You’re Stupid, I’m Offended!: How Not to Make Friends and Influence People

The state of political discourse in America is no better than watching a Jerry Springer show.  We have
known that for years. Rush Limbaugh dropped that bar more than three decades ago by  reducing political argument and persuasion to insulting others.  Since then the tone of much cable news and social media has degenerated into nothing more than name calling.  All that was bad enough, but now we have a president who manages with each statement to reduce the quality of political rhetoric even further.  Referring to Haiti and African counties as “sh-thole states” is the latest low.  With that statement, and the media actually using the word on air, the seven dirty words that you are not supposed to use and for which Pacifica Radio was fined when it aired George Carlin’s famous routine, was reduced to six.
The point is not about the word itself but about how the president confuses logic with profanity, reason with outrage, and argument with insult.  But guess what?  He is only the personification of what culturally so many others are doing–both politically right and left–in America.
I am a professor with a Ph.D. in political science.  But I am also a law professor with a J.D. and have a masters degree in philosophy.  My world is one of evidence and logic. It is a world where, as I originally learned from my sixth grade teacher Grace Dale, that name calling is not the way to win an argument.  She used to say you can make any argument you want but once you state your claim the beginning of your next sentence must start with the word “because.”  This next sentence  must provide the evidence–logical or empirical–to support your claim.  Simply saying “I feel” or “you are stupid” are not arguments.  Both are just examples of emoting, not thinking, and asserting or declaring either of them are not persuasive to getting others to changing their mind of supporting your argument.
In philosophy there is what is called logical fallacies–argumentative techniques that are not valid.  Among them are the concept of ad hominem or calling people names as a way to try to win an argument, and ad motum or the appeal to emotions to win an argument.  These arguments often are accompanied with red herrings or shifting the argument to something else that is irrelevant, false  moral equivalence or equating two events as being of the same degree, and either/or arguments or  forcing people into thinking the only choices are binary.  None of these from a logical point of view are logically valid ways to argue, yet they seem to be the basis of so much political argumentation today, starting with Donald Trump all the way down to simple Facebook postings.
Political discourse and debate seems one big logical fallacy.  Too much of political debate is concluded with someone simply saying “Your stupid or Trump’s supporters are stupid, or racist, or sexist.  Even if true, do you really think you will win an argument by calling someone else stupid or racist? Long ago Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People pointed that out too, offering great advice from a tactical and not logical perspective on how to persuade people. Similarly, arguments also seem to be concluded with someone pulling out their Ace card by saying they are offended.  Point out in a tough argument that someone may be wrong and the retort is “I’m offended.”  Again, that does a lot of good in terms of resolving a dispute.  But it is not enough simply to call someone stupid or say you are offended, everything seems to be of the most extreme moral equivalence–thereby equivocating everyone to the level of being a Hitler or racist for  whatever they did or said.
Now take all of the above fallacies and combine them with the political and cultural bubbles we live in, and the difficultly of some of the political choices we have to make and the problem is compounded.  Surround ourselves only with those who share our views, reinforcing and egging on beliefs until they become extreme.  Every little slight, every effort to engage in tough talk or debate  becomes an us versus them, good versus evil, an epic manichean battle where there can be no political compromise or middle ground and where even the thought that the other side might have a good idea is wrong.  “You are either with us, or against us,” as Joseph Stalin used to say.
This is not another essay pleading for civility in politics.  Emotion and passion are okay, we are not robots.  Philosopher David Hume was perhaps right in arguing that “reason was a slave to the passions” and that emotion cannot be stripped from persuasion.  We should be passionate about our beliefs, but passion is not argument.    It is also okay to engage in difficult debate and argument;  we live in an adult world with adult problems and need to have thick skin at times.  But if the goal is to persuade and reach agreement and not simply insult or emote there are better ways to persuade, and simply saying “You’re stupid” or “I’m offended” is not going to do the trick.

A plea for fact-based policymaking in an era of political myths

Comedian George Carlin quipped that "business ethics" was an oxymoron. The same can now be said about reasonable politics. Politics and the making of policy seems less to rest upon reasoned debate, social-science evidence, and facts than upon hope and belief. Rep. Michele Bachmann panders to ignorance when decrying vaccines as causing retardation. She, along with Herman Cain, Gov. Rick Perry, and most of the other Republican presidential hopefuls deny global warning, evolution, and a host of other well-established facts, preferring to base their candidacies and appeals on propositions lacking rational or empirical support.

Ronald Reagan famously misspoke: "Facts are stupid things." He seems to have gotten it right when it comes to political debate, pointing to how truth takes a backseat to myth or worse — lies. Two of Reagan's myths — welfare queens exploding the federal budget deficit, and supply side economics as trickling down to benefit us all – both failed truth tests. But that did not matter then or now; people bought them as simple answers to complex problems.

Today, untested or worse, crackpot or refuted ideas dominate political debate. Nationally, we hear rants about how illegal aliens are a drain on the economy and that they take jobs from Americans, when in fact the evidence suggests otherwise and that they are net contributors to our country. Taxes are assailed as job killers when evidence suggests that they are a marginal factor behind workforce quality, access to supplies and consumers, and transportation costs as more important factors affecting business location and expansion decisions. Conversely, little evidence supports the idea that tax holidays to repatriate corporate savings back to the United States will yield job production. Herman Cain more or less admits that his "9-9-9" was conceived as a bold political idea that was not based on any real evidence of its impact.

A bevy of other stupid public policies and political myths dominate the American political landscape. Wrongly we believe that welfare migration is a major problem in the country. Some contend that teaching sex education to teenagers encourages promiscuity, that we can pray away homosexuality, or that same-sex marriage hurts traditional matrimony. Never mind what the best research and facts state.

Both parties indulge

Myth-based politics does not seem confined to one party. Gov. Mark Dayton is determined to secure funding for a new Vikings stadium even though the economic evidence is overwhelming that public subsidies for this purpose are one of the worst uses of tax dollars there is as a tool for economic development. Conversely, the Minnesota Majority continues to beat the drum of voter fraud as stealing elections when the absolute best research suggests that in-person election fraud is negligible, that there is no evidence that it has affected the outcome of any recent election, and that voter-identification laws will not prevent this fraud and instead will disenfranchise many individuals.

As a professor who has taught public policy for nearly 25 years and a former government administrator and planner who worked in the world of facts, evidence and research, I find all this frustrating, especially when called upon to testify before the Legislature. Seldom have I seen facts — and not ideology or prejudice — move elected officials.

My students are not given the liberty simply to assert opinions unless they can support them with evidence. We should ask no less of our politicians and government officials. Reporters do not press candidates to substantiate their claims, and the public often gives them a free pass, letting emotion, anger or frustration guide decision-making. What results are bad laws and foolish policies that do not work, waste taxpayer money, and often make the problems worse than before.

Evidence dismissed

Recently I gave a talk to a local Rotary Club about the 2012 elections. When I finished, a minister came up to me and asked where I stood on voter-ID laws. I told him that I had researched and written on the subject extensively and that the evidence of fraud was negligible. He dismissed my statement, declaring: "I am from Milwaukee, I know about voter fraud. They bring busloads of those folks up from Chicago all the time to vote in our elections."

I shook my head in disbelief. "Those people?" He might as well as said blacks, because that is what he meant. I am not sure what disappointed me more — the racism, the dismissal of the facts or that he was a minister. Why he asked my opinion I do not know — except to confirm his prejudices. It was clear his mind was made up and no amount of facts would change it. He embodied all that is wrong with contemporary politics — one not of evidence-based policy making but one dominated by blind ideology, ignorance or willful disregard of the facts

Today's blog appeared in the Friday, October, 28, 2011 Minnpost.