Folk rhetorical theory and the “argumentum ad Hitlerum”

[This is a talk–a revised version of one I posted earlier–so it doesn’t have links.]

Wayne Booth once complained that, when he mentioned he was an English teacher, people on trains wanted to talk about commas. If he had told them he taught rhetoric, they would have said something about Hitler. In papers in argumentation classes, Hitler references are as common, and as welcome, as dawn of time introductions. Like dawn of time introductions, Hitler references aren’t unwelcome because they’re always wrong, but simply because they’re so easy, so thoughtless, and so rarely relevant. In politics, it’s even worse; hence the argumentum ad hitlerum fallacy, or Godwin’s law. Despite the miasma of Hitler references in politics, and Hitler’s reputation as the most powerful rhetor, teachers and scholars of rhetoric tend to avoid him.

We do so for various reasons, but at least one is that the popular (and even, to some extent, scholarly) understanding of Hitler’s power is far more simplistic than the case merits that it seems hopelessly complicated to try to get in and untangle it. I want to argue that is why Hitler should figure more in our teaching and scholarship. The popular (let’s call it folk) explanation of Hitler’s success is simplistic and inaccurate, but it’s powerful in that it fits with the folk explanation of persuasion, which fits with the folk explanation of what distinguishes ethical from unethical persuasion, which fits with folk notions about what constitutes good versus bad citizenship.

Talking about Hitler is a way of talking about the problems with all those mutually confirming, and similarly damaging, folk explanations.

And here a note about terminology: when I proposed this paper, I was strongly influenced by Ariel Kruglanski’s discussion of lay epistemology—that is, the common sense way that non-experts think thinking works. But, the more I worked on the issue, the more I realized that it isn’t a question of experts v. non-experts—Kenneth Burke, various scholars of demagoguery, some historians, and other experts assume the explanations I’m talking about. I came to think the better analogy is Christopher Achens and Larry Bartels’ discussion of what they call the “folk theory of democracy” which, as they point out, serves as the basis for a lot of scholarly work on political science and theory.

Here are the four folk explanations:

    • The folk explanation of what happened in Germany is that Hitler is the exemplar of a magician rhetor because he “swung a great people in his wake” (Burke 164), hypnotized the masses (and his generals, the generals claimed post-war). The disasters of Nazism are thereby explained monocausally: Hitler was a pure rhetorical agent, whose oratorical skill transformed the German people into his unthinking tools.
    • This explanation appeals to the folk explanation of persuasion, in which a rhetor determines an intention, identifies a target audience, and then creates a text that contains the desired message (often presented visually as an arrow) and shoots it at the target. If it hits, the target audience now believes what the rhetor wanted them to believe, and it was effective rhetoric. (Obviously, this reduces all public discourse to compliance gaining.)
    • Ethical rhetoric is one in which the rhetor, and the message the rhetor is sending, are ethical. And that is determined by ethical people asking themselves if the message is ethical (sometimes by whether the rhetor is ethical); Hitler’s rhetoric was unethical because it was intended to do unethical things. This is the folk explanation of the ethical/unethical distinction.
    • There are unethical rhetors out there, and, therefore, good citizens are ones who think carefully about the message being shot at them.. That is, the dominant popular way of describing and imagining participants in public deliberation is as consumers of a product—they can be savvy consumers, who think carefully about whether it really is a good product, or they can be loyal consumers, who always stick to one brand, or they can be suckers, easily duped by inferior products (and so on). Good citizens think carefully about the political messages they consume. Ethical citizens recognize an unethical rhetors and unethical messages, and resist them.

These are powerful narratives in that they enable the fantasy that each of us is a good citizen, an ethical person, who recognizes unethical arguments, and would, therefore have opposed Hitler, and continues to oppose anyone like Hitler. (Hence argumentum ad Hitlerum—it isn’t about the political figure in question; it’s about a performative of being an ethical person with good judgment.)

These models are refuted by theoretical work (e.g., Biesecker’s 1989 “Rethinking the Rhetorical Situation”) or empirical work on political reasoning (e.g., the work summarized in 2013 The Rationalizing Voter). They aren’t just wrong; they’re importantly wrong. They rely on a pleasurable but entirely indefensible othering of Germans.

That’s wrong, as I’ll discuss, but it’s importantly wrong because this explanation of what happened in Nazi Germany can make people feel good about themselves while they’re replicating the errors that Germans made. It says that, if you believe you are thinking critically about what a rhetor says, you are making sure it fits with what you think is ethical, and you only put your trust in someone you think is ethical, then you will never make the mistake Germans did.

This explanation of what happened in Germany is partially the consequence of post-war renarrrations of pre-war events. Large numbers of Germans post-war claimed they didn’t know about the genocides, they had nothing to do with it, and they resisted Hitler in their hearts. The Wehrmacht officers claimed they were just following orders (sometimes unwillingly), didn’t know about the genocides, and couldn’t break their oath to Hitler. Officials of churches claimed they were the real victims, and had resisted the Nazis all along.

None of that was true. Christopher Browning (Ordinary Men), Robert Gellately (Backing Hitler), Ian Kershaw (Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution), Michael Mann (Fascists) and various other scholars have shown that participation in, support for, or pragmatic acquiescence toward the genocides, imprisonment, and war-mongering of the Nazis were considerable and often strategic and instrumental. People were not swept up by Hitler’s rhetoric. Support for the Enabling Act was a strategic gamble. Support for Hitler and the Nazis increased after he took power because people liked the improved unemployment rate, the remilitarization of Germany, the rejection of various treaties, the reassertion of German’s entitlement to European hegemony, the conservative social agenda. Ian Kershaw says,

“The feeling that the government was energetically combating the great problems of unemployment, rural indebtedness, and poverty, and the first noticeable signs of improvement in these areas, gave rise to new hopes and won Hitler and his government growing stature and prestige.” (Hitler Myth 61)

They either liked or didn’t care about the antisemitism, jailing of political opponents, politicization of the judiciary. They didn’t think Hitler was unethical, and they didn’t think his policies were unethical. Many thought he was a decisive leader who was getting things done, and many thought he was chaotic and unpredictable, but getting them what they wanted.

For instance, the Wehrmacht was not constituted of innocent victims of Hitler’s rhetoric or hopelessly bound by their oaths. As Robert Citino says, “The officers shared many of Hitler’s goals, however—defiance of the Treaty of Versailles, rearmament, restoration of Germany’s Great Power status—and they had supported him as long as his success lasted” (Last Stand 205). The officer class helped Hitler come to power in 1932-33 because

“They saw Hitler as a fellow nationalist, a bit crude, but one who could win the masses to the nationalist and conservative cause. His opposition to Marxism, his plans for German rearmament, his anti-Semitism: all these things harmonized well with the essentially premodern world view of the officer corps.” (Citino, Last Stand 211)

That he would later destroy Germany, enable the USSR to gain territory, and destroy the German officer class meant that post-war they could try to present themselves as having been victims all along—but they had helped him get into power, supported him in power, knew about the genocides, and engaged in them.

Similarly, that Hitler did, as he said he would, disempower the churches and imprison those who resisted Nazi control of the churches means that some people now try to claim that the two major confessions—Catholic and Lutheran—resisted Hitler and Nazism. But they only resisted Nazi interference in Church power, and then only fairly late. There was criticism of the euthanasia program, and some criticism of the extermination of converted Jews, but it was little and it was late. The Church Wars were about issues of Church autonomy, not genocide. Like the officer class, many Catholic and Lutheran church officials would regret having supported Hitler (many would claim that the problem wasn’t Hitler, but Nazi administrators acting on their own initiative), but support him they did. Had the Catholic party (the Centre Party) not unanimously voted for the Enabling Act, it would not have passed.

Catholics and Lutherans were concerned about reinstating the privileges reduced by the Socialist Democrats (who believed in a separation of church and state) and the political agenda they believed was the core of being “Christian”—opposition to birth control, homosexuality, abortion, pornography.

Germans were persuaded during the Nazi regime—people came to accept and act on policies they would have balked at before 1930—but not because they heard a Hitler speech and were magically hypnotized. They did so, largely for instrumental reasons.

Culturally, our discussions of Hitler are dominated by what Ian Kershaw calls “the Hitler myth”—that he was a magically charismatic leader who overwhelmed Germans’ capacity to judge. That isn’t what happened: Germans judged, and they liked what they saw.

My point is that these four folk explanations–of Hitler, persuasion, ethical rhetoric, and good citizenship– are not just inaccurate, but are inaccurate in ways that reinforce factionalism, obstructionism, and politics as performance of in-group loyalty. Talking. more about Hitler is a way to talk about what’s wrong with those explanations.

Avocado toast, Orwell, homelessness, and prosperity gospel

When I was teaching first year courses in argumentation, one of my favorite texts for sparking interesting arguments about poverty, homelessness, and working conditions was George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London. His description of poverty usefully vexed a tendency to approach the issues in “liberal v. conservative” ways, and helped students move beyond thinking about an economic issue in terms of feeling or not feeling “sorry” for the homeless, let alone overworked and underpaid dishwashers. The book shifted the argument from whether the homeless are or are not “bringing it on themselves” (that is, whether their identity is villain or victim) to policy arguments about strategies. On the whole, the self-identified Christians in the classes at Berkeley tended to argue for some kind of intervention, with disagreements (even among themselves) as to what it should be. I liked that. I don’t like binaries.

I moved to a much more conservative region, and discovered the book didn’t thwart the “they brought it on themselves and therefore don’t deserve help” argument, for some self-identified Christian students. The first time it happened, the student (call zir Chester) was really angry with Orwell. Chester said something like, “Well, of course he’s homeless; he’s wasting money.” My response was, “How so?” Chester answered, “He talks about smoking, so clearly he’s spending money on cigarettes.” Other students pointed out that Orwell very clearly said he (and other “tramps” as he called them) were picking up discarded cigarette butts, and smoking them, or picking out the last bits of tobacco and re-rolling them. There was no evidence he was spending money.

Chester argued that meant that Orwell and the tramps must have been spending money on rolling paper. Some students argued that we don’t know that, but one student (call zir Hubert) said, “Even if he was, that would have been a few pennies.” Chester said, “He should have saved those pennies.” I liked Chester a lot, but at this point even I was confused—“And done what with them?” Chester said, “Save them.” Hubert asked how—Orwell couldn’t open an account with a few pennies, and it wasn’t as though he could buy stock (or whether buying stock at that point was even a smart investment—this was the 30s). Chester brushed off any of those questions about how, practically, Orwell could have taken the few pennies he might (or might not) have spent on rolling paper (or perhaps even tobacco) and invested it for financial security.

That was my first exposure to prosperity gospel.

Orwell’s situation wasn’t some consequence of his personal failings or lack of work ethic; it was the consequence of a world economic situation, and the ways his government was (or was not) responding to them. Hubert didn’t see how Orwell’s refusing to smoke would change the worldwide and systemic factors that caused homelessness and poverty—Hubert wanted to know what to do with the pennies.

The Huberts of the world now post on Facebook and tweet about how bizarre it is that some political figure argues that “millennials” or “urban poor” (do I hear whistling?) or “that person using WIC” (that whistling is really loud) or “immigrants” (why are my dogs barking?) aren’t really poor because they eat avocado toast, have nice shoes, bought chips, have i-phones.

The Huberts of the world point out that there is no practical action a person could take that would mean forgoing avocado toast, chips, i-phones, or nice shoes would enable that person to gain financial security.

But for the Chesters of the world, getting economic security isn’t an pragmatic (and economic) system of taking money from one place and investing it; it’s a spiritual system (an issue of “character” or “will”). Orwell’s mistake, for Chester, wasn’t spending money on smoking—it was smoking. Smoking is an indulgence.

In this world, smoking, avocado toast, nice shoes, chips, i-phones are all indulgences. If you are the sort of person who engages in indulgences, you will never be rewarded with wealth. Had Orwell refused to smoke, he would have … I don’t know, something. This whole way of thinking seems to be so blazingly irrational, and theologically indefensible, that I’m still unclear on the relationship of claims.

This notion that being a person who resists smoking (but doesn’t always resist sexual assault) also has to do with the current fundagelical obsession with control (largely Strict Father Morality). In this world, good people, especially good men, control their desire for indulgence (they also control others, but that’s a different post). If they are in control, they are rewarded with wealth (which, oddly enough, enables them to have all the avocado toast they want, but no one claims this ideology is internally consistent). The assumption is that being a rigid person who believes in God and engages in strict self-control means you will prosper.

So, it isn’t about what you would do with the money you saved by not smoking or not eating avocado toast. It’s about being the sort of person who doesn’t indulge in smoking or avocado toast. We don’t need an argument about avocado toast; we need an argument about prosperity gospel.

Conservative Christians’ support for Trump isn’t hypocrisy

[Image from here]

Many people are dismayed and shocked at how self-described conservative Christians are justifying our government’s heartless treatment of immigrant children. Since most (perhaps all) of these “Christians” are descendants of people who made exactly the same decision they are now characterizing as “irresponsible parenting,” it’s tempting to call their stance hypocritical.

It isn’t. There is no conflict between American conservative evangelical Christians’ support for an authoritarian, anti-democratic, corrupt, bigot and their fundamental values. Those are their values. They’ve always supported bigoted authoritarianism. They always do.

Self-identified conservatives are, as Elizabeth Theiss-Morse’s research shows, if they consider themselves patriotic, “more likely to set stricter boundaries on who counts as American and therefore  to limit who should receive the benefits of group membership.” (98) What Theiss-Morse calls “strong identifiers” (that is, people who identify strongly with their in-group)  tend to rely heavily on stereotypes about groups. So, people who self-identify as conservative evangelical Christians are more likely to believe stereotypes about out-groups (immigrants, poor people, non-whites, non-conservatives) as lazy, indulgent, weak, and therefore not deserving of support.

Self-identified conservative Christians read Scripture as advocating an us v. them attitude that calls on Christians to protect “us.” And they define “us” by political, not Scriptural, agenda. And certainly not by what Christ emphasized.

Look, for instance, at a defense  of how “evangelicals” are supporting Trump . And notice, first, that the author assumes that all evangelicals are white, and politically conservative. In other words, as I said, Brown’s sense of “us” (which he falsely identifies as evangelicals) is actually his very narrow sense of who is truly “us.” The no true Scotsman fallacy.

Brown’s argument is fallacious and authoritarian to the core. It’s also a rejection of Jesus.

Brown doesn’t think self-identifying evangelical Christians count if they don’t share his very narrow political agenda. They aren’t even in his world. He only thinks in terms of his in-group’s self-identification: as “evangelicals” who have a very specific (and very new) political agenda.

Brown admits that politically conservative white evangelicals “made a gross miscalculation” to think Trump would “change the moral fabric of the nation,” and defending Trump’s treatment toward others has “compromised [their] moral authority]”.

But, he says, ignore all that because Hillary Clinton would have made things much worse because “she would be a staunch opponent of our religious liberties, a zealous advocate for abortion, and a supporter of radical LGBT activism.”

Let’s be clear: Brown is not an advocate of religious liberty on principle. He is, as he says, concerned about “our” religious liberties (meaning his). He isn’t concerned about the religious liberties of evangelical Christians who disagree with him about politics, let alone about the religious liberties of non-Christians. Trump’s judicial appointments are doing extraordinary damage to the principle of religious liberty. But, he’s doing great for people who want the liberty to treat other religions in a way they wouldn’t want to be treated. Brown likes that.

Brown is only concerned about the very narrow “us” and he wants that “us” to be treated differently from how other groups are treated.

HRC wasn’t an advocate for abortion, and he isn’t supporting a policy agenda that would reduce abortion. Radical LGBT activism is simply his term for queer people asking that they be treated as Brown wants to be treated, that they have the same rights he does. Brown doesn’t like the idea that the government would treat others as he wants to be treated.

Jesus never mentioned abortion or homosexuality, and, as many people have shown, Scripture is more oriented toward issues of our treatment of the poor than it is about abortion or homosexuality.  As has been shown over and over, bigoted readings of clobber verses about homosexuality are incoherent.  Yet Brown never mentions anything about the poor, about a Christian attitude toward immigration, about opposition to violence and war.

Brown thinks, correctly, that Trump is promoting Brown’s very limited political agenda. Brown thinks his political agenda is evangelical Christian. That’s where he’s wrong. What Brown wants the government to do is a violation of how Jesus says we should behave.

Brown might be able to cherry-pick Scripture to argue that his political agenda is Scriptural, but he can’t cherry pick what Jesus said—he wants a government that enables him to do unto others as he would not have done unto him.

Brown’s “Christianity” is religious demagoguery. He is arguing for a government grounded in an “us” (people who think the way he does) who are privileged in every aspect and a “them” (people who disagree with him) who should be punished, marginalized, and treated differently.

Unhappily, Brown is not unusual for conservative Christianity. It’s worth remembering that conservative Christianity was on the side of slavery  segregation , and are still on the side of marital rape. Conservative Christians justified Roy Moore’s pedophilia, Trump’s sexual assaults (he bragged about watching underage girls undress), Kavanaugh’s plausible accusation of assault. They don’t really care very much about rape. They also don’t care about the poor.

Advocates of slavery and segregation, conservative Christians, sometimes (rarely) responded to progressive Christian arguments that slavery and segregation violated Christ’s “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” And their argument was always some version of why that didn’t apply, why it was less important than other cherry-picked bits from Scripture. That’s why anti-slavery and anti-segregation rhetoric posed the same assertion that enraged conservative evangelicals: they said, “I am a man.” Conservative Christians rejected that claim; they rejected Jesus’ call.

Current “conservative Christians” are the same. They still can’t defend their politics in terms of what Jesus very clearly said: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Instead, they argue that we are in a battle between good and evil that means we should reject what Jesus said in order to save “us.”

American conservative Christians have always been getting their panties in a bunch about how they are being oppressed, about how they are in an existential fight against extermination, and it’s never been true, and it’s always been in service of enacting oppressive, exclusive, and bigoted policies against some other. It’s always been in service of rejecting what Jesus very clearly said.

Doing unto others as you would have them do unto you means that you, and everyone who disagrees with you, are held to the same standards. Were conservative Christians to follow Jesus’ rule (they don’t, and they never have), then they would have to say that their desire for a “conservative evangelical” to have the “religious liberty” to preach in classrooms, would mean that they’d have to be fine with a terrorist Zoroastrian doing the same.

They aren’t okay with their very narrow understanding of Christianity being treated equally with all other religious beliefs because American conservative evangelical Christianity is, and always has been, a rejection of what Jesus’ commandment that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. American conservative evangelical Christianity has always been on the wrong side of history; it has never been about caring for the marginalized, doing unto others, abjuring violence.

Progressive Christians opposed slavery; progressive Christians opposed segregation; progressive Christians advocate effective policies regarding abortion, progressive Christians advocate compassionate and non-punitive policies about the poor, immigrants, and the marginalized. American conservative evangelical Christianity is, and always has been, about rejecting Jesus’ commandment that we do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Progressive Christians are the ones who’ve taken that seriously.

So, no, conservative evangelical “Christians”’ heartlessness about children being separated from parents isn’t hypocrisy—it isn’t a violation of their core beliefs; it’s perfectly consistent with the values they have and have always had.

On false binaries and teacher neutrality

I was taught and trained by liberal humanists, who relied heavily on the seminar method—we’d read a provocative text, and then come to class and argue about it. The job of the teacher was to mediate the generally vehement debate (it was Berkeley, after all), a task that different faculty enacted in different ways. While some of them clearly favored one side or another (as indicated through raised eyebrows, a smile, or even active participation), most of them tried to keep the debate more or less equal either by staying entirely out of it, and just trying to keep the argument from falling too deeply into ad hominem or ad baculum (although all arguments had at least a few people skid through the edges of those ponds), or a few had the strategy of taking the side of the less-skilled interlocutors (insisting that all points of view be treated as equally valid, even if they weren’t equally well defended) and intermittently playing devil’s advocate of various possible positions. While it was clear that the first sort of teacher was actively promoting a point of view, it was conventional to talk (and think) about the latter two pedagogies as the teacher having a “neutral” stance.

And there are considerable educational benefits of those latter two pedagogies—clearly grounded in the humanist tradition of Mathew Arnold and Kenneth Burke, those teachers treated us not only as though every student’s stance was as valid as any other student’s, but as though our literally sophomoric reactions to the central questions of the Western humanistic tradition were as valid as the authors whom we were reading. One of my favorite professors explained why he had students reading Plato, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud in first-year argumentation courses. He said he wanted students to feel that they too could contribute to the long and great debate, and to see that even famous authors had glitchy (or even actively dodgy) arguments. Coming from a working class background himself, he wanted to undermine the notion that Great Authors had nothing to say to non-elite students, and those students had nothing to say back.

I mention all this because, by talking about problems with this pedagogy, I’m not advocating abandoning every aspect of it—I think there is value to honoring sophomoric reactions to complicated texts, and I often say that I benefitted from being trained by humanists who didn’t make an issue of my gender. On the other hand, I equally often say, there were problems with being trained by humanists who didn’t acknowledge that my gender was an issue.

One such moment was when a class was discussing some writings by the Marquis de Sade, and my own visceral reaction to treating rape as a joke and rape-porn as thoughtful philosophy was shouted down, particularized, and pathologized. That course was taught on the basis of the teacher not intervening at all, and I was suddenly profoundly aware that my stance on the material was not equally valid because it was my stance—a woman whose concerns about being raped on the way home from class were dismissed as paranoia.

I was touchy on this issue because, as I walking home from one of the seminar meetings (which ended in the evening) a car full of men started cruising me, with the men telling me about wanting to rape me. I just walked up to a doorway and knocked, and they went on. Not that it matters, but it was in the midst of a bunch of frats with very bad reputations, and they looked like frat boys to me. Berkeley, at that time, was in the midst of an extraordinary number of rapes.

My professors were neutral on that issue, and my reaction to de Sade was explicitly dismissed as not neutral. One of the students in the class (who later wrote his dissertation on de Sade) said that no one could find de Sade erotic, which meant I was now explaining things like snuff and rape porn in a graduate seminar. I was easily moved into the box of “crazy woman.” One of the faculty, the one reknowned for remarking on the asses of women students, and who was having an affair with an undergrad, did, after that, undermine me in all sorts of ways. The other professor became my dissertation director, and told me he would never teach de Sade again. So, which one was “neutral”?

I’m not sure I believe in neutrality as a goal or virtue, but I would say that the person who most worked toward fairness was the one who acknowledged that his personal experience was particular, and that others had (and have) other experiences.

I loved (and still love) my training—I got three degrees there, after all. I’ve had a dream career, and I still stand back and find footing in principles I learned at the Berkeley Rhetoric program. The Berkeley Rhetoric Department had faculty whose commitment to inclusive deliberation, writing instruction as meaningful intellectual work, and passionate commitment to the notion that all students can engage with the intellectual tradition informs every class I teach.

Yet, on the whole, there was a sense of training as the liberal humanist model. And it didn’t always work. The premise of the first-year argumentation course was that papers should be written to be persuasive to the opposition position (a pedagogy that still informs how I teach). In the teaching practicum, we were asked to write papers like that, and a colleague wanted to write a paper about how, for a woman walking alone every strange man is a rapist—to think otherwise is dangerous. That wasn’t her main point. I think she wanted to advocate some change to campus policies regarding safety or training, but I don’t remember because she never got past that sentence in the paper. She was presenting this paper in a graduate course about pedagogy, and the whole discussion exploded. Several males were insulted to be called rapists, which is how they read the argument, and couldn’t read it as a fairly accurate claim from a perspective they don’t have. The goal of a “neutral” classroom meant that her (our) experience as women who have to treat every strange male as a potential rapist were counted as equally valid as his feelings of being insulted.

One last example. I was teaching in a relatively small college in a fairly small and very conservative town, and was continuing to require that students try to persuade opposition audiences, and I was trying to have the same open and vehement discussions I’d had in Berkeley. We had read George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, and the most talkative student in the class had no sympathy for Orwell or the other homeless—he mentioned smoking cigarettes, so he was clearly using his money irresponsibly. (This is pretty typical of people who believe in prosperity gospel.) My training at Berkeley made me think that I could invite students to make any argument they wanted, and all those arguments would be shared, in peer review, with all the other students.

That made me neutral. But it didn’t at all.

Another student (who had spent some time homeless because his parents had kicked him out of the house for being gay) was livid, but couldn’t make his argument in that college in that community because of the potentially violent consequences to him personally if he came out. Whether I was personally or pedagogically neutral didn’t matter—the classroom wasn’t neutral because the community wasn’t.

One characteristic shared in these examples is the tendency to focus on teacher neutrality as though that is both necessary and sufficient for a neutral classroom, and my point is that it isn’t. I don’t think we can have a “neutral” classroom, and I’ve come to think we shouldn’t. I teach about various genocides, and I feel no obligation to be neutral on issues such as whether they actually happened, whether they were morally defensible, or whether the victims brought it on themselves. They did, they weren’t, and they didn’t. Biology professors don’t have to be neutral about evolution, physics professors don’t have to be neutral as to whether gravity is a fact (or if it’s really “intelligent falling”), and geologists don’t have to allow equal time in the classroom for flatearthers.

But neither does that mean that the teacher has the truth and the classroom should be a place in which we pour our truth into the empty heads of students. My favorite teacher as an undergraduate described teaching argumentation as trying to get students into the range of plausible and well-argued claims. Our job isn’t to reward students for getting the right answer, he said, but for putting together a good-enough argument. And, he said, if you’re doing your job, there should be students getting good grades with whom you deeply disagree, and students getting not good grades who share your politics. That isn’t a neutral classroom, because we bring judgment to bear on the arguments, but neither is it an indoctrination session.

It’s hard for us to think about neutrality effectively in pedagogy because our culture has a sloppy neo-post positivist construction of what it means for anyone or anything (a teacher, a text, an author, a news program) to be neutral. Even in composition studies, there is a tendency to create a binary of epistemologies, and assume that there is either naïve realism (it is easy to perceive Reality) or some kind of extreme social constructivism (so that there is no reality external to language or no human can make claims about it). For naïve realists, a “neutral” statement (aka, objective, unbiased, or factual) is one that immediately appears true to a reasonable person—neutrality is the same as non-controversial. (It ends up being “non-controversial to the in-group”, but that’s a different argument.) For rigid social constructivists, there is no such thing as neutrality, nor even degrees of it, so we are all swamped in our own miasma of socially constructed beliefs (except about social construction, which is a factually-based statement and universally true claim). As is clear from my snark, I don’t think either position is either valid or helpful. But, more important than my judgment is the consequence of the belief that there are only two options: many people defend a simplistic naïve realism because they reject the rigid social constructivism and vice versa.

We can have better arguments about teacher neutrality when we have a richer sense of the range of epistemologies—not all realisms are naïve realism, and not all forms of skepticism are rigid social constructivism. Further, we don’t have to agree on any specific epistemology. To have better arguments about neutrality we just have to acknowledge that there are various kinds of fallibilism—that, because of various kinds of cognitive biases, something might appear to be true and yet be wrong, and we can leave it to others to argue about just how wrong we inevitably are. That is, our job is to make students aware that “neutral,” “objective,” “non-controversial to people like me,” “factual,” and “true” aren’t necessarily the same things. And to acknowledge cognitive biases is not to claim that we have no ability to reflect on our own thinking, to make plausible claims about a shared world, or to assess claims.

In short, I’m saying that neutrality isn’t possible as an epistemological or political position, and refusing to intervene in class discussions doesn’t mean our classrooms are neutral. There is another way to think about neutrality, however, that is potentially useful: that we apply the same standards across all groups regardless of group identity.

Just as there are different epistemologies, there are different biases. And, while we can’t be bias-free (that isn’t how human cognition works) we can be aware of what biases are likely to harm us, our students, and our teaching. The main cognitive bias that makes epistemological neutrality unlikely (perhaps even impossible) is in-group favoritism. We tend to perceive people like us as more reliable (even “objective”), having nobler motives, and providing better arguments (we will tend to fill in the gaps in their arguments). Thus, for instance, the male teachers in my experience thought the male reactions to rape were the unbiased ones, because they seemed unemotional, and an unemotional reaction to the possibility of being raped seemed sensible simply because they shared the experience of not worrying about being raped.

It wasn’t anything about logic or emotion; it was about in-group favoritism, with no awareness that that was what was going on.
We are going to have in- and out-group students in our classes, and we are going to be biased toward in-group members. We can stop trying to be epistemologically neutral and instead strive for being fair.

It’s my passion for fairness that caused me to abandon “open” assignments (which I think are tremendously unfair in all sorts of ways). We can set up assignment prompts that are fair insofar as the projects require comparable amounts of time and effort, will result in “writing” (whether papers, podcasts, multimedia projects, or other kinds of texts) that can be assessed by the same standards, and on which we, the teacher, do not have a “right” (or even preferred) answer.

That last criterion is important. We shouldn’t invite students to write papers that will identify them as members of a group we cannot evaluate by the same standards we would use for members of an in-group. They might be members of groups we find appalling, but we should not set ourselves up as judges of their souls. This emphasis on standards that operate across groups doesn’t mean that there is a level playing field for all points of view. If, for instance, we require that students treat a reasonable opposition argument fairly, and/or use scholarly sources, certain arguments are almost impossible to make. And it’s appropriate that we set such requirements, since those are the conventions of academic discourse we are supposed to be teaching.

One advantage of relatively specific assignments is that it’s more straightforward to ensure that students from various political positions can still write good papers, and even to ensure that writing a good paper does not require students to divulge their political, religious, or cultural views.
And the last point I’d make about teacher neutrality is that many people, especially moderately authoritarian ones (a position that appear anywhere on the political spectrum), assume that we are presenting texts as containers of truth—we should only teach texts with which we agree, and that we think are true. Authoritarian teaching methods—insisting that students agree with everything we say or we have them read—doesn’t successfully inculcate that content (we won’t make students into feminists by having them read Susan B. Anthony). But authoritarian grading methods—insisting that students endorse Susan B. Anthony’s arguments in their projects and class commentary by punishing students who don’t—does model and endorse authoritarianism. And authoritarianism and democracy don’t mix.

ASHR talk: “Lay rhetorical theory and argumentum ad hitlerum”

[Image from here.]

Although Adolf Hitler and rhetoric are deeply entangled in popular culture, and argumentum ad hitlerum a pervasive fallacy in public discourse, there is very little recent scholarship in rhetoric about Hitler. While the reasons for avoiding Hitler are both varied and valid, in this paper I want to argue that those are also the very reasons we should be teaching, writing, and talking more about Hitler, his rhetoric, and the conditions of persuasion.

Briefly, the case of Hitler appears simultaneously too obvious and too complicated for scholars and teachers of rhetoric to pay much scholarly or pedagogical attention to him or his rhetoric. Hitler appears to be the example of the powers of bad rhetoric, a man who, in Kenneth Burke’s words, “swung a great people into his wake” (164); that is, the story of Hitler appears to confirm lay rhetorical theory’s monocausal narrative of rhetoric being a powerful rhetor whose discursive skill transforms the irrational masses into unthinking tools.

This narrative of Hitler and his rhetoric seems to confirm lay rhetorical models of persuasion, a model encapsulated in the notion of a purely agentic speaker who shoots an arrow (the message) into the head of the target audience. This model assumes an asymmetric relationship between rhetor and audience (the rhetor has the power and the audience is a passive recipient, or not, of information). This model also assumes that an “engaged” audience is not purely passive in reception, but engages critical thinking as a kind of “filter” (the metaphor often invoked) of the rhetor’s message. The role of the audience is to judge the message. That is, the dominant popular way of describing and imagining participants in public deliberation is as consumers of a product—they can be savvy consumers, who think carefully about whether it really is a good product, or they can be loyal consumers, who always stick to one brand, or they can be suckers, easily duped by inferior products (and so on).

This isn’t how communication works, as both theoretical arguments (e.g., Biesecker’s 1989 “Rethinking the Rhetorical Situation”) and empirical work (especially work on confirmation bias) clearly show, but that isn’t my point. Regardless of how scholars model the complicated relationship among audiences, context, texts, and intentions, in popular culture, there is still the tendency to describe audiences using a consumer/marketing model.

Popular conceptions of Hitler fit neatly with that model—he was a witch doctor, in Burke’s terms, who sold snake oil (ignore the mixed metaphors) to a gullible and desperate audience. This (false) narrative of what went wrong in Weimar Germany ensures that people will not recognize when we are making the mistakes that Hitler’s backers made—because 1) we have defined Hitler’s supporters as hopelessly other (no one sees themselves as a potential mark), and 2) we’ve misdefined the mistakes.

argumentum ad Hiterlum is the consequence of that othering—we accuse any effective rhetor who is popular with an out-group of being Hitler. In addition, there is a kind of timelessness of judgment, and we tend to see our perceptions acontextually—we assume that we would have looked at Hitler then as we look at him now—knowing what we know now. But Hitler didn’t look like Hitler—while there was always evidence that he had genocidal, expansionist, and militaristic aims—but that rhetoric could be (and were) dismissed as mere metaphor not to be taken literally. That his arguments were, to the elite, clearly nonsensical and profoundly dishonest (perhaps delusional) meant they thought he could be easily outmaneuvered. That his arguments were, to many people (elite and non-elite), common and familar (racism, German exceptionalism, social conservatism, vague anti-elitism) meant that they thought he could be trusted to understand how common people think.

He had many arguments and qualities that made some groups uncomfortable—Nazis’ (deserved) reputation for hostility to Christianity, and Hitler’s own intermittent claims of being Christian, concerned many conservative Christians, both Lutheran and Catholic. That he would later work to reduce their power, and had plans for marginalizing the established churches entirely, makes many Christians believe they would not have supported him (there is even the blazingly counter-factual claim that Hitler did not have the support of Christians, as well as the hyperbolic claim that he “persecuted” Christians). The fact is that Christians’ support of Hitler was crucial—the Catholic Party supported “The Enabling Act” (the act that made him dictator) unanimously. (Only the Communists and Social Democrats voted against it.)

Later harassment of Christian churches made some Christians regret their support (such as Niemoller), but many found ways to dissociate the Nazi attacks on church power from Hitler himself, insisting that it must be happening without his knowledge. Christians supported Hitler; they shouldn’t have, but they did. And even those who regretted supporting him did so because of Nazi weakening of Christian power structures, not out of a principled opposition to his treatment of Jews, his authoritarian government, the abrogation of human rights, the factionalizing of the judiciary, or the expansionist and inherently genocidal war. Those who stopped supporting him did so when, as Niemoller famously said, they came for him.

Understanding why so many people supported Hitler means, not seeing his supporters as dupes blind to his obviously evil character, but understanding why people across social and educational groups very much like us thought it made sense to support him, why his rabid antisemitism, militarism, rhetoric of victimization, and history of inciting and rationalizing violence against his critics was either attractive or dismissible.

And that means understanding that Hitler didn’t rise to power primarily because of his rhetoric.

Scholars of Hitler and Nazis, while acknowledging that Hitler was an impressive public speaker, emphasize other factors as more important than his personal ability to give a great speech. These include:

    • the important role of calculated and elite support for Hitler, essentially strategic politics. von Papen and Hindenberg weren’t persuaded by Hitler’s rhetoric—they thought he was a putz who could be played;
    • the role of Nazi, rather than Hitler’s, rhetoric. Memoirs, autobiographies, and various comments—even from before backing Hitler started to look like a mistake—show that many people came to Nazism via speakers other than Hitler, or not through speeches at all (such as via newspapers and magazines, or even through a desire to participate in the violence of the Freikorps). After the Nazi takeover in 1933, much of the rhetoric that would have persuaded people originated with Streicher, Goebbels, or the army of speakers and writers—most of whom were following Goebbels’ direction, and not Hitler’s.
      Even when it was Hitler’s direction, he was persuasive, as even he acknowledged, because he could count on his base only hearing (and only listening to) his version of events. After years of presenting the Soviet Union as the materialization of the Jewish-Bolshevik threat against which Germany and Germans must be implacably opposed, in 1939, Hitler announced that the USSR was a valuable ally and trusted friend. In 1941, he insisted on an about-face from Germans once again when the USSR reverted back to the nation with whom Germany was in an apocalyptic battle. Hitler attributed his success on that (and other instances in which public opinion had to be changed quickly) to complete control of media: “We have frequently found ourselves compelled to reverse the engine and to change, in the course of a couple of days, the whole trend of imparted news, sometimes with a complete volte face. Such agility would have been quite impossible, if we had not had firmly in our grasp that extraordinary instrument of power we call the press—and known how to make use of it” (Table Talk 480-1; see also 525).
    • that much of the conversion that happened during the Nazi regime was some version of strategic acquiescence. Historians emphasize that groups like the military chose to support Hitler despite misgivings because they believed, correctly, he would build up the military and fulfill the dream of German hegemony of Europe, finally achieving what had been the territorial goals of the Great War. There remains considerable debate as to exactly how much popular backing Hitler really had, since expressing criticism was so dangerous, with scholars like Gellately arguing it was considerable and others like Kershaw arguing that coercion played an important role. But all of them agree that much of the compliance was the consequence of changes to material conditions—the (apparently) improved economy, lower unemployment, a reduction of street violence, a conservative social agenda, a more reactionary judiciary less worried about the rights of the accused, recriminalizing of abortion, homosexuality, and birth control, and just the sense that Germany was again a respected and feared power. That is, much of Hitler’s support wasn’t because of his rhetoric, but his policies. His successful acquisition of territory without provoking war was the cause of his greatest popularity (in 1939, although some put the height in 1941, when the western Blitzkrieg had done so well)—in other words, propaganda of the deed.

I’m not, like some scholars in the 80s, rejecting Hitler as a factor at all, but simply pointing out that the situation isn’t accurately described by the monocausal narrative promoted by lay rhetorical theories.

People in Germany did change their minds—it’s generally agreed that large numbers of Germans came to new positions on such questions as whether they would participate personally in genocide (Ordinary Men), the ideal relationship with the USSR, the plausibility of a two-front war, and various other points. But they didn’t do so because, believing one thing they listened to a Hitler speech and suddenly believed something else entirely. Hitler’s rhetoric was effective because (and when) it fit with things his audience already believed, needed to believe, or needed to legitimate. His rhetoric was effective because (and when) it was not unique, and he alone was not creating the wake into which Germans would be drawn.

My point is that the popular fascination with Hitler gives scholars of rhetoric the opportunity to promote, not just better understandings of Hitler, but more nuanced understandings of the complicated ways and forces that cultures change beliefs.

Why y’all should read Lilliana Mason’s _Uncivil Agreements_

The book has a lot that is of interest only to scholars, and much that is of interest only to scholars in her field, but there is a lot that is useful to everyone. I think lefties can particularly benefit because she provides empirical research to show that a lot things we tend to do will not actually help (she isn’t alone in her claims about that–she pulls together a lot of research).

The empirical research, like hers, is clear that Americans agree on policy, especially policies that would imply higher taxes for the wealthy, reasonable gun control, government-funded healthcare, and various other progressive policies. But running candidates who advocate those policies won’t work because people (including a lot of lefties) vote on the basis of partisan identification.

They cheerfully (sometimes without knowing, sometimes completely aware) vote for political figures who will enact policies they don’t want, but they do it because their side winning is more important than any policy issue.

The more people identify with a political group–the more all their various group identifications align with a political party–the more they engage in motivated reasoning. People with cross-cutting identities are more likely to engage in empathy with other groups, advocate tolerance, and be willing to argue about policy.

This is a complicated point I won’t make here, but I think her book helped me understand the very specific ways that GOP trolls and clickbait fractured the left (and are already doing so today, especially in regard to AOC). Here are some of my favorite passages.

I read Goebbels’ 1945 diary entries so you don’t have to.

[Image from here]

The 1978 edition (ed. Hugh Trevor-Roper) of Goebbels’ Final Entries begins in late February 1945. By that time, the Battle of the Bulge was over, and it had failed. At this point, Germans have lost Budapest, Breslau is encircled, they’re calling up women, Dresden has been firebombed, bombings of major German cities are a nightly event, American troops have reached the Rhine. It goes downhill from there.

28 February. Goebbels’ reading of the situation is that Western countries are facing a “profound political crisis” with strikes “the order of the day”–so, any minute now, the Allies will collapse.[1] That same day he expresses outrage at “bolshevist atrocities” and, after a conversation with General Vlasov about the USSR in 1941, concludes, “The Soviet Union has had to weather precisely the same crises as we are now facing and that there is always a way out of these crises if one is determined not to knuckle under them.” [Thereby ignoring that USSR got through 1941 by having moved factories, still having access to resources, getting help from the US, and having a much larger potential military force. It was not just the will.]

2 March. “We can count on major operations in the east German area being possible by the end of March” and “if all goes well we can anticipate enormous success” [which is a nice example of a tautology, and summarizes Nazi strategic thinking at this point]. Also, the situation “is not reassuring” and “In the East too operations have not gone through as we expected.” But, meanwhile, he got a lot of letters telling him he made a great speech. Oh, and he condemns Roosevelt for megalomania.

3 March. Anglo-American troops are making progress. “We had never really visualized such a course of events.” [He did another speech that went over well, though.]

4 March. The population in the West is welcoming the Anglo-American troops. “This I had really not expected.” [Later he would—in many entries– blame this problem on the Nazi leadership rejecting his argument that they should openly abrogate the Geneva Convention.] He’s reading Carlyle on Frederick the Great, and that proves it will all be fine. Oh, and a lot of people thought “four weeks ago the situation was such that the majority of military experts had given us up for lost” but Hitler sure showed them! Hitler has a bullet-proof plan: “we must somehow succeed in holding firm in the West and the East.” Hitler also hopes to open talks with some one of the Allies, but, before they could start talks, “it is essential that we score some military success.” So, it’s a clear plan: hold the line everywhere, have some major military successes, and then open talks with one of the Allies. That’ll work.

7 March. [And a lot of other entries.] Goebbels is puzzled that publicizing Soviet atrocities isn’t turning world opinion in favor of the Nazis. [This is a common plaint: why can’t people see that Nazis are the real victims here?] He’s also grumpy that a lot of the “Germans” coming in from the East don’t really look German to him. At this point, he begins to blame Goering for all of the Nazis’ problems [a nice instance of projection—yes, it’s true that Goering screwed up, but Goebbels has screwed up just as much if not more].

8 March. Goebbels makes fun of Churchill for saying the war would end in two months. [VE-Day was 8 May.] “Our sole great hope at present lies in the U-boat war.” And “Rendulic has now put things in order in East Prussia.” So, really, everything is fine.

13 March. Hitler says there are new airplanes, so it’s all good (and, besides, Hitler had been right all along about what kind of aircraft Germany should have been producing) [This topos–what really matters here is who was right–runs throughout Hitler’s deliberations with his generals, and, less so, through Goebbels’ diaries. That’s interesting.][2]

14 March. “I refuse to be deterred by reports of so-called eyewitnesses.” [Germans in the west are cheerfully welcoming Anglo-American troops.]

21 March. He and Hitler have a long talk and agree “that we must hold firm at the front and if possible score a victory in order to start talking to the enemy.” Well, as long as he and Hitler have decided that the people at the front should hold firm, it’s all good. [It’s fascinating how often Goebbels and Hitler decide that the problem can be solved by telling people to be more steadfast. Sometimes they take a lot of time to yell at people to be more steadfast. ]

22 March. “The military situation both in East and West has become extraordinarily critical; during the course of the 24 hours it has changed noticeably to our disadvantage.” [Because up to that point it was pretty good?]

23 March. “I think that my work too is no longer being totally effective today.” He was getting a lot of reports of people surrendering instead of fighting to the death for Hitler. This might cause some people to think that perhaps things were getting a little bleak for Germany. But, no, his reading of Carlyle’s biography of Frederick the Great shows that, although Frederick “too [who else is feeling this? Goebbels or Hitler?] sometimes felt that he must doubt his lucky star, but, as generally happens in history, at the darkest hour a bright star arose and Prussia was saved when he had almost given up all hope. Why should not we also hope for a similar wonderful turn of fortune!” So, the fact that things were going badly was proof that things would be fine! As long as you continue to beleeeeeve.

30 March. “This is the beginning of the catastrophe in the West.” He and Hitler agree on the military strategy: “we must now make every effort to re-establish a fresh front.”

31 March. He’s getting letters that are a little “despairing.” Some of them even suggest Hitler might be at fault. He blames it on Goering.

1 April. People in France, he says, must really be regretting the Allies’ success because they are facing a serious food shortage. [Did he really not know that Nazis had always been starving occupied countries? He mentions, approvingly, Hitler’s decision not to try to feed POW. He has several entries where he says that the liberated peoples must be miserable now, so maybe he really didn’t? On the other hand, he knew about Nazi extermination policies, and the extraordinary atrocities, and yet he expresses outrage at Soviet atrocities, so is all just in- v out-group?]

4 April. “We must act at once if it is not to be too late.”

It was too late in November 1941.

In other words, this is how an administration steeped in charismatic leadership and blind loyalty who believes it’s all about marketing responds to failure. They never learn. They never start behaving rationally.

Never. They will take everyone down with them.

[1] Editors of Goebbels’ diaries always have to decide what to do about the fact that he is writing the next day about what happened the previous. So, on February 28, he wrote about what happened on the 27th (“yesterday” in Goebbels’ words). Some editors (e.g., Fred Taylor, who edited Goebbels’ 1939-41 entries) keep Goebbels’ dates, but Trevor-Roper doesn’t. I’ve used Trevor-Roper’s dates.

[2] This is also the entry where Goebbels makes clear that it was genocide, and he knew it, and he was happy about it: “Anyone in a position to do so should kill the Jews off like rats. In Germany, thank God, we have already done a fairly complete job. I trust that the world will take its cue from this.”

Another way that American coverage of political issues sucks

A bunch of people are posting a USAToday article that makes it seem McCaskill dissed on Ocasio-Cortez, and they’re expressing an appropriate amount of outrage about McCaskill doing that. The thing is, I’m not sure she did.

I don’t have a dog in this fight. I don’t know either politician at all. But I do know outrage bait, and both the USAToday and CNN articles reek of it. First, they smell like cropped quotes. For instance, the CNN article says,

“I don’t know her,” McCaskill said when asked if she’d consider Ocasio-Cortez a “crazy Democrat” like the ones she decried on the campaign trail. “I’m a little confused why she’s the thing. But it’s a good example of what I’m talking about, a bright shiny new object, came out of nowhere and surprised people when she beat a very experienced congressman.”

Had CNN presented the whole interview, there would have been an exchange like, “Do you consider OC a crazy Democrat like the ones you decried on the campaign trail?” And McCaskill would have answered, “I don’t know her.”

In other words, no, she was not talking about Ocasio-Cortez.

The next part of her quote might have been praise, and might have been criticism. We can’t tell because CNN didn’t give us the context. But we do know this—that this is the photo CNN chose of Ocasio-Cortez.


Meanwhile, this is the photo they chose for Kamala Harris.

So, and that’s my second point, who knows what McCaskill actually said—CNN didn’t give us the interview, but an abridged version that skews against Ocasio-Cortez. Harris has nothing to do with this interview.

[Edited to add: why is Harris here? My crank theory is that CNN wants to play Harris against AOC. In other words: clickbaity CATFIGHT!]

The USAToday version is the classic CATFIGHT version that always gets clicks—women fighting is such fun. It’s the depoliticized, hyperpersonalized coverage of political events that has made me loathe USAToday since it was started.

There might be reasons to criticize Ocasio-Cortez’s policies; McCaskill might have made them. But neither CNN nor USAToday went in that direction because policy argumentation doesn’t get clicks.

So, did McCaskill diss Ocasio-Cortez? Maybe. Maybe not. That isn’t my point. My point is that we don’t know from either the USAToday or the CNN article because neither of them is oriented toward giving voters useful information about anyone involved. CNN is part of the outrage machine, and USAToday is the founder of clickbait journalism. I think lefties sometimes forget that CNN is more interested in getting committed viewers than it is in furthering democratic deliberation, and USAToday is an insult to parrots who might find it in their cages.

Trump and the long con

One of the paradoxes of con artists is that cons always depend on appealing to the mark’s desire for a quick and easy solution but the most profitable cons last a long time. How do you keep people engaged in the scam if you’re siphoning off their money?  

There are several ways, but one of the most common is to ensure that they’re getting a quick outcome that they like. They’ll often wine and dine their marks, thereby coming across as too successful to need the mark’s money, and also increasing the mark’s confidence (and attachment). They might be supporting that high living through bad checks, but more often with credit cards and money from previous marks, or by getting the mark to pay for the high living without knowing. One serial confidence artist who specialized in picking up divorced middle-aged women on the Internet was particularly adept at stealing a rarely-used credit card from the women while they were showering. He then simply hid the bills when they arrived.

Because he seemed to have so much money, the women assumed he wouldn’t be scamming them, and would then hand over their life’s savings for him to invest.

They do this despite there being all sorts of good signs that the guy is a con artist–his life story seems a little odd, he doesn’t seem to have a lot of friends who’ve known him very long, there’s always some reason he can’t write checks (or own a home or sign a loan). There are three reasons that the con works, and that people ignore the counter-evidence.

First, cons flatter their marks, arguing that the marks deserve so much more than they’re getting, and persuade the marks to have confidence in them. They will tell the marks that those people (the ones who are pointing to the disconfirming data) look down on them, think they’re stupid, and think they know better. The con thereby gets the mark’s ego associated with his being a good person and not a con artist—admitting that he is a con means the mark will have to admit that those people were right.[1] The con artist will spin the evidence in ways that show he’s willing to admit to some minor flaws, ones that make the mark feel that she can really see through him. She knows him.[2]

Second, the con works because we don’t like ambiguity, and we tend to privilege direct experience and our own perception. The reasons to wonder about whether a man really is that wealthy are ambiguous, and it’s second order thinking (thinking about what isn’t there, about the absence of friends, family, connections, bank statements). That ambiguous data will seem less vivid, less salient, less compelling than the direct experience we have of his buying us expensive gifts. The family thing is vague and complicated; the jewelry is something we can touch.

Third, people who dislike complexity, who believe that most things have simple solutions, and that they are good at seeing those simple solutions are easy marks because those are precisely the beliefs to which cons appeal. Admitting that the guy is a con artist means admitting that the mark’s whole view of life—that the world has simple solutions, that people are what they seem to be, that you can trust your gut about whether someone is good or bad, that things you can touch (like jewelry) matter.

And it works because the marks don’t realize that they are the ones who’ve actually paid for that jewelry.

There are all the signs of his being a con artist—all the lawsuits, all the lies, the lack of transparency about his actual wealth, the reports that show a long history of dodgy (if not actively criminal) tax practices, the evidence that shows his wealth was inherited and not earned—but those are complicated to think about. Trump tells people that he cares about them; he (and his supportive media) tell their marks that all the substantive criticism is made by libruls who look down on them, who think they know better. The media admits to a few flaws, and spins them as minor.

Trump is a con artist, and his election was part of a con game about improving his brand. But, once he won the election, he had to shift to a different con game, one that involved getting as much money for him and his corporations as possible, reducing accountability for con artists, holding off investigations into his financial and campaign dealings, and skimming.

 And Trump gives his marks jewelry. If you have Trump supporters in your informational world, then you know that they respond to any criticism of Trump with, “I don’t care about collusion; I care about my lower taxes.” (Or “I care about the economy” or “I care that someone is finally doing something about illegal immigrants.”) They have been primed to frame concerns about Trump as complicated, ambiguous, and more or less personal opinion, but the benefit of Trump (to them) as clear, unambiguous, and tangible.

 They can touch the jewelry.

And they don’t realize that he isn’t paying for it; he never paid for it, and he never will. They’re paying for it. They bought themselves that jewelry.

There are, loosely, three ways to try to get people to see the con. First, I think it’s useful not to come across as saying that people are stupid for falling for Trump’s cons (although it can be useful to point out that current defenses of Trump are that he’s too stupid to have violated the law). It can be helpful to say that you understand why he and his policies would seem so attractive, but point out that he’s greatly increased the deficit (that his kind of tax cuts always increase the deficit). It’s helpful to have on hand the data about how much “entitlement”programs cost. Point out that they will be paying for his tax cuts for a long, long time.

Another strategy is to refuse to engage and just keep piling on the evidence. People get persuaded that they’ve been taken in by a con artist incident by incident. It isn’t any particular one, but that there are so many, and they reject each one as it comes along. So, I think that sharing story after story about how corrupt Trump is, how bad his policies are,and what damage he is doing—even if (especially if) people complain about your doing so—is effective in the long run.

Third, when people object or defend Trump, ask them if they’re getting their information from sources that would tell them if Trump were a con artist. They’ll respond with, “Oh, so I should watch MSNBC” (or something along those lines) and the answer is: “Yes, you should watch that too.” Or, “No, you shouldn’t get your news from TV.” Or a variety of other answers, but the point is that you aren’t telling them to switch to “librul” sources as much as getting more varied information. 

Con artists create a bond with their marks—their stock in trade is creating confidence. They lose power when their marks lose confidence, and that happens bit by bit. And sometimes it happens when people notice the jewelry is pretty shitty, actually.

[1]This is why it’s so common for marks to start covering for the con when the con gets exposed. They fear the “I told you so” more than the consequences of getting conned.

[2] In other words, con artists try to separate people from the sources of information that would undermine the confidence the mark has in the con.