The ‘Christmas List’ Fallacy

If our priorities aren’t in alignment…then perhaps we should examine why that is?

With this year’s political season quickly heating up, mouthpieces for candidates and political parties alike need to be mindful of not only what they say…but how they say it.

In 2016, former D.C. legislative staffer Cliston Brown authored an editorial in The Observer where he attempted to shame leftists and progressives for even entertaining the notion of giving their votes to Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein that upcoming November.

He berated eligible voters who sat out the 2010 midterms, accusing them of pouting about how President Barack Obama wasn’t able to “give them every present on their Christmas list in less than two years.” Brown failed to acknowledge the possibility that much of the discontent toward Obama may have been due to the then-president having the wrong priorities or straying away from proactive advice to citizens in his public speeches.

Brown’s gaslighting of leftists and progressives is all the more appalling given how, on the July 19 and Aug. 2 episodes of the “Up and to the Left” Podcast, he wrote off this year’s U.S. House races as basically “unsalvageable” for the Democrats. He went on to praise the yesteryear machine politics of the Daleys and the Pendergasts while pushing the self-fulfilling prophecy that the best his party can do is mitigate their “inevitable” losses this year.

This commentary from Cliston Brown, especially when juxtaposed against his sectarian privilege from 2016, exudes the pompous air of commentators such as Tim Wise, Charles Blow, and Ron Brownstein. He displays a further disconnect by lambasting Democrats for pretending Obamacare didn’t exist — or running away from Obama altogether — in 2010. Yet, simultaneously, he blames voters for not blindly pulling the lever on behalf of Democrats?

Brown is certainly an avatar for the tendency of elitists to scapegoat “commoners” when they don’t react to situations in the way he would have preferred. But, obviously, I don’t know him personally.

I’ve run into this archetype within my own life experiences, though.

A High School Hellhound in a Highchair

In my Medium article from April entitled “The ‘Do Your Own Research’ Fallacy,” I recalled my first experience with student activism as a high schooler. During my sophomore and junior years, I tried to broker a schedule restructuring plan for our school to accommodate both teachers who wanted to try out block scheduling as well as those who wanted to maintain the status quo (45-minute class periods).

Unfortunately, our new principal, Mr. Taylor, was hell-bent on implementing a pure four-period block schedule across the board with no compromises or workarounds. Even worse: he blatantly tried to paint me — or anyone else in the school district who opposed his plan — as being “afraid of change” or “making it all about us.”

I’ll never forget the two separate private meetings that my parents and I had with him in his office during the autumn of my junior year. Mr. Taylor accused me of basing my proposed hybrid schedules on my own personal preferences (even though that was bullshit, since there was a limited number of courses that I could individually take). He got defensive by whining how somebody was going to have to end up making a decision that could be unpopular amongst a lot of faculty, parents, and students — and that somebody, in this case, was him.

Aw, poor baby…

If you think I overreacted by graduating early and taking my senior year courses on a satellite campus — then you’ve obviously never witnessed someone with autism being gratuitously humiliated.

The “Mean Girls” and “Mean Boys” of Deflection

While my “Christmas List Fallacy” may be considered an offshoot of established straw man fallacies, it goes deeper. It’s based on folks’ legitimate failure to grasp the underlying anxieties felt by somebody who holds a viewpoint diametrically opposed from one’s own.

Or, alternately, it involves your sparring partner attributing your “demands” to something unreasonable or excessive. And, perhaps, any of us doing likewise to them.

In a July 2020 piece for the Tennessee-based Daily Herald, Rubel Shelly takes a glimpse at how this might unfold amid modern-day political discourse. He puts forth examples such as caricatures of liberals who use the term “defund” to advocate weakening or abolishing law enforcement, or when conservatives are misrepresented with accusations of viewing Black Lives Matter as being mainly looters or hatemongers.

Rejecting such reductionism, Shelly reminds us:

We are smarter than that. Many of us have had some false or extreme position attributed to us because some knucklehead in our denomination or alma mater or civic club said something stupid. Asinine. Reckless. When people fight, they often fight dirty by trying to stick you with a ridiculous position you have never thought about supporting and advocating…It is time to listen to one another without the defensiveness, caricature, and Straw Man misrepresentation that have become the norm…It can only happen, though, when we reject the temptation to caricature anyone with a different viewpoint as an extremist and search instead for a sensible middle ground of understanding.

Shelly emphasizes that media outlets as well as political campaigns engage in such tactics. That makes it all the more essential that we recognize when it’s happening.

In a July 2021 piece for The Swaddle, Rohitha Naraharisetty expands upon this epidemic of political gaslighting. She identifies power and narcissism as being two key components often possessed by its perpetrators. Her illustration of this dynamic is as follows:

Being gaslit on a mass level undermines the public’s capacity to think about policy in the long[-] and short-term (and their ability to have a say in it), distorts truth and reality, and creates a sense of distrust among the public. The idea of gaslighting is mostly discussed with respect to intimate partner relationships or family dynamics; but in a political sphere, experts note its impact on mass paranoia, confusion, pain, and uncertainty.

Naraharisetty specifies how it can be done through interpersonal manipulation. In another vein, she adds that political gaslighting may also occur from a manipulator’s attempts at engaging in libel or defamation against the person with whom they disagree.

Beliefs Don’t Just Emerge Out of Thin Air

When you fail to recognize the true objection of your philosophical opponent, your dialogue with them will go off the rails.

A manipulative debater tends to divert the conversation so they can attribute desires or motives to their opponent that may not actually be there.

In June 2020, Christina Pazzanese penned an editorial in The Harvard Gazette recognizing how the lenses through which Americans view political issues can be so inherently different from the onset. She uses the ongoing battle over immigration policy as a prime example.

Partisans, says Pazzanese, hold dissimilar underlying assumptions that are complex. Whether it relates to taxation, work ethic, structural barriers, or other concepts — these contradictions get shaped by variant news sources. Furthermore, they exist due to people’s vastly different life experiences.

It’s why there’s such a divisive split in public opinion regarding immigration. Pazzanese makes the case that emotion invoked by individuals’ personal stories is what can really move the needle — as well as people asking questions about tough issues.

This is where Cliston Brown and other hard-liners miss half of the ingredients. Yes, emotion is an effective tool for persuasion…but, as Pazzanese discusses, it cannot be monodirectional. There must be a good-faith exchange on all sides in order for solutions to get forged.

Drawing Conclusions with Grace and Savvy

So how do we move past all of this noise and rancor?

In a July 2018 Time magazine piece, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong explores how our society has come to look at arguments as a fight or competition. By doing this, he cautions us, it promotes the idea that it’s somehow valid to “win” by cheating — as long as you don’t get caught or punished.

Why else would those trying to gain the upper hand proceed to interrupt, mock, or demean those with whom they are hashing out differences?

It’s easy and convenient for Cliston Brown to portray most progressives and Greens as overly-idealistic and fanatical when they won’t blindly vote the way in which he commands them.

It was easy and convenient for Mr. Taylor to malign me as a youthful idealist who was “presumptuous” and misinformed when I wouldn’t defer to the same agenda he’d pushed through at his previous school.

Sinnott-Armstrong contends that all you gain is “minor fleeting joy” at beating someone through showmanship or condescension. Instead, he argues, it’s preferable to identify shared values if both parties make reasonable arguments based on validity.

When countering someone else’s position, you need to give reasons that are actually persuasive and grounded in proper context. Part of that involves acknowledging good arguments — even when your opponent makes them.

Don’t try to insist that someone has declined to sample a certain food because they are supposedly a picky eater who wanted too much cheese added to the dish.

Don’t make the claim that somebody is rejecting a budget proposal primarily because their pet project was excluded from it.

Don’t allege that your spouse refuses to run a specific errand for you because they are bitter that you hogged the bed covers last night.

Can you actually prove those allegations to be the case?

According to the U.K.-based Social Care Institute for Excellence, research studies as far back as November 2012 have been vetted to identify anatomical shortcomings.

It has found that some research may be conducted with a lack of ethics. At other times, whoever compiled the data failed to consider the extenuating or confounding nature of factors involved. In many scenarios, conclusions may be extrapolated or inferred based on a researcher’s biases. Numerous individuals use different starting points when examining evidence. Or, they might outright dismiss evidence that counters their prewritten narrative.

To simplify it: break down each person’s goals and rationale. Do they have valid concerns that should be mitigated as part of the end solution? Do you see ways to infuse elements of what you desire into their envisioned blueprint?

If the answer is “yes” more often than “no”…then there exists the capacity for more celebration and joy than any “Christmas list” could bring.