Imagine that we’re disagreeing about whether I should drive the wrong way down a one-way street, and you say, “Don’t go that way—you could get in an accident!” And I say, “Oh, so no one has ever driven down a one-way street without getting into an accident?” You didn’t say anything about always or never. You’re talking in terms of likelihood and risk, about probability. I’m engaging in binary thinking.
What’s hard about talking to people about binary thinking is that, if someone is prone to it, they’re likely to respond with, “Oh, so you’re saying that there’s never a binary?” Or, they’ll understand you as arguing for what they think of as relativism—they imagine a binary of binary thinking or relativism.
(In other words, they assume that there’s a binary in how people think: a person either believes there’s always an obvious and clear absolutely good choice/thing and an obvious and always clear absolutely bad choice/thing OR a person believes there’s no such thing as good v. bad ever. That latter attitude is often called “relativism” and, for binary thinkers, they assume it’s the only possibility other than their approach. So, they’re binary thinkers about thinking, and that makes talking to them about it difficult.)
“Binary thinking” (also sometimes called “splitting” or “dichotomous thinking”) is a cognitive bias that encourages us to perceive people, events, ideas, and so on into two mutually exclusive categories. It’s thinking in terms of extremes like always or never—so if something doesn’t always happen, then it must never happen. Or if someone says you shouldn’t do something, you understand them to be saying you should never do it. Things are either entirely and always good, or entirely and always bad.
We’re particularly prone to binary thinking when stressed, tired, faced with an urgent problem. What it does is reduce our options, and thereby seems to make decision-making easier; it does make decision-making easier, but easy isn’t always good. There’s some old research suggesting that people faced with too many options get paralyzed in decision-making, and so find it easier to make a decision if there are only two options. There was a funny study long ago in which people had an option to taste salsas—if there were several options, more people walked by than if there were only two. (This is why someone trying to sell you something—a car, a fridge, a house–will try to get you to reduce the choice to two.)
Often, it’s a false dichotomy. For instance, the small circle of people making decisions about Vietnam during the LBJ Administration kept assuming that they should either stick with the policy of “graduated pressure” (which wasn’t working) or pull out immediately. It was binary thinking. While there continues to be considerable disagreement about whether the US could have “won” the Vietnam conflict, I don’t know of anyone who argues that graduated pressure could have done it. Nor does anyone argue there was actually a binary–there were plenty of options other than either graduated pressure or an immediate pull-out, and they were continually advocated at the time.
Instead of taking seriously the options advocated by others (including the Joint Chiefs of Staff), what LBJ policy-makers assumed was that they would either continue to do exactly what they were already doing or give up entirely. And that’s a common false binary in the train wrecks I’ve studied–stick with what we’re doing or give up, and it’s important to keep in mind that this is a rhetorical move, not an accurate assessment of options.
I think we’ve all known people who, if you say, “This isn’t working,” respond with, “So, you think we should just give up?” That isn’t what you said.
“Stick with this or give up” is far from the only binary that traps rhetors into failure. When Alcibiades argued that the Athenians either had to invade Sicily or betray Egesta, he was invoking the common fallacy of brave v. coward (and ignoring Athens’ own history). A Spartan rhetor used the same binary (go to war with Athens or you’re a coward) even while disagreeing with a brave general who clearly wasn’t a coward, and who had good reasons for arguing against war with Athens at that moment.
One way of defining binary thinking is: “Dualistic thinking, also known as black-and-white, binary, or polarized thinking, is a general tendency to see things as good or bad, right or wrong, and us or them, without room for compromise and seeing shades of gray” (20). I’m not wild about that way of defining it, because it doesn’t quite describe how binary thinking contributes to train wrecks.
It isn’t that there was a grey area between graduated pressure and an immediate pull-out that McNamara and others should have considered (if anything, graduated pressure was a gray area between what the JCS wanted and pulling out entirely). The Spartan rhetor’s argument wouldn’t have been a better one had he argued that the general was sort of a coward. You can’t reasonably solve the problem of which car you should buy by buying half of one and half of the other.
The mistake is assuming that initial binary—of imagining there are only two options, and you have to choose between them. That’s binary thinking—of course there are other options.
When I point out the problems of binary thinking to people, I’m often told, “So, you’re saying we should just sit around forever and keeping talking about what to do?”
I’ve spent my career looking at bad, unforced decisions. I describe them as times that people took a lot of time and talk to come to a decision they later regretted. These aren’t times when people didn’t know any better—all the information necessary to make a better decision was available, and they ignored it.
Train wrecks aren’t particular to one group, one kind of person, one era. These incidents I’ve studied are diverse in terms of participants, era, consequences, political ideologies, topics, and various other important qualities. One thing that’s shared is that the interlocutors were skilled in rhetoric, and relied heavily on rhetoric to determine and advocate policies that wrecked the train.
That’s how I got interested in them—a lot of scholars of rhetoric have emphasized times that rhetors and rhetoric saved the day, or at least pointed the way to a better one. But these are times that people talked themselves in bad choices. They include incidents like: pretty much every decision Athens made regarding the Sicilian Expedition, Hitler’s refusal to order a fighting retreat from Stalingrad, the decision to dam and flood the Hetch Hetchy Valley (other options were less expensive), eugenics, the LBJ Administration’s commitment to “graduated pressure” in Vietnam; Earl Warren’s advocacy of race-based mass imprisonment; US commitment to slavery; Puritans’ decision to criminalize Baptist and Quakers.
I’ve deliberately chosen bad decisions on the part of people that can’t be dismissed as too stupid to make good decisions. Hitler’s military decisions in regard to invading France showed considerable strategic skill–while he wasn’t as good a strategist as he claimed, he wasn’t as bad as his generals later claimed. Advocates of eugenics included experts with degrees from prestigious universities—until at least WWII, biology textbooks had a chapter on the topic, and universities had courses if not departments of Eugenics. It was mainstream science. Athenians made a lot of good decisions at their Assembly, and a major advocate of the disastrous Sicilian Expedition was a student/lover of Socrates’. LBJ’s Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was a lot of things, but even his harshest critics say he was smart.
The examples also come from a range of sorts of people. One temptation we have in looking back on bad decisions is to attribute them to out-group members. In-group decisions that turned out badly we try to dismiss on the grounds that they weren’t really bad decisions, they had no choice, an out-group is somehow really responsible for what happened.[1] (It’s interesting that that way of thinking about mistakes actively contributes to train wrecks.) The people who advocated the damming and flooding of the Hetch Hetchy Valley were conservationists and progressives (their terms for themselves, and I consider myself both[2]). LBJ’s social agenda got us the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, Medicare, all of which I’m grateful for. Earl Warren went on to get Brown v. Board passed, for which I admire him.
In short, I don’t want these posts to be in-group petting that makes Us feel good about not being Those People. This isn’t about how They make mistakes, but how We do.
A lot of different factors contributed to each of these train wrecks; I haven’t determined some linear set of events or decisions that happened in every case, let alone the one single quality that every incident shares (I don’t think there is, except the train wrecking). It’s interesting that apparently contradictory beliefs can be present in the same case, and sometimes held by the same people.
So, what I’m going to do is write a little bit about each of the factors that showed up at least a few times, and give a brief and broad explanation. These aren’t scholarly arguments, but notes and thoughts about what I’ve seen. In many cases (all?) I have written scholarly arguments about them in which I’ve cited chapter and verse, as have many others. If people are interested in my chapter and verse version, then this is where to start. (In those scholarly versions, I also cite the many other scholars who have made similar arguments. Nothing that I’m saying is particularly controversial or unique.)
These pieces aren’t in any particular order—since the causality is cumulative rather than linear, there isn’t a way to begin at the beginning. It’s also hard not to write about this without at least some circularity, or at least backtracking. So, if someone is especially interested in one of these, and would like me to get to it, let me know.
Here are some of the assumptions/beliefs/arguments that contribute to train wrecks and that I intend to write about, not necessarily in this order:
Bad people make bad decisions; good people make good ones Policy disagreements are really tug-of-war contests between two sides Data=proof; the more data, the stronger the proof The Good Samaritan was the villain of the story There is a single (but not necessarily simple) right answer to every problem That correct course of action is always obvious to smart people What looks true (to me) is true—if you don’t believe that, then you’re a relativist Might makes right, except when it doesn’t (Just World Model, except when not) The ideal world is a stable hierarchy of kiss up/kick down All ethical stances/critiques are irrational and therefore equally valid Bad things can only be done by people who consciously intend to do them Doing something is always better than doing nothing Acting is better than thinking (“decisiveness” is always an ideal quality) They cherry-pick foundational texts, but Our interpretations distinguish the transient from the permanent In-group members and actions shouldn’t be held accountable (especially not to the same degree as out-group members and actions)
There are a few other qualities that often show up: Binary thinking Media enclaves Mean girl rhetoric Short-term thinking (Gus Johnson and the tuna) Non-falsifiable conspiracy theories that exempt the in-group from accountability Sloppy Machiavellianism Tragic loyalty loops
[1] I’m using “in-“ and “out-“ groups as sociologists do, meaning groups we’re in, and groups against whom we define ourselves, not groups in or out of power. We’re each in a lot of groups, and have a lot of out-groups. Here’s more information about in- and out-groups. You and your friend Terry might be in-group when it comes to what soccer teams you support but out-group when it comes to how you vote. Given the work I do, I’m struck by how important a third category is: non in-group (but not out-group). For instance, you might love dogs, and for you, dog lovers are in-group. Dog-haters would be out-group. But people who neither love nor hate dogs are not in-group, yet not out-group. One of the things that happens in train wrecks is that the non in-group category disappears.
[2] For me, “conservatives” are not necessarily out-group. Again, given the work I do, I’ve come to believe that public deliberations are best when there is a variety of views considered, and “conservatism” is a term used in popular media, and even some scholarship, to identify a variety of political ideologies which are profoundly at odds with each other. Libertarianism and segregation–both called “conservative” ideologies by popular media–are not compatible. Our political world is neither a binary nor a continuum of ideologies.
Despite the fact that invoking Hitler in arguments is so kneejerk that there’s even a meme about it, a surprising number of people misunderstand the situation. They misunderstand, for instance, that he was elected; he was even voted into dictatorship. So, why was he elected?
I want to focus on four factors that are commonly noted in scholarship but often absent from or misrepresented in popular invocations of Hitler: widespread resentment effectively mobilized by pro-Nazi rhetoric, an enclave-based media environment, authoritarian populism, agency by proxy/charismatic leadership.
I. Resentment
Resentment is often defined as a sense of grievance against a person, but grievances can be of various kinds, including motivating positive personal change or political action. Resentment is grievance drunk on jealousy. It’s common to distinguish jealousy from envy on the grounds that, while both involve being unhappy that someone has something we don’t, jealousy means wanting it taken from the other. If I envy someone’s nice shirt, I can solve that problem by buying one for myself; jealousy can only be satisfied if they lose that shirt, they are harmed for having the shirt, or the shirt is damaged. My jealousy can even be satisfied without my getting a shirt—as long as they lose theirs. Jealousy is zero-sum, but envy is not.
Resentment is a zero-sum hostility toward others whom I think look down on me. Although I feel victimized that they have something I don’t, I don’t necessarily want what they have. I do, however, want them to lose it; I want them crushed and humiliated for even having it. Resentment relies on a sense that others have things to which I am entitled, and they are not. In addition, resentment always has a little bit of unacknowledged shame.
Many Germans (most? all?) resented the Versailles Treaty, and they resented losing the Great War. They resented the accusation that they were responsible for the war, they resented that they lost a war they believed they were entitled to win, and they resented a treaty as punitive as the kind they were accustomed to impose on others.
Certainly, the Versailles Treaty was excessively punitive, but it was, oddly enough, fair—at least in the sense that it was an eye for an eye. Germans didn’t condemn equally punitive treaties they had imposed on others (e.g., the Treaty of Frankfurt or the 1918 Brest-Litvosk Treaty. They resented being treated as they felt entitled to treat others.
The war guilt clause was a particular point of resentment, and yet it was partially true. The notion that one nation and one nation only can cause a world war is implausible—few wars are monocausal—but certainly Germany held a large part of the responsibility. Yet Germans liked to see themselves as forced into a war they didn’t want—they were the real victims and completely blameless. Were the Germans actually truly blameless, I don’t think the Treaty of Versailles would have been as useful a tool for mobilizing resentment.
Sloppy pan-Germanism mixed with the even sloppier Social Darwinism promoted a narrative that victory always goes to the strongest, and that therefore whoever win deserved it. The German defeat in the Great War therefore was a massive blow to German ideology—if the best always win, and the winners are always the best, that loss was stuck in the craw. People who enjoyed Nazi rhetoric resented that they lost a war they felt entitled to win.
Important to Nazi mobilization of that resentment was continually reminding audiences of it—there are few (any?) Hitler speeches in which he didn’t remind his audience of the humiliation of the Versailles Treaty, and of the way that other nations looked down on and victimized Germany.
Did everyone else really look down on Germany? The French probably did, but that’s just because they looked down on everyone. Some British and Americans did; some didn’t. But the Germans certainly looked down on everyone. So, like the resentment about punitive treaties, they weren’t on principle opposed to people looking down on others; they just resented when they thought they were being looked down on.
The Versailles Treaty didn’t actually end the fighting. Pogroms, forced emigration, violent clashes, and genocides raged through Eastern and Central Europe well after the war, causing a massive immigration crisis. And, as often happens, people resented the immigrants. They also resented liberals, intellectuals, Jews, and various other groups that they imagined looked down on them.
Resentment is an act of projection and imagination.
II. Enclave-based media environment
Weimar Germany had a lot of political parties (around forty, depending on how you count them), which can loosely be categorized as: Catholic, communist, conservative, fascist, liberal (in the European sense), and socialist. They all had their own media (mostly newspapers), and many of them were rabidly partisan in terms of coverage but without admitting to the partisan coverage. [The antebellum era in the US was much the same.]
The important consequence of this factionalized media landscape was that it was possible for a person to remain fully within an informational enclave: foundational narratives, myths, premises, and outright lies were continually repeated. Repetition is persuasive. Since factional media wouldn’t present criticism or even critics fairly (or at all), it was possible for someone to feel certain about various events and yet be completely wrong. Germany was not about to win the war when it capitulated.
Sometimes the narratives were specific (e.g.,The Protocols of the Elders of Zion documents the plot of international Jewry ), and sometimes about broader historical events, or history itself. One of the most important narratives was the shape-shifting “stab in the back” myth about the Great War. This myth said that Germany was just about to win the war, and would have, but the nation was stabbed in the back, and therefore had to accept a humiliating treaty. As Richard Evans has shown, just who stabbed the back, or when, or why, or even what back, varied considerably. Like a lot of myths, it was simultaneously detailed and inconsistent.
Another important narrative was a similarly specific and vague narrative about the course of history, as a survival of the fittest conflict undermined by liberal democracy. This narrative typically cast Jews as intractably incapable of patriotism, assimilation, or German identity. German exceptionalism denied the actual heterogeneity of
Of those six kinds of political parties, three were explicitly and actively hostile to democracy, either advocating a return to the monarchy (Catholic) or a new system entirely (fascist, communist). Some “conservatives” parties advocated a return to monarchy, some advocated some other kind of authoritarian government, and some at least seemed willing to accommodate democratic decision-making practices. Only the liberals and socialists actively supported democracy (communists wanted a Marxist-Leninist revolution and dictatorship of the proletariat, whereas socialists agreed with Marxist critiques of unconstrained capitalism, but wanted reform via democratic processes; “liberals” believed in a free market and democratic processes of decision-making).
What’s important about this kind of media environment is that it undermines democratic practices because it enables the demonization or dismissal of anyone who significantly disagrees. Repetition is persuasive. If you are repeatedly told that socialists want to kick bunnies, and never hear from socialists what they actually advocate, then you’ll believe that socialists want to kick bunnies. That makes them people who shouldn’t be included in the decision-making process at all; it personalizes policy disagreements. Policy disagreements, rather than being opportunities for arguing about the ads/disads, costs, feasibility, and so on of our various policy options (even vehemently arguing) is a contest of groups.
Tl;dr If you only get your information from in-group sources, then chances are that you never hear the most reasonable arguments for out-group policies; therefore everyone who is not in-group will seem unreasonable. Not hearing the arguments leads to refusing to listen to the people.
Repetition coupled with isolation from reasonable counterarguments radicalizes.
III. Authoritarian populism
One way to misunderstand how persuasion works is to imagine out-groups and their leaders as completely and obviously evil—by refusing to understand what some people find/found attractive about such leaders, we make ourselves feel more secure (“I would never have supported Hitler”), and thereby ignore that we might get talked into supporting someone like that.
Nazism is a kind of “authoritarian populism.” Populism is a political ideology that posits that politics is a conflict between two kinds of people: a real people whose concerns and beliefs are legitimate, moral, and true; a corrupt, out-of-touch, illegitimate elite who are parasitic on the real people. Populism is always anti-pluralist: there is only one real people, and they are in perfect agreement about everything. (Muller says populism is “a moralized form of antipluralism” 20).
Populism become authoritarian when the narrative that the real people have become so oppressed by the “elite” that they are in danger of extermination. At that point, there are no constraints on the behavior of populists or their leaders. This rejection of what are called “liberal norms” (not in the American sense of “liberal” but the political theory one) such as fairness, change from within, deliberation, transparent and consistent legal processes is the moment that a populist movement becomes authoritarian (and Machiavellian).
As Muller says, “Populists claim that they, and they alone, represent the people” (Muller 3). Therefore, any election that populists lose is not legitimate, any election they win is, regardless of what strategies they’ve used to win. Violence on the part of the in-group is admirable and always justified, purely on the grounds that it is in-group violence. The in-group is held to lower moral standards while claiming the moral highground.
Authoritarian populism always has an intriguing mix of victimhood, heroism, strength, and whining. Somehow whining about how oppressed “we are” and what meany-meany-bo-beanies They are is seen as strength. And that is what much of Hitler’s rhetoric was—so very, very much whining.
And that is something else that authoritarian populism promises: a promise of never being held morally accountable, as long as you are a loyal (even fanatical) member of the in-group (the real people).
In authoritarian populism, the morality comes from group membership, and the values the group claims to have—values which might have literally nothing to do with whatever policies they enact or ways they behave.
IV. Charismatic leadership/agency by proxy
Authoritarian populism needs an authority to embody the real people. It’s fine if they’re actually elite (many people were impressed by Hitler’s wealth). Kenneth Burke talked about the relationship in terms of “identification”—they saw him as their kind of guy. They imagined a seamless connection with him. In charismatic leadership relationships, the followers attribute all sorts of characteristics to their leader (which the leader may or may not actually have): extraordinary health, almost superhuman endurance, universal genius, a Midas touch, infallible and instantaneous judgment, and a perfect understanding of what “normal” people like and want.
In general, people engage in intention/motive-based explanations for good behavior on the part of the in-group and bad behavior on the part of non in-group leaders and members, and situational explanations for good behavior on the part of the non in-group and bad behavior for the in-group.
So, if Hubert (in-group) and Chester (out-group) give a cookie to a child (good behavior), then it shows that Hubert is good and generous (motive/intention), but Chester only did so because he was forced by circumstances (situational).
If Hubert (in-group) and Chester (out-group) both steal a cookie from a child (bad behavior), then it was because Hubert didn’t see the child, the child shouldn’t have been eating the cookie, he had no choice (situational explanations), but Chester stealing the cookie was deliberate and because Chester is evil.
One sign, then, of a charismatic leadership relationship is whether the follower holds a leader to the same standards of behavior as non in-group leaders, or if they flip the intention/situation explanations in order to hold on to the narrative that the in-group is essentially good.
What we get from a charismatic leadership relationship is a fairly simple way of understanding good and bad—it reduces moral complexity and uncertainty. Since our group is essentially good, we are guaranteed moral certainty simply by being a loyal member. And that is what Hitler promised.
Because Hitler is like us, and really gets us, then we are powerful—we take pride in everything he does; we have agency by proxy.
But, because we identify with him, then our attachment to him means we will not listen to criticism of him—criticism of him is an attack on our goodness. Our support becomes non-falsifiable, and therefore outside the realm of a reasonable disagreement about him, his actions, or his policies. Charismatic leadership is authoritarian. But oh so very, very pleasurable.
Sources:
There are still lots of arguments among scholars about Hitler, the Germans, and the Nazis, but nothing I’m saying here is either particularly controversial or something I’ve come up with on my own.
While it is a mistake to attribute magical qualities to Hitler’s rhetoric, and to attribute the various genocides and disasters to him personally (as though his personal magnetism was destroyed agency on the part of Germans), it is also a mistake to think the rhetoric was powerless. Germans elected him because they liked what he had to say.
There was a time when scholars were insistent that Hitler’s rhetoric wasn’t that great (an argument that Ryan Skinnell’s forthcoming book will show was an accusation made at the time, one that completely misses the rhetorical force of Hitler’s strategies), but that was partially a reaction to the immediate post-war deflecting of German responsibility for the war, the Holocaust, the various genocides (the argument was that Germans were overwhelmed by Hitler’s rhetoric, or secretly hated him—neither was true).
There are many excellent biographies of Hitler, the ones written after the opening of the records captured by the Soviets are the most useful. Kershaw’s writings are especially readable, but Volker Ullrich’s and Peter Longerich’s biographies have been able to take advantage of more recent research (If I were asked to recommend just one biography, it would be Longerich’s). Richard Evans’ three-volume study of Nazism (coming to power, in power, at war) is thorough and makes clear the enthusiastic participation of various other leaders.
Adam Tooze’s Wages of Destruction is a compelling and detailed analysis of the economy under the Nazis, and Nicholas Stargardt’s The German War shows the considerable support Nazis had throughout the war. There are a lot of books about the media and Hitler, but I think the best place to start is Despina Stratigakos’ Hitler at Home. Robert Gerwarth’s The Vanquished is a powerful discussion of the aftermath of the Great War.
Thomas Patterson has long criticized the “horse race” way of framing elections and politics more generally. It’s so dominant that people can’t imagine talking about elections in any other way. Briefly, the “horse race” frame treats elections as contests between two groups, rather than a call to discuss issues of governance.
Connected is the assumption that politics is about selling a candidate or policy; it’s all compliance-gaining. So, dominant coverage of proposed policies isn’t about whether they’ll work, what costs and consequences they might have, and so on—in other words, media doesn’t cover policy disagreements qua policies. Instead, candidates’ proposed policies are assessed in terms of their likelihood of attracting voters—i.e., whether the policies will help sell the candidate.
As Patterson and others have pointed out, the way of reporting on politics assumes (and therefore reinforces) the notion that political disagreements are identity conflicts—a conflict between two kinds of people. Obviously, policy disagreements are often conflicts among kinds of people, but not just two, let alone always the same two. People who disagree about abortion might strongly agree on the death penalty, bail reform, expanding Medicare, or all sorts of other specific policies. And there are few issues about which there are really only policy options. (Tbh, I can’t think of any, but I’ll hedge.)
The horse race/selling frame tragically limits our ability to talk about think usefully about the massive landscape of policy options.
There are two other damaging consequences of this frame. One is that it reduces intra-group deliberation about policies. If policy preferences are the consequence of identity, then we can’t treat intra-group disagreements about policies as reasonable disagreement—one of us must really be out-group (or duped by the out-group).
When a group fails, the impulse is purification of the in-group. People call for expelling the people who aren’t true believers, and blame them, when the real problem is the opposition.
and so in-group recriminations are about those intra-group disagreements or presumed failures in “selling” the product. We thereby double down on what damages policy discourse.
Right now, there are a lot of people blaming Harris or Dems for not selling the policies enough, or having the wrong policies, or in various other ways calling for a party purified of disparate elements. That is, to put it very clearly, anti-democratic and incipiently authoritarian. It’s also wrong.
People slip into calls for in-group purity after a failure or setback because it is reassuring. It is a way of thinking about the failure that keeps control within the in-group—it says we could have won, if we’d just done this thing. And it’s almost always the “thing” I think should have been done all along. So, it’s about maintaining the illusion of in-group control, denying the agency of the successful out-group, all while making myself seem prescient.
That kind of “I coulda been a contenduh” always happens after an unsuccessful war. Germans insisted they were about to win the Great War when they got stabbed in the back by a liberal and defeatist media, and I’ve recently been reading various books that argue that we were about to win in Vietnam when we a liberal and defeatist media caused us to give up, or we would have won if we’d just done this other thing.
They believe that their support of Trump is reasonable, and that it isn’t reasonable not to support him for two reasons (so to speak): 1) their media gives them “reasons” to support him; 2) their media gives them “reasons” to refuse to listen to anyone who disagrees.
And all of those “reasons” are unreasonable. The lowest bar for having a reasonable position is: you are open to persuasion on it, you’ve considered the best opposition arguments, and you hold all positions on the issue to the same standards of proof, civility, logic.
Trump supporters fail every single one of those standards. So, why don’t they notice that failure? There are several relevant factors. One is a misunderstanding about what it means to be reasonable (aka, the rational-irrational split). The second, and the point of this post, is that they’re inoculated against being reasonable about their support of Trump.
“Inoculation” is a metaphor that scholars of propaganda use for the strategy of getting people not to listen to non in-group arguments. [The in-group isn’t “the group in power” but “the group you’re in.”] If I am trying to vote for Chester, and I’m worried you might vote for Hubert, then I will—like exposing someone to cowpox so that their body rejects smallpox—try to train you to reject pro-Hubert arguments by misrepresenting them, nut-picking (equating Hubert with some unhinged or extreme critic of Chester), motivism (saying all critics of Chester are jealous, sad, or have bad motives), taking quotes out of context, or just plain lying about Hubert. If I’m successful, then, when confronted with strong arguments for Hubert and his policies, you’ll reject them without even listening.
I’ll give two examples. Trump supporters believe that the 2020 election was stolen, although the legal cases making that claim (including before Trump-appointed judges) have overwhelmingly lost, generally on the grounds that they have little to no merit or evidence. Trump supporters don’t know the outcome of these cases because their media doesn’t tell them. (Trump supporters open to a reasonable discussion about this can email me. They aren’t. They won’t.)
Second, your Trump supporting family and friends are probably completely supportive of anti-DEI policies, which they conflate with CRT. And the argument against CRT is an illogical argument by association. It runs like this: All concerns about inclusion are really CRT, and CRT can be associatively (not reasonably) related to some Marxists; therefore, if anyone indicates concerns about inclusion, they’re CRT, and, therefore, you shouldn’t listen to them—they’re Marxist.
Argument by association is unreasonable. The CRT argument has the same logic as: God is love; love is blind; Stevie Wonder is blind; therefore Stevie Wonder is God.
Or, more to the point, Nazis believed in the Great Replacement narrative; Tucker Carlson advocates the Great Replacement narrative; therefore, Tucker Carlson is a Nazi.
But Trump supporters only consider argument by association reasonable when it confirms what they believe. That isn’t reasonable. They might provide data that look like reasons, but their argument isn’t reasonable.
When inoculation works, and it often does, it means that you are trained to listen to people in terms of a binary—are they with me, or against me. If they give any sign of not being fully supportive of Chester, then they must support Hubert, and that makes them a squirrel-loving communist who probably kicks little dogs for fun. And that binary thinking goes to the very source—they only get information from sources that support Trump, so they don’t even know what the best opposition arguments are.
Trump media, pundits, and rhetors aren’t the only people to engage in inoculation. A lot of demagoguery does, all over the political and cultural spectrum.
Political parties and figures, advertisers, salespeople, even manipulative individuals engage in inoculation only because they know that they’re unlikely to persuade people if their audience gives a fair hearing to the various opposition positions and critics. Inoculation is not only unreasonable; it is a pragmatic admission that the entire case is unreasonable. If you have to lie to make your case, you have a bad case.
A lot of people are sharing this post, and it’s wrong. Students were tremendously supportive of Nazis. (I think they were also supportive of Mussolini and Franco, but I haven’t read much about them, so I might be wrong.)
More important, this post appeals to the fantasy that complicated political situations are actually simple. It says they’re really a binary between a group with perfect insight and the right understanding, and a ruling class that is a Disney villain. That way of thinking about politics shuts down our ability to argue with one another reasonably about policy options. As it is intended to do.
There are evil groups and evil policies, but, if I were going to say that there is a good law of history it would be: no framing of any major policy conflict as binary of two groups (one right and the other evil) has ever been just, accurate, useful, or helpful.
I’m open to counter-examples, but, since thinking about this framing of politics has been something I’ve been studying for forty years, I’m pretty confident that there isn’t one.
So, if you think you know of a time when a major policy issue was a binary between two sides–of two groups (one right and the other evil) –I’d love to hear about it.
I often read a subreddit AmItheAsshole. People write in describing some incident where they think they were right, but someone tells them they behaved badly, and they’re asking for judgment.
For instance, there was recently a post by someone who said that his girlfriend dithered and delayed in the morning, and therefore regularly drove well over the speed limit in order to get to work on time. The Original Poster (OP) told her that her speeding was unsafe, and that she should get up earlier. She ignored him. She got a lot of speeding tickets. When she had gotten so many speeding tickets that she was about to lose her license, she told the OP that he should claim he was driving her car at the time of the last ticket–that he was the one speeding. That would cost him a lot of money (directly and indirectly) but it would enable her to keep speeding, since she could keep her license. He refused. She said he was the asshole because now she would not be able to drive to work. She told him that he would have to drive her to work, since he had caused this situation. He refused.
He was unwilling to take the hit of increased insurance rates and having to drive her to work just because she had ignored everything he warned her about, and had chosen to make really bad decisions. She said he was the asshole, since her current situation—having to take public transportation to work—what the consequence of a decision he’d made.
So, who is the asshole?
AITA is really a subreddit about blame and responsibility, and commenters are invited to make one of several judgments: YTA (you’re the asshole) meaning you, and you alone are responsible for this situation. In other words, the OP is responsible for her losing her license. Or, there’s NTA (not the asshole) meaning that there is an asshole (a person whose bad behavior led to this situation) but it isn’t the person who posted the question (for instance, the girlfriend who dithers in the morning). NAH (no assholes here) meaning that it’s a bad situation but not because anyone behaved badly. ESH (everyone sucks here) meaning that this situation came about because everyone is awful.
Clearly, she hadn’t learned from this situation. She had no intention of driving any differently. She didn’t see the consequences of her behavior as…well, the consequences of her behavior. She thought someone else should step in and save her, so that she could continue to be irresponsible. Technically speaking, OP could have kept her from losing her license. But she would never have been in that situation had she been more responsible about her time management.
I taught college writing for about forty years. And, when I was the teacher of record, I sometimes had a student who was flunking my class (because they hadn’t turned in any work, they’d plagiarized, what they did turn in had little relation to the assignments, and so on), and they would say to me, “If I flunk this class, I’ll be kicked out of college; because of you, I’ll be thrown out of college.” Technically speaking, my flunking them might be the final straw, and so, if I didn’t flunk them, they could stay in college, until they flunked the next class.
But, if they hadn’t flunked (and weren’t flunking) lots of other classes, what grade I gave them wouldn’t matter. What I did only mattered because of the situation they’d gotten themselves into. I didn’t force them to flunk; I didn’t keep them from doing the work. Like the girlfriend who regularly violated speed limits, the situation they were in–about to flunk out of college–was the predictable consequence of choices they’d made.
The claim that Democrats are responsible for the House impasse reads to me like an AITA post. So, imagine that the Republicans claiming that the House inability to get any work done is the fault of the Democrats wrote in to AITA. What would the judgment be?
Demagoguery means reducing complicated, nuanced, and uncertain policy issues to questions of fanatical loyalty to us (including refusing to look at any non-fanatically in-group media) and Them (everyone else). Demagoguery means refusing to compromise. The GOP has promoted an anti-government demagoguery since the 80s. The basic message of that demagoguery is that the government is the cause of all problems, so shutting down the government would be good. No reasonable person believes that, but it’s been a winning frame for the GOP. So, they’ve spend forty years promoting it.
The GOP decided to engage in a kind of gerrymandering that meant that winning a primary rewarded the most demagogic candidate. The GOP (and its media enablers) decided to reward demagoguery. The GOP decided to refuse to hold its most demagogic members accountable for anything, ranging from an attempted to coup to sex-trafficking underage girls.
And now, having enabled the election of people who think refusal to compromise is a good thing, whose policy agenda is entirely negative and fairly incoherent, and who couldn’t reason their way out of a paper bag if both ends were open and there were flashing EXIT signs, but who are fanatical and in districts that would elect a dead dog if it had R next to its name, the GOP is realizing that they’re held hostage by unreasonable people.
And they think the Dems should save them.
That girlfriend thought the OP should take the hit. She thought he should lie, take the insurance hit, and pay the fine, so that she could keep speeding.
From here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SetNFqcayeA
A common description of the LBJ Administration decision-making regarding Vietnam was that it was an instance of “groupthink”—that decision-makers in the administration were unwilling to disagree with one another (e.g, Irving Janis Groupthink). Another description is that the administration was excessively optimistic, duped, or otherwise unwilling to consider reasonably the likelihood of success.
It turns out it was much more complicated than that. I was looking for times that decision-makers used the cudgel of “but appeasement!” to deflect reasonable dissent, and came across this exchange.
In June of 1965, Westmoreland had asked for additional troops, arguing that escalating US involvement would “give us a substantial and hard hitting offensive capability on the ground to convince the VC that they cannot win.”
George Ball argued that escalation was a mistake. In a July 1, 1965 memo, for instance, he said,
“So long as our forces are restricted to advising and assisting the South Vietnamese, the struggle will remain a civil war between Asian peoples. Once we deploy substantial numbers of troops in combat it will become a war between the U.S. and a large part of the population of South Vietnam, organized and directed from North Vietnam and backed by the resources of both Moscow and Peiping. “The decision you face now, therefore, is crucial. Once large numbers of U.S. troops are committed to direct combat, they will begin to take heavy casualties in a war they are ill‐equipped to fight in a non‐cooperative if not downright hostile countryside. “Once we suffer large casualties, we will have started a well‐nigh irreversible process. Our involvement will be so great that we cannot—without national humiliation—stop short of achieving our complete objectives. Of the two possibilities I think humiliation would be more likely than the achievement of our objectives—even after we have paid terrible costs.”
On July 20, 1965, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara sent a memo to LBJ arguing for raising US personnel in Vietnam from 75k to 175k (perhaps even 200k). On July 21, 1965, LBJ and his advisors met to discuss that memo. I was surprised by the transcript of the meeting. It doesn’t show ideal deliberation, but it does show that LBJ wanted to hear what Ball said, and wanted options considered. Ball was invited to make his argument, and LBJ specifically asked McNamara to reply to them. He also asked for a second meeting just to discuss Ball’s argument. The transcript of both meetings is fascinating, but this exchange (from the afternoon meeting) is particularly important for thinking about deliberation.
Ball: We can’t win. Long protracted. The most we can hope for is messy conclusion. There remains a great danger of intrusion by Chicoms. Problem of long war in US: 1. Korean experience was galling one. Correlation between Korean casualties and public opinion (Ball showed Pres. a chart)5 showed support stabilized at 50%. As casualties increase, pressure to strike at jugular of the NVN will become very great. 2. World opinion. If we could win in a year’s time—win decisively—world opinion would be alright. However, if long and protracted we will suffer because a great power cannot beat guerrillas. 3. National politics. Every great captain in history is not afraid to make a tactical withdrawal if conditions are unfavorable to him. The enemy cannot even be seen; he is indigenous to the country. Have serious doubt if an army of westerners can fight orientals in Asian jungle and succeed. President: This is important—can westerners, in absence of intelligence, successfully fight orientals in jungle rice-paddies? I want McNamara and Wheeler to seriously ponder this question. Ball: I think we have all underestimated the seriousness of this situation. Like giving cobalt treatment to a terminal cancer case. I think a long protracted war will disclose our weakness, not our strength. The least harmful way to cut losses in SVN is to let the government decide it doesn’t want us to stay there. Therefore, put such proposals to SVN government that they can’t accept, then it would move into a neutralist position—and I have no illusions that after we were asked to leave, SVN would be under Hanoi control. What about Thailand? It would be our main problem. Thailand has proven a good ally so far—though history shows it has never been a staunch ally. If we wanted to make a stand in Thailand, we might be able to make it. Another problem would be South Korea. We have two divisions there now. There would be a problem with Taiwan, but as long as Generalissimo is there, they have no place to go. Indonesia is a problem—insofar as Malaysia. There we might have to help the British in military way. [Page 195] Japan thinks we are propping up a lifeless government and are on a sticky wicket. Between long war and cutting our losses, the Japanese would go for the latter (all this on Japan according to Reischauer). President: Wouldn’t all those countries say Uncle Sam is a paper tiger—wouldn’t we lose credibility breaking the word of three presidents—if we set it up as you proposed. It would seem to be an irreparable blow. But, I gather you don’t think so. Ball: The worse blow would be that the mightiest power in the world is unable to defeat guerrillas. President: Then you are not basically troubled by what the world would say about pulling out? Ball: If we were actively helping a country with a stable, viable government, it would be a vastly different story. Western Europeans look at us as if we got ourselves into an imprudent fashion [situation]. [….] President: Two basic troublings: 1. That Westerners can ever win in Asia. 2. Don’t see how you can fight a war under direction of other people whose government changes every month. Now go ahead, George, and make your other points. Ball: The cost, as well as our Western European allies, is not relevant to their situation. What they are concerned about is their own security—troops in Berlin have real meaning, none in VN. President: Are you saying pulling out of Korea would be akin to pulling out of Vietnam? Bundy: It is not analogous. We had a status quo in Korea. It would not be that way in Vietnam. Ball: We will pay a higher cost in Vietnam. This is a decision one makes against an alternative. On one hand—long protracted war, costly, NVN is digging in for long term. This is their life and driving force. Chinese are taking long term view—ordering blood plasma from Japan. On the other hand—short-term losses. On balance, come out ahead of McNamara plan. Distasteful on either hand. Bundy: Two important questions to be raised—I agree with the main thrust of McNamara. It is the function of my staff to argue both sides. To Ball’s argument: The difficulty in adopting it now would be a radical switch without evidence that it should be done. It goes in the face of all we have said and done. His whole analytical argument gives no weight to loss suffered by other side. A great many elements in his argument are correct. We need to make clear this is a somber matter—that it will not be quick—no single action will bring quick victory. I think it is clear that we are not going to be thrown out. Ball: My problem is not that we don’t get thrown out, but that we get bogged down and don’t win. Bundy: I would sum up: The world, the country, and the VN would have alarming reactions if we got out. Rusk: If the Communist world finds out we will not pursue our commitment to the end, I don’t know where they will stay their hand. I am more optimistic than some of my colleagues. I don’t believe the VC have made large advances among the VN people. We can’t worry about massive casualties when we say we can’t find the enemy. I don’t see great casualties unless the Chinese come in. Lodge: There is a greater threat to World War III if we don’t go in. Similarity to our indolence at Munich.
As I said it’s far from ideal deliberation, but it isn’t as bad as I’d expected. LBJ wanted disagreement, and wanted people to take Ball’s arguments seriously. And they didn’t. It wasn’t groupthink; it was something more complicated.
Ball’s concerns were legitimate and prescient, and he got shut down. Because Munich.
Some time in the 1980s, my father said that he had always been opposed to the Vietnam War. My brother asked, appropriately enough, “Then who the hell was that man in our house in the 60s?”
That story is a little gem of how persuasion happens, and how people deny it.
I have a friend who was raised in a fundagelical world, who has changed zir mind on the question of religion, and who cites various studies to say that people aren’t persuaded by studies. That’s interesting.
For reasons I can’t explain, far too much research about persuasion involves giving people who are strongly committed to a point of view new information and then concluding that they’re idiots for not changing their minds. They would be idiots for changing their mind because they’re given new information while in a lab. They would be idiots for changing their mind because they get one source that tells them that they’re wrong.
We change our minds, but, at least on big issues, it happens slowly, due to a lot of factors, and we often don’t notice because we forget what we once believed.
Many years ago, I started asking students about times they had changed their minds. Slightly fewer many years ago, I stopped asking because I got the same answers over and over. And what my students told me was much like what books like Leaving the Fold, books by and about people who have left cults, changed their minds about Hell or creationism, and various friends said. They rarely described an instance when they changed their mind on an important issue because they were given one fact or one argument. Often, they dug in under those circumstances—temporarily.
But we do change our minds, and there are lots of ways that happens, and the best of them are about a long, slow process of recognition that a belief is unsustainable.[1] Rob Schenck’s Costly Grace reads much like memoirs of people who left cults, or who changed their minds about evolution or Hell. They heard the counterarguments for years, and dismissed them for years, but, at some point, maintaining faith in creationism, the cult, the leader of the cult, just took too much work.
But why that moment? I think that people change their minds in different ways partially because our commitments come from different passions.
In another post I wrote about how some people are Followers. They want to be part of a group that is winning all the time (or, paradoxically, that is victimized). They will stop being part of that group when it fails to satisfy that need for totalized belonging, or when they can no longer maintain the narrative that their group is pounding on Goliath. At that point, they’ll suddenly forget that they were ever part of the group (or claim that, in their hearts, they always dissented, something Arendt noted about many Germans after Hitler was defeated).
Some people are passionate about their ideology, and are relentless at proving everyone else wrong by showing, deductively, that those people are wrong. They do so by arguing from their own premises and then cherry-picking data to support that ideology. They deflect (generally through various attempts at stasis shift) if you point out that their beliefs are non-falsifiable. These are the people that Philip Tetlock described as hedgehogs. Not only are hedgehogs wrong a lot—they don’t do better than a monkey throwing darts—but they don’t remember being wrong because they misremember their original predictions. The consequence is that they can’t learn from their mistakes.
Some people have created a career or public identity about advocating a particular faction, ideology, product, and are passionate about defending every step into charlatanism they take in the course of defending that cult, faction, ideology. Interestingly enough, it’s often these people who do end up changing their minds, and what they describe is a kind of “straw that breaks the camel’s back” situation. People who leave cults often describe a sudden moment when they say, “I just can’t do this.” And then they see all the things that led up to that moment. A collection of memoirs of people who abandoned creationism has several that specifically mention discovering the large overlap in DNA between humans and primates as the data that pushed them over the edge. But, again, that data was the final push–it wasn’t the only one.
Some people are passionate about politics, and about various political goals (theocracy, democratic socialism, libertarianism, neoliberalism, anarchy, third-way neoliberalism, originalism) and are willing to compromise to achieve the goals of their political ideology. In my experience, people like this are relatively open to new information about means, and so they look as though they’re much more open to persuasion, but even they won’t abandon a long-time commitment because of one argument or one piece of data—they too shift position only after a lot of data.
At this point, I think that supporting Trump is in the first and third category. There is plenty of evidence that he is mentally unstable, thin-skinned, corrupt, unethical, vindictive, racist, authoritarian, dishonest, and even dangerous. There really isn’t a deductive argument to make for him, since he doesn’t have a consistent commitment to (or expression of) any economic, political, or judicial theory, and he certainly doesn’t have a principled commitment to any particular religious view. It’s all about what helps him in the moment, in terms of his ego and wealth. That’s why defenders of his keep getting their defenses entangled, and end up engaging in kettle logic. (I never borrowed your kettle, it had a whole in it when I borrowed it, and it was fine when I returned it.)
The consequence of Trump’s pure narcissism (and mental instability) and lack of principled commitment to any consistent ideology is that Trump regularly contradicts himself, as well as talking points his supporters have been loyally repeating, abandons policies they’ve been passionately advocating on his behalf, and leaves them defending statements that are nearly indefensible. What a lot of Trump critics might not realize is that Trump keeps leaving his loyal supporters looking stupid, fanatical, gullible, or some combination of all three. He isn’t even giving them good talking points, and many of the defenses and deflections are embarrassing.
For a long time, I was hesitant to shame them, since an important part of the pro-GOP rhetoric is that “libruls” look down on regular people like them. I was worried that expressing contempt for the embarrassingly bad (internally contradictory, incoherent, counterfactual, revisionist) talking points would reinforce that talking point. And I think that’s a judgment that people have to make on an individual basis, to the extent that they are talking about Trump with people they know well—should they avoid coming across as contemptuous?
But for strangers, I think that shaming can work because it brings to the forefront that Trump is setting his followers up to be embarrassed. That means he is, if not actually failing, at least not fully succeeding at what a leader is supposed to do for his followers. The whole point in being a loyal follower is that the leader rewards that loyalty. The follower gets honor and success by proxy, by being a member of a group that is crushing it. That success by proxy comes from Trump’s continual success, his stigginit to the libs, and his giving them rhetorical tactics that will make “libs” look dumb. Instead, he’s making them look dumb. So, pointing out that their loyal repetition of pro-Trump talking points is making them look foolish is putting more straw on that camel’s back.
Supporting Trump, I’m saying, is at this point largely a question of loyalty. Pointing out that their loyalty is neither returned nor rewarded is the strategy that I think will eventually work. But it will take a lot of repetition.
[1] Conversions to cults, otoh, involve a sudden embrace of this cult’s narrative, one that erases all ambiguity and uncertainty.
Aristotle argued that if people who disagree argue as hard as they can, and the people making the arguments have equal skill, then the truth will prevail. And that’s not a bad argument. It might be a little idealistic. After all, there are lots of situations in which the people arguing (the rhetors) might not have equal skill: a 300-dollar an hour attorney v. you. But, if you’re talking about rhetors who have all the money they need, then Aristotle’s argument makes sense.
People with lots of resources making true arguments don’t worry about their audience being exposed to false arguments because, on the whole, people are sensible, and if the audience is shown something true and something false, they can find the truth. So, a major media source, call it Chester News, doesn’t have to worry about people watching other media, unless watching other media will enable Chester News viewers to realize they’re being lied to. A lot.
People who are lying, however, need to make sure you don’t read other sources because then you’ll figure out they’re lying. So, they spend as much time telling you their lies as they do telling you not to tune in to anyone who might disagree.
Con artists (this book is really interesting about con games), like abusers and cult figures, first isolate you. They spend a lot of time telling you what They believe. The “They” here is a fabricated version of various out-groups that lumps them all into one false image that is both much stronger and weaker than any of the groups are—weaker in the sense that their arguments aren’t presented, but just straw man versions of them, stronger in the sense that They are presented as well-organized, powerful, and incredibly dangerous. Chester News might give cherry-picked quotes or data that, in context, don’t mean what they claim, and they don’t give you the sources so that you can see the full quote in context. Similarly, they give you the clip of This Person (who represents They) saying something outrageous, but they don’t give you a link where you could watch it in context.
And Chester news will, as Benkler et al. and Levendusky show, insist you not listen to anyone else, especially not to any They sources. Why?
It’s like the worst moments in junior high, when someone tells you, “Terry said this terrible thing about you, but don’t ask them about it, because I’ll get in trouble.” If you were sensible, you learned not to listen to them. Don’t believe what Fox tells you “liberals” believe, unless they link to direct sources, and you look at those sources in full context. And don’t believe what MSNBC tells you Fox is arguing, unless they link to direct sources, and you look at those sources in full context.
If the Fox case about impeachment were as good as they claim, they would give you all the sources. They would show you the whole videos, all the documents, all the speeches. They don’t. Fox, Trump, and the GOP are all admitting that they can’t defend themselves if all the evidence is open to their base. That’s important.
And, c’mon, we all know what it means when someone won’t let you look at the data. We’ve all had someone tell us, “Here’s the bill, and I won’t actually explain why I’m right.” And we know it means that they’re lying.
We aren’t talking about someone prying into potential irrelevant details. We’re talking about testimony regarding what Trump said in a phone call. If Trump did nothing wrong in the phone call, then all the people privy to that phone call could testify and he would be exonerated. If they can’t testify, then why not? If Fox won’t let you see that evidence, or the arguments about it, why not? If they had a slam dunk for their interpretation, you know they would share it. They won’t because they’re afraid of it.
If Fox won’t let you see the evidence, their case sucks.
That’s rhetoric 101.
There is no principle here to which any GOP wants to commit. Had HRC won, and had all of this played out, but with HRC substituted for Trump, y’all would be screaming for blood.
And that is how democracies die. They die when people value faction over principle. If we value democracy, we hold our party to the same standards we hold the other party. Otherwise, we’re looking at Athens as it imploded. We’re valuing party loyalty above anything— the truth, fairness, the law, any principles. And if we’re supporting a party whose claims are so weak that they have to make sure their base doesn’t have any direct contact with the opposition arguments, then we’re in real trouble.
