suggest that we like believing that our membership in a group is necessarily connected to good beliefs and good policies. Believing that the connection is necessary gives us a sense of security about ourselves, and about whether we might be capable of engaging in unethical actions or supporting unethical policies. If we believe that actions and policies necessarily follow from beliefs, and necessarily imply group identity, then we have the option of telling ourselves that, of course, we would never advocate bad policies because we are good. Our beliefs necessarily imply other and only good beliefs and good policies. That sense of certainty about the necessary relationship of group identity, beliefs, and policies means we don’t feel that we need to do the hard work of deliberating—of listening to arguments that we might be wrong, or they might be right, or that the world is more complicated than we think.

Does believing that our group is good necessarily mean that we will support unethical practices or beliefs? Not necessarily. We still have to deliberate.

What should individuals do?

a screenshot of fox headlines about the reflecting pool deterioration

[This is more or less a continuation of the previous post.]

The important variable in democracies shifting to authoritarianism is media.

When people can remain within an informational world that frames all policy issues as zero-sum battles between good and bad people, the foundation of democracy (pluralism) is actively is undermined. And, the response of “both sides are bad,” or any version of “left v. right,” makes the situation worse. We can’t undermine or escape authoritarianism by trying to argue within its frames.

Authoritarianism is a politics of identity, so the more that we accept the depoliticizing of policy questions by framing them as questions of loyalty, univocality, or identity to Us or Them, the more that authoritarianism thrives.

If you argue with Trump supporters about Trump, you’ll get nowhere. And, really, he isn’t the problem. If it hadn’t been Trump, it would have been someone else. (As I argued in a book I tried to publish in 2013. Not that I’m bitter.)

Trump supporters live in a world that has trained them to reject any evidence that he is corrupt, dishonest, incompetent, and mentally unwell as “biased.” This is important.

The way that people get persuaded to reconsider their support of Trump has to be direct and personal, when the leopard eats their face. That isn’t something we can count on happening, so I’m not sure it’s a great strategy (although it is useful to point out that it’s likely to happen).

Scholars sometimes pose the question: why did the slaver states secede? They were doing fine, actually, and Lincoln wasn’t really a threat. The answer is that their media had worked them up about secession. It was possible to be in an informational world that presented innumerable (and I do mean that) abolitionist conspiracies, plots on the part of African Americans (free and enslaved), and threats to the slave economy. Almost all were fabrications, wild exaggerations, nothing more than rumors, or misrepresentations of actual events. The AAS did not flood the South with anti-slavery pamphlets in 1835, but it was continually repeated that they did (and still is because it was so commonly repeated).

Weimar Germany was a world of informational enclaves, in which it was possible to believe that Jews had been proven to be…whatever. As I mentioned in the previous post, and as anyone who has regular contact with a Trump supporter knows, they are in an informational enclave.

So, here’s my crank theory.

Don’t argue with family members about Trump. Instead, try to point out the flaws of their information. Try to get them to understand that they’re being lied to.

I’m not entirely sure about the best strategy, but here are some ideas:

1) Ask them if there is any evidence or information that would persuade them to change their mind on X. X might be whether they should support Trump, if Fox is reliable, specific claims about Trump.

2) Ask them if their media holds Trump’s family to the same standards they held Biden’s.

3) Ask them if their media showed them [this] or reported on [this].

My intuition is that, when they say no to each of these questions, they’re likely to respond with whaddaboutism. I’m not sure that continuing the discussion is worth the time—they’ll just use it to persuade themselves that they’re right. The whole point of being MAGA is upsetting “libruls,” so if you aren’t upset, and just refuse to engage, and treat them as not worth engaging, they don’t get the rush of being an edgelord upsetting a lib.

So, asking things like, “Did you know Trump fell asleep during the NBA game?” “Do you think a family member profiting from what the President does is bad?” and so on. And then don’t engage an argument about whether it happened. If you have them in your social media world, then post information from sites that cite, and that you have double-checked. Sharing information they can easily show is false or misleading confirms their commitment to their media enclave.

Sharing that well-sourced and accurate information is a way of usefully disagreeing. Without arguing.

Leave them uncomfortable. Not about Trump, but about Fox, or wherever they get their information.

You’re putting a hole in the dam, and eventually they’ll run out of fingers.

Useful disagreement

people arguing — From the cover of Wayne Booth’s _Modern Dogma-

As y’all know, I intermittently pay attention to what pro-GOP sources are saying about events. And it’s really worrisome. I’m so far left that I’m not in favor of any flavor of authoritarianism; that is, an anti-deliberative approach to policy questions. An anti-deliberative approach is always a politics of the obvious: the correct answer is obvious to all good people, and anyone who disagrees with this very specific policy is obvious not a good person.

I’m not saying this because I’m about to advocate some incoherent and irrational both sides are bad (all versions of BSAB are incoherent and irrational), or the hobgoblin of relativism (all ideologies are equally valid—a position I don’t think anyone has actually held). But I will say that I think conservatism is a legitimate political position, and should be included in the conversation, as should be lots of other positions with which I disagree (libertarianism, for instance). I believe in useful disagreement.

By useful disagreement, I don’t mean one in which people are nice to each other, or stay calm, or end up persuading one another, finding common ground. Useful disagreement can be vehement and frustrating.

The problem with pro-GOP media, and many media that are opposed to the GOP and its current turn toward authoritarianism is that they don’t believe in useful disagreement. There was a time when there were shows where people with different political identities shouted at each other, but that wasn’t useful disagreement because they just shouted slogans at each other, without actually responding to what the other was saying. It was like a staged fight in a not very good movie–what one is doing has nothing to do with what the other is doing.

As I’ve said many times, my area of scholarship is how communities wreck the train on which they (we) all live, and they (we) do so by refusing to acknowledge that disagreement is useful. If you define demagoguery as rhetoric that causes communities to wreck the train on which we live, then the first and most important characteristic is that demagoguery is anti-deliberative. It says that the correct course of action is obvious, and there is no reason to engage anyone who disagrees with Us about that correct course of action. It says disagreement is never useful.

Demagoguery says disagreement isn’t about people who have different ways of thinking, perspectives, values, experiences, goals, but a fight between people who are right and everyone else (people who are wrong). Demagoguery says that, for every and situation or problem, there is a perfect solution that all reasonable people recognize as the correct solution. And, therefore, politics is not about understanding why people disagree, but about persuading, coercing, or excluding everyone who disagrees.

Again, I’m not saying that all positions are equally valid, or even that all positions are valid. I’m saying that reasonable and inclusive disagreements hold all participants to the same standards of reason, proof, evidence, ethics. And I really wish people understood enthymemes, and major premises.

For instance, imagine that we’re disagreeing about whether policing is systemically racist, and that people of color are more likely to be pulled over or treated worse than white people.

One personal experience might be: a person of color getting seriously harassed by a police officer for a minor parking violation. The logic of that argument is: people of color are treated differently by the police because Terry (a person of color) was seriously harassed for a minor parking violation. The assumption is that Terry getting seriously harassed for a parking violation is a sign of police harassment for people like Terry.

That’s taking a single instance of a sign of a larger problem and, as even Aristotle said, that isn’t necessarily proof of the grander claim, but it is evidence. It is a datapoint. So the way to engage that argument, for someone who believed that policing is not racist, would be to argue about whether that datapoint is representative—whether, on the whole, police interactions with people of color are strikingly different from interactions with white people.

But, instead, at least as far as my drifting around in various spaces suggests, the most likely counter-argument is: I am a white person, and I have no trouble with the police because I am polite to them, and therefore the police are not racist.

That is missing the point of the disagreement entirely. That a polite white person has never had a bad interaction with the police is not proof that policing is not racist.

Here is my crank theory: people think it’s proof because they can’t imagine that other people have different experiences. They imagine that they are fully in control of what happens—their behavior, not their identity, caused the police officer’s reaction—and so they assume everyone has that level of control. To think otherwise would threaten their perception of a just world. I once had a bizarre conversation with someone who said that the government should not impose any controls about environmental policy. I asked if she would be okay if someone put a smelting plant next to her house, and she said then the neighbors should band together and buy out the smelting plant. I asked what should happen if the neighbors were poor, and she said, and I’m not kidding, they should stop being poor. She thought that was obvious—it’s a politics of the obvious combined with the (unjust) just world theory.

Rejecting a politics of the obvious means acknowledging that disagreement is useful. That doesn’t mean that people disagreeing have to be nice, or shouldn’t be emotional, or should always soft-pedal their arguments and avoid direct contradiction. It doesn’t mean every point of view is equally valid, or that every disagreement can or should be talked through. But it does mean advocating pluralism (not sloppy relativism). It means disagreeing by responding to the argument someone has actually made, holding all parties to the same standards (e.g., of tone, evidence, rationality), and trying to be internally consistent. It means disagreeing usefully.

What should Dems do? Read Asymmetric Politics

I urge anyone who has strong opinions about what the Dems should do to read Asymmetric Politics.

I hate to put my thesis first, but here I will. I’m seeing a lot of centrists arguing that the DNC should support centrist candidates, and self-identified leftists saying it should be leftists. And there are people who are saying that the DNC should have a coherent message, or various other narratives that assume the DNC is at the wheel. The DNC cannot guarantee that opponents of authoritarianism can win the midterms by only putting forward candidates with one ideology and one policy agenda. What will work is cracking holes in the dyke of support for Trump, and that means NOT sharing posts from irresponsible anti-Trump sites. Sharing information that it’s easy for Trump supporters to dismiss as false or misleading confirms their support for him, and their sense of a binary of unbiased and objective people (Trump supporters) and biased liars (his critics and opponents).

Here’s the longer version. Whenever there is a really complicated and nasty political situation, there is a tendency for some people to assert that it’s actually really straightforward, and there is a simple solution. That response is emotionally satisfying, since it’s what people really, really want to hear when things are getting twitchy, but, as a scholar of train wrecks, I can say it’s never true.[1]

There is always a tendency for people to think about policy questions from our own perspective. We unintentionally assume that what we want is what everyone wants (or should want). I always think of this as the Rousseau problem. Rousseau assumed some univocal identity of “the people” who had all the same needs and interests.

Drifting around the digitally-connected world, I’ve learned that there’s an interesting variation on the notion that all real people really have the same needs and interests, and it’s one that troubles anti-authoritarians particularly: the tendency to assume that everyone reasons as we do. There is a tendency among people who oppose Trump to assume that the Dems could win if they just used different rhetoric and/or had a different policy agenda. And it’s always the rhetoric or policy agenda that person endorses. So, it’s an argument that, were the people making decisions in the DNC to behave more like the GOP (one policy agenda, one rhetoric) and find the right policy agenda and rhetoric, then the Dems could win. That isn’t how Dems and potential Dems approach politics.

GOP voters will vote for a dead person rather than a Dem. People likely to vote Dem don’t have that kind of party loyalty. (Which, I think, is good on the whole, but it’s a problem when we’re no longer in a pluralist system.) Dem and potential voters are about policies. So, all that the GOP has to do to win is to persuade potential Dem voters not to vote Dem. That’s how the math works. So, what does that mean about what voters who will not vote GOP, but are unhappy about Dem policies and candidates, should do? And I should say that I really hate the DNC. For all the reasons.

But here’s where I’ve landed.

The current GOP, which is not conservative, has a base that is about ideology and ingroup loyalty (as the conservative Haidt long ago showed). It is reactionary (a topic on which Mark Lilla has written beautifully). And the ideology is strategically vague, but functionally mostly negative (as Paul Johnson has shown): supporting the GOP means [slogans not reasonably attached to GOP policies] and actions that are simply about feeling victimized by the hobgoblin of “libruls.” That approach to politics works because self-identified “conservatives” commitment to loyalty means that they are loyal to their sources of information.

People likely to vote Dem are not motivated by ideology. They (we) care about policies. It’s a coalition. I have to say Asymmetric Politics surprised me—I thought the GOP was a coalition, in that it has people who actually wildly disagree with each other on all sorts of policies, yet they work together. That seemed like a coalition. But a coalition is a group of people with disparate interests who agree to work together.

What I’ve come to believe from drifting into pro-GOP sites and conversations is that supporters of the GOP don’t know they disagree—they just agree on hating on the hobgoblin. Fox is not as extreme as some pro-GOP media sites, and that’s the only one I intermittently check, and they never mention anything that might undermine support for Trump—ranging from his falling asleep, rambling incoherently, openly lying, how many of his policies are oriented toward his family’s pockets, or the irresponsibility and internal incoherence of his policies.

Here’s my point: What matters most about people who currently support the GOP is that their sense of loyalty means that they have no clue what the GOP is actually currently doing.

Showing that progressives won in very pro-Dem areas is not evidence that that particular agenda and rhetoric will work in other areas (although I really, really wish it did.) That advice falsely assumes that Dems are like the GOP—that there is one ideology and one set of policies will work for all potential Dems. There isn’t. There shouldn’t be. That would make the Dems just a mirror image of the GOP; that is, anti-democratic and anti-pluralist.

[1] The book I’ve never written is about toxic self-help rhetoric, and how toxic self-help rhetoric promises “this one weird trick” or “you just have to”. (The adjective is restrictive.) Not all self-help rhetoric is toxic. I’ve got a site that has a lot of advice about scholarly writing—in other words, self-help rhetoric. And it cites a lot of advice and sources that are self-help rhetoric.)

Snopes, Fox, and “Biased” Sources

showing full version of a Talarico quote

Fans of Fox News and various pro-Trump and pro-GOP pundits/media reject Snopes, PolitiFact, and various other fact checking sources as a reliable source. They say those sources are “biased,” since those sites make more corrections of pro-GOP/pro-Trump popular claims than of Dems, critics of Trump, or what they call “liberals.”

Here’s the important point: they don’t refute the fact checking. They don’t go into the data and show that the facts were actually correct, or that Trump (or whoever) didn’t actually say it, or that it was misrepresented, or in any way respond to the assertion.

Their only evidence is that those sources find more falsehoods among pro-GOP and pro-Trump pundits and politicians, and, therefore, those sources are biased.

Their only argument is “more cases”—that is, preponderance equals bias. Yet, that is a way of arguing that they themselves reject.

By that logic, Fox is biased, since it spends more time showing what’s wrong with “liberals” than with the politicians and party they support.

By that logic, every pundit, talk show, news source, video that doesn’t spend equal time correcting or condemning both parties is biased. By that logic, the police are biased, since they pull over a disproportionate number of people of color. They would conclude that all instances of disproportionate representation are instances of bias–arrest rates, gender in C-level positions, application of the death penalty. But they don’t.

People who trust media like Fox, and who reject sources like Snopes, aren’t applying the same standards of evidence for what constitutes a “biased source.” They don’t have a consistent way of assessing “bias.” They’re using motivated reasoning to dismiss information they are too threatened or too irrationally partisan to consider.

Motivated reasoning is when you “reason” that this evidence is objective, and that evidence is biased, purely on the basis of what supports what you already believe. What makes clear that it’s motivated reasoning, and not some actually reasonable position, is when people reject the conclusions that the same reasoning process offers if it means a conclusion they don’t like. For instance, were the “Snopes is biased because they mostly show pro-GOP lies” a reasonable position, and not just motivated reasoning, then that person would hold all media to the same standards. And would conclude that a disproportionate representation was a sign of bias.

In other words, either the argument that Snopes and so on are biased is an illogical argument, based on a way of reasoning even they themselves reject, or they have to accept that their own sources of information are biased, as are various systems such as policing.

They can’t play it both ways while claiming to be reasonable.

And, if anyone responds to this by refuting the argument that policing is biased by explaining why police pulling over more people of color with data or arguments, they’re proving my point that the rejection of Snopes and so on simply on the basis of numbers is a thoroughly indefensible. Why not respond that way to the specific instance Snopes et al. are describing?

When I point this out to someone who dismisses Snopes as “biased” on the basis of the numbers argument, they then retreat to “Well, the people who run it are liberals, so they’re biased.”

Okay, so that’s a new criterion for “bias”—that the source has a policy agenda. And, let me just say, this is one of the signs of a position that is not grounded in reason (and we all have some positions like that). If we say, “A is good because A is B” (all bunnies are good because they have floppy ears), and someone points out that not all bunnies have floppy ears, or that some floppy-eared bunnies are not good, they’re pointing out that we haven’t really thought out something we’re claiming is a principle. If we suddenly move the goalposts, it’s a sign of motivated reasoning.

And, again, an inconsistently applied criterion. If information from Snopes should be dismissed as biased because its owners are liberal, then everything from Fox should be dismissed as biased because its owners openly support the GOP and Trump. They are biased. When I’ve pointed this out to people, suddenly the meaning of “biased” changes. (I first learned this arguing with Stalinists when I was living in Berkeley.)

Suddenly, “biased” means perspectives with which I don’t agree, and that’s an unreasonable position. Saying that “anything that isn’t my viewpoint is biased” is biased–it’s refusing to consider potentially important information. It’s reassuring to maintain the pretense of having a political stance grounded in principle, but if the principle is abandoned on a regular basis, it isn’t really a principle. It’s just a handy thing to swat away uncomfortable information.

One of the qualities of train wrecks in public deliberation is that people attach themselves to a principle, and try to claim the moral highground because of that attachment, and then, when a contradiction is pointed out, they refuse to acknowledge the contradiction. Nazi ideology was comforting to people who could think of themselves as Aryan, but it was internally wildly inconsistent, and now groups that would not have been considered Aryan are pro-Nazi. Various forms of Social Darwinism (which is just an old wine in a new bottle—the basic principle predates Darwin, and it’s a philosophy he never endorsed) say that the triumph of a group is proof of its superiority, unless another group triumphs. And then… cue whining.

And that’s what’s going on with the claim that they reject Snopes without consideration as they have a principled objection to bias. They don’t. They like bias. They just don’t want to have their political commitment complicated.

They deflect uncomfortable information by rejecting the source (often a fallacy) purely on the basis of preponderance (always a fallacy, as they themselves recognize at other moments). What they’re saying is an interesting statement about them—that they’re incapable of responding reasonably to criticism, and so they deflect it. Maybe instead think about why it doesn’t seem possible to refute the claims reasonably? Maybe that’s a sign your position is unreasonable?

The trouble with necessary counterfactuals. Or, Hitler and Art School

I’ve become fascinated by a specific kind of counterfactual argument that is often made, but is constraining and damaging in deliberation. Let’s call it the “necessary counterfactual.” It’s structurally unstable, but people tend not to see that, and often find it compelling. And its weaknesses are hard to explain.

Just to be clear: I’m not arguing the counterfactuals are always bad—they’re inescapable in policy deliberations, whether personal or “political.” Any causal argument implies a counterfactual (if I say that you feel sick because you ate a party-size bag of knock-off chocolate-covered fried bananas, I’m implying that you wouldn’t feel sick if you hadn’t).

The problems arise when the connections are asserted and assumed to be so necessarily connected that all dissent or disagreement is delegitimated.

For instance: When confronted with an expansionist and aggressive leader (Hitler) decision makers (the French and British) chose appeasement. Appeasement didn’t work; therefore, it is obvious that maximum aggression would have worked. We are now in a similar situation (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq), so it is obvious that we must do what would have worked then, and engage in maximum aggression.

Here’s the structure of the logic:
In [Situation Z], policymakers adopted [Policy A], and [Policy A] went badly; therefore, the correct policy must have been [Not-A]. [Policy B] is not-A; therefore, it is obvious that [Policy B] would have worked. We are now in a situation similar to [Situation Z]; therefore, it is obvious that we must adopt [Policy B], since that would have worked the prior time.

The “logic” is something like this:

A –>B; therefore ~A –>~B.

(A led to B, therefore not-A leads to not-B.) Appeasement led to failure; therefore, not-appeasement would have led to success.

What makes the “logic” of this kind of argument so troubling is the degree to which it assumes necessary consequences and necessary implications—the way that it shuts down reasonable disagreement.

This kind of “logic” ignores several important points:

1) That A didn’t work doesn’t necessarily mean that this not-A would have worked.

That sentence has a lot of negatives (which is probably why it’s hard for people to grasp). But my point is that this way of thinking assumes two false binaries that are falsely assumed to be necessarily connected.

There are plenty of events/policies other than maximum aggression that might have prevented Hitler’s coming to power, starting WWII, engaging in the multiple genocides: his getting into art school, von Hindenburg and von Papen refusing to work with him, the Reichstag growing a spine and refusing to pass the Enabling Act, anti-Nazi parties making a coalition, one of the assassination attempts working, a treaty that wasn’t as punitive as the Versailles Treaty, the US joining the League of Nations, economic policies that would have meant the Great Depression didn’t happen, Germany refusing to back Austria’s play in 1914, a different response on the part of the French in May of 1940, Napoleon III not taking the bait and declaring war in 1870…

2) Evidence isn’t proof.

Counterfactuals are generally supported by telling a story about what would have happened had the other course been taken. That maximum aggression would have worked with Hitler is argued through the telling of a compelling narrative. But that it’s compelling doesn’t mean it was likely, let alone guaranteed.

One narrative is that a military response to Hitler’s remilitarizing the Rhineland would have led to a military coup that would have removed Hitler from power. But the only evidence that a coup was even considered are things said in self-serving and jaw-droppingly dishonest post-war memoirs on the part of Nazis military leaders, who lied about everything else (such as the Wehrmacht’s participation in genocide), so why suddenly decide they’re being honest about that coup plot? Particularly since there is no other supporting evidence. A military response, which Hitler thought was likely, wouldn’t have stopped him from regaining that territory (they were going to get it anyway in a few years), and it wouldn’t have persuaded him to change his mind about his long-term plans. What might have made a difference would have been a more successful response to the Nazi invasion of France, and there are counterfactuals about what would have been better responses, but even a compelling counterfactual is still a counterfactual.

3) Assuming best case counterfactual scenarios isn’t even evidence.

Richard Ned Lebow makes this point quite neatly in Forbidden Fruit. Counterfactual narratives often make one major change, and then assume that there are necessary consequences of that change, all of which are the consequences most favorable to the argument. So, a military response to Hitler’s actions in the Rhineland would have successfully deterred him, there would have been a coup, it would have been successful (a very weak link in the chain of events), the Nazi military leaders would have put in place a non-aggressive, non-expansionist, and pacific government that would not have tried to refight the Great War.

There are other stories one might tell that are also plausible: it might not have deterred him from invading Czechoslovakia; it might have increased anti-war sentiment in France and Britain; there probably wouldn’t have been a coup; it was very unlikely that a coup would have been successful; Nazis would still have been Nazis.

4) Policies have to be politically available.

Many scholars argue that going to war over the Rhineland was not politically possible for France or Germany. It would have seemed to be a repeat of the Great War, which was (in the 20s and 30s) often narrated as a massive overreaction to a minor incident with no real importance.

5) That A didn’t work doesn’t necessarily mean that there is a not-A that would have worked, one which must be our current choice.

I’m not making some argument about history being determined, or non-contingent; I’m making a point about argument, but I’ll get to that. I’m saying that history is contingent and options are contextual. For instance, there are counterfactuals that I’m persuaded would have prevented WWII, at least in terms of the form it took. I’ll mention two: if Hitler had gotten into art school; if the Franco-Prussian War hadn’t happened.

If we follow the logic of the necessary counterfactual, then the implication of the first is that we should let everyone into art school. Or maybe just all Nazis? Or something.

What are the policy implications of the second counterfactual? Don’t go to war against Bismarck? That’s probably pretty good advice, but unlikely to be useful, and certainly not something that might have helped people trying to figure out what to do about Hitler. Or Vietnam.

So, counterfactuals about the past, even very plausible ones, don’t necessarily determine our current policy choices. We’re not in the realm of obviously correct decisions, but in a world of deliberation.

The problem with necessary counterfactuals is not that they’re counterfactual, but that they’re presented as necessary at every step—this is necessarily what would have happened, and that narrative makes it clear what is necessary for us to do. My point is about how they shut down potentially useful disagreement. My crank theory is that’s exactly why people are drawn to them—they don’t actually reduce uncertainty, but they make us feel less uncertain about the past, present, and future. The narrative about obvious choices is comfortable, since it ends the need to acknowledge uncertainty and risk.

And, obviously, I’m not just talking about Vietnam. Or Hitler. There are a lot of discussions right now about what went wrong such that we have a political party that simply refuses to hold its members accountable, that is openly pursuing competitive authoritarianism and abandoning democracy, and the question is: what should opponents of authoritarianism do now? And that question means thinking about how we got here—it involves counterfactuals. And it should. But what won’t help is swearing fealty to a necessary counterfactual. I mean, it might help people feel less uncertain, but it won’t help figure out our various options.