I think that both with Brexit and with Trump, we still haven't got to the heart of the truth about why so many people voted for them. We can go on until the sky falls making rational arguments against them - and we should - but we won't actually persuade the majority to accept they made a colossal mistake in this way. Both results were close when they should have been overwhelming landslides in the other direction. We need some way to break the circular-logic filter bubbles at work here, and rational argument doesn't cut it. Even in the absolute best case, the preference for Remain is now marginal - and that's nowhere near enough. Reason and logic don't work, but emotion-driven narratives don't work either. It's something stronger even than post-truth at this stage; plenty of escape avenues to save face have been offered (we all make mistakes, we accept you weren't all racists and genuinely thought you were doing the right thing) despite the massive asymmetry this requires (treating large numbers of people with a kindness that is seldom reciprocated).
Possibility 1 : Our arguments and methods are basically correct, but aren't getting through to those who need to hear them because of media bias.
Possibility 2 : Our arguments genuinely don't matter, because a large fraction of such people are truly xenophobic and thoughtless but can't bring themselves to admit it.
Fun times.
I find the cases discussed below to be a curiously interesting example of not merely shifting the goalposts, but shifting them around in a circle.
The overall paradigm is, first, a series of claims about how easy and/or beneficial Brexit will be, so we should leave. Then as the claims meet reality they are not abandoned, but used to claim that the EU is punishing Britain, so we should leave. Intellectually, this is completely moribund. No amount of evidence or rational argument can touch it.
What is very much still relevant is that the same hermetically-sealed, evidence-proof and argument-proof logic now drives government policy. And it drives it in one direction only: towards a more and more calamitous form of Brexit. Each time reality demolishes one of their claims (the most ubiquitous, perhaps, and the most absurd, certainly, being that German car makers would ensure a good deal in double quick time) the Brexiters do not acknowledge that they were wrong, but move on to a harder position. So, first, we can somehow be in the single market but with no strings attached. That’s proved wrong. So it will be a trade deal. Now that that is looking increasingly difficult they move to saying that no deal would be perfectly fine. And, in any case, it’s all the EU’s fault and ‘just goes to prove’ that we are right to leave.
http://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2017/05/brexiter-illogic-and-where-it-could.html
I have been a socialists all my live. But in recent years i feel alienated by the left. Something went horribly wrong.
ReplyDeleteI think you missing
Possibility 3: Our arguments and methods are partly wrong and need correcting.
Oh, I'd go further with possibility 3 and say that they could be entirely wrong. That possibility must always, always be considered. I don't think it's very likely, but I do consider it. I more or less take that one as a given in almost all situations. Not much point in having an opinion if you haven't considered the alternatives.
ReplyDeleteBut, accepting that the anti-Brexit, anti-Trump brigade are indeed correct, I would like to believe that our methods of persuasion used could be more at fault. The problem is that it seems to me that all possible methods have been tried and failed. Of course, it might be that there's a huge bias as to which methods have been used most often. Perhaps the better methods do have an effect, but are used so rarely that their impact is negligible.
I'm at the fairly extreme left end of the political scale. I wouldn't say the left as a whole alienates me, but there are certainly individual elements that do.
Rhys Taylor How to explain? I know:
ReplyDeleteI knew Trump would win the day Bernie Sanders stepped down.
Since I am German I can't say we here but I think that the US left send the wrong candidate into to race.
That is what I meant with partly wrong: The US left is right that Trump isn't a good president. But they where wrong to think that Hillary could beat him.
And not because she is a women. A hypothetical Bernadine Sanders would have won hand down.
Jill Stein tripled here popular vote from 0.36% to 1.07%. If I had been a US citizen I would have voted Stein as well.
And then the ill fated attempt to get the republican electoral college to vote against there pledge.
Result: Trump lost two and Hillary five electors.
The US left made to many mistakes here.
Not Trump won, Hillary lost.
As I've said before, I favor Charles Stross' working hypothesis
ReplyDeleteantipope.org - A working hypothesis - Charlie's Diary
My working hypothesis to explain the 21st century is that the Tofflers underestimated how pervasive future shock would be. I think somewhere in the range from 15-30% of our fellow hairless primates are currently in the grip of future shock, to some degree. Symptoms include despair, anxiety, depression, disorientation, paranoia, and a desperate search for certainty in lives that are experiencing unpleasant and uninvited change. It's no surprise that anyone who can offer dogmatic absolute answers is popular, or that the paranoid style is again ascendant in American politics, or that religious certainty is more attractive to many than the nuanced complexities of scientific debate. Climate change is an exceptionally potent trigger for future shock insofar as it promises an unpleasant and unpredictable dose of upcoming instability in the years ahead; denial is an emotionally satisfying response to the threat, if not a sustainable one in the longer term.
Deep craziness: we're in it, and there's probably not going to be any reduction in the prevalence of authoritarian escapism until we collectively become accustomed to the pace of change. Which will, at a minimum, not happen until the older generations have died of old age — and maybe not even then.
Martin Krischik I dunno, about that... diehard Bernie supporters tend to be one part of the left that does alienate me. I saw perfectly sensible people start off supporting Hillary go steadily off the rails after switching to Bernie. I watched them go from "Hillary would be a good President" to "Bernie would be better" right down to "Bernie or Bust !" and culminating in wackjob conspiracy theories about Hillary being a murderer and suchlike.
ReplyDeleteSupporting Bernie doesn't concern me (whether he really would have won is, I think, a lot more questionable than many make out, but that's for another time) - it's this "Bernie or Bust" nonsense that I find offputting. The problem is that it suggests "Bust" is somehow a valid alternative. It isn't, it's utterly crazy. It's tribalism taken to an absurd absolute. Preferring Bernie to Hillary I understand, but demanding Bernie at any cost I just don't get. Not when that cost is electing a literal monster. Hillary isn't a monster, she's just somewhat unpleasant. And she won the popular vote.
In Britain we now get a not entirely dissimilar choice : the craziness of an extreme hard Brexit under May, the ineffectual damp squib of Labour under the (once popular but no longer) Corbyn, or actually stopping Brexit with the Liberal Democrats. And right now it looks like we're going to give the Grand High Witch the leadership role, because aaaarrghh.
Winchell Chung That was interesting. I'm not sure I entirely agree with it, but it is interesting. Still, if that's the root cause, the question remains : how do we go about persuading people (or letting them convince themselves) that they're making foolish choices ?
ReplyDeleteYou know my stance...
ReplyDelete