Apple of Doubt

The best argument against democracy is five minutes with the average voter.

–Winston Churchill

Someone once said that Politics is the Mind Killer. That our evolutionary drives to fight and protect the tribe leads us to abandon reason. I fear this may be true. However I’m not going to be discussing political apathy or the possibility of political reform. Instead I want to talk about one of the problems with modern political debate.

Even the best of us have a tenuous grasp on reason. We rationalize, we succumb to confirmation bias, and we tend to rely on our intuitions. Obviously with proper education, intelligence, and temperament one can be far more rational than the average person. Now, I want to make this clear, I make no claim to superior rationality. I believe I have some pieces of the puzzle but am painfully aware that I could be mistaken in my evaluation of things.

So knowing this and knowing that politics is serious business it seems almost self-evident that a great deal of political discussion will be not only unproductive but absurd. Absurd in that one or both sides have a distorted view of the other. You cannot have a conversation about welfare if you believe that the liberal participant only holds his opinion because of laziness or that the conservative because he hates the poor. In the worst case scenario one or both parties view the other as less than or subhuman. David Neiwert has thoroughly documented a dangerous new trend amongst the American right, eliminationism, that perfectly demonstrates this kind of disconcerting disconnect.

For some more specific examples there is the recent “you might be a liberal” twitter meme. Respondents posted a number of Foxworthy-esque descriptions of what they thought defined a liberal. Many of these were intended to be comedic but most were meant literally. It highlighted how these conservatives view liberals and what they think liberals believe. As one might expect the views described ranged from generic insults, to criticisms of specific groups misapplied to all liberals, to absurd distortions. Even worse than these twitter straw men there is a video from the infamous heritage foundation that will be the subject of it’s own future blog post.

Among the claims made in the video and by those twitter conservatives are such statements as “liberals don’t believe in right and wrong”, “liberals base their ideas on emotion, not fact“, and “liberals hate America“. I don’t think it would be a stretch of the imagination if I told you that a quick google search would produce liberal websites saying some similar things (especially concerning the emotion versus reason comment).

Those who succumb to this tribal thinking often end up lobbing the same attacks at one another. You can see amongst both groups (sometimes simultaneously) some variation on charges of universal corruption, lack of a moral compass, attempting to silence one another, being dogmatic, and reliance on emotion, or taking properties of one subgroup and applying it universally. A great example of this is the the description of liberalism by Bertrand Russell and the definition of conservativism by Russell Kirk. Both claim that their respective systems are categorized the absence of dogmatism and ideology.

This phenomena was summed up perfectly by Ann Coulter, of all people, when she wrote in an article defending Joe McCarthy’s actions from popular criticism that “they [liberals] anathematize their enemy”. We’ll sidestep the irony that this very practice she attributes solely to liberals is the source of much of her success.

It is indeed anathematizing the enemy. Instead of addressing legitimate points of disagreement or specific philosophical problems a great deal of modern pundits and bloggers simply take the term liberal or conservative and pour into it everything they despise. They are literally constructing a straw man onto which they attribute all manner of evil. The whole thing bears a striking resemblance to the character of Emmanuel Goldstein and the two-minute hate from George Orwell’s classic novel 1984.

Certainly I am not immune to this, I don’t believe anyone is. However I believe we can mitigate it by narrowing the focus of debate to specific policy disagreements and well defined philosophical conflicts. I believe it can be reduced by avoiding rhetorical flourishes that attempt to poison the well. Avoiding psychologising the opposition and by arguing in good faith.

It is important to note that this is not meant as a repudiation of strenuous debate. There are political philosophies that I find both morally repugnant and disastrous for the modern world. However when I argue with them I try to address the specific disagreements instead of simply launching into a universal fire and brimstone yelling contest. There is a fine line between heated debate and pointless bickering and I can’t claim any special knowledge to how best to make that distinction. Everything I’ve said here is what I believe to be best practices and am willing to admit that they are too restrictive or too lax.

I know I’ve touched on this and similar subjects before  (more than once) and I fear I’m beginning to sound like a broken record but I’m not ready to give up on political thought just yet. I believe, perhaps wrongly, that it can be refined. If nothing else this post will serve as a part of my comment policy and something I can link back to when talking to someone who resorts to these kind of tactics. Please let me know what you think and in what ways you have found to save the mind from politics.