“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster" - Friedrich Nietzsche
After last weekend's fake rage-bait story on Catholic MAGA kids disastrously backfired on us just as I warned people it would, I looked for some news stories about the incident on youtube and this very similar story showed up in my recommendations:
It's a month-old cellphone video from a MAGA-hat and Trump-shirt wearing Vanilla Ice lookalike documenting his experience getting screamed at and refused service by a vape shop employee. The video is so perfect and effective in it's portrayal of Lefties as deranged, hateful lunatics and our humble Trump fan as the noble victim & peaceful voice of reason and sanity, that at first I suspected it was staged. Towards the end of the video, even the black man waiting in line ahead of him sympathizes with the Trump fan. This was a gift on a silver platter to right-wing media. And I'm sure they had a field day with it, smugly gloating about how it proves their point about us crazy intolerant Lefties ("We told you Liberalism is a mental disorder. Here's Exhibit A"). Surely, that Lefty clerk couldn't be this stupid. Surely, he's in cahoots with the Trump fan. He's just a right-wing actor doing an over-the-top caricature of Lefty extremism, right?
Unfortunately, no. It turns out the video is all too real, confirmed by the DeKalb County Police Department and by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, who's story on the incident reveals that the Lefty store clerk was fired (obviously) and an official apology issued to the Trump-loving customer, along with a free supply of vape juice. Ka-ching!
https://www.ajc.com/news/local/dekalb-vape-shop-employee-fired-after-refusing-customer-trump-shirt/Hbh39TjLwkCOHTA5CulnZL/
But that's not all, folks. In a follow-up video at the bottom of the above article, we see our MAGA buddy embracing and chumming it up with his new best pal, the store's regional manager, who happens to be... a black woman. The Trumpist Right couldn't have won a better PR victory if they had planned it.
(the above incident is just one of many similar ones that have taken place over the last couple years. My photo image for this story is of a black MAGA-fan who was attacked at a Cheesecake Factory. see https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/05/15/cheesecake-factory-apologizes-after-report-black-man-being-harassed-wearing-maga-hat/611475002/ )
What's most disturbing and most relevant to my point here is that from the vape shop clerk's perspective, his spectacle of righteous outrage & refusal to serve this customer was due to the customer displaying "racist symbols". Hmm, sounds pretty bad. I know I wouldn't want anybody displaying racist symbols in my store. So what were the racist symbols in question?
Real answer: there were none. But if you ask Alyssa Milano and a disturbingly growing chorus of misguided activist Lefties, anything supporting Trump automatically = Racist. MAGA is the new KKK, don't you know. And how convenient! Now us Lefties have a ready-made excuse to abuse and discriminate against almost an entire half of the political spectrum. Hooray! We can be vicious hateful assholes to somewhere around 140 million Americans and it's ok because...we've reclassified them all as card-carrying KKK members. Yay for us! Take that, Trump fans!
Uh, not so fast. This is a bad idea. A very, very, very bad idea.
Are some MAGA-hat wearers virulent racists? Of course. Are they more likely to be racist than someone who doesn't support Trump? Probably. But are all of them automatically racist merely for wearing MAGA? Absolutely not. And that's a terrible, self-defeating argument to make. It plays straight into the Right's hands. Because it allows them to portray the Left as the rigidly close-minded, intellectually dishonest, ideologically intolerant side. It allows them to portray the Left as the side that refuses to understand nuanced arguments, preferring to jump to judgemental conclusions instead. It allows them to portray the Left as the side that's causing the division and polarization in our society.
This is why it's disastrously unproductive and self-owning for the Left to automatically associate MAGA with pro-racism/bigotry. It shuts down any opportunity to have productive dialogue, and it makes us look like the bad guys. The culture has shifted dramatically, and in a positive direction, in the several decades since the Civil Rights era. Today even most Republican teens and 20-somethings are socially liberal and tolerant of diversity. For example, in the full video from last weekend's confrontation in DC when the Black Hebrew Israelites launched hateful homophobic rants at them, the MAGA kids actually stood up for gay people! Isn't that what we'd want them to do? And when the Black Hebrew Israelites singled out their black classmate for abuse, they stood up for him, saying they loved and accepted him. Isn't that what we'd want them to do?
I guarantee you that if you ask Trump voters if they want to go back to a segregated society and repeal Civil Rights, the vast majority will say "No" (and most will be sincere). They aren't "Nazis", and we sound ridiculous when we say they are. Most of them hate Nazis just as much as we do. They're not KKK. Most of them despise the KKK just as much as we do. And you'd know that if you had bothered to actually talk to them. Most of them admit that Trump has said some crude, racially insensitive things. They don't agree with him on everything. But they forgive him because they've fallen for the myth that his policies are what's best for Americans, of all races. They don't wear the MAGA hats to be racist. They wear MAGA hats because they've bought into the myths that government should be run like a business and that Trump is a great businessman, abortion is murder, increased immigration harms the working class, and everything was better before the rise of "the welfare state". So instead of just calling them racist, which accomplishes nothing, let's rebut the bad arguments they actually subscribe to. We'd make a lot more progress that way.
But don't take my word for it. What do I know? I'm just an old white guy. Let's ask a young black woman. Hey, here's one now. And she even has her own youtube channel. In the video below from 2 months ago, she agrees with me that "dialogue is vital at a time when polarization is at an all-time high" and screaming smears at each other doesn't work. But unlike me, this young black woman is...wait for it...
...a Trump supporter in a MAGA hat! Who just participated in a convention of black Republicans (the "Young Black Leadership Summit"), many of whom also wore MAGA hats. And she is encouraging more young and non-white Republicans to wear and display MAGA material as much as possible:
So you still think MAGA hat = KKK? Oh, I already know how some of you will respond: "Yeah, but those black people have internalized racism" or "They're Uncle Toms/sell-outs/race traitors."
Ok, have you ever tried using that argument to a black conservative's face? I guarantee it wouldn't end well for you. I guarantee you'd end up looking like a fool. Because it's a shitty argument that always backfires. In fact, it's not even an argument at all. It's a smear. It's a smug, dismissive handwave. And I'm willing to bet it's never persuaded a single person in the history of humankind. And it never will.
Here's an idea that is guaranteed to work much, much better and be much more productive:
Ask them why they support Trump. Then address and rebut their actual stated arguments. Don't strawman them or impune their motives. That will just make you look weak and dishonest. Steelman them. It's not hard. This ain't rocket science. But if all they ever hear us do is scream "Racist!" at everyone, they'll assume we have no valid rebuttal to their arguments and they'll just continue proudly supporting Trump and wearing their MAGA hats, and convincing others to do the same.
And they'll have the ammunition to keep making clever videos like this one by another non-white conservative, Indian comic Neel Kolhatkar, pointing out how close-minded, hypocritical, and intolerant his Lefty ex-friends are:
Stop giving them that ammunition! We're better than that. We Democrats and Liberals are supposed to be the adults in the room, the reasonable ones with the logic and the facts, remember? So start acting like it! Stop embarrassing ourselves with childish screaming fits at the mere sight of a MAGA hat. Stop handing the Right such easy PR victories. And start behaving like the thoughtful, compassionate, well-reasoned grown-ups that we should be. Look for opportunities to engage Right-wingers in productive dialogue. Show them that we have heard their arguments, and we have valid reasons for believing differently. The Left has the better policies, the better ideas, and the better arguments (most of the time). But the persuadable voters we need to attract are never going to know that if all they see us doing is yelling "Racist!" at everyone and everything, and trying to silence, ban, de-platform, and demonize anyone who disagrees with us.
Some might argue, "yeah Andrew, but the reason we're so mad now is because the Left already tried and failed with your approach".
No, they actually didn't. In fact, I was pointing out as far back as my very first Kos diary back in 2010 that the Left doesn't spend near as much time on persuasive dialogue as the Right does (confirmed by polls conducted by Marquette University around that time). And this fact has been costing us dearly in almost every election. And after Trump won the presidency, we've only become worse, much worse, in our vitriolic refusal to discuss the issues reasonably with anyone who disagrees with us. We've doubled down on the same mistake that helped Trump win in the first place. And this only accelerates the vicious downward spiral of polarization we currently find ourselves in, while it also creates a perverse self-fulfilling prophecy - The more we act as if everyone else hates us, the more they will actually start to hate us.
This is an obvious recipe for disaster. But like that poor store clerk in the vape shop, and like the Twitter outrage mob who rushed to destroy the lives of some Catholic school children before all the facts were in, most of us are too stuck in fight-or-flight "righteous indignation" mode to notice the damage we are doing to our own cause. Please stop the madness! Please step back for a moment, take some deep breaths, and think about how to address our current crisis of polarization in a more strategically effective way. Here's some suggestions:
1. Try imagining what it would feel like to be an undecided voter who reads and watches both sides. What would they find most credible and convincing? What approach would they find most relatable? Remember "Who would you rather have a beer with?" from 2004? In a world of mostly low-information voters relying on heuristics to make their decisions, it is vitally important that we are the side they'd "rather have a beer with". For real and lasting progressive change, we need to bring those undecided voters to our side, instead of pushing them away (by, for example, subjecting them to unrealistic purity tests and ostracizing them when they fail).
2. Read Sun Tzu's Art of War. The advice within it is needed now more than ever. Do some opposition research. Learn what their strongest arguments are, and how to counter them. If you fail to do this, you will end up with a lot of egg on your face (as a whole bunch of deleted tweets from the Covingtongate fiasco will attest).
3. Don't assert claims or talking points your opponent can easily refute. Prioritize your strongest, most unassailable talking points, and discard the weakest ones. If you don't know which of your talking points are the weakest, find out ASAP! Search them on non-partisan fact-checking sites like Politifact, Factcheck.org, Snopes.com, and TruthOrFiction.com. If any of those sites dispute the assertion, then you should probably stop repeating it. Or at least do the necessary editing to change it into a claim that can better withstand scrutiny.
4. Think long-game, like a Chess player would. What may seem like a victory in the short-run can produce dire unintended consequences in the long-run. So game out what those negative consequences could be, and adjust your messaging strategy accordingly to preclude them. It may feel really good in the moment to take your opponent's Knight, but not if it then allows them to put your King in checkmate. The arena of public opinion is a lot like that chessboard. So be careful and think things through before you make a potentially fatal PR blunder.
5. Recognize that there are often more than just two sides to a story. There is a lot of nuance and several shades of grey in most political debates (for example: Stop conflating Culture with Race. They are not the same thing). Not everything is pure good vs pure evil. So stop assuming that everyone who disagrees with you is automatically on the side of your worst enemy. More often than not, their view lies somewhere in between. And stop assuming that everyone who disagrees with you has hateful, bigoted, or sinister motivations. You'll make a lot more progress with them if you give them the benefit of the doubt that their intentions are good, even if their conclusions may be wrong.
6. Stop letting yourself be manipulated by online rage-bait. The reason we see so much of that stuff nowadays isn't because it's actually happening more often (it's not), but because it's a cheap way for unscrupulous people to get clicks, views, shares, and re-tweets. So before you decide to share it and let everyone know how morally outraged you are, wait until the full story comes in. Wait until both or all parties in the incident have been heard from, and it's been properly investigated.
7. Do a little bit of study on human psychology and effective persuasion techniques. I’m surprised how many political activists never even bother to think about this, and then they wonder why their opposition keeps winning elections.
Here's an easy example of where we go wrong when we don't take even the most obvious & basic psychology into account - Put yourself in the shoes of the people you're screaming at. If they were screaming at you, attacking your character, and strawmanning your position, would you want to change your mind and side with them? Of course not. You would despise them even more than you already do, and you'd be even more determined to defeat them. So what makes you think it could possibly work out well for us when we behave like that?
8. Don't be disappointed if, despite your saying and doing everything right, the people you're debating politics with don't immediately change their minds on the spot. That's an unrealistic expectation. Most people are not secure enough to admit they're wrong in the heat of the moment. But you are planting seeds. You are giving them something to think about and research later. You are expanding their frame of reference. And even if they never change their political opinions, you have still accomplished something good: You've allowed them to see us "Lib'ruls" in a much better light, as people who can be logical, fair-minded, and reasonable. Anything that reduces the hate and animosity between the sides is a win-win for us.
9. Finally, stop thinking that just saying, "That's racist" or ""You're racist" can be an effective political argument. It can't. And it's not going to intimidate anyone into silence either. If our opponents say or do something we think is racist, we need to be able to explain specifically and substantively why their position is in error. If you're not willing or able to do that, then just calling them "Racist" is not an effective substitute. It can only backfire and make us look like the ignorant, intolerant, and uninformed side. So stop doing it. If seeing someone in a MAGA hat bothers you, that's understandable. It bothers me too. But if you're going to confront them, use it as an opportunity for a productive, open-minded conversation, not a hate-fueled shouting match. The survival of our democracy literally depends on this.
EDIT - I've noticed that most people commenting negatively have not bothered to follow any of the suggestions I offer at the end of this piece. So I think it's necessary to point out one of many examples for why these suggestions are so important. Here's something that simultaneously illustrates the need for my 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th, and 9th suggestions:
A majority of the commenters have displayed a distressing ignorance of the Right's counter-arguments to the "racism" charge. They seem blissfully unaware that there is a large, extensive body of literature on the Right that directly rebuts the "racism" charge. In it, the Right argues that conservative policies benefit minorities and liberal policies harm them. And that Lefties are the "true racists", who keep blacks on the "Democrat plantation" and "dependent on government", because the "nanny-state" Left "doesn't think blacks are capable of taking care of themselves." And leading this line of argument are well-known black conservative intellectuals like Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, and Larry Elder (along with countless more behind them). Am I saying they're right? No, I think their arguments are, for the most part, wrong and misleading. But because they are informing a lot of the Right's views on race issues, it ensures that when we simply argue "your side is racist" or "MAGA = KKK" (or "black Republicans are just Uncle Tom race-traitors"), it will not only fall on deaf ears, it will backfire on us. Because the Right has and will continue to use our ignorance of their actual positions to recruit more undecided and persuadable voters, particularly minority voters, to their side. This is why I am urging us to stop making these mistakes! Know what their actual arguments are and how to rebut them. Otherwise we will be a perfect example of "bringing a knife to a gunfight" and we will lose more voters than we gain.
As John Stuart Mill urgently and rightfully warned, “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion."
