How To: argue with Trumpers

[Sherrerd]

As many have said, you probably can’t “win” an argument with a Trumper, but it can help you cope with the situation to realize that the person is suffering from a disordered mental state.

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

-----Carl Sagan, in The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (New York: 1995); Ch. 13, Obsessed with Reality, p. 241

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People caught up in the self-deceptions that are absolutely fundamental to right-wing “thinking” are, in one sense, to be pitied. But if you can’t summon up pity for the deluded one, realize that in most cases they cannot escape from their need to cling to a false worldview:

We do not make people humble and meek when we show them their guilt and cause them to be ashamed of themselves. We are more likely to stir their arrogance and rouse in them a reckless aggressiveness.

-----Eric Hoffer, in The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Harper & Bros., 1951)

Hoffer again, in a passage from 1951 that applies to the 2021 fact that some are profiting from the Trumpers’ impulse to defend their delusions:

All active mass movements strive, therefore, to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world. …by claiming that the ultimate and absolute truth is already embodied in their doctrine and that there is no truth nor certitude outside it. …To rely on the evidence of senses and of reason is heresy and treason.

-----Eric Hoffer, in The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Harper & Bros., 1951)

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The Trumpists feel that their beliefs are worth clinging to against all evidence because of the way those beliefs make them feel:

The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is chaotic.

-----Alan Moore, in the documentary film “The Mindscape of Alan Moore” (2003)

More on that topic:

Conspiracy theories are really attractive. Figuring out patterns is one of the things that gets your brain to give you a nice dose of chemical reward, the little ping of dopamine and whatever else that keeps you smiling. As a result, your brain is pretty good at finding patterns, and at disregarding information that doesn’t fit. Which means it’s also pretty good at finding false patterns, and at confirmation bias, and a bunch of other things that can be fatal.

-----Elizabeth Bear, Ancestral Night (Gallery / Saga Press, 2018)

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But though we may not be able to break through the determined self-delusion of a Trumper, it’s vital to stay checked-in. We can’t just throw up our hands and say it’s hopeless; we have to, as it were, work around the willfully-ignorant:

The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.

-----Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2017)

^ All are from the book described here:

New Book: Inspiring Remarks in Support of Democracy (& Useful Criticisms of Autocracy)

And You Shall Be Upheld: Quotations for Democracy-Builders Compiled and Introduced by K. Sherrerd Lowry ISBN: 978-1-945939-04-4 It’s always helpful to have an apt quotation (or two or more) at hand when debating apologists for Dear Leaders. This book was designed to make such remarks easy to find and use, with topics such as Accountability, Justice, Tribalism, National Security, Rule of Law, Conspiracy Theorists, Anti-Authoritarianism, and Protections for Whistleblowers (to name a few of the …