Disingenuousness. Yes It IS a Word, Look It Up

For today’s post, I want to talk about disingenuousness.  It is one of my least favorite things in the world, and I’ve tried to eliminate it from my own thoughts and speech.  I hope I can convince you to do the same, and perhaps over time, we can eliminate it in the public discourse, or at least relegate it to the bitter fringes where it belongs, rather than dominating our national dialogue.

If you are unfamiliar with the word disingenuous, it refers to saying something that may not be inaccurate, or an outright lie, but it is not the actual truth, and is meant to obfuscate the issue and draw unearned support for one’s point of view.

I’m afraid the only true synonym I can provide for you is bullshit.  When someone argues his or her point using a fact that, despite being true, does not belong in the conversation, you call bullshit on that person.  That person is being disingenuous.

But since bullshit is a rather broad term, I will use the term disingenuousness for the purpose of clarity.

Disingenuousness comes in two varieties:  the intentional, cynical kind, applied consciously to make one’s point (or alter the flow and direction of a conversation,) or the far more dangerous unconscious variety, which we will discuss later.

We see a lot of disingenuousness in politics, especially coming from the mouths of pundits.  Part of the reason for this is that a politician must face the music later for what he or she says, while a pundit can just deflect and laugh off criticism as they are merely entertainers.

If you oppose something, but either don’t feel your actual, main arguments against something are strong enough, or are afraid of being painted in a negative light for saying them out loud, you can simply use another argument, which my have nothing to do with your real motivations but which can serve to justify opposing it.

The most egregious example I can think of in recent memory was with the healthcare debate.  Now there are plenty of reasons why a person might oppose this law.  Many I can agree with and many with which I disagree, but some arguments were pure, unadulterated bullshit.

I speak of course, of the “Death Panels.”  Rather than stick to their many, perfectly valid arguments, some (certainly not all, but a significant number,) conservatives chose to claim that the law allowed for government-selected panels to decide whether patients were to live or die.

Now, the truth of this aside (completely false,) this was not the reaction of people who were frightened for the public well being and reacting in horror as if they’d just checked the ingredient list of Soylent Green, this was a completely cynical attempt to sway those for whom the other, fiscal reasons might not have been enough.  Rather than simply lie (although there was a generous helping of that in there as well,) they twisted truths, to intentionally cause people to reach false conclusions.  Disingenuousness at its finest.

Likewise, the politician who tried to say we should increase border security because Mexicans carry leprosy.  Believe how you wish on the border issue, there are plenty of arguments on both sides, but leprosy should not be part of that discourse, unless we are also going to discuss how the lizard people are secretly behind the whole issue.

The media loves to use this to ‘jazz up’ their stories.  The most irritating (to me) version is whenever they talk about guns.  To this day you will hear stories of how the assailants entered the store brandishing semi-automatic handguns.

Now, ‘semi-automatic’ certainly sounds scary, what with all those syllables, but they would have been just as accurate to simply say handguns.  ‘Semi-automatic’ is redundant and prejudicial.

Semi-automatic firearms cycle a round after each firing.  That means that when you pull the trigger, a round is fired, and the spent casing (or shell,) is ejected from the weapon, and a new round is chambered and made ready to fire.  But to fire, you have to pull the trigger again.  So semi-automatic weapons fire one round each time you pull the trigger.  You know, just like you expect a firearm to do.

The technical use for the term is to differentiate such weapons (which are the norm,) from fully automatic weapons (‘machine’ guns,) and older weapons such as bolt- or lever-action rifles.  Unless you live in an area where you would normally expect criminals to be using Old West era Colt Peacemakers, the only reason to say ‘semi-automatic’ is to heighten the melodrama of the story (“semiautomatic guns, how did those thugs get machineguns?  We should pass more laws if people can just walk into Wal-Mart and buy machineguns!”)

I wonder if the suspects drove away in a groundcar?

But we do it in our daily lives as well.  How many times have you wanted to avoid attending a social engagement because you simply did not desire to go?  But how many times in such situations did you use an excuse that, while true, you could easily have overcome?

Rather than simply say “I’m sorry Dave, I don’t want to go to your party because I don’t think I will have a good time,” we say “I’m sorry Dave, but I have a huge backlog of muskrats that need to have their anal glands expressed.  Now it’s true, you really should attend to the squeezins, you know damn well that you weren’t planning to get out the buckets and rubber tubing this weekend, so that’s not really the reason you aren’t attending your friend’s “synch up Bergman’s the Seventh Seal with Raffi’s Greatest Hits” viewing party.

Sometimes, we genuinely do it to spare someone’s feelings, “Oooh, liverwurst and pimiento stuffed cake pops?  I’d love to, but I ate earlier, and I don’t think I could possibly make any more room.”  But other times, it’s just easier to fall back on the excuse.

But then there’s the most insidious kind, unconscious disingenuousness.  This is when we have internalized the excuses until we no longer realize that we are doing it.  And when that happens, it is generally ourselves that we are fooling.

Sometimes, we are afraid to face our true reasons for some of the things we do.  So we find another reason that allows us to keep the same conclusion.  Maybe you are disgusted by the very thought of homosexuals, but society has convinced you that such thoughts are fit only for malevolent Cro-Magnons (Cro-Malnons?) so you instead tell people you oppose homosexuality because the Bible condemns it, even though you don’t listen to the Bible for anything else in your life.  Just own your hate and be who you are.  The gays do it, tell them you are having a hate pride parade.  Or, you know, keep it to yourself, but at least be honest with yourself (it’s okay if you want to stay in the closet, we won’t tell.)

But allowing ourselves to truly believe that we are doing what we feel like for some convoluted logical reason (“by buying this widescreen TV rather than pay off my credit card this month, I’m helping the economy, and that will be better for me in the long run!” we open the door to all kinds of justifications and excuses, granting is carte blanche for behaviors our consciences might otherwise convince us out of.

For some people, they so want to cling to a belief that they have a hard time supporting, they will accept someone else’s reasons as their own, simply to provide them a basis for their beliefs beyond simply “I believe it.”

For me, the most irksome one that I hear from people I know (and that they themselves are parroting from religious figures,) is the pathetic attempt to discredit the theory of natural selection by attacking the science.  This topic will certainly get its own post one day, but for now, be advised that NO rational human on the planet truly disbelieves the theory first proposed by Darwin because the science is lacking.  If you choose to follow your faith instead of reviewing evidence, that’s great, mazel tov, but don’t put a pig in a dress and call it a debutante.

If you are too ashamed of your faith and feel you need scientific evidence to support it, you might just not be particularly good at religion.

I normally despise ‘bumper sticker logic’ that tries to oversimplify a topic to a phrase (let’s have a long talk someday about “guns don’t kill people…”) but the single best argument against evolution I’ve ever seen is “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.”

I don’t personally agree, but when you throw that down, it means you have explained your position, and left no room whatsoever for me to logically counter.

That’s you belief, man, so be it.  End of discussion and have a nice day.   The only thing you could produce to counter that argument is to attack your choice in believing the word of God.  And you’d pretty much have to be an asshole to follow someone into their philosophical house and start rearranging their furniture.

But the second you start talking that microevolution vs. macroevolution shit, you’ve just stepped into science’s turf, and you better have come looking for a rumble (“Yo G, check him out, he ain’t wearing our colors!”  “No lab coat?  This punk is done, esse!”)

If you enter the ring of rational discourse, be ready for that shit to be brought.

So what does it all mean?  Why have I typed all this?  Well, I’d like for people in general to be more aware of disingenuousness.  I think politically speaking, we will all be better off if everyone is better prepared to sniff out the bullshit arguments when making choices (“don’t vote Republican, because their symbol is the elephant, an animal that kills hundreds each year in Asia.”  “Don’t vote for a Democrat, their name starts with ‘demon’ kind of.”

And if we all did our best to eliminate such behavior in our lives…well, actually, we’d probably just get in more fights and lose more friends.  But I’m pretty sure we could make a better, more honest society eventually.

Because disingenuousness is the worst kind of lie: the dishonest kind.