The polemical power we don't use. Wagers and Exceptions!

Alas, we have poor generals. One thing that Dems and libs never seem capable of understanding is the importance of polemical technique, a skill displayed daily by the Kremlin/GRU, by Rupert Murdoch’s expert manipulator-shills, and by Donald Trump. Take for example the way that social media bots and Russian trolls have been spreading disinformation about vaccines on Twitter to create social discord and distribute malware.

As we speak, top officials of Facebook, Google and Twitter are testifying before Congress about their near helplessness before tsunamis of manipulative lies. Wringing hands, they explain that they are trapped between those lies and the accusations of bias and censorship that whirl, each time they try to cull away the worst of them. The most orwellian enemies of freedom will accuse them of acting as a "Ministry of Truth." 

There are countless ways to counter the oligarchy’s mastery of this manipulative art. But liberal or moderate pols and pundits – even neutral-minded or independent grownups -- seem obdurately incapable of even noticing how bad they are at it! 

Take the recent attempt by several dozen prominent news outlets to link arms and denounce Trump’s war against the profession of journalism, calling it "fake news" and an “enemy of the people.” Talk about falling for a blatant and obvious trap!

All right, you ask what methods might work? Let’s dial in here. 

Try to grasp the top Foxoid tactic.  When we trot forth a myriad facts, members of the alt-right cult deflect them with irrelevant anecdotes and assertions.  And, to your endlessly repeated blinking astonishment, it keeps working, as you stammer “But… but… I just showed you facts that…”

Look, I’m all in favor of enlisting facts as soldiers in this fight. Take my proposal for a twelve-part FACT ACT that a new Congress could enact, using neutral, competitive techniques that nimbly evade any accusations of “Ministry of Truth.” Good methods…if we ever had a Congress. 

But 99% of today’s confederates are already immunized against every such effort with magical incantations that have playground-level purity.

“Oh yeah? Well I say YOUR the liar!”

That’s all it takes. And fie on stupid dems/pundits for not realizing they need better tools of seriously pragmatic polemic! There are dozens, even hundreds of possible riffs that could work better than announcing “pants-on-fire” and “pinnocchios” or joint editorials that only reinforce the notion of a “Fake News" conspiratorial community. 

One trick, above all others, has real potential, and forgive me for repeating a point I’ve belabored ad nauseam:

Wagers. Bets. Dares. Challenges. Sure, we saw Mitt Romney try it, once, only to get shot down as a rich man trying to bully truth. So? There are ways to set up a bet that stand firm, in the face of deflections. 

The fact remains that a wager is still the one place where a good-old confed will admit the vital importance of objective reality — that factual evidence matters.

It may take care and experimentation. But this could be a chink through which ten thousand facts and truths might pour. It’s certainly worth more than one try

== How to counter the immunity against all facts ==

Again, demanding “put up or shut up” - with cash on the line - is the one realm where even a confederate admits that objective reality and facts still matter.  In confronting your neighbor or mad uncle (MU), you are free to pick any of the 7000+ outright Trumpian falsehoods listed by the Washington Post’s “Fact-Checker” Glenn Kessler. 

Start with giant howlers that offer your confed no wriggle room.  Like Donald Trump’s assertion that ice caps are “setting records” when photographic evidence shows that much of the world’s ice from the Alps to the Andes is melting amid global warming. As we saw after the “biggest inauguration, ever!", photography can be deflected, except in a wager.

Or demand that your mad uncle accompany you to the beach with a simple Ph meter and measure for himself ocean acidification. (It has only one possible cause: human-generated CO2, which is why Fox-heads quickly change the subject, instead of denying it.) When your MU shrugs and calls it an exaggeration or exception, answer “tell our grandchildren that!” And then demand he actually, actually pay the bar bet! Then corner him with another. Taking his money helps to make it all worthwhile!

See: "Greenhouse gases aren't just warming the planet. They're also acidifying our oceans."  

(The best example of a Fox-incantation and stunning intellectual dishonesty was the catechism of the right for decades that "There's been no warming for 15 years!" Then "There's been no warming for 16 years!" Then 17 years.  And I grew curious why so specific? If this one is tried on you… come to me.)

Choose carefully, and learn to recognize in advance wager matters that have any ambiguity, that leave any room for squirming. And remember how to phrase it: “You’re so sure of this crap that you’re willing to bet the lives of our planet and nation and children, but not a hundred bucks?”

Why bother? Because “Heaven rejoices at a sinner, redeemed.” Seriously, there is nothing more damaging to the Putin-Murdoch-Oligarch cabal than a wakened RASR (Residually Adult-Sane Republican.) If you waken one such “ostrich” enough for his head to lift out of sand-of-denial, that oasis of roused sanity and loyalty to America will infect and vaccinate others. 

(Lefties are fools to ignore this central fact about phase 8 of the American Civil War – that some of our neighbors are decent citizens who are clinging desperately to an obsolete loyalty, and can be talked -- some of them -- back into the light.)

== Devil in the details ==

Okay, okay. I hear the objection: "All the confederates I know will wriggle out of any wager with a million excuses!"

 I agree that any wagering system is unlikely to work at all with confed squirmers who, when they see they are being cornered by hated “facts” will fall back upon magical, murdochian incantations. But you can make it harder on them by saying:

1) “Let’s pick agreed-upon neutral parties who will adjudicate the terms of the bet, making its language clear, unambiguous, and in-advance what it will take for either side to win.

2) "Those 3rd parties will hold the stakes in advance, and distribute them according to agreed rules." 

If the confed you are cornering is a friend or relative, you can probably find a respected friend or relative.  If the red-reb is hostile, demand to talk to his lawyer, after $1000 has been deposited with said attorney. And it’s agreed that the loser pays all lawyer bills. And you can taunt -- 
"till I hear from your attorney, it is simply given that you do NOT believe the nonsense you've been howling at us. Because if you truly believed it, you'd be willing - eager! - to test them with facts and take... my... money! The fact that you are squirming and evading is the behavior of a coward and a liar. And till I hear from your lawyer, we'll leave that as the central, proved fact."

Dig it. Almost never does it reach the point of actual wagers. The hostile ones run away and hide. More importantly, the somewhat friendly, residually sane ones start squinting at the notion, at the outlines, and some of them start to get a dawning sense of realization, how far out a limb they have let themselves be drawn by the madmen and hypnotists on Fox. Before it gets to actual money on the table, they start to budge.

That is the actual objective! To be so confident, so sure that the facts support you, that you are the one pushing for a test, a trial, and they are the ones constantly squirming away.  If you can get an ostrich to realize this, then maybe… sometimes… often enough… one of them will lift his bleary head out of the insanity, blink, and rejoin civilization.

== Name an exception! ==

Another approach to wagers is challenging your RASR to Name An Exception!

This one is more sophisticated, but also more effective. Think about this, carefully, because it applies well beyond politics.

If I make a specific accusation, say about a particular crime, then the burden of proof is on me. Fair enough. 

But when I challenge you to disprove a General and Universal Accusation, well, it should be easy for you to do, by finding one exception. And hence, your failure to do so proves me right!

Not in a court of law. Indeed, if they can name exceptions, then the argument falls back under rules of preponderance of evidence. Any member of the Denialist Cult can cite weather examples that seem to violate global warming, hence it cannot be proved by Name an Exception, only by tediously showing the overwhelming factual basis for why 99% of scientists agree about climate change.

 But when a general accusation is very broad, and your opponent cannot name even one counter-example, it has profoundly effective import. Then the generality enters territory like “the sun always comes up at dawn,” or “a rock thrown in the air will always come down.”  

One counter-example – even one – will destroy the word “always.” 

But failure to cite any counter-example makes the “always” very powerful.  Especially when the assertion is in history or politics. Jiminy, almost everything in those fields has exceptions! If you can’t find even one….

== Use it in our political civil war ==

For the following general assertions, the burden of proof is on your conservative friend or MU to show how these six general accusations have any exceptions. Any at all! And if your RASR fails, then they are true. 

Moreover, if any of these cannot be refuted with even a single counter-example, then your opponent’s movement is not a political party, it is a dangerously insane and incompetent cult.

1-  Can you NAME ONE fact-centered profession of high knowledge and skill that’s not under attack by Fox/Trump &cohorts?  Teachers, medical doctors, journalists, civil servants, law professionals, economists, skilled labor, professors… oh, yes and science. Above all, science. Thirty years ago, 40% of U.S. scientists called themselves Republican, now it is 2% and plummeting. They are voting with their feet, the smartest, wisest, most logical and by far the most competitive humans our species ever produced. 

And now?  The FBI and law professionals plus the U.S. military and intelligence officer corps; all are dismissed as "deep state" enemies. Oh no, this is not your daddy's conservatism.  Name one exception.

2- NAME ONE major metric of U.S. national health that did better across the spans of GOP administrations, than across the spans of the Clinton and Obama admins.  Nearly all such metrics declined - many plummeting - across both Bush regimes.  Nearly all rose, many of them by a lot, across both DP terms. The record of almost perfect mal-governance would make any sane or scientific-minded person flee the GOP screaming and never trust them again. 

Clinton& Obama scored better in every sane conservative desideratum, including rate of change of deficits and military readiness!  The condition of our alliances. Small business startups. Entrepreneurship. Name one exception.

The next is a doozy.

3- NAME ONE MAJOR GOP LEADER between Reagan and Ryan who was even mentioned at the 2016 Republican Convention. Except for Newt, all were brushed under the rug, including both Bushes, Cheney, Rumsfeld, former House Speaker Dennis (friend to boys) Hastert, former GOP majority leader Tom (convicted felon) DeLay, former Speaker John Boehner.

In fact, name a republican top leader between EISENHOWER and Ryan who was even mentioned by the party at the RNC, other than Reagan and Newt! This shows how writhing ashamed Republicans are, of their record at governance.  And if you disavow those past Republican administrations as incompetent, Russia-hating, enterprise-destroying, warmongering liars, then where is your party’s credibility? Name one exception.

4- Name one of the DARK FANTASIES about Obama, from black UN helicopters to taking away all our guns, that happened or was even tepidly tried.  Indeed, after 25 years and half a billion dollars of Clinton Investigations… well… see number 6. Name one exception.

5- NAME ONE TIME WHEN SUPPLY SIDE (Voodoo) "Economics" made a successful prediction?  One? Ever?  One time when slashing taxes on the rich led to reduced deficits and to vastly stimulated economic activity, or even much investment in "supply" capital? Or increased money velocity or middle class health? Once. One time when this cult religion actually delivered?  Name one exception.

A related riff? When was “America Great”? I say it's great right now! While we’re sending probes past Pluto, and rovers across Mars, discovering thousands of planets across the galaxy, curing diseases, raising billions of children out of poverty around the world and so on, as we're inventing like mad, ending the insane Drug War, and creating generations who are vastly, vastly nicer and smarter than Baby Boomers. 

But sure. You fox-folks please tell us when you think it was all better!  The1950s? Run by the Greatest Generation… who adored FDR? They knew the dangers of oligarchy and passed many rules to control it. Rules like forbidding companies to waste money on stock buybacks, on which nearly all of the recent Trump Tax Cut was frittered away, without tangible investment in R&D or factories.

“Supply Side” is doing exactly what it was designed to do, stealing from the middle class that the Greatest Generation built and augmenting the oligarchy that great generation defeated. Every major retraction away from the Rooseveltean social contract resulted in lower growth, wider wealth disparity, lower money velocity, shorter commercial ROI horizons, declines in R&D and increasing dominance by a crazy MBA caste.

Name an exception!

6- Name one other time in American — or human — history, when an administration spanning 8 years had zero scandals or indictments concerning malfeasance in the performance of official duties. It has happened twice in American — or human — history. The administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.  Name another!

You can’t. There was one four year U.S. administration that had no malfeasance-of-office scandals… that of Jimmy Carter.  (Yes, there were a few scandals outside that description, “malfeasance in the performance of official duties,” though fewer than any month of a Trump or Bush administration.)

Let’s be clear. The Reagan, Bush and Bush administrations looked hard for evidence, some smoking-gun, to pin on Carter, Clinton and Obama. When they owned every federal department and record, they held endless hearings, rifled every filing cabinet, sifted like crazy, wasting hundreds of millions looking for something — anything.  “W” ordered FBI agents away from counter terror duties to join this witch hunt, before 9/11… arguably treason that cost thousands of American lives.  And they found… nothing but a husband fibbing about some 3^rd base infidelity and a wife making the same email mistake as both Bushes, Colin Powell, Condi Rise and Jared Kushner.  

Howl away "lock her up!" But not a single Hannity-shouted accusation was ever, ever, ever proved. Not one, ever. In contrast, GOP administrations – all of them -- were rife with indictments, convictions and pardons.

7- Name a counter-example to the pure record of Republican damage to every single strength that won the Cold War. Almost every thing that bolstered us during that struggle is being systematically dismantled, from our alliances to science, from dedicated intelligence and law agencies to the moral high ground and the rule of law and the respect of the world.  There may be exceptions, though I know of none. Name one.

Oh, winning these bets takes you to the next bulwark of insane treason. Watch out for the last resort of the RASR, who admits: “I know my side is crazy and has done nothing right at all! I know everything they say is a lie and that all their outcomes were negative and they act like cranky 4 year olds. But… but… but liberals are just as bad or worse!!"

Treat it as another cause for a wager. (Admitting that the lib-side does have some stunningly awful lefty flakes.  Some.)

It still comes down to one thing. Take their money.

== Outcomes? ==

Okay, I’ve had limited success in my own wager demands. Generally, when I confront folks with these challenges, they shout “squirrel!” and point offstage at some assertion or distraction, concocting scenarios and excuses to explain why they cannot answer any of these… or dozens of other… challenges. 
Or else they run away. 

Still, there is one more riff you can hurl at their retreating, cowardly backsides.

When something happens relentlessly, systematically, and without recognized exception, it is time to invoke Goldfinger’s Rule:

Goldfinger’s Rule: 

“Once, Mr. Bond, may be happenstance. 

"Twice could be coincidence.

“Three times is enemy action.”