Patricia Roberts-Miller

On Procrastinating Writing Your [Thesis/First Book/Second Book]

[photo of a page from the 2012 version of Rhetoric and Demagoguery]

I’ve written elsewhere a lot about procrastinating…

…in the draft of a book I never finished. I put off finishing it.

We have a tendency to personalize everything, from politics to writing process. By that I mean that we talk in terms of identity rather than behavior (“I’m a procrastinator” instead of “I procrastinated finishing that book”). We really need to stop. Behavior doesn’t have a necessary connection to identity. I procrastinate, and have a lot of half-finished projects. But, I’ve published six books and over a dozen peer-reviewed articles in my career, and six book chapters in the last three years alone. So, I procrastinate, but I also get things done—the two behaviors aren’t mutually exclusive.

Let’s be clear: I made some bad errors in my career, but they weren’t because I’m a procrastinator. I wasn’t procrastinating. I was working like the Tasmanian Devil in the Looney Tunes Cartoons. My errors were, or were the consequence of, being bad at time management, having unrealistic notions about publishing, not having mentors who could give me field-specific publishing advice, not being in a relationship that was supportive of my career, pissing off a powerful realist in the Philosophy Department, and many other things I probably can’t name.

Everyone procrastinates, in the sense that not everyone gets everything done right now—you can’t. Procrastinating means putting some things off till later, and, since we can’t actually do everything right now, putting things off is often a good time management strategy. I never finished the book about scholarly writing because other projects (about our current political moment) seemed to me more urgent. They were. They are. When we have people over to dinner, we don’t set the table till the last minutes. We have cats.

Sometimes procrastinating isn’t a good strategy. It can be a kind of self-sabotage; it can mean getting caught a terrible loop of shame. I think a lot of self-help rhetoric ensures that people get caught in that loop. It says that there is a simple solution, and you should follow it. Since there isn’t a simple solution for how hard it is to write a dissertation, then people for whom the simple solution doesn’t work think they’re the problem. They aren’t. The simple solution is the problem.

There is no simple solution for how hard academic writing is.

Also, the Easter Bunny was your parents. And I have bad news about Santa Claus.

One way to try to distinguish sensible v. self-sabotaging procrastination is to try understand why we’re putting something off. And those ways work differently, I think, for what kind of writing people are trying to do. This post is for scholarly writers who believe that their procrastination is hurting them.[1] In fact, it’s for a specific way that a specific motive for procrastination might be hurting them. In other words, I am not laying down rules that will work for everyone under every circumstance.

Putting off a project can be a savvy time and career management choice if the project requires resources we don’t have (e.g., travel money, fluency in a specific language), is less urgent than something else (e.g., it won’t count for promotion or tenure, won’t be part of a dissertation, or, in my case, is a less urgent argument to make given our political situation), or in various other ways isn’t something we should be pursuing right now.

My personal crank theory is that the unproductive kinds of procrastination, and the unproductive ways of trying to stop procrastinating, all involve shame. But people who’ve done actual research on this say that the unproductive kind of procrastination tends to have one of three triggers: drudgery, existential threat, decisional ambiguity.

And here I want to stop for a moment and point out that writing a thesis, article, or book has every single one of these three triggers and way too much shame, and often way too many advisors who think shame and panic are necessary to the writing process. That’s how those advisors work. That isn’t how you have to work.

Most of the advice out there about procrastination assumes that the trigger is drudgery, and so, if that’s your problem, google away. Lots of strategies —the emergent task planner, giving yourself rewards, breaking things down into manageable steps, telling yourself you have to do either [whatever it is] or a more unpleasant task [e.g., clean the litterbox]–are great advice if that’s your motive for procrastinating.

There’s less about existential threat. This is a pretty good article about that trigger. The short version is that the more we succeed, the more likely we are to worry that we will be exposed as imposters. (The only people I’ve ever known who didn’t have imposter syndrome were narcissists, and were, in fact, imposters.) The temptation is to engage in self-sabotage (e.g., get involved with a high-maintenance partner who doesn’t support your career, take on too many responsibilities) so that it’s always possible to say that no manuscript was your best effort. Therefore, if it’s trashed by someone, that isn’t actually an indication of whether you are a smart and good person.

Weirdly enough, outright failure can be less threatening to our self-esteem than trying hard and turning out something that gets a lot of criticism, or doesn’t have the impact we’d hoped, or is otherwise okay but not great. (I’ve often thought that it was a kind of gift that I have never been the smartest person in my family, friend group, work group, any class I’ve taken, or just about any group larger than me and one of my dogs, and not always then. I still had/have imposter syndrome, but there was always less at stake for me.)

The most effective way to manage this kind of trigger for procrastination and other forms of self-sabotage is therapy. (Ideally with someone who has worked with other academics.) I can’t say that strongly enough.

I want to focus on decisional ambiguity because I think it’s the least-discussed in resources for academic writers. That trigger occurs when we’re pressed to make a decision that we could make in a relatively straightforward way if we had information we don’t have at this moment. The situation is ambiguous, but it could be clear if we had certain information. The impulse is to delay the decision until we get that information.

Just to be clear, that can be a good choice. A very popular book advocates a method of setting aside decisions till you have more information (Getting Things Done).

But, when writing a dissertation or book, while teaching, having service requirements, we can find ourselves suffering from decision fatigue. The tl;dr version is that we make decisions better when we have a limited number of them we ask ourselves to make. If we have to make too many decisions (and “too many” depends on all sorts of factors), then we just stop making decisions, or start flipping coins.

So, what does that mean for scholarly writing?

If you’re writing a book, thesis, article, grant proposal, or anything else in a scholarly genre, then, even in the first draft, you’re faced with too many decisions. Is this the right organization, should I move this argument there, should I read that [article/book], am I representing that argument fairly, what the hell is my point, should I use this word, should I drop out of grad school/academia, maybe I should read that other [article/book], am I explaining this point, is that the right quote, how much should I cite that [article/book], have I cited this source correctly, will my readers hate/love this, and so many other decisions that range all over the place: your argument, your readers’ possible responses, your relationship to others who’ve written about this, your career, the job market, the text you’re producing (from sentence-level correctness to genre questions).

A lot of conventional writing process advice is useful: expect to have multiple drafts, and begin by focussing on big picture issues (wtf is my argument before you worry about what tense you should use); expect that writing is recursive (so that when you think you’re at editing stages, you might find that trying to correct passive agency or a mixed metaphor might make you rethink important parts of your argument).

It also means: limit the decisions you need to make on any given day.

Decide ahead of time that you’re going to spend certain times in the week writing—don’t leave that till the day. And then, when you’re in that writing time, it might mean that you write a blathery draft in which you don’t try to get much of anything right. (In a first draft, I often have sentences like, “As Blarghy McBlarghy said, democracy depends upon interlocutors blarghing with each other while focused on blargh.” Or it might be, “As Shirer says in that book with the blue cover, Hitler was [effective? that’s the wrong word])”

One friend described “the narcissistic pleasures of the first draft.” Don’t try to get your argument right; decide you’re just trying to get your thoughts—fuzzy, incoherent, rambling, passionate–in writing.

I never have a strict outline at this point (actually I never have a Ramistic outline ever), but I sometimes (not always) have a flow chart of the four or five concepts/cases I want to discuss. It’s never what the structure actually turns out to be. So I don’t decide on an order of ideas as much as throw out a possible order.

It’s like planning a road trip—you throw out the places you’d like to see, and make a guess as to what route makes sense. But, as you travel, you change your mind about where you want to go. You follow the evidence.

The next pass is deciding that I’m going to try to get my argument somewhat more clear. This means that I reread what I’ve written in a purely critical mood (deciding what’s not working, but not trying to decide what would make it better). Sometimes I use different colored pens, or different colored post its. There are: sentence-level gerfuckedness (orange or red), parts that require more research or bringing in research (green), significant rewriting but the argument is good (blue), changes in wording I know are right (black).

Sometimes I don’t do it that way, and each color is a different pass on reading. So, all the comments I made 1/3/2020 are in pink; the ones from 2/15/2021 are in blue. (In other words, don’t get too rigid about your process, or you’ll have too many decisions to make, and too many ways to shame yourself.)

Loosely, my method is: blather, then critique, then blather oriented toward responding to the critique, then critique. Rinse and Repeat. Do that till you’re working on the Works Cited.

And it’s generally working from big picture (WTF is my point) through issues of organization and citation to paragraph to sentence. But it’s pretty common that I hit a “sentence-level” issue (e.g., do I mean “contact” or “impact”) that causes me to rethink important parts of my argument—from the underlying model (in other words, my argument) to organization.

I’m not saying that people should do what I do. That’s pretty much the opposite of my point. I don’t know anyone else who uses this specific method. I’m describing it precisely because I think it wouldn’t work for most people—I’m hoping to inspire people to come up with one that works for them, even if it seems weird.

I’ve long been grumpy that research on the writing process turned into writing procedures [I’m looking at you: mental mapping.] My point is that one way to get around the trigger of decisional ambiguity is to restrict the choices you’re making at any given time. A decision you should not make in the moment is how you will do that.

Everyone should have a day they do not work. (I broke this rule about four times a semester when I had to grade papers, but I tracked my time, so that I got that time back for vacation.) Work needs to have limited space.

There are some other strategies that people find useful. One is sometimes called ‘chutes and ladders.’ When you don’t have the cognitive capacity for the choices that also trigger existential threat, you make the decisions that procrastinate and yet enable that kind of decision. Before leaving your workspace (and, really, try to have a workspace—I know it’s hard; at one point in grad school my workspace was a closet), pull up on your computer (or have piled on your desk) the sources you think you should use (the Blarghs). Or, before you walk away from that space (and you do need to walk away), write out a sentence or two of what you hope to write the next time you’re back to work.

Limit your work time. But, when you’re working, actually work. And give yourself breaks (about ten minutes of every hour). Some people leave a note to future self—here’s what I did, and here’s what I hope to do next.

If there are other decisions important to your writing, then set them up for yourself before leaving your workspace—cue up the playlist, put the coffee in the fridge, set up the coffeemaker, move the shaming books/articles away, organize your pens, clean off your desk, make sure the cat’s bed is up to your cat’s standards.

And procrastinate. Put off till later worrying about whether your advisor or the press or the journal will like what you’re writing, what the response to this book will be, whether it will get you a job or tenure.There are times for worrying about all those things, but not while you’re trying to write the first (or even third) version of your thesis/article/chapter/book.

We procrastinate setting the table because our cats will step all over the plates if we turn our backs. But we do eventually set the table. And we do so before the guests arrive.

Procrastination can be your friend. It can be a sensible way to think about what to worry about now, and what worries to deflect till later. But you do need to get your dissertation done before the guests arrive.

[1] Obviously, not because I think other kinds of writing are less important, but, especially when it comes to decisional ambiguity, the decisions are different.

“But they’re faaaaaamily”

Trump with bad spray tan — Photo from here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-unhappy-returns-11601333853

If, like me, you’re an avid reader of advice columns, then you know the thought-terminating cliche, “but they’re faaaaaamily.” A thought-terminating cliché is something people say to ourselves that enables us to stop thinking about what otherwise might be a troubling situation. It enables us to resolve cognitive dissonance. This particular thought-terminating cliche comes up when a family member (call them YTA) has repeatedly behaved hurtfully, and the person they’ve hurt (usually the person writing in for advice, so “Letter Writer,” LW) wants the hurting to stop. LW is proposing setting a boundary of some kind, holding YTA accountable, getting some kind of meaningful commitment that YTA will change. LW wants the family to take on the problem that YTA hurts LW.

Often, the family refuses. Getting YTA to stop hurting LW is often part of a family system, and so getting real change would mean rethinking assumptions, changing how the family systems work, dealing directly with uncomfortable things people have been evading. If they aren’t hurt by YTA, then it would be easier just to try to get LW to shut up. The conflict would still be there, but it would only be between LW and YTA.

And here is the moment of truth. A family (or group) can decide that it is committed to principles of treatment–such as reciprocity (everyone does unto others as we would have done unto us)–in which case they would be willing to take on the hard work of ensuring that every individual is going to be treated as we would have done unto us.

Or, the family/group can decide that the conflict is not YTA’s shabby behavior, but LW’s objecting to it. After all, that’s what seems make it everyone’s problem. So, many families and groups treat naming the conflict and naming the shabby behavior as the real problem, and say that this naming so violates in-group loyalty. That’s how a lot of families and groups treat the accusation of intra-group violation of ethical norms (aka, being a shit). Instead of saying the person being a shit is a problem, the person complaining is the problem.

Sometimes YTA apologizes (or is made to apologize), and LW is expected to behave as though the slate is wiped clean—no matter how many times YTA has hurt LW in exactly the same way and apologized, and then gone on to hurt again. It’s reasonable that LW might, especially if YTA has apologized, and hurt again, not think an apology is good enough. A healthy situation would mean that people would want to think about the systems that caused the hurt; an unhealthy one says LW has to “get over” the hurt, even if it’s still happening, and will keep happening. The problem gets reframed as LW being over-sensitive, too focused on the past, unforgiving, and insensitive as to the hurt they’re causing YTA by calling out past behavior.

Having deflected the problem onto LW’s being sensitive or unforgiving, the family can then fleck off any obligation to do anything. If LW resists, and, for instance, doesn’t want to loan YTA money (knowing it will never be paid back), let them move in (knowing they’ll be hurtful and irresponsible), invite them to an important event, and so on, then the family says, “But you can’t treat YTA that way, because they’re faaaaamily.” YTA, so the argument runs, would be or is hurt by LW, and YTA is family, LW is therefore in the wrong.

I have to point out that LW is also faaaaamily, so were family obligations reciprocal, then YTA would be told in no uncertain terms to knock that shit off, but they aren’t. That’s important. This narrative reframes a reasonable description of the situation–YTA has hurt LW and will continue to do so–into YTA being the victim of LW because LW named the behavior out loud and is trying to change it.

What LW wants is in-group accountability, and LW makes themselves out-group simply by asking for it. “But it’s faaaaamily” is a way of saying that in-group members (family) cannot be held accountable—it’s a violation of loyalty to the family to ask for accountability from any member of the family.

Sometimes there’s a minor amount of hand-wringing, and perhaps even a talking-to, but most often LW is framed as doing something that means they “deserve” YTA’s bad treatment, and so BSAB (Both Sides Are Bad).

It’s rarely BSAB; YTA has rarely been hurt by LW as much as LW has been hurt by YTA, but wildly different standards are applied to make the math work. So, for instance, an adult offspring wanting to move out is just as bad as another family member having stolen their identity, a bride not wanting her father to walk her down the aisle is just as bad as his having skedaddled out of financial and emotional obligations for most of her life, and, well, anyone who reads advice columns can list lots of other examples.

Thus, the more that a group values in-group loyalty, the less able they are to manage in-group conflict reasonably, the more hostile they are to holding in-group members accountable, the more hostile they are to anyone who asks for accountability, and the more likely they are to engage in bad math BSAB.

This post isn’t about families. It’s about politics.

When I began working on what’s euphemistically called “the slavery debate,” I discovered that one of the most common post-Civil War narratives was BSAB–the Civil War happened, so this fantasy goes, because slavers and abolitionists were equally fanatical. There’s an interesting history of that narrative. In the antebellum era, it was a repeated (and powerful) argument that enabled people who directly benefited from slavery to claim that they didn’t have a position on it; it died during the Civil War (at least in the North), but sprang up again after the end of Reconstruction with Democrats wanting to get the support of southern states (the Solid South strategy, although people who should have known better, like Oliver Wendall Holmes believed it), It slowly retreated after the Civil Rights movement, but never really surrendered. And I’m seeing it come back.

It’s unmitigated nonsense.

It meant equating criticizing slavery with lynching abolitionists; it meant equating factory work (which was bad) with slavery (which was worse); it meant equating the kind of physical punishment often used with children with the brutality of treatment of enslaved people; it meant equating the sometimes vehement rhetoric of abolitionists with the attempt to make all states into slave states.

But, it’s an attractive narrative for people who believe that loyalty to in-group is the highest value. I think it was Michael Sandel who said that you have to honor Robert E. Lee’s decision to value his loyalty to his state. No, you don’t. Lee valued his loyalty to his state over his loyalty to his country—he was, literally, a traitor to his country, and violated oaths, and he did so in order to protect slavery.

Jonathan Haidt, a conservative, showed that self-identified “conservatives” value in-group loyalty more than self-identified “liberals.” As I’ve argued, I think the “conservative v. liberal” way of describing our policy and political world is either false or non-falsifiable. Tl;dr, the “left v. right” binary or continuum is as useful as describing religious views as Christian v. atheist. You don’t make the Christian/atheist binary more accurate by making it a continuum between the two.

I think a more nuanced research project would complicate (aka show to be bullshit) Haidt’s conclusions (especially his conclusion that in-group loyalty is a good, and “libruls” are wrong not to value it). I think some consideration of the history of appeals to in-group loyalty (aka, scholarship in rhetoric) would show that valuing loyalty is anti-democratic and anti-pluralist. Democracy demands reciprocity; in-group loyalty means being willing to violate reciprocity.

A more useful research program would look at who values in-group loyalty over pluralism and reciprocity, regardless of the media construction of liberal/conservative.

“But they’re faaaamily” is all about violating reciprocity. Refusing to hold in-group members to the same standards as we hold out-group members is just another version of the toxic “But they’re faaaamily.” It’s a refusal to do unto others as we want done unto us; it’s a rejection of the notion of acting on the basis of principles; it’s a skedaddling away from defending our policies reasonably, and therefore an admission that they can’t be defended if we hold in- and out-group members to the same standards.

So, let’s talk about GOP outrage about Hunter Biden, and the refusal on the part of every single GOP politico, pundit, or supporter on social media to hold Trump to the same standards they’re holding Biden.

“But he’s faaaaamily.”

White Evangelical Spiritual Narcissism

Here are some quotes to consider:

“Being afflicted last NIght, with discouraging Thoughts as if unavoidable Marks, of the Divine Displeasure must overtake my Family, for my not appearing with Vigor enough to stop the proceedings of the Judges, when the Inextricable Storm from the Invisible World assaulted the Countrey, I did this morning, in prayer with my Family, putt my Family into the Merciful hands of the Lord. And with Tears, I received Assurance of the Lord, that Marks of His Indignation should not follow my Family.” (Cotton Mather, Diary I: 216, February 1696/7)

“As confident as I’d like to be about my own health, and despite my joking that I’m blessed to constantly breathe in the most sterile (frozen!) air, my case is perhaps one of those that proves anyone can catch this.” (Sarah Palin, interview with People April 2021 https://people.com/politics/sarah-palin-tests-positive-coronavirus-urges-others-wear-masks/)

“What he’s asking […] is does [abstinence only education] work. You know what? Doesn’t matter [….] AIDS is not the enemy. HPV and a hysterectomy at twenty is not the enemy. An unplanned pregnancy is not the enemy. My child believing that they can shake their fist in the face of a holy God and sin without consequence, and my child spending eternity separated from God, is the enemy. I will not tell my child they can sin safely.” (Pam Stenzel, quoted in Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming 135-6).

“One of the big issues that we have heard today and we’ve talked about lately is that without [gender-affirming] surgery the risk of suicide goes way up. Well, I am one of those parents who lived with a daughter who was suicidal for three years […] Someone once asked me, ‘Wouldn’t I just do anything to help save her?’ And I really had to think and the answer was, ‘No.’ [….] I was not going to give in to her emotional manipulation because she was incapable of making those decisions, and I had to make those decisions for her. I was not going to let her tear apart my family.” (Kerri Seekins-Crowe speech to Montana House of Representatives )

Cotton Mather was a major figure in the 17th and early 18th century New England Puritan culture. The son and grandson of major figures, he was educated at Harvard (finishing his degree early), a prolific author, and the minister of a major church in Boston. When, in 1692, Salem Village started on a witch hunt that was unprecedented in so many ways—no bonds required of accusers, testimony done in public, the accused not interviewed separately, and the reliance on spectral evidence—Mather didn’t say anything. After it had gone on for a few months, and the number of people executed, accused, jailed, and “afflicted” was unprecedented, Mather had some doubts about the trials, which he expressed in private. He was particularly concerned about the trials’ reliance on “spectral evidence.”

Spectral evidence is the term for testimony from people who claim to have been visited by a spectre—so, Mercy Lewis saying that she had been attacked (or was being attacked) by Rebecca Nurse, although no one had been present to see the attack. Spectral evidence was suspect for many very good reasons. I’ll mention two. First, the devil could attack the “afflicted” (as the accusers were called) in the shape of anyone he chose. He was, after all, the devil. Another reason was that the “afflicted” all admitted that they were in communication with the devil; they could be testifying under his power.

Although in private Mather admitted that spectral evidence was problematic, in public (especially his book Wonders of the Invisible World) he defended the trials unequivocally and yet, as the author Stacy Schiff says, at times incoherently (Witches 347).

His reasons for defending the trials in public were mixed and many. He was part of the existing power structure (his father had hand-picked the new Governor), and he might have been worried that admitting to an out-of-control witch hunt didn’t reflect well on that power structure; some scholars say he was worried that substantial criticism of the trials would lead to chaos (which is just another version of the first); he was personally ambitious, and might have thought that the most strategic choice was to support the trials; his diaries show him to be someone who believed he was chosen by God to succeed (just world model), so he might have believed that he could ignore the possibility of innocent people being executed—God wouldn’t let that happen.

God let that happen.

More important, so did Mather.

After the smoke cleared, and it was clear that innocent people had been executed, Samuel Parris (the minister who was initially most vehement in unhinged witchcraft accusations) publicly apologized. He did so because several of his children died (not as a direct result of the witch hunt chaos), and he believed that God was punishing him for his part in the witch hunt. Mather’s family also suffered tragedies, and he worried that he was being punished—through his family members’ suffering—for not having been more public in his criticism of the trials. He wrote in his diary:

“Being afflicted last NIght, with discouraging Thoughts as if unavoidable Marks, of the Divine Displeasure must overtake my Family, for my not appearing with Vigor enough to stop the proceedings of the Judges, when the Inextricable Storm from the Invisible World assaulted the Countrey, I did this morning, in prayer with my Family, putt my Family into the Merciful hands of the Lord. And with Tears, I received Assurance of the Lord, that Marks of His Indignation should not follow my Family.” (Cotton Mather, Diary I: 216, February 1696/7)

Take a minute to think about that. Mather knew he’d been wrong; he believed God thought he’d been wrong. But he decided not to go public about his having been wrong because he believed God wouldn’t punish his family.

It was always about him.

Sarah Palin was a covid denier and minimizer, until she got it. Then, suddenly, she cared about covid. It was only real when it affected her. Covid was about her.

It’s very clear how we could lower our abortion rate: give easy access to effective birth control; have accurate sex education; lower teen unemployment. When I argue with people who want to criminalize abortion rather than engage in those policies that would actually reduce it, they always say some version of, “I will not support sexual immorality.”

Goldberg has a nice quote to that effect. Michelle Goldberg quotes an anti-birth control advocate (Stenzel) who said, when it was pointed out to her that the policies she advocates don’t work, “You know what? Doesn’t matter.” (135) It’s about her being rigid to the rules, regardless of the consequences. It’s about her salvation.

Recently, a Montana legislator said that she had a child who wanted to transition, and she prayed constantly that the child would change their mind. She knew that the child was so unhappy that they might kill themselves. Instead of getting her child help, she chose to pray. She said, “I was not going to let her tear apart my family and I was not going to let her tear apart me.”

It was about her.

There are people, who consider(ed) themselves Christians, who believe that what God wants is for them to be fanatically committed to the rules they believe he’s set, because commitment to those rules will get them into heaven. They are more concerned with their personal commitment to those rules because that fanatical commitment will get them into heaven than they are with what that fanatical commitment does to others in this world and in this life.

They are looking out for themselves.

I don’t think God wanted Mather to look out for himself, his political faction, and his family. I don’t think God cares more about whether we follow the rules than we prevent abortion. I think Palin could have figured out about masks before she got covid. I think a parent should care more about preventing a child’s suicide than about following the rules.

I don’t think God is calling us to look out for ourselves.

Pro- and Anti-Communist Demagoguery and the Politics of the Obvious

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

Deliberating reasonably and inclusively is difficult under conditions of war. Audiences do not demand reasonable policy argumentation, we tend to rely on in-group sources of information, and we tend to value loyalty more than rationality—so much so that we are prone to treat criticism or calls for deliberation as necessarily coming from bad motives (such as cowardice, disloyalty, or active treason). We are drawn to rhetors who seem to see the situation clearly, and we are averse to nuance or uncertainty. We give moral and rhetorical license to in-group rhetors. Thus, a rhetor who doesn’t want to take on the obligations of deliberation and reasonable argumentation might be tempted to try to evade them by persuading a base that we are already at war. This rhetorical framing is not necessarily done in bad faith—they may sincerely believe that the situation is an undeclared war, as did the anti-communist demagogues, or that the goodness of their intentions gives them moral and rhetorical license to engage in threat inflation (as did Truman). Rhetors who genuinely believe that they know what should be done may see public discourse as purely an opportunity to radicalize their base for the war they believe is going on.

Elsewhere, I’ve argued that anti-communist demagoguery relied on certain recurrent rhetorical strategies: treating all policy questions as really battles in war; invoking the frame of politics as war sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively, and sometimes ambiguously both; the equation of their “side” (Good) with “the people” against a monolithic and Other (Evil); the assertion that, because the Other is determined on our extermination, we have moral, political, and rhetorical license to do whatever will help exterminate Them; a politics of certainty, in which the correct position on any issue is obvious to good people; the perception that diversity is weakness, and that everyone needs to fall in line. Those rhetorical strategies weren’t limited to anti-communists.

In 1969, a group of activists who would later call themselves “the Weathermen” issued a 13 thousand word manifesto, “You Don’t Need a Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind Blows.” They said that their “goal is the destruction of US imperialism and the achievement of a classless world: world communism” (2). And this struggle, they were clear, is war: “A revolution is a war; when the Movement in this country can defend itself militarily against total repression it will be part of the revolutionary war” (23). That is, these were the kind of people about whom the anti-communist demagogues were worried; what’s interesting is that both they and the anti-communist demagogues engaged in the same rhetorical strategies.

For the Weathermen, our political world isn’t a complicated situation with multiple policy options that might be deliberated because there is legitimate disagreement about major issues. They advocate getting involved in various struggles (racism, sexism, labor) but always with the same end: “There is one system and so all these different problems have the same solution, revolution” (20). The goal isn’t to create better policies that will solve (or ameliorate) the problems that people have because “reform fights, fights for improvement of material conditions, cannot be won under imperialism” (16). The goal is to convert people to revolutionaries: “We must transform people’s everyday problems, and the issues and struggles growing out of them, into revolutionary consciousness, active and conscious opposition to racism and imperialism” (15). As it was for Hargis, the solution to our political problems is converting as many people as possible to the correct identity.

There is a war, and it has only two sides: “the people of the whole world against US imperialism and its lackeys.” They say, “The main struggle going on in the world today is between US imperialism and the national liberation struggle against it.” The US is evil, and evil is the US:
“Every other empire and petty dictator is in the long run dependent on US imperialism, which has unified, allied with, and defended all of the reactionary forces of the whole world. Thus, in considering every other force or phenomenon, from Soviet imperialism or Israeli imperialism to “workers struggle” in France or Czechoslovakia, we determine who are our friends and who are our enemies according to whether they help US imperialism or fight to defeat it.”
Just as anti-communist demagoguery defines the good group narrowly, and treats everything else as a monolithic communism, so the Weathermen have a narrow in-group and capacious out-group—there are different kinds or causes of imperialism, or multiple sources of oppression.

There is no legitimate disagreement with them. People who disagree are “lackeys,” “brainwashed,” misguided about their true interests. What is necessary is “a unified centralized organization” grounded in “a common revolutionary theory” made up of people who “have the correct understanding.” Because their goal is so good, so obviously good, and they are so obviously right, they are justified in advocating policies that hurt others—they have moral license. They celebrate that “the Vietnamese are winning,” and endorse Che Guevara’s call for more Vietnams (that is, the US engaging in more wars as unsuccessful as Vietnam), despite that, as King pointed out, the burden of Vietnam fell disproportionately on Black communities (whom the Weathermen claim to support). They advocate policies and practices that will increase repression to the point that there will be “a phase of all-out military repression.” In other words, like the anti-communist demagogues, they claim moral license.

My point is not the Weathermen are “just as bad” as the anti-communists, or that “both sides do it,” but that this framing of politics as war isn’t tied to any particular spot on the political spectrum. And what this rhetoric does—whether it’s the John Birch Society or the Weathermen—is depoliticize politics. The Weathermen did deliberate; they argued and debated among themselves at great length. In the 1969 document, they admit that they were previously mistaken (about the role of Black Power in their movement). In 1974, they would publish the 188-page Prairie Fire, after much internal debate and disagreement, that admittedly revised earlier manifestoes. Yet, having been wrong, having disagreed with one another, and having come to new conclusions, didn’t change the basic stance that now they had the obviously right answer. Like the anti-communist demagogues, who disagreed with each other, changed their minds, changed their policies, they did so without abandoning their commitment to a politics of the obvious. Even though their own experience proved that it was a lie.

On writing

In elementary school, I was taught to write in pen, and we lost points if we made a correction on something we’d written. When I was 11, my family went to London, and we went to the British museum, and I saw a page of a Jane Austen novel. SHE CROSSED THINGS OUT. My first reaction was as though I’d caught her cheating at cards, or pilfering from the collection plate. My second (and much later) reaction was that punishing someone for correcting their own writing was indefensible.

When I was a newbie grad student, I was TA for a rhetoric prof who, in the midst of a lecture about something or other (he was a good prof, so it was a good lecture, but I don’t remember them) related a story about Yeats. Apparently, there was some filmed interview with Yeats, where the interviewer asked about a particular word in one of Yeats’ most famous poems, and Yeats is supposed to have said something like, “Yeah, I don’t like that word,” and crossed it out and tried a few others. According to the prof, the interviewer was horrified. For him, the poem was an autonomous mobile floating in space. For Yeats, it was something he was still trying to get right. The prof’s point was that no writer is satisfied with what they’ve written; poems are not sacred texts transcribed from a muse, but even the best are works in progress.

I happened to mention to a friend/writing buddy that I love the last part of “East Coker,” and she didn’t know it. It’s this: http://www.davidgorman.com/4quartets/2-coker.htm

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

I’ll admit that I deliberately misinterpret this poem. He was the kind of modernist who believed in the objective/subjective split, and so he means something by that “imprecision of feeling…squads of emotion” that I think is nonsense. What I think is true is that we bring to writing a lot of feelings—imposter syndrome, fear of failure, anxiety about readers who are fully committed to reenacting generational trauma, perfectionism—that are undisciplined squads of emotion, attacking us every time we try to write.

And, so I find this poem https://allpoetry.com/Love-The-Wild-Swan really helpful in response:

“I hate my verses, every line, every word.
Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try
One grass-blade’s curve, or the throat of one bird
That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky.
Oh cracked and twilight mirrors ever to catch
One color, one glinting
Hash, of the splendor of things.
Unlucky hunter, Oh bullets of wax,
The lion beauty, the wild-swan wings, the storm of the wings.”
—This wild swan of a world is no hunter’s game.
Better bullets than yours would miss the white breast
Better mirrors than yours would crack in the flame.
Does it matter whether you hate your . . . self?
At least Love your eyes that can see, your mind that can
Hear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.

When I’m editing my work, I frequently have that first line in my head.

I’ve always assumed that he’s writing about his worrying that he’ll never write a poem as good as Yeats’ “Wild Swans at Coole,” and that may be true. But, as a writer, I like the ambiguity that it’s both about the fear of not measuring up to that poem and not measuring up to the reality he was trying to describe—the wildlife of California at that moment. I suspect he’s writing about a Great Blue Heron. I’ve written elsewhere about what a Great Blue Heron meant in my life, so maybe I’m just projecting. California has no shortage of beautiful birds, and Great Blue Herons don’t have a white breast.

And I love the answer—anything we write will never measure up to reality. We can hate our writing, hate our selves, but still continue to write because we love the thing we’re trying to write about.

Good writing has to come from love, I think. In working with graduate students, I’ve often felt that there was a theme—in the musical sense—in the topics that interested them. So much about being a graduate student is demoralizing, probably unnecessarily, but it seems to me that the students who finish (and the junior scholars who publish enough to get tenure) do so because they’ve heard the music. Or someone has helped them hear it.

I know that there are faculty who believe that their job is to “train” graduate students, “toughen them up,” create disciples. I always thought my job was to help them hear the music.

I’m not saying that people should follow their bliss. That’s toxically bad advice. I am saying that finishing a dissertation (or publishing a first book) is less fraught if people can be passionate about something in their project. Passionate enough to want to write about it, without aspiring to turn it into taxidermy.

Love the wild swan.

Thucydides, Aristotle, emotions, deliberation, and the rational/irrational split

Stone platform — The Athenian speakers’ box

When I was in grad school, a fellow grad student remarked that every Rhetoric dissertation was about how the rational/irrational split was wrong. While slightly hyperbolic, it wasn’t entirely wrong. In fact, I think it’s still fairly accurate.

There are two major problems with the rational/irrational split (both pointed out by Wayne Booth in Modern Dogma). The first is that it’s an accurate description of two completely opposed ways of approaching problems: through logic or feeling. Booth pointed out that many people privileged the “rational” approach, which was defined incoherently and largely through negation (a rational argument has certain surface features, such as an unemotional tone or appeal to numbers and data, which is assumed to signify how the rhetor thinks), but other people denigrated the “rational” approach, privileging emotion and passion. His point was that we didn’t solve the many problems created by the binary by flipping the privilege. The binary was wrong.

It seems to me that work in cognitive science did a good job on dismantling the binary—there isn’t a binary between rational and its presumed associations (thinking, objectivity, neutrality, unbiased) and irrational and its presumed associations (feeling, subjectivity, prejudice, biased). After all, cognitive biases are cognitive.

This still leaves the second problem with the split—the narrative that all major Western philosophies relied on the split until the 20th century. I think it’s fair to say that it became hegemonic in Western philosophy at a certain point, but that point was much more recent than many people think. My crank theory is that people who wrote influential histories of philosophies relied on that frame, and so themselves imagined that all philosophies could fit within it (e.g., Russell—Booth’s example–, but also Durant, and various nineteenth century figures). Since it fits neatly with the cognitive bias of naïve realism, it resonates with people, and so it’s the one you’re likely to hear if you stop someone on the street.

While there are major figures who can fit in that frame (e.g., Plato), but others who only sort of do (while Augustine was very a believer in the mind/body split, he didn’t diss feeling). Various figures in the British Enlightenment didn’t accept the binary of emotional or unemotional, let alone denigrate “emotion.” Many argued or assumed that “sentiments” benefitted deliberation, although “passions” inhibited it (but passions weren’t bad, exactly—they had/have their place).

Aristotle is often assumed to be an adherent of the rational/irrational split, and certainly several translations try to make him fit it, but what he meant by alogos and logos doesn’t map neatly onto irrational and rational. The “logos” of a text, for Aristotle, is the “argument” (probably an enthymeme in public discourse—that is, rhetoric as opposed to philosophy or math).

In the book we call Rhetoric (I wish we called it The Craft of Rhetoric, as I think that’s a more accurate and useful translation) Aristotle appears to be all over the place about emotion, but I think it starts to make sense if we keep in mind that the term “pathos” doesn’t mean either “irrational” or “emotion” (as we use those terms), and he didn’t think a text could have only one. Ethos, pathos, and logos are always in play. Aristotle was mostly interested in the taxonomy of deliberative, forensic, and epideictic (and most interested in the first and last of those three). And I can’t help but read him as making an argument similar to the British Enlightenment philosophers—that various “emotions” (however we define them) function differently in the three genres. Aristotle was interested in methods of public deliberation that led to good policies, trials that resulted in the truth, and effective ceremonial orations. (Except when he wasn’t, as in the weird passage about testimony gained through torture.)

I happened to read Aristotle after taking a class in which we read selections from Thucydides. Thucydides has several situations in which rhetors reflect on rhetoric, on how publics should reason about policies, and there are several points that come up (some repeatedly) that influenced my reading of Aristotle. I’ll mention two.

First, several speakers disagree about whether publics should make decisions in anger. The rhetors who argue we should (such as the un-named Corinthian and Stheneslaides in the “Debate at Sparta” and Cleon in the “Mytilenean Debate) are advocating policies of which Thucydides clearly disapproves. The people who argue we should not make decisions in anger (Archidamus, Diodotus, Pericles) are all rhetors whom Thucydides identifies as wise, insightful, and reasonable, ad they are advocating policies of which Thucydides approves. They are not unemotional speakers, and they do appeal to emotions (because, who doesn’t?). They all speak, for instance, of their fears, such as Archidamus saying that he feared that the war with Athens would last generations (it did). They argue for taking time to deliberate, and to consider the issue. Archidamus, speaking after the un-named Corinthian has tried to use the timeless strategy of shaming Sparta into war by saying it’s only procrastination and cowardice that causes them to delay, says:

“And the slowness and procrastination, the parts of our character that are most assailed by their criticism, need not make you blush. If we undertake the war without preparation, we should by hastening its commencement only delay its conclusion: further, a free and a famous city has through all time been ours. The quality which they condemn is really nothing but a wise moderation; thanks to its possession, we alone do not become insolent in success and give way less than others in misfortune; we are not carried away by the pleasure of hearing ourselves cheered on to risks which our judgment condemns; nor, if annoyed, are we any the more convinced by attempts to exasperate us by accusation. We are both warlike and wise, and it is our sense of order that makes us so.” (I:84)

The second theme that comes up is not to confuse genres. That’s particularly strong in the “Mytilenean Debate” when Cleon has argued for genocide of Mytileneans, using arguments of guilt and innocence. He says that reopening the debate about what to do is “causing a delay which is all in favour of the guilty, by making the sufferer proceed against the offender with the edge of his anger blunted; although where vengeance follows most closely upon the wrong, it best equals it and most amply requites it.” (3:38). His opponent, Diodotus, points out that this isn’t a trial, but a deliberative assembly, and so the decision should be made in terms of what is often translated as “expediency”: “the question before us as sensible men is not their guilt, but our interests.” We should make policy decisions in light of “the good of the country.” (3:44)

Thucydides doesn’t say we should never engage in questions of guilt and innocence (and he is also not saying he doesn’t care about justice), but that deliberative assemblies are about pragmatic deliberation. Making policy decisions in the midst of anger, arrogance, factionalism, vengeance inhibits deliberation, and leads to bad decision. That isn’t an argument that we should never be angry and so on–it’s about genre.

Thucydides’ ideal rhetor is Pericles, and it’s interesting that we get three different kinds of speeches from him: Aristotle’s taxonomy. The speech about how to respond to Sparta’s demands is deliberative, and it’s about pragmatic considerations. The speech he gives when he’s been attacked by Cleon is an apologia, a defense speech, and it’s about motive and emotions. And the “Funeral Oration” is epideictic, and it’s a flag-waving tearjerker.

It seems to me that Aristotle is imagine rhetoric in similar ways. He doesn’t have a binary of emotional/unemotional, but he has a sense about place and genre, and sees those different genres as doing different work.

The final point I’ll make is that both Thucydides and Aristotle seem to assume not a binary, but a different emphasis, in deliberative rhetoric v. both judicial and ceremonial. The goal of a deliberative speech is not to persuade but to participate in deliberation. Of course, there’s a sense in which one wants to persuade people to one’s point of view, but advocates of deliberation in deliberative setting emphasize the goal of “considering” the situation. Judicial and ceremonial are much more about persuasion, about making a one-sided case. It isn’t a binary, as I said, but a question of emphasis.

And it has nothing to do with how we now think about rational/irrational people or arguments.

[DRAFT] Part of the introduction for Deliberating War

There are five ways of imagining policy conflicts that make it likely we will see ourselves as having no option but some degree of aggression—that is, to see a policy disagreement as discursively insoluble. The first is believing that one is a voice crying in the wilderness, a prophet sent by God speaking an unpopular and yet immediately recognized Truth. Claiming that no one is listening, that one is all alone, is a lively glimpse of being fourteen, and, as in the case of Muir, it isn’t necessarily entangled with victimization or persecution. By claiming that God is on one’s side, one does seem to be implying that opponents are un-Godly, a characterization that fosters motivism (discussed later). It also seems to imply that negotiation, bargaining, and even inclusive deliberation are problematic—prophets aren’t known for sitting down at a table with opponents and working out a yes-yes solution. But (again, as in the case of Muir), it’s often nothing more than rhetorical flourish, venting, or a bit of hyperbole. It doesn’t inevitably or necessarily prohibit using deliberation to find a political solution far short of violence against the Other.

The second is shifting from policy disagreements to questions of identity. If, for instance, there is a minister with a different interpretation of the faith/grace/works conundrum from us, we may feel threatened by his rhetorical success. If we confuse our feeling threatened with his being a threat, then we’ve made him the problem—not his rhetorical effectiveness, nor our ineffectiveness, nor the conundrum, but his presence in our community. A policy issue has become a conflict of identities.

The third is to frame that conflict of identities in terms of essential, almost ontological, strife between good and evil—those who disagree with us do so, not out of principle, but out of their identity as bad people, and their loathing for good. John Winthrop, for instance, categorized all the conflicts as parts of Satan’s plot to destroy the Puritan project. Cotton Mather, when more or less forced to admit that the witch trials had been badly managed, still deflected responsibility, maintaining that the events were Satan’s fault.

Once such a plot is posited, then it cannot be falsified. Disconfirming evidence (for instance, that the witchcraft convictions depended on violating evidentiary norms, that there is a long history of disagreement about Scripture) is deflected and dismissed. Hutchinson’s death at the hands of Siwonoy is proof that she was wrong; he doesn’t draw that conclusion about others killed in wars on indigenous peoples. It’s only evidence when it confirms the already existing beliefs.

Because we are threatened with extermination by an Other plotting against us, we have moral license. “Moral license” is the fifth way of imagining policy conflict, and it follows from the others. We don’t condemn victims who violate ethical norms in order to save themselves or their group; moral license means that individuals or groups are free to violate those norms while still claiming the moral highground. One of the crucial tenets of reasonable deliberation is that discourse rules (e.g., is it okay to lie?) are reciprocal—all parties are held to them. But, if it is a question of extermination, we’re likely to allow the victim to lie, but condemn lying in the aggressor. If we believe ourselves to be already or imminently victimized, we are likely to believe ourselves and our in-group rhetors and leads to be justified in lying—to be unbound by any discourse rules, especially reciprocity. Thus, if we are rhetorically successful in persuading ourselves or others that we face an existential threat, we are less bound to find non-violent ways of resolving the conflict, and will be seen as more justified in violating norms. Sometimes that violating of moral and rhetorical norms is hypothetical, as when slavers justified mass killings of African Americans on the grounds that the slaves would do it if they could (what’s called “the wolf by the ears” argument).

What I hope this list suggests is what will be pursued in this book: there is a complicated relationship between rhetoric and war. The more that we believe that our disagreements can be solved discursively—that is, the more faith we have in the power of pluralistic approaches to persuasion and deliberation–, the less likely we are to believe that our only choice is war. The more that we are persuaded that there is an evil Other already at war with us, and determined on our extermination, the less likely we are to value or demand inclusive, pluralist, and reasonable rhetorical approaches to our disagreements. The more we are persuaded that this war is total war, signified and engaged in major and minor ways, the less likely we are to believe that there are neutral actions or actors, and the more likely we are to find ourselves treating normal policy disagreements as themselves a kind of war. When politics becomes a kind of war, I will argue, we have to think carefully about what kind it is.

This isn’t a book about military strategy, or military history; it’s about rhetoric. We’re primed to reason badly when it comes to questions about war because the prospect of being the victim of violence activates so many cognitive biases, especially binary thinking. Under those circumstances, deliberation can easily be framed as opting for cowardly flight instead of courageous fight, as unnecessary at best and treasonous at worst. It’s precisely because disagreements about war are so triggering, so to speak, that we need to be deliberately deliberative. To say that we should deliberate reasonably before going to war is banal in the abstract, but oddly fraught in the moment, and this book uses several cases to explore why it is that we often evade deliberation even (or especially?) when the stakes are so high.

But, if war and deliberation are incompatible, then war and democracy are incompatible, because democracy thrives on deliberation. This isn’t to say that every decision about a conflict should be thoroughly deliberated—that would be impossible and unwise—but that deliberation doesn’t weaken the will for war if there is a strong case to be made for that war. If advocates of war can’t make their case through reasonable policy argumentation, then they probably have a bad case, and it’s likely an unnecessary war. War triggers cognitive biases, and so deliberation is necessary to counter the effects of those biases—contrary to popular belief, we can’t simply will ourselves not to rely on biases; deliberating with people who disagree can, however, do some work in reducing the power of the biases. But, not all rhetors want us to reduce the power of cognitive biases. Because we are averse to deliberating about or during war, rhetors engaged in normal political disagreements who are unable or unwilling to advocate a policy rationally are tempted to claim that this isn’t normal politics; it’s war. If they can persuade their base that this situation is war, then they won’t be expected to deliberate. The cognitive biases triggered by war will motivate the audience to believe beyond and without reason, and some political leaders and media pundits want exactly that. We shouldn’t.

Trump supporters’ bad faith appeal to “the law”

(Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press) https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-01-07/capitol-violence-dc-riots-how-to-explain-to-kids

Many years ago, I was in a conversation with someone who was defending the police violence against Rodney King. He said, “After all, King had broken the law, so he was guilty.” I pointed out that, in the first place, by US conceptions of law he was innocent until he’d been through a trial, and second, that, even were he guilty, the punishment for what he’d done was not being physically beaten. He wasn’t bothered by the first one at all, and only a little bothered by the second.

He was a self-identified Libertarian. A “Libertarian” who believed that a police officer could not only determine guilt or innocence on the stop, but enact whatever levels of punishment felt right. That is very much not what a “Libertarian” should not believe. It’s authoritarianism. It’s believing that judgment should be giving to authorities.

That conversation was another datapoint that led to my belief that it’s really, really important that we stop thinking our political world in terms of a binary or continuum of “left v. right.” The data for the left/right continuum is from polls about self-identification, or a circular argument about support for X policy meaning that you have Y identity.

What matters for a thriving democracy isn’t who people are, nor where people are on some fantastical binary or continuum. Among the thing that do matter is that we believe that “the law”—whatever it is—applies equally to in- and out-group. The Libertarian didn’t believe that; he wanted complete liberty for his in-group, but didn’t mind if the police violated the supposed principle of Libertarianism, since it was against an out-group member.

Briefly, what I’ve come to understand—by spending a lot of time arguing with people all over the political spectrum—is that there are several ways of thinking about what “the law” is supposed to do.

In this post, I want to mention two that have a shared premise: that “the law” is supposed to enable communities to get along in a reasonably ordered way.

One way that people imagine the law doing that is to see law as a series of compromises and conventions that are, at best, striving to help everyone get along while holding everyone to the same standards. Some of them are purely arbitrary, and yet necessary–we all have to agree as to whether we’ll drive on the left or right side of the road (and the fact that right side is more common probably should figure into our deliberations), but there’s nothing inherently better about one or the other. If most of the world drove on the left side, after all, then that should figure in our deliberations.

And the law can change. For instance, there was in the 19th century a general sense that the law shouldn’t interfere in private contracts. But, after a while, people started to think that child labor was appalling, but passing laws about it would violate that principle about contracts, so they decided they had to reconsider that principle. So, “the law” works as a series of decisions and arguments in which we’re trying to get a community of diverse people to function effectively within the constraints of principles about rights.

The second way of thinking about the law, an authoritarian one, assumes that the law should maintain order by holding in- and out-group to different standards—it should maintain order by letting good people (the in-group) do pretty much whatever they want, and controlling bad people (the out-group) through punishment.[1] Ann Coulter, ends her book Treason with this argument:

“Liberals promote the rights of Islamic fanatics for the same reason they promote the rights of adulterers, pornographers, abortionists, criminals, and communists. They instinctively root for anarchy and against civilization. The inevitable logic of the liberal position to to be for treason.” (202)

It’s an astonishing argument, even for Coulter. That rights are human rights–that is, granted to all people simply by virtue of their being human–is a principle of American law. So, yes, pornographers have rights; that isn’t treason–that’s how the law is supposed to work. But, for Coulter, bad people shouldn’t have rights.

In my experience, people who imagine the law functioning this way are also prone to claiming that their condemnation of out-group figures is grounded in principle, but it isn’t.

I recently had an argument with someone who claimed that he was opposed to Biden because Biden lies. He supports Trump. That Biden lies is, unfortunately, a fact, and I will be angry af if he’s the Dem candidate for President in 2024. But Trump also lies, and he lies even more than Biden, yet that Trump lies was not a reason for that person to oppose Trump. That person was engaged in strategic appeals to principle. His opposition to Biden wasn’t grounded in some principle about lying—his support of Trump showed that he doesn’t care about lying on principle. He was engaged in cultish levels of support for Trump, while pretending to himself that his opposition to Biden was principled.

Trump supporters are authoritarian to the extent that they refuse to hold him (or themselves) to the standards they hold others.

For instance, Trump supporters frequently condemn BLM protests, many of which got violent. If those protests should be condemned, then so should January 6. That is, a person who was, on principle, opposed to violent protests would condemn both. Like the Trump cultist member who only objected to Biden’s lies but justified or refused to consider Trump’s lies, Trump supporters who defend January 6 and condemn BLM protests are not, actually, reasoning from a principle they value. They’re just people who hold their in-group to lower standards (or no standards at all).

And yet they do believe in “the law.”

MLK argued that there is a higher law than the laws supporting segregation, and he appealed to the higher law of people being treated equally regardless of in- or out-group. He advocated that everyone be held to the same standards. I’ll say he had Jesus on his side.

Trump appeals to a different understanding of a “higher law.” His supporters don’t hold in- and out-groups to the same standards. They believe that order is about domination and submission.

They believe that they are justified in violence if they don’t get their way. That is, if they can’t dominate. And Trump believes the same. And that is not democracy. And it isn’t Christian.

[1] There’s a quote going around describing this principle as being the central tenet of “conservativism,” and, while I think it’s true that a lot of people who self-identify as conservative do believe this, I’ve also heard the same principle expressed by self-identified leftists. I think authoritarianism is more usefully seen as another axis in a political map rather than a point on a single-axis continuum of political affiliation.

“Changing” Dahl’s books

As often happens with big controversies, the version that gets tossed around is a stark binary with absurdly un-subtle positions, and that’s what’s happened with the new versions of many of Roald Dahl’s books. No one is talking about burning every copy of the “original” version (which, keep in mind, went through a process of editing—that is, an editor telling Dahl to make changes, some of them having to do with racism).

People (some of whom are authors, and really should know better) are saying that you can’t change an author’s words, or that you never should. That’s what editors get paid to do. Sometimes editors suggest changes to make a book more appropriate to an audience (cite more, cite less, make the language less/more formal); sometimes the changes come about because a person is using language that will probably get a reaction the author doesn’t intend (for instance, when I was told by an editor not to use the word “taint” in a book that college students would read).

When an author is alive, they can object to the changes, and say they’d rather not have the piece published at all, or get a different publisher, or say they’re fine with any controversy or misreadings that might happen. It’s a different situation when the author is dead, and can’t authorize a new edition, and that’s the situation here. So, just to be clear: it isn’t as though we’re suddenly in a new world in which <clutch pearls> authors are, for the first time ever, having work edited.

And it’s the job of publishers to make money; if they believe that out-dated language is hurting sales, you can bet they’ll update it. There are and have been for years more accessible versions of Shakespeare (wth do people think West Side Story is?)—in the 19th century, it was de rigueur to have what was called “the water scene” in Hamlet (where Hamlet jumped into the water—sometimes on a horse—in order to keep Ophelia from drowning). I don’t think there’s been a single movie version of any Shakespeare that has the entire “unchanged” script from the original play (including the Macbeth of Coen or Welles ).

I mention Coen and Welles because I think both of them tried particularly hard to stay with Shakespeare’s intention, and believed—correctly, I think—that the changes they made were necessary for the play to have the impact for a current audience that Shakespeare originally intended. That’s one way of updating–through editing (or “changing”) a text–try to keep the author’s intention and change the text.

Some ways involve ignoring intention. There are plenty of versions of Merchant of Venice that make Shylock sympathetic—was that Shakespeare’s intention? Maybe, but quite possibly not, and directors don’t spend a lot of time worrying about the issue. Taming of a Shrew, similarly, is often performed with an interpretation that may or may not have been what Shakespeare intended. And, if, for instance, we found some document that made absolutely clear that Shakespeare intended for Shylock to be a greedy, Christian-hating villain, and intended him to represent all Jews, people would either stop performing the play, or they’d ignore his intention.

The publisher of Dahl’s books—who has announced they have the old and new versions available (and, by the way, used books are always an option)—made several kinds of changes. You can see them here. They’ve made an effort to remove language that is ableist, racist, sexist, fat-shaming (which, apparently, particularly has some readers clutching their pearls), in order to make the books more accessible. From the article:

“Scott Evans has been a primary school teacher for eight years and works at a school in South Wales, near Cardiff, where Dahl grew up. He runs a website, The Reader Teacher, and has worked as a sensitivity reader. “I understand the arguments some say about censorship and diminishing the author’s voice,” he says. “However, after recently re-reading some children’s books by Dahl, some language stood out as offensive while other terms have become outdated over time. Here, sensitivity readers can make suggested adaptations to make them more accessible to children.”

Personally, I don’t think the editors did a great job of the project, and I think it’s completely worth arguing about the specific changes, what they do, don’t do, and what changes would be better. That’s an argument worth having.

But, the fact is that Dahl was writing at a point when no one cared about shaming kids who were different, stigmatizing mental illness, and so on. I doubt it was Dahl’s intention to be hurtful—I suspect he just didn’t think about it–but the books are hurtful. To assume that removing some of the hurt necessarily violates his intention is saying he intended to promote racism, ableism, and so on, that he intended to hurt children. That doesn’t seem like much of a defense to me.

The “Debate at Sparta” and Identity Politics, Pt. II: Archidamus

In a previous post about Thucydides’ description of the “Debate at Sparta,” I pointed out that the Corinthian speaker is in a vexed rhetorical situation. Corinth was at war with its former colony Corcyra, and they were fairly evenly matched. If Corinth could get Sparta to take its side, it could win. But there’s no real reason for Sparta to take Corinth’s side—Corcyra isn’t a threat, and it’s all about yet a third city-state (Potidea) in which Sparta has no compelling economic or political interest.

In addition to unnecessary, intervening would be risky. It would be a clear violation of a treaty with the other major power in the Hellenic region—Athens—and it would start war. The outcome of that war was far from obvious, and potentially disastrous. As Archidamus—the Spartan King, and an experienced general—says, it could be a war they would hand on to their children. (They did.)

What makes this debate interesting for us now is that the Corinthian, who has a specific kind of weak case, uses four rhetorical strategies that speakers in that situation often use—a set of strategies that’s usefully called a “politics of identity.” And, while those strategies are often effective, they really shouldn’t be. If the Corinthian actually had a reasonable case, he could have made it in a reasonable way. He couldn’t because he didn’t. Instead, he deflected away from the weakness of his case in the four ways that others with weak cases do—recognizing those strategies can help us make better decisions. Instead of finding a politics of identity compelling, we should recognize it as someone with a weak case.

First, he presented Athens as an existential and inevitable threat. He framed the conflict between them as outside of the realm of pragmatic, contextual, and negotiable policy issues, instead claiming the specific conflicts came from the essentially aggressive and expansionist nature of Athens, and, therefore, it was just a question of time till Athens took over all of Hellas, including Sparta. (That outcome was improbable, at best.)

Since war was inevitable, according to the Corinthian, it was a question of Sparta choosing the most opportune moment to start that war (or allow Athens to start it). He claimed urgency, with no evidence at all. That is, his second move was to make the argument that is now called the “closing window of opportunity” frame for going to war immediately. If we go to war right now, we win; if we let them get stronger we lose.

Third, he tried to shut down all deliberation about the war by saying that the situation was obvious, and there was only one possible solution—his. That is, he argued as though acknowledging the need (Athens’ expansionist nature) necessarily meant agreeing with his plan (joining the Corinth/Corcyra conflict right now on the side of Corinth).

Fourth, he tried to shut down all deliberation through what’s now often called “motivism”—a kind of ad hominem that is surprisingly effective. Motivism follows from the claim that there is only one possible solution. If there is no choice other than the plan he is adopting, why are there people who disagree? And the answer is: because they’re bad people. When rhetors make this move—prohibiting reasonable deliberation by dismissing (rather than engaging) every dissenting voice—they generally do so either through motivism or asserting out-group membership (they’re only disagreeing because they’re cowards, or they’re only disagreeing because they aren’t really in-group). [1]

If each of those moves were effective, then Sparta would go to war immediately, goaded by the Corinthian’s calling them ditherers and cowards.

And I want to emphasize: part of what makes the Corinthian case likely to be simultaneously rhetorically effective and completely unreasonable is that he’s muddled the need and plan. Even were Athens an existential threat, that doesn’t mean that intervening in this conflict right now is a good plan. And, really, how do you show that Athens is essentially and implacably committed to exterminating Sparta? Even assuming that Athens has done everything he says it has (it hadn’t), that doesn’t mean it’s going to be marching on the gates of Sparta (especially since it was a naval power).

But, to the extent that he’s been successful, anyone who stands up and disagrees with him about any point he makes is framed, even before speaking, as a dithering coward blind to the obvious facts.

How does someone get an assembly back on the deliberative track? How can someone redirect from a politics of identity?

One of those ways is through what’s sometimes called identity politics. Archidamus, who was dubious about the Corinthian’s plan, began his speech by refuting the foundational part of the argument—that doing anything other than intervening in Corinth’s squabble was motivated by dilatory slow-footed stupidity if not cowardice. And he does so by pointing out that he’s an experienced general, and that others who share that lived experience probably agree with him.[2] He says it’s important to take your time to deliberate carefully before you get into war, or you might find yourself in one it’s hard to get out of. He says that acting without thinking now means you’ll be able to repent at your leisure (I.84). The Penguin translation puts it: “If you take something on before you are ready for it, hurry at the beginning will mean delay at the end.” He reframes the behavior that the Corinthian tries to frame as dithering (that is, not getting easily provoked) as sophrosyne; that is, temperance, reasonableness, and self-control.

He goes on to propose a counterplan—Sparta should object to Athenian violations of the treaty, build up a war chest, make allies, and prepare for war while trying to make war unnecessary.

One of many serious problems that comes from our tendency to turn every disagreement into “two sides” is that arguments like Archidamus’ are easily dismissed, especially if we talk about disagreements regarding war policies as “pro-“ or “anti-“ war. Archidamus’ position is not “anti-war,” nor was he. His lived experience is a logical refutation of one of the claims the Corinthian was making—that everyone who disagreed with him was a dithering procrastinating coward.

Archidamus’ appealing to his lived experience—his appealing to his own identity—doesn’t end the argument. It’s an attempt to open the argument back up, to bring the community back to deliberation. Appeals to lived experience are datapoints.

It wouldn’t have been a reasonable argument had Archidamus said, “I’m a general, and anyone who disagrees with me knows nothing about war and should be ignored.” Arguments from identity reasonably add to deliberation, and they can refute “all” or “no” statements, but a single lived experience doesn’t reasonably support an “all” or “no” statement. That Archidamus is an experienced military leader doesn’t prove that all experienced military leaders have one position.

The Corinthian speaker tried to hide the extent to which it was a war of choice by deflecting from the pragmatic policy issues (could compromises be reached with Athens, or Corcyra, what would a war with Athens be like) by pretending that this war of choice was a war of self-defense.

That’s a common move. And it’s common to do it the way that the Corinthian speaker did—claim that issue is not a pragmatic issue open to compromise, negotiation, deliberation because there is an Other (in this case Athens) always already at war with Sparta. Pro-slavery rhetors, the Weather Underground, John Muir in the Hetch Hetchy debate, Hitler, Earl Warren about Japanese Americans, Planned Parenthood, and all current GOP rhetors engage(d) in that rhetoric to some degree. In other words, no matter what your policy affiliation or your hall of heroes, you admire someone who deflected from pragmatic policy deliberation by claiming that an enemy determined on our extermination has already declared war, and so we need to stop deliberating. There isn’t an Other who argues badly; there is an Us who reasons badly.

And, even were the Corinthian’s need argument true—even were Athens determined on exterminating Sparta—that doesn’t mean that intervening in the Corinthian/Corcyra conflict at that moment was the only possible response. I’m perfectly willing to grant that both Stalinism and Maoism were disastrously bad, but—even if that’s true—that doesn’t mean that our Vietnam policy was correct. That there is a legitimate, and even urgent, need doesn’t mean that we can’t usefully disagree about the plan.

Identity politics is an approach to policy deliberation that says that who we are—what our identity has meant we’ve experienced—has given us a perspective important for reasonable and ethical deliberation. A politics of identity—what the Corinthian advocated—is profoundly authoritarian. Identity politics—what Archidamus enacted—is profoundly democratic.

Whether he was successful or not is a complicated question, and not really relevant to my point. My point is that a politics of identity says that we are never facing pragmatic questions about how to assess our various policy options in a world of uncertainty. It says that politics is really a zero-sum conflict between identities, and that policy argumentation, let alone the normal practices of democratic policy determination (compromise, mediation, bargaining) are cowardly and/or corrupt submissions to evil. It’s always authoritarian, regardless of where it is on the political spectrum. Identity politics says that who we are matters, and the experiences related to our various identities must be taken into consideration if we are going to come to good decisions. Identity politics is an approach to deliberation that insists on inclusion. It is profoundly democratic.

Who we are, and what we have experienced, and how we see things—what our identity means in terms of our perspective—all of that is crucial to reasonable democratic deliberation. Policy deliberation can’t be either reasonable or democratic if it isn’t informed by the perspectives of the people—perspectives that are different.

Policy deliberation can’t be either reasonable or democratic if we assume that it’s all just a zero-sum battle between two groups.

[1] English is weird. When I say that motivism means we dismiss every single person who disagrees us without engaging their argument, I’m often heard as saying that we have to engage the argument of every single person who disagrees with us. And I’m not saying that. I’m saying that it’s extremely unlikely that there really is only one possible course of action, and so there are almost certainly some good arguments out there that we would do well, as a community, to consider.

[2] Aristotle would probably have characterized it as an appeal to ethos. Since he also said that one of the ways we can argue is appeal to logos, many people—including argument textbooks and teachers of argument—assume that an appeal to ethos is not a logical argument, but that isn’t what Aristotle meant at all. It certainly isn’t how any scholars of argumentation think about the issue. Ethos is a datapoint, and there are more and less reasonable ways of appealing to ethos.