Brian Greenberg and I used to have a regular colloquy on our blogs called “The Red and the Blue” where we’d debate some issue. That’s fallen off of late, but we’ve erupted into another 20,000-word extravaganza on Facebook recently.
I’m taking the liberty of cross-posting that discussion here for a couple of reasons: 1) I can never quite figure out what Facebook permissions are for linking to a discussion; 2) in case I’d like to read the damn thing in 2022, I trust my own blog more than I trust Facebook.
I’m editing out other comments from the debate (and making similar edits to Brian’s and my text), which is simply to keep in the spirit of Red and Blue. And also because I think I have Brian’s implied consent to do this, but I don’t know about anyone else.
Brian started the debate by linking to The Wrong Side Absolutely Must Not Win, with the comment “EXACTLY!” (Oh, so many words spilled following a one-word post….) My posts follow in normal text, Brian’s in blockquote:
Jeff, September 3, 10:49 AM
First, I agree with [the prior comment]. The Democrats are collectively moderate. The Republicans are collectively right wing batshit by the standards of the 1990s. The Democrats are squabbling idiots who bend over and grab their ankles when they are the minority party. The Republicans are masters of parlaying the filibuster, and the senatorial vote advantage of states with low populations, into shutting down the government when they don’t get their way.
So even before you start dealing with policy issues, it’s incorrect to say the parties are equivalent. I wish the Democrats were as effective as Republicans when in the minority.
Beyond that: last time I checked, the Democrats were in favor of insuring all Americans by 2014, and the Republicans are in favor of outlawing abortion entirely. Both of these are literally life-and-death issues, for either those who are uninsured, or for any woman of the age of 14 and up. No hyperbole necessary.
Personally, I also think that electing Romney—who would be the wealthiest president in 200 years—continues a trend towards plutocracy and oligarchy that has been even more dangerously powerful since Citizens United. So I think I’m justified in using hyperbolic terms about those views, but let’s be clear: just because it’s a matter of debate whether these are important issues, does not negate the fact that other political choices concerning health care, war, foreign policy, and the environment involve stakes that are too fucking high to heed an idiotic call for moderate language regardless of the topic.
Brian, September 4, 12:54 AM
You… could not paint a better picture of exactly what the article is pointing out if you tried. *My* side cares about “life and death” issues like Supreme Court justices and healthcare, *Their* side cares about things that don’t matter, like money and profits. *Their* side wants to kill sick people and teenage girls, *My* side wants to save the environment and end all war. And then, the icing on the proverbial cake: “No hyperbole necessary… [unless] I’m justified in using hyperbolic terms” – you know, because *MY* side’s issues are so important/substantial and *THEIR* side’s issues are so dangerous/undemocratic.
It’s as if the author of the article wrote your comments for you. Seriously…
Jeff, September 4, 3:39 AM
Brian… I can’t believe you’re not getting this. Let me try again.
Someone who is absolutely convinced of their pro-life position thinks that I’m in favor of drowning babies in a bathtub. That’s not an argument about moral equivalence, they think that anyone who is pro-choice is literally in favor of murdering babies.
There is no “moderate” or “polite” way to oppose that, any more than you would moderately or politely disagree with someone who was in favor of euthanizing the elderly or deporting anyone who isn’t white.
I completely agree with an argument against hyperbole—i.e., you can attack Obama for being too liberal without calling him a socialist. When I say that he’s moderate, I’m making a historically accurate, factual statement about definitional terminology in American politics. But if you want to make an argument that he’s too liberal, you can do so. Call him a socialist, though, and you’re being a hyperbolic idiot.
It is also a factual statement that wherever abortion is outlawed, more pregnant women die trying to terminate their pregnancies. I’m not saying that pro-life people don’t care about women in general. I’m saying that a minority of them—the absolutists who believe I’m in favor of drowning babies—think that it’s more important to prevent what they believe is a genocidal act against defenseless children.
However, the majority of them are ignorant of the fact that they’re in favor of a policy that causes women to die.
And the remainder just don’t give a fuck, in the same way that many people don’t give a fuck about the homeless, or the uninsured, or people starving and dying in poor countries, or children dying of malaria, or what have you.
That’s not most people. Most people are simply ignorant. The difference is that they’re willfully ignorant about actual pain and suffering. Some of these people would accuse me of being willfully ignorant of hellfire and damnation, and care about it just as much, and think that I’m just as wrong. The difference is that I’m talking about reality and not a sociopathic illusory fantasyland.
Yes, I do believe that my understanding of history, politics, and culture allows me to make a factual argument about sociopathic behaviors. I regard many Republicans as having the moral equivalence of a sixth-century village burning witches at the stake.
I’m making a factual argument to that effect, which you’re dismissing because I’m not allowing for some common ground? Please. That just shows that you’re not listening. There are many political issues where common ground exists. But when there isn’t, or when your political opponent advocates a position that will damn you, personally, to a shorter and more painful lifespan, it’s not hyperbolic to call it what it is.
Brian, September 5, 11:31 PM
To quote another prominent Republican, there you go again…
*Their* side believes that you’re in favor of “murdering babies,” but *my* side believes that they are in favor of “causing women to die.” *Their* side is being hyperbolic, but *my* side is reaching a conclusion based on a factual statement.
*Their* side believes I’m “willfully ignorant of hellfire and damnation” and *my* side believes they’re “willfully ignorant about actual pain and suffering.” *Their* side is being hyperbolic, but *my* side is talking about “reality.”
*My* side understands history, politics and culture. *Their* side isn’t listening.
For what it’s worth, I don’t believe that Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Barack Obama, Joe Biden or anyone in Congress from either party is in favor of murder and death or is willfully ignorant of pain and/or suffering. These are the kind of people that shoot up movie theaters, not the kind of people that run for and hold public office. The fact that they disagree with you (and me) on whether abortion is murder does not mean they favor killing young women. And when you say that it does, you are being as hyperbolic as the article I posted satirizes you for being.
Brian, September 5, 11:45 PM
@[prior poster] – first things first. Please don’t say *YOUR* side. I don’t have a side. I’m a registered Republican who has voted for Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. My vote goes to the person I think would make the best president at the time he is running. And the fact that so many people have pre-ordained who they’re going to vote for before they even know who’s running drives me absolutely nuts every four years.
As to what you wrote, yes, justices have lifetime appointments. The one that George W. Bush nominated was the swing vote on Obama’s healthcare reform. You implied that Republican nominees to the court would have uniformly bad consequences and Democratic nominees to the court would have uniformly good consequences.
As I said to Jeff, the fact that one side disagrees with you on the issue of abortion does not make then more or less “bad” than the other side. (And, by the way, the fact that some (including me) disagree with you on the importance of potential court nominees with regard to choosing a candidate doesn’t make them “bad” either). The point is that both sides paint the other as dangerous/evil/harbingers of doom because of who they may nominate to the court. The point is that we can no longer say, “I disagree with Mitt Romney’s position on abortion, but I agree with his position on taxes (or whatever…).” The point is that “he” becomes “they” and “they” become dangerous/evil/etc. because “they” disagree with *YOU.*
Jeff, September 6, 2:03 PM
Brian—thank you, at least, for giving me the thread that explains this better. Attempt #3:
From the point of view of someone who believes that human life begins at conception, I am ABSOLUTELY in favor of murdering babies. Our argument is precisely over when a series of dividing cells magically moves from “cellular material” to “embryo” to “legally human.”
Someone who believes that human life begins when the sperm hits the egg looks at my point of view and sees LITERALLY no difference between the pro-abortion position, and drowning a 3-month-old baby in a bathtub. For them to then say that I am murdering babies, participating in genocide, or an evil monster is not hyperbolic or vitriolic—provided, of course, that you would agree with them that all of these terms apply to someone who supports the drowning of millions of babies in bathtubs.
THIS is the point I’m making. You’re drawing a line around some kinds of speech and saying, “This is hyperbolic, vitriolic, and has no place in our discussion.” I’ve been saying, “no, if something is LITERALLY TRUE, then by definition it can’t be hyperbolic.”
I’ll be the first to say that there’s a immediate step from “pro-choice” and “murdering babies” if you accept the above precepts. (Of course, I think the precepts are ridiculous.) The connection from “pro-life” to “women will die” is two or three steps, but those steps are repeatedly demonstrable and tightly coupled, so I think it’s justifiable—more than that, it’s one of the primary reasons I’m pro-choice.
Your argument appears to me to be, “If I hear obviously hyperbolic speech, I am going to believe it’s not factually accurate and dismiss it.” This draws lines and creates “polite, allowable political debate”, but more importantly, it also means that you dismiss anything that is hyperbolic by your terms. This has the effect of saying, “your political concerns are unimportant.” I can’t speak for [another poster], but such attitudes tend to get me fairly honked off.
Where you and [someone else] are both right is that there are many political areas where the connection from action to effect are many more steps, and are not tightly coupled. For example: I’m not going to call Paul Ryan a tyrant for being in favor of a 0% capital gains tax—although I can make a many-steps, loosely-coupled historical argument connecting low taxation to plutocracy, and plutocracy to tyranny. IMO, it’s perfectly reasonable to say that Ryan is a plutocrat or an oligarch, following the shorter path to the middle, but I’d say “tyrant” is somewhat hyperbolic. For that, I need to point to the Patriot Act and the neoconservative theory of executive power, where there is clearly a tightly-coupled path that makes the tyrant label stick (to both Bush and Obama, but that’s another post).
Jeff, September 6, 2:18 PM
Point 2: not much to add to the Supreme Court argument, except to say that since 1787 an appointment has been one of the best ways to make sure that your political philosophies were going to make a difference for decades. I disagree with Janet that a Court appointment has been politicized since Bork; it’s more accurate to say that that pendulum has been swinging for two centuries, and Bork was the beginning of this one.
Point 3: re “I don’t have a side.” I’ll gently call that horseshit. You have a side that traverses the gap between the two parties, so you don’t identify with either party exclusively; I think Janet and I both get that. But anyone who’s known you for a long while can come up with a guess about Brian’s opinion which is probably 80-90% likely to be correct, ergo, you have a side.
Pointing this out because saying, “I don’t have a side but you clearly do” is another way of saying, “I’ve come to all of my opinions through reason and you are parroting what you’ve heard.” According to what the psychologists say, ALL of us believe that we’ve reasoned our politics and ALL of us are wrong about that, a hell of a lot more often than we think.
Main difference between us is that your politics gives you reason to consider both candidates in most races. My politics mean I settle for the Democrat and never have to consider the Republican. That wasn’t always true: I voted GOP in PHL and PA races, back when GOP-PA meant something very different. I’ll consider green or socialist candidates when I have reason to. I’d prefer a social democratic party on the European model. But you’re being reductive when you think that Janet or I do less evaluation of a candidate than you do, even when it’s a foregone conclusion that we’re pulling the D lever as the least worst option.
Brian, September 8, 2 PM
I’m not sure if your rhetoric is so well rehearsed that you’ve stopped noticing the inconsistencies, or if you’re just hoping that it’s so eloquent that *I* won’t notice them. Either way, if one is to assume, for the sake of argument, that abortion = murder, then every single abortion results in a murder. With the same assumption, it does not follow that every person who wants an abortion in a state where it’s illegal will die. In fact, those who are anti-abortion would probably point out to you that the pregnant woman has several choices other than the illegal, unsupervised abortions that tend to cause the increased death rate you’re referring to – she can have the baby and put it up for adoption, for instance. Also, she can choose not to have unprotected sex in the first place if she isn’t prepared to be a mother. So, if anything, the “connection” between the position and the position holder’s definition of “murder” is much stronger on the pro-life side than on the pro-choice side.
But all of that is besides the point. The point, stated so well in the article I linked to and slammed home in stark reality by 95% of what you’ve written so far, is that most folks can’t stop defending their opinion as “righteous” and the opposite opinion as evil (or, in this case, murderous). I don’t believe for a second that you’re in favor of murdering babies, any more than I believe there are Republicans in high office that are in favor of murdering pregnant women. The issue is complex and will likely never be resolved fully, but the hyperbole can, and very much should, stop. The reason my argument appears to you as dismissive is because you consider anyone who recognizes merit to the other side of the argument as dismissing your own. That’s a pretty good definition of hyperbole in this context.
Brian, September 8, 2 PM
re: Point #3 – if you’re going to define “travers[ing] the gap between the two parties” as a side, then yes – everyone has a side. My “side” is the “middle” side. But that’s a pretty strained definition of the word.
Also, if I “consider both candidates in most races,” and you “settle for the Democrat and never consider the Republican,” then yes – you do less evaluation of a candidate than I do. In fact, if you’ve decided that you’re in favor of a candidate before you even know his/her name, then I’d suggest you’re doing *NO* evaluation of the candidate – you’re just reviewing the positions of him/her and his/her opponent in an attempt to prove your foregone conclusion – that the Democrat is right and the Republican is wrong. That’s not evaluation, that’s marketing.
Jeff, September 8, 5 PM
I rarely feel the need to rehearse my arguments, so I suppose you could easily argue either that my arguments are all unrehearsed and hence original, or that my mindset is so fixed that I stopped thinking originally in 1989.
Re the argument you posed, however: where you see inconsistencies, I see horribly sloppy thinking—or if you prefer, the kind of ignorance that I slammed in my earlier posts. Let N be the number of abortions where it is legal. N(1) is the number of abortions that are performed where it is illegal. It is true that N(1) < N. It is also true than N(1) is the kind of back-alley affair that led me to wear the clothes hanger pro-choice button in the 1980s.
Let N(2) be the subset of N(1) where the life of the woman is threatened or ended. The pro-life community wants to pretend that N(1) and N(2) are both zero—millions of data points exist to prove this is false. Personally, I believe that any nonzero number here is unacceptable, in much the same way that I’d be opposed to back-alley castrations.
Likewise, anyone who can formulate the concept that “a woman can choose not to have unprotected sex” is simply ignorant. I trust I don’t need to go into details.
So I think the real answer to your question is this: if someone is in favor of a policy that inescapably leads to a negative outcome, can someone say that they are therefore in favor of that outcome? I.e., pro-life inescapably leads to nonzero deaths of women attempting to have abortions, the invasion of Iraq inescapably leads to thousands of civilian casualties, etc. etc. I would say “yes, absolutely” if the person in charge of the policy is either cynically uncaring of the negative outcome, or “yes, with some slight wiggle room” if the person is willfully ignorant of same. The only possible “no” comes from “such an outcome could not be predicted at the time of the policy”—and even then holds the moral obligation for the person to reconsider the policy in the face of new facts.
This, incidentally, holds for beliefs anywhere on the political spectrum. I’m pro-gun control because I believe the lack of it inescapably leads to gun violence. There’s any number of research studies and data points that disagree with me. I don’t like having to reconsider the opinion—and I’ll admit that it’s very easy to say “any idiot can see that I’m right”—but I don’t approach that idea with nearly the certainty that I have about my pro-choice position.
Jeff, September 8, 6 PM
Point #2: unsurprisingly, I completely disagree that I’m ignoring the other side’s point of view—in fact, my ability to both state and argue for it implies the opposite. Pro-life is easy: if you believe that human life begins at conception (usually because of the infusion of the soul at that moment), then being pro-life is simply the corollary. Likewise, I grant moral points to the tiny sliver of my opposition who cares about both the “unborn child” (their words) and the lives of the women where abortion is outlawed.
It’s the majority of the pro-life community who are willfully ignorant and have no policy prescriptions to prevent back-alley slaughter that I state are in favor of murder. For the same reason, I say that people in favor of cutting off welfare after N months are in favor of an increase in crime or child starvation—the only way you can be in favor of one and not the other is if you’re willfully ignorant.
Likewise, if you can point out the outcomes of my beliefs and say that I’m willfully ignorant, I’ll reconsider them. For example, I’m strongly in favor of no-review welfare and easy access to government credit, to prevent things like crime and child starvation. The outcomes of that are an increase in fraud and government expenditure. I’m wholly okay with that. Show me different outcomes, and you’re damn straight I’ll reconsider my beliefs.
In my opinion, the reason I almost never have to reconsider my beliefs is because the opposing sides almost never make a factual argument against them. If you disagree with this statement, please feel free to begin one.
Finally: I think I’ve made a strong argument why my opinions are (mostly) rational, and the reasons why I’ll reconsider them. The problem with your attack on hyperbole is precisely because it creates a safe harbor for anything you deem hyperbolic. There are any number of philosophical arguments dating back centuries that ascribe the word “evil” to people whose policies result in back-alley abortions or wholesale civilian deaths. You seemingly dismiss all of them. I agree with a small subset of these—and have a regular mix of philosophical podcasts and audiobooks in my daily diet precisely to present myself with opposing ways of thinking.
When I want to listen to someone who disagrees with me who might present a factual argument, I generally listen to a Democrat. Or to a conservative who eschews the Republican label, such as you or Steve. Self-identified Republicans used to be worthwhile, but too many of them today start with precepts such as “Christ” or “global warming is a hoax”, which invalidates any reasoning that might follow.
Jeff, September 8, 6 PM
Point #3: again, your argument is far too reductive. You presume that the only valid decision point is which lever to pull. That’s ridiculous.
First, I’m generally deciding whether to vote Democratic or for a third-party candidate, so there’s the same level decision. Since this process includes considerations of game theory as well as straight voting procedure (i.e., will my vote for a leftist candidate cause the right-wing candidate to win), I’d argue that this is a deeper consideration than yours is, presuming that your votes don’t require secondary levels of consideration.
Second, I’m also deciding whether to volunteer for the candidates in advance of the race, or alternately whether to work with nonprofits and political organizations that may affect the race.
Finally, given how much I travel, there’s a “zeroth” consideration concerning where to vote. By default I’ll be voting in Pennsylvania this election, but I’m considering establishing residency in Nevada instead. Arguably, I’d say that even though my vote for Obama is almost certain, I’m putting far more effort into my exercise of the franchise than anyone who’s simply deciding between Romney and Obama.
Likewise, I’d argue that my politics require far more consideration of the parties than yours does. You’re a self-identified moderate, which means you’re catered to by both sides. I’m self-identified as “leftist”—I haven’t had a president campaign on my issues since 1936. That means I need to evaluate every candidate, then add in the game theory. If a libertarian streak occurred in the Republican party that was “Thomas Paine-libertarian” (as opposed to the Cato-libertarian that’s currently dominant), absolutely, I’d start giving that party a fair hearing. I don’t dismiss the Republicans out of hand; rather, it generally takes less than 60 seconds for nearly all Republicans to dismiss themselves by citing Christ or ignoring science, evidence, or some other segment of reality. When Christie runs in 2016, I expect that I’ll oppose him for different reasons, such as his record as DA or his opposition to gay marriage—but at least that will require more than 60 seconds of education.
Brian, September 8, 10:45 PM
Yeah, OK – we’re done here. I’ve given you several factual agruments, and you’ve ignored every single one of them, choosing instead to throw around words like “game theory,” quoting faux-algebra in an attempt to prove that abortion laws (and those who support them?!?) actually kill innocent women, and trying to convince me that your vote is somehow harder to decide than mine because you operate on some higher political plane than I do (including the idea that you might change states to influence the election more?).
You are clearly more intrigued by the argument itself than the substance of the argument and, frankly, I’m not. So at this point, we simply agree to disagree.
Jeff, September 8, 11:13 PM
Brian—I’m still waiting for the factual arguments. You’re attacking my rhetoric, and I’m explaining it. I’m resorting to philosophical concepts and algebraic terms in order to make myself more precise.
Yes, we’ve gotten caught up in a dozen side-topics, which is how these things usually go—I didn’t feel the need to discuss my voting strategies until you painted me as a knee-jerk thoughtless automaton. But I’d rather you didn’t disengage, because at this point your strongest argument against the initial point—the theory that politics might actually engage some life-and-death issues and should be discussed on those terms—has been that your tummy goes all wobbly when people get upset about it.