This works in 2 levels.
If they know their arguments are dishonest, it’s important to call them out on it and let them know that their BS didn’t work, and that they have further debased themselves in the discourse by attempting a bad-faith argument. We need to dispel the myth that playing dirty and arguing BS has no consequences. It has severe consequences, as the bad-faith actor loses credibility, respect, dignity and their seat at the table.
If they don’t know that their arguments are dishonest, calling them out allows an opportunity for progress, by engaging in the discussion to show them how their arguments are BS, and how they’ve debased themselves, exposing their ignorance, their bad company and sources, and pointing out how they are losing their seat at the table if they don’t sharpen up their civics.
Either way, taking the “high road” against dirty politics serves little purpose. Calling them out and holding a mirror to their dirty faces is essential if we are to have real dialog. Bullies only know strength.
The response to a low takedown attempt is a knee to the face, because it says: we saw it coming, you’ve achieved nothing and impressed nobody, and you are now concussed from the weight of your own ineffective maneuver.
Notice how the “high road” would actually be detrimental because it’s enabling. Engaging in discourse with their bad-faith BS only serves to validate their BS, legitimize their argument and show them unearned respect as participants in the discussion. When they act in bad faith, if we don’t treat them as bullies deserving of a knee to the face, we’ve embraced their BS and validated their approach. So, of course, they will do it again and again, and take it further every time. The “high road” people have made our political division worse, not better.
The bully doesn’t ponder on their bad string of choices until something shakes them up. If we want our national discourse to regain civility, since we’ve allowed it to get this bad we now must teach a bunch of people how to behave, by the way of corrective blows in response to each of their BS attacks.
And we must teach the “high road” people to cut it out and smarten up in how they deal with bullies and cultists. You are not going to Kumbaya a cultist away from racism, misogyny and religious adoration for their orange crimelord - because there’s no time and space to sit down with each broken, indoctrinated mind and cuddle it back to health. We need to set firm boundaries on how much BS we’ll tolerate (and at this point it should be near none), we need to hold a mirror up to their BS to show them how we see them and how much they’ve lost the argument and the respect, and we need to clarify why they are dead wrong and full of shit, and stress that they are the largely responsible for turning our civics into a mess and we demand that they cut it out.
Peter Shamshiri from the podcast 5-4 demonstrates how this is done in their patreon only episode Your Questions: Jury Nullification, Law School Reform, and More
I wish I could post the clip because it’s so well done and so cathartic but here’s the transcript:
0:46:19.2 Peter: “My question is, why don’t you ever invite guests on who disagree with you? If
your arguments are strong, there is no downside. Plus it would be nice to hear how you react to
others of goodwill who don’t see things how you do. Just a thought.” Well, the question I would
have for this listener is why the fuck would we ever do that [laughter]?
0:46:40.0 Rhiannon: The downside is I have to hear a conservative talking on my fucking podcast.
0:46:45.4 Peter: The downside is the podcast would suck ass first of all, [laughter] Okay. We’re a
podcast about critiquing Supreme Court decisions. If you want to hear the other side, just read the
fucking opinions. That’s the other side. That is the purported smartest people in America trying to
do the other side.
0:47:03.1 Rhiannon: Exactly. Clarence Thomas has the platform. Fox News has the platform.
We’re doing our own thing over here.
0:47:09.1 Peter: Fucking read the VALA Conspiracy or whatever you feel like doing.
0:47:12.4 Rhiannon: Exactly.
0:47:12.9 Peter: Plenty of people have written about like the conservative fetishization of like
debate. The implication here is that by debating with some conservatives, we’d all somehow arrive
closer to the truth. Right? Despite the fact that there’s like endless research showing that that’s just
not true and not how debate works. And my strong hunch is that this dude is not writing into
National Review or whatever pervert publications he reads requesting that they give space to
opposing views. It’s just something you want left-leaning media to do so that you can hear your
fucking freak friends in their ill-fitting suits describe their arguments to our faces directly.
0:47:51.8 Rhiannon: Exactly.
0:47:53.4 Peter: Turning our podcast where we speak openly from a left perspective about the law
into some bullshit New York Times debate nonsense that no one wants to hear and would end our
careers as podcasters.
0:48:07.9 Rhiannon: That’s great.
0:48:10.4 Peter: So my strong suggestion to this listener is for you to shut the fuck up and suck my
dick.
I love what you write, and I agree. Or rather, I want to agree.
We need to dispel the myth that playing dirty and arguing BS has no consequences. It has severe consequences, as the bad-faith actor loses credibility, respect, dignity and their seat at the table.
But like… Maybe I’m misinterpreting what you mean, but I’m sitting here thinking that apparently it has no consequences. Trump hasn’t gotten in any trouble for the absolute shitload of things he’s done and said over a period of at least 9 years (not to mention everything before that), and he’s still for some inexplicable reason eligible to run for president and thus have a very big seat at the biggest table there is, and is polling well for some reason. I see no reason to believe there will ever be consequences if there has been none thus far. But I really hope I’m wrong.
It’s easy to feel adrift in the sea of nonsense we’ve had to deal with the last few years. Let me recap some important developments:
Trump is easily the most hated man in America and possibly the world. He is a convicted felon on 34 counts, and the only reason he is not convicted of several other things is that Republicans are doing their darnest to jam the wheels of justice at least until the election. He is credibly accused and expected to lose trials on election interfering in Georgia, and the theft of classified documents, at the minimum. He is likely to be given severe prison sentences next year, after he loses the election and continues suffering the long list of legal troubles ahead of him.
In 2020, Trump lost by 7 million votes, and has only become more hated since then. His base shrinks by the minute and it has for a while. The number of people that call themselves “Republican” is at a generational low, not because the country has that many fewer conservatives but because so many people are done with MAGA and the Trump circus and no longer feel represented.
Do not go by polls or by mainstream media “reporting” on how Trump is doing in terms of the campaign. Polls have been a mess since the Trump era and they are far from accurate, and these days the MAGAs do everything in their power to appear as loud and supported because they know they are decidedly a minority in this country. During the GOP primaries, Nikki Haley was getting a third of the vote even after she had already abandoned the race, and that was Republicans showing up to vote against Trump for anyone, even a candidate that wasn’t running.
To recap, Republicans are a political minority in this country, and Trump doesn’t even have the support of all Republicans. No progressive would consider voting for the GOP in the current state, so all the GOP can draw votes from is their minority base, which is also splintered because of how many of their own people have grown to hate Trump and the disgusting MAGA politics.
Trump’s path to winning is to whip up every single voter he still has in a frenzy, and otherwise try to get most of the country to FEEL apathetic and defeated and stay home. Because if we all had our say on even terms, Trump and the GOP in general are going to get thoroughly rebuked by the overwhelming majority of the country that is done with their shit.
The MAGA have a vested interest in making it seem that they are proud and many. The media lets Trump get away with lies and publicity stunts because they are lazy, entangled in corporate interests, and they want the views. The reasonable people in politics don’t say clownish BS and spew vitriol, so they don’t make the big headlines. So Trump shows up everywhere in politics and that makes him look larger. The MAGAs are the only ones excited to pick up the phone when a pollster calls.
There are severe consequences for the kind of dirty, disgusting “politics” from MAGA and the GOP. They are holding on for dear life with the fraction of the electorate they still hold, and they only hold those people through malicious propaganda, by lying, misrepresenting the issues, aggrandizing single-issue voting, and keeping their base irrationally angry and hateful. And through gerrymandering and voter suppression and every dirty tactic they can muster.
The GOP is on a death spiral. MAGA has almost fully destroyed the party from within. The last few years have had deep and lethal consequences for organized conservative politics. They will not recover from this without a severe reckoning.
We just need to keep our heads cool and up, keep asking for a better quality of discourse and politicians, and vote that in when we are given the chance. Those of us that want a better country with better people at the helm are a large majority. Where we stand today, we’re more likely to send Kamala in with a blue wave than we are to having to suffer Trump again. And we need a blue wave to work on repairing the damage from the Trump admin. I’m tired of hearing a Dem president talk about how they want to do more but they don’t have the power in Congress. Let’s fix that too, and then demand performance from our elected officials. We are very close to retracing course back towards an age of reason, if we just trounce this MAGA nonsense hard this cycle.
Thank you for writing all that. I (and I’m sure others) needed to hear it in these dark times. I’m sure there are counter arguments to at least some of it, but I’m not going to concern myself with that and instead focus on the good parts. Here’s for a better future. 🍻
At the end of the day, the goal still needs to be to get politics “back” to being a cordial affair. I agree that you can’t just take shit without responding but you also need off ramps.
This works in 2 levels. If they know their arguments are dishonest, it’s important to call them out on it and let them know that their BS didn’t work, and that they have further debased themselves in the discourse by attempting a bad-faith argument. We need to dispel the myth that playing dirty and arguing BS has no consequences. It has severe consequences, as the bad-faith actor loses credibility, respect, dignity and their seat at the table.
If they don’t know that their arguments are dishonest, calling them out allows an opportunity for progress, by engaging in the discussion to show them how their arguments are BS, and how they’ve debased themselves, exposing their ignorance, their bad company and sources, and pointing out how they are losing their seat at the table if they don’t sharpen up their civics.
Either way, taking the “high road” against dirty politics serves little purpose. Calling them out and holding a mirror to their dirty faces is essential if we are to have real dialog. Bullies only know strength.
The response to a low takedown attempt is a knee to the face, because it says: we saw it coming, you’ve achieved nothing and impressed nobody, and you are now concussed from the weight of your own ineffective maneuver.
Notice how the “high road” would actually be detrimental because it’s enabling. Engaging in discourse with their bad-faith BS only serves to validate their BS, legitimize their argument and show them unearned respect as participants in the discussion. When they act in bad faith, if we don’t treat them as bullies deserving of a knee to the face, we’ve embraced their BS and validated their approach. So, of course, they will do it again and again, and take it further every time. The “high road” people have made our political division worse, not better.
The bully doesn’t ponder on their bad string of choices until something shakes them up. If we want our national discourse to regain civility, since we’ve allowed it to get this bad we now must teach a bunch of people how to behave, by the way of corrective blows in response to each of their BS attacks.
And we must teach the “high road” people to cut it out and smarten up in how they deal with bullies and cultists. You are not going to Kumbaya a cultist away from racism, misogyny and religious adoration for their orange crimelord - because there’s no time and space to sit down with each broken, indoctrinated mind and cuddle it back to health. We need to set firm boundaries on how much BS we’ll tolerate (and at this point it should be near none), we need to hold a mirror up to their BS to show them how we see them and how much they’ve lost the argument and the respect, and we need to clarify why they are dead wrong and full of shit, and stress that they are the largely responsible for turning our civics into a mess and we demand that they cut it out.
Peter Shamshiri from the podcast 5-4 demonstrates how this is done in their patreon only episode Your Questions: Jury Nullification, Law School Reform, and More
I wish I could post the clip because it’s so well done and so cathartic but here’s the transcript:
I love what you write, and I agree. Or rather, I want to agree.
But like… Maybe I’m misinterpreting what you mean, but I’m sitting here thinking that apparently it has no consequences. Trump hasn’t gotten in any trouble for the absolute shitload of things he’s done and said over a period of at least 9 years (not to mention everything before that), and he’s still for some inexplicable reason eligible to run for president and thus have a very big seat at the biggest table there is, and is polling well for some reason. I see no reason to believe there will ever be consequences if there has been none thus far. But I really hope I’m wrong.
It’s easy to feel adrift in the sea of nonsense we’ve had to deal with the last few years. Let me recap some important developments:
Trump is easily the most hated man in America and possibly the world. He is a convicted felon on 34 counts, and the only reason he is not convicted of several other things is that Republicans are doing their darnest to jam the wheels of justice at least until the election. He is credibly accused and expected to lose trials on election interfering in Georgia, and the theft of classified documents, at the minimum. He is likely to be given severe prison sentences next year, after he loses the election and continues suffering the long list of legal troubles ahead of him.
In 2020, Trump lost by 7 million votes, and has only become more hated since then. His base shrinks by the minute and it has for a while. The number of people that call themselves “Republican” is at a generational low, not because the country has that many fewer conservatives but because so many people are done with MAGA and the Trump circus and no longer feel represented.
Do not go by polls or by mainstream media “reporting” on how Trump is doing in terms of the campaign. Polls have been a mess since the Trump era and they are far from accurate, and these days the MAGAs do everything in their power to appear as loud and supported because they know they are decidedly a minority in this country. During the GOP primaries, Nikki Haley was getting a third of the vote even after she had already abandoned the race, and that was Republicans showing up to vote against Trump for anyone, even a candidate that wasn’t running.
To recap, Republicans are a political minority in this country, and Trump doesn’t even have the support of all Republicans. No progressive would consider voting for the GOP in the current state, so all the GOP can draw votes from is their minority base, which is also splintered because of how many of their own people have grown to hate Trump and the disgusting MAGA politics.
Trump’s path to winning is to whip up every single voter he still has in a frenzy, and otherwise try to get most of the country to FEEL apathetic and defeated and stay home. Because if we all had our say on even terms, Trump and the GOP in general are going to get thoroughly rebuked by the overwhelming majority of the country that is done with their shit.
The MAGA have a vested interest in making it seem that they are proud and many. The media lets Trump get away with lies and publicity stunts because they are lazy, entangled in corporate interests, and they want the views. The reasonable people in politics don’t say clownish BS and spew vitriol, so they don’t make the big headlines. So Trump shows up everywhere in politics and that makes him look larger. The MAGAs are the only ones excited to pick up the phone when a pollster calls.
There are severe consequences for the kind of dirty, disgusting “politics” from MAGA and the GOP. They are holding on for dear life with the fraction of the electorate they still hold, and they only hold those people through malicious propaganda, by lying, misrepresenting the issues, aggrandizing single-issue voting, and keeping their base irrationally angry and hateful. And through gerrymandering and voter suppression and every dirty tactic they can muster.
The GOP is on a death spiral. MAGA has almost fully destroyed the party from within. The last few years have had deep and lethal consequences for organized conservative politics. They will not recover from this without a severe reckoning.
We just need to keep our heads cool and up, keep asking for a better quality of discourse and politicians, and vote that in when we are given the chance. Those of us that want a better country with better people at the helm are a large majority. Where we stand today, we’re more likely to send Kamala in with a blue wave than we are to having to suffer Trump again. And we need a blue wave to work on repairing the damage from the Trump admin. I’m tired of hearing a Dem president talk about how they want to do more but they don’t have the power in Congress. Let’s fix that too, and then demand performance from our elected officials. We are very close to retracing course back towards an age of reason, if we just trounce this MAGA nonsense hard this cycle.
Thank you for writing all that. I (and I’m sure others) needed to hear it in these dark times. I’m sure there are counter arguments to at least some of it, but I’m not going to concern myself with that and instead focus on the good parts. Here’s for a better future. 🍻
/thread
At the end of the day, the goal still needs to be to get politics “back” to being a cordial affair. I agree that you can’t just take shit without responding but you also need off ramps.
Was it ever really a cordial affair? I feel like it naught be worse today but saying it was cordial feels like some rose tinted glasses.