It’s still a compound sentence, but maybe the better first response than “first of all…” is “You’re not only wrong, you’re also evil.”

I think the most effective thing is to just flat-out respond “They are lying” or “This is a bald-faced lie” and then let people get interested enough to listen to the compound answer.  The right has proven that you never really have to justify the stuff you spew in the media, so you might as well counter with the shortest and most succinct reply: It is a big fat lie.  Then if no one remembers the compound or complex rebuttals that come next, they at least remember that someone was accused of lying by someone who was able to talk like a smarty-pants.  After a while of enough progressives calling out lies, lies, lies, people will start to associate what Republicans say with untruthfulness or questionable truthfulness at least.  The trick is only having the courage to call out the lies in the first place and then whenever they crop up again.

Definitely attack the lie - explain simply how it’s wrong, how it’s not a fact.  In the sound-bite driven culture, this attacks, quickly and directly, the credibility of the speaker.  If the lie is shown immediately to be such, any effed-up conclusions are more likely to be dismissed by any listeners, because the credibility of the source of those conclusions has been hit.

I agree, linz; pointing out the lying is probably the best that can be done. This is a really tough rhetorical trick that the right is doing. For me personally, it also gets to my head, since I both am big on accuracy and truth and also because I hate the ideology that these people are promoting.

What really gets me are the multiply-wrong statements. The woman at the McCain event who had the “I can’t trust Obama, he’s an Arab” line was a classic example; I can think of at least six ways that her message (in the context of everything going on) is wrong. I sure hope that calling out the lying will work well in these cases as well…

Of course the “That’s a Lie” approach is going to immediately provoke pearl-clutching and clucks about incivility and the like. Probably worth mixing in a few “That’s simply not true”, “That’s wrong” etc. Let the firebrands go right to using “lie”, they can be lightning rods. Then the “moderate” response is just that it is wrong and untrue.

Now that I’ve written that, I’m not really sure it holds up as much of a difference in the long run.

I think the quickest answer is saying “That’s a lie”, “That’s not true”, “That’s wrong”.  People will perk up enough to hear why.  Or by saying exactly what they are saying - “So having sex is worse than cancer?” “So you want public schools to teach religion?”

At least, it works for the people that I talk to.

LC, I prefer the straight-up firebrand approach, but I think it depends on the lie and how it’s being delivered.  If it’s of the “I can’t trust Obama, he’s an Arab” variety, then it deserves a ‘you’re either a stupid racist or a lying racist’ response.  I’m currently in the umpteenth year of my crawl through an undergrad program, and I notice one of the things about the academic environment is the reflexive respect that’s given to all viewpoints, even the obviously ‘fuckwitted’ ones.  I was actually impressed by one professor, an accomplished attorney teaching a constitution class, who kept a straight face and pulled a pretty decent conversation out of a classmate’s assertion that he was a ‘strict constructionist.’  My impulse was to ask the guy, “listen, pinhead, do you even know what the fuck that means?”

Of course, the rub is that the wingnuts have learned to exploit that academic politeness and use it to throw massive piles of shit into the works, knowing that their respectful, reality-based opponents have to expend time and energy forming a polite method of calling bullshit.  I think we should learn to shift tactics a little, and be ready to deploy an initial response that ranges anywhere from “that’s simply not true” to “you lying piece of shit…”

Another example is any appeal to the “good old days” because of course mothers never had jobs, children never acted up in school, and nobody ever had premarital sex until 1969 when society fell apart.  Of course mothers have always worked, kids have always been hyper in school, and teenagers have always had sex outside of wedlock.  But those things wouldn’t be bad even if they were brand new inventions.

I’ll play:

Argument:  Women who terminate their pregnancies go on to suffer post-abortion syndrome, a nasty case of depression and regret.  (Anthony Kennedy of the Supremes in Gonzales v. Carhart, 2007).

Factual error:  The opposite choice—letting the pregnancy continue and giving birth—is more likely to cause depression.  Abortion is a sensible way to prevent depression.  As for regret, all life decisions generate this risk.  There is no evidence that abortion is more regretted than other choices.  Probably much less.

Ideological fuckwittery:  Women should lose one of their civil liberties because, who knows, they might regret the choice they make.  People of all genders might regret choosing to exercise any number of their constitutional rights (“I shouldn’t have confessed,” “I’d have been better off representing myself without a lawyer”), but SCOTUS has used its bogus post-choice syndrome to abrogate only one constitutional right.

“Global warming is a myth! It’s all a liberal conspiracy to destroy our freedoms!”

Factual error: that anthropogenic climate change isn’t happening. You need to have your head buried deep in the sand and fingers planted far into your ears to miss the overwhelming consensus that climate change is no joke.

Ideological horribleness: that they would rather make the planet uninhabitable for their grandchildren than use different light bulbs or a different transportation strategy. It’s the idea that the “freedom” to consume as much of whatever they want as they please is more important than keeping the Earth in such a condition that our species can continue to live on it without a precipitous die-off.

The problem is that whichever falsehood you attack first, you leave the impression that the other one is OK. Which is why something extreme is so attractive as a way of stepping out of the frame. I kinda like the “Even if you weren’t lying, you’d still be a <misogynist/racist/bigot/apologist for the rich/whatever” or “Which of your lies do you want me to expose first?” approach because it gives them the same kind of two-front attack they’re trying to mount, only without the lying part.

I think another potential avenue of attack is to force them to continue their argument past the soundbite. Because all of the fuckwittery is based on the the assumption that the thing they’re (falsely) claiming something leads to is bad.  So women having more sex and enjoying it is bad why? Discouraging bankers from spending 100 hours a week betting with trillions of dollars of other people’s money is bad why? and so forth.

Man, I clicked “comment” to say, “Start by accusing your opponent of falsehood.”

The reason is, people will give you a chance to make your case, once you start out with the bald accusation.

Oh, and “I read about someone on foodstamps going to Whole Foods”

Falsehood: that people receiving government assistance regularly spend their money unwisely

Ideological fuckwittery: To avoid the possibility that a poor person might eat something delicious and healthy now and again, we should make them go hungry.

Argument: Amending the state constitution to ban gay marriage would be good for business and job creation. You should vote for this amendment to help the state’s economy.

Factual error: An anti-gay amendment would actually hurt the state’s economy. Executives of our state’s largest companies have stated explicitly that an anti-gay amendment would be very bad for their businesses, and would in fact push them to move their businesses elsewhere.

Ideological fuckwittery: We should restrict people’s civil rights for economic reasons.

Extended argument: Banning gay marriage is good for the economy because children who are raised by both a mother and a father are better workers.

Factual errors: Multiple.
1) Total lack of evidence that children raised this way are better workers than those who aren’t.
2) What does “better workers” even mean?
3) Banning gay marriage does not ensure that all children will be raised in households with two married opposite-sex parents.
4) The problem is a lack of jobs, not a lack of workers.

Ideological fuckwittery: Multiple.
1) As above, that we should restrict people’s civil rights for economic reasons.
2) Everyone who marries will raise children.
3) Straight people make better parents than gay people.
4) The main purpose of childrearing is to make children into good workers.
5) People are only unemployed because they are bad workers.

Perhaps off-topic, but I’ve been running into this problem since I was a queer little 13-year-old arguing for gay rights. The homophobic religious right is a fertile, fetid pile of manure that fosters arguments that are both factually incorrect and ideologically poisonous. I switch up which aspect I attack, though I tend to go for factually incorrect. Thankfully, after 10 years of doing this, I’m seeing the tide recede a bit.

Some homophobic arguments that are both lies and fucked up ideas: “It’s not natural,” “If children know about gay people then THEY’LL turn gay,” “They can’t reproduce, and marriage is for making babies” and its stupid cousin “if EVERYONE were gay we’d go extinct.”

It’s pernicious though. If someone were to argue that feminists are bad because they are “all hairy lesbians” I feel bad countering with examples of non-hairy non-lesbians because some feminists ARE hairy, lesbian or both and I don’t want to treat those traits as bad, or treat some feminists as embarrassments to be hidden on the basis of their hairiness or lesbianosity. Same thing with gay people that wish to be married and childless, when I’m countering the “gay people don’t reproduce, therefore no marriages for them” line.

That’s the thing about combating stereotypes; some people of the group might embody those traits, and if the traits are for things that should be morally neutral (hairiness, childlessness, being a bit effeminate or camp for gay guys) I don’t want to encourage throwing camp gay dudes under the bus to be more respectable to people inclined to be bigots.

After a while of enough progressives calling out lies, lies, lies, people will start to associate what Republicans say with untruthfulness or questionable truthfulness at least.

“Evolution is a lie.  Global warming is a lie.”

“Shit - both sides are at it again.  Think I’ll sit this election out.”

The problem with attacking the lie before the fuckwittery is that we have a media culture that is so desperate to appear “balanced” (lest they risk being called out for bias by the blatantly biased Fox News) that it won’t report lies as lies. As Paul Krugman pointed out, the headline “Opinions differ on the shape of the Earth” is not that far-fetched. All calling a lie a lie suggests is that the truth is somewhere in the middle, particularly because calling something a lie is deemed shrill and rude.

I think there may be some value in mocking the fuckwittery first before attacking the fact. “Let me get this straight - it’s better for women to die from a preventable disease than to have sex. That’s your view?”

argument: Women would be much happier if they would leave the workforce and return to the domestic duties they are more qualified for.

factual error: The opposite has been documented everywhere from The Feminine Mystique to the most feminist show on TV, <iMen.</i>

ideological fuckwittery: This seems to be the favorite argument of female wingnuts, such as Beverly Lahaye and Phyllis Schafley. Funny how it doesn’t seem to apply to them.

That’s Mad Men. I hate typing on a phone.

Factual error: There is no evidence for this assertion, and some counter-evidence that raising the marginal tax rate actually encourages business executives to make better decisions for their companies, because they can’t drive them into the ground, grab a golden parachute, and leave others to clean up after them.

*sniff* Amanda does read my links.  I feel like I’m so less lonely now…

Sam Halloway - I think that’s a better metric. The inanity of the argument can dictate the response, modulated by personal style, I think. Shotgunning all over the range from It’s a Lie to That’s Wrong probably works since it still positions the whole discussion as inane, which is the point.

Amanda, thanks for your clear-sighted, well-written and insightful writing as always.  You have laid out the basic problem here, and you are absolutely right.

Now - what do we do about all the wingnuts who simply don’t care about what’s true or false, and who have big bucks helping them “catapult the propaganda” (per Dubya Bush)?

And what do we do about wingnuts who can actually say “food stamps mean poor people aren’t really poor” at the same time as saying “food stamps are an example of socialist evil that should not exist in Our You Ess of Murka, so vote Republican!”

As Paul Krugman pointed out, the headline “Opinions differ on the shape of the Earth” is not that far-fetched.

And that there is a good example of why there’s a problem when you have to argue with these people.

What Krugman (and most people) are thinking of is the difference between the idea of the world being round and the world being flat. The problem is that “round” implies a perfect sphere, and of course, as everyone knows (or should) the planet is an ellipsoid (or geoid): the equatorial diameter of the Earth is 12,756 kilometers, the polar diameter 12,713 km…or, to put it simply, the planet is about 43 km wider than it is tall. Of course, a 0.34% difference means about squat, so if you want to consider the planet as a sphere, that’s close enough for the vast majority of situations although not technically correct

See what I did just then? By going into technical details, I’ve started boring probably half of people and most of the other half think I’m being a pedantic jerk. But that’s a problem. Telling a lie is easy: “The Earth is flat!” “Evolution has never been observed!” “We can’t have evolved from monkeys because there are still monkeys!” “Making rich people richer will be better for everyone!”. Correcting the error, without being careful how you phrase it, gives someone an opening allowing them to start making the fight about the details of your definitions, instead of the overall point that your argument is the right one. All anyone remembers is that you are being long-winded and constantly defensive.

This is High School Debating 101: if you can make the other side have to defend the definitions and details of what they’re supposed to proposing instead of the general merits of the argument, you win. To use an example from the American justice system, if an anti-death penalty advocate gets into a fight with a death penalty supporter over whether a particular method of execution is cruel and unusual, the supporter has already won the argument. It shouldn’t matter how an execution is carried out, only that it’s being carried out at all.

That’s why I’m a proponent of always being aggressive and taking the fight to them, and putting them on the defensive, making them justify their arguments. James Randi’s schtick of going on stage and downing the entire contents of a bottle of “homeopathic sleeping pills” or something similar is a good example. When he does that, suddenly the focus is shifted from him having to explain why homeopathy doesn’t work to them having to explain why he could do that without any effects, unlike medicines, even “herbal” ones, that actually do something. And when they have to address it, suddenly they can’t go on about Big Pharma or traditional healing, or the other crap, an they’re the ones who have to give long-winded explanations. Which are full of shit, making them easier to attack.

Well, there’s always the 15% that’s crazy.  You can’t change them, but you can mitigate their arguments with facts.

@Comment #2: linz on 10/28 at 05:30 PM

I think the most effective thing is to just flat-out respond “They are lying” or “This is a bald-faced lie” and then let people get interested enough to listen to the compound answer. ...

This is key. I would add, you should be willing to say, “That’s dumb.” You have to be willing to face down your opposition and simply state the obvious. Certain people will get offended but those people will never be convinced by logic or facts anyway.

Argument: Families are better at raising children than single parents. Women should return to raising children and letting the men go out and be the breadwinners.

Factual Error: Surviving as a single wage-earner conventional nuclear family in the present day and age is impossible due to a 30 year stagnation of wages.

Ideological Fuckwittery: The party of “Family Values” doesn’t practice what they preach. They favor the investor class over the labor class.

Argument: Abortion and birth control should be restricted women are sluts and because they kill babies.

Factual Errors: Married Women get pregnant too. Babies are not fetuses, embryos, blastocysts, etc. none of which are viable outside the womb. Birth Control prevents ovulation, not conception or implantation, ad infinitum.

Ideological Fuckwittery: The idea that mother’s life is somehow less important than a collection of cells, restricting the civil rights of the female sex, invading the right of privacy of a couple, forced childbirth even in cases of rape, incest, or incestual rape, ad nauseum.

Argument: Annoy a Liberal, Get a Job!

Factual Error: Liberals aren’t annoyed by people working. The vast majority of liberals (like the vast majority of conservatives) work themselves and would hate to lose their paycheck and have to live entirely on public assistance.

Ideological Fuckwittery: Annoying liberals is a good in itself, irrespective of the pragmatic consequences of the supposedly annoying actions. It’s a short step from “Annoy a Liberal, Get a Job!” to “Annoy a Liberal; Eat Only Hamburgers!”

2) What does “better workers” even mean?   (snowmentality @ 15)

Gay parents don’t beat their kids enough.

evolution happens and that it explains how life came to be
minor quibble here:  evolution happens and it explains how the diversity of life came to be. technically, we haven’t yet figured out how life came to be in the first place, although biochemistry has come up with some pretty good theories.

“Ideological Fuckwittery: Annoying liberals is a good in itself, irrespective of the pragmatic consequences of the supposedly annoying actions. It’s a short step from “Annoy a Liberal, Get a Job!” to “Annoy a Liberal; Eat Only Hamburgers!””

There seems to be a consistent mean streak in modern conservatism that values literally or conceptually annoying liberals or making them angry.  (Witness Perry talking about poking Obama with birtherism crap for the pure childish glee.)  And it doesn’t even need to actually annoy any real “liberals” (defined as anyone outside of the core tribe, which even includes most “conservatives”), it’s just as good if wingnuts believe it will — reality is only embraced when it works in their favor, otherwise unreality is just fine.

Not sure how you combat that kind of thing.  Look at Bush Jr. — he liked to annoy those around him whether they were “liberal” or not.  It was/is a disturbing part of his sickening personality.  If morons like him never grew out of such childish behavior, what can we do now?...

Fine, then. Came to be as it is.

But I have to chime in and point out that since points are lost in public debates for long-windedness and pedantry, this is why we lose.

There seems to be a consistent mean streak in modern conservatism that values literally or conceptually annoying liberals or making them angry.

Well, it’s a well known fact about debate that if one side gets angry, the other side automatically wins.

@Karalora, I have a line that seems to work extremely well on that sort of thing.  “Yeah, I’ve noticed that it’s a high conservative priority to harm their fellow Americans.”

The thing is, it’s true, of course.  But getting that point across knifes through a lot of the BS and absolutely destroys their credibility.  “Well, y’all said that it was important to you that your fellow Americans be (poor/annoyed/in debt), so that’s probably the issue here.”

Problem is, even taking account of KeithM’s High School Debating tips, too many Americans have been dumbed down by substandard educations.  It’s not that they simply don’t want to know the truth, though there is a huge element of that as well, it’s that they aren’t capable of understanding there is a truth.

Because the Bible says so is good enough.  Because my favorite theocratic says so is good enough.  Pointing out reality is different from the lies is actually beyond too many of our citizens’ ken.

They can’t follow a logical argument because they’ve never been taught logic or logical fallacies.  They fall for strong rhetoric because they don’t understand how rhetoric works.  They don’t *believe* in inconvenient facts because they don’t understand facts persist whether or not you believe in them.

Politics is a team sport to too many, and they will vote for their “team” as long as they say the right lies.  The fact that the policies are toxic never permeates their skulls.

Cutting education funding is of utmost importance to our corporate overlords.  A NewSpeak education makes it impossible for the masses to question the authority figure.

Joe Wilson yelled “you lie!” at the President.  The fact that Wilson was the liar is irrelevant.  The disrespect he showed to the office of President is irrelevant—Obama plays for EurAsia, after all, being the Other in his black, democratic Kenyosity.  Correcting Wilson?  Doesn’t matter because facts aren’t important to the GOP anymore.  They do create their own reality, and as things go to shit, their philosophy of selfishness and “making sure I get mine and fuck all y’all before you get any” continues to serve them.

Without proper educations, how can we hope to communicate?  If facts are irrelevant, how can we fix anything?

Well, start with talking about tribes?

But, then again, SOMETHING must be sneaking in. 

My father has voted Republican since he was old enough to drop a ballot.  After W., he said he’d never vote for a Republican again (though, I think this means he just won’t vote).

My father-in-law?  Just recently said that he regretted voting for Michelle Bachmann, and has to rethink voting the Republican ticket at all. AND he supports Obama’s Student Debt relief bill.

My super-libertarian friend?  He’s currently on a strike line with his fellow workers for the INTALCO strike in Ferndale.  He said that he knows the value of unions.

SOMETHING is getting past the ideological filters, because these are all dyed-in-the-wool conservatives, suddenly going “Hey, maybe the liberals may be on to something”.  My less-libertarian friend said it’s because he doesn’t want to be owned by China and Brazil, and realized it’s the conservatives gunning for that.

I hate to say it, but as things get bad enough, I think it will be a case of “Once it happens to me, I realize it’s a problem” (Or “Reagan’s support for Alzheimer’s Research Theory”).  My dad is against W., because he worked as a Border Patrol Agent and thought Homeland security was a scam.  My fil has three kids and an in-law struggling under the weight of super student loan debts.  My friend was against unions—- until it was management that was directly screwing him and he figured out who had his back.

Argument: It’s morally acceptable to torture terrorists in order to get information from them which will save thousands of lives.

Factual error: Torture is a highly ineffective method of getting reliable information from a prisoner even when the prisoner really does have the information you want - let alone when you are torturing hundreds of people, most of whom know nothing except that they want you to stop hurting them.

Ideological fuckwittery: There are no circumstances under which torturing a prisoner is morally acceptable.

As an analogy, I used to point out that boiling a black cat alive to get the magic bone of invisibility was both highly ineffective and profoundly morally wrong.

Antigone - the thing with that is that whenever I have seen such shifts, they never admit the liberals were probably right. They just take the new position as part of “their team” and go on - at best saying that “even the liberals, who are wrong about everything, admit this is true”.

Admittedly, that is anecdata, but it is damn frustrating.

MikeEss:  There seems to be a consistent mean streak in modern conservatism that values literally or conceptually annoying liberals or making them angry.
junk science:  Well, it’s a well known fact about debate that if one side gets angry, the other side automatically wins.

Ohh, yeah.  I’ve seen this happen far too often for it to be accidental or coincidental.  Deliberately twist or misinterpret my words;  move the goalposts as wildly as possible;  use the “So you’re saying ... ” gambit (“So you’re saying President Obama is stupid for believing in God?  Then Martin Luther King must have been stupid, too?”);  play at being far more obtuse than you actually are;  then, the moment I evince the faintest hint of annoyance, turn all condescending and faux-concerned:  “Why are you so angry?”  “See, this is why I don’t feel comfortable debate leftists/feminists/skeptics/whatever:  they’re all so full of bitterness and rage.”  “Wow, this is really starting to bother you.  Maybe you’d better take a break, just step away from the keyboard for a while and collect yourself, if anything as insignificant as a little online conversation is getting you this upset.”

No, Chet! Torture does not result in actionable intelligence.  It’s a moral evil and should not be used, EVER.

Making up a hypothetical where torture is a reliable form of intelligence gathering and claiming it would be moral IF that were true, when factually it is NOT true, is fuckwittery.  And claiming that refusal to engage in hypothetical fuckwittery like that means an inability to engage in moral reasoning at all?  Fuckwittery of the highest order.

Don’t answer their claims.  Don’t let them decide what you’re supposed to talk about.

Make your own short soundbitables.  “Evolution is scientifically valid.”  “Women want to work outside the home.”  “Abortion doesn’t cause depression.”  “Lower taxes don’t lead to prosperity.”

For example:

Wait, what? You’re saying it’s never moral to torture somebody to save lives? Says who? What are the circumstances under which allowing thousands of innocent people to be killed is morally acceptable?
Comment #41: Chet on 10/29 at 03:45 PM

Torture doesn’t produce useful information. 

(See what I did there?)

You’re presenting the ticking time bomb scenario which is bullshit.  People come up with all kinds of plausible lies just to keep from being waterboarded again.  The best interrogation method is gaining trust.

Well, that’s several different claims. Does torture generally result in intelligence? No, it doesn’t. Is it impossible for it to result in intelligence? I wouldn’t say so - torture can work under some circumstances. Of course, what works far, far better are humint techniques that get the guy on your side.
Comment #47: Chet on 10/29 at 07:30 PM

Let the conservative side become the theoretical debaters. 

That’s the issue we’re facing, right?  That we become the eggheaded this side that side let me explain the details to you liberals?

So stop that.  Make the definitive statements and let them try to knock them down with their sophistry.  I haven’t heard of any examples where torture gave us useful information.  Let them come up with it on their own, don’t even ask for it, just keep saying the truth over and over again.

In Chet’s world breaking a few fingers for info is worth millions of lives, but being called an immoral brute for breaking those fingers is not worth millions of lives.

Chet, since I didn’t say “torture is wrong in all circumstances” then I don’t have to defend it.

Torture doesn’t work. 

Doesn’t matter if in some theoretical universe torture did work, or some theoretical circumstances sometimes it might.  It is a stupid worthless tactic.  Added to that it’s actually making enemies.  It is a waste of time.  Don’t do it.  The end.

If you want to go up your own ass arguing about how liberals might theoretically argue against something that works because we think it’s morally wrong, go on ahead.  I won’t be following you.

The main result of torture is to extract false confessions.  That’s why Stalin used it.  It’s why units in WWII that used it got worse information than units which did not.

Again, turn this around: “There you conservatives go again, trying to degrade US security because of your hatred for your fellow Americans.”

Argument: Gay marriage will lead to polygamy.

Factual error: Historically, the cultures that have had the highest rates of polygyny have been the least tolerant of homosexuality.  FLDS cults sure aren’t supportive of gay men, and the Biblical patriarchs that had multiple wives and concubines would never have supported gay marriage.

Ideological fuckwittery: Consensual polyamory is not wrong and should also be legally recognized.  And even in the cases of exploitative polygyny in extremists groups, it’s pragmatically better for the state to recognize those marriages to give the women more power if they try to leave.  Keeping polygamy illegal hurts plural wives more than it helps them, because they are basically recognized as single mothers and have little right to things like alimony, next of kin rights, or inheritance when their husband dies.

Chet, answering me with arguments against someone else is idiotic.  Don’t pretend you didn’t make that stupid mistake and try to blame it on me for “interfering” with “your” discussion.

I’m allowed to say what I think about your opinion, even if you were yelling it at someone else.  Why?  This blog isn’t a private conversation.  Not that I’m completely averse to jumping into those either when some bully resorts to “I told you to shut your ugly whore mouth.” 

The topic of the fucking blog post is how to address wrongheaded complex arguments made by assholes and idiots.  I used your wrongheaded complex argument as a jumping off point for an example of how not to turn it into a long stupid detail fest that most people won’t give a fuck about and will end up hating the person who brings up the detail just for making their heads hurt because they can’t think and don’t want to try. 

The important point is that torture does not work.  Period.  End of argument.

If you aren’t concerned about someday being persecuted for being a torturer because society has decided torture is a vile act that will not be tolerated then why do you care so much about convincing us that someday this thing that has never proven useful but quite detrimental could possible in some scenario, somewhere, somehow be the savior of millions? You’re like some strange breed of hoarder unable to let go of this terrible on every level, even just basic functionality, practice because someday when the evil stars aline you will need it and it will, I don’t know, sense your desperation and take pity? and do what you want it to do.

Chet @ 47

. . . the preservation of innocent human life is among my highest moral principles.

Unless an innocent life has been targetted by a torturer.  By your own standards, you’re a monster.

Regarding taxes: the richest Americans could move anywhere on the planet, yet they live here. Tax cutting did not attract any more plutocrats to the US.

Re: raising taxes cuts productivity, there’s a grain of truth there, but it’s important to understand where it comes in.

Imagine a three tier tax system. First million dollars, the tax is 35%

The second million, the tax is 50%.

The third million, the tax is 70%.

Well, imagine that your effort determines whether you make one million, two million, or three million dollars.

For the first one, you get to take home $650,000. For the second, you only get to take home $500,000. For the third, you only get to take home $300,000.

Is earning the second million as good for you as the first? No - you take home fewer dollars. And for the third, you take home less than half as much as you do for the first.

But look at these assumptions - that it’s *only* your efforts that determine how much money you take home. Ronald Reagan’s complaint was that no one would make (I think it was 5) movies in a year - the pay for the last movie would be eaten up by taxes.  That’s not entirely unreasonable, though you’ll have to pardon me for not being *too* sympathetic.

What tends to happen (not always - again, remember the movie actor!) is that people have a successful business, and they don’t personally make a million dollars. They might have 40 people working for them, and those forty people bring in a large chunk, probably a majority, of that million.

And here we see something perverse happen. At a 70% tax rate, each of those employees have a net (after tax) cost of 30 cents on the dollar. Lay off a worker, and you save their salary, but you pay 70% in taxes on it - you only get to keep 30 cents on the dollar. So, even if you can drop an employee, and still make the same amount of money, you don’t get that much out of it.

At a 40% tax rate, value of that layoff doubles - you get 60% of the employee’s salary after paying taxes on it.

What does basic econ say will happen if you make something twice as lucrative? Does it happen more or less often?

Sorry, I’m babbling, aren’t I?

Chet said: “You’re saying it’s never moral to torture somebody to save lives? “

No, Chet. Thank you for illustrating the classic example of ideological fuckwittery mixed with factual error.

I’m saying it’s never moral to torture somebody: the assertion that it can be moral to torture someone is ideological fuckwittery.

I’m saying that torture never saves lives: the assertion that torturing a prisoner produces reliable intel is factual error.

“As an atheist, the preservation of innocent human life is among my highest moral principles. “

Good. So now quit with ideological fuckwittery factual error.

“Here’s some ideological fuckwittery that I don’t agree with:”

So you do not feel that strongly about the preservation of innocent human life, since you think it can be moral under some circumstances to make innocent people become torturers - with the inevitable consequence of destroying their innocence, and the probable consequence of further harm done to innocent human beings by these torturers, and the possible consequence that torturers will be unable to deal with what they have become, and commit suicide.

Torture is not something that gets done in the abstract, Chet. Sitting safely in front of a computer screen, you’re comfortably philosophising that it would be perfectly okay to destroy at least one, probably two, almost certainly far more innocent human lives, to create a torturer and a torture victim. The victim may or may not be guilty of the crime of which they have been accused and for which they are being tortured: the torturer is unquestionably now guilty of a hideous crime.

Now, religious people can justify this in on whatever Pastafarian grounds they like: I am an atheist, and I can’t compromise my beliefs for any shaky moral grounds that religion can devise. So, there are two absolutes on which we must stand, and defend against all ideological fuckwits and ignorant comic-book-educated morons:

Torture is a moral evil and should not be used, EVER.

There are no circumstances under which torturing a prisoner is morally acceptable.

Moving on

Argument: Minimum wage, especially set at an artificially high rate, just means employers hire fewer people and so it actually damages the economy!

Factual error: A mandatory minimum wage that applies to all employers (and to all employees - ie, no exemptions who can be paid below minimum wage) ensures all businesses are on a level playing field - it doesn’t affect their ability to compete because their competitors are in exactly the same position. Employer hiring and firing practices won’t be affected.

Ideological fuckwittery: The idea of an “artificially high” minimum wage.

Compound sentence that most information adverse can understand: “You’re a lier and a nutcase.” Or ” Your’e a lying nutcase” Or “this argument is fact-free and evil.” But I agree with others, hit the Wrong wingers on the lie, again, again, and again. If you can only squeeze one meme into the cotton-filled heads of the low information viewers, cram in the meme that the right wing always lies. When the wrong-winger offers “proof” through some bogus study or other bit of garbage, explain first why the study or claim is garbage. ” This study was done by the coal industry, the Mormon church, the Koch brothers, the NRA, and surprise, surprise it supports positon X, it’s crap and bringing it up shows again how the right lies time and time again.”

So, even if you can drop an employee, and still make the same amount of money, you don’t get that much out of it.

That is a really dishonest assumption.

Argument: Giving tax breaks to the rich “job creators” means they will hire more people.

Factual error: The economy doesn’t work that way.  Employers hire as many people as they need to to meet their demand.  If nobody is buying more of their product or service, they won’t just up and create more jobs out of the kindness of their hearts.

Ideological fuckwittery:  This really comes across as saying “We musn’t anger our overlords, lest they become angry and punish us.”  If a few people have the power to control the economy and threaten to hold it hostage until they get more money, then we need a revolution more than we need tax breaks.

Argument: We don’t need to regulate the financial services industry because they will self-regulate.

Factual Error: Not only do they not self-regulate, they use their profits to lobby the government for even less regulation.

Ideological Fuckwittery: The financial services industry has to be treated with kid gloves, while the green energy industry needs to be attacked at every turn. Yet the first is an essentially secondary industry which has grown far beyond the size at which it was useful, while the second is the only way this human civilization will survive climate chaos and peak oil… if it can ever really get off the ground.

Um, Weirdo, the US income tax is a *marginal* rate.  So those increasing rates in your example only apply to the income *above* each threshold, not retroactively to *all* income.

As Paul said at #12, if you attack the lie you seem to be conceding the ideological point; if you attack the ideological fuckwittery you appear to be stipulating the relevant empirical statement. I guess it’s better to go after the lie, since you’re more likely to convince people coming from a different place as you idiologically.

It’s easier to convince someone who believes that sex is worse than death that the HPV vaccine reduces the latter without increasing the former than to convince someone who thinks the vaccine makes girls have sex that there’s nothing wrong with that. I’d much rather defend “so you think it would be okay if half of Americans didn’t pay taxes?” than “so you concede that half of Americans indeed pay no tax?”

Argument: “Teach the controversy”.
Factual error: That there’s a controversy over the theory of evolution. There’s not; that evolution happens and that it explains how life came to be has scientific consensus behind it.
Ideological fuckwittery: The notion that schools have any place passing off a very specific strain of religious dogma off as science.

I don’t wholly agree on this one. If there were a genuine controversy I wouldn’t want the schools coming down firmly on one side of it. I still wouldn’t want them to teach religious dogma, but I’d have no qualms about teaching something that has a scientific basis even if it’s also religious dogma.

Caren, 45:

Torture does not result in actionable intelligence.  It’s a moral evil and should not be used, EVER.

I agree with both of those statements, but Chet’s—and Amanda’s, I think—point is that neither is a logical consequence of the other. Each, I think, is a sufficent argument against the practice, but it’s entirely possible to believe with all one’s heart that torture is a moral evil and at the same time believe with all one’s hear that if we were to use it, it would be effective (but that the moral principle trumps this). Or the opposite, as in Chet’s comment.

And this is another reason I agree that it’s more important to attack the lie than the idiological point. We can demonstrate facts; moral values can easily be characterized as “a matter of opinion.”

LHW, 61:

Sorry, I’m babbling, aren’t I?

Yes. It’s a good explanation—I was already arguing along those lines, but now I know why—but a terrible soundbite/debate line.

Toitle, 66:

So, even if you can drop an employee, and still make the same amount of money, you don’t get that much out of it.

That is a really dishonest assumption.

Under a more honest assumption, LHW is even more right and high tax rates are more beneficial than they proposed.

69 NY Expat:

Um, Weirdo, the US income tax is a *marginal* rate.  So those increasing rates in your example only apply to the income *above* each threshold, not retroactively to *all* income

Yes, it is - I was oversimplifying, because I felt a bit guilty about talking about “grains of truth” in a thread about lies, and so I didn’t want to take up more bandwidth explaining all of the nuances.

Bananacat @67:

Factual error: The economy doesn’t work that way.  Employers hire as many people as they need to to meet their demand.  If nobody is buying more of their product or service, they won’t just up and create more jobs out of the kindness of their hearts.

Plus, tax cuts actually *increase* the cost of each employee to the proprietor/partner in a small business - that’s what my earlier comment was about.

Toitle @66:
Let’s just pretend I flamed you for saying it was a dishonest assumption. I’m at a workplace where everyone is working really hard, and working long hours without overtime, because they’re so grateful to have a job. There are limits - lay off too many, and they wouldn’t be physically able to get the job done.  But they are “lean”. Adding more people is reasonable, but low tax rates make that more expensive (net after taxes) to do so.

Hershele: And this is another reason I agree that it’s more important to attack the lie than the idiological point. We can demonstrate facts; moral values can easily be characterized as “a matter of opinion.

It’s been my experience that if you argue the case against torture purely on the provable grounds that it is wildly ineffective at getting reliable information, you then get ideological fuckwits arguing that this means that if it worked, it would be OK to torture people.

People who support the use of torture tend to believe (from what they’ve seen on 24, or other media sources, or heard about from the US government) that it “works”. But also, they seem to me to be the kind of people who actively want to believe that torture works - sold on the idea because on some level they like the idea. The belief that it “works” is an excuse to fantasise about doing it for real and being a hero. So if you take that rationale away from them, by pointing out the lie, they get very angry and try to justify the morality of torture “for a good purpose”. I’m not saying Chet is one of those people. But it’s certainly a pattern.

So I think it is necessary to point out, simultaneously if possible, both the lie and the ideological fuckwittery.

Maybe y’all can help me: over a year ago I was talking to a woman at a party and she maintained that MSNBC _and_ Faux ‘News’ were equally culpable in terms of distorting the news.  (The fact that she worked in broadcast made this even more stunning.)

My (weak) comeback was that while both were partisan, FN had no compunction about straight-up lying, while MSNBC attempted to find actual truth.

What would have been a better rhetorical strategy and/or tactic in such a situation?

Argument: Huge taxes and government regulations make the single income stay at home mom lifestyle impossible.

Factual error: The single income household was the result of labor regulations and high tax rates that forced corporations to reinvest in new capital that resulted in low unemployment. And do you really wanna go back to the late fifties? Take a tour of your inner ring suburbs. Some have become become low birth rate hipster utopias, but others are pure blight. Look at the tiny houses. A pretty well off dude could easily afford one of those tiny houses, take the bus to work, and double up three or four kids in a 1950’s bungalow.

But no, you want a hip urban house, a snazzy condo, or more realisticly a suburban home or a McMansion? Mama’s gotta work

Climate change is a conspiracy of corrupt scientists.

Truth: Climate change is real and dangerous and we are causing it.

Morals: Scientists care about truth and even if they didn’t the structure of the scientific community is very, very resistant to that kind of conspiracy.

(Someone already did this, but they based the “moral” part on accepting the “truth” part, which is cheating.)

This is an interesting one, because it is so self-reinforcing.

Oh, and here’s the mother of them all:

Follow these rules for being good or you will go to hell.

Truth: There is no eternal hot place full of bad people.

Morals: If there were, that wouldn’t change morality.

Less important, but I think illustrates the principle:

Argument: It’s surprising that a Christian like Johnny Cash would let someone as hateful as Trent Reznor cover his beautiful song, “Hurt”.

Major factual error: Cash’s version is the cover.

(Minor factual error: under U.S. intellectual property law, an artist doesn’t actually have a choice about whether to let someone cover a song.)

Ideological fuckwittery: Cash isn’t that kind of Christian; industrial music isn’t inherently hateful (even if I’m not a NIN fan); Cash actually admired NIN/Reznor somewhat.

argument: Liberal women are ugly.

major factual error: there are lots of liberal women who look lots of different ways and no objective measure of ugliness

ideological fuckwittery: all that women have to offer a political movement is looks and ugly women do not deserve to express their opinions

It’s been my experience that if you argue the case against torture purely on the provable grounds that it is wildly ineffective at getting reliable information, you then get ideological fuckwits arguing that this means that if it worked, it would be OK to torture people.

People who support the use of torture tend to believe (from what they’ve seen on 24, or other media sources, or heard about from the US government) that it “works”. But also, they seem to me to be the kind of people who actively want to believe that torture works - sold on the idea because on some level they like the idea. The belief that it “works” is an excuse to fantasise about doing it for real and being a hero. So if you take that rationale away from them, by pointing out the lie, they get very angry and try to justify the morality of torture “for a good purpose”. I’m not saying Chet is one of those people. But it’s certainly a pattern.

So I think it is necessary to point out, simultaneously if possible, both the lie and the ideological fuckwittery.
Comment #72: Jesurgislac on 10/30 at 07:03 PM

No.

You tell them “Torture doesn’t work.  Period.  Ask any US interrogator who’s actually been in a war zone and they’ll tell you the same thing.” 

If the idiot continues to blather on about what if it did work, stop them with “let’s stick to reality and the facts.”  Make them the theory-spouting weenie who lives in the clouds.  Make that a separate argument from whether torture works.  Keep it simple.

Do not fall into the trap of arguing against two or more statements at the same time.  Most people will become confused but will understand that there’s something internally inconsistent.  Point out an inconsistency and to the simpleminded you are the one who is speaking nonsense (just like pointing out racism makes you the racist).  You and I aren’t confused by these tactics, but we are not average.

Torture doesn’t work.  ‘24’ is a fictional TV show.  That’s all you need to say.

argument: Liberal women are ugly.

major factual error: there are lots of liberal women who look lots of different ways and no objective measure of ugliness

ideological fuckwittery: all that women have to offer a political movement is looks and ugly women do not deserve to express their opinions
Comment #77: alysia on 11/01 at 12:35 AM

The counterargument is “so what?”

Let them explain why it makes a difference.  Let them own it.  Put them on the defensive about why that could possibly matter.  Let everyone else look at them and wait for the answer.  It better be something good, right?  Just “har har” won’t cut it if this is supposed to be a logical argument.

Don’t chase the ball.  Don’t be the one who is defending the idea that how a person looks doesn’t matter.  Make them defend the idea that how a person looks does matter.

@Comment #78: oldfeminist on 11/01 at 11:47 AM

You tell them “Torture doesn’t work.  Period.  Ask any US interrogator who’s actually been in a war zone and they’ll tell you the same thing.”

If the idiot continues to blather on about what if it did work, stop them with “let’s stick to reality and the facts.”  Make them the theory-spouting weenie who lives in the clouds.  Make that a separate argument from whether torture works.  Keep it simple.

Do not fall into the trap of arguing against two or more statements at the same time.  Most people will become confused but will understand that there’s something internally inconsistent.  Point out an inconsistency and to the simpleminded you are the one who is speaking nonsense (just like pointing out racism makes you the racist).  You and I aren’t confused by these tactics, but we are not average.

Torture doesn’t work.  ‘24’ is a fictional TV show.  That’s all you need to say.

WORD.  I get endlessly frustrated by liberals who try to play 11-dimensional chess when the game is actually wrestling.

Oldfeminist, Atheist: the notion that “Torture is morally wrong, always, under any circumstances” is something that’s as confusing as 11-dimensional chess, is now emblematic for me of what’s gone wrong with the US since Bush became President.

Torture is always wrong is a damn simple concept.