On the Ad Hominem
There’s a Soviet joke from the Cold War in which two car salesmen, one from the USSR and one from the US, are talking. The American asks the Soviet, “how many decades does it take a Soviet man to earn enough money to buy one of your cars?” The Soviet pauses, thinks for a minute, and retorts, “and you are lynching negroes!”
The joke, if you didn’t already get this, is “funny” for a couple of reasons. It’s funny because the American’s critique of the Soviet system is nowhere near as powerful as the Soviet’s. It’s funny because the Soviet view was that American capitalism is heartless. And it’s funny because lynching has nothing — ostensibly — to do with the sale of cars.
The last point here, the irrelevance of the retort, is also what gets us to my main concern. The Soviet joke is one example of an ad hominem fallacy. An ad hominem argument is a logical fallacy in which you attack the person you’re arguing with, rather than their argument itself. So, the American car salesman asks a rhetorical question poking at the inefficiency of Soviet economy, and the Soviet, rather than addressing the economic concern in question, reminds the American of the unbelievable human rights violations of his country.
Like many ways of thinking from the Cold War era, the ad hominem has not since gone out of style. Internet culture (that all-consuming culture) today seems to be more interested in photoshopped images of Vladimir Putin, shirtless, riding all kinds of animals (bears, eagles, unicorns, sharks…) and even Ritz Crackers than in actually discussing his political action. Never mind Putin’s actions in the Middle East, here are some pictures of him walking away from explosions!
Putin isn’t the only politician who primarily faces ad hominem attacks. Hillary Clinton’s biggest fault is her wardrobe, while Donald Trump’s biggest flaw is his comb over. Clearly someone without the right *look* could not serve our political, economic, and security needs. And it’s really the hair, more than the bigotry and fascism that’s a real concern to voters. Asia, similarly, has a hair problem when it comes to modern geopolitics. Kim Jong Un’s hairstyle seems to be more offensive to many than his nuclear testing. Meanwhile, Canada has got it right because their leader, Justin Trudeau, is hot and sometimes holds pandas in photo ops.
On the other hand, we have to ask ourselves if politics is the one arena in which ad hominem arguments are fair. Ultimately, when you’re running a political campaign you are being judged for your political strategy, but also for who you are. While I, like many, feel extreme frustration with the requirement that the president be someone “I could have a beer with”, for many people this sort of judgment serves as a proxy for selecting a candidate who they feel would understand them. In politics, the line between the feelings and prejudices of a politician and that politician’s intellect and capability are vague. Maybe the fact the Trump thinks all Mexicans are rapists wouldn’t impact his actions as chief of state. But given that Mexico is an actual real live country and that there are Mexican people living within the US borders it probably matters, and ignoring that probability doesn’t feel like a good gamble.
The other reality is that sometimes ad hominem arguments are all we have. As an American citizen, what power do I have against Vladimir Putin but Photoshop? Even in my own country’s politics, isn’t my single vote more impactful when I go on Facebook and convince some conservatives and moderates to vote for Hillary by ridiculing Trump? (Because, I assure you, my tirades against him are highly persuasive). For many people today, shaming politicians online feels like a way to participate in global (and local) politics. And this is intentional. The internet and personal computing were built with the goal of empowering individuals. The authoritarian figure who Apple attacked in their 1984 Super Bowl ad was not meant to be a purely fictional reference. Orwellian dystopia is a real fear which real people continue to hold, and attacking “the man” is a time honored tactic.
One outcome of the personal computing revolution is social media, a whole new space for living, and attacking. It sometimes seems that “Twitter wars” are the only things that happen on Twitter. Increasingly, though, we are less and less likely to distinguish between our digital lives and our “real” lives. Our identity at work or school might not differ from our own identity on Facebook. Can it, even?
If our digital and physical identities are one and the same, then can our behavior be different in digital and physical spaces? If we’re comfortable with ad hominem arguments online, then are they more common in our physical lives? In our personal relationships? You don’t like the Frank Ocean album? Clearly you’re an idiot. You don’t buy organic? You must be a republican. It’s easy to jump to these sort of conclusions when you’re disagreeing with someone you don’t know, or with someone who is not talking back to you, but what happens to our relationships when we let ad hominem thinking become our norm?
Ad hominem fallacies are dangerous for many reasons. They are typically unfair to the person you’re attacking, and they eliminate people from being potential collaborators. When you present an ad hominem argument, you lose all chance of swaying someone, of adding supporters to your point of view. When you attack someone you know, personally, with ad hominem logic you’re delegitimizing their thinking, their feelings, their nuance as an individual, and chalking up what their saying to some shortcut of their identity. The difference between your relationship with Hillary Clinton and with your friend is that with your friend you’re better able to access and accept her nuance. The layers you see in your friend are what makes her a real person for you, what distinguishes her from being just a concept of a human being. But Hillary Clinton is also a human being. She has layers and nuance and flaws and challenges and secrets and insecurities and goals just like your friend. You don’t have to acknowledge those layers of Mrs. Clinton, if you don’t want to, but attacking her and reducing her to a concept of a human doesn’t mean her layers will cease to exist.
