I mentioned elsewhere that I’ve spent a lot of time wandering around the digitally-connected world arguing with assholes, and so I think some people have been surprised when I’ve said that the best response to someone who supports Trump is to refuse to argue with them. I’ve also said the same thing about people who get all their information from the pro-Trump propaganda feedback loop. And each time I’ve tried to be clear that I’m not talking about “conservatives” or all Republicans. I think our tendency to divide everything into left v. right is gerfucked.
I think it’s better to think about politics as something like a color wheel, with both tone and saturation. And there are people all over that spectrum who refuse to look at any information that might contradictor or complicate their beliefs, mistake personal conviction for proof, and are poster children for confirmation bias. In fact, I think we’re all that way on some issues and under some circumstances. So, not everyone who makes the mistakes I’ve talked about in this set of posts is a Trump supporter.
And I doubt every Trump supporter makes all those mistakes, but it does seem to me that everyone arguing for Trump does. Perhaps I’ve missed the good arguments, but I don’t think so.
I’ve focused on Trump supporters because they exemplify (not prove) what happens when in-group loyalty trumps rational argumentation–something we all do.
I mentioned the tendency to think that proving They are bad means that We are good, and it doesn’t. That Trump supporters argue badly is no guarantee that everyone else argues well. That their position is, they performatively admit, indefensible through rational argumentation is not proof that all other positions are grounded in rational argumentation.
Right now, all that seems to hold the pro-GOP coalition together is the ethical theater of abortion and feeling superior to the libs. Seeing that Trump supporters argue badly shouldn’t be part of forming an anti-Trump coalition in which we feel good about who we are because we’re better than they; it should be part of our seeing how we argue badly. And that’s what I hope people take away from this series. It isn’t just them.