Washington’s Ad Hominem Fetish

In multiple ways, the 2008 Presidential elections were stage for some of the ugliest political discourse I have ever seen.  Hateful rhetoric became the norm, finger-pointing became the preferred battle tactic and everyone took everything so personally--it became impossible to have a civil debate.

Perhaps the most disturbing trend introduced during the 2008 elections was the absurd over-usage of the ad hominem fallacy.  For those who are not familiar with the ad hominem fallacy, it is, to quote wikipedia (I know, bad, but I honestly liked their definition the best) “an attempt to link the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise.”  Essentially the ad hominem fallacy is arguing against the person instead of his/her ideas.  

What made matters even worse during the 2008 election season was the strong presence of “identity politics”--the concept that race, gender, and religion play factor in a candidate’s qualifications and that these qualifications determine the candidates ability to appeal to various demographics of potential constituencies.  With the first-ever black Presidential candidate and the first-ever Republican female Vice Presidential candidate, the battlefield was set.  All of a sudden, voting for one set of ideas became voting for one set of people and against another set of people and boy did it get ugly.  I don’t think I have ever seen more perfectly logical arguments fallaciously dismissed in the name of “racism” or “sexism” or some other form of "prejudice" in my entire life and quite frankly, I found it disgusting.  

If you did not agree with Barack Obama’s position on Health Care Reform, then you obviously hated black people.  If you did not share the same opinion as Sarah Palin on Immigration Reform, then you clearly despised women.  Instead of voting for a leftist politician with strong convictions regarding Health Care Reform and improved international diplomacy, you were voting for a black man.  Instead of voting for a right-wing politician with a passion for Tax Reform and promoting small business, you were voting for a woman. 

The sad thing is, this fetish for the ad hominem fallacy has not gone away at all, it appears that it’s here to stay at least as long as Washington continues to play identity politics.  Instead of arguing ideas with members of the TEA Party Movement, you have Janeane Garofalo, dismissing them all as racist “rednecks”.  Instead of accepting criticism and taking it in stride, you have Bill O’Reilly accusing anyone who disagrees with his Conservative principles as “un-American.” 

Love her or hate her, the highly-controversial right-wing author and political analyst, Ann Coulter, struck a chord in me recently when I read some pieces of her’s bringing attention to this issue, arguing that American political discourse has been paralyzed by this obsession with dismantling the person you are arguing against and ignoring the ideas behind them.  It dumbs down the intellectual caliber of debate and it opens up the potential danger of accepting a leader, regardless of their beliefs, based solely on the way you like them as a person (or rather on the way you like your perception of their person).  This indeed, scares the shit out me.  The prospect that some people would be willing to vote into office the next Hitler just because she’s a woman makes me tremble.  If we are serious about preserving our democratic republic--we have to ditch this ad hominem fetish once and for all and we need to start arguing ideas. PERIOD.