A Bad Faith World
Bad faith arguments are everywhere — here’s how to spot them, and call them out
Second in a Series
The McConnell “Rule”
In the political arena, perhaps the most outrageous bad-faith argument in recent years has just leaped back into the news: Sen. Mitch McConnell’s blatant theft of a Supreme Court nomination in 2016. In February of that year, conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly. President Barack Obama nominated the well-regarded U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Merrick Garland in March, which was considered to be a replacement of a very conservative justice with one more moderate but by no means ultra-liberal. Even so, with less than a year remaining in Obama’s term, McConnell announced that the Senate would not consider the Garland nomination because of a bit of obscure blather from Joe Biden 24 years earlier that McConnell dubbed “the Biden Rule” even though Biden’s suggestion had never been put into practice or even seriously considered.
This so-called “rule” asserted that, since it was so close to the end of the President’s term, it was only fair to “give the people a voice in the filling of this vacancy,” as McConnell put it, by waiting till the election. But can you really call something a rule that had never before been used? At most it was a proposal, but “the Biden Proposal” didn’t have the right kind of heft for McConnell’s bad-faith purpose.
No hearings were ever held on the Garland nomination, and shortly after Donald Trump assumed the presidency, Republicans nominated — and promptly confirmed — the conservative judge Neil Gorsuch. In 2019, McConnell was asked whether, in a similar situation where a court vacancy arose in the last year of a Trump administration (sometimes hypotheticals turn out to be not so hypothetical), he would again “give the people a voice.” With a gloating smile he could not suppress, or didn’t bother to suppress, he answered, “Uh, we’d fill it.”
In the wake of the passing of Justice Ginsburg, this particular bit of bad faith has suddenly become crucially important. So, what is a bad faith argument, exactly?
Bad Faith
The traditional definition of a bad-faith argument is that it’s one where the person arguing knows the position s/he asserts is false, but makes the assertion anyway. It’s part of a win-or-die mentality whereby it’s more important to win an argument than to arrive at any kind of truth, and of course this broadest of categories of poor argumentation has a lineage that’s probably as old as language itself.
But Jean-Paul Sartre contended that a bad-faith argument could also be unintentionally, or unconsciously, false. In other words, that the person making the argument might not realize it’s a lie, which is often true when someone reposts or retweets a meme without first checking its provenance. It’s the exact mechanism that allows foreign interference in our elections through social media manipulation.
An example: someone I know recently reposted a meme on Facebook about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in which she purportedly urged governors to maintain COVID-related business closures till after the election because an economic recovery could help Trump win. The meme was demonstrably fake and eventually Facebook labeled it as such. When a commenter noted that the meme was a lie, my Facebook friend shrugged it off. “[B]ut you could definitely believe it would be something she would say,” he wrote, and he left the post where it was, no revision, no disclaimer. This becomes a special kind of bad-faith argument, incorporating Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness”: my friend didn’t know the lie was a lie when he reposted it, but once he learned of the lie he immediately decided that if something feels true, then it is true. Thus unconscious bad faith becomes conscious.
The even-worse version of a bad-faith argument is when the person doesn’t deep-down believe their argument but is lying to themselves that they do. That’s when it becomes even more important for them to convince another person, any other person, otherwise their own internal lie breaks down. People will walk many a mile to avoid going where they don’t want to go, which is why the internet is stuffed to bursting with people vigorously defending their own internal lies.
You Cannot Win This Argument
When someone simply doesn’t care that their argument is false, you cannot win the argument. You cannot find consensus because the person arguing with you has no interest in consensus, they’re only interested in zero-sum winning for winning’s sake. The “argument” itself is a lie because its premise is false — the argument is never about the thing it pretends to be about, it’s about the unbearable disagreement between the people in the argument. And when both parties are arguing in bad faith, then it’s not really a proper argument anymore, it’s just shouting. Verbal combat, and let the loudest, most persistent voice win.
But it’s a Pyrrhic victory because it means nothing, it adds nothing, it contributes nothing to truth or understanding or the politics of the moment. We have become a bad-faith nation, shouting endlessly at each other, and since everyone is lying there’s no other option than to get louder and louder and LOUDER…
So We’re Doomed, Right?
Not necessarily.
In a recent article in The Bellows, writer Sam Kriss suggested that “Instead of the pointless demand that people stop lying to themselves, what if we became better critics and connoisseurs of lies?”
This is the best approach: not to hope for the miraculous, global improvement of the human mind, but to take your own steps to better understand, even to appreciate, the kinds of lies that people tell themselves and others. Because what this allows is detachment: the ability to recognize a flawed technique and to discern both where it comes from — the particular human need that drives someone to lie in such a fashion — and how to counter it more effectively. Bearing in mind that sometimes the only way to counter someone arguing in particularly bad faith is to simply walk away.
Yes, when you do that, the person arguing will feel as if they’ve won. But since the argument was actually unwinnable, for the sake of your own sanity you’re better off ending the conversation and allowing the other person their illusion of victory. Your time is valuable, and you cannot possibly gain anything from such a pointless effort.
It can be hard to surrender the field like this, particularly with family. But you should always consider the value of saying something like “We’re only going to be together for a limited time. Is this really how you want to spend that time?” If they still say yes, you might want to consider going somewhere else next Thanksgiving.
Types of Bad Faith Arguments
When you do decide to pursue an argument, here are some of the types of bad-faith arguments, or lies, that you’re likely to encounter. You may have encountered some of them under the term “logical fallacies,” and that’s because logical fallacies are the building-blocks of a bad-faith argument. They work hand in falsified hand. Here are just a few of the many types:
- Deflection/Whataboutism — Instead of answering the question asked, a person instead replies with something irrelevant. I wrote an entire article on this a while back, describing the frustration of arguing with someone who leaps from one topic to another, never actually dealing with any of the issues raised, until s/he eventually lands on a topic you don’t happen to know much about. Then they declare victory in the conversation and walk away. This tactic goes hand in hand with…
- False Equivalence — You say something like “There are too many people dying from mass shootings.” The person with whom you’re arguing then says, “Well what about cars? Cars kill people too. Are you saying we should ban cars?”
False equivalence is the natural companion of deflection because they’re both attempts to shift away from an uncomfortable idea to something that can be mocked and minimized. They are often blind, flailing reactions to discomfort, the uneasiness that comes with being obliged to question an assumption you hold dear. It’s easier to attack the uncomfortable question than to deal with it.
If owning a gun makes you feel more secure about the nightmare of a home invasion, to pick just one reason why people want to own a weapon, then gun control proposals understandably strike a deep chord of worry about the safety of you and your family. So, then, rather than grapple with what happens to the families of the people murdered in mass shootings, it’s easier by far to cling to your own personal, familiar fear and dismiss or deflect every other question.
- Leading Questions — With a leading question, the idea is to phrase a question in such a way that you can only give the answer they want you to give. A lawyer in a deposition, for instance, might ask, “How fast was the Honda going when it smashed into the Nissan?” This is leading because it’s phrased as if the lawyer wants an answer about a specific speed, when they really want you to tacitly admit that the Honda smashed into the other car. The emotionally-loaded word is “smashed,” so that’s the word that really matters. By minimizing its weight in the question, they stand a better chance of getting the answer they want. It’s misdirection: look at my right hand, not my left.
- Loaded Questions — A loaded question is also filled with emotionally-weighted language. Any version of “Aren’t you angry about the thugs and rioters who are burning America’s cities?” is heavily loaded. You have to either agree (because no one likes the idea of burning American cities) or dig deep into the premise of the question. There’s a reason why politicians are always told “Don’t accept the premise of the question.” In the above, for instance, how much burning/looting is really happening? Do we know who’s doing it? Is it opportunistic or organized? Is Antifa/BLM/Leftist Boogeyman of the Moment behind it, or is it Black Bloc or some other anarchist group, or is it Erik Prince’s right-wing provocateurs? All of these specific answers change the equation considerably, but there isn’t room for any of that kind of analysis in loaded questions like this one.
- The Purity Test — Whenever Al Gore makes a speech about climate, there will inevitably be people who pop up to ridicule him for taking an airplane to reach whatever venue he’s making the speech from. “Learjet Liberals” is what they call Gore and anyone else who has ever driven or flown to a climate-related event. But any individual’s personal energy use is insignificant compared to the giant corporate and governmental polluters, and Gore purchases carbon offsets (in addition to many other actions he routinely takes to reduce his carbon footprint.) It’s really a disingenuous attempt to silence people advocating for a change by holding them to an impossible standard: if Al Gore could be shamed into not flying anymore, then his ability to effectively advocate would be sharply reduced. It’s a hypocritical way of calling out purported hypocrisy.
The World is Not Written by Aaron Sorkin
It would be lovely to live in a West Wing world where people of noble purpose make good-faith arguments, seeking truth and revelation, willing to concede a point well made, and only occasionally gloating when they properly won a proper argument. But of course we don’t, we live in the terrible real-life mirror image of that world, and in the wake of Justice Ginsburg’s passing, the tidal wave of bad-faith argumentation just got about a mile higher.
How, then, can we cope? The Zen Buddhists probably have it right: breathe. Your sense of poise is the most important tool you’ve got, and when you find a gully-wash of bad-faith roaring at you, take a step back. Take a breath. Recover your equilibrium. Then look for the horizon of truth, so to speak, and begin swimming in that direction. It doesn’t really matter which direction you pick, as long as there’s solid land you can find. “Reacting in anger or annoyance,”wrote Justice Ginsburg, “will not advance one’s ability to persuade.”
The good news is — here’s the real secret, and it’s also the worst bad-faith argument of all — we’re not so hopelessly divided as people pretend we are. The American cultural divide is not the Grand Canyon, it’s more like a crack in the sidewalk, and that’s what we’ll talk about next time.
PREVIOUSLY: Part One, Everything is an Argument
NEXT: Part Three, Unite and Conquer
