It has occurred to me often over the past year that there are a few terms that keep cropping up in political discussions and which are often used inaccurately, or at least sloppily. The terms have some overlap but are distinct ideas, and I think it’s helpful to parse them out. So here goes:
1. Whataboutism: the biggie, from which many other errors flow. Here is my definition:
Whataboutism uses the sins/mistakes/atrocities/whatever of one individual or party to excuse the sins/mistakes/atrocities/whatever of another individual or party. If X commits a sin, and this misdeed is pointed out by Y, all that is necessary for X to be excused is for Y to be accused of the same wrong. Thus no moral judgments can be passed at all, except by perfect people, if this idea is carried out to its logical extreme.
Think of it this way: Suppose that you’ve caught your child in a deliberate lie, one told to get him out of trouble. Say he lied about whether or not his teacher had called about something he did in class. (For this example to work you’ll have to assume a landline.) Now his lie has been uncovered. You ran into his teacher at the grocery store and she said, “I left a message with Jimmie for you to call me about what happened in class.” Jimmie is faced with a spanking or some other punishment and he’s looking for a way to (literally, maybe) cover his behind. “But you lied just last week! You told Mr. So-and-so on the phone that Daddy wasn’t home but he was standing right there!” If you accept whataboutism, you’re stuck. I hope no one reading this, though, would really accept the estimable Jimmie’s argument. One lie doesn’t excuse another. Two wrongs don’t make a right, as we’ve all been told since we were Jimmie’s age. If you’re a wise parent you’ll say something along the lines of, “Yes, you’re right. I didn’t want to talk to Mr. So-and-so, but that doesn’t excuse me. I need to call him back and apologize.” And then you proceed to deal with your son about his lie. (I hope you don’t say, “Never mind! That’s none of your business! I’m your mother and that’s that!”)
Ho-kay. Pure whataboutism pits wrongs of approximately equal weight against each other. “I did this, but you did that, so we’re even.” Barck Obama did various heinous things, so therefore no one can criticize Donald Trump. Lame, lame, lame.
2. However, whataboutism leads almost inevitably to a variant, or subspecies, of the varmint: false moral equivalence. In this situation, a lesser sin is used to excuse a greater. Probably the most egregious example of this error that involves Donald Trump occurred in Bill O’Reilly’s pre-Super Bowl interview with him in which he tried to get Trump to condemn Vladimir Putin. This was a softball interview; O’Reilly was a card-carrying member of the Water Carriers for Trump. He said (leadingly), “But [Putin’s] a killer.” “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?” Trump infamously replied. So . . . America’s government is the moral equivalent of Putin’s thuggish regime? False moral equivalence to the max! Gary Kasparov, the former-chess-champion-turned-political-activist, says that this is the type of propaganda that is extremely popular in authoritarian regimes. Make of that what you will.
3. Another error occurs with what I call tribalism: the idea that your guy, no matter what he says or how he acts, is always and forever immune to criticism because he’s on your side. If you call him out, you’re disloyal. You’re rooting for the other side. You’ve sold out. This type of thinking can also be called willful blindness. Picture a baby in his high chair, refusing to eat the mashed peas. His mouth is closed and his head flung back. He pivots away from the spoon with the dread green glop. No, no, no! That’s a tribalist refusing to accept that his idol has the proverbial feet of clay.
4. And, finally, there’s a big misunderstanding about the concept of “the lesser of two evils.” I said repeatedly throughout the campaign that I was voting for Hillary Clinton as the lesser of two evils, and I was accused of various and sundry crimes against humanity as a result. But here’s the thing: We are always having to make this choice in our fallen world. There are very few times when there’s a perfect and an imperfect option. You have to weigh the good and the bad. That’s not moral relativism, because you’re using moral standards to make the choice of which of the evils is the lesser. If you’re a moral relativist you won’t refer to standards of good and evil at all. The question we’re constantly having to answer is, “Which of these two options is better?” which is just another way of saying, “Which of these two options is less bad?” But if you’re willfully blinded by tribalism, and by peer pressure—and make no mistake, the dreaded pp plays a big part in this—then you’re not going to be very capable of making what is a supremely moral choice: What do I do in this very imperfect situation? Have I weighed all the options? Have I done my due diligence? Have I (gulp) prayed for wisdom?
Anyway, hope this post clears up at least my position on these concepts. There’s an awful lot of crummy reasoning being thrown around these days—and most days in human history!