How to argue politically, OG style

For Folks of The Future to use as a reference in their 'historical recreations'.

The history of this country contains a variety of unsettling political moments nearly as nerve-wracking as the one we find ourselves in right now. But one thing that makes this election year different from others is that anyone over 8 years of age can probably remember a time when facts and their attendant details played an important role in a political debate. (I imagine that some of you seven year old substack readers, of whom I am sure there are many, are rolling your eyes at this. But I swear, I’m not exaggerating. People used to cite facts and believe them because they were FACTS! Outlandish as this may seem, I remember a time when I used to worry that I wouldn’t be able to hold up my side of a political argument against better informed opponents who had memorized constitutional sub-clauses and the dates of historical precedents. LOL, right?)

 Of course I’m talking about ‘the olden days’ before the election of 2016 when “Because he’s crazy.” was thought of as a lazy rebuttal, not a carefully researched medical opinion and comparisons to Hitler and Nazi Germany meant you automatically lost the argument because you were reaching for such an oversized and over-used hyperbolic cliché .

Ha ha. Remember all that? Back when The Handmaid’s Tale was still classified “Dystopian Fiction?” LMFAO.

But because we now live in a time where provable details have become as anachronistic and fanciful as the field we once fondly referred to as “history”, all discussions between the ‘two parties’ in our democracy are fated to play out in the most chaotic way possible. I guess that is why, lately, I find myself nostalgic for the old fussy, rule-based and boring political rhetoric on which I was raised. I’m talking about those old-timey speeches delivered in a droning monotone full of numbers and metaphor- filled partial-truths that made everyone’s eyes glaze over. As a rule, although these political speeches would contain a lot of percentage point statistics, there would be no (0) mentions of shark attacks, low water pressure in toilets or Hannibal Lecter.

And that is why I have decided it is important for someone like me ( by which I mean me, myself) to leave a bread crumb trail for the people of the tumultuous future to follow, in case they ever want to stage any “historical re-enactments” and are concerned about getting the details right.

Who knows? Maybe some entrepreneurial denizen of the year 2060 will want to set up a Renaissance Faire type event out in some big empty field where they used to hold Lollapalooza (before the weather was 200 degrees) in order to allow the futuristic people and their robot companions to experience what an old-timey election cycle was like in the country that used to be called “The United States of America.” As with The Renaissance Faire, ticket holders will probably be asked to attend wearing historically accurate clothing ie. poorly fitting suits and matching crocs or low-rise jeans with visible thongs. They will be able to buy kale infused artisanal beers served in Starbucks cups and for extra verisimilitude carry around the kind of old-timey smart phones that didn’t even come with an app that was able to read people’s minds!

Then, to insure that participants have the most authentic experience possible, they will all queue up at ye olde “Political Debate Boothe” to take a shot at matching their ‘wits’ with someone portraying the kind of vintage political candidate that used to appear on ballots back in the days when candidates were expected to behave like they understood what was meant by the term “wits”.

To do this correctly, the proprietors of the faire would need to be familiar with the kind of rhetoric political candidates were using before they were all personality disordered white men who based their reputations on having made exceptionally high scores while taking a dementia test.

So I am leaving this note as a resource to be made available to all of my friends from the future. I hope it can serve as an explanation of the golden days of presidential politics, back in early years of the 2000’s: a more lighthearted and frolicsome time when Americans (as we used to call ourselves) still believed that a political argument was supposed to present a juicy layer of policy ideas spread smoothly over a crunchy, chocolatey flavored ‘fact-based’ infrastructure.

OLD TIMEY POLITICS: A BRIEF EXPLANATION

Dear Friends of the Future,

In the old version of The United States, which was sometimes referred to as ‘The Great American Melting Pot’ (based on an archaic but popular idea that many kinds of people combined their differences to create a more versatile and united citizenry….I know. LOL LOL) it used to be customary as well as patriotic to proclaim “I may not agree with what you have to say, but I would defend to the death your right to say it.” This big-hearted boast was delivered with humble conviction despite the secret suspicion that if any of us were actually called upon to enter into a death match of this type, the only risk we would have been willing to take would have been some kind of passive aggressive facial expression accompanied by flailing hand gestures.

Nevertheless, the afore-mentioned sentiment was at the heart of most political debate, which in those days worked very differently than it does now. The way it used to work was as follows:

Step One: EACH PERSON PICKS A SIDE:

•  Every debate consisted of TWO opposing SIDES, “The Left” and “The Right.” Both were considered an essential part of “a democracy” and expected to exhibit both logic and facts.

• “The Left” was thought to have more empathy for the human condition and therefore supported more funding for programs to help the disenfranchised and the less fortunate. These people were called “Bleeding-heart liberals.”

• “The Right” had a more fiscally conservative approach to spending. In those days, that did not necessarily mean the candidate also backed an anti-science-conspiracy-based-pro-fundamentalist-Christo-fascist agenda. And if he did, rules of decorum demanded that these ideas be politely hidden inside the empty phrase “family values”.

How to know which side was right for you.

A. THE RIGHT

If you were fed up with the idea of a sprawling bureaucratic government that didn’t allow white people to spontaneously invent all their own ‘God given’ privileges and laws, wherever and whenever they wished, you were said to be ‘ON THE RIGHT’. This made you a “conservative”, a term that started out having a direct link to attitudes about smaller government and curtailed spending, but wound up meaning that you were against any group of people who did not look exactly like you or whose views were not like your own.

As a “conservative”, you claimed to be “triggered” when a ‘liberal’ made any points about what used to be considered “basic human rights” and/or the preservation of what was once called “the environment.” But after The Citizen’s United ruling, when the Supreme Court decided that corporations were still considered “persons,” you were pleased to realize that you had finally met exactly the kind of persons you liked best.

Your Winning Strategy

Your path to the easiest win in any heated debate involving the problematic concept known as ‘compassion’, could always be found in any of a multitude of ambiguous Judeo-Christian Biblical quotes. For example Romans 8:28— “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” This one was always applicable, no matter what the issue, since there was no doubt that God’s purpose was perfectly aligned with YOUR purpose. Case closed.

Now all you needed to do to seal your win was throw in a Ronald Reagan reference. If you didn’t have one handy, it was fine to just make one up, safe in the knowledge that most right wing people under the age of 40, even back in the ‘olden days,’ had no idea what Reagan actually said or did. They just knew he was a handsome, craggy, beloved family patriarch, one time actor and former president who was not a liberal and who died before they were old enough to figure out how many of his policies had worked out very badly.

As “a right wing conservative,”it was also a given that you were a second amendment fanatic. Therefore, as long as you were speaking louder and faster than your opponent, it was not wrong for your opponent to become nervous and wonder if you were dangerously unstable. Thus, out of concern for their personal safety, your opponent might begin to take a step backward if the argument grew too heated and they began to sense a build up of explosive rage. At which point, your smartest next move would be to melt the logical core of your liberal opponent’s dialectic right back onto him in a way that was so confusing it was impossible for anyone to refute. Example:“*If clean air and the environment mean so much to you, how come you haven’t given up your comfy electricity based home and your gas guzzling car?” Naturally, many liberals could offer no easy way to explain why they alone had not been able to successfully re-invent all the accepted ground-rules of the civilization into which they were born. So…. score one for you! Easy win!

 B: THE LEFT

If you were comfortable with the idea of a sprawling bureaucratic government that pretended to give a shit about something, anything, besides massive tax breaks for corporations and billionaires, and/or you had the slightest amount of empathy for less fortunate fellow beings, you were known as “a woke far left liberal”. Before people gave up entirely on the idea of seeing logic as a useful tool, a liberal used to have to know enough about the economic ideas of Milton Friedman to counter a conservative’s fiscal arguments about budget balancing. That meant that a liberal had to at least scan Milton Friedman’s Wikipedia page before trying to convince a conservative opponent that ‘the trickle down theory of economics’ never actually worked. Also that Jesus himself thought that human beings ought to help each other achieve a base level of what used to be referred to, in the olden times and by the writers of “the Declaration of Independence” ( a whole other story) as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

YOUR WINNING STRATEGY

During especially heated discussions, a liberal’s best line of defense was sometimes to invoke the more humane, civilized customs of some theoretically idyllic European country. For example: “The people of Belgium have socialized medicine.So if you get sick there, hospitalization only costs a penny.” This was often effective as a conversation stopper because unless you were talking to someone whose family actually lived in Belgium, it was a given that neither you or your opponent had any clear idea what was going on in Belgium politically.

Another time-honored way to snap back from a verbal defeat was to counter with “Do you realize we waste millions on (unwinnable wars, propping up dishonest banks, giving tax cuts to the wealthy) while there are children starving in our own back yard?” This evergreen always worked because even back in ‘the olden days’, no matter which theoretically humane bill was currently being shepherded through which sub-committee, no significant amount of available funds were going to wind up being directed toward feeding hungry children anywhere, ever.

Sadly, one of the biggest problems for the liberal was frequently getting so frustrated by a right wing opponent’s un-relatable and bone-headed lack of empathy for his fellow human beings that mid-argument, the liberal would drift off into daydreams about delicious sandwich combinations. At these moments, while the conservative opponent slid ever more steadily into a racist diatribe, all the liberal would be able to think about (besides storming off) was the order in which they would most like to put condiments on the freshly toasted ciabatta bread. (BTW: In this example, by “the liberal”, I am referring to me. And the correct condiment order is mayonnaise always goes first. Always. )

Step 2: Now the idea is to argue and win ‘points’.

• The traditional old style debate used to involve allowing one person to make a point, followed by the other person’s getting a fixed amount of time for a rebuttal. This was before everyone decided that the preferred protocol was going to be that someone would start talking, and then the other person would jump in and begin talking over them. And this would keep going on and on, with each party drowning out the other, until someone had to leave to use the restroom.

• In the olden days, the points being made during a political debate were supposed to be indicative of the politician’s plans for running the country. Since they needed to deliver this message in as appealing and comprehensible a way as possible, many of the main ideas were reduced to a peppy 4 word slogan that could be repeated over and over. (“Better dead than red.” “54-40 or fight.””It’s the economy, stupid.”) With that as a guide, all that was then required of the debater was to hold on tightly, just as you would to the steering wheel of a runaway vehicle with bad brakes as it was caroming down an unpaved mountainside. From that point on, the speed at which the debater found himself traveling became far more important than the destination since speed enhanced by ever-increasing volume meant that the candidate was ‘winning.’

• Never, for even one second was either candidate allowed to indulge the ridiculous notion that the other side of the debate might contain even one valid point. Rather, the object of the debate was to annihilate your opponent’s policies entirely by enclosing your side of the rhetoric in an impenetrable air tight vacuum to which you could continuously return every few minutes. This was also the best way to cause your opponent to throw their hands up in disgust, eventually reduced to shouting “You’re not even listening!” before stalking off the stage…. leaving you with ANOTHER WIN!

Step 3: THIS IS ANNOYING, SO LET’S WRAP IT UP.

By now both candidates should have successfully charged boldly into a complete political gridlock by making one or two simple points repeatedly before declaring themself the winner . After that, all that was left was for the two opponents to shake hands, and then stand there seething with quiet rancor, making sure to never look at each other again. In the time remaining, both men (and let’s face it… they were almost always men) would just continue staring into the middle distance as they waited politely for someone to validate their parking.

The next day media would somehow declare one of them the winner. But since no one’s mind had been changed in the slightest, and there was no known scoring system, it was unclear how the whole idea of “winning” could even be decided. Eventually, polls would be taken to show that the debate did not really have much of an effect on the preferences of the voters.

One final note: The methodology I have described applies only to electoral politics, not arguments at family reunions. Do not try any of these techniques while debating with contentious family members. In such a volatile environment with stakes that high, the only debate technique that is considered safe has always been to smile, nod, then excuse yourself and make a run for your car.