‘Own the Libs’
Culture war causing all the rage
“Recurring arguments are failed grips on reality.”—Carolyn Hax, advice columnist
“You did it!” “No, you did it!” Whether it’s social media or politicians, what passes for public discourse these days often resembles rumbles in the schoolyard. Real kids are fine—it’s just when they weigh 200 pounds, their main religious belief is to carry guns, and they demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect (the less you know, the more you think you know) that things tend to go downhill.
I refer to the war of words we constantly hear online and over the airwaves.
The arguments are incredibly binary, as if everything comes in the form of two opposites. This limited perspective is sometimes called Either/Or.
In contrast, experiments show that birds can count above two. They can tell if somebody has swiped an egg from their nest. If a chicken can count to three, humans should be able to do at least as well. Two sides? There may be four or five sides to every question.
The sole great advantage of Either/ Or is that you have two sides for purposes of fighting—assuming you want to fight 24/7. Some of us believe that we will get further by civil discussion. Unfortunately, once the stage is set for a slugfest, everybody tends to join in.
Angry arguments are often triggered by Internet trolls. Psychologists say trolls “lack a sense of personal responsibility, enjoy causing others harm, show high self-esteem.” (Self-centered bullies.) Amanda Marcotte in “Troll Nation” claims much of the country is acting that way.
Before social media, shock jocks and demagogues riled us up. The late Rush Limbaugh found a huge audience for his insulting rants, with listeners proud to proclaim themselves “ditto heads.” While glorifying American individualism, they’d rather parrot others than think from scratch.
“Owning the Libs” is a widespread online game in which red hats attempt to dominate and defeat blue hats. Derek Robertson claims in Politico that for red hats, it‘s “a way of life, even a civic religion.” Don’t expect good sportsmanship, logic, or anything resembling the high school debating team, where students learn to argue using time-honored rules. Instead, posts are heavily larded with insults and personal attacks—ad hominem. Red hats are the main aggressors here, but verbal mayhem is contagious.
Assertions don’t require sources: “It’s all over the Internet!” Meanwhile, someone dismisses the Encyclopedia
Britannica as fake news from the liberal media.
Partisans constantly repeat their favorite talking points, even those clearly false—like pretending Biden has dementia. Or that Jan. 6 was a picnic in the park. We all have eyes and ears.
Red hats like a storyline with good and evil characters and a lurid plot, very much like an old-fashioned melodrama or a medieval morality play. They enjoy one-upmanship, and claim to have secret information unavailable to other citizens. I think they get more fun out of this game than their opponents do.
Red hats create by far the most folk devils, from Fauci to Pelosi. In contrast, blue hats make little use of the 5Gs: Gaetz, Gohmert, Good, Gosar, and Greene. Blue hats may be drawn into defending a stronger position than they actually hold, since any nuances or exceptions are treated as a weakness in their argument.
Meanwhile, red hats are certainly the masters of catchphrases and slogans. They have dozens of think tanks to help.
Red hats have some clever tricks worthy of the old propaganda master Karl Rove. Instead of adopting one position, they argue differently on Tuesdays and Fridays: Libs are sometimes snowflakes, sometimes communist demons; eggheads or dumbos. Cognitive dissonance doesn’t cause stress to red hats, who simply ignore their own inconsistencies.
The Double Flip is built on what psychologists call projection. If you want to do, or have done, something that you shouldn’t, you tend to project your flawed idea or action onto somebody else. Unconsciously, you see your own worst traits in others. But in the Double Flip, projection becomes a deliberate political ploy: “Before you can blame my guy, I’ll say your guy did it.”
We could bypass most of this fighting if we made distinctions among three kinds of statements: 1. by people sworn to tell the truth under oath; 2. news that can be fact-checked; and 3. by entertainers or demagogues who provide emotional opinions and dramatic narratives.
But since Republicans reportedly plan to run the 2022 campaign on culture-war issues, it’s not likely that “Own the Libs” will end anytime soon.