rational argumentation Archives - Patricia Roberts-Miller

“Liberals look down on you” is evil genius rhetoric: on demonizing rational argumentation

In an earlier post, I said that the GOP is, like any other useful political movement, a coalition. Thus, like any other coalition, it has groups with profoundly different policy agenda. The normal way to solve that problem is through bargaining, compromise, and deliberation. But the GOP can’t openly engage in those practices because two of the major members of its coalition believe that compromise is not acceptable (the fundagelicals and neo-Social Darwinists). The GOP has to persuade people whose political agenda is toxic populism, libertarianism only when it helps the wealthy, Dominionism, racism, ethical theatre about abortion, social and cultural reactionary knee-jerking, fundagelical and often end-times politics, and the carceral industry.

So, the GOP has to look tough, rigid, and supportive of regular folks while actually passing policies that do the opposite of what they’re advertised as doing (or the opposite of what they were previously advocating as the only ethical policy), and, above all else, keeping their supporters from looking at non-partisan data about the policies, candidates, or talking points. This coalition is very fragile, and falls apart if the people in it understand the positions of others in it. The last thing the current GOP can stand is policy argumentation.

Not all conservatives, and I sincerely mean that—this isn’t a list of all the sorts of people who vote Republican, but of the ones who create the rhetorical problem solved by “liberals look down on you.” I think our political discourse benefits by having people who are skeptical of social change and ambivalent about globalization, want small government, advocate being really cautious about military intervention (the traditional conservative position, abandoned by the GOP since Vietnam). I’m not saying they’re right, but I think the ideal public sphere has a lot of positions I think are wrong, as long as we’re all abiding by the rules of argumentation. The GOP can’t allow policy argumentation. And the “liberals look down on you” enables them to avoid it completely.

Here’s what I said in the previous post. Loosely, “liberals look down on you” enables GOP loyalists to feel good about having a rationally indefensible position, encourages them to dismiss dissent or uncomfortable information through motivism, makes politics an issue of dominance/submission, encourages GOP loyalists to feel victimized if they’re proven wrong (so the issue shifts from whether they were wrong to whether they were victimized), sets supporters up to make “Vladimir’s Choice” on a regular basis, makes having an irrational commitment seem a better choice than having a rational policy, and allows blazingly partisan standards to seem justified. It is and enables shameless levels of demagoguery.

As I keep saying, the whole “left v. right” false binary enables demagoguery. It enables this demagogic (it isn’t a question of policy but us v. them) move on the part of pro-GOP media because it’s always possible to find a non-GOP (and therefore, by the bizarre logic of the left-right false dilemma “liberal”) person who, for instance, treats disagreement as victimization. So, pro-GOP pundits can say, “Who are they to look down on us when they do it too?”

Were we to have an understanding of politics (and research on political affiliation) that wasn’t begging the question (research grounded in the assumption that “liberals” and “conservatives” reason differently) we could have better discussions about politics. Of course, were I to have a unicorn in my backyard that pooped gold, I could support various causes a lot more than I do. If wishes were horses and all that.

The “liberals look down on you” topos appeals to the epistemological populism (often falsely called “anti-intellectualism”) of the US. And here we get to two problems that puzzled me for years. It’s conventional to say that demagoguery is anti-intellectual, and that it’s grounded in resentment (what Nietzsche called ressentiment) and both of those claims seemed to me true, false, and damaging. Let’s start with the first—anti-intellectualism.

It’s true that demagoguery tends to have a rejection of “eggheads,” but it almost always cites expert sources. It isn’t opposed to expertise, but to a bad kind of expertise:

“Good” expertise confirms what common people know, what you can see by just looking. It shows why what sensible people already believe is right (even if it does so through very complicated explanations—here’s where conspiracy thinking comes in). “Bad” expertise says that what “common people” (and here “common people” is conflated with “in-group”) believe is wrong, that things aren’t exactly as they appear “if you just look.”

So, here we’re back at the point I make a lot. Demagoguery can thrive if we live in a world of argument (in which you have a good point if you can find evidence to support your claim), but it dies in a world of argumentation.

We don’t have a political crisis, but an epistemological one. Pro-GOP media can cite a lot of experts to support their positions, and dismiss as eggheads all the experts who don’t because pro-GOP media appeals to naïve realism and in-group favoritism (the truth is obvious to good people and good people are the ones who recognize this truth). That way of thinking about policy issues (there is a right answer, and it’s obvious to every sensible person, and anyone who presents data it isn’t right is not someone to whom we need to listen because their disagreement is proof that they’re bad) is far from restricted to the GOP, let alone to major political issues. (Do not get me started on my neighborhood mailing list fights about graffiti, putting dog poop bags in someone’s trash can on garbage collection day, bike lanes, or the noise wall).

I’ve spent a lot of time arguing with racists, and they always argue from personal experience.[1] Affirmative action is bad because they didn’t get this job, anti-racist actions in the work place are bad because they got reprimanded for being a racist, there is no racism in policing because (as a white person) they’ve never had trouble with the police. They believe that those datapoints are proof of their position, but a POC getting denied a job, a person failing to get anything useful done about racism in their workplace, a POC having trouble with the police—the same kind of evidence—none of that matters. That’s argument, but not argumentation.

Argumentation would be assessing personal experience as just another kind of data, subject to the same tests as other kinds of data—is it relevant, representative (or an outlier), reliable, and so on. As I said, the GOP can (and does) give its base arguments, but those arguments collapse like a cheap tent in a hurricane if they run into actual argumentation. So, why not give its base talking points that can withstand argumentation? It can’t, for several reasons.

It can’t have rational argumentation about abortion, for instance, because its policies aren’t supported by data. There are other issues on which the data is just plain bad (climate change) and can’t stand up to the weakest questioning. There are also issues for which the accurate and relevant data would make one member of the coalition of the happy, and another very unhappy. One group might be thrilled to find that Trump’s foreign policy has increased the chances of nuclear war in the Middle East, while that would sow doubt in the minds of other members of the coalition.

The GOP can’t actually give its base rational talking points that will serve its base well if they get into it with someone skilled in argumentation. All it’s got is ad hominem, whaddaboutism, and a kind of driveby shooting of data because that’s all it can have. So, what the GOP has to do is make a virtue of its greatest vice—make the ability to defend or attack policy claims through argumentation (what its critics can do and they can’t) a bad thing. Instead of acknowledging that being able to defend your positions through rational argumentation might be a good thing, they characterize it as what libs do. “Liberals look down on you” (for being unable to defend your position through argumentation) makes the inability to engage in rational argumentation a sign of in-group loyalty and a performance of in-group identity.

Just to be clear, I think that lots of “conservative” positions can be supported through rational argumentation. (That an argument can be supported through rational argumentation doesn’t mean it’s true—it just meets a certain standard.) The GOP can’t support its policy agenda through rational argumentation because it has wed itself to an identity of people who refuse to compromise, bargain, or deliberate and it’s a coalition. A coalition has to unify disparate groups with disparate needs and goals. It can do so through openly admitting that there are compromises that need to get made for strategic purposes that will, on the whole, benefit the coalition. There’s another strategy.

In 1939, Kenneth Burke, when talking about Hitler’s strategy in unifying the very disparate group that was the recently-created identity of “German,” said that unification through a common enemy is the easiest strategy with a disparate group. In the case of the GOP, the common enemy is rational argumentation.

[1] They also argue from data that doesn’t actually prove their point. For instance, in order to prove that policing isn’t racist they show data that African Americans are arrested more than white people. Logic isn’t their long suit. That’s why they need to make being bad at logic a good thing.

Arguing with Trump supporters III: tone isn’t rationality

Kavanaugh yelling — https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/09/kavanaugh-opening-statement-angry/571564/

Just to recap: Trump supporters avoid taking on the responsibilities of rational argumentation by taking the position of a negative case even when they’re making an affirmative claim. They do so this through shifting the issue from Trump to various distractions: your emotionality (“Why are you so upset?”), your sense of humor (“You just can’t take a joke”), your supposed biases (“Snopes is a liberal site”), your identity (“Typical Social Justice Warrior bullshit”), whatever the latest fear-mongering distraction-of-the-moment whaddaboutism is that pro-Trump propaganda is promoting (her emails, Benghazeeeeee, abortion, socialism, immigration, a prayer blanket found in the desert, the caravan, ISIS, Biden will kick in your door and take your guns), and by what amounts to a version of sealioning (setting themselves as the arbiter of truth).

Sometimes, they make claims, but they rarely engage in argumentation—at this point, they even rarely engage in pseudo-rational argumentation. Since maybe they still are, and just not in places I hang out, I’ll go ahead and explain how it works and why it’s hard to argue with. Pseudo-rational argumentation is neither rational, nor argumentation, but it has surface features that people (fallaciously) associate with rational argumentation, so it can look like it’s rational.

We too often characterize rational argumentation by surface features and, paradoxically, our visceral response. As far as the surface features, we’re tempted to call something a rational argument if it has: a calm (or “matter of fact”) tone, what are sometimes called “rationality markers” (words like “because,” “therefore,” “it necessarily follows”), appeals to external knowledge (“everyone knows,” “everyone agrees,” “obviously,” “clearly”), data, appeals to expert opinion (citing reliable experts, or people with apparently expert information). Finally, a lot of people think (because they have been taught) that a “rational” argument will “make sense”—it resonates. That’s the visceral response part. Let’s call an argument that fulfills these criteria but not the criteria of rational argumentation pseudo-rational argumentation.

Such arguments appear to be rational, as long as we judge on the basis of superficial traits of the argument and the person making the argument (and how we’re cued to judge the argument and person).

Tone is not an indication of the ir/rationality of an argument
Pseudo-rationalism plays on the common misunderstanding of rationalism as not emotionalism (a relatively recent want to think about emotions v. reason). In this world, a person is rational if they are not emotional, and an emotional person is not rational. In fact, that someone appears unemotional might mean all sorts of things, such as that they’re just good at suppressing their expression of emotions, they’re not an empathetic person, they don’t understand the situation, the person judging whether someone is emotional is a bad judge of emotionality (this last is pretty common, I think).

Being emotional doesn’t necessarily mean that one has an irrational argument. One of the things Rando might do (especially if Chester is female) is first deliberately outrage Chester, and then accuse Chester of having an invalid argument (or being unable to argue) because they are emotional. (This is a classic strategy of abusers). What this does is shift the stasis (that is, the thing about which we’re arguing) from Chester’s argument to Chester’s emotional state.[1]

This is one instance of Rando’s (the nickname of Random Internetasshole, the hypothetical interlocutor of Chester’s) favorite strategy—throw the burden of proof onto Chester, and, ideally, to things Chester can’t prove. (How do you prove you’re not emotional? That’s proving a the presence of an absence, and it’s notoriously hard to do.) And it doesn’t matter. That Chester is now emotional doesn’t mean their argument is irrational. (The “you have no sense of humor” accusation is another instance of this strategy—trying to make the argument about your feelings).

We have a tendency to think about arguments in terms of identity—a good person makes a good argument; a rational person makes a rational argument; an expert makes an expert argument. Good people do not necessarily make good arguments. (By the way, I’m often misunderstood as rejecting the notion of identity politics—I’m not.) Identity politics is an acceptance that different policies have different impacts on various identities—that we are not the same. Good v. bad people is not a useful way to think about identity, especially since neither guarantees the ir/rationality of the argument a good or bad person makes.

A slight variation on this muddle about rationality is the notion that a rational person is in control (of their emotions, themselves). It was this sense of rationality and control being connected that meant that women and non-whites were prohibited from rationality—they (we) weren’t allowed to control anyone. Thus, for someone who believes in this pseudo-rationality, a woman or POC can’t argue because we’re too emotional; if we appear not to be emotional, we’re hiding it, or—worse yet—we’re trying to control them. Then, oddly enough, it’s okay for them to get angry.

Later, I’ll get back to how to respond to these moves in pseudo-rationality (all of which you can see in Trump supporters). Here the point is simply that a person appearing to argue calmly is not necessarily someone making a rational argument.

To judge the rationality of the argument, we have to look at the argument. Pseudo-rationality tries to pretend that we can infer the rationality of the argument from the tone of the arguer. We can’t.

Something else that I’ve noticed tricks people into thinking an associative argument is rational argumentation is the use of what linguists call “metadiscourse” (especially “rationality markers” and “appeals to external knowledge”). “Metadiscourse” is the term used for the language that tells the reader about what you’re telling them. That’s a weird sentence, but it’s a useful concept. Imagine the claim, “Bunnies are fluffy.”

I might say, “Unfortunately, bunnies are fluffy,” “Thankfully, bunnies are fluffy,” “Obviously, bunnies are fluffy,” “It’s well known that bunnies are fluffy,” “Bunnies are generally fluffy,” or “I think bunnies are fluffy”—those are all sentences with that same predicate (“bunnies are fluffy”), but with metadiscourse that tell you how I want you to consider the claim.The first two tell you how I feel about bunnies being fluffy. The third and fourth are “appeals to external knowledge”—they’re saying that this claim about bunnies isn’t just my opinion, (and the “obviously” is what is called a “booster” in that it boosts the strength of the claim). The fifth and sixth have “hedging” in which I’m restricting the claim (the opposite of boosting). “Rationality markers” are words we use to signal that it’s a rational argument—often words like: because, therefore, thus, in conclusion.

The tendency to infer that the presence of a lot of those sorts of words and phrases means the argument is rational is connected to our tendency to think associatively. As I’ll explain when I get to the issue of data, “Bunnies are fluffy because 1 + 1 =2” is not a rational argument. It doesn’t matter how much metadiscourse I add, or how calmly I say it. It’s a sentence that has two logically disconnected claims. “Bunnies are fluffy because bunnies are mammals” has two claims that are more associated (they’re both about bunnies) but they’re still logically disconnected. People are likely to read them as logically connected simply because of the word “because.” We’re particularly likely to make this mistake if we believe both claims to be true.

Boosters and appeals to external knowledge are likely to persuade some people of the truth of the claims (even though they aren’t evidence, let alone proof) because we too often conflate certainty and credibility. That is, a lot of people assume that decisiveness, rhetorical clarity, and certainty are signs that someone has a perfect and complete understanding of a situation. They aren’t.

The calm tone, rationality markers, and signs of certainty are all surface qualities of a text that persuade people who mistakenly believe that those surface features are indications about the rhetor being a reliable person—rational and knowledgeable. Instead, we have to look at the argument they’re making.

[1] Since this is my blog, I get to put forward some of my crank theories. One of them is that a lot of people who say they are opposed to valuing rational argumentation have been traumatized by people in their lives who use pseudo-rational argumentation as a weapon to abuse and often gaslight them (particularly the move of deliberately upsetting someone and then condemning that person for being “emotional”). I think their experience of pseudo-rational argumentation as a kind of abuse is important to keep in mind.

Arguing with Trump supporters II: an unpersuasive negative case isn’t proof of the opposite claim

Arguing with Trump supporters is frustrating because they can look like they’re engaged in argumentation, but they aren’t. They’re using a very old trick of doing everything possible to avoid the burden of proof—that is, the rhetorical responsibility of supporting your claims. They’ll engage in sham outrage if their interlocutor won’t support their claims (or engages in fallacies like ad hominem), and that’s interesting. It’s striking how often a Trump supporter blasts into an argument with insults and then is on the ground crying and screaming if someone insults them. They’re very fragile.

I think there’s something else going on. They really can’t win an argument on an even playing field—one on which everyone is held to the same standards of argumentation—and so they do everything they can to make sure it isn’t level. They evade the responsibilities of argument as though they’re running from a vindictive ex, through sham outrage, motivism, deflection, distraction, and, most of all, trying to position themselves as making the negative case.

Argumentation has two cases—proposing a solution or case, and critiquing the case someone else has made. That is, affirmative (making a case) or negative (saying they haven’t made their case). People get confused as to what a “negative” case is—it isn’t a case saying something is bad; it’s saying that something hasn’t happened. And here’s what people have a lot of trouble understanding: the success of a negative case is not the proof of an affirmative claim. If I fail to prove to your satisfaction that Chester is a bunny, it’s fallacious for you to conclude that Chester is a duck. He might be neither; he might be a bunny, and I put forward a bad case; he might be a bunny, and I put forward a great case, and you aren’t open to persuasion. A successful negative case just that shows that this argument is inadequate.

If Chester says that Trump is a bad President, and Rando destroys that argument, Rando hasn’t shown that Trump is a good President.

“Trump is a good President” is an affirmative case—that’s the case his supporters have completely stopped defending through rational argumentation. Defending that case through rational argumentation would mean that his supporters engage the smartest critics of him while following these rules.

If any Trump supporters read this post, they’ll respond by listing what he’s done that they like (which he may or may not have actually done—they’re strategically misinformed), motivism, straw man, and nutpicking. Not through rational argumentation. That would be proving my point.

In my experience, Trump supporters often make one or more of four moves. First, as I’ve been saying, they can’t rationally defend “Trump is a good President,” so they don’t try—they insist that his critics take on the burden of proof, and they take the stance of a negative case. (And his critics tend to take on that burden, for really interesting reasons—that’s a later post, and if anyone is that interested, and I forget to write it, nag me.)

Second, they often set their own persuasion as the standard of a good argument. I have to say that every person who has done this latter move to me is a white male. Can we cay privilege? [1]

Third, having declared the opposition argument inadequate (because they are unpersuaded), they declare an affirmative victory. They never made an affirmative case, so they can’t have won it.

The fourth move isn’t necessarily the last one (sometimes it’s the first one they make, and they don’t make the others)—it’s to say that the Democrats are bad (you get to abortion and socialism on this road very fast). But Democrats being bad doesn’t mean he’s a good President. He might also be bad.[2] After all, if A is bad, that doesn’t mean not-A is good (that a gorilla is a bad pet doesn’t mean that a lion is a good one). But I think a lot of people really have trouble understanding that absence of proof for one affirmative case is not proof for the opposition affirmative case. Logic is not zero-sum.

Supporting Trump is sloppy Machiavellianism—anything, any argument or any action, that supports him is assumed to be good because their goals are supposedly good. Neither are good, and neither are rationally defensible.

[1] Speaking of privilege, being an actual Professor of Rhetoric, with a specialty in argumentation, means I have some cred when I say that whether a person is or is not making a good argument is something I am better qualified to determine than they are. But, arguing in my actual identity means making it clear that I’m a woman, and I can tell you that white males with no more research than asking their own brains what they think often feel fully qualified to tell me that I am wrong about rhetoric and argumentation.

And here we get back to whether the rules are applied equally. If Rando not being persuaded means the argument is bad, does my not being persuaded by his argument mean his argument is bad?

It doesn’t, of course. But if you ask him that, the two neurons he can get to fire short out. It’s kind of entertaining to see the response. Here again, if Rando is claiming to be Christian, it’s useful to point out that he is failing to do unto others as he would have do unto him.

[2] “He’s a bad President but he’s better than Biden” is not the same claim as “he’s a good President,” nor is it even evidence for that second claim.

On being nice to Trump supporters

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

Cicero, in De Inventione, said that, if you are presenting an argument with which your audience already agrees, you land your thesis in the introduction. If you are arguing for something your audience disagrees, you delay your thesis. Oddly enough, as I’ve taught a lot of workshops across the disciplines for scholarly writing, I’ve found that Cicero is right. When people are making an argument their audience doesn’t want to hear, they delay their thesis, even in scholarly arguments (they have a partition instead, or sometimes a false thesis).

I have always required that my students write to a reasonable and informed opposition, and that means delaying their thesis, delaying their claims till after they’ve given evidence, beginning by fairly representing the opposition, getting evidence from sources their opposition would consider reliable, giving a lot of evidence, and explaining it well. I don’t have those requirements because I think this is what all teachers should teach–we shouldn’t. Since student writing requires announcing a thesis, giving minimal explanation, starting paragraphs with main claims, and various other non-persuasive strategies, it is responsible for people teaching the genre of college writing to teach students how to do that. I’m describing that pedagogy because I want it clear that I understand the value of reaching out to an audience and trying to find common ground.

The hope of rhetoric is that we can avoid violence by talking.

We use violence when we believe that we are in a world of existential threat, when we believe that the out-group is engaging in actions that might exterminate us. Sometimes that belief is an accurate assessment of our situation—Native Americans through the entire nineteenth century, Jews in Nazi Germany, free African Americans in the antebellum era, powerful African Americans in most of the nineteenth and twentieth century, Armenians in Turkey, and so on. Whether violence or non-violence is the most strategic choice for the people being threatened with extermination is an interesting argument. For me, whether third-party groups should use violence to stop the extermination is not an interesting argument. The answer is yes.

Sometimes the rhetoric of in-group extermination is simultaneously right and irrational. Antebellum white supremacists correctly understood that abolition would mean that their political monopoly would end were African Americans allowed to vote. Their sense of existential threat was the consequence of so closely and irrationally identifying with white supremacy–with believing that losing that system was essentially extermination. It wasn’t; it was just losing the monopoly of power. Racist demagoguery enabled them to persuade themselves that, because they were threatened with extermination, they were not held by any bounds of ethics, Christianity, legality.

That’s how demagoguery about existential threat works, and that’s what it’s intended to do. It’s designed to get people to overcome normal notions that we should follow the law, be fair to others, listen to others, treat children well, be compassionate, behave according to the ethical requirements of the religion we claim to follow, and so on by saying that, while we are totally ethical people, right now we have to set all that aside–because we’re faced with extermination. When, actually, we’re just faced with losing privilege. That connection is sheer demagoguery.

Republicans now correctly understand that allowing everyone to vote would end their political monopoly. White evangelicals correctly realized that they were losing the political power they had with Bush and Reagan. Coal miners are faced with a world that doesn’t need a lot of people to have that job. Racists, homophobes, and bigots of various kinds are being told they need to STFU. None of these groups are faced with being actually exterminated, but they are faced with their political power being lessened. And too many people in those groups listen to media that has taken the Two-Minute Hate to 24/7 demagoguery about existential threat.

Trump supporters have spent years drinking deep from the Flavor-Aid of the pro-GOP Outrage Machine, and so they believe a lot of things. They believe they’re the real victims here, that the media is against them, that white people are about to be persecuted, that there is no legitimate criticism of their position, that libruls have nothing but contempt for them and think they’re racist,that they are so threatened with extermination that anything done on their behalf is justified.

And here I have to stop and say that authoritarians (regardless of where they are on the political spectrum, and authoritarians are all over the place, but at any given time they tend to congregate on a few spots) misunderstand the concept of analogy. If, for instance, I say that supporters of Hitler reasoned the same way that squirrel haters are now reasoning, I am not saying that they are the same people (or dogs) in every way. I am not making an identity argument; I am making an argument about reasoning.

But, all over the political spectrum, people who are, actually, reasoning the way that people who supported the Nazis reasoned, are outraged at the comparison. It isn’t a comparison about identity; it’s a comparison about methods of reasoning.

We aren’t in a crisis of facts. Everyone has facts. We’re in a crisis of meta-cognition. We have a President who is severely cognitively impaired and obviously declining rapidly, fires people who disagree with him, can’t make a coherent argument for his policies, doesn’t argue from a consistent set of principles. Trump supporters can find ways to support him, but none of those ways fit all the other ways, let alone are ways that explain their opposition to out-group members. The debacle about ingesting disinfectants is just the latest.

We are at a point when the defenses of Trump are that he doesn’t have the skills to be President–he is thin-skinned (he was so obsessed with impeachment that he couldn’t pay attention to anything else), lies all the time (his height, weight, the number of people at his inauguration, whether he was talking to Birx), forces other people to lie on his behalf (such as Trump supporters lying that he was so obsessed with impeachment he couldn’t do anything else, although he also said that wasn’t true), refuses to listen to anyone (which his supporters defend by blaming the disloyal people), gives briefings when he doesn’t actually know what he’s talking about (every briefing), and often says things that aren’t what he meant (every defense of Trump).

What I’m saying is that Trump supporters grant all the criticisms of Trump–their argument is that he’s incompetent.

But their defenses of him show something about them–that they can’t put forward a rational defense of him. I mean “rational” in the way that theorists of argumentation use the term. They can’t put forward an argument for Trump without violating most of rules of rational-critical argumentation. (And, I’d love to be proven wrong on this, so if any Trump supporters want to show me an argument for him that follows that rules, I’d love to see it.)

In other words, support for Trump isn’t about any kind of rational support for his enhancing democratic deliberation, nor even his trying to ground his political decisions and rhetoric in a coherent ideology, but a “fuck libruls, we’re winning” rabid tribal loyalty that eats its own premises.

Trump happens to be the most obvious example right now, but, again, all over the political spectrum are people who can’t defend their positions in a coherent and consistent way. They can defend their positions—but by giving evidence that relies on a major premise they don’t believe, engaging in kettle logic, or whaddaboutism.

If we’re paying attention to Cicero, then we should find common ground with them, be fair to their representation of their own argument, and delay our theses. And, as I said, I think that is great advice.

But it isn’t useful advice when we’re arguing with people who, as soon as they sense you are going to criticize them, refuse to listen because they think they know what you are going to argue, and they know they shouldn’t listen. People well-trained in what the rhetoric scholars Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrecths-Tyteca called “philosophical paired terms” just assume that, if you’re saying Trump isn’t the best, then you are part of the ruling elite–just as Stalinists used to say that Trotsky must be a capitalist, since he criticized Stalin; Nazis said that anyone who criticized Hitler must be a Jew; anyone who opposed McCarthy was a communist; slavers said that anyone who criticized slavery must want a race war. If you aren’t with us, you are against us.

In the 1830s, the major critics of slavery were predominantly Quakers and free African Americans who described slavery accurately, but that (accurate, it should be emphasized) description hurt the feelings of slavers.

Slavers and pro-slavery rhetors said that any criticism of slavery was an incitement to slave rebellion. Much like pro-Trump rhetoric that inadvertently gives away the game–their argument is that he doesn’t have the skillset to be a good President–this rhetoric gave away that slaves hated being slaves, and that the actual conditions of slavery were indefensible.

Many people tone-policed the anti-slavery rhetors (to the extent of having a gag rule in Congress, which is pretty amazing if you think about it). Oddly enough, some anti-slavery rhetors said that these (accurate) descriptions of individual slavers beating and raping slaves were inflammatory, and so some of them tried to write conciliatory anti-slavery tracts. They were accused of fomenting slave rebellion.

Individuals can be persuaded to change their ways on the basis of individual interactions, and there are a lot of anecdotes saying that can work. That’s how individuals leave cults, for instance. But conciliatory rhetoric to groups of people who are drinking deep from a propaganda well is a waste of time.

If you have a personal connection to someone who is a Trump supporter, then building on that personal connection might work, but it’s worth noting that the notion of being able to change people is why people stay in abusive relationships.

But, when we’re talking about relative strangers–the strange world of social media interlocutors–then I don’t think engaging the claims is as useful as pointing out the inability to follow the basic rules of rational-critical argumentation. When people are fanatically committed to an ideology that is internally incoherent and incapable of defended in rational-critical argumentation—and that’s where support of Trump is now—no level of “let’s be inviting to them” will persuade them. It’s worth the time to be precise in our criticisms of their position, but not because being precise will be more or less rhetorically effective. It’s worth the time to be right.

People in rhetoric need to understand that some people are engaged in good faith argumentation, and some aren’t, and we behave toward them differently.

It is impossible to defend Trump through rational-critical argumentation.

Shaming Trump supporters on that point is a good rhetorical strategy. Whether you do that through conciliation with individuals or through generally pointing it out is an audience choice.

Flinging claims for Trump

picture of trump — This image is from here: https://www.snowflakevictory.com/

There is a pro-Trump website telling Trump supporters “how to win an argument with your liberal relatives.” One of the main arguments for Trump was (and is) that he would get the best people to work for and with him. So, this is the argument that the best people make for Trump, or, in other words, the best argument for Trump. Does this “best arguments for Trump” webpage have good arguments?

Someone making a rational argument

makes claims supported with good evidence, and so presents sources for claims;
can identify the conditions under which they would change their mind;
has claims that are logically connected, avoids fallacies, and applies standards across groups (so, for instance, if you want to say that you are appalled at feeding squirrels, you are just as appalled at in-group squirrel-feeding as you are at out-group squirrel-feeding);
engages the best out-group arguments, or, engaging a specific set of claims that aren’t good arguments, then at least the out-group claims are being presented accurately.

Engaging in rational argumentation isn’t very hard, and it’s easy to do if you’ve actually got a good argument. Rational argumentation isn’t about what claims you make, and whether they seem true to people who already agree, nor whether people making the claims think they’re unemotional. Rational argumentation involves a fairly low bar; it’s just the list above. And that list isn’t controversial.

If you take it out the realm of politics (where people are especially tribal), then it’s clear that “rational argumentation” is actually “sensible ways to think about conflict.” Imagine that you have a boss who says that you should be fired because reasons. You’d be outraged (justifiably) if your boss couldn’t cite sources, was just operating from in-group bias, unfairly represented what you’d said, and wasn’t listening. That’s a shitty boss. And it’s reasonable for you to ask that your boss make a decision about firing you rationally.

That’s a shitty boss because it’s a person who is making decisions badly. And we’ve all had that boss. What would it be like if we extrapolated from that shitty boss, who made decisions badly, to our own tendency to make decisions badly? What if we’re all the shitty boss?

But back to the Trump page—does it present good arguments? It fails every one of the criteria for rational argumentation.

For instance, it not only fails to link to sources to support its claims but it never links to an opposition.

Why not? Why not link to data that would support the claims it’s making? Why not link to the opposition with their, supposedly, terrible arguments? Well, perhaps because it can’t because then it would be clear how false the page’s claims are. Take one example. On two of the links, the claim is that “the 2020 Democrats are the ones who want to strip you of your private, employer-provided health insurance!” (“Trump approach”) That’s a lie in two different ways. First, some of the main candidates argue for something, single-payer health care, that might cause people to choose not to get health insurance from their employment, but instead from the government-based insurance—that’s what the pro-Trump healthcare page goes on to argue. So, the Dems don’t “want” to strip people of their private insurance—some Dem candidates want to give people a choice. (Sanders is the only one who has unequivocally said he would get rid of private insurance, not something, by the way, that a President can do without Congress.) If, as the pro-Trump page claims, so many people leave private insurance that the rates become unmanageable that would be because the government-funded insurance program is better than the private. In other words, this argument is an admission that the current system is inadequate.

Second, many Democratic candidates have not endorsed any such plan, so the claim that “the Dems” are advocating it is simply a lie. If what you’re saying is true, you don’t have to lie.

There is only one place that the site gives a link—to Biden saying that he insisted that a Ukrainian prosecutor get fired. The page admits that this claim has been debunked, but without any explanation or argument¬, insists it’s true. That isn’t an argument: that’s just direct contradiction.

That argument about Biden and the Ukraine is fallacious in that it is tu quoque (or, “you did it too!”). Whether Biden asked that the Ukrainian prosecutor be fired in order to prevent an investigation of his son’s activities has no relevance to whether Trump told Ukraine that he would withhold foreign aid (which he did, in his version of the phone call). Whether Trump is now refusing to allow people to testify in a trial—that is, obstructing justice—has nothing to do with anything Biden did. Tu quoque is how little kids argue—when caught with a hand in the cookie jar, claiming that little Billy also stole cookies is irrelevant. You might both have stolen cookies. But that’s a fallacy that runs throughout the pages—Trump’s reducing environmental protections is good because China is bad. Trump’s healthcare plan is good because the Democrats’ is bad. They might both be bad.

The set of claims about Ukraine has another fallacy that runs throughout the site: it says that “under President Obama, Ukraine never received this kind of lethal military aid AT ALL. It is thanks to President Trump, that the Ukrainians are getting the aid in the first place.” That is an example of the fallacy of equivocation (also called the fallacy of ambiguity), of an argument that is technically correct, but deliberately misleading (much like Bill Clinton’s “it depends upon what is is”). It looks as though it’s saying that Ukraine never got military aid from Obama AT ALL, something that is false. Technically, it’s saying that Ukraine never got “this kind” or “the aid”—meaning the Javelin missiles. That’s technically true, just as it was technically true that Clinton was not, at the very moment, having sex with an intern. But it’s misleading.

It’s hard to argue with someone engaged in equivocation, since it necessitates getting into the technicalities—that’s why people who aren’t arguing in good faith (that is, whose minds are not open to persuasion) engage in it.

Another common strategy of this site is to give Trump credit for what Obama or other Presidents did. For instance, the page on the environment begins, “America’s environmental record is one of the strongest in the world and the U.S. has also been a world leader in reducing carbon emissions for over a decade. We have the cleanest air on record and remain a global leader for access to clean drinking water.” Notice that this claim is vague, and so hard to disprove (like an ad that says, “We have the best prices”—compared to whom?): what record? Not the world record. It’s seventh. It isn’t even clear to me that the US now has the cleanest air in its record. But we can’t know what the claim is because it gives no sources. Similarly, the claim that “President Trump has taken important steps to restore, preserve, and protect our land, air, and waters” is unsupported, unexplained, and unsourced.

To the extent that the air is cleaner, it’s because of what was done in the past, by other people, particularly Obama, but also the Congress that passed the Clean Air Act and the 1990 Amendments.

The final problem with the page that I’ll mention (I could go on) is one that contributes significantly to the demagoguery of the page (and it is demagoguery): the implication is that anyone who disagrees with Trump is a “liberal,” and that simply isn’t true. A large number of people who believe that Trump should be convicted are conservative.

In short, the page doesn’t engage in rational argumentation. It doesn’t even engage in argument. So, would someone following the script provided by this webpage win any argument with any “liberal”? No. Because they wouldn’t be arguing. They’d be making claims, claims that are sometimes false, often misleading, almost always unsourced, and always unsupported, but never argued.

A person who followed this script and claimed to have won the argument would be like someone who claimed to have won a chess game because they turned over the board and fed the pieces to the dog.

If Trump can’t be supported with rational argumentation, then maybe it isn’t rational to support him.

Arguing with GOP Loyalists

daily worker masthead I have a difficult time finding a good term to describe people who get all their information exclusively from what is sometimes called “the right-wing media sphere”—that is, Fox, Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh, Drudge Report. I don’t like calling it “right-wing” because I think one of the reasons we’re in the mess we are is the false binary (or no less false continuum) of right v. left. And, as is often remarked, it’s hard to look over Limbaugh or Fox and infer a coherent ideology that they’re promoting. They claim they’re against big government, debt, government spending, corruption in government, but they aren’t against those in principle—they defend big government when it comes to regulations they like, debt caused by wars and tax cuts, self-paying if it’s done by Republicans.

Those media and pundits aren’t consistently conservative—sometimes they’re very radical. They often reject basic principles of conservative ideology, such as promoting free trade, so it seems to me an important misnomer to call them “conservative.” What they are consistent about is promoting the election of Republican candidates, supporting the GOP in Congress, deflecting any criticism of GOP political figures (unless those are figures who dissent from or criticize the most extreme members of the GOP, in which case those figures are condemned as not true Scotsmen, oops, I mean not really Republican).

Unhappily, most research in political science relies on the binary or continuum, and I think it seriously confounds the results. A lot of the research relies on people identifying as “conservative,” but that doesn’t mean that they have a “conservative” ideology. A lot of research shows that people endorse “liberal” policies, so you have lefties insisting that they could win elections by promoting progressive policies, but that’s the wrong conclusion. Most people don’t vote on the basis of a policy agenda, but identity (and sometimes shark attacks), and there are two kinds of identities that a lot of voters like: some like the image of a “conservative” person; some vote for “the outsider who will go into Washington and kick some ass.” Thus, there are a lot of people who endorse progressive Democrat policies, but vote loyally Republican (see especially Rationalizing Voter, Stealth Democracy, Politics of Resentment, Ideology in America).

Sometimes I use the term “people who self-identify as conservative” since that’s really what much of that research shows. And here is where scholars of rhetoric could intervene usefully in the discourse of political science. It seems to me that a lot of political science assumes a coherent identity (I am a liberal); more recent work is usefully complicating that assumption (such as the work showing that people like the identity of independent, but who vote GOP consistently), but it’s no surprise to scholars of rhetoric. It’s consubstantiation.

I sometimes use the term “rabid factionalism,” since I sincerely think that’s accurate. There are various problems with that term, though, especially if you’re actually trying to reach people in that hyperfictional bubble. Benkler et al. call it a “propaganda feedback loop”—another accurate term. The problem, of course, is that people in a propaganda feedback loop never see themselves that way.

My first experience of recognizing that I was talking to people in a propaganda feedback loop was at Berkeley, and it was, if I remember correctly, the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade (Stalinists). There were four communist groups at Berkeley when I got there (maybe five), each of which had a very small number of members, and they mostly spent their time breaking up each other’s meetings. There were the Stalinists (they didn’t call themselves that—they might have called themselves Leninists) who handed out The Daily Worker (as far as I can tell, a Pravda-supported publication) and defended the USSR to the hilt. There were the Trotskyites, who spent most of their time fighting the Stalinists. There were Maoists, and the anarcho-communists (they worked at the Writing Center, and, interestingly enough, listened to a lot of New Age music).

A propaganda feedback loop, as Benkler et al. define it, is one in which
“media outlets, political elites, and publics form and break connections based on the contents of statements, and that progressively lowers the cost of telling lies that are consistent with a shared political narrative and increases the costs of resisting that narrative in the name of truth.” (33)

What was interesting to me about the Stalinists is that their defenses of the USSR relied on two strategies: 1) having at their fingertips all sorts of accurate statistics and information about the wrongs of the US; 2) dismissing any criticism of the USSR as biased on the grounds that it was criticism.

Of course, many of the things for which the Stalinists were criticizing the US were things the USSR was also doing: pollution, oppression of minority groups, corruption, imperialism. More important, the logical problem with the first strategy is that the US being wrong doesn’t make the USSR right. But it was the second one that intrigued me—it seemed to me an open admission of irrational loyalty. It meant that they could never engage in good faith argumentation, or a rational assessment of their own positions.
They were in a propaganda feedback loop.

Nothing so reminds me of those Stalinists as talking to someone who gets all their information from the GOP propaganda feedback loop (Fox/Limbaugh/Breitbart and so on). They make those two moves—they have lots of information as to what’s wrong with Democrats, but it’s a logical fallacy to assume that (even if the information is right, and it often isn’t) the Democrats being bad means the GOP is good. Ethical behavior is not a zero-sum, in which bad behavior on one side necessarily means better behavior on the other.

It’s a rhetorical mistake (one I often make) to dispute about those claims. They don’t really matter—for the GOP Loyalist (which is what I’m now thinking is the right term), they’re just examples of how awful Democrats are. If you persuade them that that example (or information) is wrong, they won’t change their mind either about Democrats or about their sources of information. As with the Stalinists, it’s that second argumentative strategy that matters: they will reject any disconfirming information, criticism, or dissent on the grounds that it is criticism and therefore “biased.”

It’s an admission of deliberately irrational loyalty.

I’m not saying that that deliberate irrational choice to remain in a propaganda feedback loop is limited to one place on the political spectrum (see How Partisan Media Polarize America), or even limited to politics–one reason I dislike the “two sides” model is that it limits our ability to talk about that problem because it so quickly turns into “you do it too!” And, while it’s true that there are lots of propaganda feedback loops, it isn’t true that both sides are just as bad–people who self-identify as liberal (0r left) are more likely to believe in fact-checking, consume media that issues corrections and has norms of accountability, and get information from disconfirming sources.

A lot of people ask me about how to argue with relatives who get all their information from the GOP propaganda feedback loop, and one thing I would say is: don’t feel that you have to. If they say, “Trump is the most effective President ever” or “Clinton laughed about a rape” you can, if you want, show them the video (she wasn’t laughing that a woman was raped) or give the data about Trump’s failure. But you don’t have to. One response is to ask them, “Do you get your information from sources that would tell you if he isn’t?” And then you can shift the argument about Trump to a discussion about information and deliberation.

Or, just refuse to argue, on the grounds that they don’t know anything about politics; they just believe. As long as they stay in that feedback loop, as long as they refuse to take seriously sources that disagree with them, they aren’t capable of a rational argument about politics. You can argue with them if you want, but it’s also possible to find various kind ways of saying that you aren’t arguing with them because they’re in a propaganda feedback loop, and then invite them to have more pie. Everyone likes pie.

Chances are good that how you assess bias is irrational

Many people believe that a biased argument is irrational, and vice versa, and, so, one way to assess the rationality of an argument is to see whether it’s biased. That’s an irrational way to assess an argument, and one that nurtures irrationality.

What I have long found difficult about getting people to think in a more accurate way about how we think is that many people assume that you either believe there is a truth, and we all see it (naïve realism), or you believe that all points of view are equally valid.

It’s grounded in an old and busted model of how perception can work—that “rational” people just look at the world and see it in an unmediated (unbiased) way. And that direct perception of the world enables them to make judgments that are accurate and ring true.

One of the ways that our media (all over the political spectrum) engage in inoculation is to promote the false binary of one position being that kind of “unbiased” and obviously true position, and “biased” positions (all others). They point out to their choir that this position seems obviously true to them, so it must be the unbiased position. That’s the confusion that Socrates pointed out—that you believe something to be true doesn’t mean you know it to be true. You just believe you do.

Imagine that two dogs, Chester and Hubert, disagree as to whether little dogs are involved in the squirrel conspiracy to get to the red ball. Chester, and his loyal media, says to their base, “Hubert media is biased because it says little dogs aren’t conspiring with squirrels.” Chesterian media is inoculating its base against listening to any contradictory information. To the extent that it successfully equates “disagrees with us” and “biased,” any media—regardless of its place on the political spectrum—ensures that its audience can’t assess policies rationally.

That’s what far too much of our political media says—any source of information that gives information that contradicts or complicates our position is “biased” and therefore should be dismissed without consideration. And, as I said, that’s irrational.

It’s irrational because it’s saying that having a strong political commitment is irrational, but only if it’s an out-group political commitment. So, this isn’t really about the rationality of an argument, in terms of its internal consistency, quality of evidence, logical relationship of claims, but whether it’s in- or out-group.

It’s saying that people who believe what I believe are rational because they believe what I believe and I believe that my beliefs are rational and so I believe that anyone who disagrees with me is irrational because they don’t believe what I believe and what I believe is rational because it’s what I believe.

A rational position on an issue is one that is argued:
• via terms and claims that can be falsified,
• internally consistently in terms of its claims and assumptions,
• by fairly representing opposition arguments,
• by holding all interlocutors to the same standards.

Rationality has nothing to do with the tone of an argument, whether it appeals to emotions, whether the people making arguments are good people, or even whether you can find evidence to support your claims.

So, the argument that out-group media sources should be dismissed on the grounds that those sources are biased is irrational because it violates everyone one of those criteria. It’s a circular argument; it doesn’t consistently condemn bias (only out-group bias); it frames all out-group arguments as biased by bad motives; and it privileges in-group arguments.

To say that all media are biased is not to say that they are all equally reliable (or unreliable). It is to say that we are all biased, and we can assess sources to see if their biases cause them to engage in irrational argumentation. If we find that a source is consistently irrational, then it’s fine to dismiss the source as unreliable–not because it’s out-group, but because we’ve found it to fail so often.We should assess arguments on whether they’re rational; not whether they seem true to us.

That you believe, sincerely, deeply, and profoundly, that what you are saying is true doesn’t mean it is, let alone that it’s a belief you can defend rationally. Just because you sincerely believe you’re right doesn’t mean you’re Rosa Parks, refusing to give up your seat; you might be George Wallace, committing to segregation forever.

[Btw, if any of you would like to put pressure on cafepress to make the circular reasoning visual a t-shirt, count me in.]

Your being frightened doesn’t mean those people are dangerous

Earlier, I had a post about a very nice neighbor whose position on the issue of the marathon exemplifies a really damaging way that we are all tempted to think about public policies—there is the public good, and that good is obviously achieved through the one policy grounded in it. All other policies benefit special interests. That is, policy deliberation is simple because the right answer is obvious to people of good will.

Seeing our values as the values that matter, and all other values (goals or needs) as the consequence of special interest is a kind of imaginative selfishness. We can only imagine what impact policies might have from our self-oriented perspective. Our perspective is the universal one, and all others are particular.

The second problem with how we think and argue about politics exemplified on the neighborhood mailing list has to do with how our culture treats things like fear, anger, desire for vengeance, shame. And my argument is: not well.

There is another guy on the mailing list, who is (legitimately) angry about graffiti. Apparently, he owns a strip mall and has a real problem with graffiti. It’s reasonable for him to be angry about graffiti at his strip mall. And, apparently, the city won’t do much to help him, and that also makes him reasonably angry.

One of many problems with the rational/irrational split is that our culture tends to privilege the “rational” side of that split, with the mostly unspoken assumption that, if you have something that falls on the “irrational” side of that split—a belief you can’t defend rationally—then you should abandon it. That’s a disastrous way to think about decision-making and public deliberation.

A lot of beliefs that can’t be defended rationally (and which we don’t hold in a “rational” way) are central to our sense of identity. From within the world that says you have to abandon beliefs that can’t be defended rationally, then, if we have a belief that can’t be defended rationally–we’re angry about graffiti, fearful about the presence of the Japanese, shamed by being accused of being racist–we don’t abandon them, but just try to present them as “rational.”

Since our cultural notion of what makes a belief rational is so muddled and gerfucked–a witches brew of feeling, affect, tone, metadiscourse, in-group identity, surface features (like data, appeal to studies, appeal to facts), identity–then we just present our nonfalsifiable argument as though our nonfalsifiable and irrational belief (graffiti is damaging, the Japanese are threatening, people shouldn’t call me racist) is “rational” by making it fit some of those incoherent surface features of a “rational” argument. We find data, studies, experts who support us, or we make our argument with claims to universal truths, and we adopt a calm tone, bemoaning the emotionalism of our opposition.

As lots of people have argued (including me), our understanding of “rational” is an imbroglio of criteria: surface features (metadiscourse that signals calm affect, such as hedging, rationality markers), rhetorical appeals (such as the appeal facts, statistics, expert opinions, claims of expertise), deeper features (such as the relationship of claims), relationship to reality (an argument is rational if it’s true, a rational argument is universally accepted, whereas an irrational argument is particular to an individual). None of those are useful ways of thinking about what makes an argument (or belief) rational (and, no, I am not arguing that all beliefs are equally valid or there is no truth), but that isn’t my point here. My point here is that, if you are angry about graffiti (or frightened by the Japanese, as was Earl Warren, or threatened by integration, as was James Kilpatrick) then simply saying, “I am really angry about graffiti because it costs me a lot of money, and I’m angry that the city won’t do anything about it” would look as though you are irrational. That’s an argument about you (not universal, therefore particular and “subjective”) and it’s coming from a place of emotion (anger).

I think that we should live in a world where people can make that argument–“I am very angry about this”–and have that taken seriously as a datapoint to be considered.

I think the fact that Earl Warren (and many others) were afraid of “the Japanese,” and James Kilpatrick felt threatened about “whites” losing their privileges are arguments that people should be able to make in the public sphere. I don’t think Warren and Kilpatrick should be able to make those arguments because those arguments are good or valid, but because treating them as claims about their beliefs (and not about the world) would have opened up policy options off the table (such as people like Warren learning to distinguish between Americans of Japanese descent and the nation with whom we were at war),, and having to submit those arguments to public deliberation would have shown the policies (mass imprisonment, segregation) were grounded in indefensibly irrational arguments.

I think that, had they been clear what their argument was (“I am afraid” and “I feel threatened”) there could have been some interesting and useful discussions, especially about policy, since the policy they promoted didn’t actually solve their problems (mass imprisonment of Americans of Japanese descent couldn’t make Warren any less afraid about the war with Japan, and that Kilpatrick was threatened by the possibility of “a coffee-colored” culture was not solved by segregation). But they kept their most relevant beliefs (“I am afraid of Japanese” and “Integration scares me”) off the table.

These are all instances of people with particular reactions to their particular situations, but that they reframed as problems for everyone, and they did so by transforming the objects of the feelings (“I fear the Japanese”) into the agents of those feelings (“The Japanese are dangerous”). If you insist on the objective/subjective distinction, then you’d say it’s that they make a subjective reaction an objective reality. But the subjective/objective distinction isn’t a useful way to think about these policy disasters because the people making these arguments sincerely believe they were describing, not a subjective perception, but an objective reality. No one thinks they’re being subjective.

I think it’s more useful to see this problem as someone taking their reaction and universalizing from it (as happened with marathons being universally good or bad) and projecting one’s feelings into the fabric of the universe. “I don’t like action movies” becomes “Action movies are bad.”

And that’s what happened with the issue of graffiti and the neighborhood mailing list. Instead of saying, “Graffiti is really hurting me, and I wish the city took it more seriously,” he argued that the graffiti in this blazingly white neighborhood was part of [dog whistle racist] gang activity. The notion that this neighborhood is in grave danger of turning into the site of [dog whistle racist] turf warfare is not just false, but fear-mongering in a neighborhood with a lot of elderly people. It’s damaging.

[That the moderators allowed him to engage in [dog whistle racist] and completely irrational fear-mongering about graffiti, nearly relentlessly, is why I left the list.]

A lot of people, Earl Warren among them, were frightened about how badly the war was going with Japan. Imprisoning Japanese wouldn’t make that war go better. His own policy didn’t fit his need. James Kilpatrick, like all whites, was genuinely threatened by desegregation—were desegregation to happen (and it still hasn’t), whites would no longer get a privileged status and a free pass for all sorts of things. Had Kilpatrick had to admit that was really his fear, then, perhaps, we wouldn’t be trying to make the point that black lives matter as much as white lives.

It seems to me legitimate that my neighbor is outraged about the graffiti on his strip mall, and even I found the graffiti in our neighborhood irritating (I really dislike graffiti unless it’s thoughtful), but it isn’t and never was a sign of gangs tagging our neighborhood. (I think I know what white kid up the street it was. He is not in a gang.) That was irresponsible and toxic rhetoric.

That a person is frightened by something doesn’t mean it is dangerous. We all feel threatened, offended, enraged, violated by various things. Those aren’t just feelings. They are beliefs. We believe that we are threatened, offended, enraged, violated. And, once we try to get others to share that belief, we are arguing, not that we are frightened but that those things are threatening. That slippage–“I am frightened” becomes “they are dangerous”–obscures that those two kinds of claims are supported in very different ways.

That some group is dangerous is not supported by your fear of them, nor your (and your in-groups) non-falsifiable claims about how everything they do is motivated by their desire to hurt the in-group. Warren said that the lack of sabotage on the part of Japanese was proof that they planned to engage in sabotage. Graffiti guy interpreted every instance of graffiti as proof of the impending gang war.

We can make arguments that our feelings are accurate assessments of the situation (as they often are)–that we feel frightened, threatened, uncomfortable, sexually aroused, sexualized, silence is a valid datapoint. It should neither be dismissed, but nor should it be seen as conclusive.

Graffiti guy’s really unhappy experience was a single datapoint. Relevant, worth considering, but not proof of impending gang warfare.

In a previous post, I argued that one problem with how we argue about politics is that we universalize from our belief system—because we are ethical people, then our policy agenda is the ethical one (and all other policies are unethical). For every apparently complicated political situation, there is a policy solution, and it happens to be the one that is obviously right to us.

I think that argument could be misunderstood as my saying that we shouldn’t argue from personal experience or personal perspective. Of course we should; in fact, that’s all we can do. And that’s how healthy argument works—with people bringing different perspectives. We can try to represent the perspective of people not like us, and we should, but, finally, we will still be representing our perspective on their perspective. The problem is when we insist that our perspective is the only valid one. Warren feared “the Japanese.” Black men fear the police. Kilpatrick feared desegregation. I fear climate change. Those are all datapoints.

Warren’s fear of “the Japanese” became the basis of public policy, but he never made a rational argument that his fear of what the country of Japan was doing militarily was evidence that people of Japanese ancestry in this country were dangerous. A black man who fears an interaction with the police can make a rational argument that his fear of police is grounded in evidence.

That I fear something doesn’t mean it’s so dangerous that we need public policy changes. But my fear might be a sign of a larger political issue that should involve policy changes. Fear is, by itself, neither rational nor irrational. Whether the claims I’m making about what my fear means for us as a community are rational https://www.patriciarobertsmiller.com//2019/10/18/people-teaching-argument-need-to-stop-teaching-the-rational-irrational-split/ or not has nothing to do with whether I appeal to fear or statistics, but with how I argue.

Rational argumentation and whether Dems should impeach Trump

I’m getting really tired of lefties slamming Pelosi for not insisting on impeaching Trump. A far too common argument is that impeaching Trump is the obvious thing to do, and she is too corrupt, craven, cowardly, or corporate to take the obviously correct line of action.

This is a standard—and profoundly anti-democratic—position that people all over the political spectrum take about all sorts of policy disagreements: that the correct course of action is obvious, and anyone who disagrees with that position does so out of bad motives. This position assumes that politics is simple, that there is not legitimate disagreement (at least on this issue), that the person making this argument has perfect perception and knows everything necessary, that, in other words, there are not other legitimate needs or perspectives. That’s in-group authoritarianism. Democracy presumes that we have to argue together because no single individual (or group) can see an issue from every possible perspective—we need input from multiple perspectives.

I have no problem with people believing that impeachment is the right course of action. I have no problem with people passionately believing that they are right, and arguing with vehemence about how right they are. I have no problem with people getting frustrated at not getting their way. I also have no problem with someone coming to the conclusion that an interlocutor is a bad actor, acting in bad faith. But I do have a problem if people are arguing irrationally . The rationality of an argument is determined by how the argument is made, not the emotional state of the people making the argument, nor even (in general) what the argument is.

There are irrational ways of framing a debate, such as beginning with a false binary. One of my least favorite false binaries is the “do this now or do nothing ever.” There are not two sides on whether to impeach Trump, even among people who believe he has committed acts that should cause any President to be impeached.

The Dems could impeach Trump now, begin impeachment hearings now (and impeach any time between now and his reelection), begin impeachment hearings in January 2020, not begin impeachment hearings at all unless he gets reelected. Any one of those positions can be defended through rational argumentation.

What can’t be defended through rational argumentation is the argument that impeaching right now is so much the obviously right thing to do that anyone who disagrees must be corrupt.

Impeachment cannot succeed with this Senate. There aren’t the votes in the Senate, and there is no reason to think—at this point—that that will change in the near future. Even if you think Trump should be impeached (and I do believe that the GOP would be screaming for impeachment had a Dem President done what Trump is doing), that doesn’t mean impeaching him now is right.

If impeaching Trump would be a futile effort because the Senate would never convict, but it starts a cultural conversation about demagoguery and political corruption, it could be the right thing to do.

But, if it doesn’t start that conversation, costs a lot of money, and enables Trump to get reelected, then it isn’t necessarily the right thing, even from within the set of premises in which preventing Trump’s reelection is right. When you passionately (and perhaps rationally) believe that an end is absolutely right, you can get suckered into skipping arguing about the means–it can seem that doing something is better than doing nothing. But it isn’t; doing nothing is better than doing the wrong thing. (There’s a wonderful part of The Phantom Tollbooth about exactly this.)

Doing something doesn’t mean doing this thing. That’s how Bush argued for invading Afghanistan and Iraq–we had to do something. We did the wrong thing. For people who believe that Trump needs to be removed, that our political world needs to acknowledge the depth and consequences of his corruption, impeachment now is not the only option. It might be the right option, but it isn’t the only one. We were not in a world of invading Afghanistan and Iraq or doing nothing about terrorism. We are not in a world of impeaching now or doing nothing about Trump.

There is something odd to me about people who have never managed to get themselves elected to Congress deciding that they know that Pelosi is making the wrong move. She has her flaws, but she is better at politics than many of her critics. Does that mean she’s right? Nope, but it does mean that argument from person conviction that Pelosi is wrong is just that and nothing else—it is not an argument from authority, nor rational support for a claim.

I’m not saying that people who disagree with Pelosi are irrational. I’m not saying that people appalled by Trump’s corruption are obviously wrong to argue for impeachment now. I’m saying that we are not in a binary of the obviously right position and all other obviously wrong positions–about Trump, about raw dog food, about bike lanes, about much of anything.

I’m saying that we are in a world in which being passionately and rationally committed to your position (and it’s possible to be both at the same time)—about impeaching Trump, immigration, raw dog food, abortion, Billy Joel, bike lanes—requires acknowledging that the situation is not obvious, that it is not a binary, and that no one died and made you God.

If you believe that our policy options about Trump are a binary of your position and everyone else, and you believe that only your position about Trump is legitimate, and that the people who disagree with you are irrational people with bad motives, then whatever your position is about Trump, it is not coming from a place of respecting or protecting democracy.