[Politics]
[politics] Incivility and false equivalency
One of the things that continually pops up in political discourse is false equivalency. “[X] was bad, but both sides do it.” The media does it, presumably in an attempt to present balanced stories. Extremists on both the Right and the (American mainstream version of) the Left do it, to justify their own rhetoric and behaviors. Centrists and independents do it as an expression of frustration, or a justification for not getting involved.
You see this especially in the problem of incivility and destructive rhetoric.
But the equivalency here is false. Remember the outrage in the media over a Bush-Hitler video in the MoveOn contest some years ago? Republicans in Congress grandstanded against one anonymous contributor somewhere out of thousands. We were told this poisoned the process, this was typical of the left. Yet during the Obama administration, leading Republican political figures have routinely compared Obama to Hitler and his policies to Nazism, without a hint of protest from the media or the public.
This ties back to Newt Gingrich’s GOPAC memo of 1994, and conservative pollster Frank Luntz’s ongoing updates of keywords for Republican use. Likewise the widespread use of eliminationist rhetoric in the Right wing commentariat and the edgier fringes of conservative political establishment.
There simply is no Democratic equivalent of the GOPAC memo or Luntz’s word lists. There is no Left wing commentariat with even a fraction of the audience and market share of Limbaugh, Beck, et alia, and such as they are, Maddow and so on, they do not engage in eliminationist rhetoric directed at the Right.
To say that “both sides do it” with respect to political incivility and calls for violence, intimidation and other forms of rhetorical attack is both untrue and ignores the specific, well-documented facts on the ground. One of the many reasons I’m a committed liberal-progressive is that I find the rhetorical tactics of the Right distressing and often disgusting. Even if they have something to say I might want to hear, it’s so often cloaked in a combination of aggressiveness and dismissiveness that closes my mind.
If you think I’m wrong, show me. Show me how conservatives have stood up and challenged the use of Nazi rhetoric to refer to Obama to the same degree they challenged the MoveOn video. Show me where the Democratic equivalent of the GOPAC memo is, and who uses it. Show me liberal talk show hosts with Limbaugh’s ratings, Beck’s attitude, who use eliminationist rhetoric to delegitimize the right.
Because so far as I can tell, the current poisonous climate of political discourse has been deliberate fostered by the Republican Party and their media proxies since at least 1994 in an attempt to energize their political base and polarize the sought-after undecided center. I don’t see good faith, or meaningful rhetoric about policy, politics and process. I see highly organized nastiness directed at a large segment of American society, an attempt to separate “Real America” from the rest of us. Yes, there’s always some leftie nut saying outrageous things, but those people don’t host major talk shows or hold national elective office, unlike the lengthy list of conservatives who say outrageous things.
Where am I wrong?
Posted: 6:03 am Thu June 17 2010 |
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You are reading the blog of Jay Lake, speculative fiction writer and author of hundreds of short stories, many novels, and winner of the John W. Campbell Award.
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Alex von Thorn
June 17th, 2010 at 6:31 amYou should have your own TV show.
JulieB
June 17th, 2010 at 7:32 amEvery time I say something similar, some conservative will pop up and ask where I was when the left was spouting the Nazi rhetoric and other name-calling about Bush. My response: Same place I am now. It was wrong then and it’s wrong now.
I can respect an argument a lot more when it’s based on facts rather than talking points and inflammatory rhetoric – on either side of the fence.
Jay
June 17th, 2010 at 7:48 amI’m pretty sure we didn’t have Democratic Representatives and Senators calling Bush a Nazi. It was fringe rhetoric from the left. We do have Republican elected officials at all levels using that rhetoric routinely. It’s just not the same, like saying, “Well, some red-headed kid threw a rock at me once, so now I’m going to go beat the crap out of all red-headed kids I meet, and you can’t tell me there’s any difference.”
JulieB
June 17th, 2010 at 8:29 amI’m sure you’re right, Jay, but to hear the right go on about it, you’d think that was the case.
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June 17th, 2010 at 12:35 pm[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jay Lake, torforgeauthors and SFWA authors, Night Shade Books. Night Shade Books said: Jay Lake: [politics] Incivility and false equivalency: One of the things that continually pops up in political dis… http://bit.ly/bn1xwO [...]
Rick York
June 17th, 2010 at 4:51 pmThere is a near equivalent of the GOPAC memo, George Lakoff’s “Don’t Think of an Elephant”. Lakoff has articulated a set of principles for framing political arguments. He examines how Republicans have learned to use simple-minded phrases to identify their issues in terms. They use words and phrases that are easy to understand and completely cloud the issue.
A classic example is the infamous “death tax” – the inheritance tax. There was a time when most of us middle class folks believed that inherited wealth could lead – as it clearly has – to plutocracy. So, we supported inheritance taxes to help prevent such a trend.
The right attacked the inheritance tax by calling it “the death tax”. Then they persuaded people we would all be rich and didn’t we have a right to leave all our money to our children? The following illustrates the idiocy of this pie-in-the-sky argument: in 2006 2,426,000 people died. In the same year 31,000 estates paid estate taxes.
In 2005 David Cay Johnston, financial writer for the Times, challenged the Republicans to find one farm or small business that was lost due to estate taxes alone. No one has answered him yet.
As long as he Democrats let the right determine the terms of the argument, we will always lose.
The last year has demonstrated quite clearly and painfully the Democrats tendency to let the other side frame the terms of the debate. Does anyone remember John Kerry responding to the Swiftboaters – two years after the election?
Who says words won’t hurt you?
Jay
June 17th, 2010 at 4:55 pmHmm. Definition of terms issue, perhaps. Lakoff’s book may be the philosophical equivalent of the GOPAC memo (let us posit that for the sake of discussion), but it is not so far as I know even remotely the operational equivalent. I’m not aware of the Dems adopting it, or pursuing framing as a strategy.
Personally, I think the greatest trick the modern GOP ever pulled was convincing everyone, including the media themselves, that the media was laced with liberal bias. That’s where the framing was really lost.
JulieB
June 17th, 2010 at 4:59 pmAh, this is one of my favorite canards. “You don’t agree with me on this single issue, so therefore you must be liberal/conservative/whatever is the opposite of my belief set.”
There’s a guy I spar with occasionally on our newspaper web site. He and I agree on a lot of things, but every time we disagree with something he trots out that reasoning. Of course, he’s ALWAYS right … in his own mind.
Cora
June 17th, 2010 at 7:58 pmOne thing I have noticed regarding political discourse in the US is that there is the assumption that depending on political affiliation people will have a whole bundle of beliefs and opinion that inevitably go together. If an individual differs from the assumed bundle of opinions in one or two point, that person is often immediately accused of being in the opposite camp. Since I am neither American nor can I be neatly slotted into American political divisions, this has caused some confusion.
This phenomenon seems specific to the US, probably because the political division in two opposing camps is so entrenched. In other countries, where the political spectrum is more varied and more flexible, you do not get these rigid assumptions. Of course, when a person reveals that he or she voted conservative or liberal or social-democratic or green or left, you get some idea of their political beliefs. But there are still plenty of people, including high profile politicians, who do not match the assumed beliefs of their party.
Jason Block
June 17th, 2010 at 7:37 pmThe neat (or scary) thing about Newt’s memo is how readily the fuzziness of the language lends itself to complete reversal of his intent. All of the ‘bad’ terms can be applied to the Republicans. All of the good ones to Democrats.
Earl Cooley III
June 18th, 2010 at 12:27 amOne of my favorite phrases is “terminal terminology definition dysfunction” (from an old Vaughn Bode underground comic).
Alexis
June 18th, 2010 at 6:28 amThis is why I can’t listen to news or politics. I just hate the incivility, the screaming, the personal insults, the childish circular ‘reasoning’. I can and do have civil conversations (and friends!)who have very different political beliefs than my own, thoughtful, considered, different political beliefs. One of my great frustrations with the Democrats in this country is the way they allow the Republicans to define the arguments and the terminology. Another frustration is that they are too polite to tell the damn Republicans that most of their objections to Obama are that a) He’s black b)He’s president and c) He’s NOT Republican. His policies are criticized for those reasons and ONLY those reasons. For some reason, no one wants to say that out loud. ‘Liberal’ media my ass!
Stephen Watkins
June 18th, 2010 at 6:45 amThe reason that no one in the media will point this out is that to do so is “to play the race card” – another Republican framing that casts a thin veneer of “can’t we all just get along” over the institutionalized racism of their party.
JulieB
June 18th, 2010 at 6:49 amCora, I’m American, but I certainly understand what you’re saying – particularly so since I live in Texas, where the “my way or the highway” mentality rules.
And I’m really tired of apologizing for our politicians. This is not the first time I’ve considered moving so I could vote against Joe Barton.
I hear you, too, Alexis. Some close friends of mine are conservative, yet we can talk politics because all of us – gasp! – think for ourselves.
Cora
June 18th, 2010 at 4:31 pmNo need to apologize, Julie. Most of us outside America understand that not all Americans nor all Texans voted for or supported Bush and his cronies.