The Crossed Pond

Brad and I are having a debate in a thread below about the Scott Thomas Beauchamp affair. In actuality, the two of us agree that the majority of the Barnett/Malkin attacks on Beauchamp’s TNR piece are trivial and foolish. I end up disagreeing with Brad (and Andrew Sullivan) in that I think there is one legitimate needle of complaint amidst the haystack of straw-grasping.

I’ve been thinking about it most of the day, and I guess I’ve decided that the thing that bothers me most about Barnett and Malkin’s approach is that they somehow felt compelled to drown a legitimate journalistic objection in white noise. They decided to do what many bloggers choose to do when they encounter an opinion to which they object: they chose to “Fisk” it.

“Fisking”, as I understand it, is an attempt at a line-by-line refutation of an entire printed statement; a sort of rhetorical saturation bombing in which the more claims go challenged, the better. It is a tactic well-suited to the new style of American political discourse–particularly within the blogosphere–in which every aspect of one’s opposition is exposed to attack. It is not enough for one’s opponents to be factually wrong on an important matter, or to draw the wrong conclusions from agreed-upon evidence, or to advocate different solutions to common problems. Instead, the opponent must be proven an enemy. He or she must be consciously attempting to achieve evil ends through deliberately deceitful means.

It is an exercise in pure demonization in which the writers central claim is deliberately drowned in technical details. And even as the rest of the net celebrates the tactic–or individual examples of it–I find myself increasingly turned off.

For one thing, the conflation of a large number of objections with high-quality objections is in itself a bad thing. I have yet to see a “Fisking” which involved a large number of really legitimately important points. Malkin and Barnett in particular demonstrate how a really legitimate claim–one that could find common sympathy among people of different political persuasions–can get lost in a blizzard of lesser gripes.

Additionally, “Fisking” plays to the blogosphere’s unfortunate tendency to “preach to the choir”. Nobody “Fisks” anybody in order to change their mind, or indeed to change the mind of ANYBODY on the other side; it’s an exercise in riling up one’s base, in building hatred toward an opposing perspective and its adherents. It is the opposite of diologue, in that it seeks to deliberately destroy any point on which one’s “teammates” might find common ground could be found. There is too much of that sort of thing in American politics already. We don’t need to develop new tactics explicitly designed for bridge-burning.

And lastly, in further development of that point, “Fisking” is irrational in that it encourages us to ascribe opinions with which we disagree to incorrect motives. What is “Fisking” if not an attempt to compel others to believe that a perspective is wholly irrational, and hence motivated by something other than reason? Sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, the authors of the piece being “Fisked” are accused of operating based on a hidden agenda, usually one of pure malice. Beauchamp, apparently, is attempting to sabotage the entire Iraq operation from within. Bush and Cheney are suspected of running their entire administration as a means to personal financial profit, or even out of love of murder and domination for their own sakes.

These claims fly in the face of the entirety of my experience in human interaction. There are certainly people who engage in evil actions for selfish motives, but even when they do so they see their selfishness as serving some greater good. Hitler wanted the German people to prosper; Fred Phelps wants people to go to heaven when they die. “Fisking” all-too-often suggests that the author being “Fisked” is some kind of werewolf. To seek a genuine understanding of the greater good which the author thinks she’s serving is a lot harder than coming up with a technical objection to every claim she makes. Yet those willing to make the effort will end up not only building a better overall political community, but also will more persuasively refute the claims they wish to refute. Beauchamp, for instance, genuinely believes that the US ought to get out of Iraq because the occupation dehumanizes everyone involved. But the true story of his mess-hall interaction suggests that we dehumanize ourselves when we have the opportunity, whether we’re at war or not. The truth he exposes is more “Lord of the Flies” than “Platoon”. Wouldn’t Malkin have been wiser to argue that Beauchamp has proven the converse of his own case? That since we all become beasts when accountability disappears, that the one thing we ought to be avoiding at all costs is the true anarchy that would result from an Iraq pullout?

The first rule of combat, rhetorical combat included, is to know your enemy. Fisking fails because it substitutes demonization of the “enemy” for knowledge of the “enemy.” And because it posits an “enemy” where only an opponent may be present.

The blogosphere is full of smart people who can find an objection to almost any assertion. We would all be wiser to restrain our tendency to do so. We win friends when we “Fisk” others, but we rarely influence people. Our individual causes–and our common cause–are better served by other tactics.