Month: January 2021

What happens next: arguing (or not) with people who still support Trump

vivien leigh raising an eyebrow
Image from here https://belldora.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/vivien-leigh-vii.jpg

As I said a long time ago, a lot of Trump supporters stopped trying to defend him through rational-critical argumentation fairly early on in his Administration. I’ve read defenses of him, ranging from your high school friend to scholars. It’s either fallacious zero-sum demagoguery–non-Trump supporters are SO bad that nothing Trump can do is something I will condemn– or, more commonly, charismatic leadership. A lot simply refuse to engage, and those who do try to engage in argumentation are kind of impressive in terms of how many fallacies they can fit into a few words.

Trump supporters (and not just Trump supporters) believe our political spectrum is a binary, and so believe “fairness” is saying that “both sides are just as bad.” So here I should say, “both sides” are not just as bad because there aren’t two sides. Politics isn’t a binary or continuum. More important, while there are people who can’t defend their position through rational-critical argumentation who have all sorts of affiliations, I haven’t run across a Trump supporter who can in a long time.[1] So, much of what I’m saying applies to people who aren’t Trump supporters but are irrationally committed to Paleo, Brittney, Obama, single-payer health care, Santana, hating Santana, and, well, everything.

And here I should explain why I use the term “argumentation” rather than argument. An argument is a claim. That you can make a claim and support it with data from a reliable source doesn’t mean that you’ve supported your claim rationally, nor that your commitment to that claim is rational.

But a lot of people think that a claim “supported” by a piece of evidence from a reputable source is a good argument. That the best-selling argument textbook endorses this view has made me ragey for years.

When you arguing with someone whose commitment isn’t capable of rational defense, and you point out that 1) they don’t believe their own major premise (explained below), 2) and/or their claim is contradicted by other sources, 3) and/or they’ve put forward a fallacious argument, or 4) and, the most important point, that the way they’re deliberating about politics is a way they would never make decisions in their own area of expertise, in my experience, people respond in one of three ways.

  1. A fair number of people never get your point. It isn’t about whether they can find evidence to support their position; it’s about whether they’re willing to think about how they’re thinking. They just get confused when you talk about major premises and non-falsifiability. These people aren’t uneducated. My most recent failures to get someone to understand that their way of reasoning about Trump is a bad way to reason include an anesthesiologist and mechanical engineer.
  2. Some people (in my experience, this is less common than it used to be) will say, now that you’ve shown their position is completely irrational, that everyone’s position is irrational. That’s just projection, and the kind of universalizing that comes from being in such a position of privilege that they’ve never had to listen to others. This response is deflection–instead of defending their inability to engage in rational argumentation, they just declare that no one engages in it.

    It’s motivism. The problem for them, of course, is that there are lots of examples of people engaging in rational-critical discourse and thereby changing their minds about an issue. But they won’t look at those examples because being a Trump supporter means refusing to look at any disconfirming data. They’re in a vicious circle of irrationality.

    They believe that what they believe is true, and they so much believe that it’s true that they refuse to look at evidence that it isn’t true. If they are presented with evidence that their beliefs aren’t true, they reject that evidence on the grounds that it’s biased, since it says their beliefs aren’t true.
  3. They say that they aren’t really engaged in good faith argumentation—they’re just teasing libruls. They seem to think that their admitting to be unable to defend their position rationally is a virtue.

    I’ve said elsewhere that it’s like when cats get entangled in the blinds and pretend they meant it, but it’s actually worse.

Not all extremists are Trump supporters, but, in my experience, all Trump supporters are extremists in that they refuse to think about how their commitment might be wrong. What has happened, as always happens in demagoguery, is that their sense of themselves as good people has gotten attached to the claim that supporting Trump was/is a good choice. They believe that admitting that their support was mistaken would be shameful submitting to anti-Trumpers. They live in a world of demagoguery in which there are two groups: the good and the bad. They think that admitting that Trump was bad means admitting that they are the bad group.

Everyone makes bad decisions. Imagine that you decided to invest in a Redball, Inc project that claimed it would eternally keep squirrels from the redball, and it went bust. Does that mean you’re a bad person, that what the squirrels said was right?

No. It means you made a bad decision. And making better decisions means understanding why investing in Redball, Inc seemed like a good idea. Having gotten suckered doesn’t make you a bad person, but a person who has reasoned badly. If we think about decision-making as good or bad people, then we’re in a world of demagoguery. If we think about decision-making in terms of better or worse ways, then we have ways of agreeing with wildly different people. We’re in the world of democracy.

The problem is that Fox, a completely demagogic site, is trusted by 40% of people because it is demagogic. Fox, Limbaugh, and various others are completely anti-democratic. They’re authoritarian populist. And that’s why people like them. People like hearing that their point of view is the only legitimate one, that they are the real people, and so only the political agenda promoted by someone who embodies real people is democracy (that’s how current GOP rhetoric says that their minority views are the real American views).

Because the premise of the pro-GOP propaganda machine is that only their political position is the real position of real people, then people advocating it can feel that they’re the realists, arguing from a real position. It isn’t real in terms of being falsifiable; it’s real in terms of feeling real. And it’s real because they can find evidence.

Fox’s talking points are derived deductively from whatever talking points will be most effective at supporting today’s GOP agenda. And their rhetoric is irrational (such as inconsistent appeals to major premises and refusal to look at disconfirming data, lame whaddaboutism).

What’s kind of genius about the rabid pro-Trump propaganda is that it is telling people, “Say this, and, then, when people point out that what we’ve told you to say is stupid, false, fallacious, and you can’t defend it, then say you’re just triggering libs.” They’ve found a way to transform the pro-Trump camp’s inability to support Trump rationally into a virtue.

I think this rhetorical strategy is an admission that the GOP political agenda—especially supporting Trump—is a fragile house of cards that can’t stand even the breath of rational-critical policy argumentation. I think that’s important. People with good policies can support them in argumentation. People with bad policies can’t. So, we should start with the observation that supporting Trump is rationally indefensible.

Supporters of Trump and the GOP are well-trained in deflection. If a critic points out that, for instance, Trump’s vacations not only cost taxpayers far more than the trips Obama took that had Fox pundits and viewers choking with rage, but a tremendous amount of that money went directly to Trump. If you point that out, though, you’ll get deflection, usually some version of whaddaboutism. The basic argument is that “Trump is good because Biden kicked a squirrel.” The impulse for critics of Trump is to take issue with the minor premise. We’ll try to show that Biden didn’t kick a squirrel, or it wasn’t a squirrel, or Trump has kicked more squirrels. If you want to do that (and I often do) go for it, but just be clear that it won’t work because Trump supporters don’t support Trump because of his behavior to squirrels. They support Trump. They then find reasons to justify their support. Their position isn’t rational.

Here’s a digression that won’t be interesting to most people, but, if you teach argumentation, you need to be able to follow this.

“Trump is good because Biden kicked a squirrel” is an enthymeme with an undistributed middle.

A is B b/c C did D.

A [Trump] is B [good] because C [Biden] kicked a squirrel [D].

Instead of arguing the minor premise (whether Biden kicked a squirrel), point out that the whole argument is fallacious. They might both be bad.

So, how do you argue with people who won’t (can’t) argue their case rationally, engage in deflection, and when, pantsed, will just claim to be trolling when they’ve made a fool of themselves argumentatively?

You can argue with them to see if you can get them to change their minds. (You can, but they’ll never admit to it, which is interesting–they think being closed to persuasion is a virtue. I find that very odd.)

There are, I think, three responses that sometimes work. First, if it’s possible, show them that their claims are refuted by in-group sources.

Second, show them that the way they reason about politics isn’t how they reason about their job. A doctor who had a commitment to a particular treatment and refused to look at any studies that showed his commitment might be wrong would be a terrible doctor. A citizen who does the same is a terrible citizen.[2]

Third, and the most effective, is refusing to argue with them unless they put forward a rational argument. Ask them: are your beliefs about Trump falsifiable? What evidence would cause you to change your mind about Trump?

If the answer is no, and nothing, then you say, “Fine, your beliefs aren’t rational, and we aren’t talking politics.”

They will try to make you defend whatever they think Biden believes, and you have several options.

You can say, “We aren’t talking politics. Have more pie.” You can also say, “If Biden is wrong, that doesn’t mean Trump is right. Are your beliefs about Trump falsifiable? What evidence would cause you to change your mind about Trump? If not and nothing, then we aren’t talking politics because your position isn’t rational.” You can be very loving in what you say, “I love you so much, and this topic makes us all unhappy, so let’s talk about cousin Dwerp winning a hokey-pokey trophy.” Some people I know have said, “You taught me to reason thoughtfully, and you can’t when it comes to Trump, and that makes me sad. Let’s change the subject.”

Stand your ground. Refuse to talk about politics. They will do everything they can to shift the burden of proof to you, but you can just refuse to take it on. They’ll engage in passive-aggressive swipes at Biden and Democrats. When they do so, raise an eyebrow like Vivien Leigh, ask them if they’re trying to talk politics, snicker, smirk, walk out of the room, take a careful assessment of your fingernails, offer them pie, ignore them, do complicated math problems in your head, but you are under no obligation to engage people who are engaged in demagoguery. If they won’t say that their beliefs are falsifiable and that they can name the evidence that would cause them to change their minds, then they aren’t open to argumentation.

They will explode like someone throwing a match into a fireworks stand. In my experience, they and their enablers will try to use norms of “let’s get along” to allow them to make their arguments while silencing you. You might have to leave. Authoritarian families will try to make you the villain, although the Trump supporter is the one who violated boundaries (in authoritarian families, only the asshole is allowed to set boundaries).

It is not your job to put out the fire they have started on themselves by supporting someone who is rationally indefensible. Trump appeals to authoritarians. Paradoxically, insisting on the authority of argument, which means a lot of walking away and refusing to engage, has far more impact than staying in the authoritarian space and trying to refute demagogic arguments point by point.

Change the subject, and, if that doesn’t work, walk away.

[1] I have run across figures who can defend specific actions of his. I’m not saying that they’re right, or that I agree with them–being right and being able to put forward a rational-critical argument aren’t the same thing.

[2] Here is another issue that makes me ragey. Propaganda is for free, since it’s paid for by groups that can profit from it getting out there. Being actually informed about politics is incredibly expensive.

Authoritarian populist demagoguery is never a controlled burn

wildfire
Photo from here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/severe-wildfires-raise-the-chance-for-future-monstrous-blazes/

As I’ve said so often that I’m certain the four people who read my blog regularly are really tired of reading, there aren’t two sides on any issue. The moment we frame an issue as a question of two choices, we have started clearing our political throat for demagoguery.

The reason I’m committed to what might be a crank theory about how to represent political commitments is that, if we realize those commitments are very specific when it comes to policy, then we have a world in which coalitions are possible. For instance, people all over the political spectrum support reform of the criminal justice system, especially bail reform. Some, but not all, conservatives support it. If we think of the issue of bail reform as a partisan issue, then, instead of being able to argue the policy merits of the policy of bail reform, voting about bail reform becomes performance of in-group loyalty.

One of many reasons I like the metaphor of political affiliation being a color spectrum (rather than, for instance, a continuum or matrix) is that it raises the possibility of talking about intensity. One of many fallacies of the left/right continuum model is that it suggests that centrists aren’t irrationally passionate—only the people at the extremes are. I’ve known some people who are extremist about the need for everyone to have “centrist” policies, and people who are mildly committed to policies labelled “far left” or “far right.” And the “extremes” get muddled—where on that continuum do we put people who are extremely committed to libertarianism, pacifism, whatever the GOP or Dems are promoting now, a strong safety net and humanitarian intervention, a strong social safety net and homophobic legislation, a strong social safety net but only for white people?

I think, from the perspective of rhetoric and persuasion, that the degree of commitment is among the most important variables. It’s far more important than where a person fits on some false continuum.

And I say this because of years of arguing with people all over the political spectrum, and also the non-political spectrum, and finding people who, whether it’s about raw dog food, immigration, if something can’t be called hummus if it has sugar, Santana’s guitar playing, Trump, whether Tolkien is racist, single-payer healthcare, and, basically, every issue:

1) insist that their advocated course of action is so right that anyone who disagrees with them is corrupt, stupid, or evil;
2) and they therefore frame the issue as a binary between their specific policy agenda (right) and anyone else (wrong);
3) since everyone who disagrees with them is wrong for disagreeing, they refuse to look at any sources, sites, or data that say they might be wrong, and they only rely on in-group representations of that evil group
4) and they have a monocausal narrative about the problem they are solving.

In my experience, there is no position on any issue–“political” or not–that doesn’t have someone who argues this way. So, this isn’t about political affiliation (left or right)–it’s about how people think about beliefs. I think that people who fit the criteria above are extremists, whether the argument is about the virtues of Ezra Pound’s poetry or the Kyoto Protocols.

Using terms like “evil” doesn’t necessarily mean that one is making an extreme argument. Condemning slavery as an evil and condemning anyone who advocates slavery as evil isn’t necessarily an extremist position. Condemning Nazism as evil isn’t an extremist position.

But saying that the only way to end slavery or Nazism is [X], and that anyone who doesn’t support [X] is just as bad as slavers or Nazis, that’s extremism.

And here’s the point I really wanted to get to: in my experience, people drawn to extremism propose monocausal narratives. I don’t know why, and I have no studies to support my claim. This is just my experience.

It doesn’t matter if they’re talking about dog training methods, immigration, hummus, riots, World War I, the Paleo diet, or whatever. Extremists say that immigration causes all problems, only the presence of tahini causes something to be hummus, since the British failure to signal clearly that they would go to war made the Germans feel confident in their war plans then the British caused the war, and so on.

But nothing is monocausal.

Kristallnacht was signalled and spontaneous at the same time. Goebbels announced that “the Führer has decided that … demonstrations should not be prepared or organized by the Party, but insofar as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be hampered.” Thus, Hitler didn’t specifically call for that action at that moment, but his years of rhetoric of Jews as an existential threat made people feel that he wanted the violence to happen, that he approved of it. And he did. People were, in Ian Kershaw’s words, “working toward the Fuhrer” by making it happen. And, of course, there were people involved in it who were formally Nazis. So, is Hitler responsible for Kristallnacht? Yes. No historian doubts it. No Hitler, no Kristallnacht. But, can historians find a direct order from him? No.

Imagine that Y happened (a driver hit a cyclist), and we all agree it was a bad thing. What caused it to happen? Imagine that the driver was speeding, texting, and drifted into the bike lane, and the cyclist was listening to a podcast and so didn’t notice the car coming into the bike lane. Extremists, in my experience, find ways to make the in-group not responsible because there were other contributing factors. So, anti-cyclists extremists (and there a lot of them) will say that, since the cyclist could have prevented the accident by seeing that the driver was in the bike lane, the driver wasn’t at fault. The driver wasn’t the only cause of the accident, and therefore not the cause at all.

That’s the argument extremist Trump supporters are making about the attempted insurrection.

Trump extremists are trying to claim that since his January 6 speech wasn’t the only cause of the riots, he didn’t incite them. But, as even the Wall Street Journal says, the problem is his and his supporters’ “war rhetoric.” And that is the most important cause of the attempted insurrection—you can’t keep using war rhetoric, that liberals are out to destroy us and everything we value that there has never been a worse situation, and then not expect them to get violent. Either Trump has been deliberately inciting violence or he’s an irresponsible idiot.

Hitler set the stage for Kristallnacht, and he left himself plausible deniability if public reaction was bad. When it didn’t get the reaction he wanted, the official Nazi line was that it had been spontaneous. So, someone saying that there is no monocausal narrative of Trump having incited the January 6th failed insurrection is someone who would hold Hitler faultless for Kristallnacht.

They are reasoning badly.

Trump has been supporting the notion of violent insurrection for along time. If what happened wasn’t what he wanted to happen, he would have instantly condemned it and stopped it, and he didn’t. Because it was the desired end of his rhetoric.[1]

Trump could have stopped the attempted insurrection that he inspired and incited through his speeches (and he even named the date that he wanted it to happen), but he didn’t, and he didn’t do what a responsible person would have done to make it stop, such as answering Pence’s calls and sending in the National Guard. He didn’t.

Either he’s irresponsibly incompetent, or he didn’t have a problem with what was happening.

By his defenders’ argument, Trump engaged in rhetoric that—as experts on rhetoric said it would–persuaded people that he wanted a violent incursion and insurrection on January 6, and he didn’t stop it once it started, and only denounced it when he was facing impeachment. Thus, by his defenders’ case, Trump either wanted that insurrection, or he’s so irresponsible and incompetent that he unintentionally caused an insurrection he didn’t know how to stop.

Either option is impeachable.

But, more important, Trump really wasn’t the only cause of the attempted insurrection. He’s responsible, and he should be held responsible, and he isn’t the only one that should be held responsible.

People who tried to storm the capital in order to stop the Constitution from being enacted as it is supposed to weren’t people who, until 2016, had accurate and informed understandings of politics, who appreciated democracy as a pluralistic governmental system, and who saw difference of opinion as legitimate. They were authoritarian populists, and that’s why they supported Trump. Trump didn’t cause authoritarian populism—he just rode the wave that others’ rhetoric had created.

For years, talk radio and Fox have been promoting authoritarian populist demagoguery. It’s demagoguery in that they reduce every issue to us v. them, with “us” very narrowly defined, and “them” being everyone else who are lumped into the most extreme “them.” So, if you didn’t (don’t) support the political figure or agenda that they supported at that moment, you were (are) a communist or socialist. Limbaugh, Fox, etc., advocate populism in that what they say perfectly fits what Jan-Werner Muller defines as what populists do:

[T]hey tend to say that they — and only they — represent what they often call the real people or also, typically, the silent majority. Populists will deny the legitimacy of all other contenders for power. This is never merely about policy disagreements or even disagreements about values which, of course, are normal and ideally productive in a democracy. Populists always immediately make it personal and moral. They also suggest that citizens who do not share their understanding of the supposedly real people do not really belong to the people at all. So populists always morally exclude others at two levels: party politics, but also among the people themselves, where those who do not take their side politically are automatically deemed un-American, un-Polish, un-Turkish, etc.

Work like Muller’s shows why the left/right binary (or continuum) is proto-demagogic at least and irrelevant at best. If we’re going to try to shove figures into the left/right binary (which makes as much sense as shoving all religions into Catholic or Protestant), then there are “left-wing” populists like Chavez and “right-wing” populists like Trump, who have the same rhetoric. Whether they’re claiming to be conservative or socialist doesn’t matter—they’re neither. What matters is that they’re populist in a very damaging way.

They’re authoritarian in that they’re saying that the real people are so threatened with extinction by a system run by elites (Them—the elite is entirely composed of out-group members, which is kind of hilarious if you think about it) that we cannot hold ourselves to normal standards. This is war.

Authoritarian populist demagoguery is profitable for a media outlet. It’s stimulating, like a Two-Minutes Hate, but more like the 24/7 Hate. It is guaranteed to generate an audience who will refuse to look at other information (which advertisers love); since it is all about generating in-group loyalty, then advertisers also benefit simply from having ads in that outlet—they look like they’re supporting the in-group.

Authoritarian populist demagoguery is a powerful fuel for setting an audience on fire.

And it’s never a controlled burn.

[1] One of many things incredibly creepy for me is how defenses of Trump are exactly the same arguments that Nazis make to defend Hitler.




On not really objecting to Nazis

Hitler building a road
From the Berlin exhibit about Nazi rhetoric

In January of 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. On March 23, 1933, Germany voted to abandon democracy in favor of a Nazi dictatorship. In April of 1933, the out-going British ambassador to Germany, Horace Rumbold, wrote a five-thousand word telegram concerning what he believed to be Hitler’s goals and the German situation. There is something very disconcerting, if not actually enraging, about reading it, since it is so prescient.

Rumbold points out that, within a few months of attaining power, Hitler and the Nazis had criminalized dissent, brutally silenced all critics, and created an extraordinary propaganda system. Rumbold summarizes Hitler’s plans were openly stated in Mein Kampf and various speeches of his and other high-ranking Nazi officials. That plan was to claim to want peace all the while engaging in the complete ideological and practical militarization of Germany in order to start a war that will enable Germany to incorporate all parts of Europe that have German speakers, and expand into Russia and the Baltic States. Hitler is determined to get war, not just because of what it will gain Germany, but because of his commitment to seeing a nation as an organism which must fight for its existence or be “doomed to extinction” (5).

And, as early as April of 1933, Rumbold recognized that central to Hitler’s understanding of militarism and nationalism was the goal of a Germany without Jews, and that Hitler was rigidly committed to “the campaign against the Jews” (6). Rumbold summarizes Hitler’s plan for the immediate future: “Germany needs peace until she has recovered such strength that no country can challenge her without serious and irksome preparations [….] The aim of [Hitler’s] policy is to bring Germany to a point of preparation, a jumping-off point from which she can reach solid ground before her adversaries can interfere” (8). Elsewhere I (and lots of other people) have argued that anything other than appeasement was so politically and rhetorically unpopular that to advocate policies grounded in taking Rumbold’s prescience seriously would have been political suicide. Resisting Hitler was simply too unpopular.

While all the most effective anti-appeasement policies were unpopular, Hitler was not. On July 10, 1933 (so just two months after Rumbold’s telegram), the Viscount Rothermere (owner of The Daily Mail) published in that paper a piece praising Hitler and what he called “Naziland.” His argument is in his last paragraph (in bold and larger font):

“The world’s greatest need to-day is realism. Hitler is a realist. He has saved his country from the ineffectual leadership of hesitating, half-hearted politicians. He has infused into its national life the unconquerable spirit of triumphant youth.“

Rothermere claims to have carefully studied Germany and the Nazi movement for several years, so he would be well aware of the criticisms noted by Rumbold (and others): the abandonment of representative politics, persecution of all political opponents and even critics, openly-stated goal of eliminating Jews from the nation, and militarism. The assumption that many people make is that people in the UK who thought Hitler wasn’t that bad didn’t recognize him for what he was. Rothermere did. He liked it.

Rothermere liked fascism. He praised Mussolini and his “collaborators” because “Together they have made their country to best-governed State in Europe.” He says that “foremost” of Hitler’s accomplishments is “the liberation of [Germany] from the rule of the frowsy, down-at-hell German Republic, which was totally lacking in prestige, self-confidence, and even self-respect.” He acknowledges that there has been some criticism of how the Nazis have treated their opponents, but dismisses it as coming only from communist admirers of Stalin: “The plain, blunt patriotism of Hitler and his followers is highly alarming to our parlour-Bolsheviks and cultured Communists.”

In a section titled “Misplaced Horror,” he says that these communists
“Have started a clamorous campaign of denunciation against what they call “Nazi atrocities,” which, as anyone who visits Germany quickly discovers for himself, consist merely of a few isolated acts of violence such as are inevitable among a nation half as big again as ours, but which have been generalized, multiplied, and exaggerated to give the impression that Nazi rule is a bloodthirsty tyranny.”

Rothermere goes on to say that “the old women of both sexes” denounced Italian fascists’ “outrages” (which he has in scare quotes) when those actions consisted of nothing more than “the administration of a few doses of castor-oil to Communists” and, just as “the incidental extravagances of the early days of Fascism are forgotten,” “the minor misdeeds of individual Nazis will be submerged by the immense benefits that the new regime is already bestowing upon Germany.”

Italian fascists weren’t as obsessed with (or oppressive of) Jews as Nazis were and always had been, so someone might point out that the persecution of Jews (as Rumbold noted, one aspect of the Nazi platform to which Hitler was obstinately committed) meant the outrages were not the misdeeds of a few individuals, but an important point in the Nazi political agenda. It was, after all, in the open. And something that is tremendously important to understand is that the people who argued that Hitler wasn’t so bad, and, in any case, he was better than Stalin, didn’t object to his anti-Semitism. Like Rothermere, they endorsed it. In a section sub-titled “Alien Elements” Rothermere says,
“The German nation, moreoever, was rapidly falling under the control of its alien elements. In the last days of the pre-Hitler regime there were twenty times as many Jewish Government officials in Germany as had existed before the war. Israelites of international attachments were insinuating themselves into key positions in the German administrative machine. Three German Ministries only had direct relations with the Press, but in each case the official responsible for conveying news and interpreting policy to the public was a Jew.”
In other words, Rothermere supported and celebrated Hitler because he liked everything about Nazism. He was a Nazi.

On Republicans saying Trump went too far

Scene from Casablanca in which Renault pretends he didn’t know there was gambling


There are a lot of editorials from conservative sites admitting that Trump deliberately incited violence in the hopes that Pence would do something unconstitutional. And that is what Trump did. And it’s what Trump critics have been warning he would do since he was elected.

Even the Wall Street Journal has, in both its news and editorial positions, said that Trump instigated the violence at the capital on January 6, and did so deliberately. Since last spring, people had been saying that Trump would dispute the legitimacy of the election if he lost (and both he and the GOP thought he’d lose—that’s why they rushed through the appointment of Barrett, thereby violating the principles they said had made them refuse to certify Garland). Anyone who was paying even a little bit of attention to Trump’s tweets or his supporters knew that they were planning violence on January 6 (and they are for January 20—I’m seeing some stuff about January 17 and I don’t know why).

Various pro-Trump media are expressing shock at what he did on January 6—that is, incite violence. They’re either idiots, in which case, they should resign, or they knew he would. I think it was the second. I think everyone at Wall Street Journal now busy clutching their pearls, every GOP politico now saying he went too far, every FB friend saying it was antifa–they all knew that Trump would do exactly what he did and what he’s still doing. He’s trying to violate the Constitution in order to stay in power. It’s perfectly in line with what he’s always done. He doesn’t think it’s right for him to be constrained or accountable in anyway—by laws, morals, or conventions.

That’s who he is, and who he has always been, and anyone who knows anything about his time in New York knows that. His tax returns show that he was never successful at anything other than Celebrity Apprentice. Otherwise he had terrible judgment.

I’m working on a chapter about the appeasement of Hitler, specifically about why major political figures (like Chamberlain and Baldwin) kept giving Hitler what he wanted, as though that would avert war, and as though he wasn’t someone who had always said that he intended to engage in a war of conquest and extermination. There are lots of arguments as to why Chamberlain’s government engaged in appeasement, but I think it’s pretty clear: they did so because anything other than appeasement was rhetorically impossible given the beliefs of their base.

Once Trump became the GOP nominee, then criticizing him was rhetorically impossible because of the beliefs of their base—the beliefs the GOP had been drumming for years. Specifically, the pro-GOP media for years had been saying that only the GOP was right because Dems were so awful. Because Dems were/are so awful because SOCIALISM and ABORTION (and on neither point does the pro-GOP media have a rational argument), then the GOP is justified in anything it does.

For instance, the claim that there was massive voter fraud is not only irrational, but a great example of how people can mistakenly think that “I have seen the evidence for myself” is a rational way to assess an argument. Whether you can find data to support your claim doesn’t make your argument rational. There are three tests for a rational argument:

  1. Can you identify the evidence that would cause you to admit that you’re wrong? In other words, is your argument falsifiable?
  2. Do your arguments consistently appeal to the same major premises? This one is complicated, and I really wish that people taught syllogisms in argumentation classes. The short version is that if you say, “There was voter fraud because there were bunnies near the polling places” and “There was voter fraud because there were no bunnies near the polling places” then you don’t have a rational argument.
  3. Would you consider the way you are arguing a good argument if made in support of positions with which you disagree? Again, complicated because of how badly we teach argumentation, but a rational argument has a form that we would consider a good form regardless of the content.

No argument for massive voter fraud can withstand that test. As an aside, I have to say that I’d love were the results in Texas subjected to the level of scrutiny that Republicans want for Pennsylvania. Were the GOP pearl-clutching about Pennsylvania sincerely about the principle of voter fraud and not just another instance of not believing that people who vote against them should have their votes count, then the pearl-clutchers would welcome scrutiny about Texas.

Yeah, that won’t happen.

We are in a cultural moment that, for various reasons, assesses things (a CEO, product, political figure, athlete, diet, policy, movie) in terms of immediate outcome. If the CEO is getting great press, then they must be good, so we give them more good press, which proves they’re good. Since great press increases the stock value, then the great press is seen as great judgment.

It’s as though someone jumped off a cliff, and all the press was about how great they were for flying. They’re a great success, and should be admired. And then the hitting the ground is treated as an unfortunate outcome, as opposed to what was always going to happen.

That’s the issue with pro-GOP media that advocated a scorched earth demagoguery regarding Dems long before Trump started running for President. Rhetoric isn’t mere rhetoric. It has consequences. The pro-GOP media persuaded people to jump off the cliff.

What happened on January 6th (and what Trump was still hoping for on January 16th and 17th and maybe the 20th) was just one more instance of how Trump has always been. Trump has always lied. About everything.

Take, for instance, the argument that you have to be GOP if you think abortion is wrong. The Dems aren’t pro-abortion (no one is) but want to reduce abortion through the policies that are demonstrably effective at reducing abortion. The GOP has no response to that argument.

Instead, it falsely presents the Dems as pro-abortion. And here I’ll just say that, if you have to lie about what your opponent believes, then maybe you aren’t promoting democracy? But anyway, even assuming that the Dem plan for reducing abortion is bad, it doesn’t mean that the GOP is right. Both parties might be wrong. The GOP rhetoric about abortion is just demagoguery. It’s a false reduction of a complicated issue to us v. them, necessitating straw man representations of the opposition.

Trump engages in race-based demagoguery, and he always has, as far back as his advocating killing innocent men because they were Black. Trump’s rhetoric is:

  1. he is entitled to everything because he is a person above accountability, above rules, above norms;
  2. therefore, he is entitled to use any and all means to enhance his power, financially profit, and triumph over people who don’t support him;
  3. he will reward people who support him by enabling them to stand above accountability, rules, and norms;
  4. and he will punish anyone who doesn’t support him in every way he can.

That’s his rhetoric. That’s what his rhetoric has always been. It’s also what his policies have been since he’s been in office. These aren’t just rhetorical topoi he’s used, but the arguments he’s used for policies grounded in those beliefs.

That’s also the rhetoric of pro-GOP pundits, and has been ever since Rush Limbaugh started broadcasting. The only difference is that they begin with a different premise from Trump. Trump says (and probably believes) that he is entitled to those things and practices because of who he is, whereas pro-GOP rhetoric, since the 1990s, has been that the GOP (and whatever policies its advocating at this moment regardless of what it previously advocated) are entitled to those things because of how evil the Dems are.

So, just to be clear, pro-GOP rhetoric has, since the 1990s, been that we should abandon the rhetoric and practices inherent to democracy—that is, we should abandon democracy—because of how evil the Dems are. What we saw on January 6th was not just the consequence of Trump’s rhetoric, but the consequence of what Rush Limbaugh has been saying his entire career, what pro-GOP pundits have been saying for thirty years: that Dems are so bad that there are no restraints or constraints on what the GOP should do to win.

So, to those people who are now outraged about what happened on January 6th, I’d love to see them explain how what he did is not just one more instance of those four topoi, and how those topoi are not the logical consequence what pro-GOP media has been saying for over twenty years.

What we saw on January 6th was the direct consequence of what Trump said, and Trump is the direct consequence of what pro-GOP media has been saying for over twenty years.

Rejecting Trump, without rejecting that anti-democratic rhetoric and policy agenda, is just wishing the coup had been better managed.

The Enabling Act and the current coup attempt

nazi propaganda poster saying "death to marism"

On March 23, 1933, Adolf Hitler argued that what “the left” had done was so outrageous that Germany should abandon democracy and make him dictator. The elected officials did.

He was supported by the Catholic Party, all conservative parties, and the majority of Protestants. The only parties to oppose him were the Democratic Socialists and the Communists.

Since everyone other than socialists and communists supported Hitler, why is it a talking point among pro-Trump groups that Hitler was a socialist, and therefore a leftist? Because they want to rationalize engaging in exactly the same kind of coup that Hitler managed—we have to abandon democratic practices because “the left” is so bad—while pretending they aren’t doing exactly what Hitler did.

A lot of people reason by identity rather than politics. That is, they engage in the fantasy that good people, and only good people, will enact good policies. So, when trying to decide how to vote, just look for someone for someone who understands you, who is like you. That’s called “identification.” There’s a kind of narcissism in it—or maybe political solipsism is a better word. You just look out for yourself, and vote for someone who will look out for you, and….what, exactly, is supposed to happen? There can’t be a one-to-one relationship of identities (young, old, middle-aged, no kids, lots of kids, a disabled kid) between voters and political figures because there aren’t that many people in Congress (and voting on this basis always hurts the smaller groups). In addition, what are called social groups (not social in the sense of being about socializing, but group memberships that are important for a sense of self, such as having a child who gets accommodations in schools, having a a dog, or being evangelical Christian) don’t necessarily lead to policy affiliation. Not everyone with a dog wants off-leash dog parks, after all.

Good political figures should be able to look out for lots of different kinds of people; that’s what democracy requires. Diversity is a fact.

But a politics of identification assumes that identity is stable and monocausally determines policy affiliation. With unintentional irony, self-described “right wing” media figures throw themselves around about “the left” engaging in “identity politics,” yet that’s what they offer to their audience: the assumption that their identity (being “conservative”) necessarily leads to one political agenda (that is never clearly stated in the affirmative). It’s generally what’s called a “negative identity”—people are “conservative” just because they aren’t “liberal” (and vice versa).

What people call “right-wing” politics should be called reactionary toxic populist nationalism. It isn’t conservative. Conservativism is a political ideology that, although I disagree with it, even I will say is generally internally coherent and principled. Pro-Trump politics isn’t internally coherent or principled—it’s irrational factionalism. Using a private server is terrible, unless it’s a Trump family member. Pornography is terrible, unless it’s a Trump family member. A problematic charity is terrible, unless it’s Trump’s. There are no principles that are applied consistently across groups.

Supporting Trump comes from two sources. First, there’s charismatic leadership. He’s decisive and confident and (they think) successful. People drawn to Trump for this reason believe that politics isn’t complicated, that the right solution is obvious, and that politicians make things unnecessarily complicated because they’re doofuses. They believe that “regular people” (like them) are screwed over by our current political system, and that Trump understands them, and is looking out for them. They know he isn’t a doofus because he says things are simple, he’s confident he can solve them, and they saw him be decisive on a (scripted) TV show. He feels transparent to them.

They believe that because everything he says, and even the way he stands, shows that he is clearly a successful guy who gets them and who knows what needs to be done. And he’ll cut through the bullshit and get it done.

And they only pay attention to information that says that what they believe about Trump is true. They reject any criticism of Trump on the grounds that it is criticism. They believe what they believe is true because it’s what they believe, and anything that says what they believe is false must be false because it contradicts what they believe.

These are people, in my experience, who make the same mistake over and over, and who get scammed. A lot. They’re people who are often good and kind, and who believe that Scripture means what it seems to mean to them, and that people are who they say they are. That’s why they get scammed. They believe that the world is not complicated, but that bad people make it seem complicated, and so they like people who are decisive and confident. Con artists are always decisive and confident (so are a lot of badly informed people).

I have to digress and say that, since I’ve spent a lot of my life arguing with all sorts of people, this way of thinking about the world (it’s all really simple, and people just try to make it complicated, and we can solve this problem that no one else has solved by being thoroughly commitment to this simple solution that, for inexplicable reasons, no one else has ever adopted) is all over the political spectrum. It isn’t just Trump supporters (here, for instance, is a nice discussion of how it’s playing out right now among democratic socialists).

Second, many people support Trump in a purely reactionary way—he is NOT “libruls” (whom they believe to be the cause of all problems in the world. He will (and does) crush them, and, since they think libruls cause all the problems, crushing them will solve all the problems. It’s still toxic populism, in that it’s saying that there are some Americans who aren’t really American, whose views shouldn’t be represented (or even discussed), and who should be excluded from power.

Those two kinds of support—here is a strong, decisive person with excellent judgment who will cut through all the bullshit, and here is someone who will purge our government and culture of liberals and their influence—are the two kinds of support for Hitler.

Am I saying that Trump is Hitler? No.

Am I saying that the people who are supporting Trump would have supported Hitler? That is exactly what I’m saying.