Make politics about policies, not high stakes tug-of-war

2009 Irish tug of war team
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tug_of_war#/media/File:Irish_600kg_euro_chap_2009_(cropped).JPG

Pro-GOP media and supporters have long committed themselves to a view of politics as a zero-sum battle between the fantasy of an “Us” and a hobgoblin of “Them.” This rhetorical strategy goes at least as far back as McCarthyism, but Limbaugh was relentlessly attached to it, as is Fox News. They aren’t alone in this (I first became familiar with this way of thinking about politics when arguing with Stalinists, Libertarians, and pro-PETA folks many, many years ago). It’s working better for the GOP than it is for critics of the GOP, or Dems, or various groups for various reasons.

1) Demagoguery posits an Us (Good Persons) and a Them (Bad People With Bad Motives), and says that the correct course of action is obvious to every and any Good Person. While there are rhetors all over the political spectrum (it’s a spectrum, not a binary or continuum) who appeal to the false Us v. Them, the most anti-democratic and dangerous demagoguery relies on there being a third group—one that is unhuman (associated with terms and metaphors of animals or diseases)—and one of the things that characterizes Them is that They don’t recognize the danger of the animalistic group.

For Nazis, Romas and Jews were the dehumanized group, and liberals and socialists were the Them that didn’t recognize the danger. For proslavery rhetors, enslaved people and freed African Americans were the dehumanized group, and abolitionists and critics of slavery were the Them that didn’t recognize the danger. PETA used to dehumanize farmers and ranchers, and the Them was people who continued to buy animal products.[1]

Regardless of who does it–whether in- or out-group–, we need to object when rhetors dehumanize humans.

2) The media has long promoted a (false, incoherent, but easy and profitable) framing of policy questions as a horse race or tug-of-war between two groups. The “continuum” model is just as inaccurate, and just as incoherent. When I point out that it’s false, I’m told, “But everyone uses it.” That’s a great example of the “bandwagon” fallacy. “Everyone” used the substance v. essence distinction for hundreds of years. “Everyone” bled people to cure diseases for over a thousand years.

Our world is not actually two groups; our world is a world of people with different values, needs, and policy agenda. Media treating policy disagreements as a fight between two groups is a self-fulfilling description insofar as it teaches people to treat policy options as signals of in-group commitment rather than …well…policy options.

A person might be genuinely committed to reducing crime in an area. That commitment doesn’t necessarily mean they should be opposed to or in favor of more reliance on “Own Recognizance” rather than bail, or decriminalizing various activities, increasing infrastructure expenditure in that area, increasing punishment, privatizing prisons, applying the death penalty more often. The relationship between and among those policies is complicated in all sorts of ways, and data as to which policy strategy is most likely reduce crime is also complicated. Each of those topics is a policy issue that is complicated, nuanced, and uncertain, and something that should be argued as a complicated, nuanced, and uncertain issue and not a tug-of-war between good and evil.

Not everyone who believes that abortion should be criminalized also believes that our death penalty system is just, for instance. Despite how many media portray issues, neither of the major parties has a consistent policy agenda from one year to the next—keep in mind that as recently as the overturning of Roe v. Wade major figures in the GOP said there would not be a federal ban on abortion. They were not speaking for every member of their party, as was immediately made clear. Republicans disagree with each other about whether bi-partisanship is a virtue, gay rights, tariffs. Dems disagree with each other about universal health care, the death penalty, how to respond to climate change. As they should.

Talking about politics in terms of a contest between two groups means we don’t argue policies. Policies matter.

Most important, a person persuaded that the death penalty should be applied more often, but who believes that people who disagree have a legitimate point of view—a pluralist (which is different from a relativist)—enhances democracy, whereas a person who believes that every and anyone who disagrees with them is spit from the bowels of Satan is an authoritarian, regardless of whether they’re pro- or anti-death penalty.

Democracy depends upon values like pluralism, fairness, equality before the law. Media needs to talk about extremism in regard to those values, not one’s stance on a policy. The continuum model falsely conflates the two–a person who believes in universal health care is not more “extreme” in terms of their commitment to democracy than someone who believes that anyone who wants a change to our system is a dangerous radical who should be silenced, if not deported. The media would call that latter person a centrist. They aren’t.

Treating politics as a conflict between identities mobilizes an audience, and is therefore more profitable, but it is, at least, proto-demagogic, and it inhibits (and often prohibits) reasonable deliberations about our complicated policy options.

(And, just to be clear, so does a “let’s all just get along” way of approaching politics—if we think that “civility” is being nice to each other, and refraining from saying anything that hurts the feelings of anyone else, then we’re still avoiding the hard work of reasonably, and passionately, arguing about policy.)

So, if we want less demagoguery, we need to abandon a demagogic way of talking about politics. Stop talking about two sides. Talk about policies.

3) Mean girl rhetoric. A junior high mean girl (Regina) who wants to be friends with Jane is likely to do it in three steps. First, she tells Jane that Sally says terrible things about Jane. She’ll pick things about which Jane is at least a little insecure. “Jane keeps making fun of your acne.” “Jane says you’re fat.” Then she’ll badmouth Sally, thereby creating a bond between herself and Jane—they are unified against the common enemy (Sally). Sally may or may not have said those things—Regina might have entirely lied, taken something out of context, or even been the one to say the crappy things to Sally. Regina will continue to strengthen the bond with Jane by continually telling her about crap Sally is supposed to have said. Regina thereby creates resentment against Sally—“who is she to say I’m fat?”

The insecurity is necessary for the bonding, so, oddly enough, it’s Mean Girl who has to keep making Jane insecure by repeating what Sally may or may not have said. She has to keep fuelling that resentment.

If you pay attention to demagogic media, they spend a lot of time talking about the terrible things They say about Us. Sometimes someone in the out-group did say it, but often it’s a misrepresentation. Most often it’s cherry-picking. We tend to see the in-group as heterogeneous, but out-groups as homogeneous. So, while We are all individuals, any member of the out-group can stand for all of Them. That means demagogic media can find some minor out-group figure and use it to foment resentment against the out-group in general.

Find the best opposition arguments on policy issues before dismissing the Other as blazing idiots. Don’t rely on entirely in-group sources.

4) Demagogic media holds the in- and out-group to different standards. In fact, it holds the in-group to no standards at all other than fanatical commitment to the in-group.

Here’s what I mean. Imagine that we’re in a world that is polarized between Chesterians and Hubertians, and we’re Hubertians. Hubertian media finds some Assistant to the Assistant Dog Catcher in North Northwest Small Town who has said something terrible about Hubertians, perhaps called for violence against us. If our media is going to use that as proof that Hubertians are out to exterminate us, then if there is any Hubertian who has ever called for exterminating Chesterians, we are (if we have a reasonable argument), then we have to admit that we are out toe exterminate Chesterians.

If one what one member of the non in-group can be used to characterize what everyone other than the in-group says—if that’s a reasonable way to think about political discourse—then it’s reasonable for Them to characterize Us on the basis of what any in-group member says, no matter how marginalized.

If we don’t hold the in- and out-group to the same standards, then our position is unreasonable. We’re also rejecting Jesus, but that doesn’t generally matter to followers of demagogic media.

Hold in- and out-group media, rhetors, and political figures to the same standards: of argument, ethics, legality, accountability. If you won’t, then you’re an authoritarian.

Pro-GOP media isn’t the only media doing these things. (I’ve seen exactly this rhetoric in regard to raw food for dogs.) But if someone replies to this post by telling me that “Both Sides Are Bad,” I will point out that they have completely misread my argument. They are applying the false model of two sides that enables and fuels demagoguery. Saying “both sides are bad” is almost always in service of deflecting criticism of in-group demagoguery and is thereby participating in demagoguery.

If you don’t like demagoguery, stop engaging in it. That means stop talking about our political situation as a tug-of-war between two sides. Argue policies, acknowledge diversity and complexity, and seek out the smartest opposition arguments.

[1] There are various anti-GOP rhetors whom I cannot watch now that I’ve retired (studying demagoguery is my job, not something I do for fun), and I used them in classes as examples of demagoguery, but even I will admit that they don’t openly dehumanize some group the way that many pro-GOP rhetors dehumanize immigrants. They irrationalize “conservatives” and engage in a lot of motivism, but don’t equate “conservatives” with animals, viruses, and so on to the same extent. I’ve been told that dehumanizing metaphors don’t play as well with people who self-identify as “conservative,”and that’s why such rhetors avoid them, but I don’t know.






Progressives are children of the Enlightenment

bee on a flower

I loathe putting my thesis first (the thesis-first tradition is directly descended from people who didn’t actually believe that persuasion is possible), but here I will. The way that a lot of liberals, progressives, and pro-democracy people are talking about GOP support for authoritarianism is neither helpful nor accurate. Both the narrative about how we got here and the policy agenda for what we should do now are grounded in assumptions about rhetoric that are wrong. And they’re narratives and assumptions that come from the Enlightenment.

I rather like the Enlightenment—an unpopular position, even among people who, I think, are direct descendants of it. But, I’ll admit that it has several bad seeds. One is a weirdly Aristotelian approach of valuing deductive reasoning.

In an early version of this post, I wrote a long explanation about how weird it is that Enlightenment philosophers all rejected Aristotle but they actually ended up reasoning like he did—collecting data in service of finding universally valid premises. I deleted it. It wouldn’t have made my argument any clearer or more effective. I too am a child of the Enlightenment. I want to go back to sources.

Here’s what matters: syllogistic reasoning starts with a universally valid premise and then makes a claim about a specific case. “All men are mortal, and Socrates is mortal, so Socrates must be mortal.” Inductive reasoning starts with the specific cases (“Socrates died; so did Aristotle; so did Plato”) in order to make a more general claim (“therefore, all Greek philosophers died”). For reasons too complicated to explain, Aristotle was associated with the first, although he was actually very interested in the second.

Enlightenment philosophers, despite claiming to reject Aristotle, had a tendency to declare something to be true (“All men are created equal”) and then reason, very selectively, from that premise. (It only applied to some men.) That tendency to want to reason from universally valid principles turned out to be something that was both liberating and authoritarian. Another bad seed was the premise that all problems, no matter how complicated, have a policy solution. There are two parts to this premise: first, that all problems can be solved, and second, that there is one solution. The Enlightenment valued free speech and reasonable deliberation (something I like about it), but in service of finding that one solution, and that’s a problem.[1]

The assumption was that enlightened people would throw off the blinders created by “superstition” and see the truth. So, like the authorities against whom they were arguing, they assumed that there was a truth. For many Enlightenment philosophers, the premise was that free and reasonable speech among reasonable people would enable them to find that one solution. The unhappy consequence was to try to gatekeep who participated in that speech, and to condemn everyone who disagreed—this move still happens in public discourse. People who agree with Us see the Truth, but people who don’t are “biased.”

The Enlightenment assumed a universality of human experience—that all people are basically the same—an assumption that directly led to the abolition of slavery, the extension of voting rights, public education. It also led to a vexed understanding of what deliberative bodies were supposed to do: 1) find the right answer, or 2) find a good enough policy. It’s interesting that the Federalist Papers vary among those two ways of thinking about deliberation.

The first is inherently authoritarian, since it assumes that people who have the wrong answer are stupid, have bad motives, are dupes, and should therefore be dismissed, shouted down, expelled. This way of thinking about politics leads to a cycle of purification (both Danton and Robespierre ended up guillotined).[2] I’m open to persuasion on this issue, but, as far as I know, any community that begins with the premise that there is a correct answer, and it’s obvious to good people, ends up in a cycle of purification. I’d love to hear about any counter-examples.

The second is one that makes some children of the Enlightenment stabby. It seems to them to mean that we are watering down an obviously good policy (the one that looks good to them) in order to appease people who are wrong. What’s weird about a lot of self-identified leftists is that we claim to value difference while actually denying that it should be valued when it comes to policy disagreements.

We’re still children of Enlightenment philosophers who assumed that there is a right policy, and that anyone who disagrees with us is a benighted fool.

Another weird aspect of Enlightenment philosophers was that they accepted a very old model of communication—the notion that if you tell people the truth they will comprehend it (unless they’re bad people). This is the transmission model of communication. Enlightenment philosophers, bless their pointed little heads, often seemed to assume that enlightening others simply involved getting the message right. (I think JQA’s rhetoric lectures are a great example of that model.)

I think that what people who support democracy, fairness, compassion, and accountability are now facing is a situation that has been brewing since the 1990s—a media committed to demonizing democracy, fairness, compassion, and in-group accountability. It’s a media that has inoculated its audience against any criticism of the GOP.

And far too many people are responding in an Enlightenment fashion—that the problem is that the Democratic Party didn’t get its rhetoric right. As though, had the Democratic Party transmitted the right message, people who reject on sight anything even remotely critical of the GOP would have chosen to vote Dem. Ted Cruz won reelection because he had ads about transgender kids playing girls’ sports. That wasn’t about rhetoric, but about policy.

We aren’t here because Harris’ didn’t get her rhetoric right. Republicans have a majority of state legislatures and governorships. This isn’t about Harris or the Dem party; this is about Republican voters. To imagine that Harris’ or the Dems’ rhetoric is to blame is to scapegoat. Blame Republican voters.

We are in a complicated time without a simple solution. Here is the complicated solution: Republicans have to reject what Trump is doing.

I think that people who oppose Trump and what he’s doing need to brainstorm ways to get Republican voters to reject their pro-Trump media and their kowtowing representatives.

I think that is a strategy necessary for our getting this train to stop wrecking, and I think it’s complicated and probably involves a lot of different strategies. And I think we shouldn’t define that strategy by deductive reasoning—I think this is a time when inductive reasoning is our friend. If there is a strategy that will work now, it’s worked in the past. So, what’s likely to work?





[1] The British Enlightenment didn’t make the rational/irrational split in the same way that the Cartesian tradition did. For the British philosophers, there wasn’t a binary between logic and feelings; for them, sentiments enhance reasonable deliberation, but the passions inhibit it.

[2] There’s some research out there that suggests that failure causes people to want to purify the in-group. My crank theory is that it depends on the extent to which people are pluralist.