Month: September 2025

Way back in 2016 Ammon Bundy and fellow “militia” members occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon as a protest of federal land use policies. Ammon Bundy is the son of Cliven Bundy, the rancher who was involved in another armed stand-off with the federal government. Cliven Bundy once owed the American taxpayers over $1 million for grazing his cattle on public land.  While the right usually condemns what they see as freeloading,  he became something of a hero for the right. While that itself is an interesting issue, my focus will be on discussing the ethics of protest through non-violent armed occupation.

Before getting to the main issue, I will anticipate some concerns about the discussion. First, I will not be addressing the merits of the 2016 Bundy protest. Bundy purported to be protesting against the tyranny of the federal government’s land-use policies. Some critics pointed out that Bundy benefitted from the federal government, something reminiscent of the infamous cry of “keep your government hands off my Medicare.” While the merit of the content of the protest is relevant to its moral status, my focus is on the general subject of occupation as a means of protest.

Second, I will not be addressing the criticism that if federal land were non-violently seized by people protesting Trump’s immigration policies, then the right’s response would be very different. While the subject of race and protest is important, it is not my focus here. I now turn to the matter of protesting via non-violent armed occupation.

The use of illegal occupation is an established means of protest in the United States and was used during the civil rights movement. But, of course, an appeal to tradition is a fallacy, the mere fact that something is well-established does not entail it is justified. As such, an argument is needed to morally justify occupation as a means of protest.

One argument for occupation as a means of protest is that protestors do not give up their rights simply because they are engaged in a protest. If they wish to engage in their protest where they would normally have the right to be, then it would seem to follow that they should be allowed to protest there.

 

One obvious reply to this argument is that people do not automatically have the right to engage in protest in all places they have a right to visit. For example, a public library is open to the public, but it does not follow that people thus have a right to occupy a public library and interfere with its operation. This is because the act of protest would violate the rights of others in a way that would seem to justify forbidding the protest.

People also protest in areas that are not normally open to the public or whose use by the public is restricted. This would include privately owned areas as well as public areas that have restrictions. In the case of the Bundy protest, public facilities are being occupied. However, Bundy and his fellows used the area in a way that would normally not be allowed. People cannot, in the normal course of things, just take up residence in public buildings. This can also be regarded as a conflict of rights, the right of protest versus the right of private ownership or public use.

These replies can be overcome by showing that the protest does more good than harm or by showing that the right to protest outweighs the rights of others to use the occupied area.  After all, forbidding protests simply because they might be inconvenient or annoy people would be absurd. However, accepting protests regardless of the imposition on others would also be absurd. Being a protestor does not grant a person special rights to violate the rights of others, so a protestor who engages in such behavior would be acting wrongly and the protest would thus be morally wrong. After all, if rights are accepted to justify a protest, then this provides a foundation for accepting the rights of those who would be imposed upon by it. If the protester who is protesting tyranny becomes a tyrant to others, then the protest loses its moral foundation.

This provides the theoretical framework for assessing whether the Bundy protest was morally acceptable or not: it is a matter of weighing the merit of the protest against the harm done to the rights of other citizens (especially those in the surrounding community). The same applies to other protests by occupation.

The above assumes a non-violent occupation like civil disobedience of the sort discussed by Thoreau. That is, non-violently breaking the rules (or law) in an act of disobedience intended to bring about change. This approach was also adopted by Gandhi and Dr. King. Bundy  added a new factor while the occupation began as peaceful, the “militia” on the site was well armed. They claimed the weapons were for self-defense, which indicates that the “militia” was willing to escalate from non-violent (but armed) to violent occupation in response to the alleged tyranny of the federal government. This leads to the matter of the ethics of armed resistance as a means of protest.

Modern political philosophy does provide justification of such resistance. John Locke, for example, emphasized the moral responsibilities of the state in regard to the good of the people. That is, he does not simply advocate obedience to whatever the laws happen to be but requires that the laws and the leaders prove worthy of obedience. Laws or leaders that are tyrannical are not to be obeyed but are to be defied and justly so. He provides the following definition of “tyranny”: “Tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which nobody can have a right to.  And this is making use of the power anyone has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it, but for his own private separate advantage.” When the state is acting in a tyrannical manner, it can be justly resisted, at least on Locke’s view. As such, Bundy does have a clear theoretical justification for armed resistance. However, for this justification to be actual, it would need to be shown that federal land use policies are tyrannical to a degree that warrants the use of violence as a means of resistance.

Consistency does, of course, require that the framework be applied to all relevantly similar cases of protests, be they non-violent occupations or armed resistance.  Be they about land use or immigration policy.

The United States has settled into a post-shooting ritual. When a horrific shooting makes the news, many people offer some version of this prayer: “Oh God, let the shooter be one of them and not one of us.” Then people speculate about the identity of the shooter. In most cases the next step is that the Republicans offer thoughts and prayers while the Democratics talk about wanting to pass new gun control laws, if only they could win more elections. The final step is forgetting about that shooting when the next one occurs. My focus in this essay is on the speculation phase.

One of the most recent shootings is the attack on a Mormon church in Michigan which resulted in four people dying in the church and the attacker being killed by the police. As soon as the attack made the news, speculation began on the identity and motives of the shooter. Laura Loomer seemed to claim that the shooter was a Muslim acting as part of a broader plan while Donald J. Trump asserted that it appeared to be a targeted attack on Christians. And, of course, social media was awash with speculation. As this is being written, the suspect has been identified as 40-year-old Thomas Jacob Sanford. He is believed to be a military veteran and there is some evidence he held anti Mormon views. There is currently no evidence that he was Muslim. The investigation is ongoing, but the speculation continues.

In terms of why people speculate so quickly and without much (if any) evidence, there are various psychological reasons. I will leave those to the psychologists. There are also some practical reasons that connect to critical thinking, so I will briefly discuss those.

One practical reason to speculate immediately and even claim to know the identity and motives of the shooter is to generate clicks and hence income. One recent example of this is when 77 year old Michael Mallinson, a retired banker living in Toronto, was falsely claimed to be Charlie Kirk’s killer by an account pretending to be a Fox News outlet. Whoever was behind it also claimed he was a registered Democrat, which suggests they had some understanding of their targets. This example, and others like it, shows the importance of confirming a source as credible before accepting a claim. While one outlet might scoop a story, if it is credible, then other news outlets will run it as well and thus it is also wise to see if a claim is confirmed by other credible sources. There is, of course, the obvious problem that there has been a longstanding war against credible media outlets and that we are awash in misinformation and disinformation.  

While people can speculate in good faith (believing what they claim), there can be bad faith speculation intended to get an ideological narrative out there as soon as possible. This is because what is claimed first can often establish itself as plausible and then resist efforts to debunk it if it turns out to be false.

 Such false claims also provide others with “evidence” that they can use later when making their own false claims. For example, I regularly see people posting the false claim that many mass shooters are trans people, despite this being obviously untrue. As “evidence” people often post images of other posts making a false claim about a shooter’s identity. In some cases, people are acting in a form of good faith: they are being duped and wrongly think they are making true claims. For people who want to believe true things, a wise approach is to confirm whether a claim is true by seeking out multiple credible sources. But there is the obvious problem that people are often locked into ideological bubbles and what they see as credible sources are heavily biased or even dedicated spreaders of disinformation. There are also those who act in bad faith, posting claims about the identity and motives of shooters they know are false and using other untruths as “evidence” in order to advance their agenda, even if that is just to troll and trigger.

It is, of course, tempting to speculate about the identity and motives of shooters. While it might seem reasonable to draw inferences from such things as the target of the shooting, such speculation is still just speculation. For example, Trump speculated that the shooting might have been a targeted attack on Christians because the shooter attacked a church. As noted above, there is now some evidence that Trump was somewhat right: the attack might have been motivated by the shooters alleged dislike of Mormons. As this is being written, the religious beliefs of the shooter are unknown, but the United States does have a history of Christian Anti-Mormonism. When Mitt Romney was running for President, I (an Episcopalian) had to argue that Mormons are Christians. As such, any inferences about the shooter’s religious beliefs would be drawn from very thin evidence. The shooter could be a Christian who detested Mormons; but this is just speculation.

From a critical thinking and moral standpoint, the rational and ethical thing to do is to not speculate about a shooter’s identity and motives in public (such as posting on social media). Leave the investigation to the professionals and wait for adequate evidence to become available. This applies whether one is a pundit, a president or just a random person like me. People do, of course, have the right to speculate but rights should always be exercised with prudence and moral restraint.

The Martian is a science fiction film about the effort to rescue an astronaut from Mars. Matt Damon, who is often rescued in movies, plays “astrobotanist” Mark Watney. The discussion that follows contains some spoilers, so those who have yet to see the film might wish to stop reading now. Those who have seen the film might also wish to stop reading, albeit for different reasons.

At the start of the movie Watney is abandoned on Mars after the rest of his team believes he died during the emergency evacuation. The rest of the movie details his efforts at survival and the efforts of NASA and the Chinese space agency to save him.

After learning that Watney is not dead, NASA attempts to send a probe loaded with food to Mars. This effort fails, strewing rocket chunks and incinerated food. The next attempt involved resupplying the returning main space ship, the Hermes, using a Chinese rocket and sending it on a return trip to pick up Watney. This greatly extends the crew’s mission time. Using a ship that NASA already landed on Mars for a future mission, Watney blasts up into space and is dramatically rescued.

While this situation is science fiction, it does address a real moral concern about weighing the costs and risks of saving a life. While launch costs are probably cheaper in the fictional future of the movie, the lost resupply rocket and the successful Chinese resupply rocket presumably cost millions of dollars. The cached rocket Watney used was also presumably expensive. There is also the risk undertaken by the crew of Hermes.

Looked at from a utilitarian standpoint, a case can be made that the rescue was morally wrong. The argument for this is straightforward: for the “generic” utilitarian, the right action is the one that generates the greatest utility for the being that are morally relevant. While Watney is morally relevant, the fictional future of the film is presumably a world very similar to the real world. As such, there are presumably millions of people who are at risk of dying who could be saved by the expenditure of millions (or even billions) of dollars in resources.

Expending so many resources to save one person, Watney, would seem morally wrong: those resources could have been used to save many more people on earth and would thus have greater utility. As such, the right thing to do would have been to let Watney die, at least on utilitarian grounds.

There are many ways this argument can be countered on utilitarian grounds. One approach begins with how important Watney’s rescue became to the people of earth. The movie shows vast crowds concerned about Watney. Letting Watney die would make these people sad and angry, thus generating negative consequences. This rests on the psychological difference between abstract statistics about people dying (such many dying due to lacking proper medical care) and the possible death of someone who is now a celebrity. As such, the emotional investment of the crowds could be taken as imbuing Watney with greater moral significance than the many who could have been saved from death with the same monetary expenditure.

One obvious problem with this sort of view is that it makes moral worth dependent on fame and the feelings of others rather than on qualities intrinsic to the person. But, it could be replied, fame and the feelings of others do matter, at least when making a utilitarian calculation about consequences.

A second approach is to focus on the broader consequences: leaving Watney to die on Mars could have been damaging to the future of manned space exploration and humanity’s expansion into space. As such, while Watney himself is only a single person with only the moral value of one life, the consequences of not saving him would outweigh the consequences of not saving many others on earth. That is, Watney was not especially morally important as a person, but in terms of his greater role he has great significance. This would morally justify sacrificing the many (by not saving them) to save the one as an investment in future returns. This does raise various concerns about weighing actual people against future consequences but these are not unique to this situation.

There is also the meta-concern about the fact that Watney is played by Matt Damon and some contended that this would justify leaving Watney to die on Mars. But, I will leave this to the film critics to settle.

 

As a young man, I was not a car person. I was not interested in getting my license and not interested in owning a car. I relied on walking, running, and biking to get around. When I started work at Florida A&M University in 1993, I tried biking to work. My bike was destroyed by an SUV running a red light, and I barely escaped serious injury. I decided that I needed more speed, so I got a small Yamaha. After several near-death experiences, I decided I needed steel all around me and got a Toyota Tacoma in 2001. I was still not interested in vehicles and just took it in for service as needed. It had a few problems over the years, but the shop I went to generally did a good job and the prices were not too excessive. A couple years ago, it developed a mysterious hum that proved expensive and this got me interested in cars. Or rather, my truck. Being a philosopher, I naturally think of my experiences with the repairs in the context of a theory, in this case capitalism.

Practical folks are usually not interested in economic theories. They mostly operate within systems that theorists mirror in theories to criticize or justify the behavior of these practical folk. Consider, for example, capitalism. The theoretical ideal is that equals meet within the free market to engage in a fair struggle for success. In the case of businesses (broadly construed) the ideal is that they engage in battle until the businesses with the best products and best prices stand atop the corpses of their competition (with the invisible hand making this all happen as it should). In the case of the consumer, the ideal is that they engage as equals in the free market with these businesses, thus ensuring that they will get the best products at the best prices for themselves. The workers, within the magical world of the theory, also engage as equals with the businesses and work out a fair wage, fair working conditions and fair benefits. Outside of the theory, none of this holds true. So, let us look at cars and capitalism.

As I mentioned, my truck developed a mysterious hum. At the time, I knew very little about fixing vehicles, but I did know how to google the symptoms. Based on the sound and apparent location, it seemed most likely to be a bad fuel pump. While my truck does not have many miles, at the time it was 20 years old so I figured the pump could be dying of old age. The shop initially said it was my transmission, then went to the fuel pump. It was replaced and the hum went away briefly only to return. It went back to the shop and now they were sure it was the transmission. That was replaced with a remanufactured transmission. The hum remained, though they insisted that it passed all the tests. This inspired me to finally learn about cars.

I bought several books and read them, watched numerous credible YouTube videos on repairs and maintenance and learned all the parts of my truck. During this, I found that two hoses in the truck were damaged one had a visible hole, while the other was obviously cracked. Mind you, my truck had gone through three “multipoint” inspections and the paperwork claimed that the hoses and all been properly inspected and were in good shape. So, I replaced those hoses and did more checking, finding various other issues. For example, the battery had not been properly secured and had been sliding around. Fortunately, no damage was done, and I secured it properly. This nicely illustrates how idealized theoretical capitalism does not match the reality.

In the theory of capitalism, the goal is to maximize profits. This just mirrors the “desire for undue gain” that Plato talks about in his Republic and Hobbes’ reflection on gain in his Leviathan. Capitalism, in essence, enshrines greed as good. Practical folks do not care about this theory, but they do want to maximize their profit and hence repair shops have a clear and well-known incentive to do the least work for the most money. They are also incentivized to convince customers that expensive repairs are needed even when they are not. For example, carefully checking the hoses in my truck would take time and not yield much profit. And failed hoses could mean lucrative repair jobs later. As another example, the shop went right to claiming that the fuel pump and then the transmission were the issue, rather than considering less lucrative explanations. To be fair, issues can be hard to diagnose, but the profit motive pushes businesses to go with the expensive diagnosis rather than testing fixes that would be much cheaper.

It can be argued that this was all on me; the shop and I met as equal individuals in a free market, and they got the better of me. However, most of us do not meet repair shops as equals for two obvious reasons. First, most of us lack adequate knowledge to properly diagnose our vehicles and determine the necessity of repairs. As I mentioned, I had never had any interest in cars and only owned one to decrease my chances of being killed on the road. But this ignorance cost me. Ignorance would obviously not be a systematic problem if businesses were honest; while they might make honest errors, you would never need to worry about being deceived. That said, ignorance could still be a problem if you pick an incompetent business out of ignorance. As such, if you want to enter the free market and be able to compete, you will need to learn many things. While you cannot become an expert at everything, you can develop enough knowledge to make a better assessment of when you are being misled.

It could be objected that it is just obvious that people generally do not meet as equals in such situations; you go to a repair shop because you lack the knowledge (or equipment) to do the work yourself. In reply, I agree that this is why people go to shops; but it simply confirms that people generally not meet as equals in a free market: one person or group will usually be at a significant disadvantage that can be exploited to maximize profit.

It could also be objected that shops which exploit customers will end up harming themselves. As Benjamin Frankin was reportedly fond of saying, honesty is the best policy. As one of my professors pointed out long ago, this is a utilitarian approach to honesty: it is not that honesty is right, it is that it is the best policy from a practical standpoint. While shops do sometimes suffer from being exposed, dishonest behavior persists. This is because if a shop comes out ahead, then being dishonest is the best policy when one assumes that the goal is maximizing profit. As such, it is wise to be on guard—everyone has a clear incentive to maximize their profit at your expense. While some people think that this is just another bad apple problem in capitalism, this is capitalism: the goal is maximizing profits and there is more profit in exploiting ignorance than in scrupulous honesty. If you think otherwise, you presumably just agree immediately with whatever the folks at the shop tell you and pay up with a smile, believing they gave you God’s truth. But I assume you are sensible enough to be a cautious consumer, you know that their goal is to take as much of your money as they can and your goal is to get as much as you can for as little as possible.

Second, when you need a repair you most likely need them far more than they need you. As such, you are operating at a disadvantage. Often you need your vehicle to get to work, to make the money you will need to pay for the vehicle. While you can leave to find another shop, they most likely have a waiting list of customers. You probably need the repair done ASAP, while you are just another job in the queue for them. If your car is having serious issues, then taking it elsewhere might require a tow or put you at risk. As such, you will usually be operating at a disadvantage that can be exploited to maximize profit.

This could be defended by pointing out that capitalism excels at creating and meeting needs (and wants). It is working as intended that there is a shop available to repair your vehicle that you probably need to get to work. What more could you want? Reliable and convenient public transportation? An economic system in which you are not dependent on a for-profit repair system?

If you are a good capitalist, you will be aware of this disadvantage and try to mitigate it. Conveniently, solving your ignorance problem can also help with solving your need problem: the more capable you are at diagnosing your vehicle and repairing it yourself, the less you will need to enter the marketplace to compete as an “equal.”

 

As a philosopher, one of the greatest challenges I face is reducing the number of problems I must deal with in my classes. Addressing this task requires a diverse approach to the problems. In some cases, I must craft policies and rules to attempt to head off troubles. As you might suspect, based on the iron law of bureaucracy (bureaucracy always increases) my syllabus has bloated over the decades. When I first started teaching, my syllabus was about two pages featuring a list of the readings, the grade scale and similar relevant items. But it is now the length of an academic paper, jammed with policies and rules that I am required to include and policies I crafted over the years in response to each new problem. Back when I was in graduate school, a professor joked about naming his rules after the students who made them a necessity and in some cases they did just that. While I do not name my new rules in this manner, each one has a story behind it.

I have found that every semester introduces a new problem that the existing rules and policies do not cover, and thus the syllabus must grow like a monster that feasts on trouble. I do not, of course, think that the policies and rules will ensure that the same problems will not arise again. They will. Rather, they exist so I can paste the policy into emails in response to some problem or issue. Also, since I am a lawfully aligned creature, I do like having a procedure flowchart to follow so I can deal with each problem consistently and fairly in each manifestation.

In other cases, it is a matter of recording yet another video or creating another page in Canvas explaining how some aspects of the course, such as grading, work. While technological advances have required that I add explanations of things that did not exist when I started teaching, the explainers are as likely to be about some ancient aspects of teaching, such as late policies, extra credit policies and such. Based on the five views these have gotten over the years, I know that people are generally not looking at them. As such, while they are intended to inform, they realistically have two practical functions. One is that they make me feel that I have done my job in informing the students so that I feel no guilt or discomfort when students profess not to know something that was thus explained in multiple medias. The second is that they give me something I can link to in emails in response to the questions that were, of course, answered in the syllabus and in class. Mostly, it is just a matter of saving time.

While I do strive to create a class that is free of problems, this is an impossible task. As Plato and other philosophers have argued, this is an imperfect world rife with evils of various sorts. My hypothesis is that baked into the universe is the Ineliminable Problem Problem. The gist of this problem is that no matter what one does, one can never eliminate all problems. I also like to put it this way: For every Problem P that I solve, a Student S will create at least one new Problem X. The IPP applies broadly to all aspects of reality; you can test it yourself.

If you are starting a WOX (War On X), this entails that there is actually no significant and sustained attack on X.  For example, there is no significant and sustained attack on Christmas, so the War on Christmas has been built on fabrications, hyperbole, and intentionally bad logic. But what if there is something like X, Y, that is under significant and sustained attack? The obvious answer is that you would not need to start a WOY (War on Y), you could provide reasonable evidence that Y is under sustained and significant attack. But what if openly claiming that Y is under attack would have negative consequences? For example, while there is no significant and sustained attack on white Americans by “the left”, but there is a sustained and significant attack on white supremacy in the United States. But if you openly defended white supremacy and lamented that it is under fire, you might face consequences. 

Because of this, some people use the claim that “you can’t say anything anymore.” While obviously hyperbole, this assertion is often used to complain that people can face consequences for remarks they would have been able to make with impunity in the past. In some cases, this complaint has merit, and free expression is being wrongly infringed upon. In other cases, people are merely facing consequences for violating social norms.

The United States has undergone various normative changes over the years. These changes include alterations in laws, etiquette, aesthetics, and moral values. The area of aesthetics is non-controversial: everyone gets that fashion, hair styles, music, and such change over time. Since I started teaching in 1993, I have witnessed these changes in my students: styles and music that were in vogue back in the 1990s are now hopelessly out of date (until they become retro cool). Another obvious area of change is American racism. While racism is still a serious problem, American norms have changed so that extreme racism is still mostly unacceptable. There are also many other things that are now unacceptable to say openly, so what can you do if what you want to say is something that would lead to consequences you are unwilling to face? Fortunately, there is a way to say such things without saying them. As would be expected, racism provides an excellent example, and Lee Atwater ably explains how to do this:

 

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968, you can’t say “nigger” – that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now, you’re talking about cutting taxes. And all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me – because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

 

What Atwater is describing is the use of what is known as a dog whistle. One version of the dog whistle is to use coded language whose true meaning is understood by your intended audience but not by the general population. This is analogous to how slang terms and technical terms work; you need to know the special meanings of the terms to understand what is being said. Another version of the dog whistle is a form of innuendo. A word or phrase is used to suggest or imply something (usually negative). If you do not know the special meanings or the intended implication, you are excluded, often intentionally so.

The coded or suggestive words or phrases will also (usually) have neutral or even positive meanings to the general population. This feature allows you to say what you want to say to your intended audience without the general population knowing what you really mean. For example, “thug” and “urban” have neutral meanings but are also coded words used for racist dog whistles. “Bossy” is an example of a sexist dog whistle. While using one can raise moral concerns, the dog whistle has many advantages. 

The advantages of the dog whistle include:

 

  • Your fellows know what you mean, and they approve.
  • Your foes know what you mean, and they are triggered.
  • Critics can seem silly or crazy to “normies.”
  • Plausible deniability that “normies” will accept.
  • Can onramp “normies.”

 

As noted above, coded and suggestive words work like slang and those in the know will understand what you mean while others will not. These people tend to split into two groups. There are your fellows who will presumably approve of your dog whistle. There are also your foes who are likely to be triggered. They know what you mean, and it will probably outrage them, especially when you whistle loudly in public. Fortunately, if these foes try to criticize you or explain what you really mean, they are likely to seem silly or crazy to “normies” (people who do not know the codes).

 Over the years, I have tried to explain dog whistles to intelligent, educated “normies” and I usually fail as they tend to think that I am either just getting it wrong or that I have a very nefarious motivation. As such, the dog whistle can provide a double victory: you send a clear message to your fellows while also “owning” the “libs” as they are frustrated by trying to explain your dog whistle to people who are oblivious.

Even if your foes make some headway, a dog whistle provides plausible deniability. You can insist that you were using the words in the “normal” way and even that you had no idea that they are coded or suggestive. For example, a politician might warn voters not to “monkey this up” by electing their (black) opponent. When it is pointed out that this is a well-known racist dog whistle, the politician can plead ignorance and say they did not intend to use it that way. While their fellows and their foes get exactly what was meant, most normies will either be baffled or accept the explanation.  Finally, dog whistles can help on-ramp normies.

While most normies would be appalled by, for example, openly bigoted language, they can be lured onto the path by dog whistles. This is usually done by appealing to legitimate or sensible fears, hopes and concerns. For example, it is reasonable to be concerned that female athletes are being treated fairly. But “fairness” can be used as a dog whistle that might lure people down the path of being anti-trans without them realizing how they ended up there.  But dog whistles do have a disadvantage.

Laying aside the usual moral concerns, the sole disadvantage of the dog whistle is that “normies” can catch on and start to hear them. Once enough normies recognize a dog whistle, it is no longer useful since the point of a dog whistle is that you can present two different meanings to your two audiences (your fellows and the “normies”).  This problem can be addressed by switching to a similar dog whistle that the normies have yet to decode or by creating a new dog whistle word or phrase. The far right does this routinely and never seems to be at a loss for new dog whistles; such is the power of language. While it is unlikely that the normies will decode your whistle while you are in mid-sentence, a clever whistler checks their whistles and keeps up with what codes have been cracked. 

As an example of how to use this method, imagine that you wanted to claim that there is a War on Girls and Women.  I do not, obviously, mean the sustained and systematic problems with sexism and misogyny. This is, after all, supposed to be a WOX and not address the real problems women and girls face. You can note that over the past decade trans athletes were able to compete in accord with now well-established rules. While some people do come out as openly anti-trans, many normies see this as bigotry. So, if you want to say something anti-trans while not spooking the normies, you can use the dog whistle of fairness: you have nothing against trans people; you are just asking questions about fairness. Surely it would be “unfair” if a young girl had to compete in sports with a “boy”.  There must, then, be a War on Girls and Women! No, not systematic sexism. Ignore that, this is a WOX. 

This concludes my series on the WOX and is the WOX to end all WOXs.

As this is being written, the story of the stalled escalator is making international news. The gist of the tale is that an escalator at the United Nations building came to a sudden stop just as Trump and the First Lady began their journey upwards. The UN claims that a White House videographer accidentally tripped a safety system, stopping the mechanism. Aside from Trump and Melania getting in some unexpected cardio, nothing happened. While this event might seem utterly insignificant, it provides an excellent and absurd example of the state of American politics.

Some on the right rushed to present a narrative of a sinister plot against Trump, suggesting that it was a deliberate attempt to harm Trump or perhaps even set him up for an assassination attempt. While Trump initially seemed to laugh off the escalator incident, he is now calling for arrests in the wake of what some in the media are calling “escalatorgate.” Fox News personality Jesse Watters jokingly (one hopes) suggested blowing up or gassing the U.N. in retaliation. While all this might strike rational people as nonsense, it is philosophically interesting in terms of critical thinking, epistemology and ethics. In this essay I’ll briefly look at some of these aspects.

In causal explanations it is usually wisest to follow the popular conception of Occam’s Razor and go with the simplest explanation. In the case of the escalator, the simplest explanation is the stated one: someone tripped a safety mechanism. If someone intended to harm the President, rigging an escalator would be both needlessly complicated and extremely unlikely to cause any meaningful harm. Times being what they are, I am obligated to state unequivocally that I condemn any efforts to harm the President or anyone else with escalator sabotage. But there are reasons why someone might claim something sinister occurred and other reasons why someone might believe it. I make this distinction because people can obviously make claims they do not believe.

While there are various psychological reasons why the claim might be made, there are some “good” practical reasons to claim a sinister plot. One is to create a distraction that will take attention from other topics, such as economic woes and the Epstein files. Trump and his allies have turned this into an international story, and I have been drawn in to do my part. However, my point is that this should not be an important story. The second is to energize the base with an “example” of how “they” are out to get Trump. The third is that it provides a pretense for Trump to go after the U.N.. But why would anyone believe that there is something sinister going on?

We humans tend to attribute human motivations or intentions to objects or natural phenomena and this gives rise to what we philosophers call the anthropomorphic fallacy. While Trump and his supporters are not making this mistake about the escalator, they could be committing a similar error: they are inferring without adequate evidence that an accidental event was caused by sinister intentions. This “reasoning” involves rejecting the accident explanation in favor of the sinister intention explanation based on psychological factors rather than evidence. That is, Trump and his supporters probably feel that there is a sinister conspiracy against him, so accidents and coincidences are explained in terms of this conspiracy because the explanation feels right. And if the conspiracy theory is questioned, the questioner is accused of being in on the conspiracy. Other accidents and coincidences are also offered as “evidence” that this specific accident or coincidence is part of the conspiracy. It might be objected that people really have tried to hurt Trump, such as occurred with the two failed assassinations attempts (that I also condemn). While those do serve as evidence that those two people wanted to harm Trump, they have no relevance to the escalator incident and evidence in support of the escalator conspiracy in particular would be needed.

Another reason why some people might believe this is based in the claim about the right that “every accusation is a confession.” While there are various ways to explain this, a plausible one in some cases is the false consensus effect cognitive bias. This occurs when people assume that their personal qualities, characteristics, beliefs, and actions are relatively widespread through the general population. People who might themselves think of sabotaging an escalator to harm someone they dislike would be inclined to believe other people think like them, just as a liar would tend to think other people are also dishonest. Times being what they are, I must clarify that I condemn using escalators to harm people and I am not accusing anyone on the right of planning to do this. This is but a hypothesis about why some people might believe the elevator was sabotaged. Lastly, I’ll take a brief look at an ethical issue of free expression.

As noted above, Jesse Watters joked about bombing the U.N. in retaliation for the escalator. As I am a consistent advocate of free expression, I believe he has the moral right to say this although it would be morally acceptable for him to face any relevant proportional moral consequences. Times being what they are, I must be clear that I do not condone any attempts to harm Watters or even firing him over this. But his remarks are another example of the apparent moral inconsistency of the right, with Brian Kilmeade’s assertion that we should consider executing mentally ill homeless people being the most extreme example to date. Kilmeade had to apologize but faced no meaningful consequences.

After the brutal murder of Charlie Kirk, many on the right rushed to punish those who spoke ill of Kirk, with Watters himself calling for Matthew Dowd to be fired. There was also the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel after alleged intimidation by Trump’s FCC. Less famous people have also been fired, with Vice President Vance urging people to report criticism of Kirk to get these critics fired. This is but one of many examples showing that folks on the right either do not believe in free expression or define the right of free expression as only allowing what they want to express and hear. While this is moral inconsistency, it can be an effective strategy since it allows them the pretense of ethics without the inconvenience of being ethical.

 

 

While a WOX can be created based entirely on lies, it can be useful to have some true claims as evidence for the WOX. Obviously, if adequate evidence existed to prove that X is under significant and sustained attack, then you would not need to create a WOX. Fortunately for starting a WOX, the United States has a population of about 330 million, so you can almost certainly find someone who did or said something that would constitute an attack on X. The odds are ever in your favor. You might wonder what you can do with but a few examples, since isolated incidents do not make a war. Fortunately, there are two time-honored fallacies you can use when you have evidence, yet not enough of it: Hasty Generalization and Anecdotal Evidence.

A hasty generalization is committed when a person draws a conclusion about a population based on a sample that is not large enough to adequately support that conclusion.  It has the following general form:

 

Premise 1:  Sample S (which is not large enough) is taken from population P.

Conclusion: Claim C is made about Population P based on S.

 

That this is a fallacy is easy to show with a fishing example. If you catch a small yellow perch in a lake, you would not be justified in believing that all (or even most) of the fish in the lake are small yellow perch. For all you know, there could be dozens of species of fish in the lake.

In the case of a WOX, here is how you would make a type of hasty generalization from a few examples of attacks on X:

 

Premise 1: There are a small number of examples of attacks on X.

Conclusion: There is significant and sustained war on X.

 

The “logic” here is that having a few examples of attacks “proves” that there are many examples of attacks and thus there is a WOX. This is obviously bad logic is on par with inferring that because you saw one fish in a lake it must be teaming with fish. Now, to the Fallacy of Anecdotal Evidence.

The Fallacy of Anecdotal evidence is committed when a person draws a conclusion about a population based on an anecdote (a story) about one or a very small number of cases. The fallacy is also committed when someone rejects reasonable statistical data supporting a claim in favor of a single example or small number of examples that go against the claim. Some consider this to just be a variation on hasty generalization.  It has the following forms:

 

Form One

Premise 1: Anecdote A is told about a member (or small number of members) of Population P.

Conclusion: Claim C about Population P based on Anecdote A is true.

 

Form Two

Premise 1: Reasonable statistical evidence S exists for general claim C.

Premise 2:  Anecdote A is presented that is an exception to or goes against general claim C.

Conclusion: General claim C is false.

 

For a WOX, you would use the following form:

 

Premise 1: Anecdote A, about an attack on X, is told about Population P.

Conclusion: Attacks on X are widespread in Population P.

 

This fallacy is like hasty generalization and a similar sort of error is committed, namely drawing an inference based on a sample that is inadequate in size relative to the conclusion. The main difference between hasty generalization and anecdotal evidence is that the fallacy anecdotal evidence involves using a story (anecdote) as the sample.

People often fall victim to this fallacy because stories and anecdotes have more psychological influence than statistical data. This leads people to infer that what is true in an anecdote must be true of the whole population or that an anecdote justifies rejecting statistical evidence in favor of said anecdote. Not surprisingly, people most commonly accept this fallacy because they would prefer the anecdote be true for the whole population. For example, a person who smokes might try to convince herself that smoking will not hurt her because her Aunt Jane smoked a dozen cigars a day and lived until she was 104.

Fortunately, while the logic is bad, this method has advantages:

 

  • When anyone checks your examples, they will be found to be true.
  • It avoids the disadvantages of lying.
  • Statistics are what they are, but you can share the anecdotes you want to tell.
  • Statistics require that people think, stories make people feel.

 

Anyone who checks on your examples will find they are true, which can deter them from looking beyond them. If you are criticized, you can “defend” yourself by focusing on the fact that your examples (or stories) are real and you are technically not lying. By being able to pick your examples and stories you can shape the narrative as you wish. Best of all, as a matter of general psychology people tend to be bored by statistics and moved by stories. You can probably find some very emotionally charged stories and take advantage of the Fallacy of Misleading Vividness. This is a fallacy in which a very small number of particularly dramatic events are taken to outweigh a significant amount of statistical evidence. It relies on the psychological force of the drama of the examples rather than on the logical weight of evidence. It can be considered a variation on Hasty Generalization/Anecdotal Evidence.

 While useful, these fallacies do have their disadvantages:

 

  • If someone checks, they will find you only have a few examples or stories.
  • While you are not technically lying, you are being dishonest.

 

Fortunately, your target audience is unlikely to critically assess whether you have enough examples or not for your generalization. If the generalization matches their biases, fears, or expectations, they will tend to be moved by the psychological force of the fallacy and ignore that it is logically flawed. Those who are willing and able to engage your generalization critically are not your target audience and their criticisms will probably be ignored by your target audience or even taken as more “evidence” you are right. As was discussed with religious and moral concerns about lying, these concerns can easily be dismissed or worked around.

As an example of how to use this method, imagine that you wanted to claim that there is a War on White Men in America. With such a large population, you can easily find a few examples of people who explicitly attack (in word or in deed) white men simply for being white men. If you are lucky (which you probably will be) the examples will be especially dramatic, and the “perpetrators” will be members of groups your target audience already fears or hates (thus allowing you to cash in on stereotypes and demonizing). These few incidents can be generalized into a full-scale war, thus getting your WOX started. You can also make good (evil) use of dog whistles here, which will be the subject of the last essay in this series.

In the previous essay in this series, I discussed how you could provide “examples” of a War on X by using hyperbole and making straw men. In this essay, we’ll look at how you can use the fallacy of incomplete evidence to “prove” there is a WOX.

The fallacy of incomplete evidence occurs when available evidence that would count against a claim is ignored or suppressed. It also occurs when only evidence in support of a claim is selected (“cherry picked”). It has the following form:

 

Premise 1: Evidence E is given for claim C.

Premise 2: There is no available evidence A that would significantly count against C (but A is available and is ignored or suppressed).

Conclusion: Therefore, C is true.

 

Unlike many other fallacies, this fallacy does not arise because the presented premises fail to logically support the conclusion. Instead, the error is that the person making the argument fails (intentionally or accidentally) to consider available evidence would count against their conclusion.  The fallacy does its work by conveying the impression to the target that the premises are both true and complete (that salient evidence has not been ignored or suppressed).

There are two factors that must be considered when determining whether the fallacy has been committed. The first is whether the suppressed or ignored evidence is significant enough to outweigh the presented evidence. That some salient information has been left out is not enough to establish the fallacy has been committed. What is needed is that the suppressed or ignored evidence would make a meaningful difference in the strength of the argument. If not, the fallacy is not committed.  But in this context, you will want to commit the fallacy. You will need to determine which evidence would count against your claim and then ignore it. And hope your audience will do so as well.

The second is whether the (allegedly) suppressed or ignored evidence was reasonably available to the person committing the fallacy.  If someone “ignored” evidence that they could not reasonably be expected to know, then they would not be committing this fallacy.  Sorting out what a person can reasonably be expected to know can be challenging and thus there can be considerable dispute over whether the fallacy was committed. In this context, the evidence will obviously be available to you as you will be knowingly ignoring or suppressing the evidence.

When using this fallacy to start a WOX, one useful variant is to ignore inconvenient facts about the past. This version has the following form:

 

Premise 1:  Evidence E is given for the claim there is a WOX.

Premise 2: There is no available evidence that E occurred before the WOX and would thus meaningfully count against their being a WOX (but there actually is available evidence that E did occur well before the WOX).

Conclusion: Therefore, there is a WOX.

 

This method does have advantages:

 

  • The available evidence is what it is but the evidence you use is up to you.
  • The evidence used can be true and unmodified.

 

While reality is what it is, picking the evidence you wish to use and what you want to ignore makes it easier to build your argument. If you are starting a WOX, there will be available evidence against your claims, but you can ignore it. While lies, hyperbole and straw men have their advantages, the use of incomplete evidence allows you to use true claims while ignoring inconvenient truths. This can sometimes increase your credibility and using some truth makes it harder to debunk your claims about a WOX. But this method has some disadvantages:

 

  • There will, by the nature of the fallacy, be significant evidence against your claim.
  • This method is lying by omission and many moralities and religions condemn lying.

 

This method entails that there is significant evidence against your claim which means that debunkers are likely to find it. Fortunately, the usual target audience for a WOX is unlikely to engage the matter critically and some of them will be happy to be in on the fallacy. While you will not be fabricating evidence, you will be lying by omission, and many moralities and religions consider this unacceptable. Fortunately, as with lying in general, it is easy to work around this.

As an example of how to use incomplete evidence to start a WOX, consider how those pushing the War on Christmas use it. They point out, correctly, that people now use “Happy Holidays.” Making use of a straw man attack, they “infer” that the “real reason” this is occurring is because Christmas is under attack. They will also tend to lie and claim that no one can say “Merry Christmas” anymore without fear of some sort of reprisal. But a key part of this is the use of incomplete evidence: they do not mention that “Happy Holidays” has been in use for a long time. This can easily be confirmed by the 1942 film Holiday Inn in which Bing Crosby and Marjorie Reynolds sing the song Happy Holiday. It was later released by Jo Stafford as a Christmas song in 1955. With a bit more effort, you can find that the term was used in 1863 and was used in advertising from at least 1937. This serves to undercut the idea that the use of “Happy Holidays” is evidence of a War on Christmas. The fact that the idea of the War on Christmas still has considerable power on the right shows how effective this fallacy can be. Despite the ease with which the “Happy Holiday” claims can be disproven, we still hear about the War on Christmas every year. As such, when using incomplete evidence for a WOX you will generally not need to worry about all that evidence you are ignoring and your audience will most likely just do the same.

This essay continues my guide on how to start a War on X. In the previous essay, I looked at the advantages and disadvantages of lying and this essay will focus on using hyperbole and the Straw Man fallacy. Hyperbole is a rhetorical device involving exaggeration, typically to make something appear far worse or much better than it really is. While hyperbole is a form of lying, it is an exaggeration rather than a complete fabrication. For example, if a person does not catch any fish and say they “caught a whopper”, then they are just lying. If they caught a small fish and called it a whopper, they are using hyperbole.  While there can be debate about the boundary between hyperbole and other forms of lying, this distinction is not as important as the distinction between the truth and a lie.  Hyperbole can be used for benign purposes, such as in comedy. But it can also be weaponized to help start a war. Hyperbole is often used in creating a straw man fallacy.

The Straw Man fallacy is committed when one ignores a claim or argument and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated, or misrepresented version of that claim or argument. This sort of “reasoning” has the following pattern:

 

Premise 1: Person A makes claim or argument X.

Premise 2: Person B presents Y (which is a distorted version of X).

Premise 3: Person B attacks Y.

Conclusion:  Therefore, X is false/incorrect/flawed.

 

This sort of “reasoning” is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a claim or argument does not constitute a criticism of the position itself. A Straw Man can be effective because people often do not know the real claim or argument being attacked. The fallacy is especially effective when the straw person matches the audience’s biases or stereotypes, they will feel that the distorted version is the real version and accept it.

While this fallacy is generally aimed at an audience, it can be self-inflicted: a person can unwittingly make a Straw Man out of a claim or argument. This can be done in error (perhaps due to ignorance) or due to the influence of prejudices and biases.

Straw man attacks often make use of an appeal to an unknown fact. This usually involves claiming to know the “real reason” a person or group believes the straw claim or argument. This “reason” is usually presented as a wicked motivation.

The defense against a Straw Man, self-inflicted or not, is to take care to get a person’s claim or argument right. This involves applying the principle of charity and the principle of plausibility.

Following the principle of charity requires interpreting claims in the best possible light and reconstructing arguments to make them as strong as possible. There are three reasons to follow the principle. The first is that doing so is ethical. The second is that doing so avoids committing the straw man fallacy. The third is that the criticism of the best and strongest versions of a claim or argument also addresses the lesser versions.

The principle of charity must be tempered by the principle of plausibility: claims must be interpreted, and arguments reconstructed in a way that matches what is known about the source and in accord with the context. Obviously, if you are using a Straw Man in your war, you will want to ignore these principles. Instead, you will want to be uncharitable and present the worst possible interpretation of your target. This should be tempered by a distorted version of the principle of plausibility: your distortion should be plausible (or at least appealing) to your target audience.

Hyperbole and the Straw Man fallacy have the following advantages: 

 

  • The truth is what it is, but hyperbole/straw man allows you to “modify” the truth.
  • Engaging an actual claim or argument can be difficult, exaggeration and distortion are easy.
  • Hyperbole/straw man allows you to have a grain of truth.
  • People tend to be more forgiving of hyperbole/strawman compared to utter fabrications.
  • Even if someone does not believe the hype, they can be influenced by it.

 

 

If you limit yourself to the truth or what your target really said, you are stuck with what is. If you are trying to create a WOX, reality will probably be of little or no use to you. But you can tailor your hyperbole or straw man to have maximum impact on your audience. You can, for example, make it fit perfectly with what they fear. If your target makes reasonable claims and has a good argument, engaging these would be hard. Exaggeration and distortion make fighting easier. To use the obvious analogy, it is the difference between fighting the person and punching a dummy dressed up like the person. While useful, hyperbole and straw man do have some disadvantages. Since hyperbole/straw man is not a complete fabrication, you have a grain of truth to work with. This allows you a degree of plausible deniability and there is also the fact that people seem more tolerant of exaggeration and distortion compared to complete fabrications. Interestingly, even if people do not “buy the hype” they can be influenced by it—this is something advertisers make use of. You just need to be careful not to over-hype or distort to the point that even your target audience will not buy it.

As with lies, there are some disadvantages to hyperbole/straw man:

 

  • As with lying, hyperbole/strawman can be debunked.
  • Most religions and moralities condemn lying, even hyperbole.
  • Requires a grain of truth.

 

The general points I made about lying in the previous essay also apply here to hyperbole/straw man. It is worth noting that hyperbole/straw man does give you a degree of plausible deniability. If you are debunked, you can claim you just got things wrong by accident or were being dramatic. Hyperbole/straw man also decreases the chances that your targets will doubt you. If they do make a cursory check of your distortion, they might think that it is confirmed by the grain of truth it is built on. As such, hyperbole/straw man can be better than outright fabrication, at least in some contexts. It does, after all, require at least a fragment of truth.

As an example, consider the change from “Christmas Break” to “Winter Break” or “Holiday Break” by many schools. This was done for the obvious reason that not all students, faculty and staff are Christians who celebrate Christmas. There is also the fact that the break includes holidays other than Christmas, such as New Year’s and that it includes days before and after Christmas. While this change was obviously not an attack on Christmas, it can easily be made into a straw man. A good way to do this is to claim that the “real reason” that the name was changed was because “they” are attacking Christmas and want to cancel it. You can also throw in some claims about “the libs” and “the woke mob” attacking Christianity. If you want to do some racism or sexism, there is also the option of using a dog whistle (the subject of the final essay in this series).  In the next essay we will look at how to use Incomplete Evidence to start the war.