I replied “I have no problem with your personal characterization of Trump; everyone is welcome to their opinion including you and me. I’ve stated more times than I can count since 2015-2016 that Trump’s public persona is that of a loose cannon-mouthed narcissist with the tact of a bull moose in heat. He’s an equivalent to an internet troll that’s trolling his haters at every turn. No Kurt, I’m not a Trump fan and I’m not offended by other people’s opinions of him. Here’s your “happy to argue facts” based challenge: Please provide actual facts/actions taken by President Trump that are an actual “assault on democracy” and describe why the action(s) are an “assault on democracy”. While thinking critically about this, remember how our federal system of government is designed to work and how Presidents have done things over the years that have been overturned by the courts. This is nothing new.”
The reply I got back from Kurt wasn’t what I expected to see after he had just written “I’d be happy to argue facts…” He wrote,
“This is hardly the forum for a thoughtful discussion of anything. A simple Google search will unearth impartial, detailed information about, for example, the tactics of authoritarian governments.”
Kurt had just made two really bad choices that revealed his lack of integrity. I replied, “So this is the forum to make accusations but “hardly the forum” to support your accusations? That, Kurt, is a baldfaced, unethical cop-out especially after you stated that you were “happy to argue facts.” YOU expect ME to go find evidence to support the assertion of fact accusation that YOU made? Do you know how intellectually dishonest and immature that is? You’re arguing like a partisan propagandist with no integrity. You are not arguing in good faith. Why can’t people like you simply be honest with yourself and everyone else when you make a mistake like you did? That’s what people with integrity do. But nope—you make an accusation that you cannot support with facts, then you try to lay the burden of proof on others to do your job after being challenged to prove your claim. I’ve run into this kind of immature arguments far too many times when I ask people to support their claims. It’s really sad.”
That’s the summary of what transpired. I keep experiencing this phenomenon when challenging progressives, the Trump Deranged, and a vast majority of 21st century Democrats to support their assertions and accusations. It is signature significance : it shows that the person engaging in it has either has gullibly swallowed the massive amounts of anti-Trump propaganda as absolute truth without a shred of critical thinking, thus willingly becoming a propaganda parrot, or they actually know what they’re doing and have deliberately chosen to be part of a political propaganda machine that constitutes morally bankrupt “the end justifies the means” tactics.
It seems to me that a huge swath of the outspoken political left goes out of their way to make repetitive assertions of claims and/or accusations they are unable to support with actual facts. It is as if they believe that the accusation itself is all the “proof” they need. Most of the Trump Deranged argue their narratives using pure opinion, emotion, spin, and propaganda talking points as if what they write and say are all verified facts, and openly smear anyone that challenges what is really a partisan narrative.
Again; how many rationalizations on the Unethical Rationalizations list do you think apply to what Kurt did in this engagement?
Ethics Alarms 
Steve, they can only argue in Talking Points.
Well done.
DISCLOSURE: I’m in the same nape of the neck as Steve, and have been privileged to know him for over a decade.
One (1) thing I know? He’ll take on all comers…but if you come, you better bring it!
I followed the neighborsnextdoor (THEY Report/YOU Decide!) thread in real time, and when I read: “Ignore economic reality and Trump’s assault on democracy and decency,” I immediately thought “Kurt” had no idea who he was engaging.
Heh! He still doesn’t!
PWS
I greatly appreciate having the opportunity to share a guest post. I also appreciate the efforts that Jack puts into these to make my scribbling submissions more readable.
The Nextdoor conversation discussed in this guest post has taken on a new commenter named Cathy that just wrote in part…
…and here are the “facts that we’re not paying attention to” that Cathy presented to support her claim that Trump is assaulting democracy “every day”…
Yup, a candidate challenging the results of an election (which absolutely every candidate running for any office across the entire USA has the legal right to do) and saying things Cathy doesn’t like is a 21st century TDS suffering progressive equivalent to “assaulting democracy”. Seriously; these people are deluded into believing right down to their bones that Trump exercising any free speech that they disagree with is an “assault on democracy”. Every damn one of them are indoctrinated morons that will swallow anything an anti-Trump talking head propagandist says or writes, it really is cultish.
After I debunked everything Cathy wrote, I wrote the following and ended my comment…
“Assault on democracy” is such a nebulous term that it’s arguably meaningless. It’s indeed chicken little’s lament of the current political era. “The sky is falling!”
That’sa feature, not a bug.
When one civically minded hears those words, they think it means an action that undermines core tenants of a theory of government. Any gerrymandering counts, but a Republican effort to reverse this was labeled as the “assault”.
Is shadow-electing the last two Democratic party candidates rather than letting the public’s favored candidate float into the nomination seat an “assault on democracy”? What about the flurry of EO’s at the beginning of the term and the pardons at the end that Biden autopenned at astonishing rate? Remember how astonished people were when Trump implied Hilary would be jailed for political activities? That’s definitely an “assault on democracy” but where was that understanding when Trump actually was jailed?
Really, what those words actually mean is the democratically-elected (due to very undemocratic self-sabotage behaviors of the DNC) president’s actions undermine the DNC’s political power. Anybody using them needs to be informed what they actually mean. They clearly don’t know.
WallPhone wrote, “Remember how astonished people were when Trump implied Hilary would be jailed for political activities? That’s definitely an “assault on democracy”…”
On that point we disagree.
Trumps words were not an “assault on democracy”, they were constitutionally protected free speech. Trump is welcome to his opinion just like you and I.
As I wrote at the time: Trump was wrong to use his position to make that point. But he wasn’t wrong. She should have been jailed for her misuse of classified information, and though there is no statute that specifically addresses what she did with the fake Russian Collusion report to undermine his Presidency, there should be.
Related descriptive meme…
It is as if they believe that the accusation itself is all the “proof” they need.
It’s as if they make an assertion (recite a talking point) and then add, “Q. E. D!”
Finding common ground in the aspects of Trump you disapprove of is a great start.
It’s pretty clear that the commenter, “Kurt” is intellectually lazy and doesn’t actually care about facts. He assumes that not only is Trump a threat to democracy, but that it’s obvious to everyone who takes a serious look. He also seems to expect other people to go to the effort to convince themselves to agree with him just because he said so. Maybe he thinks it will be as easy as reading anything about Trump from a “trustworthy” source, because he personally finds those sources very convincing.
If you’re looking for Kurt to realize how foolish his approach is, I’m not sure that blasting him was an effective way to go about it.
Instead, I’d look up a few reasons why some people think Trump threatens democracy, and ask if those are what Kurt is referring to.
For example, the first results that come up are mostly about steps Trump has taken that you might consider reasonable to prevent malicious sabotage of his administration by the media, federal employees, or the justice department. The sabotage itself weakens democratic institutions by demonstrating dishonest activities by employees of the institutions and the institutions themselves.
There are also some results saying Trump enforces stricter voting requirements, intimidates voters, and can’t be trusted to abide by honest vote counts.
Then there are results about Trump’s executive orders that people think are executive overreach because they either don’t like the orders, or they just don’t like the person issuing them.
I’d bring up one of these and ask Kurt if it’s an example he was thinking of. Internally, I’d consider what I thought of the issue, and then ask Kurt what outcomes he’s afraid of. Underneath all his assumptions is some outcome that I can explicitly agree I don’t want to happen, an outcome that isn’t defined by Trump. Whether I think the outcome is likely is irrelevant. Finding a point of agreement is a point of common ground to build on, a shared reference frame we can start from.
Now that Kurt’s comfortable, I make him think. I’d ask Kurt what he’d like to see happen to reassure him those outcomes won’t happen even with Trump in office. This is where his brain starts relearning how to think about Trump as a person instead of as the Antichrist. When he and the other people reading our discussion go out and have conversations with other people, they’ll start talking about their real concerns and how to address them in ways that don’t require forcing Trump out of office. That effect ripples out. People haven’t had to think about that in a long time, maybe ever, so they only knew how to make protest noises. They needed prompting and help to start discussing politics like adults. The fastest way to get someone thinking rationally is to show them how to make their own strongest argument. The fastest way to do that is to break it down into their anchor values.
“It sounds like you don’t trust Trump not to abuse his power in XYZ situation, because of how he handled these other situations. Does that sound right? I want to make sure executive power doesn’t get abused either. That said, I’m also concerned about ABC, and so I could see reasons why he did what he did. Is there something he could have done to address those situations that would have been more trustworthy in your eyes? If he can be trusted not to abuse his power, how would you expect him to show it?”
I find I can get people to learn a lot that way. How does that sound?
Extradimensional Cephalopod wrote, “If you’re looking for Kurt to realize how foolish his approach is, I’m not sure that blasting him was an effective way to go about it.”
I’m not going to coddle someone like Kurt after they slammed the rhetorical door with significant force like he did with his reply. In my opinion, it became time to ring his bell by figuratively unleashing the rhetorical dogs of war to show him exactly where he failed intellectually and morally. If my response didn’t effectively ring his bell then he’s quite likely a moron.
Since Kurt went silent almost immediately after my reply; I’m going to give Kurt the benefit of the doubt and guess that he’ll never post another ignorant progression of comments like that again.
I’m waiting for him to block me on Nextdoor, that’s the usual end result on Nextdoor after challenging a Democrat to produce facts to support their claims, how dare I ask for facts.
What do you expect to accomplish by ringing people’s bells, given that the usual response is for them to block you? What are you afraid will happen to someone if you “coddle” them?
To me, coddling someone implies that I’m not challenging them, and instead am enabling their complacency. I hate letting intellectual complacency go unchallenged. In my quest to stamp out intellectual complacency, I find that challenging people is much more effective when they don’t see the challenge as an attack and me as an enemy that opposes their values and wants to harm them. It’s easier for them to take my challenge seriously if I’m at least a little sympathetic towards them and contribute a bit of support. That way they don’t feel overwhelmed by the prospect of explaining their point of view to me.
“This is hardly the forum for a thoughtful discussion of anything.” Yeah, that was an obnoxious thing for Kurt to say after he just said he was willing to argue facts. The least he could have done was provide an alternative venue to continue the conversation. Since he didn’t, that would have been an opportunity for you to do so.
Sometimes it’s important to firmly tell someone what they’re doing wrong when they’re committing a social or intellectual infraction. When that happens, I also tell them what they could have done right, so they know that they’re not being punished just for expressing themselves. People are more likely to accept corrections when they are shown the way to accomplish their goals.
I might say something like, “I’m getting mixed messages here. You said you were willing to discuss facts, but then you say this isn’t the forum for a thoughtful discussion. I appreciate your dissenting perspective, but when voicing an objection in an online discussion it’s generally respectful to be prepared to back it up. If you’re serious about wanting to change other people’s minds, you should at least do some research on your own point of view so you can clearly explain why you disagree with them. Is there a forum you’d prefer to continue this conversation in?”
In my experience, a tone of “dangerous but affable calm” challenges people without scaring them away. Does that make sense?
EC,
We’ve literally been here before and I’ll repeat what I’ve written in the past. Your methods work fine in on-on-one and small group face-to-face settings, but when it comes to confronting narrow minded partisan internet trolls hiding behind their computer monitor that have absolutely no intention in conforming to your standards and all they want to do is anger you and try to trip you up, you have to change up your game. When you’re face-to-face with people in closed sessions tactics are different, as they should be. Conversing via the typed word on the internet is vastly different than face-to-face and different tactics must be used to be reasonably effective. I’m all for giving them some kind of chance up front to have civil conversations, as I have proven time and time again, but at some point in time when it’s clear that the person is intentionally trolling you gotta drop the bell ringing rhetorical hammer or they will walk all over you.
Remember, my mother was a psychologist and I read damn near every book she used in her psychology studies back in the mid 1970’s. I was also an Infantry Instructor for Privates and Cadets in the US Army for a few of years. I understand one-on-one, small group, and large group tactics reasonably well and I’ve put them into practice over the years. In my opinion; conversing with partisan trolls via the written word on the internet in the 21st century is a completely different animal than any kind of face-to-face discussion.
I’m aware that it’s not likely that we’re going to agree on all of this, and that really is okay. What you do is fine in some settings and what I do is fine in other settings. The trick is to effectively blend these kinds of tactics when it’s appropriate to do so, but you have to pay close attention online and recognize when one tactic is going to be far more effective than the other and when to drop the rhetorical hammer if need be.
It depends on your goal. I have noticed that when I’m quick to pull out the rhetorical hammer, people who might just be having an off-day start looking like rhetorical nails. This phenomenon is also called the Fundamental Attribution Error, also described in the famous “This Is Water” video based on a speech by David Foster Wallace. We believe others say harsh things because they are deranged. We say harsh things to ring their bell, because we’ve decided they’re not worth our effort.
Maybe they see us the same way we see them, and they’re just trying to ring our bell. Whether or not they’re worth your effort is obviously up to you, but do note that that doesn’t mean they’re incapable of being reasonable if someone else puts in a bit more effort. We can’t break out of the cycle of hammers unless we do something different.
I find the rhetorical hammer makes it harder for other people to take me seriously, compared to when I firmly and matter-of-factly assert boundaries. I avoid making statements about the other person, and instead make reasonable statements about what I’m willing to engage with. It’s a great way to prevent people from walking all over me while making it very difficult for others to see me as a troll myself, be they onlookers on the fence or opponents trying to protect their own egos from my criticisms.
“when… all they want to do is anger you and try to trip you up, you have to change up your game.” Not really. That’s the elegance of my method; it’s the same approach regardless of whether someone is arguing in good faith, which means I don’t have to make that judgment call. The method makes it easy to avoid getting angry and tripping up. I do have to decide at what point it’s worth continuing the discussion, if I have to convey a point or question they’re not grasping, but that’s the same whether they’re trolling or mentally unsound.
In my experience dealing with potential trolls, I just keep asking more and more basic questions trying to find a common reference frame (“Would you feel safe around someone who stabbed a stranger?”). I don’t get angry, though, which throws off their script. They feed on frustration, but not someone admitting to confusion and incisively troubleshooting it. They either have to give false answers and make themselves look stupid, or start engaging for real, and once they get a taste of real engagement with a respectful listener they often get drawn into it. They’re still three-dimensional people behind the monitor. They’re only trolling because they’re frustrated and angered by the other side, they want to feel accomplishment and acknowledgement, and they don’t know how to get that through an interaction other than by making other people frustrated and angry. When I show them an alternative, they latch onto it.
This approach works for my purposes because I’m more interested in introducing people to the process of critical reasoning and win-win thinking than I am in changing their mind about any specific political opinion by browbeating them into believing my sources and not theirs. The reasoning comes first, and over time they’ll start understanding issues in terms of people’s concerns and approaches for addressing them. They’re far more likely to do that when I take the Fred Rogers approach than when I take the Gordon Ramsay approach.
Does that all make sense?
Finding common ground in the aspects of Trump you disapprove of is a great start.
How can one find common ground with someone who refuses to debate in good faith? Thus If you’re looking for Kurt to realize how foolish his approach is, I’m not sure that blasting him was an effective way to go about it. seems to me to be magical thinking. A debate has to begin from a point of transparency and fairness. “Everybody knows I’m right and I shouldn’t have to defend my position with facts” is on its face a statement of cowardice and obstinacy, so “You’re a coward and you don’t want a real discussion” is a necessary retort.
I’m not sure I understand your first question. Steve already demonstrated the process of finding common ground. He listed things he doesn’t like about Trump. That establishes to Kurt that Steve is willing to consider criticism of Trump. That in turn hints that if Steve disagrees with a criticism of Trump, it might be for a good reason and not because he thinks Trump is perfect.
“…’You’re a coward and you don’t want a real discussion’ is a necessary retort.” Necessary for what purpose? If a person is afraid of a real discussion, are they not also afraid of admitting that fear to themselves, even when it’s pointed out? You may be able to bully a child into being more like you, but you don’t have any authority over an adult. They can just retreat into their echo chambers and continue to support destructive ideas together. What do you do then?
Contrapositively, if there’s a way to get them to admit that they are afraid of a real discussion, there’s also a way of creating a real discussion that they aren’t afraid of.
“A debate has to begin from a point of transparency and fairness.” Surprisingly, it doesn’t. Most people have a sense of rationality, but on polarizing issues it can be buried under that cowardice and obstinacy you mentioned. There’s a bit of an art to peeling away the obstinacy and uncovering the rational layer, but it’s based on systematic principles. The main thing is finding out the core of what they fear, at its most basic level, and affirming that you oppose it as well. You don’t have to believe the fear is likely to come true. You don’t have to agree with them on what to do about the fear. You just confirm that you don’t want bad things to happen either.
There are people out there who lack a grip on reality. Most people have some basic rationality, and although they can forget it sometimes when they’re in a bad mood, they can be brought back to it. If you blast them with your retorts, though, you’re giving up the chance to help someone escape the crazy zone.