“You cannot lecture your way out of trouble that you got entertained into.”
— Bill Whittle
Explore the meta-level rationale of a new video animation project that bypasses the rational gate to connect enduring ideas of a happy society with the hearts of young people. Here’s how you counter the Progressive’s secret weapon.
Bill Whittle and Alfonzo Rachel create two new episodes of The Virtue Signal, thanks to our Members. Join them with the big green button above.
11 replies on “Rhetorical Intelligence: The Progressive’s Secret Weapon, and the Tools You Need to Counter It”
I recall back in high school (forty years ago at this point), a friend of mine and I were studying in the library and she saw a flyer for a magic show. She said, somewhat arrogantly I first thought, that she wished we weren’t so smart, so we could go to a magic show and enjoy the magic rather than go there and try to figure it out.
But she was correct. Christine Rao, forgive my presumption.
receiving an exemption from the tax rate on charitable contributions is not anywhere near the same thing as writing off the entire contribution. It is not as if the government were giving you a gift of the entire contribution, they are only letting you off from paying whatever rate of tax you would pay on that amount of money. I still wish that the church were not a 501c3 entity by tax law, but I also wish the government were not in the business of taking care of the poor by stealing money from everyone to do the job that Christ assigned to the church.
I just had an article published, “The Truth Regarding Healthcare”, in American Thinker today.
Speaking of effective communication, it’s probably too long.
Articles that I have published before mentioned “truths” that I felt could sway people’s opinions, appealing to their logic. The BBC sent a reporter to the US, broadcast over NPR, of course, back when Obama was running on what was later termed ‘Obamacare’. They shamed us for our system by interviewing a young woman with a strong family history of breast cancer who was afraid to go to the doctor because of cost. I wanted to jump through the radio and tell people that the uninsured US breast cancer victim has higher survival rates than Britain’s “covered” citizens.
But when the insured, the people on whose backs this whole, out-of-control, way-too-costly system relies, are getting the worst healthcare because they’re afraid to go to the doctor due to cost, things are predictably going to sway towards feelings over facts. Healthcare, and hence a big chunk of our freedom, will probably be assigned to government, unless something big changes. Ugh.
VERY well done! And Zo’s usage of the term “‘Legion’ that we’re up against” is PERFECTLY descriptive. (Lk 8:30-KJV)
Zo at 5 min: his comments about conservative practicality vs. liberal “imagination” basically parallel the views of Thomas Sowell about the people with a constrained vision [typically conservatives, recognizing people are flawed and nothing you can do will totally remove their flaws] and the people with an unconstrained vision [typically liberals who say mankind is “fixable” and improvable, and it is society’s fault, not the person’s fault they are a loser, etc.].
This “rhetorical intelligence” is a serious problem when it comes to addressing the issues supported by the Left.
They use two primary tactics.
I know a guy who’s about as Conservative as they come. His wife, a teacher and though being a teacher isn’t really an indication of intelligence is herself no dummy.
If he doesn’t agree with her on a political argument then she employs #1. If that doesn’t work then she falls back to #2. The following description is a paraphrase but it illustrates my point.
The other day he was telling me that his wife was complaining about high prices and the fact that nearly 10% of their financial efforts towards retirement had evaporated into thin air.
To which he replied “But Sweetheart, you voted for this.”
So of course out comes the scoffing with “Yeah, right, like I wanted to throw away years of our combined work.”
And he said (words to the effect of) “There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Someone has to pay for the runaway spending the current administration is engaged in. Inflation is a way to tax us, so far to the tune of 10% of our retirement finances, without us being able to do anything about it. It is a redistribution of wealth that the party in power can execute without anyone doing anything but voting them into power. They told us they were going to do this. There is no denying the fact that under the previous administration we were much more secure and prosperous and under the current administration we have lost both security and prosperity.”
Which is a pretty hard argument to counter. So out comes #2. She got mad and didn’t speak to him for a couple days.
When he was telling me about this I commented that she got mad because she couldn’t support her actions with a reasoned argument and loss of domestic tranquility is a powerful weapon used to shut him up.
Which was an argument he could not disagree with.
This woman does this all the time. I love it, I’m not married to her so I troll the living crap out of her. I don’t care if she likes me, gets mad at me, or anything else. I can say to her the things her husband cannot and I give as good as I get.
It doesn’t make a bit of difference to her political views. She’s always ripe for a good trolling.
The point I’m making here is that the Left is incorrigible. If they can’t scoff you into submission they get angry/hurt/disgusted in an attempt to shut you up. If they can’t convert you, they attempt to silence you. If your arguments hit the bone they don’t change their viewpoint they change their tactics. Then they take your silence as vindication that they were right. Their political views are on a ratchet. Rhetorical intelligence and tactical sophistry allows them to never have to admit they were the least bit wrong about anything.
They learn this from each other. Remember I said my friend’s wife is a teacher? Most of her views are the above tactic applied to her in teacher’s lounges over the years and now she can’t adapt to the circumstances of reality when they bite her on the bottom. Or cost her a huge chunk of her own labor. These tactics are so effective that they become a part of a person’s identity, this is who they are.
That doesn’t diminish my enjoyment of trolling them even one tiny bit. I think owning Leftists should be an Olympic sport.
That doesn’t mean that someday we’re going to round them all up and put them up against a wall with an offer of speaking their final words around a last cigarette.
Politics is force. We have to apply that force effectively. We’re either going to win or not. We’re not going to win by converting people like my buddy’s wife. We’re not going to ever be rid of such people because that’s the nature of the beast.
One of the best arguments we can make against the Left is to point to the results when they have power. That still won’t convince a Leftist but they’re not as big a percentage as they’d like you to believe.
The other problem is what to do about keeping their numbers from growing. Like I said above regarding my buddy’s wife and teacher’s lounges, they use very effective tactics. Once someone drinks that Kool-Ade they’re pretty much lost to reason.
How to go about holding their numbers down is a problem I have no surefire solution to.
Unlike those Leftists, most people will not vote against their own interests when things become obvious. Like it obviously is under Biden. So there’s hope because I do have a measure of faith in Americans. We’re not nearly such sheep as the Left thinks we are.
This is where American Exceptionalism comes to our aid. We’re a stubborn bunch and we like the good life we have. Threaten that, as the Left absolutely must do, and it’s not going to go so well for the opposition.
One of the reasons Marxist Socialism has worked in other countries is that they had a much larger poor class and a much shallower political history. Leftists know that and are doing everything they can to increase the poor class in America and … Keep you there when they get you there. That’s their real base, not to support and help the poor like they lie they’re doing. To use the poor as a political weapon.
A variation on your tactic #2 is that, sometimes they will say, “Let’s just agree to disagree.” This also has the effect of shutting you down. They know they can’t win the argument and this tactic allows them to not lose. It also gives them the so-called high ground.
I call it “the high ground” because it looks like they are promoting peace and if you want to continue the discussion, you are an aggressor. In reality, they know that if the discussion continues, they will lose and they will get angry. They are the ones who will break the peace so, they hide behind the agree to disagree tactic.
Absolutely, you nailed it. It’s all about winning the rhetorical battle and if you happen to be winning because your points are more valid and more reasonable then the only thing they can do is shut you down. Whatever that takes.
Thing is … That doesn’t change anyone’s mind. You still walk away knowing your views are more valid and more reasonable. They walk away thinking they won an argument, and they’re not going to change their minds about that.
Don’t cede the high ground to those buttwipes. If they want to agree to disagree then point out that it takes two people to agree. That you’re not agreeing with them closing down the conversation and that they cannot agree for you. That their false graciousness is an excuse to avoid the issues. Issues they cannot support or they obviously would do so.
At that point, simply ask a clear, irrefutable question. Like “Are you and the rest of the country better off today than you were when Trump was in office? If so, how so?” Or, and I admire the crap out of Matt Walsh for what he’s doing, “What is a woman?” That kind of thing. Have that last shot ready beforehand.
They can shut up and walk away but everyone monitoring the conversation knows they folded their hand and pushed back from the table. They know that too. You don’t have to pursue and browbeat them, which makes you look like the bully. Just don’t let them walk away without an irrefutable shot across their bow.
If they’re going to walk away, make them slink like the yellow dogs they are.
Because those people do what they do simply for the reason it makes them feel good. Deny them feeling good, it’s the best and perhaps the only way to penetrate their delusional state. Make ’em feel like the yellow cowards they really are. Don’t pull your punches because I promise you if the shoe was on the other foot they would show you no mercy at all.
When they do something like beg to “agree to disagree” it’s not because they’re gracious, civil human beings. It’s to disarm you. They’re using your own civility and decency against you.
One day they will go too far. We’ve seen this in Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Communist China, Cuba, Cambodia, Venezuela and the list grows ever longer. They need to fear you because you cannot be cowed or cuckolded. They hate you either way, might as well give them a reason.
Good advice.
That reminds me I remember in college not long after learning the physics of thin-film diffraction, I saw a pretty button that used that effect for its “prettiness”. And it DID hit me I was kind of robbing myself of the wonder, even back then. I thought “I can’t just say ‘wow, that’s pretty’!”
I suspect that in reality you can appreciate it in both modes of perception.
Consider Buckminster Fuller’s comments about sun rises and sunsets: he said they were basically the earth de-eclipsing the sun in the morning and eclipsing it in the evening. So thinking that way, you “see” the earth (and yourself) rotating with respect to the sun, rather that our more usual mode of thinking the sun is “moving across the sky”. I still enjoy colorful sun rises and sun sets, but “see” the “horizon” moving rather than the sun (some of the time).