Politics and the English Language

This article was written in 2020.

Something is rotten in the state of English language. What does progressive mean? What about fascist, equity, or diversity? Why do Black Lives Matter but not All Lives Matter? What is meant when we call vaccine challenge trials unethical or when we said that there is no evidence that masks work? Are you pro-life or pro-choice?

George Orwell says this about English1:

It is becoming ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

Orwell wrote this in 1946, and he was talking about the English of England in the 1940s. Something endlessly delightful about Orwell’s essays is their relevance to America in the 21st century; it often feels as if he was writing about specific issues in today’s American political culture. Orwell’s Politics and the English Language is really two essays in one, the first essentially being a guide on how to write and the second a criticism of political language, in line with the title. Both these essays are really good, and I think we can use them to make sense of the absurdities in today’s politics.

I

Orwell presents five real-world examples of bad writing, and says:

Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not… As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed; prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more of phrases tacked together like the section of a prefabricated hen-house.

I love this quote because of how densely packed it is with insightful claims – seriously, every sentence is saying something important and nonobvious that is worth thinking about. Let’s start with the first problem: staleness of imagery.

When I first read this, stale imagery didn’t immediately strike me as a huge problem. Sure, stale imagery is uninteresting, but it still gets the point across, right? In fact, images are usually stale because they’ve been used a lot because they’re good images! “The map and the territory” is a heavily used – dare I say cliché? – metaphorical image for “your model of the world vs the world itself”, but it’s damn good and worth reusing. It doesn’t seem fair to call “the map and the territory” a stale image, and in fact it isn’t. Stale imagery is imagery (in the literary sense) that ceases to function as imagery (in the mental sense). In Orwell’s words, it’s a dying metaphor:

A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically ‘dead’ (e.g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases themselves.

So, three classes of metaphors. Fresh metaphors inspire mental images, pictures we can see in our mind’s-eyes’ that hopefully elucidate something else. Dead metaphors are essentially just words. They have a literal meaning to us and are neither intended nor interpreted as real metaphors; reading a dead metaphor really feels exactly like reading a word. For all intents and purposes, they are words, so there’s nothing wrong with using them. Dying metaphors don’t conjure up images, but neither nor do they act as words. They complicate the writing and create a cognitive burden on the reader without providing a different way to look at things. Dying metaphors are familiar, which explains both their appeal and their demise: they sound good and even seem to be offering the explanatory power of a fresh metaphor without actually doing so.

Let’s consider some examples. Starting with dead metaphors (which can be almost invisible until they’re pointed out), we have she drove the point home and he shot down my request; Orwell offers iron resolution, which seems as dead today as it apparently did in 1946. These phrases don’t feel metaphorical from the reader’s perspective, especially in context, and there is no implication to imagine driving or shooting. Then there are fresh metaphors, which are (unsurprisingly) easier to find. “Bad” metaphors – metaphors that connect two domains that have important relevant asymmetries – are still fresh metaphors, because they actually make the reader think about the metaphorical domain. Whether it’s good or bad, this metaphor from Scott Alexander is alive2:

There are certain theories of dark matter where it barely interacts with the regular world at all, such that we could have a dark matter planet exactly co-incident with Earth and never know… This is sort of how I feel about conservatives.

Note that this metaphor really works visually. From my previous familiarity with dark matter, I first picture a Milky-Way-like galaxy; I can see the spots of darkness where we know matter should be. Then I read the remark about Earth and I get an image of our planet as seen from space, superimposed on a dark translucent twin-Earth. And, yeah, it makes me get what the author is saying when he says that this is how he feels about conservatives.

And then there are dying metaphors. Orwell offers Achilles’ heel and shoulder to shoulder as examples. I actually think the former has become a fully dead3 metaphor in most cases today. To me, reading Achilles’ heel feels like reading a word meaning ‘sole weakness’ – it doesn’t even have any residual classiness from its time as a fresh allusion to Greek mythology. Shoulder to shoulder (and its brother side by side) are still dying metaphors, I think. They are kinda-sorta synonyms for ‘act together’, though their precise meaning is vague; they also involve some sort of (militaristic?) notion of comradery. And they fail the imagery test; I’ve heard these phrases so many times that my brain doesn’t bother actually imagining people standing by each other.4

For a modern example of the dying metaphor, consider this sentence from an article on illicit third vaccine doses in The Atlantic5:

The careful dance of morals and personal peril involved in booster banditry is far more complicated than the obvious ethical dumpster fire of taking a first dose from an essential worker or a cancer patient.

When I read this, “ethical dumpster fire” sticks out. I’ve heard “dumpster fire” be used to mean something like “bad thing” a lot, and I certainly am not imagining a dumpster fire when I read this. Mental imagery probably isn’t even the author’s intent – after all, the image of a dumpster fire doesn’t shed any deep insight on booster banditry or the ethics of prematurely taking first doses. On the other hand, my brain doesn’t treat “dumpster fire” as just a word, as just a synonym for “bad thing”. I have to think about it for a second – what is a dumpster fire, is it a particular kind of bad thing, does it imply that the situation is silly, does it imply that the situation is messy? I do acknowledge that ‘ethical dumpster fire’ is a cool and stylish-sounding set of words, but I don’t think it’s doing any more work than ‘ethical disaster’. Actually, the fact that I don’t even know whether it’s a synonym for ‘disaster’ or whether it means something else makes it a bad phrase. ‘Ethical dumpster fire’ adds not only complexity but also vagueness to the writing.

(The metaphorical classification of “booster bandit” is left as an exercise to the reader.)

Stale imagery is not bad primarily because it’s boring (or unnecessarily complex), but rather because it’s vague. Which brings us to Orwell’s next point – that lack of precision is a common element of bad writing. What causes a writer to be vague? Orwell gives a bunch of standard reasons plus two more interesting ones. First, a writer may be vague due to a sort of intellectual laziness; it doesn’t require much effort to write ‘shoulder to shoulder’, and in fact it may be the most mentally available phrase at the time of writing. Second, a writer may be vague because vague language hides weaknesses in arguments; this is why, “as soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed.” What kinds of topics are these? Political topics, of course!, which leads us into essay two.

II

Orwell writes6:

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.

Something that’s been bothering me for a while is the language surrounding abortion. The most obvious culprits are pro-life and pro-choice, terms that are guilty on charges of euphemism. These are funny names because the actual positions here are legalize abortion and criminalize abortion. Plus, isn’t everyone both pro-life and pro-choice in the non-abortion senses of these terms? But wait, you can’t be both pro-life and pro-choice in the political sense. The overloaded definitions of these terms is a bad thing that leads to certain arguments which can be called at best confused rhetoric and at worst bad-faith sophistry. Arguments like: he is pro-choice, therefore he isn’t pro-life, therefore he thinks murder is fine.

I’m straw-manning, right?

Pro-life tweet

A fascinating thing about these arguments (which conflate meanings of the term pro-x) is that the other side can make the obvious parallel argument, e.g. if Oregon is so pro-choice, residents should be able to not wear masks in public places. Sometimes people recognize that pro-life and pro-choice don’t actually mean pro-life and pro-choice, which leads to some… misinterpretation? of the other side’s reasons for their views. From the same thread, here is the third-highest rated comment:

Comment

This is so silly, but a lot of people really feel this way. This exemplifies a truly bizarre aspect of the abortion issue, which is that many people actually cannot see any non-evil reasons in support of the other side. And, like, it’s so freaking obvious! Maybe fetuses are babies and killing babies is really bad and abortion is terrible and should be illegal! Maybe they aren’t! Maybe freedom and rights are really important and abortion infringes on the rights a future person. Maybe freedom and rights are really good and bodily autonomy is valuable even if it involves bad things. Maybe fetuses are people but abortion is still worth it because of its societal benefits. Etc.!

So, how can some people be so convinced that the other side has nothing going for it? Well, because they’re not in contact with the real arguments for each position. The real argument for legalizing abortion actually addresses why it’s okay to abort fetuses. It says something like “fetuses aren’t people because a person (in the morally significant sense of the word) has certain mental states like beliefs and desires, oh and this implies that newborn babies and late-stage dementia patients aren’t people and we don’t have moral obligations towards them” (for example). As Orwell would say, most people don’t hear this argument because it’s too brutal to face and because it’s inconsistent with other views/aims held by the political party (probably meaning Democrats in this case).

Instead of the real arguments, we get arguments that hide these complicated issues through vagueness or downright fallacy. Orwell highlights7 question-begging, which is probably the most insidious one. “Abortion is murder!” might be true but as a stand-alone argument… um, why is abortion murder? “A woman has a right to abortion” is an argument but… wait, what the hell is a right even and why is abortion one? I don’t think that vagueness is a particularly bad offender in the abortion domain, though it does creep in sometimes. “Abortion should be illegal except when in puts the mother in medical danger” is probably a fairly common view, but what counts as medical danger? Isn’t giving birth pretty much dangerous always, at least compared to a lot of things?

To sum things up:

Diagram

III

How can we avoid these linguistic errors? How can we write (and speak) better about politics? Orwell writes:

What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about. In prose, the worst thing you can do with words is to surrender them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing, you probably hunt about till you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meanings as clear as one can through pictures or sensations.

Here’s a puzzle: an American’s views on abortion legality are highly predictive of their views on gun control. Even weirder is the direction of this correlation — being in favor of less restrictions on abortion is associated with being in favor of more restrictions on guns! Of course, we all know what’s going on here; the short answer is “political party”. I don’t mean to imply that there is anything wrong with these beliefs being correlated. Beliefs should affect other beliefs, and there are quite coherent underlying philosophies/values (such as cultural conservatism or utilitarianism) that give rise to superficially contradictory views on abortion and gun control. With that said, there’s still something fishy happening here.

I remember being 18 and feeling nervous and uncomfortable when I was asked about my political views. I definitely had them, and I wasn’t embarrassed about them or anything. I felt that my answer to the question – which would be approximately “so, what are you, like, politically?” – should be either “Democrat” or “Republican” (even at that age, I knew better than to call myself an Independent). So I’d say “I’m a Democrat”, and this made perfect sense to me; I voted in the Democratic primary, then for a Democrat president, and furthermore I voted completely Democrat in my local elections. What, then, was there to be uncomfortable about? Well, then I’d be asked8 something about free trade, which I didn’t really understand at the time but it seemed like a good thing to me, but Democrats (like the ones I had voted for!) were against it or something, and why didn’t I support the trade bill the Republicans were trying to pass in Congress? This whole thing confused me. I felt like I had to defend myself and also defend this view which I wasn’t really sure I accepted (and also it seemed like I was supposed to have that view?). All this confusion, and we hadn’t even broached the subject of labor unions!

What went wrong for me here at age 18 was that I didn’t follow Orwell’s advice. Deep within me I had some meaning, some set of values and factual beliefs and ideas of what government was for. Then the existing dialect (Republican or Democrat!) came rushing in and gave a label to that meaning, and in doing so terraformed the meaning to fit the label. In other words, I let the word choose the meaning.

Okay, so I was an intellectually sloppy teenager, Orwell’s advice is good, who cares? Here’s the broader point. Most people – even most smart and thoughtful people – have only a few political issues about which they deeply, actually care. In the best case, they have seriously reflected on these issues, formed a coherent view, and understood the arguments against their view9. Then what? Then they pick Democrat or Republican, and the party fills in the rest of their views for them. In my 18-year-old case, I cared about protecting the environment and increasing government revenue by raising taxes on the rich; the word ‘Democrat’ gave me the views that immigration is good and that the death penalty is bad.

IV

There’s a nice example of this phenomenon – of beliefs being changed by conforming to a limited pre-existing vocabulary – in the (supposedly) more rigorous domain of philosophy. Let’s talk about free will. Free will: do we have it? Here’s a how typical conversation goes these days between someone (‘N’) who thinks the answer is no and someone (‘Y’) who thinks the answer is yes.

Y: So, you don’t believe in free will!?

N: Of course not! Don’t you know the universe is deterministic? Physics explains the motion of everything physical, so there is no room left for things to happen any other way!

Y: Sure, I agree that the universe is deterministic. But I still have free will. After all, I still freely choose all sorts of things, like what to eat for breakfast.

N: No you don’t! You couldn’t have chosen not to eat eggs for breakfast – the physics of our universe had already made your choice!

Y: Well, determinism doesn’t mean that I didn’t choose. And nobody was forcing me to choose eggs – so I chose freely, and by my own free will.

N: That’s not free will!

Y: Yes it is!

N: No it’s not!

Y: …

These conversations really happen all the time. They happen to both academic philosophers and laypeople; they happened to medieval Christian philosophers long ago. Can you figure out who’s succumbing to linguistic confusion here? Well, they both are, in different ways. N is trying to force Y’s view into a Christian (and arguably intuitive) conception of free will – free will is the ability to choose other than the way you do. In doing so, N misrepresents and completely fails to see what Y is actually saying. Y doesn’t let his belief – that we have this philosophically important ability to make choices – be extinguished by this old definition of free will. This is good, but Y confuses everyone by calling his thing “free will”. Things get worse:

N: I don’t see why you defend free will so adamantly. Why do you care about having it so much?

Y: If we don’t have free will, then we can’t be ultimately morally responsible for anything. But we are morally responsible for things, and it matters that we are. Can you really accept that we don’t have moral responsible?

N: Well, do I have to? Maybe we have moral responsibility for other reasons. Perhaps it’s not ultimate responsibility, but I think it exists.

Y: What do you mean? How can you talk about moral responsibility without free will? What is moral responsibility?

N: I don’t know! But wait, how does free will even give you ultimate moral responsibility?

Y: Because it means you chose to do what you did, so you’re responsible.

N: But you couldn’t have done anything else! You’re not responsible if you didn’t have any other choices!

Y: But I did have other choices, I just didn’t choose them!

N: Ahhh!

Y: Ahhh!

Again, N and Y are confused because of a lack of clarity in the concepts provided by their language. N’s conception of free will provides strong support for the existence of moral responsibility. In Christianity, God’s act of sending a sinner to Hell is just only because the sinner sinned by his own free will. N feels that there is some sort of moral responsibility even without free will, but has trouble thinking of moral responsibility outside its relation to free will. On the other hand, Y mistakenly uses the existence of Y’s free will to reach conclusions implied by the existence of N’s free will. (Note that Y’s free will seems to apply to all animals). The real kicker here is that N and Y don’t disagree about anything meaningful. Their disagreement is entirely about what free will means or should mean. Both believe that there is no ability to choose other otherwise; that people make uncoerced decisions; and that some kind of moral responsibility exists, though they aren’t quite sure what this means.

About fifty years ago, philosophers improved the situation by recognizing a third position on free will and changing the name of an old position. These days, you can believe in “no free will”, “libertarian free will” in which determinism is rejected and a Christian-y free will exists, or “compatibilist free will” in which determinism is accepted alongside a different conception of free will. One popular move is for compatibilists to define free will as the thing that gives us moral responsibility; the no-free-willers will then either argue about moral responsibility or complain that whatever the compatibilist described isn’t really free will. Life goes on.

Besides showing that imprecise language can be perniciousness even outside of politics, this story about free will illustrates the danger of redefining existing terms, especially terms that have multiple layers of meaning. The Christian conception of free will consisted of (at least) a definition and an implication; the redefinition of free will modified the definition without addressing the implication. This tactic (which Orwell doesn’t explicitly mention, surprisingly!) is seriously powerful and worth considering deeply. Redefining terms can hide dubious assumptions in an argument, associate ideas with emotions that don’t belong, and increase the difficulty of verbally denying the terms; in short, it can make arguments for your own side more appealing and superficially stronger, which is what makes it so tempting (in a manner not unlike the temptation to use the Dark Arts in the world of Harry Potter). This rhetorical Dark Art can achieve nearly magical effects, like the ability “to name things without calling up mental pictures of them”.

V

One place to find politically redefined terms is in morally-charged language. Consider ‘patriot’, for instance. This word normally means something like a person who loves their country, with the possible inclusion of and is willing to make personal sacrifices for it. But there’s something more to a patriot; it’s good (or at least noble) to be a patriot even if your country is wrong, and an actively unpatriotic person is deeply suspicious. Now suppose your political opponent votes to cut funding to a military program. Regardless of whether their decision was good for the country, you can say something like:

America has always been built on the backs of patriotic citizens and leaders, people who loved this country and were willing to protect it. I was deeply saddened to learn that My Opponent’s values lie elsewhere. A few days ago, My Opponent’s unpatriotic tendencies were exposed when she refused to support continued funding to an important military program. If you care about this country and the people who have vowed to serve it, vote no for My Opponent in election.

Why is My Opponent unpatriotic? Because I have defined a patriot to be someone “willing to protect this country”, and “protecting this country” means “supporting military funding”. Here’s another one: ‘freedom’. I don’t think I need to sketch a definition to convince you that the ability to own modern firearms is a relatively unimportant aspect (though a real aspect nevertheless) of freedom. But the Republican party has successfully redefined ‘freedom’ in such a way that the issue of gun rights is just as much about freedom as it is about, well, guns. Notably, these examples both deal with ‘sacred’ words (at least to Americans); these redefinitions exploit this sacredness to attach moral significance to something more mundane. There is a whole class of political language that is constantly being (mis)used for similar effects. Words like “equality”, “democracy”, and “rights”, even when used loosely or incorrectly, add emotional or moral significance to an issue.

Now, let’s consider some of the other ways that redefinition is used. Consider this tweet (which was very well received by Reddit):

AOC tweet

To her credit, AOC is telling us what she’s doing here — “Tax the rich” means something rather specific and limited. Good job! Except not really. This first problem is pretty egregious, which is that AOC is just… lying? about what she means by “tax the rich”. I don’t think I’m putting words into anybody’s mouth when I say that AOC and her political base want to increase taxes for at least the top 1% (and probably much more than that), which is not even a politically unpopular opinions. Now, AOC might object that while yes, she wants more taxes on the top 1%, the phrase “tax the rich” refers only to a more special tax on the nesting-doll yacht rich. And I say: sorry, but I don’t believe that. If AOC really does mean that, she’s innocent here but even guiltier of the deeper problem.

The deeper problem being that “tax the rich” already means something, something like what you’d expect given that we call a lot more people than the top 10 “rich”, and it is a very normal thing to talk about “taxing the rich” referring to this normal meaning, so why the hell are you taking this normal common straightforward intuitive phrase and making it mean something that doesn’t make sense until you explain it, rather than coming up with a phrase that makes more sense like “ultra taxes for the ultra wealthy!” or “90% for billionaires” or something?!

There are other weird problems with this tweet. Is AOC clarifying her ideas, or is she clarifying her sentences, or is she trying to defend her tax ideas (and to whom?)? Also, what the hell are: nesting-doll yacht, for-profit prison, student-loan-shark, and trick-the-country-into-war rich? I respect the literary spunk, but this spunk comes at the unfortunate cost of clarity and correctness. The lame truth is that three richest Americans happen to be information-technology rich. Omitting this type of rich may have been more than a stylistic point, because it’s actually a prerequisite for another linguistic trick. “THAT kind of rich is simply not good for society”, she writes; but is she talking about all the ultra-rich, or just the rich that are evil (for-profit prison, student-loan-shark)? It’s ambiguous, and this ambiguity allows for the rhetorical effect of the broader point (i.e., the reader feels that all ultra-rich are bad for society) without having to actually make that point. Furthermore, AOC can use this ambiguity to defend her position (“I’m not talking about Bill Gates, you misinterpreted ‘THAT’ !”) even if she’s trying to argue for the broader position. (I’m not actually accusing AOC of doing or wanting to do this)

This technique – argue for a harder-to-defend position, retreat to a less extreme position when challenged – is called the Motte-and-Bailey10 doctrine/defense/fallacy, and it has been discussed extensively in other places. AOC’s “THAT” was an example of how an ambiguous term can be used for a Motte-and-Bailey defense. Terms that have been severely redefined are especially vulnerable to this. The theory behind this is that the term can be used (with its weird meaning) to support weird claims; and once the validity of the term is questioned, it can be defended (with its normal meaning). Suppose the “tax the rich” that I want is increase taxes on the top 5% of Americans; but when someone starts pointing out problems with increasing the tax on doctors, I say that I was only talking about the 10 richest Americans.

As a final case study of bad political language, let’s talk about “Defund the Police”. I went perhaps a week without reading or talking about politics when this thing started, so I was surprised to discover that this phrase had become a mainstream movement. And not just surprised but confused, because “Defund the Police” sounded, well, stupid – don’t we need at least like some police? I now know that “defund the police” meant something like “fund the police less, fund other social workers and programs more, and fix structural racism within the police system”.11 This is a reasonable enough idea; why muddle the message by using those three words to convey it? This may have been the point; since the intended meaning “Defund the Police” is less controversial than its literal meaning, this phrase actually leads to a lot of reverse-Motte-and-Baileys. People are more emotionally moved by ideas that sound revolutionary and are probably more likely to become active supporters for a movement that has a sexy name — imagine trying to get angry and riot under the banner of “Decrease Police Budgets”. This was a movement that people deeply identified with, and they identified with it because of the boldness of its slogan. This naming choice certainly did its part in degrading political communication and increasing cross-party tensions, but it also was responsible for the movement’s social success.

VI

Politics is the mind-killer12; it kills the mind by making us think in political language, a language

…designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

Somewhere along the way, we have decided it acceptable to use words to mean what they don’t mean. It’s no surprise that having a productive political disagreement has become near-impossible, since opposing political groups use the same terms to mean quite different thing. Communication difficulties aside, our political language has the problem of being vague and imprecise. This is the language we have, and so it is the language we use when we translate a belief into words. In doing so, our high-fidelity belief deforms to fit within the shape of the least-bad label; and thus, our thoughts have been molded by our present political language, a language particularly ill-suited for clear thinking.

There are a lot of really stupid things going on with today’s political discussions. Orwell’s lens of language is useful for identifying what these stupid things are and why they are happening. He offers us a connection between thought and language which leads to this broader point: conversations – and more importantly, your own thinking — are clearer, more precise, and more rational when you use better language. Be concrete and avoid ambiguity. Come up with your own language when the preexisting language isn’t good enough, but don’t redefine words in confusing or tricky ways. The truly powerful — and scary — thing about using clear language, in Orwell’s words, is that:

…when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious.

Footnotes

  1. Orwell, “Politics and the English Language.” https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/ ↩

  2. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ ↩

  3. Achilles’ heel was presumably fresh many hundreds of years ago, and by the 1940’s it was dying, and now it is fully dead. Dying is a pretty apt description. ↩

  4. I’m not certain that shoulder to shoulder fails to produce any image. I think I get a weak flash of something that could best be described as a screenshot from a 2000s movie depiction of a Napoleonic war, except it’s mostly obscured by a massive bald eagle watermark. ↩

  5. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/booster-bandits-ethics/620048/ ↩

  6. Text bolded by me. ↩

  7. Is ‘highlights’ being used as a dead metaphor here? ↩

  8. To be honest, I can’t remember if these conversations ever actually happened, but they at least happened numerous times in my imagination. ↩

  9. In the worst case, they come to their position via tribalism. ↩

  10. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/ ↩

  11. Of course, this is not what “Defund the Police” meant for everyone. Some people really did want to completely abolish having police officers. Note that slogans that correspond to decentralized movements will always mean different things to different supporters, because there is no central authority to declare what the slogan means or what the movement is really about. ↩

  12. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9weLK2AJ9JEt2Tt8f/politics-is-the-mind-killer ↩