How to Debate a Sheep
After observing and participating in East Hampton politics for more than 5 years, I still find myself at a loss for words when our elected and appointed leaders “misremember” facts or dismiss the public. I simply can’t conceive of behaving in that way, and so I struggle to understand how others can do so in such a casual manner. But today I found the answer! I found the playbook that reveals the secrets of how arrogant, dogmatic, close-minded people argue. It’s called, The Woolly-Thinker’s Guide to Rhetoric.
If you have ever attended an East Hampton Town Council meeting in the last eight years and seen Melissa Engel or any of the Good Old Boys in action, you will immediately recognize the plays… (the following is an excerpt from The Woolley-Thinkers Guide to Rhetoric)
- Be Courageous: Stand up straight, square your shoulders, squint a little as if facing a strong wind. Stifle a sigh now and then. If you can (this is difficult), make a muscle in your jaw twitch.
- Be Dismissive: Go on, don’t hesitate. Brush people off, especially if they know about something you don’t know about. If they later turn out to be Nobel economists or widely-read philosophers, just pretend you’ve forgotten the whole episode. “When? Where was I? I don’t remember that at all, you must have me confused with someone else.”
- Claiming is Succeeding: Blur the distinction between claiming to make your case, and actually making it. If anyone notices this, act surprised and wounded. Notice someone you need to talk to across the room.
- Develop Sudden Hearing Loss: When your opponent makes a good point, a crushing argument, an inconvertible case, simply fail to hear and keep talking as if no one had spoken at all. Talk a bit louder. Lean toward your opponent with an intent listening expression on your face, then continue to ignore what anyone else says.
- Pretend to Be Amused: Say things like, “Not at all, I’m not angry/cross/offended, I’m amused.” Pretend to find the other person hilariously ineffectual and cute. Disguise the tremor in your voice and the bulging veins in your forehead.
- Repetition: If your ideas are weak, if you have neither the logic nor evidence to back them up, simply keep asserting them over and over and over again. This will convince everyone that they must be true. If they were not true, surely we wouldn’t keep hearing about them all the time?
- Translate: If your opponent talks of evidence, you talk of proof. If your opponent mentions probability, you turn that into certainty. If your opponent disagrees with your facts, say your opponent is offended. If your opponent claims to know something about the topic under discussion, call your opponent an elitist.
This revelation gives me an entirely new perspective! Now when I see Melissa furrow her brow across the Town Council table, I’ll see it as a veiled attempt to look courageous and thoughtful when really she’s thinking how annoyed she is at the person who made her furrow her brow in the first place. When I see Melissa quickly dismiss that any prior knowledge of the person or event being discussed, I’ll recognize the pretense for what it is. When she makes false claims and asserts flawed logic, I’ll see through it more clearly. When she feigns to not hear what was said or that she’s “amused”, I’ll know better. Vladimir Lenin said, “A lie told often enough becomes truth.” However, a lie never becomes truth, but rather propaganda. I believe truth matters, and objective truth will ultimately win the day.
