Incredibly, the conservative website “Not the Bee” called that “an absolute masterclass in dealing with godless commies.” Where’s Extradimensional Cephalopod when we need him/it?
I know the EA herald of respectful disagreement would be all over this. On the other hand, Debra Lipstadt, the Holocaust historian, has maintained that engaging in debate with Holocaust deniers give them too much credibility, and I believe it is valid to hold that Communists warrant the same dismissive treatment. It is pretty funny that when asked to name an accomplishment of Communism, all the male Communist can come up with is “The Bolshevik Revolution.
However, shouting insults and talking over people is not an ethical debate practice no matter what the topic or who is involved.
Answer not a fool according to his folly,
lest you be like him yourself.
Answer a fool according to his folly,
lest he be wise in his own eyes.
The difference between a holocaust denier and a communist is one is a conspiracy theorist and they have a few basic characteristics-
A question is the same as a credible accusation. And they have dozens of questions. Their belief is that questions are smoke and where there’s smoke there is fire.
Except it turns out the smoke isn’t smoke after all.
Every answered question just leads to the next question, never to the theorist thinking “oh, that’s a good answer, I’d never thought of it that way”.
The questions, in many cases from JFK to 9-11, *should be asked*.
Like “how on earth can a steel and concrete building just melt”. It’s a fair question.
But the conspiracy theorists never accept the answer and move on to the next question they have elevated to the level of credible accusation.
When their line of questions begin to unravel their next characteristic is the gish gallop. A flood of questions you never have a chance to answer and the volume of which the conspiracy theorist believes is proof that the official answer is a nefarious fog to hide “the truth”.
A communist? At least that is supposedly a coherent worldview open to critique. Granted, in practice, the critique gets you shot, but in our case, you can ask the communist questions that *he* has to answer.
While I think communism relies a great deal on conspiracy theory thinking to get people scared of capitalists and entrepreneurs, it’s still a worldview that can be questioned.
Good points. I’ll add that non-one has built policy around holocaust denial, but people are building policies around communism. The fact that the philosophy has gotten as far as it has means it needs to be seriously countered.
Yep. Wrong ideas should be confronted.
I have a friend who refuses to take part in online discussions and arguments on the idea that the other side will not be convinced.
Odds are this is true- most people who take to online debates are throughly solidified in their beliefs.
However, my push back is, there are people who read the discussions who are convince-able and they need to see all sides of a debate.
That looked staged to me.
Nope. Not staged. In fact, I would say that it is a very real video of people recorded at some event/protest (possibly in Memorial Park here in Houston).
Kenny Webster, the page’s owner, is a radio guy here in the Houston market. He got his big start by working with Michael Berry, a talk radio host on AM740, in the vein of Rush Limbaugh (to a degree), Mark Levine (also, to a degree). Berry is a bit different because he was on Houston City Council but lost a bid for reelection. He concentrates his commentary in the mornings on local Houston matters but his afternoon show is more national in scope. He is conservative but not a “bomb thrower” who also brings a lot of huimor to his content. I believe Berry has some national syndication under his belt.
Webster, though, has not achieved that level of success, yet. Webster used to do the “man on the street” gigs for Michael Berry and the Walton & Johnson show but moved into his own slot on the “W&J” show (AM950) in the mornings when one of the show’s hosts passed away. They kept the W&J show name because it is a popular show and the host who passed away was very well regarded in Houston. It was a good move for Webster because it gave him a bigger platform for his routines.
Webster does these kinds of videos where he baits a target of his ire with belligerently obnoxious questions, mostly to get a rise out of the person, usually to get merriment of all listening.
This bit, though, reminds me watching Jesse Watters get his head handed to him by El-Sayyed the other day. Watters wanted to show how awful El-Sayyed is but failed miserably.
How Watter has his Fox show is a mystery to me. I have been saying for a long time the Watters is an idiot but no one listened to me. El-Sayyed ran circles around him in that interview, Watters let him get away with it, too, along with nonsequitor filibusters to Wattters’ questions. It was embarrassing to watch. For instance, Watters asked El-Sayyed a question about the antisharia law initiatives but El-Sayyed simply side-stepped and reframed the question as “well, Jesse, why don’t you have problems with canon law like you do with sharia?” Watters lacked the IQ, quick wit, and critical thinking skills to say, “wait, dumb ass. Don’t obfuscate or misdirect the question. Either answer my questions or we’re done. Canon law deals with the internal governance of the given church and/or its faith and its practices; it is not binding on local, state, or federal governments. Sharia, on the other hand, is the controlling law over local, state, and federal laws in Islamic countries and is anathema to Western culture. Answer my question or get off my show.”
jvb
A year ago Charlie Kirk was murdered for his speech. This act was the ultimate in leftist cancel culture. The AG of Virginia was elected after making sick jokes about killing the children of his opponent. You cannot have a reasoned debate and civic discourse with the hard left.
In my experience, trying to shut people down just gives them more credibility in the eyes of people who already agree with them. Think about it: If you think someone is wrong, and they mock you, does that make you more inclined to consider they may be right? Do you think other people will be more likely to side with them? (If so, do you think that returning the mockery would attract them to your side?)
If you want to kill an idea, you have to talk about it. You have to learn about the needs that the idea serves so that you can then replace it with a better idea.
Just saying “But Stalin!” doesn’t work, because they already know about Stalin. They are aware of the evidence. The issue is that while you interpret the evidence as an indication that communism is fundamentally unworkable, they don’t share that interpretation.
I find it’s easiest to start the conversation outside of the realm of evidence. People can pick whatever evidence they want to support their point of view, so evidence is not a helpful approach to lead with.
Here’s how I’d start discussing communism:
In my head, I’d reflect on my own concerns. I’m concerned that communism has no plan for distributing limited resources or incentivizing people to contribute. Those are the reasons I don’t like communism. They’re not defined by ideology or policy approach. They’re just concerns. Concerns can’t be attacked, nor do they attack others. I can open my mind knowing that I will be able to come back to these anchor values.
Next, I’d listen to the communists’ concerns. They see people accumulating large amounts of economic power and wielding it irresponsibly, with no accountability. The powerful people use their power to crush better ideas. They prevent people from developing skills and negotiating for better working conditions. Do these concerns seem reasonable?
These are concerns that lead people to want an alternative to the current form of capitalism. As long as we don’t tack on “…and therefore, we should do communism”, can you agree that it would be nice if we could address these concerns without giving up our own anchor values? You don’t need to think that it’s possible. You just need to agree that it would be a good thing if we could do that.
Now, communism doesn’t solve these problems, but that point comes later. For now, I just have to demonstrate that I get where the communists are coming from. The minimum level of success (above civility, which is level 0) is that they can tell that I understand and appreciate their anchor values.
Once they see I support their concerns, I ask to share my own concerns, my anchor values. I don’t say “and this is why we can’t do communism.” I say, “For me to support a system, it has to address these concerns.” When they understand where I’m coming from, that’s the next level of success.
Then we can work on higher levels of success by doing the work of applying constructive principles to figure out what resources, information, policies, and cultural adaptations would allow us to address all of our concerns.
If you assume that addressing everyone’s concerns is impossible and you’re dead-set on making someone else pay for your solution, then you’re entitled to your win-lose thinking. Just don’t be surprised when people oppose you because they disagree that your tradeoffs are objectively better than theirs. And definitely don’t try to stop those of us who are working on win-win solutions.
For more details on why open scorn is a counterproductive way to approach disagreements, see my article on Chihuahua Rhetoric: https://visionaryvocabularies.substack.com/p/how-can-we-stop-chihuahua-rhetoric?r=1ls051.
EC,
Whenever you mention your approach, I always have questions about applications that the approach seems to ignore. I admit this may be my not understanding the whole process, so I want to address one of my concerns. I have several, but it seems fair to address only a single one and not go for the written equivalent of the gish gallop to attack you with. Please note that I am not approving of the process that began this post at all and not contrasting your approach with it, simply looking at how I struggle to apply your approach.
How do you apply when a concern is opposed to your values and experience and you cannot agree with it? I don’t mean when a concern is so far out there that it has no basis in reality, but when the underlying values actively contradict yours. (For an example, a far out concern would be that they don’t want us attacked by the dragons that live on Freeze Out. I can agree with that concern because I don’t want that either. I just don’t think it’s much of a problem in real life as I have never seen any evidence of dragons on Freeze Out and spent much of my formative years there.)
So when I have spoken (admittedly in a limited fashion) or heard pro-communists speak, they usually admit several major concerns that I cannot understand or appreciate, so I cannot agree with them because they actively oppose my value.
The wealth disparity gap being a concern does not make a lick of sense to me. Who cares that Elon Musk is a trillionaire? That is not a concern for my life. He creates/organizes/innovates/manages/commits to do things well enough in areas that are either a)needed, or b)marketed well enough that his skills earn him whatever they are valued at. My skills and willingness to put hours in on top of my other commitments earn me a very low wage. This is because we get money based on the combination of our skills, talents, productivity, and the need for whatever it is we produce that we get what wages we get.
This to me, ties in directly to the “40 hours is too much work” complaint. We work the hours we choose to work. My job requires about 10 hours or less work from me a week. I chose this very low wage, minimal hour job because it fit with the lifestyle I want, specifically that it fits around my vocation of a stay-at-home, homeschooling mother who volunteers to lead that music at her church and tutors people with math difficulties. I can’t keep my lifestyle and work more than that, but I have a husband who works hard in a highly specialized, highly trained, and very rare position to pay the bills so I just add a little money to the budget to help out.
When I was a kid, my mother worked 35 hours a week, because that would afford us health insurance, but still give her time to take care of me and the house. My step-dad worked varying hours depending on the job and money that came in. There were times when he worked 14 hours a day 4-5 days a week. Now that I am no longer a concern, both my mom and my step-dad have their own small businesses and work the hours they feel they want to work for the business to thrive and for them to make the money they feel they need. However, they choose to have debt and worry about the fact that they have nothing saved for retirement. On the other hand, they take a large amount of vacation each year, and have many adult toys, like ATVs, snowmobiles, a boat, etc. They chose one path that got them the life they wanted at the cost of an easy future. Conversely, my dad worked 60-90 hours a week as a manager of a grocery store. He worked for small wages that, as a salaried employee, didn’t add up to minimum wage. He scrimped and saved, spending very little money, and retired early with huge savings and is now going on a number of cruises each year based on what he can afford with his RMD.
I cannot comprehend the idea that we don’t have a trade-off between wanting to work for a living and wanting to play around with our time and money. My values actually are somewhat based on that idea. I also do not understand why it seems hard for the people I have encountered to think that not every passion we have is marketable, at least for the price we want. This is where the evidence leads. There are some exceptions, like those born into very wealthy families, but the vast majority of people have to balance wants and needs with effort. The idea that we can do what we want, for the hours we want, and make the same money as someone who works many hours doing something useful or complex is ridiculous.
A main goal/idea is that someone else’s labor needs to be provided for free. They don’t want to pay for housing, but they want people like my step-dad to build more houses. Where does he get paid for his labor in this model? They want free health care, but when does my mother get paid for the hours she puts in providing that health care? They want to have food provided for them. Demeter can tell us what that takes from the farmer’s perspective. Many of the other underpinnings of life require the same basic concept. We have to pay for all of these things somehow. Evidence shows that the government doing so always seems to lead to shortages due to a combination of pressures.
As for the assertion, why not just hire more people so that everyone gets less money, but also less work, not every person can do every job. Very few people have the desire at least (perhaps not even the ability) to learn to become a chemical engineer. Then they have to get the experience to make them worth while. Unlike chemical engineering, my husband is one of only a few hundred people in our country with his set of skills and I doubt there is more than a couple score thousand people with his skills over the globe. It is a rare skill set that most people don’t even know exists, with required working conditions that are not for everyone. He is also a go-getter, finding problems to solve before they are brought to his desk, and willing to work overtime to make sure everything is working properly. As a salaried employee, this means that he does not get paid extra for this time, but in the employment contract, it is clear that overtime is expected. This is the case for pretty much his whole field. They haven’t the people to do this work, so it’s not like they can hire more. Therefore, he makes pretty good money. People in his field who don’t work the overtime, aren’t go-getters, etc are not very well respected, usually refused major raises, and often told to go somewhere far away from here. With a high value skill and a high value work ethic come more money than a low value skill or a low work ethic. There are also premiums paid for people who need to do certain jobs in certain places very few people want to live. This is very true in any technical field, but even in the less technical world, this still is a fact.
Since I cannot agree with their concerns and values and in fact find them to be opposed to my concerns and values, how do I go to the next step?
Thank you for your incisive question, Sarah! Ideas can only get better when people challenge them.
I will start by translating your concerns into anchor values. If these don’t seem accurate, please correct me.
Trust: It sounds like you trust that Elon Musk provides value to society and that what he gets paid is fairly negotiated. It’s fine that he is a trillionaire because that reflects the value he provides.
Trust: It sounds like you accept that what you get paid is fairly negotiated and reflects the value you provide.
Habits: It sounds like the people in your family feel in control of their employment, income, and finances. You are satisfied that if you wanted more, you have the ability to find employment that takes more effort and pays more.
Habits: I admit I’m a bit confused on this point: it sounds like you consider it entirely reasonable for a person to work 90-hour weeks with low pay and no overtime as the price for a comfortable retirement. Does that sound right? Was the grocery store manager position a particularly relaxing job?
Habits: It sounds like you are concerned that people expect to get money (or things they would buy with money) while avoiding any difficult and unpleasant work.
Habits: I suspect you’re concerned that communism has no incentives for people to do the work that keeps society running.
Costs: It sounds like you’re concerned that for communism to function, people have to do essential jobs without compensation.
Does that all sound right? Did I miss anything about your concerns?
These would be your anchor values. They represent concerns that you will not ignore, nor should you. Understanding our own values is essential for understanding other people’s values.
Now I’ll see if I can identify the concerns of the communists you spoke with. (I suspect they are a bit different from how you understood them; communists aren’t known for being good at communicating their values.)
Trust: If someone makes more money than someone else, people want it to be because they’re delivering more value through superior skills, work ethic, or sacrifice. They don’t want it to be because the person positioned themselves to demand more money even as other people who are able and willing do the job as well or better aren’t being given the chance. (We’re changing the assertion from “workers are interchangeable” to “if some jobs pay more than others, here are good and bad reasons for it.”)
Trust: People don’t want wealth to allow people to subvert laws and impartial governance. (One reason why people would be concerned about wealth inequality is that corrupt systems allow wealth to translate to political power.)
Habits: In a world with advanced technology, many people would like to shorten work weeks and allow people to benefit from more leisure time. They expect to be able to find jobs that are not torturous or exhausting.
Trust: People consider hard working hours and conditions to be exploitation from executives who are not willing to tolerate those conditions themselves, and who are rewarded more than the people doing the most stressful work.
Risk: In a chaotic or depressed economy, if a person cannot find a job, people do not want to fear that they’ll be abandoned to starve. They want to know they’ll still have access to basic resources.
Do those sound like underlying communist concerns that you can agree with?
I’m glad your husband is getting properly compensated for his skills and effort. I wonder if the required overtime helps dissuade more people from going into the field, which would be a vicious cycle. That said, if there are enough people who are willing to do the training and the work, it may not be a problem at the moment.
EC,
I think you mostly covered my values. There are several items and statements that I think need more attention, so I will focus on those, as well as my issues with agreeing with the communist stances.
I do find that working for 90 hours for low wages is perfectly acceptable. If a good retirement is your goal and you have limited marketable skills beyond being able to work hard, then you will have to work hard to make the money you need. A grocery store manager in a small town is very much NOT a simple job, but requires long hours of manual labor and usually 15+ hour days, with little, if any, breaks and rest. I find working for 120 hours miserable, but acceptable if that is what is needed over a short time frame. There does need to be breaks from 120 hour weeks after one or two of them. I find that being on call 24/7/365 is mostly acceptable, though I believe that you, if not a business owner, should be allowed to be off call for surgery, most funerals, and ideally weddings, though that is not the policy in the energy industry. I do find that my opinions of overtime are very influenced by the energy industry who, as a standard for most employees has high expectations of unpaid overtime, and if they were to back off of that policy, the world as we know it would LITERALLY end, and within probably a few days of ridding themselves of that policy, but with utter certainty, two months, tens if not hundreds of thousands of people would die in fiery explosions. I am not speaking in any figurative sense, as I have been uncomfortably near the fireballs and smoking ruins that have called me (before I quit to be a stay-at-home mother) and my husband to work at odd and long hours. I personally have had to work through multiple occasions of up to 5 straight days of special on-call – which means I cannot sleep through a phone call and must be at work within 30 minutes of my phone ringing – with more than half of those hours on-site working under stressful and even deadly conditions where a mistake at the wrong time will end up with, at minimum, my literal dead body and probably up to a dozen others, but not doing it will stop most of the diesel and gasoline production for a huge section of the mountain west market or an explosion that could wipe out nearly 10,000 people if the wind is blowing the wrong way. Should the energy industry lower its expectations of overtime without having plenty of trained workers able to step in the instant they drop their expectations on the current crop, our lights would go out, gas stations would be empty and dry, natural gas heaters would be cold. No food would be refrigerated or frozen. The ERs would be without power, generators would be out of fuel. This really would be the SHTF scenario all the preppers have been looking for, simply because we want to not work overtime or have dangerous or hard jobs. These jobs make the world run, and denying that is foolish to the extreme.
I also see a great many people who believe that what they want are the basics, or at least their definition of the basics goes well into my definition of luxury. Weekly date nights, spa appointments, haircuts by hair dressers, frequent restaurant visits, live entertainment, premium grade vehicles (rather than base version doing what you need – if you need a pickup or SUV then no problem, if you are a single person who only drives to the spa, I have a problem, especially if it has a sun roof and a moon roof as well as heated and vented seats). I see people complaining they can’t get jobs, but especially in my home state, I see plenty of job openings simultaneously with high unemployment. The explanation is consistently that the unemployed don’t want these jobs either for the work required or perceived insufficient wages. My favorite was a woman who was straight out of college wanting a $200,000 salary and upset because that was only for someone with her degree and 20-years of experience. She complained, “what was my college for if not to get me experience?” I also have not met anyone in dire straights who was not there by anything other than the consequences of their choices. I listen to the whole sob story and can pretty much identify all the choices that brought them to the straights they are in. I actually wonder if that is the main difference between communists and capitalists. The belief in agency. This frontloads my brain for the whole experience, which probably gives answers you did not expect.
Going on to the items from the communists:
I agree that someone who makes more money should bring more value. However, I find that people ignore risk taking and up front costs as bringing value, so I cannot agree with this statement as put forth. Sacrifice needs to be understood not as just hard work or menial labor. If the statement accepts that, then I will agree that it is frustrating when nepotism gives someone a leg up. (Now the fact that communism has strong ties to the nepotism-based job holding is an item to argue.)
I do not agree that wealth gives political power. It seems to me that political power grants wealth. There are many wealthy people who do not put their thumbs on the political scale, far more, to be sure, than those wealthy people who do. In fact, you see communists abusing wealth and political power far more often than capitalists, so I cannot agree that this is a value of communists, especially as they only complain about the capitalists doing so, rather than condemning all outright. Given the people they generally idolize tend to be extremely wealthy corrupt people with lots of political power, I believe that their claiming of this value is either hypocrisy or manipulation.
I disagree that technology can allow us to shorten work weeks. There are 168 hours a week and in energy, chemical plants, medicine, plumbing, electricians, and a great deal of manufacturing at the very least, (I can continue to pick more and more jobs that require 24/7 operation and on-call overtime work) require all of those hours to be worked by trained and experienced people. There is a shortage of people who want to do these jobs and so there has to be overtime until that shortage ends, and if overtime is driving people to not want to, the few that remain work even longer and harder. This means that people HAVE to work jobs that are tortuous and exhausting. There is NO technology that can keep someone from having to do this. I disagree with this “value” as it is simply a childish wish.
Hard working hours and conditions are not exploitative nor necessarily the most stressful. An executive usually works longer hours than we do, under far more stress. Sure, there are bad executives, but most of them are harder workers than we are, so to complain that our conditions are bad while they get all the good things is childish and unrealistic. Hard work is good for us. (Just like eating healthy, that which is good for us is not always pleasant.)
I do agree that in a troubled economy, people should not just starve. I donate to an organization that works to help that. There are many such organizations out there, enough that generally people who are struggling with true need are usually able to get quite a large amount of help. Many of the desperate cases we see are people who do not want help or at least do not want the string attached, like not actively shooting up in the shelter or not beating people up on a drug binge whilst in the facility. However, when I hear this argument, my mind front loads my experiences and evidence. If you do not want to starve, make good choices. Deny yourselves luxury, take the work that is available rather than the work that you desire. Your passion may not be marketable. This does not seem to be a value that is held by this group, as they define basic needs well into the luxury category and deny the need to just get whatever job they can. Also, if they looked around for a minute, they would know that those resources are out there if they were truly in need.
When someone claims a value and lives in direct opposition to that value, I do not agree with their “value,” and that is the case for a great many of these values you claim they have.
(Sorry for the delayed response, Sarah Beth; I’ve drafted a response but might not be able to finish it until after this weekend. Just wanted to let you know it’s still on my radar.)
Quick quiz everyone, since no one has invoked the rationalization list in awhile:
At least this guy isn’t recommending Pinochet’s solution to discourse with Communists!
To be clear, the AK-47 was only technically a communist development. Much like almost all communist “technology”, it was a stolen design.
Essentially copy-pasted from the German Sturmgewehr 44.