| Friday, March 21, 2003 |
01:30 - The New Godwin's Law
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Zjonni and I had a long and interesting hot-tub discussion (is there any other kind?) regarding the war and public opinion toward it, and the various factors that have gone into shaping that opinion, especially over the past several days. I'd just shown him the Mohammad-vs-Andrea audio clip, which has reportedly been swaying opinions left and right (as it were), and he'd left my room with his arms held out in front of him, making the "O" face from Office Space. And thinking about what kind of meme it is, and how effective it is in driving home its point, made me wonder about how the psychological and political fallout from this war is going to look a couple of years from now. "The facts are on our side," he says. But are facts enough? Facts are the basis for our reasoned arguments here in the blogosphere, or at least in theory they are. We rely on facts and rhetorical skill to make our case and hope our audiences are open-minded and intellectually curious enough to follow the links we present and (hopefully) arrive at the same conclusions we do.
What's going to happen two years hence? The war in Afghanistan hasn't proven to be the psychological coup that many thought it would, because the facts and positive memes (girls being allowed to go to school, Starbucks and McDonald's and Hyatt hotels going into Kabul, soccer stadiums being used for soccer instead of executions) keep getting obscured by negative anecdotal memes like inflated civilian casualty rates, still being given credence even months after being discredited, and accusations of American empire/hegemony. I find myself wanting to keep a quiver of hard-hitting anecdotes to whip out in a pinch when in an argument, when I really want to lay some festering opinion to rest and sink a fact in up to the fletching.
The question, though, and what our discussion centered on, was the legitimacy of such an approach as an argumentation method. Do we legitimize anecdotal reasoning by using it? Or do we rise above that temptation, dismissing it as the domain of the opposition?
Because I've noticed-- and so has Zjonni, who wrote about it back on 9/14/2001-- that if there's one thing held in common by the anti-war Left, it's the tendency to argue by slogans, ad hominem attacks, and other such "cheap shots" that provoke a swift gut reaction in the listener, even if they're not based on fact or reality. The opponent can recite facts and reason all he wants, but the sad reality is that his boring facts will not sway the sloganeer. What we've got is yet another manifestation of the old creationism-vs-evolution debates, in which one side is reasoning from fact and working theory, but the other side is reasoning from faith. No matter what the scientist says or how many barbs he deflects, he's not going to sway the guy whose platform is founded on faith. The two sides are operating on completely different sets of rules. The one side refuses to use certain argumentative techniques that the other side feels no compunction against using, and so will never gain the upper hand.
A prime example that he brought up is the ongoing argument by which anti-war forces rage about how American depleted-uranium rounds have caused thousands of birth defects in Iraqi babies over the past twelve years. Look at these pictures we have! they shout. Deformed babies! Who can be so callous as to doubt our claim?! Never mind, of course, that depleted uranium does not have measurable radiation-- because it's depleted. It has less radiation than the carbon in the human body. And yet that point usually only gets brought up as about comment #19 in any given thread on the subject, and nobody ever seems to pay attention or internalize it. Why? Because the reasoned facts are boring, and the sloganeering and visual sucker-punch is a lot more effective.
The person whose position is based on faith will never budge; their faith will never be shaken. Stand at a podium next to someone screeching that depleted uranium causes birth defects; do your best to refute it. You'll never win, at least in convincing your opponent to your position, because no matter how factual and well-reasoned your argument, in the vocabulary of his argument, yours doesn't look any more forceful than stamping your feet and saying "...Nuh-uh!"
But that's the key: even if you don't ever sway your direct opponent, the goal of the argument is not to sway your opponent anyway; it's to sway the onlookers. The audience might well prove to be more willing to listen to a reasoned argument and differentiate between a faith-based platform and a platform of fact. This is where we who prefer to stick to facts actually stand a chance; you can see it in action in the Mohammed/Andrea clip, in which Andrea leaves the show clearly no more chastened in her pacifist position than she ever was before... but the audience, the thousands of people who have heard the clip by now, whether during the original radio broadcast or during its subsequent travels throughout the Net, are left thinking that God-- she was such an idiot! It's they who are the real targets of well-reasoned arguments. The direct opponents, the ones secure in their faith, are a red herring. There are a lot fewer of them in any case. What matters are the numbers won to your cause, not the volume at which they can screech.
It's easy to dismiss the mobs on Market Street as "rebels without a clue"; but to dismiss them without applying public opposition to their opinion runs a terrible risk: that the audience, the "silent majority", will hear their raving and take it to be valid because it's unopposed. They'll take it as the word of an authority. When the BBC compares our "shock and awe" campaign (which has killed between 10 and 200 Iraqi civilians, depending on the source) to Dresden (250,000), you can wave a dismissive hand and say "People are stupid"-- yeah, but these people are being listened to. If you meet the challenge head-on, you won't win over many of the actual opposition; but your arguments-- especially if well constructed and reasoned without yielding to the opposition's underhanded tactics-- will sway the much greater numbers of those watching and analyzing quietly from the sidelines.
Winning those numbers is a daunting task. There are a variety of traps to fall into when undertaking an argument toward such an end; avoiding those traps is a matter of "honor" more than prudence, but only by sticking to that sense of honor do we maintain a rhetorical moral high ground. And that's what's going to stand the test of time.
Zjonni said that in his arguments, he refuses to lower himself to the level of his opponents when they engage in the tactics currently so favored by the anti-war crowd: ad hominem attacks, appeals to gut reaction, pleasing ironies, sheer volume, and poorly-documented anecdotal evidence.
Ad hominem attacks can be very satisfying ("You chirping bird!"); they can be very effective. The temptation to yield to this kind of tactic is immensely strong, particularly when up against an opponent who deserves it. They're easy to identify, though, and while some debaters make a comfortable living using nothing but this tactic, no such rhetoric will have any relevance further down the road, when whoever the person was ad-hominemming against is no longer an active public figure or actively opposing the viewpoint in question. When that happens, all that's left is the original point-- which may well be revealed to have no substance.
Appeals to gut reaction are like the movie poster for Patch Adams: in the words of Paul Tatara, CNN's movie reviewer, with the clown nose and the warm smile, it was "like getting punched in the stomach with a fistful of dollars". It's the "aaawww" instinct, the temptation to show pictures of cute puppies or deformed babies to melt or enrage the viewer. Because who can resist puppies or babies? It's waaay too easy, and completely non-substantive. I remember being in a mock debate in seventh grade exploratory class; the topic was abortion, and I was on the "pro" side-- until the opposing side trotted out a photo of -- well, let's just say I know precisely what it's like to be on the receiving end of this particular argumentative tactic.
Pleasing ironies are what constitute most peace protesters' signboards: NO BLOOD FOR OIL. BUSH=HITLER. AT LEAST SADDAM WAS ELECTED! If a casual observer digs even slightly into any of these, he finds that it's completely bogus; but on the face of it, it can trip the same kind of frontal-lobe nerve that reacts to the gut-reaction tactics described above. Especially if there's a joke or a gag involved. These days, there's a strong tendency for us to think it's funny-- so it must be true! I don't think anybody seriously can make a reasoned case that the only difference between Bush and Hitler is the moustache; but in the first second and a half after seeing that kind of sentiment on a sign, worded wittily enough and accompanied by a good enough picture, the viewer's mind is softened up enough by the humor and irony to think, hey-- maybe he's right! And getting barraged by thousands of these signs in a day will break down anybody's defenses. This is the tactic that I'm tempted to label "The New Godwin's Law"-- compare Bush to Hitler, and you've automatically forfeited the argument.
Sheer volume is the tactic of putting a giant megaphone on your car and driving around preaching your message, like the Blues Brothers, at such a volume that you can't be drowned out. This is the tactic used by the protesters in San Francisco who think that if they just make their moves more and more extreme-- vomiting and shitting in the streets while obstructing traffic and interfering with daily business-- then they're sure to not be ignored. This tactic is best left to fantasy, right along with outright violence; because as we've seen, it's really easy to take this too far, and you end up alienating your entire sympathetic audience. And it's easy for this tactic to escalate into outright terrorism.
Finally, poorly-documented anecdotal evidence is the most insidious tactic of all, and it's the one I'm having the most trouble eschewing. Any time we post a link in a blog which digs up some obscure passing quote from some second- or third-hand source, we're employing this tactic. I can post a link to this story (via LGF), in which the "human shields" are leaving because "Some of the Iraqis he interviewed on camera 'told me they would commit suicide if American bombing didn't start. They were willing to see their homes demolished to gain their freedom from Saddam's bloody tyranny'"... and while this is exceedingly effective, it's also not the kind of meme that's going to stand the test of time. It might turn out to be false. It might get eclipsed by similar events that can be interpreted in a crucially different way. It might make for an amusing story sometime down the road, but it's never going to make as good ammunition after the fact as it will in swaying someone's opinion right now, in the heat of the moment.
And that's really what I wanted to get at: there are two kinds of audiences that I find myself arguing with the intention of persuading. There is the general public, people who I may or may not know personally; I might persuade them or I might not. It's really not too much of a concern to me whether I do or not, as it's overall just a game of numbers, of percentages of the audience convinced; but naturally I want to present as compelling a case as possible, in case it gets quoted or backlinked or inspires comment from someone at random months down the road. And so naturally I want these arguments to be as factual and well-documented as they possibly can be. If that means being a little less inflammatory and anecdotal than I might be, if that means being boring and stodgy and unoriginal, if that means carefully researching everything until I have an absolutely ironclad case to present (and all the attendant lack of effectiveness against a counterargument from someone willing to use the aforementioned underhanded tactics in response), then that's the risk I run. I'd be doing it with the understanding that my well-reasoned argument would stand up better in the long run and be relevant much longer than someone's ad hominem attack or cutesy ironic slogan.
But the other type of audience is the person with whom I'm personally acquainted-- maybe a close friend who holds a view opposite to my own, someone who I would really love to have on my side, someone who I want to be able to talk and laugh with after the whole issue is behind us. How does one conduct this kind of argument? Reason and fact are effective, but not always-- because, crucially, the person you're talking to is an audience, not an opponent; and he'll also be listening to people who are presenting opinions opposite your own, and those people might be using those very tactics that you refuse to use yourself. You might not want to lower yourself to using things like anecdotal memes. But the stakes are much higher, because you're trying to convince a friend-- and you're likely to lose, if the other fellow your friend is listening to feels no compunction about using those kinds of tactics. They're more effective, even if they don't stand up factually.
So-- in this case, do you stoop to the level of using those tactics? Is this a case where you might deem success to be of enough importance that those underhanded maneuvers might be justified? If it's an anonymous audience of many, it isn't crucial that you convince any one individual reader; but if it's a friend, it is crucial. So in these cases, I feel as though I'm justified in keeping that proverbial quiver of ringer points and memes slung around my shoulder, firing them off just when they'll be most effective, hoarding the karma points and spending them as I deplete my ammunition. Such a meme is a "big gun"; it's like a nuke, in that by God it'll get the job done, but there are real consequences for using it. Where it's appropriate to use would be a situation where I feel success trumps argumentative ethics; holding to a standard of rules-of-engagement is a nice-to-have, but success is a requirement. I really, really want the person to agree with me. And I'm willing to have some of my arguments come up for audit after the fact, and I'm willing to defend and justify them then, if it means that in the interim we can have consensus and harmony and the satisfaction of being on the same side.
I'm not talking about lying, of course; I'm talking about things like the Mohmmed/Andrea clip, the Day By Day cartoon, and in fact pretty much the entire blogosphere. It's all stuff that supports my position, yes, and it's all very persuasive. But it still all amounts to opinion; it's the kind of evidence that makes a strong case only when taken as a whole, evaluated as a collective zeitgeist, but which can seem uneven and unbalanced when examined piecemeal. There's no guaranteeing the validity of what you see on a blog, compared to what you might see on a major news site. There's no rhetorical legitimacy to formulating a political opinion based on a great comic strip or a sarcastic parody anti-war signboard slogan. Sure, it's funny; sure, it's great for provoking a gut reaction. Sure, over time it can cause a sea change in someone's worldview stronger than any number of dry documented facts can. But it's not the kind of evidence that will be as valid two or three years from now.
So in a (very roundabout) way, what I'm doing is more or less to try to put the whole concept of this "blogging" thing into perspective as a form of social discourse. What most of us are doing, really, is recording our memes in our own self-defined forums that we know follow certain well-published biases; we declare that we know we're all biased in a certain way, and then we have carte blanche to post nuggets of data that we otherwise might consider completely inadmissible pieces of evidence in a scholarly work. These nuggets all fit together as threads in a vast tapestry of opinion, a continuum that spans a generation of what once might have been called "wit"; and within those parameters, it's a phenomenon unlike any other in human history. Its power to convince and to incite to action is like nothing we've ever seen before. But its power is a dangerous one; with great power comes great responsibility, as they say, and we have to be sure we know what kind of thinking we're up against, and how to combat it, and how not to combat it. Opinion is a powerful tool, but it's not an end in itself.
How will we look back on this Iraq action two years down the road? I hope we can click open our old archives and be proud of what we find there. I don't know if I can say I will. But I know that if I at least keep in sight the tactics that the opposition uses, and find that I've been able to avoid responding in kind, I think I'll be pleased.
Yes, I know I'm being kinda hypocritical here; I've never been one to stick to pure fact and reason in the things I write here, and-- let's be frank-- ad-hominem attacks and pleasing ironies are fun, which is why I do them. Indeed, it's hard to reconcile this call to logic with my defense of the Mac; to advocate Apple is to advocate what is essentially a liberal cause (the Mac's superiority is based on ideals, anecdotes, entitlements, community mentality, etc), and the arguments I've used more often than not fall squarely into the categories I've described here. Facts and logic and reason would tend to dismiss Apple as irrelevant.
I'm not saying we all should avoid using these kinds of tactics at all times, or anything like that; and I doubt I'll be practicing what I preach anytime soon either. The whole reason I blog is that I like posting bits of out-of-context information that I can spin in a way that's to my liking. My point is that we're all entitled to use whatever underhanded tactics and biases we like; that's our right and what makes blogging fun. But let's just not kid ourselves that that's not what we're doing.
UPDATE: Various people have been ahem-ing and mailing me URLs about depleted uranium, and how it's really nasty stuff, the likely causative of Gulf War Syndrome, etc, etc. One scientific resource in particular that was brought to my attention was this study by Vladimir S. Zajic, which seems rather exhaustive. However, Zjonni and I pored over it for some time, and found that while it detailed a lot of the direness of risk entailed by being in the line of fire or scooping up DU-tainted dirt, the paper a) did a lot of speculative math about the DU dust contamination by a hypothetical projectile (followed by radiation readings taken by the Christian Science Monitor and Iraqi officials, as reliable as we know those to be); b) claimed that DU dust would be spread by weather effects (not true-- it's heavier than gold dust); and c) made no attempt to claim that DU had a link to birth defects-- except once, in which he admits that "the cause of these birth defects is unknown". And check out his list of references. "Nukes of the Gulf War"? "Swords to Plowshares"? "Metal of Dishonor"? The Independent? He's got a lot of actual scientific papers in the mix, but these other nuggets make them poor company. He then goes on to praise "respected British journalist" Robert Fisk.
We then did a Google search on "depleted uranium" "birth defects", and in the first five pages of links found nothing resembling a scientific paper that linked DU to birth defects. (After five pages we gave up.) And given the nature of Google, you'd think that at least some groups would have done a lot of linking to such a paper, kicking it up toward the top of the result list, perhaps? You'd think that those groups whose websites did fill those five pages of results would have had it as their flagship supporting evidence. But there was nothing. Plenty of resources which agree that DU is nasty stuff, responsible for plenty of health problems if ingested, but not the culprit in any way that can be proven for those birth defects (the pictures of which, gathered as they usually are into a group, show vastly differing symptoms which can be easily attributed to a variety of much more likely and present causes in Iraq at the time-- for one, no people had ever before been exposed to crude oil smoke in anywhere near that quantity before).
The upshot would seem to be that depleted uranium certainly isn't something you'd want to stir into your cereal, but I remain to be convinced that those waving signs with pictures of deformed babies are motivated by fact rather than the desire to kick the viewer's mind right in the nads.
Yet another UPDATE: Zjonni has dug up the following two sources which seem to do a pretty good job of refuting the claims in the Zajic study:
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_s03.htm
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