(Warning: this article contains swear words and penises.)
“Dear fucking lunatic,” reads the salutation of a famous open letter to Donald Trump. It goes on: “At your recent press conference – more a word salad that had a stroke and fell down stairs – you were clearly so out of your depth you needed scuba gear.”
Was this an ad hominem attack? Insult? Or merely a well-written description? It is important to know the difference because we spend so much time arguing with people on WhatsApp and social media, and bad vocabulary is spoiling the quality of our self-righteous indignation.
Specifically, I have noticed a hypersensitivity to opposing viewpoints. Whenever someone takes a slight to being disagreed with, they will just yell “ad hominem!”, ending the discussion and retreating into sulky silence. They think taking things personally means ad hominem. It doesn’t.
To clarify, the opening statement, sampled from the viral writing to the US president, shared by rockstar Tommy Lee, is not ad hominem. An ad hominem is a logical fallacy where a personal attack is used in place of an argument to discredit a claim. An insult is simply abusive language meant to offend. While ad hominems are typically insults, not all insults are ad hominem; the key difference is that ad hominem aims to win a debate by attacking the opponent’s character rather than their evidence.
If the statement had read: “Your decision to invade Iran was wrong because you are a lunatic who fell down stairs and are thus out of your depth”, it would have been ad hominem. It would also have been factually incorrect because Trump didn’t fall down the stairs; he just stumbled.
Words matter. Logic matters. Language helps us think and share our thoughts with others, in order to build rapport to avoid more costly conflicts.
As a highly social species with large prefrontal cortices, slurs have a place, though. The British are very good at insult; from Monty Python to Shakespeare, they have turned it into an art form.
“You are a disgraceful, pustulant hot stew full of casuistry, godawful ideas, unintelligible non sequiturs, and malignant rage.”
That was not the famous bard, but the same letter writer, launching forth with prose of a highly personal nature, designed to offend, insulting, yet still not ad hominem. For it to be ad hominem, the personal nature of a statement has to be in support of a presupposed position and used incorrectly to prove or disprove that statement. Yet, Shakespeare’s clever rudeness and the scribe’s caustic wit can be useful in showing disagreement and asserting intellectual clout in aid of avoiding physical conflict. There is restraint. There are boundaries.
“Fried dick sandwich”
How about this part? “You are a fried dick sandwich with a side of schlongs. If chlamydia and gonorrhea had a son, you’d appoint him health secretary.”
Ok, now here the wheels have come off. Restraints unleashed, we are two steps away from someone leaving the group in a huff and starting their own WhatsApp group.
In a pub, this would have been fisticuffs. It does not matter whether the discussion was about Covid, Ukraine, or the US invading Iran; this is now an ‘us’ vs ‘them’ battle to the bitter end. I have to give the scribe credit for staying away from penis references for so long in his missive.
On many WhatsApp groups I engage in, this level of discourse arrives much sooner. I share social media space with intellectual royalty; constitutional lawyers, people who rub shoulders in Nobel Prize circles, highly educated people. Yet, in recent years, even in these Porsche brains, it goes from discussing a technical point to: “I can’t hear what you are saying with Putin’s dick in your mouth” in less than 30 seconds.
It does not matter whether it is your cock in Putin’s mouth, the Ayatollah’s dick in Xi Jinping’s ass or interesting configurations involving ANC ministers; the conversation is now over. A war has been declared. Language becomes nasty, used not to convince or engage, but to wound.
The use of the phallic symbol is a sign of dominance. A show of force. It says: “I can fuck you if I want, whether you like it or not. Or would you rather I fuck you up, your choice, buddy?”
Social media has given us the power to say what we want because there is no fear of physical retribution. Our words become loose, our bravado huge. We become very, very angry. We start confusing the intensity of our indignation with the veracity of our argument. This is a bigger error than misunderstanding what ad hominem means: we allow dissent to become hatred.
To pick sides
We don’t know how to talk about issues anymore. We only know how to pick sides. And how to be offended. It starts with terminology and ends with wishing death upon friends and colleagues who dare to think about Covid vaccines differently from us. We cheer on Khorramshahr-4 or Tomahawk missiles in a conflict we scarcely understand the complexities of, because being enraged makes us feel certain. And we wail, “ad hominem, ad hominem” ad infinitum because a little bit of Latin makes us feel cleverer.
So please, please – take this personally:
Words matter. They lead to thoughts that turn to loathing, which foment ideology that translates into action in the form of votes that are approved in governments, and become a world war.
Stop it. Just stop.
Think, before you speak, before you write – and especially before you hit the ‘send’ button.
(Disclaimer: No sitting US president was offended during the writing of this article. Trump cannot be offended by people like us because his skin is as thick as Tewkesbury mustard. Furthermore, he is an infinite and endless liar and an hourly promise-breaker, so he is fair game, and I wish we were better strangers. This last statement includes truths, colourful descriptions, casuistry (look it up), personal comments, insults, ad hominem and some Shakespeare. See what I did there?
Much peace, good vibes, and better debating to all during these perplexing times.)
[Image: Hannes Wolf on Unsplash]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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