Odd hominem
A perverse style of persuasion
The most influential political essays in American history would not be published today. It's not that the Federalist Papers are densely written and would be difficult for modern readers to follow. They are dense and difficult. It's not that they deal with an issue that was resolved, namely the ratification of the Constitution. The Constitution was indeed ratified, but the questions raised in the Federalist Papers are with us still.
No, the reason they wouldn't be published today is that their authors were anonymous. Nearly every newspaper and magazine these days insists on revealing the identity of the people who write in their pages. Who the writer is has come to mean as much as what the writer says. In fact, there has emerged a common format for titles of opinion essays: “I am a such-and-such, and here's what I think.”
This kind of argument from authority has its merits. I trust a public health professional on the subject of vaccines more than I trust a random person off the street.
But it also has its weaknesses, as we see around us lately. When trust in experts is lost, everyone is perceived as having equal authority. Your crazy uncle thinks he knows as much about covid as the surgeon general.
The argument from authority has another weakness. It invites ad hominem responses. This strategy of attacking the speaker rather than the argument is as old as arguments themselves. John Locke seems to have coined the Latin label. The strategy has often been nasty and treated as fallacious. It is often nasty today and has become standard practice.
When Larry Summers was president of Harvard and conjectured that the greater representation of men in science compared to women reflected the greater variability in mathematical abilities among men, he was labeled a sexist and his argument was ignored or misrepresented. When J. K. Rowling suggested that children were not necessarily the best judges of matters relating to their long-term health, she was called a transphobe and in many quarters canceled.
The phenomenon has broadened. Opponents of affirmative action are commonly labeled racists. Critics of the government of Israel are often called antisemites. Questioners of open-ended American aid to Ukraine are dismissed as isolationists. Advocates of stricter controls on immigration are called nativists. Republicans call Democratic supporters of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris socialists. Democrats call Republican supporters of Donald Trump racists, sexists, transphobes, isolationists and nativists.
None of this improves our political discourse. Like domestically produced goods in a tariff-protected market, ad hominem arguments are enervated by not having to engage the competition. This is a particular problem in a democracy. Calling people socialists or racists doesn't deprive them of their votes. But it does deprive the name-callers of the ability to persuade them. It allows each side to retreat into its shell of righteousness. The arguments of each side become shrill and lazy, more about affirming sect identity than about winning converts.
Many cities took a step in the right direction during the progressive era by making municipal politics nonpartisan. Arguments at city council meetings are less freighted with party affiliation. The arguments have a greater chance of being judged on their merits.
Newspapers and their digital equivalents could take another step forward by taking a big step back to the era of the Federalist Papers. Publish opinion pieces anonymously. Compel readers to evaluate the arguments on the merits of the arguments.
Of course, some readers won’t be willing to make the effort. They might cancel their subscriptions. Which is why newspapers are reluctant to take the step. It's also why many papers are reluctant to hire columnists not clearly classifiable as liberal or conservative.
Still, it would be worth a try, if only as an experiment. Maybe we Americans are collectively stupider than Americans in the 1780s. Or intellectually lazier. I don't think it's true. I could be wrong. I’d like to find out.
I think that is a brilliant idea. Too many times, people on both sides disagree with an argument based solely on who is making the argument. The thinking is that no one with whom one disagrees is even capable of having a good idea and thus people dismiss the idea completely. I love the man-on-the- street interviews where they ask people about a policy and they like it -- until they find out who said it.
Summer's point about mathematical ability was actually that men displayed a wider range of ability with some men very high and other men very low- in short, he was describing a bell curve with different arc than one that would apply to women at the time he said it. His problem is that he stated his view as if these ability ranges (shapes of the bell curves by gender) were innate and essentially dismissed the issue of lack of female representation at the high end of the professions. He didn't seem to consider that other factors created a narrower curve for women such as societaly pressures, cultural biases. Hence he came across as sexisst. For a supposed professional economist (and full disclosure I despise is middle of the road neo-liberal economics views) he did a really shallow dive into this issue,
Quote: new analysis of math data from 22 countries (not yet published but presented at several conferences) finds men with the expected spread in scores in many countries—but not in Lithuania, Germany, the Netherlands, Slovenia, or Denmark. In these places, female variability is either greater, or there’s little difference between the sexes.
This new data would suggest cultural differences which ultimately even out the variability.
As to Rowling, she is echoing the same simplistic views of gender of the right which ignores actual science which shows that not just sexuality, but gender, are more fluid than merely the genitals one has been born with. (Curious that all these folks simply ignore the actual existence of intersex people (Intersex people are born with sex traits that don't fit into the binary definitions of male or female, and may have genitals that include traits of both sexes) also called hermaphrodites (A hermaphrodite is an organism that has both male and female reproductive organs, structures, or tissue. Hermaphroditism can be found in many animals and plants). Intersex population is estimated to be about 1.7% of the human population.
In short, both Summers and Rowling claim to be addressing issues using "the science" when the science actually refutes their positions.
But I do take your point- too often a short cut to dismiss some people's positions.
I have been called an Islamaphobe by people when I ask if they would want to live under an Hamas or other islamic government. They don't answer that question but resort to the "phobe" attack. ( Of course they will never know the numerous times I hung out and partied with Iranian Muslim students while at university who were some of my best friends and coworkiers LOL).
What you describe is also a tactic in "dismissing the source" rather than address the issue or argument.
Humorously, I recall 20 years ago in an online forum discussing politics, one (liberal) respondent posted some information and his opponent in the discussion said "those are liberal facts"