Suppose that you want to defend someone or some institution from criticism that it has engaged in unacceptable behavior of type t. Here's a common rhetorical strategy understood by all professional pundits: First, you define some spectrum, relevant to t. Then you find a way to identify demons at the right and left-hand ends of that spectrum that will allow you to place your hero in the rational middle. It helps if one of the demons can be associated - even if unfairly - with actual people, preferably people that are already demonized by your likely readers. Balancing that first demon needn't actually be real people. Rather, you can use some vague phrase that suggests demonizable extremism. Such non-referential vaguery is useful because it allows you to suggest to readers that real critics fit this extreme, without having to actually defend claims about what they really say. Next you assume the middle, with high fanfare and moral certainty. Finally, you rhetorically assimilate your spectrum to three discrete points: point occupied by you and your hero; the crazies on one end, and all critics on the other.
Voila: Hero defended without having to actually address any of the substantive criticisms. No one who is a crazy spectrum-ending demon needs to be engaged with seriously.
We are sad to say this of someone who has produced a great deal of valuable philosophy, and done a great deal for the profession, but that is precisely the form Gary Gutting's most recent NYT Opinionator piece.
The article is entitled You Say You Want A Revolution - a clever, but utterly rhetorically unfair title. Its subject is a defense of the Obama administration against critics of its undermining of civil liberties, its military policies, and its support for corporations. And it gets right to the spectrum defining - in particular the spectrum of "revolutionary" opposition to Obama. At one end, we have the great contemporary demon of NYT readers: the Tea Party. In fact, Gutting is completely unfair to the Tea Party. After summarizing Obama's self-image, his use of the "hallowed reference" to the US revolution to position his own administration as "the most recent step" in "a continuing effort to carry out the ideals of the revolution," he offers the following amazing justification for placing the Tea Party at one extreme of revolutionary defiance to this project:
The rhetoric of the Tea Party — the far right of the Republican Party — asserts a quite different view: that Obama’s mode of governing represents a betrayal of our revolutionary ideals and calls for a “mission . . . to restore America’s founding principles.” Although few Tea Party members advocate armed opposition, many, like the original Tea Party, are committed to much more than the conventional elective and legislative efforts to thwart the goals of “liberal” government.
Ever since Obama’s initial election, they have been willing to employ almost any “acts of disruption” short of civil disobedience or insurrection. They routinely use filibuster to oppose legislation, obstruct the implementation of laws (especially the Affordable Care Act) already enacted, and put on indefinite hold appointments to key administrative and judicial positions. In this sense, they are indeed a revolutionary party.
They are, that is, a revolutionary party in the sense that they do not advocate revolution, do not advocate violence, armed opposition, or insurrection, do not even engage in civil disobedience, but do use various legislative and procedural tricks to thwart policy implementation. Wow - Orwell would approve of that one.
Well, onward. Having offered the right-hand demon, it is time for the left, in this case represented, conveniently, by "the far left". "On the other side of the political spectrum, recent developments have evoked similar revolutionary sentiments from the far left." Who does Gutting have in mind here as "the far left" that is "on the other side" from the Tea Party? The Spartacists? The Black Panthers? The SWP? No, heavens. Those are not interesting foils. Why bother trying to silence them? Rather, we get Glenn Greenwald and Noam Chomsky! Of course Gutting doesn't literally say that Chomsky and Greenwald are far left, or as demonic as the Tea Party, and his literal claim is only that they are "revolutionary" in his non-revolutionary "sense of revolutionary". In the case of individualist, civil libertarian, political moderate Greenwald, the "far left" label would be absurd. In the case of Chomsky, any responsible use of it would require (a) distinguishing anarchisms of various sorts from Marxisms of various sorts, and (b) showing that Chomsky's criticisms of government crimes was dependent upon his positive political vision. But never mind. Let's just quote them saying things that are not remotely revolutionary or far left and associate that with the label "far-left revolutionaries."
So why are the two demons wrong? The Tea Party demon is wrong because it thinks that the limitation of government means that government can do nothing to help people. (Remember that this is written for the NYT whose readership will hardly be unsympathetic to this critique of the Tea Party.) And "the far left"? Here's the "argument":
A similar dilemma undermines the revolutionary tendencies of the far left. They must either deny the obvious fact that protecting Americans from terrorist attacks requires a substantial government surveillance system or they must agree that the only debate should be about how this surveillance system should work, not whether it should exist. Taking the second approach means accepting the fundamental legitimacy of Obama’s anti-terrorism program and merely challenging specific aspects of this program.
Let's count a few of the fallacies:
1. Critics who never advocated anything remotely like revolution have their criticisms defined as "revolutionary" tendencies.
2. The central claim in question - that protecting Americans from terrorist attack requires "a substantial government surveillance system" - is said to be "obvious". End of story. No need to discuss the actual danger from violent attack, the meaning of "terrorist," the causes of such attacks, the efficacy of surveillance as a means of prevention, the efficacy of other means of prevention, distinctions between legally constrained surveillance and systematic surveillance, whether, for example, the policy of extra-judicial drone killings seems designed to keep the so-called war on terror going indefinitely, is known to hit innocents, inflames public opinion against us, and fails to capture terrorists who might, in fact, be useful sources of information, etc. Chomsky, at least, has written at length on all of these points, and Greenwald on many. But never mind: It is "obvious" that "a substantial government surveillance system" is needed.
3. Finally, we equivocate between the vague "a substantial government surveillance system" and "Obama’s anti-terrorism program" to conclude that only polite engagement with Obama around details is permissible.
And it is not enough to forestall criticism of our hero around civil liberties, because "Similar arguments could be developed against far-left attacks on the legitimacy of Obama’s use of military force, support for Israel and acceptance of market capitalism." (On that we have no doubt.)
And there you have it. If you criticize US wars and militarism, our rent-seeking, wall-street bail-out serving, militaristic, global corporatist system, or Israeli domination of Palestine, you are to be dismissed because you are a revolutionary leftist who is as irrational as and a mirror-image of the Tea Party. You are a romantic fantasist. You need to "take up, with the president, the challenge of actually governing this country."
The president, that is, who maintains that he has the right to kill you without judicial review if he thinks you are associated with his enemies.
Mark Lance, Eric Schliesser, John Protevi
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