I used to be an active member of a debate club that met monthly before the pandemic. We switched to online debates, but none have been scheduled for several months. Basically, the spirit has died, killed off by the venom of partisan hatred. A taste from last week’s group email thread:

Member 1 (Self-Described Conservative), debate suggestions from Seven Lessons Democrats Need to Learn — Fast* : 

  1. It is possible to overstimulate the economy.

  2. Law and order is not just a racist dog whistle.

  3. Don’t politicize everything.

  4. Border security is not just a Republican talking point.

  5. “People of color” is not a thing.

  6. Deficits do matter.

  7. The New Deal happened once.

Member 2 (Self-Described Progressive**), response (in its entirety] to the above suggestions: 

White conservatives (increasingly a redundant term) downplay racial issues not from a sense of fairness or equality, but from a fear of the erosion of power and privilege that their own slide into minority status portends. They seek to entrench their tenuous hold on power by making it harder for current minorities to vote, suppressing discussions on race in classrooms and in public, banning books from libraries. So much for the party of Lincoln. They are just fighting the inevitable- a multiracial society that finally realizes liberty and justice for all.

How could you argue with that?

Notes and Comments:

*by David Brooks/New York Times, April 28, 2022

** This same individual had written in an earlier post, “Social issues can’t be solved logically because they involve people, who are emotional and irrational. There’s good evidence and bad evidence to support every claim, but what people think ultimately comes down to their personal moral compass, not a dispassionate evaluation of the facts.” Why bother to debate issues, then? He had an answer to that: “the reason I continue to participate in this group is not because I think most of the active members here have good ideas about how the world should be. Quite the opposite in fact. I find most of the active members here to hold conservative views driven by ideas that are racist, sexist, classist, and in most ways anti-progressive and antithetical to everything I believe. I feel I have a moral duty to challenge conservative ideology whenever I come across it”.

Speaking of ideologies, here are some ways of thinking and reasoning that are motivated by ideological beliefs:

  • Motivated reasoning: reasoning that follows a conclusion already reached. Such reasoning is motivated by the desire to justify or rationalize what one already believes is true. As Clark and Winegard (2020) put it, “Reason, from this perspective, is more like a lawyer defending a particular position than a dispassionate scientist searching for the truth.”

  • Motivated skepticism: being hyper-critical or nitpicking when confronted with information that doesn’t support one’s ideological convictions.

  • Motivated credulity: embracing information that supports one’s convictions, no matter the quality or source of this information.

  • Motivated certainty: a tendency to be overconfident, insensitive to counterarguments, and unwilling to acknowledge the downside of one’s political opinions, such as unequivocally supporting open borders.

  • Intolerance of Ambiguity: a tendency to become more tenacious, zealous, or resolute in one’s beliefs when confronted with information or arguments that challenge these beliefs, i.e., to become even more certain one is right and that the evidence one is right is unambiguous. Intolerance of ambiguity explains a perplexing phenomenon in my debate club: after hearing strong arguments in favor of (or against) a policy position, some of the more ideological club members would respond “now I’m against (or in favor of) that position more than ever”. Say what!! Basically, people double-down on their political biases when confronted with credible information or arguments against these biases. Under threat of doubt, reaffirm one’s faith.

  • Sacred Values: ideologues tend to hold their values with a quasi-religious fervor. Per Clark and Winegard (2020) sacredness “appears to trigger motivated certainty, reduce utilitarianism, and …increase imputations of “evil” motives to those on the other side of the sacred value debate.” Hence, ideologues tend to dismiss pragmatic, incremental approaches to problem-fixing (too utilitarian) in favor of “the right thing to do”.

  • Categorical Mindset: the tendency to reduce people and ideas into simplistic categories, which facilitates name-calling and labeling - the better to dismiss people and ideas one disagrees with. Having a categorical mindset reduces appreciation of the world’s complexity, exaggerates Us-Them differences, fossilizes thinking and undermines creative problem-solving.

— from a previous post, Loosen those chains of certainty! (How to Resist the Lure of Ideology)

Reference: 

Cory J. Clark & Bo M. Winegard (2020) Tribalism in War and Peace: The Nature and Evolution of Ideological Epistemology and Its Significance for Modern Social Science, Psychological Inquiry, 31:1, 1-22, DOI: 10.1080/1047840X.2020.1721233