Rhetoric And The Synoptic Problem has a Amazon page now, with an availability date of June 15, 2022. I was told yesterday that I would get copies in two months, so technically, you could get a copy before I do.
David Trobisch, author of The First Edition of the New Testament (among other works) provided a very generous blurb for the back cover.
I don’t usually write two columns at once, but these topics seem closely related enough.
In the last few days, it’s become apparent that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, currently the most senior member of SCOTUS, has a legal conflict of interest in virtually any case he might hear in the future.
It’s not that we didn’t know he had one, mind you. It’s just that now he’s trapped between two rather damning syllogisms:
1.) He knew his wife was deeply involved in an effort to invalidate the 2020 presidential election with no legal basis, and did nothing, making him both complicit to an illegal act and ethically bankrupt for not recusing himself from a directly related SCOTUS case;
2.) He did not know that his wife was deeply involved in an effort to invalidate the 2020 presidential election, and therefore he is an oblivious idiot not to be trusted with anything.
Whether 1) or 2) reflects the actual reality of the situation, I suspect, will remain mostly fodder for SCOTUS historians. Either one is bad. The first bookend of his SCOTUS career was his damning confirmation hearing; now we’re just picking out the decor of the second.
My intention here, though, is not to condemn or bury Thomas. My intention is rather to draw some attention to who is drawing attention to his dilemma. Rhetoric is an act, and art, of selection; we chose what we want to talk about, and choose what we do not talk about, for effect.
The news cycle has been dominated by Ukraine lately, and for good reason, as Vlad Putin has unwittingly managed to do something that hasn’t happened since the 90s – unify the West – and Zelensky and Ukraine have turned my go-to wear of nondescript green shirts (and among many other things, the surprising utility of the average Ukraine tractor’s torque in hauling abandoned tanks) into a statement of principled defiance. It helps, of course, if you have a shoulder-fired anti-tank missile handy when you make such statements, but when your opponent has both the symbol and the signified, I sense driving a T-72 tank that was obsolescent in 1989 into Ukraine is not a strong career or life investment.
But where is a corrupt (or oblivious) SCOTUS justice in the news? Page 2, if that. I read multiple newspapers like a starving wolf that hasn’t eaten in days, and I learned about this on Reddit, which is the internet equivalent of a slightly upscale back alley with well-spoken hoodlums too busy sharing cat videos to mug you. Surely the papers can take a day off from Ukraine updates to notice the rot? A slight shift in coverage is not going to stop a nuclear exchange.
The steady normalization of corruption would seem to be the answer. Of course Thomas is corrupt. Did anyone think he wasn’t corrupt, save perhaps Virginia Thomas, who once dialed up Anita Hill and demanded that she apologize? Corruption is the norm. Corruption is a feature.
Perhaps it’s only the absence of corruption that makes a story now, which is why the West has reacted so positively to Ukraine’s position. As corrupt as Ukraine has been over the years, the existential threat of invasion has given them (and the West) an interesting chance at a reset back to immediate post-WWII moral clarity. Yes, Russia, like many other autocrat-run countries, does not have our best interests in mind. Maybe it wasn’t a bad idea to keep a few armored divisions and a shitload of planes and submarines placed exactly where force can deter Soviet ambition.
But if America has a monoculture, it is one of weariness. We are all exhausted. If not from work, from Covid, corruption, racism, or rank stupidity. Surely yet another unqualified, powerful elite figure texting their wishes to other unqualified, powerful elite figures is not news. It is expected. And it is expected of us, too, to be corrupt.
As the astute political philosophers collectively known as Lynyrd Skynyrd once pointed out, “Does your conscience bother you? Tell the truth.” Why, fellow Southerners, you’ve probably also broken the law to smear your political opponents with the purpose of holding onto the Presidency of the United States! Haven’t you? Tell the truth.
I am not a particularly good or pleasant person, and there are some things I regret, but no. I have yet to do that or anything remotely similar, nothing that would land me in jail or prison via any twist of reasoning. I won’t even cheat in a board game. I am sensitive to false guilt-projection; just because a SCOTUS justice is corrupt (or oblivious) doesn’t meant that I am corrupt (or oblivious), or I would make a similar corrupt (or oblivious) choice in similar circumstances – or, for that matter, that anyone else would automatically descend into an oozy pile of sleaze, a position largely filled solo by Ted Cruz most days.
But that’s the trick. To get a SCOTUS seat, you have to accept a certain degree of corruption. It is a political position, Democrat or Republican. America largely accepts this. We call them “judges” and Chief Justice Roberts calls them “umpires” but they are closer to the political officers that the Soviets used to enforce correct thinking in military units – our big American innovation is to pit them against each other instead of the rank and file. They could only be “judges” if there was general agreement in America about most core values, and as there is not, they can’t be judges. They can only enforce this or that value and mask it with arbitrary “legal” reasoning.
Perhaps the only sin of Clarence Thomas, then, is that he got caught, and there is no possible coherent defense. But it is hard to defend, much less want to preserve, a society where the crime is not a sin, but being caught is the sin, and where the more elite you are, the less accountable you are. Perhaps his fan-base should dwell upon that, if they can stop wanting to be him long enough, but the Gingrich-Clinton-Trump era has largely deadened our national sensitivity to corruption. We can barely feel the ache that signals the cavity, and thus, we don’t bother to brush. But the absence of pain is not contentment. It is only a lack of signal.
Indeed, this notion is the going theory on why Putin miscalculated so badly in invading Ukraine; he literally didn’t know his armed forces were in piss-poor readiness, through a combination of rank corruption and relying on yes-men. The bulk numbers should have told him something, of course. Readers may recall that in the first real-time CNN-broadcast full-scale conventional war on the planet Earth, and in the first (and last) use of the Powell doctrine, a U.S.-led coalition put together a force of over a half-million personnel and nearly the full power of its air assets to retake tiny Kuwait in 1991, and Russia couldn’t muster half that for a huge county like Ukraine or enough aircraft to get air superiority on Day 1.
Throw in a total defeat on the public relations side and the implosion of the Russian economy, and the syllogism remains. If Putin knew the invasion was doomed, he’s quite complicit in not just its launch, but its failure; if he didn’t know the invasion was doomed, well, this column is turning into an Mad Libs exercise, isn’t it?
For the sake of argument, let’s say something called “cancel culture” exists as a 21st-century specific example of collective, reactionary shunning of an undesirable person or viewpoint, perpetuated by leftists, and primarily preying on right-of-center viewpoints.
Such behavior would be nothing new. Every culture is constantly trying to push its adherents to conform, and wielding its own specialized form of ostracism to enforce this conformity.
But if this “cancel culture” is reactionary, what is it reacting to? Isn’t being reactionary the traditional tactic (and duty) of conservatives who are, by definition, trying to “conserve” a unitary culture?
I would suggest here that “cancel culture,” is a reaction to an argumentative tactic for which I have yet to see a clear definition. For the lack of a better term, let’s call this tactic, to which “cancel culture” is a reaction, something appropriate to its nature: fence pissing.
Two examples may suffice. Please note that I am not attempting to describe “troll” or “wedge issue” or their many variants. This is something different.
Example 1:
Imagine you own a piece of property. Lucky you, right, in this day and age? You share a boundary with a neighbor. This boundary is marked by a physical fence. The fence doesn’t actually stop anyone from crossing; it serve chiefly as a marker and a reminder of the legal status of the two plots. This side is mine, that side is yours. You do your business there, I do my business here. A social-capitalist boundary. All is good.
Until one day you wake up, survey your domain, and note that the fence is soaked in piss. It stinks awful as it’s so saturated. The fence itself is largely ruined. Perhaps you could wait for the sun to dry it out. You tell your neighbor about this, knowing all the while that they pissed on the fence, and they smirk and only agree to help replace the fence if the fence is re-positioned a little further onto your property. After all, they argue, that’s where it should have been in the first place, and perhaps even claiming that the new proposed position reflects where it was originally.
Without much choice, you agree and the fence is replaced, and you have slightly less land than before.
The next day you wake up and the fence is soaked in piss again.
Example 2:
Let’s say “Steve” is prejudiced against transgendered people, and motivated to do something about it rather than keep such thoughts to himself. The reason for this prejudice is irrelevant. More important for this example is that Steve knows quite well that he cannot say his opinion about transgendered people aloud in most settings without negative consequences. He feels hemmed in and constricted. How dare society muzzle him? Whatever happened to freedom?
Steve notes, however, that there is a peripheral way to act on his prejudice that is far more socially acceptable; he can wax at length about how transgender athletes should not compete in women’s sports. This doesn’t attract as much ire because he can frame his objection through notions of fair play and equity for women, which are also legally protected and offer a strong counterargument. He can also gain allies for this argument that he would not have gained if he simply stated he doesn’t like transgendered people. Steve doesn’t really give a damn about the specific issue he’s chosen; it’s primarily a way for him to express his prejudice without much risk to himself and make life a little more difficult for those he dislikes – not just transgendered people, but the people who support them as people with rights like all others.
Note that everyone who expresses concern about transgendered athletes having an unfair sporting advantage does not necessarily share such a deep-seated bias; rather, I’m saying that the peripheral issue allows Steve a relatively safe outlet to express his prejudice as his bias is cloaked by the presence of those focused on the competitive aspects, who, again, may not be fully aware of the beliefs and motivations of their apparent allies such as Steve.
I’ve called the issue of transgender athletes a “peripheral” one because it sits at the boundary (or “periphery,” around the edge, much like, say, “cough” a fence) of more centralized and difficult issues of sex and gender; namely, what is a “man” and “woman,” who gets (or is allowed) to be called a “man” and “woman,” and what benefits, responsibilities, and complications are respectively attached to these concepts. Sport competition is important, but it’s only one way that those core issues manifest.
But Steve doesn’t want to participate in any core debate. For him, there is nothing to debate or discuss. So he pisses on the fence itself, the social boundary where differences are negotiated and society itself is held together. If anyone confronts him on what he’s doing, he cries foul, notes that the fence is technically intact, and he is a strong support of rights of women, even, and refuses to compromise unless he gains something from the exchange. For him, any rules of discourse are for fools, and a poisoned debate is an advantage.
But. What if. Back to Example 1.
Let’s say you choose to ignore Steve the fence-pisser instead of playing their loaded game. The fence, albeit rather smelly and damp, remains in place. The sun begins to do its important work.
Impatient with the lack of progress and attention, Steve makes a selfie of themselves pissing on the fence and posts it to social media. Or the new media equivalent. Perhaps he dumps a truck full of manure on the property line. Use your vivid imagination.
Other fence-pissers are suitably impressed. This is now pretty close to classic “troll” behavior. People with social investments in intact fences are outraged. Collective shame is applied, as no one with a good fence wants it ruined; to allow such behavior to go without comment is unthinkable. If an apology is extracted, fence owners rejoice. If it is declined, fence-pissers are emboldened to piss further.
Cancel culture, then, would be a reaction borne not of encroaching new ideas, but a defense of a preexisting boundary in the face of trolling.
Or is it? What if it’s the other way around?
What if the “left” is actually the side engaged in fence-pissing behaviors, pushing all sorts of newfangled ideas like the normalization of transgendered rights, and the right is… umm… cancelling…
Yep.
In any heated rhetorical dispute, either of these two tactics may be in use by any given side. They aren’t new 21st-century things, but behaviors that would arise in any complex community where people live close together and share some basic assumptions about acceptable behavior. The common denominator is the fence, the boundary area, the periphery where the struggle for meaning takes place. We’ve seen this play out many times before. Fence pissing is therefore a tactical maneuver to push the acceptable spectrum of opinion on an issue, sometimes referred to as the Overton Window, in a desired direction. However, it is an innately destructive maneuver, as it corrupts the nature of the boundary itself that could otherwise be changed peacefully through respectful negotiation. It makes the use of a given logical fallacy look halfway respectable.
Ideally, a careful dialectic would be the only behavior that takes place at the fence; two neighbors, talking with respect, keeping in mind that the legal boundary between their lands has always been a fiction, and making sure their zippers are firmly closed.
But if the opening gambit is to piss on the fence, to destroy the very arena of meaning for a momentary advantage, standing there and insisting on respectful dialectic is a tough sell. This has always been the weakness of systems of rhetoric and dialectic that insist on rules of conduct – anyone willing to break them has an advantage.
Think about your options for response to a soaked fence. The structure of society itself, perhaps, has been defiled. No one wants to stand there and be disrespected. That only leads to more of the same. A strong “fight” reaction seems appropriate. But the reaction is what the fence pisser wants. Attention and respect and a chance to move the fence. They are not building a fence, or planting a field, or raising a child. All they have to offer to society is a stream of urine.
The smart move is, if you can afford it, silence.
But maybe we can’t always wait for the sun to do its disinfectant work.
In some situations, maybe even more, a silent treatment reaction to fence-pissing is not enough, especially if shame has no effect.
A stronger reaction is needed. You pissed on my fence? Oh, look, your barn seems to be on fire. Try pissing on that. Conflict resolution via the Chicago way, as Sean Connery once put it.
Thus he effective strategy against fence-pissing is about the same as the winning strategy against a bully. Disregard if you can; fight like hell if you cannot. This principle scales up well. Ukraine is giving a class to the entire world on how the second option works, after years of Putin fence-pissing.
I’ll admit “cancel culture” as a term still has a bit of that new-car smell, but once that wears off, there’s a more familiar odor. That said, either side of “fence pissing” and “cancel culture” don’t neatly fit into the rhetorical systems I’ve seen, which tend to concentrate on fallacies, emotional appeals, and scapegoating when they do discuss “bad” rhetoric, if at all.