You might have noticed a shift over the past few years in how I address apologists, propagandists, kooks, and various disinformation scoundrels, toward laying out not just that they are wrong (their facts are bogus; their logic is hosed), but the underlying methodologies they are using that guarantee they’ll be wrong, methods distinctive only to cranks, liars, and trolls, and quite contrary to the methods of legitimate critical thinkers. You’ll find prominent examples of my doing this all across the spectrum of issues, from Debating the Authenticity of Daniel to A Vital Primer on Media Literacy, and many more of late. Even in my evaluations of what professional historians are still doing wrong, from How to Successfully Argue Jesus Existed (or Anything Else in the World) to The Korean “Comfort Women” Dust-Up and the Function of Peer Review in History, and so on.
One category of method I’ve found to be common among the delusional or the dishonest, or the otherwise catastrophically wrong, does not fall neatly into the subject of “logical fallacies” because it is more of a tactic than a logic. The Gish Gallop is probably the most famous example: not really an argument for anything as shuch, it is designed rather to score a technical win (the “appearance” of winning an argument) by bombarding someone with so many bogus claims and fallacious arguments in so short a span that they will never find time to rebut them (or even keep track of them), allowing you to (falsely) claim “they had no answer,” when really, you are just “abusing clock,” since it takes twice as much time to explain why a claim is mistaken than to merely make the claim. (See my article Tips for Debate: How to Be More Effective Engaging with Demagogues & Dogmatists.)
I have written on another prominent example of this category of “argument,” the Motte & Bailey, whereby a certain strategy of rhetoric, again more a behavior than an argument, is employed to avoid having to actually state or defend one’s reasoning, yet with the intention of hoping for the same effect as having done so (see Disarming the Motte and Bailey in Cultural Discourse). It isn’t itself a fallacy, so much as a trick to create the feeling that an argument has been made or won, that never has. Which feeling may satisfy the delusional ranter using this tactic (thus escaping the pressing pain of cognitive dissonance), or fool uncritical audiences.
The Motte & Bailey tactic is a subcategory of what’s often called a Whack-a-Mole strategy. The general Whack-a-Mole tactic is when losing argument after argument, you keep switching to different arguments, until everyone forgets which ones were already refuted, then you circle back to those, and when refuted again, you retreat once again to the other arguments, over and over again, in an endless cycle, so that it “seems” like you still have unrefuted arguments, even when in fact all your arguments have been refuted. This strategy relies on people’s (or your own) short memories to create the impression that an effective argument has been made, when none actually has. The specific implementation of this strategy called the Motte & Bailey uses the more particular device of making an absurd claim, then when it becomes clear that can’t survive the withering weight of criticism, you retreat to a more defensible “softer” version of the claim, and pretend that’s what you had been arguing all along, until your critics go away; then you jump right back to the absurd argument, as if you’d been defending it all along.
For example, someone might start with “the Chinese government engineered the latest coronavirus to destabilize the American economy,” and when the absurdity of that claim is collapsing under the weight of evidence and logic, they might retreat to, “well, all I was really saying was that a Chinese lab that was studying a natural coronavirus might have accidentally released it due to poor compliance with safety protocols,” whereby they’ve retreated to a far more plausible theory, and switched to the subjunctive form of the verb, going from “did” to “might have done.” Then, when their critic acknowledges that’s possible (emphasis on “that” and “possible”), they declare victory…and in two hours time they are back to insisting “the Chinese government engineered the latest coronavirus to destabilize the American economy,” and now claim even their staunchest critics admitted they couldn’t refute them. This isn’t so much a fallacy of logic, as an evasion of logic altogether; it employs a trick to create the false impression that their case has been made. It’s a bamboozle, not an argument. And the tactic is the same, whether they are using it to bamboozle themselves (as when they are delusional) or to bamboozle others (as when they are a liar).
And now, I have accumulated enough evidence to add three more “tricks” to this quiver of strategies, each of which is, similarly, not so much a fallacy of logic as a behavior designed to evade logic altogether, and instead create the appearance or feeling or impression that an argument has been made, when none has. They are designed to avoid ever having to face any refutation of their intended position or effect, while still getting to defend that position or create that effect. And as with the bamboozle of any Mott & Bailey or Whack-a-Mole strategy, in each of these three cases, the exact same tactic is being used whether the one using it is sincere (and merely delusional) or not (and actively seeking to disinform).
Three common types of people you’ll encounter all these strategies from are as the title says: cranks, liars, and trolls. Cranks might also be liars, but often they are just insane, so lost in some crazy delusion that they can never escape it, as their brain has deployed all these and other strategies to immunize themselves from any falsifying evidence or argument. They are, in effect, lying to themselves. By contrast, some cranks, and many other disingenuous operatives, are outright lying to everyone else, and know they are; whether for money, attention, influence, or to recruit people to help them effect some social or political program or objective. A third common category are trolls, people who actually don’t even believe in what they are arguing, but are attempting to create outrage or trip people up either merely for the lulz or to convert the result into usable rhetoric (and as such, are not anyone you can ever engage rationally). For example, to catch someone in the appearance of a contradiction, or making a mistake (often trivial), or reacting emotionally, so they can use that to discredit them (by subsequently taking it out of context). This is like the schoolyard bully who beats you until you punch back and then immediately calls in the proctors and accuses you of assault. The strategy is the same.
JAQing Off
First of the three strategies I’ll be cataloging today is JAQing Off; in other words, “Just Asking Questions.” And no, I didn’t make its moniker up. The idea here is to present evidence or state questions, but not make an explicit argument from them, even though the implicit argument is self-evident, and when the odious or ridiculous nature of the implied argument is called out, to then act offended and insist you were “Just Asking Questions,” and not really advancing that obviously implied argument. The tactic serves two functions at once: it allows an argument to be made that you never have to defend (thus rather than a fallacy of logic, it is a means to avoid logic); and it allows an unsavory or shameful position to be affirmed while providing the means to pretend it wasn’t and thus avoid any moral or epistemic criticism. One can even use this to “turn tables” on a critic and insist they are the one crossing the line by even suggesting they implied what they obviously did, thus distracting everyone, including even the one using this trick, from what really just happened. It thus creates the appearance that one argument has been made (more like a motte: “I didn’t really argue what I just did”), when in fact, secretly, a completely different argument has been made (the actual bailey: whatever ridiculous or odious opinion the user of this tactic wants to spread among their audience).
For a good and timely example of this strategy, see Shaun’s Jimmy Dore’s Anti-Vaccine Lies, where Shaun shows us numerous occasions of motte & bailey rhetoric from popular YouTube dunce/comedian Jimmy Dore, including explicit examples of JAQing off. For instance, in one instance, Dore lets clips of an out-of-context news report run, merely displaying his own facial reactions alongside, and never actually himself asserting anything—all engineered to create the impression that he’s proved some point about the inefficacy of vaccines, while allowing him to simultaneously deny he ever even argued such a thing. He was “Just Asking Questions.”
In that case the rationale was obvious: in order to continue making money off the anti-vaxx market, Dore can’t explicitly violate YouTube’s policy on disinformation, so he has to frame his disinformation campaign with a “behavior” that allows him to deny he’s even doing it. But JAQing Off can serve all manner of purposes, not just that one. Again, it can be a device by which the delusional delude themselves, or a device for demagugues to try and create social and political effects in their audience, which can be direct (e.g. to recruit more fencesitters and rubes to a transphobic point of view, thus increasing the popular reach and power of the transphobe’s own views) or indirect (e.g. to disarm opposition to the tobacco and oil and gun industries, or stoke opposition to any political policies, or the teaching evolution or the history of slavery in schools, or anything at all, by confusing the public into thinking the science or evidence is “controversial” or “isn’t clear” or “remains in dispute”). Many other tactics are used to these ends; but JAQing Off is prominent.
RationalWiki has a good breakdown of this strategy with numerous examples, covering both the strategy itself, and the counter-strategy (also common) of falsely accusing someone of using the strategy, and how to tell the difference (e.g. between a legitimate line of questioning, and a disingenuous one). But an astute and link-worthy discussion is “Questions of Mass Destruction: Just Asking Questions vs. Radical Curiosity” by Fraser Newton at Clio Labs. Newton succinctly puts it like this:
At best, questions without explicit intent leave room for wrong assumptions, miscommunications, and misunderstandings. At worst, questions can be deliberately used as weapons. Just Asking Questions is the use of questions to make wild accusations, influence, manipulate, and sow FUD [i.e. Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt] while avoiding accountability and shifting the burden of proof to others. Questions used this way are sometimes obvious (see Betteridge’s law of headlines: Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no), but they are often more insidious and can be used in organized misinformation campaigns. For example, with questions like: where is Barack Obama’s birth certificate?
I highly recommend reading the whole thing. One takeaway from both RationalWiki and Newton is that JAQing Off depends on two things: the question is actually one that should have been asked, and then the answer competently sought, by the questioner long before ever asking it publicly; and it’s a question whose answer is actually irrelevant, or so well established and readily available to be learned that asking it again is a noticeable waste of everyone’s time. In the first case, questions like “where is Obama’s birth certificate” can easily be answered on one’s own time, and conclusively, such that there can never be a legitimate reason to raise it in public (like, say, on a bulletin board on the internet; or in a political speech; or on a news program). In the seond case, by asking a question that has already been soundly answered, the person asking it is signaling quite clearly that they want you to think the question has no answer, or that the established answer is false (otherwise, why ask the question at all?). The question itself is therefore an implied argument.
Someone using this tactic will exploit the ambiguity between asking oneself a question and then researching the answer (“How do we actually know the Earth is a sphere?”), and asking a question in public so as to influence people and have an audience-mediated effect. The latter is propaganda; it’s rhetoric; it’s a trick. Bullshit, in common parlance. But by pretending that this is no different than sincerely investigating something you don’t know the answer to (which actually would happen before barfing your questions all over the internet or a congressional committee or any other audience), you can accuse anyone calling you out on it of trying to “silence” skepticism and stifle inquiry. But anyone of sense knows that’s a disingenuous charge. Trying to expose the public to your “questions” is a rhetorical behavior, not an investigative one. Real investigation happens prior to and outside the context of blurting ideas to any general audience. So when we see you skipping that step, we’ve caught you at your game.
This point is briefly explained by George Georgovassilis in his article “Just Asking Questions,” reflecting on Sam Harris’s own analysis of the tactic, which focuses on the dishonesty of JAQers concealing the real motivations behind their questions, which means they are essentially outright lying when they claim “all” they are doing is “just” asking questions. As Georgovassilis puts it, when savvy folk catch the trick being pulled and immediately suspect the questioner’s intentions:
The interrogator will then dismiss accusations of hidden motives by pointing out they want to learn the truth [and] further public discourse and that they are assuming a neutral position by “just asking questions”. This is an indirect, albeit not very covert way of influencing opinion: if I asked whether you’d like an apple from a biological farm or whether worms gross you out then I just planted the idea in your mind that biological farming might be infected by pests even though I made no such statement.
This is dirty pool. Anyone deploying this tactic is quite simply lying. They are lying about what their intentions are. They are lying about what their goals are. And they are lying by omission and commission, by implying, by merely asking it, that the question actually hasn’t already been or can’t be answered, and that the answer isn’t already well known (or known to be irrelevant).
It’s even more dishonest when a question is asked in a way that obfuscates what is even being asked. For example, “How can a trans woman be a woman and still have a penis?” isn’t really asking that question; it’s really asking whether gender is defined by sex and whether sex is defined by genitalia. The answer to both questions is, quite scientifically, no. But the important point is that this is easily found out (see Attack of the Lycanthropic Transsexuals!). There can therefore be no legitimate reason to ask this question in public. You should have asked and answered it on your own, well before posing it to any public venue. What you are really doing instead is trying to “argue” that gender is defined by genitalia, by disguising your argument as a question, thereby not having to even present an argument (much less defend one), and certainly not having to engage any effort to listen to anyone and thus learn anything.
JAQing Off isn’t new. Atheists have been eyerolling at the tactic from creationists for decades (and that never ends: see Steve Novella’s “Just Asking Questions—Creation Edition”). It’s a tactic typical of flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, election conspiracists. It’s easily mocked. Yet it’s dangerously common, because it’s oddly effective. Don’t fall for it. Learn how to discern when it’s happening, and never let them get away with it.
Whataboutism
The second example of this kind of thing is more commonly recognized in disingenuous political discourse, yet you will find it in fact everywhere, from creation-evolution and flat-earth debates to just about any issue or social justice argument on either side of anything. It’s called “Whataboutism.” It uses the same rhetorical trick of JAQing Off to deploy a fallacy of Tu Quoque (“You Do It Too”), but, by adapting the JAQing tactic, it avoids actually making an argument, and thus “technically” avoids the fallacy. It thus becomes another behavior rather than an argument, and thus a rhetorical trick rather than an explicit error of logic. Thus, instead of deploying the explicitly fallacious argument, “You did x too, therefore your criticism of my doing x is invalid or unsound,” you “Just Ask the Question,” i.e. “What about when you did x?” This only implies the fallacy, allowing you to change the subject (thus avoiding the actual pertinent debate) and emotionally manipulate the audience into “feeling” like you have made a valid point and defended your position or behavior.
Wikipedia has a detailed article on the tactic, well supplemented at RationalWiki. Dictionary.com explores the origin of the idea in Russian propaganda during the Cold War (though it also notes the concept was evoked even before that to describe the rhetoric between camps during the Irish Troubles; and now of course, we’ve come full circle with the Trumpist cooption of the original Russian propaganda technique). One example Dictionary.com describes is useful to analyze:
Critics who claim “All Lives Matter” and “Blue Lives Matter” in response to the Black Lives Matter movement are engaging in whataboutism. They deflect attention from the original issue (Black people are almost three times as likely to be killed by police, for example) to another issue without addressing the first. Bringing reverse racism (or the rights of non-marginalized groups) into the conversation is basically whataboutism distracting from the original issue and grievances.
Of course it’s even worse than that, insofar as responding to Black Lives Matter with Blue Lives Matter is in effect saying Black Lives Don’t Matter, by insisting Blue Lives matter more. But the token phrase allows the one who asserts it to pretend they are saying something inoccuous and uncontroversial: that the lives of people in law enforcement matter (i.e. we all care about their welfare and reducing the dangers they face). But that isn’t really what they are saying. It’s what they want to appear to be saying (to their own conscience, and all the other people they are thereby virtue signaling to); and what they want people to think BLM advocates are denying (when they aren’t). And indeed, if they had said that in any other context, it would be what they were really saying. But by saying it specifically in the context of having been presented wth the argument (sloganed as BLM) that police, across the United States, are not treating black lives with the same care as white lives (that they are, in fact, more casually and readily resorting to violence with black suspects, whereas they treat white suspects with remarkable “benefit of a doubt,” on which see Actually, Fryer Proved Systemic Racism in American Policing and Intersectionality: A Guide for the Perplexed). It essentially signals the retort that…police should treat black lives with less care, because black people “are” a danger to police and police “should” get to kill anyone who scares them. But you can’t actually say that. Because that would immediately out you as a racist. Which even your own conscience cannot admit to—unless you are self-admittedly a white supremacist; but most racists aren’t.
Most racists, through cognitive dissonance, don’t believe they are; and they fly Blue Lives Matter flags, a “Let’s Go Brandon” way of saying “Fuck Black People and All Their Complaints.” In truth, Blue Lives Matter flags advertise to everyone your real belief that every black person beaten or murdered by police deserved it—so everyone should shut up about it already. Because (the implied logic goes) “cops’ lives matter, therefore they should get to defend themselves,” which is all straightforwardly true, but misses the point of BLM: that cops are too casually deciding when “they get to defend themselves” when a suspect is black. If they were treating white people that way (and letting black people skate, or treating them with kid gloves), there’d be hell to pay. Which is precisely the problem. Whataboutism is thus a very ingenious rhetorical tactic, designed to derail any argument that makes you uncomfortable, by trying (through some logical legerdemain) to change the subject to something else, something that supposedly can’t be denied. In this case, it’s “But what about the cops who are getting killed?” Which is not relevant to the original complaint. But it does effectively dodge that complaint (while simultanously virtue signaling your “safe” racism).
As described by Mordecai Gordon for the CT Post, “Whataboutism is the practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by charging one’s accusers with hypocrisy without directly refuting their argument,” which means, in other words, “the practice of whataboutism is an attempt to discredit an opponent’s position without disproving their argument” (emphasis mine). The tactic thus typically signals the absence of any actual rebuttal—you have no argument, so you have to pretend you do. After all, if you had a real argument, you’d have used that instead. In the context of the “BLM vs. BLM” debate, the Blue Lives stance (as well as the related All Lives Matter pose) de facto accuses the Black Lives stance of hypocritically denying the value of other lives (white people and cops, particularly). In this case it’s a patently false charge. But it allows pretending you’ve said something substantive against the Black Lives Matter position.
And not all Whataboutism relies on false accusations of hypocrisy; it can also deploy on true ones. “What about all the reckless spending of the DNC?” is a nifty way to deflect from the argument that the GOP has consistentlty and catastrophically raised the U.S. national debt and outspent revenues more than the DNC in any administration in the last fifty years. Even if this was bad, pointing out that “the DNC does it too” is not a relevant argument against it being bad. That response effectively ignores the entire argument. Of course, here the accusation is still a little disingenuous because the DNC always tries to get revenue to balance, but the GOP always opposes every such effort; and so really, even DNC additions to the debt are the GOP’s fault. Which is intentional: the last thing the GOP wants is to let the DNC claim it balanced the budget (the DNC only got away with that under Clinton; and Bush immediately reversed it). Likewise, the principal argument the GOP always deploys against DNC policies is that they are too expensive—never mind the absurd scale of expenditures the GOP entails on corporate welfare, a bloated military, and pointless—and pretty consistently failed—wars. Things are only “too expensive” when the GOP doesn’t want them. But Whataboutism is a behavioral tactic designed to trigger an emotional rather than a rational response to this, and thus can successfully “change the subject,” rather than actually argue for what they are being criticized for doing.
Hence this tactic works even when its premise isn’t disingenuous. In the context of politicians with rampant histories of sexual harassment, for example, “What about Cuomo?” does not play on any false characterization. Indeed, Cuomo’s abuses in office are demonstrably worse than any like behavior from Trump while he was in office (I suspect Trump was too busy buried under legitimate work and other scandals, too much a deer in headlights playing desperate catch-up on everything, and too much under blinding scrutiny on this very issue, to even contemplate any like shenanigans in office). But “Cuomo did it too” is not even a response to the accusations surrounding Trump’s earlier behavior. You can debate whether and to what extent what Trump’s been accused of is true, or well-evidenced, or even “bad” (arguments often indeed attempted in exactly his case); but “What about Cuomo?” isn’t even engaging a debate at all—least of all as Cuomo didn’t get away with it (so the analogy should be, neither should Trump); but the same point would stand even if he did. Whataboutism is thus a behavioral tactic—a way to avoid making arguments, rather than an explicitly illogical “argument.”
Gordon breaks down three epistemic immoralities common to Whataboutism. The first is that it often relies on not just an implied Tu Quoque fallacy, but as I just noted, also an implied Fallacy of False Equivalence. As when Republicans in the U.S. try to evade criticism for their beliefs and policies regarding election integrity with the logically irrelevant retort, “What about when Democrats contested elections?” The retort is logically irrelevant even if this were a legit comparison. But it’s all the worse that it isn’t even a legitmate comparison. As Gordon notes, “the two situations were very different, since in 2016 there were no Democratic senators who contested the results when Congress met to certify them” (and even the few members of Congress who did, did so in full compliance with the law) and “there was no violent mob that stormed the Capitol to interrupt the counting of the electoral votes after Trump won the election in 2016.” One could extend the point all the way back to 2000, when there was a legitimate case to be made that Bush stole the election from Gore (through a suspect Supreme Court decision actually shutting down a proper recount of votes), and yet even then Gore conceded—thus demonstrating the greater concern for rule of law and peaceful succession of power that the Republicans are now being criticized for abandoning. No one stormed the capitol in 2001. Nor did anyone try subverting the U.S. Constitution in any other way (like suggesting the VP simply “not certify” the vote).
The other two immoralities of Whataboutism are its use to evade taking responsibility for one’s own errors or misdeeds, and its use to openly abandon any role for the truth to play in political discourse. And the same can operate in any other arena of discourse, as well-noted by Neil Carter at Patheos. “What about Hitler?” is a false-premise variant attempt to evade any actual debate over whether atheism is nevertheless true. It’s thus irrelevant that Hitler was actually a theist (indeed, a believing Christian). Hence “What about Stalin?” is still a true-premise variant of the same bogus tactic. On the other hand, “What about women in Iran?” as a response to women complaining about sexist mistreatment and prejudice in America is an example of true-premise Whataboutism; whereas “What about the fact that most Muslims are peaceful?” is not Whataboutism, but a valid point.
As Claire Fallon notes for the Huffington Post, “The problem with whataboutism is that hypocrisy is a durable problem (humans being flawed and inconsistent), but it is not the only problem.” By diverting every discussion into arguiong over who is the bigger hypocrite, we avoid actually acknowledging, much less fixing, any errors or failures or defects of character. Pointing out that conservative Christians are just as guilty of violence and bigotry and criminality in the name of God as conservative Muslims, by contrast, calls attention to Fallon’s point, rather than evading it. Our criticism of Islam should be the same as our criticism of Christianity. This does not entail ignoring Islam as a problem, any more than it entails the same for Christianity. There are plenty of hypocrites in both faiths to criticize. Hence the point to take away here is that hypocrisy is a problem to be discussed on its own; but it is not a valid excuse to avoid discussing the other problems we face. Actual Whataboutism is societally destructive; and fundamentally evasive. So whenever this tactic is deployed…keep pointing that out. Don’t let anyone get away with it.
Infinite Goal Posts
I’ll close with today’s third example of what are more “behavioral” tactics than logical fallacies common among apologists, cranks, liars, propagandists, and trolls: the strategy of Infinite Goal Posts, which is related again to the aforementioned Gish Gallop, but remains sufficiently distinct in practice to discuss on its own. While “moving the goal posts” is a well-recognized fallacy, when the fallacy is endlessly repeated, it becomes a behavior, not an argument. And I’ve run into this countless times, from cranks of all varieties (well-known examples range from Joseph Atwill to the Israel Only crowd): as soon as you have refuted all their best arguments, they advance a dozen more arguments and insist you have to rebut them all; and when you do, they advance two dozen more arguments, and insist you have to rebut all those. The procedure will never end, because that’s the point: they get to claim their position remains unrefuted as long as they can keep inventing new stupid reasons to believe it, or more and more examples that are increasingly weaker than the ones already rebutted, or both.
This is how we end up with lunatic word-walls, hundreds of thousands of words long, escalating from a thousand word tirade, to ten thousand, then thirty…it never ends. Until you call this tactic out for what it is, and shut that shit down. It is actually a distinctive and often identifying characteristic of cranks that they have thousands of pages of arguments to show you, for some conclusion that should really have been adequately provable by means of only a handful (at least to a standard of researching it further). Quantity instead of quality is their methodology. “If I can see a thousand weak examples, I don’t need any good ones,” they think, rather than asking whether any examples hold up enough to even warrant looking for more. Cranks, liars, and demagugues are all equally disinterested in even so much as formulating, much less actually passing, honest falsification conditions (on which see my Advice on Probabilistic Reasoning).
As I wrote in Atwill’s Cranked-up Jesus:
I do not expect a theory to be proven on one case, but I must start with one case, for the same reason psychical researchers do not waste money setting up experiments to test a psychic who has already failed one good test, and yet these same researchers don’t assume the psychic’s powers can be proven by passing that one test. One must pass several tests in sequence, each test justifying the labor and expense of setting up and conducting the next; but as soon as tests start failing, further inquiry is not warranted. So, too, here: I need one good case that is not ambiguous or flawed and that hints at something significant along the lines of your thesis. Once I confirm that one case, then I can look at the next best case, etc. However, if even your best case fails to convince, then I know I need not waste time on any others. [This is] just a requirement of economy.
And here, again:
I do not mean by “good” example an example that alone proves your case. I merely mean an example that is peculiar enough that it generates a reasonable suspicion that you may be on to something. I think your best examples should be even more impressive than that, but if your very best example merely rises to the level of being what I just defined as a “good” example, then start with that. Otherwise, if you lack even a single “good” example, I am afraid to say you can only have [an unproven speculation on your hands—and that’s at best].
A typical crank “never has any defensible examples, rarely knows what he is talking about, gets a lot wrong, makes stuff up, never admits an error, and is generally” a “frustrating delusional fanatic.” Hence one of their signature behaviors is to ignore any request to “keep it one example at a time, concise, clear facts and logic,” with citation and page number to whatever scholarship they are relying on or (supposedly) summarizing. No. They have to bombard you with dozens, even hundreds of “claims.” And when you insist they pick just a few of the best, they “complain” that that’s unfair. But only a crank thinks that’s unfair (just as only a disingenuous rhetorician would “claim” it’s unfair). Honest investigators never think or claim that. That’s how we can tell the difference.
Hence as I said when responding to the Israel Only cranks:
Like all crankery, IO is defended with gigantic, massive word walls of endless, rambling, convoluted claims that would take a lifetime to vet. But all we need, really, is to see if what even they claim are their best moves hold up or fall down as unsustainably erroneous and naive. If it’s the latter, then at that point we know we needn’t waste any time culling the rest. Their attempt to harass us with thousands of claims will fall flat as just more evidence of their crank methodology.
Hence as I concluded there:
I can predict the IO response to all this (and just watch: it will happen in comments below [and yep, it totally did–ed.), because I have dealt with cranks like this for decades. Circular argument, possibiliter fallacies, false facts we can expect for sure. But the standard crank response to being refuted is to throw up a gigantic word wall filled with hundreds or thousands of dubious claims, and then “insist” that if you can’t address and refute every single one of them, you’ve “lost,” and they are right and can go on haughtily pronouncing their crank nonsense. This is hopelessly irrational. The very attempt to respond that way proves they are cranks. We do not have to respond to every single one of their thousands and thousands of bullshit claims. [Once w]e’ve caught them out in enough errors … [we] know anything else they say is simply not worth our time—being, quite probably, outright false, or not capable of proving their thesis even when correct.
Thus, once again, when anyone pulls this strategy on you, call them out on it: honest, competent inquirers don’t pull shit like this; only cranks and liars do. So don’t let them get away with it. Lay down the law: they must pick their top one to three examples or arguments, and make the best case for them, concisely (without any convoluted word-walls or digressions), with properly cited sources. And if these don’t pass critical muster, you can politely tell them to fuck off.
Finally, in “Moving the Goal Posts” Jonathan Maloney at Intelligent Speculation shows how the strategem of Infinite Goal Posts works in both directions, used not merely to argue for a position, but also to reject arguments against a position, by simply refusing to accept any evidence against your position. You can be presented with infinite good examples of your being wrong and still you declare the evidence insufficient. Infinite Goal Posts. It’s a behavior only the hopelessly irrational or dishonest will engage in. And you needn’t waste your time with such people. (And waste it is what you would do; they are immune to any falsification, so you will never change their mind.)
Conclusion
I hope this article will serve as a useful reference when you need to identify or deal with these three behavioral tactics in any argument or debate. Infinite Goal Posts is a sign of pseudoscholarship. Whataboutism is a sign of lacking any honest rebuttal. And JAQing Off only advertises one’s disingenuous—and thus dishonest—approach to engagement. Only honest, sincere people have any business engaging with real scholars or critical thinkers. Everyone else can fuck the hell off. We know your game. And you should be ashamed to have even tried it.
I love your humor in “politely tell them to fuck off.”
I like to also add “strong letter to follow”…
Regarding the use of these tactics, how much ( if any ) leeway should be given to people who you encounter for the first time. People are influenced by what they hear from others. Which makes people who have genuine questions use these methods because they heard them from cranks and charlatans. Given this, if encountering a post online from someone new is it better to give benefit of the doubt and then give three strikes your out( sorry, cheesy phrase but I had to)
Also, assuming given benifit of the doubt. Would you agree that it’s generally better to confront tactics like this by asking questions back at the questioner. Where instead of giving them data which has the chance of creating the backfire effect you try to show them why the phrasing itself of the question is problematic.
The Big Picture argues it here.
https://ritholtz.com/2019/11/a-better-way-to-talk-to-fox-news-viewers/
I think that’s why laying down the law works. A person who is actually sincere enough and respects you will respond appropriately. If you say “Dude, I don’t have the time to debunk 50 bad points. If you have 3 good ones, then we can discuss that, and then if the other ideas become relevant we can add those back in, but if all your arguments are bad, can you see why I won’t spend time with them?”, a sincere person may actually look at the script they were regurgitating. Once they do, they may either realize that none of the points in isolation are that convincing (which may at least soften them) or actually express what is really motivating them to believe, which lets you have the actual conversation.
Even with sincere people, it is actually useful to get at why they care. If someone is motivated by a faith concern, for example, going into minutiae about scientific methodology can be unconvincing, because the reason they are galloping or motte- and-baileying in the first place is because they are worried that science is making their simple religious view that gave them comfort and formed a part of their moral and personal identity seem to be false or too reductive. Reassuring them on that front is actually important. As Matt Dillahunty and Aron Ra have pointed out, every debate with apologists always comes down to the moral argument, because that is their fundamental reason to believe: they are terrified of a world without meaning and supernatural policing of ethics.
The issue with questioning when it comes to crank tactics is that they very often may actually accuse you of JAQing off, or use word walls in response. Q on this blog was asked to just provide his CV. He could have easily done so, and if it was not impressive explained why his ideas still had merits. But in bloviating word walls he couldn’t do that, even though it would have made him much more convincing no matter what his CV actually was (because even an actually bad CV is better than the impression of incompetence and dishonesty of trying to hide it), because his goal was never really to convince. People act like this on topics that they are emotionally motivated on, and they will tend to give answers to the questions that confirms their ego and usually allows them to think oppositionally (“I have to ask these questions because you liberals never give a straight answer!”).
I concur with Frederic here. The best way to engage someone taking a strange or toxic position is to skip past everything and go right to the real issue: “Why do you care?”
That question will cut right to the heart of what’s actually going on: their motivation. If they are honest with you, that is. Often they will not be. The liar, certainly won’t; but even the delusional are motivated by cognitive dissonance to avoid discussing their real motives by trying to change the subject or giving you a disingenuously uninformative motive instead of the actual truth. Like “I’m just a truth-seeker,” which is so generic, it actually doesn’t answer the question (even were it true; and often, also, it’s not).
The backfire effect has actually been refuted. It doesn’t exist. I know I used to say otherwise. That was before the science was in. So we should stop citing that as a basis for any strategy of response now.
But still, yes, if someone comes at you with a disingenuously phrased question (this seems to be the only one of the three tactics you are referring to), the immediate response should be to call them out for that fact, by showing them you recognize the phrasing is disingenuous. An honest person will admit their error and be annoyed they were deceived in this by whoever influenced them; which means, conversely, if they instead just get angry or attempt more disingenuous tactics or try to change the subject so as to avoid admitting what just happened, you know they are full of shit. Treat them accordingly.
In broader generality:
How many chances you give someone should depend on how egregious their behavior is. Sometimes it is so outrageous no honest excuse is even possible. One strike they are out. Most of the time it is deeply suspicious, so they get one more chance to show that’s what happened and that they aren’t actually an implacable nutter, disingenuous troll, or dishonest conman. Two strikes they are out. The only people I give three strikes to are those whose behavior is liminal enough, an edge case, where I’m not sure they are just stupid or foolish and taking longer to “get it,” or if they are someone I’m wasting my time with. Three strikes they are out.
Psychologically, a lot of these tactics are also designed to engage in self-delusion (which is why motivated reasoning is actually quite effective among otherwise intelligent people: the smarter one is, the better they can deploy these techniques if they are motivated to). As you have noted, many of these tactics are used to keep people on their side in the fold at least as much as it is used to try to recruit outsiders.
The Gish gallop doesn’t just force your opponents to burn time. Even if someone happens to reverse it by successfully grouping the arguments or Gish galloping back, the galloper has managed to convince themselves that they have lots of very good reasons to continue to believe (or to doubt a contrary position) and it’s all just a matter of debate. The arguments take the form of a totem: Their quality is moot, it is the fact that they exist that convinces the brain that there isn’t something to worry about. The motte-and-bailey lets someone convince themselves that they don’t hold that extreme of a view, really: When you express their view charitably, most people agree with it, right?! JAQing off lets one feel like an intellectually honest crusader while everyone else is an ideologue who can’t answer simple questions. Whataboutism is particularly dangerous because it evokes group biases: Sure, the other side may have a point in isolation, but you see, we did what we have to, because the other side did it first so we are just defending ourselves.
Which is why you’re right that it’s very difficult to talk honestly to these people. They can’t be convinced. To be reached, they have to agree to be walked through the contrary position they don’t hold one point at a time, until they at least understand the contrary position… but that requires them being willing to abandon tribalism enough to think that maybe there may be multiple intellectually honest perspectives.
Correct. All these tools work equally often and well as the delusional’s trap-beliefs (on which see my discussion in my Primer on Media Literacy). They can just as easily trick oneself into maintaining a delusion, as trick others into same. And for the very sorts of reasons you outline.
Which is why it can be very difficuly to tell the difference between “a liar and a lunatic” (or “the disingenuous and the delusional”). They often sound exactly the same and behave exactly the same way. There are only a few differences that can become clear over time, and you often don’t have access to enough of a datastream like that to analyze.
Richard, are you planning to respond to the recent Ehrman interview with Jacob Berman (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw5kOck8MCw)? Or have you given up on him?
He opens the interview asking “Well what’s the best evidence we have that Abraham Lincoln existed?”, then answers himself “We actually have photographs of him…”
He then claims that “Jesus is the best documented figure from first century Judea, in terms of external evidence. There’s nobody else that you have 4 biographies written of. … There are a lot of independent early sources behind these Gospels. … I guess the best evidence is that if Jesus didn’t exist you’d think his brother would know about it.”
I’m yet to watch the rest (and I’m interested to what extent Jacob challenges anything he says), but that hardly seems an auspicious start.
No plans to, no. Like you noticed, there isn’t anything new there. All this has already been addressed, under peer review even. Ehrman just isn’t interested in even reading the peer reviewed literature on this, much less ever responding to it. He just keeps making the same rebutted statements over and over again and never responds to those rebuttals.
I think YouTube hosts should stop letting him get away with that, and actually ask critical questions when he pulls this stunt, but there isn’t anything I can do about that.
To further flog this long-dead horse:
I’ve just watched your June 4 2021 MythVision session “How We Know The Book Of Daniel Is A Forgery”, in which Derek plays Ehrman’s response regarding mythicists in general, and you specifically (https://youtu.be/pNDYE-tLiG4?t=5147).
Neither of you comment on one particularly galling claim Ehrman makes about you: “he’s published an article or two in a peer reviewed journal… He brags about how much he publishes in peer reviewed journals…”
i.e. No mention of your peer reviewed book on the subject. It’s hard not to see that as deliberate obfuscation.
I guess Ehrman is living proof of Planck’s (paraphrased) observation, which I’m sure you’ve echoed on numerous occasions: Science [and surely even more so history] advances one funeral at a time.
(Which prompts me to ask you: what do you think of the idea that this implies that ‘scientific revolutions are non-rational, rather than spreading through “mere force of truth and fact”‘?)
Yes. That’s old hat. Ehrman is always lying about my credentials (even after apologizing for doing that, he keeps on doing it, thus demonstrating his apology was fake) and making fallacious well poisoning fallacies about how I supposedly boast about this too much; when in fact, the only reason I mention my peer reviewed work is because he claimed I didn’t have any; now when I rebut that claim, he pivots to complaining that I mention I do. It’s like a bully who punches you in the face repeatedly and when you punch back, he complains about what a violent person you are.
See items 2 and 21, in my Ehrman Recap.
As to whether the fact of irrational resistance to progress in academics implies academic revolutions are non-rational, they don’t because they always lose. That there are resistors does not negate the fact that there are also persuaded adopters. Hence, doubting the historicity of Moses met fierce irrational resistance, which lost; too many adopters were eventually persuaded (see Wallach’s Bayesian analysis of the process, showing how rationality won out, it just took time). And not all of those adopters were young scholars; though proportionally they were because older people tend to be more resistant to change and younger people tend to be more open to new ideas, which is simply a trend-line not an absolute difference (not all old people are like that, nor all young people like that).
I’m reminded of Reza Aslan’s famous takedown of FOX (which some atheists really cocked up their replies to out of distaste for Reza). One could accuse Reza of having been qualification-bragging, but that was precisely because he was in a context where his motives and his qualifications were being questioned for expressly racist, religiously chauvinist reasons. I think he could also have discussed his own past with Christianity and his sincere love for Jesus as he did in other contexts (and the interviewer even mentioned that past so apparently that wasn’t working either), but what he was trying to do in that interview was get to the actual book and its merits, and the reviewer was trying to undercut him on disingenuous grounds.
In Aslan’s case, there’s valid criticism to be made both of the book and of the zealot hypothesis. Which is precisely why no one needed to cluck about credentials.
In your case, Richard, I do sometimes think you try to take a few publications here and there and use it to make a case for specialization in a field in a way that can come off as disingenuous, but in the contexts you do it I think you are just trying to get the conversation back to the matter at hand. Because when it’s there, you never bring up your credentials or your publications. You just make the argument. And Ehrman and his ilk focusing on the optics of the debate and never the substance is deeply telling. I’ve seen this when it comes to everyone from Chomsky to PZ. It’s not a good sign.
I always thought of “whataboutism” as a fallacy and often get accused of it, but in most cases I don’t think I’m guilty of it. I think there’s a misconception that just because one utters the words “what about x” it necessarily means it’s “whataboutism”, which is obvious BS.
Here’s why I think I’m rarely guilty of it. When I’m presented with a claim or argument, I either accept or reject it, or don’t take a position at all. Sometimes I give reasons for my position, sometimes I don’t. What I often do after that is say “what about x”, very often to see if I’m dealing with a biased, hypocrite (in most cases I am).
So to use your example – if I was told that the GOP is responsible for raising the National debt, my response would be: I agree for x reasons. But I would then usually follow up with: what about the reckless spending of the DNC? At this point I usually get accused of “whataboutism”.
This is not “whataboutism”.
That literally describes disingenuous behavior on your part.
You might want to rethink everything you are telling yourself here.
Yes. It is.
That the DNC has raised the debt has no bearng whatever on whether the GOP has done so. So you can’t refute “the GOP keeps raising the debt” with “but the DNC has too.” That’s a fallacy. Phrasing it as a question is a rhetorical tactic designed to avoid being accused of the very fallacy you are actually trying to get away with.
Moreover, the DNC alone has actually ever passed surplus budgets (the Clintin administration). The GOP has never done so. So if the argument is instead “which party is most likely, if allowed to do so, stop increasing, and even start paying down, the debt?” the empirically true answer is “the DNC.”
Even more importantly to the point, the DNC has always—literally always—attempted to pay for all expenses with revenue increases. Only the GOP—ever always only the GOP—prevents that. So even when the DNC votes for an increase in budget, it is actually always the GOP’s fault that the debt went up. Because the DNC proposes to pay for the increase, and the GOP votes them down. It never happens the other way around. Which means “the GOP is always the party responsible for increasing the debt, not the DNC” is true. And this cannot be rebutted by saying “the DNC voted to increase the debt.” Because they actually proposed to not do so, by increasing revenue instead; and it is the GOP (not the DNC) that always downvotes that side of every effort by the DNC to address the problems of the nation.
So that’s three ways from Sunday you are wrong. And to ignore all these facts with “But what about the DNC’s spending?” is thus whataboutism. Their spending wouldn’t be reckless, if the GOP would let them pay for it. That is why the GOP warrants all the blame for the debt. To change the subject about what we need to spend money on (the how much we spend), rather than how we pay for it (the how much we earn, vs. take on as debt), is to disingenuously avoid the point being made. And that is the very nefarious property of whataboutism. It’s a tactic to avoid the conversation people are actually trying to have.
And you just admitted to doing that.
“What I often do after that is say “what about x”, very often to see if I’m dealing with a biased, hypocrite (in most cases I am).”
Not sure why you view this as disingenuous behavior. Is it because I’m not revealing my motivation (to see if they are being a hypocrite) in asking them that? Strictly speaking, it is dishonest, but totally morally acceptable from my POV.
Or do you thinking I’m guilty of JAQing Off? That’s not what I’m doing either since my intention is not to avoid the burden of proof and I typically do have a well-informed, evidence-based opinion that I’m willing to defend.
“That the DNC has raised the debt has no bearng whatever on whether the GOP has done so. So you can’t refute “the GOP keeps raising the debt” with “but the DNC has too.”
I concur. But that’s not what I said that I do (I’m not trying to refute that the GOP is responsible for the raise). Rather, I would typically state the following: “I agree that the GOP has raised the national debt and should be held accountable”. And then follow up with “What about the DNC?”, just to see if the potential hypocrite will admit that their political cult is also guilty of the exact same thing.
Just to be clear, I used that example out of convenience because you used it. I have no opinion about who is more or less responsible for the national debt.
But this article has been very insightful, thank you. I had never of the term “JAQing Off” before, although we can all see people doing it all the time!
Sorry, but I have literally explained why, three times now. I can’t help you if you don’t get it. I’ve done all I can to make it clear. Best I can suggest is to re-read my last comment. And actually pay attention to what it says.
That is not what you said. So now you are changing the story. Talk about disingenuous.
But even this revisionist history doesn’t change the equation. Because you are still deflecting. It does not matter whether the DNC “keeps raising the debt” when it is the GOP forcing them to by downvoting responsible revenue bills, and it is precisely that fact everyone is trying to have a conversation about when talking about the GOP’s role in continuously (and hypocritically) raising the debt—a conversation you would here be trying to derail with a disingenuously irrelevant question about the DNC.
That is the very definition of disingenuous. Asking questions when you literally don’t care what the answers are is the essence of one very common use of JAQing off. That’s trolling, not sincere conversation.
And worse, now you just admitted you were lying when you said you “would typically state” things a certain way, by now confessing you have never done this, and just made this example up (“because [I] used it”).
Even if we assume you misspoke here, you still can’t go around claiming to have done things, and then deny any possible motive for having done it. The essence of JAQing off is that it has a dishonest motivation. No one just asks random questions they don’t care about, least of all in conversations those questions deliberately aim to derail. People only go through the trouble of asking questions when they have a reason to be doing that. Your refusal to interrogate your own reasons for acting, or to admit them here, is what would make you a troll, rather than a sincere person actually interested in contributing to or understanding issues being discussed.
“Sorry, but I have literally explained why, three times now. I can’t help you if you don’t get it. I’ve done all I can to make it clear. Best I can suggest is to re-read my last comment. And actually pay attention to what it says.”
I read your last comment. I believe this is what you’re referring to: “To change the subject about what we need to spend money on (the how much we spend), rather than how we pay for it (the how much we earn, vs. take on as debt), is to disingenuously avoid the point being made”
But this isn’t what I do. I don’t change the subject at all. I simply ask the other person if they think there’s another cause (the DNC, for example) of the issue we’re discussing.
“That is not what you said. So now you are changing the story. Talk about disingenuous”
Here’s literary what I said: “if I was told that the GOP is responsible for raising the National debt, my response would be: I agree for x reasons. But I would then usually follow up with: what about the reckless spending of the DNC?”
The only thing missing here is the part where I say why I do it. I didn’t change the story.
“But even this revisionist history doesn’t change the equation. Because you are still deflecting. It does not matter whether the DNC “keeps raising the debt” when it is the GOP forcing them to by downvoting responsible revenue bills, and it is precisely that fact everyone is trying to have a conversation about when talking about the GOP’s role in continuously (and hypocritically) raising the debt—a conversation you would here be trying to derail with a disingenuously irrelevant question about the DNC.”
Here you’ve gone into addressing why the GOP is responsible for the debt and not the DNC, which is irrelevant, because this was a HYPOTHETICAL example that YOU used. Even if I’m wrong to think that the other side is also responsible for issue X, that still doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m deflecting or being dishonest. It could be that I’m just wrong.
“That is the very definition of disingenuous. Asking questions when you literally don’t care what the answers are is the essence of one very common use of JAQing off. That’s trolling, not sincere conversation.”
But I don’t ask questions when I don’t care what the answers are. I’ve never asked this question before, nor have I had this conversation before. Why is this so hard to believe?
“And worse, now you just admitted you were lying when you said you “would typically state” things a certain way, by now confessing you have never done this, and just made this example up (“because [I] used it”).”
I would typically state things in a CERTAIN WAY is not the same thing as I would ask or I have asked the question at hand. By “certain way” here I mean asking the other person if they think their tribe is also responsible for a certain issue. I ask this type of question with a specific goal in mind, which is to see if I’m dealing with a tribalist and a hypocrite.
“Even if we assume you misspoke here, you still can’t go around claiming to have done things, and then deny any possible motive for having done it. The essence of JAQing off is that it has a dishonest motivation. No one just asks random questions they don’t care about, least of all in conversations those questions deliberately aim to derail. People only go through the trouble of asking questions when they have a reason to be doing that. Your refusal to interrogate your own reasons for acting, or to admit them here, is what would make you a troll, rather than a sincere person actually interested in contributing to or understanding issues being discussed”.
I don’t ask questions I don’t care about and inquiring about another potential cause for the issue we are discussing does not mean I’m derailing anything.
If you’re genuinely concerned about homophobia and you only want to denounce it when Christians are causing it and ignore it when Muslims do it, that leads me to believe that your concern (at least your major concern) is not homophobia, but to bash Christians. I don’t want to have conversations with triallists or hypocrites (sadly they are growing exponentially on the Left).
You keep accusing me of dishonesty here but the only dishonesty I’m guilty of is not revealing the reason I’m asking the question.
I call you out for ignoring everything I said. Then you cherry pick one line of a dozen things I said, and pretend this is you not ignoring everything I said. This is delusional, Carlo. You even double down on your delusionality by asserting even more false beliefs: that people who attack Christian homophobia don’t attack Muslim homophobia; dude, we fucking do, you just aren’t paying attention, because you are nursing a grievance delusion against liberals that is total fucking mythology.
You have a problem. Your epistemology is hosed by a deep commitment to avoiding the truth and acting irrationally to dodge any cognitive dissonance over it. I simply cannot help someone this far gone. You need to get back to being a rational person on your own somehow. I can’t wave a wand and make that happen. And you have proven immune to all attempts to communicate this to you. That exhausts all options. You are just lost. Until you can find your own way out of the maze of delusions you’ve trapped yourself in.
Carlo, let me try to unpack some of what happened so you can get a different perspective on the optics here. We are of course relying on you to communicate even a hypothetical example accurately.
So your opening was to say that in the case that the GOP is responsible, you’d ask “what about the reckless spending of the DNC?” That is not what you later said, which was that you would “ask the other person if they think there’s another cause (the DNC, for example) of the issue we’re discussing”. That is not the same thing.
But, okay, let’s take that version on. First of all, “The GOP raises the debt” cannot be countered by “So do the Dems”. You said it yourself: “another cause”. Charitably, that would mean both are causes. But in that case, dealing with the GOP is part of the problem. Your question just serves to distract from a conversation even you have to admit is legitimate… all to satisfy your own purported interest in not talking to hypocrites. Which shouldn’t even bother you that much, Carlo: you should be more concerned that someone is incorrect than being a hypocrite.
Which is part of the article that Richard wrote that you didn’t address. Richard cites Claire Fallon pointing this out: that hypocrisy may be a problem, but it’s not the only problem, and that whataboutism has at minimum one consequence and in reality almost always two: A focus on hypocrisy as if it’s the only matter at hand, which means that since everyone is flawed one can just argue that everything is BS and not have to think; and, very often, a destruction of meaningful distinctions.
Secondly, it’s not the Dems who fetishize balanced budgets. The GOP are the ones shrieking about the debt. Most liberals and leftists agree that some debt would be fine, it’s just the scale of debt that we have that is the problem.
So you’re responding to an argument from hypocrisy by alleging a fraudulent argument back. Which is just the height of disingenuity. It is wholly possible to argue simultaneously “The GOP are hypocrites on the issues of debt” and “The debt isn’t as serious of a problem as they say it is, and its causes and impacts are not what they say it is”. To then ask “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE DEMS?” in response is to loudly, proudly, miss the entire point. The GOP act as if they are fiscal conservatives when they spend money hand over fist and don’t ever try to get it funded. And the GOP does this, quite clearly (and even self-admittedly when you get them talking away from the public), to starve the state. They want a big state that overspends because they want to make sure that there is never a chance that the state is functional. Democratic overspending isn’t in the same universe, but just trying to make it about dollars and cents ignores all of that context. You can disagree with liberals and leftists about the debt, but at least we’re not being inconsistent. We’re just asking that the GOP stops lying.
Third, the whole argument that liberals tend to make is that you can’t just talk about government spending in isolation. You have to look at what it’s buying. So in Take the Rich Off Welfare, Naiman pretty credibly showed that most of the ways that the GOP act as if to prime the pump are not efficient ways of doing so if your concern is actually to help the economy for everyone. Increasing military spending is not as good a way of creating jobs as approaches liberals would suggest.
That’s why Richard pointed out that this tactic changes the subject from why to how. We’re looking at return on investment. The GOP throws money away on things like disposable military items rather than investments that keep paying off. One can accuse the Dems of wanting to overtax and thereby cut the economy, but the GOP solution to that of simply neglecting to never tax isn’t just delusional and irresponsible, they do end up taxing. When public transportation costs go up because the government isn’t spending into infrastructure and transportation, that’s effectively a tax. Sales taxes are taxes. Transferring costs to state governments requires tax increases. Even Bush I had to break his promise and raise taxes.
Fourth, as Richard points out, the problem with the GOP isn’t just how they spend and what they spend it on but how much they take in. It’s the GOP that try to insist on no new taxes, who want to keep huge spending. The GOP propose budgets that won’t work. The Dems don’t, at least nowhere near to the same degree. The GOP isn’t even trying to solve the problem. So asking “What about Dem spending?” disingenuously deflects from the fact that the topic is two-sided.
If you wanted to identify a party that was profligate, it would be the GOP. Just like how when Corbyn ran he was accused of wanting “money trees” when his proposals were fully costed, unlike the Tories.
The moment you ask “Might there be another cause of the debt?”, all that has to be explained to you. Yeah, man, there’s lots of causes. We were talking about the GOP as one, though. Why can’t you just do that?
If someone were to argue that it is only GOP profligacy to blame, then you would have the start of a case. You would still be vulnerable to Richard’s point here, which you have yet to admit actually straight up answers you. You say that he is now talking about the literal facts of the GOP vs. the DNC, but… he did that in the original article, Carlo. He said ” “What about all the reckless spending of the DNC?” is a nifty way to deflect from the argument that the GOP has consistentlty and catastrophically raised the U.S. national debt and outspent revenues more than the DNC in any administration in the last fifty years. Even if this was bad, pointing out that “the DNC does it too” is not a relevant argument against it being bad. That response effectively ignores the entire argument. Of course, here the accusation is still a little disingenuous because the DNC always tries to get revenue to balance, but the GOP always opposes every such effort; and so really, even DNC additions to the debt are the GOP’s fault”.That was his original point. He used this example precisely because the whataboutism here is especially galling because the simple fact that both sides do it distracts from the conversation about the scale and character. The GOP pretends to be fiscally conservative while in fact being profligate, lying about this fiscal conservativism to actually ruin government, and waste what they spend. The DNC is disingenuously posed as tax-and-spend liberals when they would at least balance the budget.
The DNC can’t be compared to the GOP. If you were just to say that the Dems contributed to the problem, you’d not only be ignoring that the Dems have virtually never voluntarily contributed to the problem but also would be making a false equivalence. Turning it into a question disguises that that’s the trick being pulled. It’s thus an end-run around the entire conversation. “The Dems could be better on the budget” is not a response to “The GOP turn the budget into a dumpster fire”. Even if you ask the question of someone and they try to deny what you think is true about the Dems (and notice how you are asking with an agenda – you think they may be a hypocrite so you ask a question or make an argument where you think you already have an answer, and will judge them based on their answer, which makes me doubt you would actually be open to being swayed by them), you still haven’t made the argument. They’re still not a hypocrite because they aren’t in fact insisting on doing something the other side did.
This is pretty basic, and part of the point I made to you. You didn’t find that they’re a hypocrite by doing this. In exchange, you derailed the conversation. The only way you could actually show them to be a hypocrite is if you could catch them either saying that the GOP would still be bad even if it acted the same way that the Dems did, or if you could prove the Dems had done what the GOP had (to the same scale, not just having done something similar). But that requires an argument. Not merely a question. It’s precisely because whataboutism exposes the person’s actual position even less that it’s such an issue. “What about the Dems?” can be answered with “The Dems are not as bad and so not worth discussing”. To gainsay that, you have to actually make an argument about degrees. Not just ask a question.
Then there’s the fact that, in all of these discussions, you’ve never articulated a time where you do any of this to liberals. You defended Peterson (though admitting he had problems). With me, you went hard in defending Trump, even though finding Trumpist hypocrisy is trivial. Conservatives are riven with hypocrisy: I think for them it’s a feature, not a bug. Small government? Yeah, except for cops, economic protectionism, subsidies, and a military, all of which are actually both massive and deeply intrusive into our lives. Individual liberties? Yep, except for the ability to control what comes into and what comes out of one’s body, the ability to protest, the ability to criticize Trump (“open the libel laws”), etc. And you had to know that never once being able to point to this when talking to liberals makes you seem disingenuous as hell.
What’s worrisome about all of this is that I am wiling to bet that when you see liberal whataboutism and deflection that you can see it for what it is. But you seem to think that you’re able to avoid their cognitive pitfalls. That should bother you.
You admit that this was a hypothetical example. Okay, Carlo, so pick an actual one. Having chosen a hypothetical has the downside that we can’t actually catch if what you’re doing is as emblematically flawed as the example here. But, again, even in your description, if a given thread is about tribe X arguing that tribe Y did something bad, “Didn’t you, tribe X, do the same thing?” is moot. Tribe Y is still bad. You need to actually dispute the argument, or concede it. You’re replicating the exact same hypocrisy, and it’s very clear that you’re doing that based off of your position on the gender wage gap. Indeed, it’s very clear to me that you’ve elevated yourself to the position of faux neutrality.
You say, “inquiring about another potential cause for the issue we are discussing does not mean I’m derailing anything”. Uhh, yeah, Carlo, it means exactly that. I say smoking causes cancer. You ask if red meat does too. Me answering that question is derailing the conversation. “Yes, but not as much, with more benefits, etc.”, or whatever my response is, is now talking about red meat. Even if you catch me on an error on the red meat issue, you haven’t actually proven that I’m wrong about cigarettes. And you should care about the cigarettes part. You actually clearly don’t care about the topic at hand. You care about the people having the debate.
You say, “If you’re genuinely concerned about homophobia and you only want to denounce it when Christians are causing it and ignore it when Muslims do it, that leads me to believe that your concern (at least your major concern) is not homophobia, but to bash Christians”. What if I’m more concerned about Christians because they have more nukes? What if I’m more concerned about Christians because I live near them? What if I signal more on Christians because I think that Christians in the West get away with degrees of homophobia that Muslim won’t in the West, and would do the same abroad?
There’s tons of reasons that people have various degrees of focus and attention. That’s a huge part of your gender wage gap failing. Activists don’t have unlimited time. To actually see if they’re disingenuous, you need to not just look at what they can spend time doing, as you’ve pretty forthrightly admitted you do. You can’t even look at their off-the-cuff response to you, especially in contexts where they are just as concerned you’re being disingenuous (rightly in m opinion) as you are of them. You need to actually get them to say something like, “Yes, I am more concerned about Christian homophobia than Muslim homophobia”, and not provide a reason.
You can disagree with their reason. You can think it’s immoral to ignore Muslim atrocities just because, say, a person in American can do a lot less about them. But that doesn’t make the person you disagree with a hypocrite or a tribalist. But you’ve created a mechanism to pigeonhole them in exactly that way.
We just had a fascist President (despite your apologia for him) and you’re talking about tribalism on the left. You could have agreed that tribalism is growing everywhere. Doing so might even have led you to correctly diagnose the problem. Why do you do that, Carlo? When your foot is being held to the fire, why are you unable to hold conservatives accountable? I can’t recall you doing so once. And notice how I am asking that question to you directly. I’m not derailing the conversation: this is the conversation. Do you see the difference? You are talking about everyone else’s disingenuity and not addressing your own. At minimum you are repeatedly coming off as disingenuous and stubbornly ignoring feedback as to why you are.
I called you out for acting as if you wanted to find excuses to not listen. And here you say it. You don’t want to talk to tribalists. But you’ll listen to Peterson. Does he not have a tribe? Heck, you’ll admit he makes errors, but he’s useful against the other side. That’s… tribalism. Apparently it’s okay when you do it. And, yes, you (perhaps) apologized for this, and that is appreciated, but that’s still a problem. It sounds like you are actually seeking out a reason to not have to listen to ideas you disagree with. And since no one is perfect, you can find some hypocrisy you diagnose in anyone, and thus shut them out. Do you do this evenly, Carlo? Do you stop listening to conservative tribalists?
You conclude with, “You keep accusing me of dishonesty here but the only dishonesty I’m guilty of is not revealing the reason I’m asking the question”. Yeah, that’s bad enough, Carlo. You ask a question that seems innocent with the intent of sorting the person based on their response. That poses as if you are asking sincerely, out of ignorance, when you actually have suspicions. It’s all the worse that I am 99% sure that you get the responses you do because everyone is convinced you are a right-wing shill (because you come off like one) and so they want you to stop being a tribalist and admit their point.
This is not a good tactic on your part. You should stop.
“I call you out for ignoring everything I said. Then you cherry pick one line of a dozen things I said, and pretend this is you not ignoring everything I said.”
I literary copy-pasted every point you made and responded to every one.
“You even double down on your delusionality by asserting even more false beliefs: that people who attack Christian homophobia don’t attack Muslim homophobia; dude, we fucking do, you just aren’t paying attention, because you are nursing a grievance delusion against liberals that is total fucking mythology.”
Of course many liberals call out Muslim homophobia. But there’s a significant percentage of the liberal population who don’t, even though they’ll hysterically call out Christian homophobia. Listen, I hang out in liberal communities quite often, they’ll criticize Christians for a certain behavior but will turn a blind eye to Muslims when they behave in the same way or worse. This is a double standard. This is hypocrisy.
I know what I provided here is anecdotal, but I don’t keep a record of my interactions with them. You are at liberty to believe or disbelieve me. I don’t care.
And I don’t accept that I’m delusional or irrational. My observation has proven me right many a time and I’m very open to being wrong and having my mind changed in light of evidence I wasn’t aware of.
No, you did not. You skipped several points here and here. Simply quoting me does not constitute addressing what I said. You seem now to be conflating your own non sequiturs as somehow constituting “responses.” I can’t help you if you can’t tell the difference. You seem irretrievably delusional here.
No there aren’t. That’s a delusion, Carlo. You are delusional. No one except fellow homophobes defends Muslim homophobia. And everyone who addresses homophobia as a problem has addressed or included Muslim homophobia at one point or another; often explicitly. There is simply no evidence whatever for what you are talking about. You have fabricated a false reality in your mind.
And you have done this by standard fallacious reasoning (pro tip: “people who face Christian homophobia complain about it a lot; therefore they are okay with Muslim homophobia” is a non sequitur). It is not necessary for every LGBTQ advocate to repeat every single thing every other LGBTQ advocate has said. They rely on their collective voice. There are ample liberal articles against Muslim homophobia. Liberals do not have to rewrite them endlessly. They just refer to them when it becomes relevant (like, if you ask them what they think about Islamic homophobia). Which you would know if you weren’t busy disingenuously trolling liberal online threads rather than honestly engaging with them.
And n.b. here is all the “liberal silence” you falsely believe in:
I found articles and treatment of the subject going way back at NPR, at The Guardian, at Der Spiegel, at Dissent Magazine, at The Feminist Sexual Ethics Project, and so on. We’ve all been calling out Muslim homophobia for decades.
“No, you did not. You skipped several points here and here. Simply quoting me does not constitute addressing what I said. You seem now to be conflating your own non sequiturs as somehow constituting “responses.” I can’t help you if you can’t tell the difference. You seem irretrievably delusional here.”
The 2 examples you provided that I allegedly didn’t respond to link to the same point.
Is the point you are claiming I missed?
“Yes. It is.
That the DNC has raised the debt has no bearng whatever on whether the GOP has done so. So you can’t refute “the GOP keeps raising the debt” with “but the DNC has too.” That’s a fallacy. Phrasing it as a question is a rhetorical tactic designed to avoid being accused of the very fallacy you are actually trying to get away with.”
If this is what you are referring to, I did respond to it. Here’s my exact response:
I concur. But that’s not what I said that I do (I’m not trying to refute that the GOP is responsible for the raise). Rather, I would typically state the following: “I agree that the GOP has raised the national debt and should be held accountable”. And then follow up with “What about the DNC?”, just to see if the potential hypocrite will admit that their political cult is also guilty of the exact same thing.
“No there aren’t. That’s a delusion, Carlo. You are delusional. No one except fellow homophobes defends Muslim homophobia. And everyone who addresses homophobia as a problem has addressed or included Muslim homophobia at one point or another; often explicitly. There is simply no evidence whatever for what you are talking about. You have fabricated a false reality in your mind.”
I admit that all I have to show here is anecdotal evidence to support my claim. This is not the topic of our discussion and I shouldn’t have brought it up. However, I’m 100% sure that the double standard that I’m suggesting exists is real. But I wouldn’t make the absolute claim that no liberal addresses Muslim homophobia (I’m not saying that every liberal is hypocrite). The articles you provided are good examples of liberal outlets calling out Muslim homophobia. But I do believe that if those were examples of Christian homophobia the outrage would have been 10 times louder, because a lot more liberals would have called it out.
“No there aren’t. That’s a delusion, Carlo. You are delusional. No one except fellow homophobes defends Muslim homophobia. And everyone who addresses homophobia as a problem has addressed or included Muslim homophobia at one point or another; often explicitly. There is simply no evidence whatever for what you are talking about.”
I didn’t say they defend Muslim homophobia, I said they don’t call it out. I also don’t believe that everyone who addresses homophobia as a problem has addressed or included Muslim homophobia at least once. Keep in mind I’m also referring to liberal activists, when I refer to “liberals”.
Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that the liberals who don’t call out homophobia are homophobes, I just think they don’t care enough about it or at all.
“And you have done this by standard fallacious reasoning (pro tip: “people who face Christian homophobia complain about it a lot; therefore they are okay with Muslim homophobia” is a non sequitur). It is not necessary for every LGBTQ advocate to repeat every single thing every other LGBTQ advocate has said. They rely on their collective voice. There are ample liberal articles against Muslim homophobia. Liberals do not have to rewrite them endlessly. They just refer to them when it becomes relevant (like, if you ask them what they think about Islamic homophobia). Which you would know if you weren’t busy disingenuously trolling liberal online threads rather than honestly engaging with them.”
My claim was that many liberals out there call out Christian homophobia but ignore Muslim homophobia (this is a pattern). I think it would be a fair inference that those liberals don’t really care about homophobia.
Again, this isn’t the topic of our discussion and I never should have brought it up
I still don’t think I’m guilty of Whataboutism or JAQing off
I’m not wasting any more time on your nonsense, Carlo. You aren’t listening or learning. I’m no longer going to repeat myself. I’m done with that. I can’t help you. You have to help yourself and learn. Only that can make any progress and make any conversation with you worth any bother of time at all.
We’ve explained to you in detail why you are engaging in Whataboutism, why your trollish assertions are fallacious and delusional, and how you can come to discover this for yourself if you cared to. There is nothing more to discuss. You have to simply follow the advice you were given and learn. Or not. Those are the only two options left to you.
There’s another rub that just occurred to me.
Again, one of the key problems of whataboutism is that it derails conversations. When people talk about the GOP and the budget, they’re usually discussing very specific problems: The GOP’s pathological unwillingness to raise taxes, which contributes to inequality twice (letting billionaires keep more of their wealth while the state is starved) and makes the impact of the corporate subsidies they defend worse; the GOP using tax cuts as a political weapon; rampant military spending that is not only beyond any realistic or justifiable level for defense but also is straight up wasteful (so we actually know that the military doesn’t need as much as we’re giving it because if they did there would be no room for graft); the way that they try to prevent systems like the ACA from functioning properly; and the bait-and-switch Krugman has held them to the fire about where they destroy programs by underfunding them then claim that the programs were failed at conception, which is just an obvious lie.
These are the specific problems behind the GOP. But someone who was interested in being disingenuous could point out (indeed, doing so through questions) that both parties have people who, say, try to keep military contracts in their jurisdiction, or deny making the minimum wage automatically track productivity because that lets them get political credit for pitiful minimum wage increases, etc. In other words, there’s tons of bipartisan potential causes of budget shortfalls and the deficits and debts.
The problem is that that latter conversation is not the same as the GOP one. They’re not the same problem. Trying to hunt out hypocrisy in the conversation ends up distracting from the very real distinction.
On the one hand, politicians will be politicians. So, yeah, there will always be some degree of graft, and pork barrel spending, and special interest protection, blah blah blah. But this is commonly how the issue is framed in public discussion, even among “liberal” media outlets and among centrist and center-left people who have a bias toward being policy wonks.
This part of the issue is not literally insoluble, but it has to be solved in complex ways. One has to engage in oversight, and changes to how legislation is done, and macroeconomic shifts.
But the thing is that, if that was all that happened, we would not have the debt we do today.
The debt we have today is directly caused, to a huge degree, by Reaganite politics.
The GOP’s contribution to the debt is not a bipartisan issue. It’s not a result of what would be fairly conventional political and economic incentives. It’s a result of the ideology of the GOP and the influence of their actual backers. As the party has metastasized from proto-fascism to true fascism, they have become a dangerous, irresponsible insurgent party.
Talking about pork barrel spending in that context is like worrying about making sure you have a good fire drill schedule when your house is burning down.
Based off of our interactions, I bet this is another part of why you get the reaction you do with your questions. I bet that you’re coming into situations that are important and have a relatively clear problem statement, even if the solutions may be complicated and fraught, and bringing up irrelevant trivia. It’s not that pork barrel spending, or whatever complaints you have about feminists supposedly not addressing problems you care about, are necessarily bad topics to discuss; it’s that they are drowned out by other issues of much more central importance.
Take this for what it is, Carlo. I have noticed that you, in general, are so oriented at trying to excuse having hyperbolic disagreements with the left born from tribalist understandings of each side (and having identified with the right wing, for whatever reason, even when you can see what kind of ugly behavior that puts you in league with it) that it makes you unable, despite being clearly intelligent and reasonably informed, to think coherently.
Take the DNC/RNC thing. If you’re talking to anyone on the Left, “But what about the Dems?” is never going to be a good default move, because unless you’re talking about extremely centrist people or those who are express fans of the Dems, you will always get the response “Dude, I vote Green” or “Uhhh, the Dems suck too, why did you bring that up?” In other words, even your implicit argument is a fallacy of the excluded middle.
And that insight applies everywhere else. I’ve found that conservatives get so emotionally invested in what they perceive as the broader significance of an argument that they can’t just address one topic at a time. So if, say, someone brings up the gender wage gap, the accusation “What about sexist behavior against men?” is itself rooted in an assumption that anyone but the most radical of feminists will automatically dispense with: That men and women should be opposed. (In fact, your argument here seems to fall afoul of a common conservative failing, which is to constantly assume that many issues are zero sum games, the way that a lot of whites in America tend to view racial issues as an example). If one gets rid of that assumption, the only possible reason to bring up the possible hypocrisy (that such behavior may be justified by an inherent conflict between two groups) disappears.
Even more broadly, you as a conservative can concede the overwhelming evidence that there is a gender wage gap rooted in sexism quite easily, as any reasonable person is compelled to, and yet not buy, say, that feminists are right about criticisms of media or whatever else. It’s totally possible to think that a solution to the gender wage gap is for women to lead the charge by being better at negotiating, or for unionization to become the solution (particularly with unions explicitly fighting to close such gaps), or that the existence of the wage gap doesn’t justify government action but should instead be a reason for voluntary education. Ben Shapiro is right to make the argument in his Gish Galloping on this topic that discrimination may be best controlled by free markets: he’s wrong about the facts, but the argument itself is not irrational, unlike his shrieking whataboutism and fallacious reasoning on the topic of white privilege.
Every single one of the tactics that Richard identifies in this article are excuses to turn away from a conversation that you feel you are losing in. When you identify that Peterson may be full of shit but he addresses what you perceive as the left’s excesses so who cares, that’s deeply emblematic. The argument from hypocrisy is so often fallacious precisely because it’s trying to win argument Y to cover up that you lost argument X. JAQing off lets you introduce fallacious ideas and false information into an argument without having to actually admit to doing so and then losing; whataboutism lets you have the argument that you want to have rather than the one you don’t; and infinite goal posts lets you keep trying to protect a woobie, by acting as if posing an argument means that you have met your burden to have a competent one. Critical thinkers need to become comfortable with the idea that they are going to have a nuanced worldview that changes. For example: While I am nowhere near as pro-nuke as Richard is, I agree with him that any energy calculation that doesn’t take nuclear power into consideration as part of the solution for long-term sustainable energy isn’t being serious. That puts Richard, Chomsky and I against a lot of other people on the left. But it’s because whatever concerns I have over nuclear weapons are not fungible to concerns about nuclear power, and when one looks at the array of options (e.g. “Do we really want more coal plants than nuclear plants?”), nuclear power is not so obviously worse than all the other options that I can get rid of it.
You shouldn’t go into an argument wanting your team to win, or needing to address some unfairness perceived against you. You should be ready to figure out what the facts are, what the alternatives are and what their benefits and costs are. Only then does it become remotely relevant to have the discussions about competing values that tend to be expressed first in political discussions when we let feelings take over.
Hey Fred, please refer to my reply to Richard’s first reply.
I never intended to make this a Right vs Left thing. The example I used was the one Richard used in his article. I’ve never debated or even discussed the reasons for America’s national debt before. It was merely a hypothetical.
Moreover, I disagree that asking “what about x” in the way that I do is a fallacy or an indication that I’m JAQing off. I never do it as a refutation or as an attempt to avoid the burden of proof. Again, see my reply to Richard.
It may surprise you that I’m not a conservative, I’m a liberal, but I do hate the Left today more than the Right (just like many moderate liberals). Many of the things that made me hate the Right for many years are the same things the make me hate the Left today. It’s a set of characteristics and principles that determine who I stand with or against. I think the Left has become so toxic and has gone too far on so many issues and it’s going to cost them.
In regards to the gender gap, gender probably does play a role (although it’s exaggerated) but I will shamelessly say that I won’t sleep over it. Until I see lefties calling out discrimination regardless who it’s been directed at, I will not support left-wing social causes anymore (except for animal rights). When was the last time you heard a liberal or a Democrat call out the gender discrimination in the justice system?
Anyway, I apologize if I crossed the line in our discussion on the Jordan Peterson blog. I respect you as a person and your intellect too.
Carlo: The problem is that you straight up opened the conversation with talking about Jordan correcting the excesses of the left. Now, maybe you didn’t mean it this way, but in my experience what that phrase always signals (and what it ended up signaling in your case, even if only by the minutiae of how the conversation turned out) is (and this is the best case scenario) “I know damn well that I can’t actually defeat a ton of left-wing points that still bother me for reasons I’m not interrogating, so I’ll just cherry-pick the extremists and the irrational people, refuse to comparably center the extremists and the irrational on the other side, and then applaud people who say dangerous things because the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. In some cases, it’s “I’m a straight up member of the alt-right but I want to avoid that rhetorical baggage for as long as possible”. Which is why I thought Richard’s response to you was really good: Even if there’s problems to identify, Peterson’s approach would only inoculate against criticism, because they’re so overtly disingenuous and misinformed.
Take the “personal responsibility” issue. Is it possible the left should be closer to the right on personal responsibility topics and should stop framing systemic problems so centrally? Maybe. But I can’t know that right now. Because…
1) When conservatives encounter systemic problems they ontologically believe in or can rhetorically invoke because they appear to affect their actual constituents (read: the already-powerful), suddenly systemic barriers are very important
2) In the same vein, conservatives absolutely let people off the hook on personal responsibility (e.g. Peterson committing both these errors by calling for “enforced monogamy” instead of saying that any such cultural accommodation to people like incels would be negotiation with terrorists, which would have been his move for marginalized people)
3) The left has to focus on systemic causes precisely because the right essentially denies they exist and have any significance, and embodies the just world fallacy while denying the empirically and logically obvious reality of luck in world affairs; I personally would love to have a balanced conversation on the issue, but that’s dishonest unless we’re actually discussing what people really can and can’t control
4) Contrary to the lies of the right, it is wholly and trivially possible (and done all the time: see for example the AAUW’s twin focuses on disarming the gender pay gap at the legislative and managerial level with education on it and at the individual employee level by preparing women to deal with the topic) to discuss personal responsibility and systemic responsibility; and, moreover, doing this is the only way to have the conversation coherently and convincingly, because (as Tim Wise has noted) talking to people who correctly perceive systemic barriers against them and denying that those barriers exist or matter is brazenly lying to them
5) Systemic responsibility is personal responsibility: social systems are run by people, and so any conversation, that, for example, centers the need to fix the gender pay gap on women themselves rather than on managers and companies to stop being shitty and sexist is actually a repudiation of personal responsibility as a principle
And on and on. Without putting that all on the table, and correcting it, it’s not possible to have an honest conversation about personal responsibility. In modern politics, the term is not used honestly. It is weaponized against the marginalized.
And so someone who was committing to being childish could accuse the left of denying personal responsibility. You know, Jordan’s central lie, and why he continues to be embraced by the Shapiros of the world despite his weird woo and a lot of his traits being straight up liabilities for the right: winning that slander wins them debates based on BS. But this is a strawman.
If there’s a valid criticism underneath there, I can’t recover it. The only way anyone could have an honest conversation about the role of personal action and responsibility in societies that have some degree of systemically-rooted injustice within them is if at minimum the five concerns I just noted were on the table first. And almost every supposed “excess of the left” I have encountered follows this pattern.
Now, I do grant to you that you do have a valid concern that you’re talking to brazen hypocrites. I don’t know if you’re sincere about that concern, but I’ll assume you are.
The problem is that your method of doing it won’t work. And will give you false positives.
If, right now, you go into any conversation about Ukraine with “BUT WHAT ABOUT NATO ATROCITIES?”, it is very likely people won’t take you seriously.
Because countless disingenuous people will try that exact same rhetorical move.
If you begin with “I fully, clearly want to state that Russia is in the wrong here. They are aggressors. But I do think there is some hypocrisy on the topic. What about NATO atrocities?”, well, you will still encounter deserved suspicion because disingenuous people will open up that way, but you’ve at least put it out there in the first place. But your description of what you did doesn’t show that you did that.
So you have a bad test for ingenuity that will give you both many false positives and many false negatives, all while making conversations more inflamed and hard to follow. It’s wholly likely that your interlocutor will have some interesting point about some detail about the “whataboutism” you brought up, but now unless you immediately concede the point you have successfully hijacked the conversation.
That’s why whataboutism is wrong. It’s logically irrelevant. An argument from hypocrisy can only ever prove that your opponent should deny conclusion A or mutually exclusive conclusion B, or sometimes both. But if conclusion A is the matter of debate,
And what seems like hypocrisy can often be someone acting by subtle distinctions that take a long time to make clear. So you are often asking someone to articulate a long history and make a distinction that can be seemingly small but which they view as important, and when you do that the inevitable temptation will be to focus on that distinction to continue to try to prove their hypocrisy.
So at best you get someone to spend a lot of time making a perfectly coherent case on a matter only tangentially related to the topic at hand, all to only partially satisfy your particular concern that you’re disingenuous at the cost of making everyone else think you may be disingenuous yourself. During conversations that are important. And that’s assuming no one else responds to that person with their own thoughts, and now you just hijacked a thread.
It’s not unreasonable for people to blow you off at that point. The forum of discussion was about topic X. You’re not talking about topic X. It’s rude.
And the thing is, Carlo, that I find it hard to believe that you haven’t perceived that. Which again returns me to thinking that your partisan bias made you not care. Hunt down the hypocrites on the other side! Don’t have the conversations that would require you to think, and face some uncomfortable facts, and process some ideas to which you are not acquainted!
I’m not mad at you, Carlo. I don’t think you “crossed a line”, and even if you did, the apology isn’t to me. As Ian Danskin put it in his Angry Jack series, the goal of people like me isn’t to act like the Sorting Hat or St. Peter. I don’t care if you belong to House Slytherin, Carlo. And in fact whites, and men, and straight folks, and other people in dominant groups routinely end up making this conversation about them, their redemption, their error, even when they get corrected, rather than shutting up about them, learning, and then contributing about the topic.
So look at what you did just here. You straightforwardly admit that you have an opinion on the gender wage gap, one that is, by the way, pretty obviously wrong, and which I am confident based on our interactions is derived from a very poor and biased understanding of the literature. I seriously doubt you’ve read Blau’s extensive work, or AAUW reports, or other careful analyses. Further, you seem to think that it’s reasonably possible to separate out the sexist signal from the non-sexist signal here, as if there’s some clear indication, when the problems are cumulative. As a result, you won’t care about it, and won’t stand in solidarity with women in your life, because people in the left who are not them didn’t fight for another unrelated topic. Other activists’ lack of perfection (which I am suspecting is actually you having the implicit demand that they fight for every issue you care about the same way that they fight about the issues they care about, no matter their ability to do so) is an excuse you invoke. So you actually are defending whataboutism, to some degree, as a legitimate tactic, not rhetorically but logically.
Richard is likely to think that you were a liberal who got burned. But all I see is moral cowardice.
This is straightforwardly irrational and immoral, Carlo. Wrong is wrong. Your policy position, based on your own admission, should be that you will support efforts to close the gender wage gap, as long as they are proportionate to their sense of the scale of the problem. The behavior of those pushing the issue is as moot as the bad behavior of those opposing them. You won’t let the sexist abuse at Anita Sarkeesian make you think the gender wage gap is a pressing issue; and you shouldn’t! You shouldn’t make this genetic fallacy in reverse.
That should be what you apologize for, Carlo. Letting a genetic fallacy guide your thinking to the detriment of your neighbors.
“So your opening was to say that in the case that the GOP is responsible, you’d ask “what about the reckless spending of the DNC?” That is not what you later said, which was that you would “ask the other person if they think there’s another cause (the DNC, for example) of the issue we’re discussing”. That is not the same thing.”
Asking if the DNC is also responsible is asking if there’s another cause of the issue (yes, a specific cause). No, I’ve never worded the question like that (“is there another cause?”), and I never said I did.
“But, okay, let’s take that version on. First of all, “The GOP raises the debt” cannot be countered by “So do the Dems”. You said it yourself: “another cause”. Charitably, that would mean both are causes. But in that case, dealing with the GOP is part of the problem. Your question just serves to distract from a conversation even you have to admit is legitimate… all to satisfy your own purported interest in not talking to hypocrites. Which shouldn’t even bother you that much, Carlo: you should be more concerned that someone is incorrect than being a hypocrite.”
This is at the heart of our miscommunication. Please read what I’m going to say very carefully. I wouldn’t ask “what about the Dems” as a counter, refutation, deflection, or anything of that nature. The fact that I’m accepting the claim (that the GOP caused the debt, for example) indicates that I’m not countering, avoiding or deflecting. Asking a follow up question is not indicative that I’m guilty of any of those things. And I agree with your last statement that one should be more concerned that someone is incorrect, but woke liberals have taken hypocrisy to Olympic levels, and I don’t have the stomach for it. I need to apply a filter to filter out all the trash.
“Which is part of the article that Richard wrote that you didn’t address. Richard cites Claire Fallon pointing this out: that hypocrisy may be a problem, but it’s not the only problem, and that whataboutism has at minimum one consequence and in reality almost always two: A focus on hypocrisy as if it’s the only matter at hand, which means that since everyone is flawed one can just argue that everything is BS and not have to think; and, very often, a destruction of meaningful distinctions”
Like I said, I don’t have the stomach for all this hypocrisy. I have to apply a filter. It’s not an intellectual response, It’s just a filter.
In your second, third, and fourth points you are basically explaining why the GOP is responsible and not the DNC, which is irrelevant because even if I were wrong in a non-hypothetical scenario, that still wouldn’t necessarily mean that I’m committing whataboutism, it could be that I’m just wrong.
“Then there’s the fact that, in all of these discussions, you’ve never articulated a time where you do any of this to liberals. You defended Peterson (though admitting he had problems). With me, you went hard in defending Trump, even though finding Trumpist hypocrisy is trivial. Conservatives are riven with hypocrisy: I think for them it’s a feature, not a bug. Small government? Yeah, except for cops, economic protectionism, subsidies, and a military, all of which are actually both massive and deeply intrusive into our lives. Individual liberties? Yep, except for the ability to control what comes into and what comes out of one’s body, the ability to protest, the ability to criticize Trump (“open the libel laws”), etc. And you had to know that never once being able to point to this when talking to liberals makes you seem disingenuous as hell.
What’s worrisome about all of this is that I am wiling to bet that when you see liberal whataboutism and deflection that you can see it for what it is. But you seem to think that you’re able to avoid their cognitive pitfalls. That should bother you.”
Not at all. Like you said, conservatives are riven with hypocrisy, and they have been for a much longer time. But right now, liberals have become the champions of hypocrisy. Conservatives should sit back and take notes.
“You admit that this was a hypothetical example. Okay, Carlo, so pick an actual one. Having chosen a hypothetical has the downside that we can’t actually catch if what you’re doing is as emblematically flawed as the example here. But, again, even in your description, if a given thread is about tribe X arguing that tribe Y did something bad, “Didn’t you, tribe X, do the same thing?” is moot. Tribe Y is still bad. You need to actually dispute the argument, or concede it.”
More proof that you misunderstood what I do. I’ve mentioned a billion times in this very thread that I concede the point and then ask the follow up question.
“You say, “inquiring about another potential cause for the issue we are discussing does not mean I’m derailing anything”. Uhh, yeah, Carlo, it means exactly that. I say smoking causes cancer. You ask if red meat does too. Me answering that question is derailing the conversation. “Yes, but not as much, with more benefits, etc.”, or whatever my response is, is now talking about red meat. Even if you catch me on an error on the red meat issue, you haven’t actually proven that I’m wrong about cigarettes. And you should care about the cigarettes part. You actually clearly don’t care about the topic at hand. You care about the people having the debate.”
If we agree that the topic is exclusively about whether the GOP is responsible, and I ask “what about the DNC”?, that would be derailing.
“What if I’m more concerned about Christians because they have more nukes?”
When was the last time a nuke was fired because of homophobia? When was the last time a nuke was fired at all?
“What if I’m more concerned about Christians because I live near them?”
Then perhaps your major concern is not homophobia.
“What if I signal more on Christians because I think that Christians in the West get away with degrees of homophobia that Muslim won’t in the West, and would do the same abroad?”
Again, perhaps your major concern is not homophobia.
If homophobia was your major concern, you would call out its most toxic form and that takes place Islamic countries.
I understand that we are generally more concerned about issues and people that are within close proximity to us, but when homophobia is so much worse in Islamic states, and this is such well known and publicized fact, and you stay silent on it or hardly ever call it out, then perhaps homophobia is not your major concern. Or you are afraid to call out it because you’ll be labeled a racist (even though Islam is not race) by the race-baiting, authoritarian, woke clowns (can’t wait to see their tears in the midterms).
“There’s tons of reasons that people have various degrees of focus and attention. That’s a huge part of your gender wage gap failing. Activists don’t have unlimited time. To actually see if they’re disingenuous, you need to not just look at what they can spend time doing, as you’ve pretty forthrightly admitted you do. You can’t even look at their off-the-cuff response to you, especially in contexts where they are just as concerned you’re being disingenuous (rightly in m opinion) as you are of them. You need to actually get them to say something like, “Yes, I am more concerned about Christian homophobia than Muslim homophobia”, and not provide a reason.”
Not necessarily. Sometimes behavior is more indicative of one’s true beliefs and values than rhetoric. I may never say that I’m prejudiced against Christians, but if I generally treat them like shit compared to how I treat other groups, that’s a strong sign that I’m prejudiced against them. I’m sure you’ve heard the super cliché phrase “actions speak louder than words”.
“We just had a fascist President (despite your apologia for him) and you’re talking about tribalism on the left. You could have agreed that tribalism is growing everywhere. Doing so might even have led you to correctly diagnose the problem. Why do you do that, Carlo? When your foot is being held to the fire, why are you unable to hold conservatives accountable? I can’t recall you doing so once. And notice how I am asking that question to you directly. I’m not derailing the conversation: this is the conversation. Do you see the difference? You are talking about everyone else’s disingenuity and not addressing your own. At minimum you are repeatedly coming off as disingenuous and stubbornly ignoring feedback as to why you are.”
The left-wing establishment is 10 times more fascistic that Trump ever was. The fact that you can see this is quite shocking.
Of course tribalism is growing everywhere, and I do think that conservatives are very tribalistic as well, but at least they are less authoritarian than the woke assholes.
“I called you out for acting as if you wanted to find excuses to not listen. And here you say it. You don’t want to talk to tribalists. But you’ll listen to Peterson. Does he not have a tribe? Heck, you’ll admit he makes errors, but he’s useful against the other side. That’s… tribalism. Apparently it’s okay when you do it. And, yes, you (perhaps) apologized for this, and that is appreciated, but that’s still a problem. It sounds like you are actually seeking out a reason to not have to listen to ideas you disagree with. And since no one is perfect, you can find some hypocrisy you diagnose in anyone, and thus shut them out. Do you do this evenly, Carlo? Do you stop listening to conservative tribalists?”
I said I don’t want to converse with tribalists. I don’t have conversations with Petersen, and I don’t even think he’s very tribalistic. I made it clear what I like about these right-wing figures (Peterson, Candace Owens, Shapiro, etc.): it’s their anti-wokeness. Otherwise, I disagree fundamentally with them on so many issues, especially on issues related to sex and religion.
“You conclude with, “You keep accusing me of dishonesty here but the only dishonesty I’m guilty of is not revealing the reason I’m asking the question”. Yeah, that’s bad enough, Carlo. You ask a question that seems innocent with the intent of sorting the person based on their response. That poses as if you are asking sincerely, out of ignorance, when you actually have suspicions. It’s all the worse that I am 99% sure that you get the responses you do because everyone is convinced you are a right-wing shill (because you come off like one) and so they want you to stop being a tribalist and admit their point.”
I don’t care if it’s considered bad (alcohol is bad too, but it has its benefits). I need to apply this filter to filter out all the filth and trash.
Carlo:
You say, “Asking if the DNC is also responsible is asking if there’s another cause of the issue (yes, a specific cause). No, I’ve never worded the question like that (“is there another cause?”), and I never said I did.”
You used the term “reckless”, Carlo. That slips in your argument, the exact thing that needs to be established, into the question. Now you’re talking about “another cause” broadly. I hope we can agree that the DNC running a deficit for good reasons is not a reason the RNC should run one for bad reasons.
You say, “This is at the heart of our miscommunication. Please read what I’m going to say very carefully. I wouldn’t ask “what about the Dems” as a counter, refutation, deflection, or anything of that nature. The fact that I’m accepting the claim (that the GOP caused the debt, for example) indicates that I’m not countering, avoiding or deflecting. Asking a follow up question is not indicative that I’m guilty of any of those things”.
So… you chose a super-shitty example. Because “The Dems caused a little bit of the problem, thanks mostly to the Republicans, in order to adopt good policies that actually justify going into debt” can’t be compared to “The Republicans tried to starve the state through waste, graft and fraud, and play partisan politics with the debt”. Your follow-up question is just stupid. We could also ask what share of the debt can be blamed on macro-economic downturns, or local graft and pork-barrel spending, or whatever else. There’s tons of causes. But bringing them up is a blatant topic change. And since you can’t once actually condemn the GOP and the right, I just dont believe you, Carlo, that when you do these things, you are not countering, avoiding or deflecting. Even if you don’t intend to, it comes off that way, because you come off like a partisan. So… communicate better. Stop changing subjects and stop asking questions related to unrelated topics.
“And I agree with your last statement that one should be more concerned that someone is incorrect, but woke liberals have taken hypocrisy to Olympic levels, and I don’t have the stomach for it. I need to apply a filter to filter out all the trash”.
As opposed to conservatives, who…
*Include countless fundy virtue signalers who voted for an open libertine in Trump
*Are both pro-free market and anti-immigration, even though the latter obviously contradicts the former
*Dragged their feet on insurrection issues while immediately moving to try to control left-wing protest
*Are super concerned with free speech while also trying to restrict CRT teaching, etc. and being in favor of Trump threatening to open up libel laws (in effect demanding seditious libel)
I can go on and on. Conservative hypocrisy is fractal. But you don’t mention it. Why?
Seriously, dude. You scream your partisanship, whether literal political party affiliation or political bias, with every comment you make.
You say, “Like I said, I don’t have the stomach for all this hypocrisy. I have to apply a filter. It’s not an intellectual response, It’s just a filter”.
Putting aside that I simply don’t believe that you actually detect hypocrisy very well, given that we’re having a conversation where even you have to admit that there isn’t any (supporting the Dems is not like supporting the GOP on the topic of the debt) and given how you never address conservative hypocrisy, I do get this to some extent. We all have to protect our emotional energy.
The problem is that you could just… leave the conversation. But you choose to talk. And you choose a method that will simply get you bad data. And will let bad actors hide. Try something else?
You say, “In your second, third, and fourth points you are basically explaining why the GOP is responsible and not the DNC, which is irrelevant because even if I were wrong in a non-hypothetical scenario, that still wouldn’t necessarily mean that I’m committing whataboutism, it could be that I’m just wrong”
Uhhh…
Dude, the whole point was to show that whataboutism can be distracting because the people who are asking about it can be wrong about the facts. That’s… already a big part of the problem. An argument from hypocrisy can be deployed fallaciously, but it’s always bad when ti has bad premises.
And this shows that the woke left is actually on the right side of a major issue, while the conservatives are fractally hypocritical. Why did you not perceive that?
Seriously, this is super telling. I know this is a hypothetical, but it’s illustrative.
Let’s say that you had asked someone who wasn’t me or Richard this question. They didn’t answer you as directly, as forthrightly, explaining the difference. They just got mad at you, or just got the issue wrong, or made some errors.
You still didn’t properly detect hypocrisy. And you would almost certainly arrived at the conclusion that liberals in general, and not that one person who may not have been able to defend themselves but was still actually right to support the DNC even when it comes to the issue of the debt, are hypocrites, but you would be wrong. And frankly, given our previous interactions, I would doubt you would listen to them making the point very well even if they did.
You are describing a case where your whataboutism was actually irrational deflection because, in the real world, your question had nothing to back it. And that will happen a lot, Carlo. You will ask questions that seem like “gotchas!” but aren’t. Because you happen to have bad information. That’s fine! We’re all flawed. But this is why this method sucks. You should stop using it.
“Not at all. Like you said, conservatives are riven with hypocrisy, and they have been for a much longer time. But right now, liberals have become the champions of hypocrisy. Conservatives should sit back and take notes.”
Christ, dude.
I just showed you, with that alone (let alone what I’ve added in this post), that conservatives have hypocrisy on every major public policy issue they discuss. It’s down the line. Cops? They’re super in favor of cops, until the cops are on the other side of January 6th, or until the cops are against Cliven Bundy, or against a Republican!
I would love to see you actually defend the idea that liberals and the left are greater hypocrites than that. You jsut exposed your bias here, Carlo. You could have just checked out and said they’re all bad. But you clearly think that conservatives are so much less likely to be hypocrites that you can justify an unequal focus. Bullshit, Carlo. Just… crap.
You say, “More proof that you misunderstood what I do. I’ve mentioned a billion times in this very thread that I concede the point and then ask the follow up question.”
What follow-up question? And notice how I asked you for an example and you didn’t give one?
Seriously. What follow-up question is there? “The GOP drive the debt”. “What about the Dems?” “The Dems just… don’t, not really”. What’s the next question? How many questions do you have to ask, how many derailing questions do you need to put out there that aren’t on the topic but by your own admission are only intended to detect hypocrisy, before you admit your opponent is correct?
I understand, Carlo. I understand that it’s chickenshit. You have found yourself a way of having an opinion without needing to subject your ideas to scrutiny or take a position.
You say, “If we agree that the topic is exclusively about whether the GOP is responsible, and I ask “what about the DNC”?, that would be derailing.”
As, for example, when there’s an article that makes exactly that point. You said the “reckless spending” of the DNC, dude. You did ask the question I am accusing you of.
You say, “When was the last time a nuke was fired because of homophobia? When was the last time a nuke was fired at all?”
Doesn’t seem to make Harris that concerned about Muslims getting nukes, does it?
But, yes, literal nukes haven’t been fired because of homophobia. (Well, aside from the role of homophobia in helping aggravate World War II). But, uhh, have dominionists in the US goverment acted awfully with their military power? Yes. And have they aimed to use the government, backed up by that power, to oppress gays? Yes.
This isn’t a rational response, Carlo. We didn’t have a pandemic for a very long time until 2020, and then we did. It’s reasonable to more concerned about homophobes who will getting far more power. And
You say, “Then perhaps your major concern is not homophobia.”
The fuck? How does that fucking follow, Carlo?
This exposes your utter failure of ability to comprehend how others operate, Carlo.
I don’t live in the Middle East. I don’t have as much accoutability to governments or peoples there. My tax money doesn’t go to their governents. It’s not my friends who will be screwed over by their homophobia and transphobia. It’s not my communities.
This proximity issue gives practical and moral reasons to focus on what is near to me. I can do more about my country than other countries. I know more about my country and have more access to information about my country than other countries. My silence matters more in my country because it implies my silent consent in a way it does not in other countries.
Brushing over this in this blase fashion says you know nothing about activism. And then talk to activists and deliberately misunderstand them.
You say, “Again, perhaps your major concern is not homophobia.”
Non. Fucking. Sequitur. Not evn as a “perhaps”.
People can think that something (e.g. homophobia) is universally bad but think that I can more effectively target my actions against it in specific ways.
Like you said about the DNC, where you wanted you being wrong to be an excuse: Activists can do all these things, and care deeply about homophobia, and even if their tactical considerations are wrong, that doesn’t mean they didn’t make them. And tactical considerations about where to spend one’s energy do not make one a hypocrite. Period.
You say, “If homophobia was your major concern, you would call out its most toxic form and that takes place Islamic countries.”
Absolute bullshit.
First of all, Christian countries actually have incredibly bad homophobia. Including killing of gays. Yes, I’m talking about Africa, but that’s irrelevant. You’re just fucking wrong, and Islamophobically so. What a surprise.
Second, and more important, what an incredible armchair quarterback thing to say.
What does me calling out Muslims for homophobia do, Carlo?
I don’t speak Arabic. Or Pharsi. Or countless other languages of Muslim-majority countries. I don’t have access to their media, not the same way as I do here. My criticisms are not going to be taken in good faith, thanks to little things like “Islamophobia” and “colonialism”.
But doing so will create the false impression that it’s right to focus on Muslims, and not on Christians.
In contrast, exposing homophobia here lets me be more informed about the cases, more likely to get media access, etc. With much less risk of splash damage. Because, well, in the United States, Carlo, despite your delusional beliefs, there is no massive anti-Christian agenda.
You seem to care so much about hypocrisy, Carlo, until it’s homophobes in the West. Then fuck it!
What a double standard. If you can detect a mote in my eye, that’s a problem. If you have a beam, well, wrong is wrong, right? Who cares what Carlo’s focus is?
Let me be clear. If someone says that homophobia in Muslim countries isn’t a problem, as their abstract position, they are a hypocrite. And it’s even reasonable to ask that people here act in solidarity with activists abroad, and signal-boost them, and not be myopic in their analysis.
But focusing on what a person is personally accountable to, can practically change and which will reduce, does not make one a hypocrite. And if you believed that, and honestly held that tack, well, you’d be condeming the right all over the place. But you don’t.
You say, “I understand that we are generally more concerned about issues and people that are within close proximity to us, but when homophobia is so much worse in Islamic states, and this is such well known and publicized fact, and you stay silent on it or hardly ever call it out, then perhaps homophobia is not your major concern. Or you are afraid to call out it because you’ll be labeled a racist (even though Islam is not race) by the race-baiting, authoritarian, woke clowns (can’t wait to see their tears in the midterms).”
Or maybe I want to maximize my efficacy.
You can’t tell unless you actually examine it. But good to know you just clearly assume that it has to do with politically correct fear. In a way you will never will with conservatives, who routinely act like craven chickenshits when it crosses their tribe.
Carlo: Muslim homophobia is fucked up. I don’t give a fuck about being called a bigot for saying that.
There. Ready to fucking admit the point?
You just brush proximity under the rug to automatically lock onto an objective concern. Fine! Why fucking talk about homophobia? Climate change is the global concern we should focus on. What hypocrisy to focus on Muslims with their homophobia while it is America that fails to deal with climate change so badly and leads the problem in getting worse!
If you find that to be a myopic, chickenshit stance, you know why.
You say, “Not necessarily. Sometimes behavior is more indicative of one’s true beliefs and values than rhetoric. ”
Which means someitmes it isn’t. Have a good way of telling the difference? Nope! You clearly don’t.
You say, “I may never say that I’m prejudiced against Christians, but if I generally treat them like shit compared to how I treat other groups, that’s a strong sign that I’m prejudiced against them. I’m sure you’ve heard the super cliché phrase “actions speak louder than words”.”
That’s not the same thing, now is it? We were talking about holding Christians to account for homophobia because of proximity. That’s not treating them like shit (wow, super funny how you took the stance that it’s possible to criticize Muslims without being Islamophobic, and now implicitly take the other tack!). You just changed the fucking subject.
You can be disingenuous about this all you want, Carlo. But you have implicitly admitted that there are reasons one would have the behavior you call out that have nothing to do with bias. It could be that they’re biased, but their actions alone wouldn’t show that, now would it? So you need a better methodology.
Yet again: Broken epistemology.
You say, “The left-wing establishment is 10 times more fascistic that Trump ever was. The fact that you can see this is quite shocking.”
Grow a fucking spine and some honesty.
Seriously.
The left-wing are not demanding kids be separated from their parents. In 2016 we didn’t have a riot to get Trump not to be elected; in 2020 we got one against Biden.
You are engaging in a grotesque equivocation fallacy. You will disingenuously point to bad examples of the left-wing being authoritarian, or whatever else, but that is not fascism. Palingenetic ultranationalism is. And the left is not palingenetic ultranationalism. Not here, not now, not anywhere.
Your blase dismissal of everything the Trump administration did and tried, the dangers posed by Republicans in places like Iraq and Syria and Iran… it’s incredibly telling.
You say, “Of course tribalism is growing everywhere, and I do think that conservatives are very tribalistic as well, but at least they are less authoritarian than the woke assholes.”
There are fucking neo-Nazis, Carlo. Loud ones.
Stop cherry-picking.
You say, “I said I don’t want to converse with tribalists. I don’t have conversations with Petersen, and I don’t even think he’s very tribalistic.”
Then you suck at identifying tribalism. He was on PragerU, dude.
You say, “I made it clear what I like about these right-wing figures (Peterson, Candace Owens, Shapiro, etc.): it’s their anti-wokeness. Otherwise, I disagree fundamentally with them on so many issues, especially on issues related to sex and religion.”
Right. They fight against your enemy tribe. That’s what you like. Their odious opinions on other issues don’t matter. They beat up the bad guys, so you like them.
Yeah, actions do speak louder than words, Carlo. You just told on yourself in an incredible fucking way. Their hypocrisy doesn’t matter. Their cruelty doesn’t matter. Just who they oppose.
If you had integrity, you could disagree with the left and still dislike these assholes. But you like them. Because hitting us is more important than being good, or decent, or right.
You say, “I don’t care if it’s considered bad (alcohol is bad too, but it has its benefits). I need to apply this filter to filter out all the filth and trash.”
And you don’t give a shit if it’s a bad filter.
And you will happily dance in filth and trash. As long as the right wing says it about people you don’t like.
Get a better moral compass.
Another thing occurred to me as I was reading through Hegemony or Survival again that I think is illustrative.
Carlo, you think that the left is hypocritical on Islam.
What about the right? Are they consistent?
No!
They’ll demonize Iran until it’s useful to sell them weapons to terrorize Nicaraguans. They’ll demonize Syria until ISIS is scarier.
The country that unquestionably drives the most radicalization in the world, Saudi Arabia? Staunch US ally. Conservatives love selling them weapons. WWE loves doing propaganda for them to rehabilitate their image.
They will eagerly back Muslim dictators like Suharto and Islam Karimov. And, hell, Saddam Hussein.
They created the mujahadeen. And Brzezinski even may have bragged about dragging the Russians into the Afghan trap (there’s an article that claims that the source for this, an interview, is poorly sourced with many ellipses, but even that article has to admit that Brzezinski and Carter were quite happy to see the Russians stymied; and Reagan certainly deserves the blame for blowback).
The best you can accuse liberals and leftists of is being mealy-mouthed on Islam to avoid offending.
The least you can accuse conservatives of is fucking arming dangerous Islamists to the teeth.
And conservatives help radical Islam by creating an easily-demonizable version of the United States for propaganda, and destabilizing regimes.
Cheney happily made money with Iran.
So… if we were to be serious… we’d say conservatives are far, far more dangerous even in terms of Islamism and jihadism than liberals and leftists.
But conservatives always manage to find a way of burying their failures.
Can someone give a concise example of an effective rhetorical response to “Just Asking Questions”?
For example, I can do this for whataboutism. In response to “What about X?” make a true statement of the form “We aren’t talking about X, we are talking about Y.”
Similarly, I know what to do with Gish Gallops. Pick any one of the bogus claims made, refute it, and then if they demand refutations of the others say something relevant of the form “If you wanted to talk about X you shouldn’t have discredited yourself by saying Y”.
I have no analogous strategy for responding to manipulative questions. If we start with the example from the article “How can a trans woman be a woman and still have a penis?”, I would tend to reply “You will have to define ‘woman’ and ‘trans woman’ for that question to be meaningful”, but that seems to be playing into their game too much by inviting stupid pedantic dialogue. It seems like a bad move in the same way that refuting multiple statements in a Gish Gallop is a bad move. You have allowed the crank to pollute the dialogue.
Elsewhere Richard suggests the reply “Why do you care?” I would prefer to show that my viewpoint is self consistent by confronting their behavior more directly. Instead, “Why do you care?” looks like whataboutism or an attempt to gather material for an ad hominem or other genetic fallacy. In general, answering a question with a question legitimately makes the person asking the second question look like they are evading because they have no better reply.
Hmm. Is the problem with JAQing off that these questions are trivial? If so, for the example above, the answer would be “That’s a trivial consequence of how you define ‘woman’ and ‘trans woman’.” and then either solicit a more interesting discussion topic or offer one or quit. The general response would be to give a trivial and boring answer, or accuse them of asking a trivial question, and then either find something else to talk about or quit or go after their motive.
The effective response is to call out the tactic itself: talk about what they are doing and why it is disingenuous and unproductive and is not addressing the actual thing we are supposed to be talking about. And then ask why they did that. Force them onto the horns of talking about motive: why would you come in here with a bogus definition of gender when you ought to know by now it’s bogus? And if you didn’t know that, how is it possible you didn’t know a basic thing about this subject discussed everywhere? Shouldn’t you get minimally informed on a subject before forming opinions about it?
Turn the focus against them, and onto the horns of either their incompetence or dishonesty—and do not let them steer you away from that until they relent and address their behavior. This is legitimate because they are not engaging sincerely; whataboutism tries to steer a sincere discussion onto something disingenuous, but if someone starts out disingenuous, you absolutely must turn the conversation onto that very fact. That is therefore not whataboutism, but getting at the very heart of what just happened. Which disarms the entire attempt to deploy it as a strategy.
When they aren’t taking the conversation seriously, do not treat them as if they are. Because that is exactly what they are trying to get you to do. That is the entire point of this tactic (as you note by all the obvious maneuvers this behavior sets up for them).
“[T]here’s a significant percentage of the liberal population who don’t [call out Muslim homophobia]” is a fallacy because no evidence could possibly disprove the claim, unless every liberal in the world happens to have publicly called out Muslim homophobia. Even then, 0% is arguably a significant percentage. Does anyone have a name for this fallacy?
I don’t think that merely because something can’t be disproved, it makes it a fallacy. I think fallaciousness is about validity, not soundness. But I would like to hear Richard’s take on this as he is the expert.
I do admit that I didn’t specify what % qualifies as “significant”, and to be honest, I can’t give you a number. All I can say is that most liberals who call out homophobia in the Christian community, don’t call out homophobia in Muslim populations, whether it’s happening in the Middle East or else where.
To understand why your statement is a fallacy (and indeed, another example of Whataboutism), reframe it using the technique of forced perspective, although we’ve already shown you this and you keep ignoring us, but I’ll try one more time before giving up:
“A significant percentage of liberals who attack Christian homophobia don’t call out Hindu homophobia.”
What would be the point of even saying that?
Obviously, no one wastes much time on that here, because it isn’t Hindu homophobia that affects them. They don’t have neighbors who are Hindu homophobes, Hindu homophobes aren’t writing and passing and adjudicating their laws, they aren’t getting fired or beaten up by Hindu homophobes. It would be different if they lived in India or a heavily Hindu neighborhood. But most people don’t. And that is why you don’t hear much wingeing about it.
But you would fallaciously conclude, instead, that you don’t hear much wingeing about it because (as you explicitly said) you falsely think they are okay with Hindu homophobia, or that they don’t want to criticize it for some reason. The premise does not lead to your conclusion. It’s a non sequitur. Which is a fallacy.
So to go on about “what about Hindu homophobia” would be Whataboutism. It’s a bullshit way to try and change the subject to discussing irrelevancies, and thus avoid or distract from whatever it was we were actually talking about (like, say, actual laws being passed in the United States literally right now). All in aid of pushing your delusional false belief about liberals, and trying to make that into something more important than the actual issues we are trying to fight here in the U.S.
Your desire to not talk about things that actually matter here—and to try and get other people to stop talking about them as well—is not admirable. That your desire is based on a false belief that results from ignoring the actual advice tendered in the article you are commenting on is even less admirable. It means you don’t listen, you don’t learn, and you say being a delusional, shitty person instead of a useful, productive one.
If instead you tested directly (not sideways, but directly) your false belief—that liberals are “avoiding” talking about Muslim homophobia—you would easily refute that hypothesis as soon as you did what this very article explained you were supposed to do if you are rational evidence-based reasoner: look for evidence against the hypothesis. Then you would find (a) tons of liberals talking about Muslim homophobia and (b) no significant percentage of liberals complaining about people doing that, or telling people not to do that, or defending or denying Muslim homophobia, or anything else your hypothesis predicts we should observe.
Of course, someone not set on being an unreliable, deluded thinker would have done this before blurting out this bullshit you just did about liberals, and thus wouldn’t have.
That’s how we know you are committing all the sins we just warned you about, trapping you in delusional false beliefs with no real commitment to evidence-based reasoning.
There is only one solution to that, Carlo.
Stop being that.
Commit to being a rational evidence-based reasoner, who follows the epistemic standards I’m talking about, in this very article and others; and thus be the sort of person follows them before commenting, and thus who posts comments reflective of being that sort of person instead of the opposite. The whole world will then be a better place.
Even better still if you would spread this gospel to others, and actually help cleanse the world of irrational bullshitting trolls, cranks, and liars. Rather than doing nothing about it. Or worse, like you have been, contributing to the problem.