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.
- 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.
- 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. - 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.