There’s a certain kind of bizarro argument we put up with. An intentional deception which claims we’re all responsible for our demise. They’re wrong.
I honestly couldn’t believe what I was reading. It was like buying a copy of Superman and finding the issue is really about Bizarro.
Women should leave the dirty world of politics to men. This was the thesis of George Gilder’s book, Men and Marriage.
Women have the real power of relationships, so leaving men to that little nothing world of politics is just doing them a favor. Men are really just dumb beasts.
The double-speak defensiveness of patriarchal power was stunning. Not only in its boldness and brazenness, but in its earnestness. It required such incredible leaps in logic, there’s no way the author could miss the hypocrisy.
And this is why I found it so dangerous. He could not possibly believe what he wrote without delusion. I could only conclude that his casting of the world in opposite was not to further God’s kin-dom, but to protect his patriarchal power. Not to reveal what could be, or even describe what is, but to overwrite what is for the subordination of women.
Yet I had to keep reading. Powering through the self-satisfied smugness about the true talents of women next to the doe-eyed innocent mumblings about how defiling the political process is on we poor, pathetic men who are just taking one for the team…it eventually became unwinnable. I had to raise the white flag about two-thirds of the way through.
Of course, I wasn’t alone. When the professor started that week’s class on Sex and Gender Roles, he was inundated with complaints by the mostly female class. Each competing to demonstrate how little they read before throwing the book across the room.
For the first time, I really felt my gender, realizing I read more of the book than anyone else.
Bizarro World
This bizarro book represents a fringe view of the world. One which seems to say that up is really down and so down is (obviously) up. But it all sounds less bizarro the more senators and prominent evangelicals make the same kind of argument. It sounds like more “alternative facts.” Two worlds at odds. Just politics as usual.
In what has to take the prize for most bizarro and nonsensical title, Republican Senator Ben Sasse argues “Politics Can’t Solve Our Political Problems”. Which is a lot like saying praying can’t help our prayer life or running can’t help us exercise.
Of course, I know what his gibberish intends to argue. His point is to say that we have a soul problem, not a “political” problem. That if we were better on the inside, our communities would be better. But it remains a total logical fallacy. Political problems are definitionally political.
Politics is how we order ourselves. So the subject of this essay is demonstrably about politics solving our political problems.
Even so…
He’s arguing as if his very argument isn’t a political argument. One of the hundred people literally embodying our politics in the Senate is blaming my soul for his votes.
Indirectly, of course. He tries to separate his political decisions from their direct outcomes.
Because, he argues, his voting is of no consequence to our country’s problems—but my lack of commitment to the local sports teams is. My willingness to stand alongside those hurt by systemic oppression means I have a soul problem. But, don’t forget, we all have a soul problem because it has to be equal.
But this isn’t real.
I feel like I ordered a cheeseburger and he’s handed me a filet-o-fish. You think you ordered a cheeseburger, but this is what you really ordered.
It isn’t just that it doesn’t make sense. It’s that it intentionally doesn’t do what it is supposed to do and then makes up a story to justify it.
Our politics in Washington aren’t broken because there’s something wrong with 300 million people. But that’s the very story he’s offering. You’re the real problem is what he’s saying. You fix it.
Jesus Juke
Evangelicals recognize this move well. It’s the amped-up and pimped-out version of Protestantism offered by the Religious Right. The problem is always about our own brokenness. Our own soul-sickness.
Should we help the poor?
The poor will always be with us. So no.
How about the hungry?
Maybe they should work.
We must free our neighbors of systemic oppression.
Social Justice Heretic!
We can quote Jesus in Matthew 25 in an attempt to answer those questions: Doing these things for someone is doing them for Jesus. But they argue This is just your political agenda.
Because
This isn’t a political problem, it’s a sin problem.
And yet we can’t fix the “sin problem.” That would be political.
This is the same circular logic which proves itself.
Any attempts to fight it continue to prove it. But that doesn’t make it true, logical, or full of faith. It makes it a pretty terrible and illogical argument.
You can’t claim you’re protecting women’s hidden, secret bat-cave power by excluding them from power! Even if it were true, it’s still preventing them from having actual power. No matter how earnest your convictions, that’s just dumb.
Here you go, Honey. Have a drink of the better wine. I know the glass looks empty, but it’s all right here. On the inside. Try that and see how it goes.
This isn’t a real argument.
It feels like these soul and sin “problems” Mr. Sasse is concerned with is the reason we can’t have nice things in our country. As opposed to the more obvious truth. The guy votes to get rid of them.
And the same Jesus who restores the one cast out, heals the one who is sick, feeds the one who is hungry, and says over and over again that his followers are the ones who will do these things doesn’t justify your hate. Stop taking our Lord’s name in vain.
The Trap
Reading Gilder’s putrid prose and manipulatively false logic wasn’t just an opportunity to learn how “the other side” thinks. Our professor was inviting us to wrestle with its entirely illogical and manipulative sentiment.
We were pissed off. And we should have been. I’ve never read a book so deceitful in my life. It didn’t matter whether or not he believed what he wrote or what “side” he was representing, he was manipulating the truth; gaslighting the reader. It wasn’t real or honest. He’s passing off the Big Lie as another version of the truth.
It was like he wrote a math book specifically to trade addition for subtraction and multiplication for division and then demanding we treat him like an honest academic.
Cue the Left/Right sort —— bzzzzrrrraaaackk—bipp! Done!
2+2 = 4
No, it doesn’t.
What?
It’s zero. 2+2=0. Don’t listen to that left-biased media with their leftist math.
And our party hackles are raised.
At a time when all of our conversations keep pushing us toward false choices and broken narratives, understanding this difference is essential. Because one can’t honestly answer a question which will always prove her wrong.
There are no Alternative Facts. They’re lies.
I recently wrote about the problem of how many of our neighbors are preferring the fiction they read as “alternative facts” to the actual truth. Here’s a comment someone left:
“Referencing or Citing “Left Biased” News known to Censor Conservative and Objective Sources is misleading people. Why Trust in Left’ Biased News instead of Truth? Left’ Biased News is Fiction.”
Of course, he proves my point; dismissing my citing of reputable sources. Because: bias. It’s a strange, circular argument which disproves itself if he were to cite any source himself.
What if I had cited Fox News or Breitbart? Would he see how it disproves half of his point? Dismissing all media for bias would necessitate dismissing the intentionally-biased “conservative media” for the same.
But of course, it doesn’t matter to him. Because media bias isn’t really the point: it’s the circular argument to trap me. And protect him.
I’m not sure he finished reading the piece, or if he did, what he made of some of my suggestions:
“Opinions aren’t facts.
Neither are opinions the same as reasoned, supported arguments.
Opinions are just our random thoughts and deeply-held beliefs.
Yet today, we let all things be equal.
But they aren’t.”
These things aren’t equal. Or all necessarily honest.
Dealing With Bad Faith
For us to deal with these kinds of bad-faith arguments, we have to do more than dismiss them back or answer them in good faith. I use the example of Jesus dealing with the leaders who try to trap him.
So I do three things:
- relentlessly keep to the presenting issue.
- refuse to walk into the traps, but expose them instead.
- demand clarity from my conversation partner.
This is just my strategy for individual conversations. But I believe it can scale. Because it isn’t just about you — this sort of hyper-individualism is the precipitating problem — it’s about us.
We don’t need to accept distortion, manipulation, and misleading justification for unjust systems to merely get along with our neighbors. We can totally disagree with our neighbors and still get along. The supposed silencing nature of our division is part of the fantasy.
This division isn’t new.
We’re struggling to acknowledge the truth because we all seem willing to honor the lie at its foundation.
We aren’t the problem. You and me; we don’t bear all the weight of this moment. It isn’t Facebook or the lack of bowling leagues or all the countless silver bullets we offer as excuses. It isn’t the sorting of society or the shifting of political winds.
- Mr. Gilder isn’t supporting the powerless, he’s defending the ruling class.
- Mr. Sasse isn’t supporting the working man; he’s defending the legislators like himself who are gutting worker protections and building the very economic conditions which put people out of work.
- The Religious Right isn’t supporting Christians in the public square; they’re rejecting the gospel offered by millions of Americans who aren’t like them.
Many of the ones blaming you for political division are in control of the seats of power. Many of them have intentionally engineered this situation. And they also happen to be in the greater position to actually do something about it.