Truth and the Right

The last several years have not been good ones for the progressive movement, and one senses a level of frustration akin to that of trying to disentangle 25 coat-hangers.  Much of the frustration has to do with the fact that the truth about the conservative Right is not really getting through to people – at least, to those people who might be willing to change their views accordingly.  The problem is partly a matter of the Left’s communication style and strategy, which need serious renovation, but also one of highly successful conservative efforts at neutralizing inconvenient truths, and at undermining the truth-tellers.

It’s a striking reality of our current political culture that criticisms of conservative policies or strategies are routinely denied having any truth value whatsoever.  There are three main tactics by which the Right tries to delegitimize its detractors:

1. The critics are just being political.  The flawed logic of this charge is that, if a critical  stance or statement might have political consequences (against the Right), that criticism is intrinsically political and must therefore be untrustworthy.  Example: Richard Clarke, the former chief of counter-terrorism, who after criticizing the invasion of Iraq was accused of trying to give the administration a black eye simply because he hadn’t received a promotion.

2. The critics are just conspiracy theorists.  In this case, the reasoning is that, if a critical argument requires a number of dots to be connected, involving a variety of actors and events, then that argument is a confection or a paranoid fantasy.  Example: Legitimate concerns about the accuracy of electronic voting equipment are dismissed as the rantings of the “loony left” who refuse to accept the results of the election.

3. The critics are like Chicken Little.  Here, the approach is to make reasonable claims seem unreasonable by suggesting that they are unfounded or that they imply more than they actually do.  Example: Environmentalists who point to evidence of global warming’s potential economic and social impacts are accused of concocting doomsday scenarios designed to scare people into supporting a radical agenda.

What links these three tactics is that they are ad hominem attacks designed to undercut the very authority to speak of those making the criticism.  This holds true, frequently, even when the substance of the criticism is engaged – but that engagement, we should note, often takes the form only of denial or distortion.

Moreover, the unwary who are ignorant of the potency of framing [see George Lakoff’s  Don’t Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate] might inadvertently reinforce the negative images by trying to deny that they are being political, conspiracy theorists, or like Chicken Little. Consider Richard Nixon saying, “I am not a crook.” What did that make you think? Why, that he was a crook, of course. The trick is to reframe what is being said. We won’t go into that here, but do recommend Lakoff’s book.

But isn’t the Left also guilty of ad hominem attacks, we might ask, and of distorting its opponents’ claims?  Why should the Right come in for more severe censure?  Well, yes, the Left is far from perfect, but there are some crucial differences here.

First, consider that two of the Right’s primary targets over the last 30 years have been the media and the universities.  Conservatives say that what these institutions have in common is “liberal bias.”  What they really have in common, however – as a matter of professional and institutional mission – is that they are devoted to the pursuit of the truth.  Journalists and academics can fall short of that ideal, of course, but is it mere coincidence that these “liberal” institutions nonetheless represent most fully our society’s liberal (in the original sense of the word) dedication to free inquiry and the dissemination of knowledge?  Perhaps Americans, when they hear attacks on the press and professors, should stop and consider why it might be that so many members of the media and universities – those whose job descriptions commit them to figuring out what’s going on in the world – reject the Right’s worldview.

In any case, the cumulative result of the conservative campaign against these two institutions is that it has become much harder for Americans to know what the truth is.  Their healthy trust (meaning a trust informed by critical awareness) in the institutions of knowledge has been deliberately and systematically undermined, and now an unhealthy suspicion or confusion reigns.  In our image-saturated, message-mad world, when the sheer quantity of information can seem overwhelming, that makes it easier for misconceptions to propagate and for the public to be manipulated.  From this view, the supposedly “elitist” press and universities are in fact anti-elitist, in that they help people cut through the static, make good decisions for themselves, and resist the lure of demagogues.

A second important difference is the Right’s comparatively greater penchant for governmental secrecy.  Again, there’s no monopoly of virtue here; political actors across the spectrum have tried in their own ways to suppress evidence or conceal the truth.  As a matter of declared and practiced policy, however, the conservative record trends toward less public information, not more.  Usually justified in terms of Presidential prerogative, this “darkness” policy has emerged in a variety of recent cases: Dick Cheney’s energy task force meeting behind closed doors; the Justice Department holding secret trials of terrorism suspects; the military refusing to release information about detainees at Guantánamo Bay or Abu Ghraib.  Deeming the public unworthy of learning the truth about such matters – or spinning the truth until we’re all dizzy – is the true elitism, the dangerous elitism.

If you think about it, the hypocrisy of all this is stunning.  That’s because conservatives have long prided themselves on their belief in “objective truth,” while accusing the Left of espousing a kind of sickly postmodern moral relativism.  Yet one need look no further than the current administration’s famous contempt for science in order to take the measure of conservative cynicism about the truth.  Dismissing unpleasant truths as politically motivated without giving them any sort of hearing is not, whatever they may say, a belief in the sanctity of fact – or in the sanctity of life.  And it is no less hypocritical to claim self-righteously the mantle of “populism” while making it more difficult for the populace both to get and to interpret reliable information.  Increasingly, modern American conservatism has come to seem both premodern and postmodern in the worst ways: premodern in its blinkered fundamentalism, and postmodern in its skill at creating a “reality” that can be packaged and sold.

It’s symptomatic that simply putting the argument in these terms seems to verge on paranoia.  Things have gotten to where just pointing out the undisputed facts can make one sound like a wild-eyed fanatic: American soldiers torture and kill prisoners in Iraq; half a million fewer Americans have health insurance now than in 2001; the climate gets warmer and warmer, and oil consumption goes up and up; more Americans believe in the devil than in evolution.  What’s a progressive to do?

That’s an easy one.  Never back down, unless the facts call for it.  Never stop calling it like you see it.  Press for more information and better information.  Point out falsehood where it shows itself.  Stand on conviction, yet be willing to adapt to new truths.  Have faith that the truth shall set us free, and will prevail in the end.  “By their fruits shall ye know them,” a wise man once said, and as the bitter fruit of conservative ideology ripens, and the public wearies of its taste, progressives must be there standing on principle: justice, compassion, fairness, equality and honesty.

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