Taking on Today’s Right-Speak

by Ronald W. Sousa

These past couple of months I’ve become aware of a process picking up speed out in “mainstream” commentary-land. First there appeared a smattering of articles, opinions, and such that involved commentators’ individual self-critique, their critique of more-or-less like-minded colleagues — or, frequently, both at once. It all addressed a general question that went something like: “Have I/we self-censored because of (threat of) accusation from the right that we are prejudiced?” Now, however, that seems to have given way to “Let’s worry less and just tell it as we see it.”

In passing, let me clarify something. I take it for granted that everyone — but everyone — comes with prejudices and that without them we would have little of value to bring to the table. The tensions inherent in this issue are therefore, properly, ones involving not the attempt to achieve some mythic tabula-rasa position but rather attention to reasoned discourse and factuality, maintenance of critical self-awareness, and sense of responsibility to well-grounded methodologies.

All of which first presumes, of course, that one is engaging responsibly. If that can’t be presumed, well . . . that’s where this little offering of mine comes in.

You see, one prominent strand within this new-found journalistic direction can be looked at as an answer to the additional question “. . . and shouldn’t we be doing a better job of debunking at least the most outrageous instances of the flimflammery currently being practiced on the conservative side of politics — and holding its practitioners accountable?” The January 6th Committee’s recent public presentations and the semi-public clashes around them have served to raise the stakes even further. Be that as it may, the whole commitment is one that should be applauded — in the name of the traditions of responsible journalism if nothing else. But there is much else . . .

As I’ve listened and read the last few months, I’ve come to suspect that that prior reticence on the part of the media, while certainly deriving in part from concern about being charged with bias, has all along had another source as well. Namely the absence of a credible, accessible, and share-able explanatory language appropriate to the aforementioned tasks of debunking and holding-accountable. And I think that problem persists even in our current, more full-throated moment.

We are, after all, in extraordinary times. Journalistic explanation today has to deal with a newly-minted phenomenon — one of several coming from today’s right wing. Their politicos seeking (re-)election (or just trying to keep their electoral base ginned up) are tying themselves in knots, often in competition with one another, to tell what amounts to the least-unpalatable lie or create the least-indecorous evasion. At the same time, their constituents, knowing exactly what the politicos are doing, are nonetheless “applauding,” metaphorically if not literally, for, in effect “best lie.” (Yeh, style points!)

In effect, then, journalistic explanation faces the compound challenge of breaking into a closed circuit and doing so both within its own code of practice and without contributing needlessly to the animosity level.

I have some experience with that kind of task. In fact, I know of an explanatory language that can aid in accomplishing it. In what follows I’m going to set out — in a somewhat incoordinate way, given space limitations — some of the key features of just the first, but also the most important, step in using that language. Let me exemplify by first creating a pastiche of three separate events taken from current right-connected news.

It goes as follows. Prominent GOP representative X (let’s call her just “X” for short), who is running for reelection, puts out a position paper that, among other matters, contains enthusiastic support for an already-controversial plan proposed by the GOP-controlled redistricting commission in her state. X then faces strong blowback from both the media and other politicos, even some conservatives, with the charges that she used hyper-partisan terms and that the redistricting proposal itself amounted to a patently illegal/unconstitutional gerrymander. To almost no one’s surprise, in subsequent court review the redistricting proposal is struck down.

It is X’s manner of response to the blowback she has received that provides us with the useful example. You see, far from engaging with the issues or anything of the kind, X takes recourse to conservative talk-TV to defend herself. On one prominent occasion, when the discussion gets around to her endorsement of the now-rejected redistricting plan, the moderator asks her about the charge coming from several quarters that she supported something clearly unconstitutional for purely electoral reasons. He says: “you’ve denied that . . .,” whereupon X quickly interjects “of course.”

Now, to be sure, X’s position paper did not say “I propose we violate the law because I know better” or “I’m saying this so more of you will vote for me.” (For one thing, either of those possibilities would likely get low grades on the “style” meter.)

But on the show, leaving her ambiguous “of course” dangling, X keeps talking, immediately pivoting to target a Democratic senator (let’s call him “T” for “target”). Position paper, X’s motives, X’s honesty are all thus suddenly replaced as subjects of discussion by the attack on T. Neither X or the moderator ever initiates any return to the “of course.” X in effect runs out the clock, and the show ends. Moreover, as a part of her attack X berates T as a long-time enemy of voting security and, illogically given the context, simply proclaims herself a long-time defender of voting rights.

So . . . interpretation. What this exchange presents to viewers is a US congressperson running a verbal shell game based on the illogical proposition “I didn’t do it because T does it.” Moreover, the whole extended performance includes a veritable sampler of tactics designed to avoid accountability for the contents of the position paper. Among the more obvious tactics we see, implicitly when not explicitly, 1) picking at details; 2) refusing to give a direct answer; 3) going on the offensive in order to avoid the issue(s) at hand; 4) shifting blame to a third party unrelated to the question, thereby 5) changing the subject and 6) bringing up irrelevant issues; 7) attacking that third party personally, and — if I interpret tone of voice correctly — 8) signaling that it should be understood that this evasion-fest brings the whole matter to a close. All sandwiched into no more than perhaps fifteen transitional seconds between the moderator’s remark and the start of X’s diversionary diatribe about T.

Now, the terms I have just used to label the tactics that dot X’s performance, from “picking at details” to “engaging in personal attack,” come from a curriculum developed some time ago by a group of colleagues, myself among them, for skill-development in remaining grounded and effective during exchanges with people who have no desire to hold a responsible conversation. (To be clear, our efforts relied on research and practice by others before us.) Back then, our curriculum circulated in a little how-to book.[1]

Having access to an explanatory language like this enables much. First, simply reciting the language-descriptive labels one after another, as I do above, serves to profile the quite-nuanced avoidance behavior that T apparently has at her disposal. That alone has value that can be used in various ways.

Further, the ability to identify tactics to avoid accountability (there are lots more!) can be useful in multiple ways — from helping manage in-person exchanges to deciding about follow-up questions to ask to providing vocabulary and analytical direction for use in speech, in writing, or simply in preparation for future encounters of a similar sort.

More generally, this skill of “listening accurately” is valuable for anyone watching/reading today’s politicians — especially those on the right.

As I’m sure you noticed, my recitation of the list of tactics also amounts to a critique: it implicitly marks those items in X’s behavior as inappropriate because what is being pointed to by the labels is implicitly but obviously being contrasted to everyday behavior expectations. For example, we bring with us the understanding that attacking someone else, or changing the subject, to avoid an issue are unacceptable acts whatever the setting.

Moreover, the entire set of tactics that X has trotted out and we are enumerating may also signal an ongoing pattern of avoidance behavior on her part. Not infrequently one sees such patterns operate and reinforce each other among people who have overlapping agendas. Currently they function as common coin among our conservative politicos. (They likely also constitute one of the bases of the “tribal” mutual-support arrangement at work between them and their “applauding” base constituencies.)

Flipping the script, let’s now return fully to our focus on journalism and ask specifically how all this can help with the challenge of dealing with the closed circuitry existing on the political right.

First, simply put, this analysis introduces, and is beginning to train, the groundwork skill of “listening accurately.” It’s not that we don’t see and hear tactics like these in everyday use, but thinking of them as constituting a system with its own properties, functions and goals helps refine our perception of them and understanding of how they work.

It also brings with it a complement, namely “informed question-formulation.” Once it becomes clear that, say, an interviewee is trying to “load” the exchange in their favor through language flimflammery, the goal is to find a way to address that behavior effectively according to your exact goals.

Let me give an example of what could be involved in question-formulation. I’ll use our semi-fictional scenario with X, cast myself as a journalist and presume, for purposes of illustration, a face-to-face-interview or press-conference setting. In fact, for a while here, I’ll replace the moderator in the scenario with X.

First, I’d choose to stop X’s diatribe as quickly as possible, since I would be pretty sure nothing generally useful was going to be accomplished by letting it go on. And since X performed an abrupt change-of-subject, it will be easy to interrupt her in turn in the name of need to finish with a prior point.

Having reassumed control of the proceedings, I’d probably go on to take a bit of a leap and start right where the shift occurred: I’d ask her if in her “of course” she was answering “no” to the charges that had been made against her and I had been representing. Because, after getting an idea of what she is trying to do, I provisionally conclude that she is someone bent on — and therefore likely practiced at — avoiding accountability. She might therefore be of a mindset to consider her “of course,” uttered with regard to some prior statement made by somebody else, not to have amounted to a committed answer on her part — and/or expect her audience to draw a similar conclusion. But, conversely, she might be unable to say simply “no” now. Faced with my question, X could now do many things, ranging from doubling down to walking back the “of course.” Whatever she chooses to do will be useful for me in follow-up.

There are other effective and likely-productive questions that I might ask without hazarding my initial leap. (A couple follow.) But whatever tack I take, my part in the exchange should be carried out in as neutral and matter-of-fact a tone as I can manage and should pose real, not “got’cha,” questions. Otherwise I will hand X the easy opportunity to characterize the questioning as a power move on my part against her and to respond with power formulations of her own — i.e, escalate. If that is her strategy, most likely she’ll want it to entice me to escalate further in return (by doing which I would disqualify myself). Or just to be able to proclaim me adversarial and use that assertion to claim the “right” either to refuse to answer or to break off the exchange. Those too will be avoidance tactics, of course. Keeping calm and remaining strictly truthful and accurate will minimize (though not eliminate) the likelihood of their taking place.

Having such tools as these at one’s disposal can be instrumental in more structural ways as well.

For example, if I were to start in with our dummy-X (by now just a rhetorical figure) by asking her a question like “it sounded like the focus shifted away from you when you answered. How would you answer in your own words?” Or, if the contact were to occur after the court decision: “. . . how do you understand the relationship between your position and the court ruling?” Either formulation, each in a different way, has an important value in addition to those in the question-formulations we have looked at thus far. Both subordinate the relationship between me as questioner and X as answerer to the relationship between her as answerer and a third element, namely — again — common behavior expectations. When such third elements are added, X will have a more difficult time casting my questioning as simply a struggle between her and me.

Now, we could go farther on this path — to such issues as handling confrontation, using this explanatory language in writing, sharing it with co-workers for purposes of group coordination and benefit, and other such topics. But that’s impractical. I’ll step back here and try to set this fledgling presentation in a wider context.

The stakes in all this are exceedingly high — deceptively so, I think — for they involve the very role of independent journalism in this country. Right now it has to prove itself over and over again in order to maintain its standing in the face of the twin obstacles of conservative irresponsibility in its own public language use and conservative claims that journalistic discourse is always by nature purely partisan (with which then comes, apparently, the fallacious claim that either “both sides” are untrustworthy or neither is). Under these circumstances, a way to validate journalism’s position is to practice it in such ways as simultaneously to make the case for its social role. I hope that the foregoing provides some ways one can further that goal while working in the area of hands-on practice.

Finally, the implications of this struggle reach beyond the institutional as well. They involve protection of the practice of responsible independent inquiry in general. We need independent journalism to sustain itself as a/the primary public exemplar of the practice of independent, not to mention logical, thought — yours and mine. It is not an overstatement to say that our entire social model depends on it.

Washington, DC

July, 2022

[1] This is not a sales pitch but rather a way to avoid my answering the question multiple times. The book was/is titled Stop the Madness: A Quick and Effective Guide to Interrupting Irresponsible Behavior in Any Setting; 1998. It has long been sold out as a hard copy but can be purchased as an e-book at Amazon. URL: https://www.amazon.com/Stop-Madness-Effective-Interrupting-Irresponsible-ebook/dp/B00TCULEHC/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1606939089&sr=1-2