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This is a really excellent thread, and I think this point in particular is part of a larger thing: *this* is why it’s impossible to engage in good faith with these people.
We argue a lot about what terms mean, *because* we believe the meaning matters. They don’t. https://twitter.com/alexandraerin/status/1295407305979244544
We argue a lot about what terms mean, *because* we believe the meaning matters. They don’t. https://twitter.com/alexandraerin/status/1295407305979244544
You can’t compete in the “marketplace of ideas” with someone for whom words have essentially no meaning at all except the one they want them to have. How the fuck are you supposed to debate with someone when you don’t have any common ground regarding what discourse is?
And the answer is that you aren’t. Because it’s not possible to do, and the expectation that it is or should be is either ignorant or disingenuous.
They won’t stand on the strength of their ideas. They’ll slip and slide and dodge with meanings and definitions.
They won’t stand on the strength of their ideas. They’ll slip and slide and dodge with meanings and definitions.
It’s the same reason it’s impossible to debate with someone when you don’t share anything remotely like the same factual universe. You can’t debate a Flat Earther, because they’ve already settled on the terms, and they are not yours, and they won’t be budged.
You can’t debate with someone from QAnon, because they’ve arranged every fact and definition and element of knowledge and knowledge production around supporting what they believe, and they’ll alter those things at will in order to defend their position.
You can’t debate a Creationist, because they believe that the Bible is a literalist source of absolute knowledge and you (presumably) do not.
To a certain extent, we all engage in this sort of epistemology. We start with what we want to believe and work backward.
To a certain extent, we all engage in this sort of epistemology. We start with what we want to believe and work backward.
I recall hearing @drvox at one point on a podcast with Chris Hayes describing this sort of reasoning as approaching truth like a lawyer, not a scientist. Which most of us do to a greater or lesser extent. It’s not necessarily always a huge problem, it’s just human.
BUT. When you conclude that for your purposes, words and ideas have no meanings or definitions other than the ones that support whatever your point happens to be, it is not possible to debate with you. At all.
The idea that certain things are relative isn’t the denial that they have meaning, it’s the recognition that meanings are tricky and complicated and we need to go deeper than what seems apparent or assumed in order to arrive at any kind of “truth”.
They accuse us of that, but that’s because they assume everyone else approaches meaning the way they do. They think we’re playing the same game as them, and adopting only the meanings that are most convenient.
When in fact most of us have these great big fights about meaning *because we understand that meanings are powerful and they matter and we have to come to some sort of agreement in order to get anywhere*.
Generally the right doesn’t think that way.
Generally the right doesn’t think that way.
“Words mean things”. Not for them, they don’t. The notion that words have any set meaning is in fact for them extremely inconvenient, because often those meanings don’t support what they want to be the truth.
So they engage in the destruction of those meanings.
So they engage in the destruction of those meanings.
They want a world in which it’s impossible to debate, because on some level they perceive that debate in the classic sense doesn’t work in their favor. Because their ideas are usually bad ones, arrived at via a bad heuristic.
This is why people who study this kind of thinking say over and over that they’re not out to convince. They’re out to confuse. It’s much easier to flood the zone with shit and exhaust someone into feeling like what things mean doesn’t matter than to convince them.
Some of this is strategic—especially on the part of people like Steve Bannon, who knows *exactly* what he’s fucking doing—but I think for a lot of these people, it’s also instinctive.
I don’t think Trump has strategies so much as instincts that resemble strategies.
I don’t think Trump has strategies so much as instincts that resemble strategies.
He’s learned practically from birth that the very idea of engaging with someone in good faith is being a sucker, and this includes words meaning things.
Part of the philosophy of positive thinking is that the world is what you want it to be.
Part of the philosophy of positive thinking is that the world is what you want it to be.
Which means you get to decide what the world is.
He’s always thought that way, which means that while he has no ideology to speak of, he’s a great fit with the right. It’s the exact same toxic epistemology.
He’s always thought that way, which means that while he has no ideology to speak of, he’s a great fit with the right. It’s the exact same toxic epistemology.
Or let me amend that: he does have ideology. We’ve seen it guiding policy. What I mean is that he has no idea what the conservative movement is and couldn’t begin to define it if you asked him to.
He’s a great fit with more intentional people like Bannon for all kinds of awful, disgusting reasons. The epistemology part is just one particular one, and I think it’s a horrifically interesting and illustrative one.
Long story short: you can’t debate with people who approach the world this way. You can let them hang around and do untold amounts of damage, or you can shut them up and shout them down and kick them out.
