Sam Harris argued (imo convincingly) in 2020 that this resignation from morality, escape from shame and guilt, freedom from the weight of moral duty, is a key part of Trumps appeal. I think that tendency has only become clearer on the right with Trump 2.0. Or as many liberals and leftists like to put it “the cruelty is the point”.
“One thing that Trump never communicates, and cannot possibly communicate, is a sense of his moral superiority. The man is totally without sanctimony. Even when his every utterance is purposed toward self-aggrandisement. Even when he appears to be denigrating his supporters. Even when he is calling himself a genius, he is never actually communicating that he is better than you, more enlightened, more decent, because he’s not, and everyone knows it.
The man is just a bundle of sin and gore. And he never pretends to be anything more. Perhaps more importantly, he never even aspires to be anything more. And because of this, because he is never really judging you, he cannot possibly judge you, he offers a truly safe space for human frailty and hypocrisy and self-doubt. He offers what no priest can credibly offer, a total expiation of shame. His personal shamelessness is a kind of spiritual balm. Trump is fat Jesus. He’s grab-‘em-by-the-pussy Jesus. He’s I’ll-eat-nothing-but-cheeseburgers-if-I-want-to Jesus. He’s I-want-to-punch-them-in-the-face Jesus. He’s go-back-to-your-shit-hole-countries Jesus. He’s no-apologies Jesus.
And now consider the other half of this image, what are we getting from the left? We’re getting exactly the opposite message. Pure sanctimony. Pure judgement. You are not good enough. You’re guilty, not only for your own sins, but the sins of your fathers. The crimes of slavery and colonialism are on your head. And if you’re a cis-white-heterosexual male—which we know is the absolute core of Trump’s support—you’re a racist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, sexist barbarian. Tear down those statues, and bend the fucking knee. It’s the juxtaposition between those two messages that is so powerful . . . and so central to Trump’s appeal.”—Sam Harris
The thing Harris leaves out is while Trump certainly has tons of flaws that are totally valid to criticize, people of Harris’ ilk flaws are way worse and so when they point out Trumps they look ridiculous. Sam Harris said he wouldn’t have cared if the US government and the Biden family covered up the murder of innocent children as long as it meant Trump didn’t win. Does that sound moral to you? Compare that to the fact he grandstands about some pussy comment that while obviously inappropriate was said privately in a dressing room. To even ask the question which is worse is insulting to anyone who isn’t brainwashed by their elite status. At the end of the day the real question is who’s morality is correct and liberal’s morality is quite insane
"Compare that to the fact he grandstands about some pussy comment that while obviously inappropriate was said privately in a dressing room"
I must take exception with this - I know it isn't the focal part of your comment, but I've encountered this defense of Trump, and it bothers me.
Trump's statement is objectionable not because Trump used the word 'pussy' - it's objectionable because it is a window into the mind of Trump. He's the sort of fellow who will go around and grab women by their pussies. He's a pussy grabber. Saying, "I'm a pussy grabber" isn't offensive because you said the word, it's because you are the sort of person who does things like grabbing pussies without consent.
This can't be dismissed as so much 'locker room talk'.
I don’t really see any evidence that Trump is worse sexually than any liberal who advocate for divorce, normalization of adultery and polyamory, sodomy, abortion, birth control, and mutilating children. Not to mention that nearly all liberals defended Roman Polanski. I’d prefer a candidate with a committed sacramental marriage as I’m sure most GOP voters would, however again it’s all about comparison
Liberals who advocate for those things do so because they sincerely believe that they are not morally wrong, and are often morally good. Trump, by contrast, talks and behaves like someone who knows what he is doing is wrong, but doesn't care. In terms of personal character, there is a large moral difference between a person who wants to do good, but disagrees with you about what good is, and someone who just doesn't care.
Additionally, there is a large difference in moral character between someone who breaks a law, and someone who advocates that the law be changed. Liberals generally want to revise the law to legalize behaviors they approve of. Trump does not, he just thinks himself above laws and norms. He does not want to legalize pussy-grabbing, he would probably be pretty upset if someone grabbed his wife's or daughters by the pussies.
Do you honestly think Trump is different than other politician morally? You would have to be completely delusional to think so. The difference is what Trump fights for. He fights for conservative interests because it gives him power and makes him popular rather than fight for the interests of the uniparty who are all corrupt and engage in insider trading and tons of illegal stuff. As for liberal wanting to follow the law, that is actually insulting. Biden tried to force vaccines, student loan forgiveness, allowed millions to break the law for electoral benefit, threatened to pack the court, tried to declare the ERA in his last day, pardoned his entire family and that’s just one guy lol. Not to mention the entire progressive era which liberals descend from is known forcing unpopular opinions from the top, the New Deal was completely unconstitutional, and the Warren Court legislated from the bench in the 60s so liberals pretend to follow the norms but only because they have a rigged game
Yes, I would say that Trump is an order of magnitude worse than the average politicians of either party, both as a politician, and as a human being (although that may change as he is working hard to drag the rest of the Republicans down to his level). He is a con artist who scams the people who trust him. He has few real principles, is brazenly corrupt, and harms the electability of other Republicans in order to advance himself.
His main policy that made him popular enough to win was to just stop trying to cut entitlements, but to keep trying to cut taxes. Whereas previous Republicans understood that you need to cut spending if you want to cut taxes, Trump just considers the deficit to be Future America's problem.
He has conned Republicans into thinking his terrible behavior is a superpower that lets him advance Republican interests, but has not done anything that a normal Republican like Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio couldnt have done better. He won both his elections for structural reasons, not because he was a good politician (the first time Hillary ran an incompetent campaign, the second time people were unhappy about inflation). His election denial led to the Republican party losing seats.
"I don’t really see any evidence that Trump is worse sexually than any liberal [snip]"
I didn't argue that he was - the point was that you're misunderstanding the nature of the complaints about the "grab 'em by the pussy" comment.
The concern is that he's going around groping women without their consent, not that he's using bad words. Making a reference to it being said 'privately in a dressing room' suggests that you think the problem people had with it was that it lacked decorum.
I'm sure I don't know what Roman Polanski has to do with all of this - I sometimes tell my daughter that her room is dirty, and "my brother's room is also dirty" is no defense against the charge. If I were to suggest that her room is *dirtier* than her brother's, then maybe it would be. I wasn't arguing that Trump is worse than the other candidates.
Donald Trump: "Yeah that's her with the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know I'm automatically attracted to beautiful... I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything."
Billy Bush: "Whatever you want."
Trump: "Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."
The typical defense I've heard conservatives give for this is: "Trump wasn't boasting about raping women. He was expressing his amazement at the fact that when you're rich and powerful, women make themselves a lot more sexually accessible to you; suddenly, random women you encounter will tend to be open to your advances, because your celebrity status causes you to be extremely attractive to them, even on a first impression."
I wouldn't be surprised if male celebrities in general (rock stars, movie stars, etc.) have also noticed this phenomenon: when they became famous, they found themselves surrounded by women who are readily sexually available. That said, you could reasonably worry that there will be a nonzero error rate if even a very famous, high-status man overgeneralizes and approaches women expecting them to react the way they *usually* do in his experience. Some women are going to not be receptive, and leftists argue this makes Trump's behavior inherently rapey--because anyone with this "all women love me by default" policy will be wrong at some point, and make an unwanted advance.
The charitable assumption would be that Trump isn't socially retarded (being an accomplished politician, it would be surprising if he was); he can read the room and tell whether a girl is giving him receptive nonverbal cues and act accordingly; but if a girl seems hostile or uninterested, he doesn't. On a charitable reading, it's implied that the point he is making is most women *do* look at him with the kind of initial attraction that makes him feel permitted to make a move. Remember that when Trump made these remarks, it was before he went into politics and became a controversial figure. He was just the "you're fired" guy that everyone assumed was a badass billionaire and beloved celebrity.
(But whatever, if you don't want to grant Trump a charitable reading, because you hate him, I guess you can just assume he's a rapist. But just remember that that actually wouldn't prove he's a rapist, it would just prove that when you assume he's a rapist, you will take him for a rapist.)
Of course, even if we charitably assume rich and famous people make a good faith effort to target their advances on willing women, misunderstandings are inevitable unless they adopt a policy of total celibacy. After all, a woman can give every appearance of consent without really meaning it (I've done this with golf, for example; pretending to my buddies that I like it and want to go out with them for a game when I don't really).
I do think we need to have a conversation about whether we really want to live in a world where men are always required to obtain explicit verbal permission before making any form of flirtatious physical contact or before exchanging any kind of sexual banter--think about how extreme this would be: this would rule out, say, tucking an errant strand behind her ear after she closes the space between you in a private room, smiles and bites her lips, and stares deeply into your eyes, etc.. When that happens, are you really required to take a step back, hold up your right hand and say, "Now, I seem to be getting signs that you're interested in potentially some form of physical intimacy with me. Am I correctly reading your body language at this present time? Splendid. Let us perform the rites of Venus."
It seems like ANY sexual norms are going to have some nonzero rate of causing misunderstandings, barring a policy of total abstinence always. Even on the "explicitly guaranteed verbal consent required" view, women can give explicit verbal consent and every possible sign of enthusiastically agreeing to sex without actually meaning it or wanting it deep down (say, out of a misplaced sense of their self-worth or whatever; don't underestimate the depths of neuroticism people are capable of). So if your standard is "we must have norms that never allow misunderstandings that lead to any form of sexual contact to ever occur, ever" then you're going to have to sign up for complete abstinence for everyone... otherwise you're an evil, disgusting rape sympathizer, right? But that's clearly a ridiculous position to take.
So we have to set the bar somewhere higher... but then, where do we draw the line? Any standard is going to lead to misunderstandings. Some women really do want to be grabbed by the pussy--just not by you; only by extremely high status, famous, powerful, enormously successful men. And Trump happens to be the most successful man on the planet.
You’re not responding at all to the subject at hand: why the people who advocate against moral responsibility and against extending empathy, generally against morally good things, are consistently drawn to Trump. There is no corresponding tendency among liberals/leftists. Of course not every Trump supporter are drawn to him for this reason, but those who look for anti-morality as an ideal easily find it in both Trump the man and the wider rhetoric that many in his movement spread.
Again you’re begging the question on what counts as moral and responsible. For example Democrat party orthodoxy is to allow the slaughter of millions of babies per year through abortion. One could just as easily reframe the question why do people who are so evil and corrupt when it comes sexual ethics drawn to liberalism? People like Trump because for better or worse he fights the liberal order which people either see as evil (Christians) or people see as absolutely suffocating their way of life for stupid “woke” reasons (non-religious Trump supporters). Again this is because it’s an issue about first principles and who’s moral system is correct, nothing else
Respectfully, it does not seem like you have a particularly good theory of mind for how liberals view the world.
I should also point out that defining people who have different values than you as irredeemably evil is the kind of thing a sanctimonious whiny liberal would do.
I think the term can be salvaged if we insist that the person doing the blackmail have some kind of agency over the outcome.
"If you break up with me, I will kill myself." is ostensibly an attempt to explain cause and effect. One will lead to the other. But realistically, if we allow people to argue like that, it can be easily abused. So it's good to have a phrase that can describe this tactic.
But PEPFAR advocates are not threatening to release AIDS if they don't get their way! It really is cause and effect.
Unfortunately, it seems the Right is getting the hang of a trick the Left likes to use, where you define some term, declare it bad, and then call the thing you don't like by that term. It allows you to sidestep actually defending your point of view and make your argument via the transitive property.
Yeah, that's the original meaning of the term "emotional blackmail." Rightoids who just want to act immorally picked it up and changed its meaning to "any instance of someone making moral demands based on the consequences of your actions."
These people clearly can't process being called out for being morally crentinous pieces of shit, so they engage in mental gynmastics such as labelling any comdenation of them "moral blackmail".
I think much of the right / anti-woke scene has devolved into calling someone a libtard for not being Patrick Bateman. At the very least, there's a shift from "I don't agree with [the left-wing's] proposed solution, but I still share some core values (e.g. equality of opportunity, liberty) with them" to "having any universalist values is super lame"; a manifestation of this would be the so-called vitalists. I suspect there's a pendulum swing underway, as I did *not* see those folks until recently.
At the same time, I will add that the overuse of certain phrases doesn't disqualify them from having any substantial meaning. What distinguishes expedient pattern-matching from actually pointing something out is whether those terms are part of a premise in a counterargument, or whether they're a conclusion.
I've seen a fair amount of arguments that will distill any meritocratic convictions down to sounding "racist/sexist/homophobic/xenophobic/antisemitic/Islamophobic"—actually had a debate teacher (damn you, Ms. Hartwood!) call me those epithets because I argued that culture and religion don't (or rather, shouldn't) matter in the face of more universal/Enlightenment-era moral frameworks such as utilitarianism—the problem is not that they recognize that prejudice based on arbitrary traits is wrong, but that the (well-deserved) extremely negative connotations of said prejudice are used as cudgels to push increasingly asinine and spurious advancements. That would actually be a good example of moral/emotional blackmail.
Sadly, people throw out babies with bathwater quite often, and we then have "uhhhh you think that caring about babies is important? sounds like emotional blackmail!!". In other words, pattern-matching begets pattern-matching? Haha.
Re: God of the Gaps:
It drives me up the wall to see someone argue for YE creationism based on something like irreducible complexity. I don't dismiss it as dumb because "all my friends sneer at it"; I say this *after* entering a good faith discussion with that crowd--those arguments aren't seriously making use of inductive reasoning and do actually deserve the title. But if I were to not even consider the SIA argument *because* "God of the Gaps", then that title is a rather egregious thought-terminating cliché.
Moral blackmail now=feeling guilt for the consequences you have wrought on others. I think the etymology of the term was originally in response to Russian aggression, where the Russians basically threatened to cut off energy if the West helped Ukraine (or something like that - it was a bluff). The distinction between that and what the conservatives are whining about is that the Russians were going to act immorally in response to the west's actions, while the negative thing is going to happen as a result of the conservative's actions.
> But if you say that any moral argument that elicits an emotional reaction is emotional blackmail, and any that doesn’t elicit an emotional reaction is the morality of a computer, then you have a fully general method for dismissing all moral arguments.
Exactly. What is going on is known as reward hacking.
In principle we are supposed to do what is good and therefore be "rewarded" by feeling fulfilled and moral and being a good person. On the other hand, if we do the bad thing we are "punished" by feeling guilt and being a bad person. A good person is someone who does good things.
But some people instead decide that they are good to begin with. They are good people, therefore whatever they do is moral, therefore they are supposed to feel good about themselves. And so when something makes them not feel good about themselves, they assume that the problem is not in them, no way, the problem must be with this something! Now all that is left is to name it somehow sinister and the job is done. Instead of reinvestigating the premise "Am I actually a good person" they assume that whoever made them doubt themselves is the bad one.
Now, there is a direct parallel to epistemology. In principle we are supposed to collect evidence about the world and change our mind based on it and be rewarded by having correct belief and feeling being right. But some people inverse this mechanism in the similar manner. They assume their prefered conclusion, feel right about it and then start making other assumptions to encorporate the available evidence ad hoc. How this is relevant to theodicy and theism in general, is left as an exercise for the reader.
Moral/emotional blackmail is certainly a real thing. Once you’ve met and interacted with enough people you’ll experience it someday if you haven’t already. I think the “right-wing” argument in this case is something like: “We want US taxpayer dollars first and foremost going to US citizens, and any $ going to foreign aid should be thoroughly scrutinized. Currently we don’t think that is happening, and when you say ‘oh so you want babies to die?!’ that mistakes our aims. It’s not that we want babies to die, we want our country run well and this is our money you’re spending, and you’re trying to inappropriately shame people into agreeing that our money is better spent on foreigners than on us.”
Personally I’m not opposed to foreign humanitarian aid in principle so I don’t totally buy the right wing argument, although I understand where they’re coming from. The idea is that you’re telling them “you’re evil if you don’t spend your money on what I think you should spend it on.”
BB is viewing this situation in black and white terms, as if there’s only one obviously correct policy position and one obviously immoral one. This is only true, however, if you look at the situation in a superficial way and fail to consider all the relevant moral considerations (such as the fact that tax money is the money of Americans and we have the right to give it to whoever we wish, including to no one.)
All this being said, I agree that excessive use of phrases like “moral blackmail” can become an excuse not to think about criticisms, which isn’t good.
The problem with this argument is that most of the people celebrating the fall of USAID are not actually paying for it because (a) most Americans pay negative net tax and (b) many, and I think probably most, are not even American! (see the tweets captured in the article).
Yeah I’m talking less about the particular tweets and more about generic RW responses, including ones I’ve heard from friends/acquaintances in conversation.
Good comment. I do think, though, that one can understand why an EA like BB would have a strong moral viewpoint on this issue.
An EA will be thinking to themselves that if PEPFAR programs save African lives at 1/20th (making this number up) the cost that comparable Federally-funded domestic programs save American lives, that redirecting dollars from PEPFAR to domestic priorities of any type is a utilitarian moral catastrophe. Compared to that, the "tax money should go to Americans first" argument seems like the superficial one, actually.
I also think the EA argument would include the point that it doesn't matter if voters "want" babies to die, this will be the consequence of these actions regardless, and "right wing" view adherents should confront this reality rather than wave it away as blackmail.
That's me steelmanning BB. Probably the strongest argument I could make against what I just said is that nobody is under any obligation to interrogate their own belief set (and we have no mechanism to force people to do so in a liberal society), so if being preachy about it just gets people to shut down and claim "blackmail", that's not helping anyone. This is partially why Noam Chomsky and Jill Stein policy preferences are politically impractical.
All that said, personally as an American taxpayer I would happily pay significantly more taxes to fund an expansion of PEPFAR by 10x or 25x, and I think it sucks that things are moving in the opposite direction (foreign aid programs are getting shuttered AND congressional Republicans are trying to give me a tax cut).
Taxes do not fund spending and private property rights are fake and basically indefensible on a number of grounds so it’s absolutely not your money in any meaningful sense but even if that wasn’t true consider the following example
If you were watching a child slowly die knowing that you could spend a fraction of a fraction of your money and have your quality of life be essentially identical and you chose not to save the child would it be wrong for someone to think you’re behaving deeply immorally? Would you in this situation similarly not be comfortable with someone engaging in “moral blackmail” by saying “you shouldn’t let that child die because you could save him at basically no cost to yourself”?
The issue with your final point here is that this is basically as close to black and white as you can get in terms of policy the question is “should we at basically zero cost to us prevent immense suffering?”
Right wing opposition to the aid referenced in this piece is either fueled by a misunderstanding of the funds and their uses or by a deep moral bankruptcy
I think that if you want to defuse the charge that Leftists use the banner heading of foreign aid to enrich themselves and/or promote unrelated political goals by bundling in gross leftist shit with programmes like PEFPAR, you should provide a list of USAID programmes that you agree are frivolous or actively harmful and suggest that these be permanently cancelled in return for saving PEFPAR.
However, I think the vast majority of leftists would prefer to do the opposite: cancel PEFPAR if it meant keeping their gross leftist shit.* If so, it is perfectly reasonable and precisely accurate to accuse them of moral blackmail. You may object that it is not reasonable to say this about you and other EAs, but you and other EAs are not an important part of the Democrat coalition, in fact they hate you.
*After all, if GW Bush has not won the election there is no reason to think PEFPAR would have happened at all.
You're putting a lot of weight on shrimp being aware. I know they're decapods, but they're at the small end and the work was done on hermit crabs, lobsters and crabs (or so CoPilot tells me).
I think I'd want awareness rather than just sentience.
A lot of those behaviours would apply to single-celled protists too, (but I probably need to check the detail).
Of course any generalisation to "all decapods" includes their planktonic larval states which are comparatively simple organisms. (If you want to use the "potential" argument, then that also applies to human sperm cells but nobody cries over spilt milt!)
Anyway, I've made a note of the link, so thanks again.
It is not the burden of someone defending foreign aid to provide a list of frivolous or harmful aid programs. It's the burden of the people making this charge to provide that list, and then we can assess on a case-by-case basis. It's also their burden to cut only those programs, and not the extremely important lifesaving ones, if they don't want people to accuse them of being heartless assholes.
Also, most of your comment just begs every relevant question. Leftists see "gross leftist shit" as things genuinely making the world and country better, and sometimes they are right. The median USAID program almost surely does more good for the world than the median dollar spent by the US federal budget overall.
In my preferred world we would have a blanket moratorium on all "they hate you" discourse. It's unfalsifiable and does nothing except gin up resentment. We could use less resentment in our politics.
I think your assessment of the interaction between Vance and Ro is incorrect. Vance is commenting on cancel culture writ large, where journalists go out of their way to dig up dirt on individuals with the whole purpose of smearing people to achieve political ends in mind. When people speak out against this process -as JD Vance was doing- people often respond by trying to do emotional blackmail —as Ro was doing. “You don’t think this guy should be fired? aren’t you concerned about the rights of your own children?” it’s disingenuous. People don’t dig up this dirt because they care about Indian rights or whatever, they dig it up to find ammunition and appeal to our collective moral values to drop people for the take of political ends. JD Vance was absolutely right to call this out as emotional blackmail and I’m happy he did. You of all people have been victimized by people appealing to “moral virtue” in order to smear you.
"Political ends" and "caring about Indian rights or whatever" are not exclusive categories. The reason Democrats want those people dropped from positions of power is not because their Republican replacements will be any less conservative on taxes or other unrelated policy issues. It's because their prior statements reflect noxious racial mindsets that are especially dangerous in public office. Upholding moral standards in public officeholders is perfectly valid. And "going out of their way to dig up" information of interest to the public, as it assesses someone's qualifications to represent their values in government, is kind of journalists' whole job. Not everything they dig up should be disqualifying, but it's reasonable to think these statements are.
> "... it's disingenuous. People don’t dig up this dirt because they care about Indian rights or whatever, they dig it up to find ammunition and appeal to our collective moral values to drop people for the take of political ends."
I don't think we know that Ro was being insincere. It seems reasonable for me to believe that he was acting in good faith as an Indian-American. I do take your point that many instances of these sorts of interactions are fueled by bad faith appeals; that's certainly how Vance interpreted the dynamic. But if Ro was sincere and Vance mistakenly interpreted the comments as insincere, then what we have here is a really unfortunate failure to connect and find common ground.
Pretty much this. If leftists hadn’t spent the last 10-15 years engaging in frivolous accusations followed by ruthless cancellation campaigns for obviously political reasons, their accusations today would carry a lot more weight. At this point, they’re the boy who cried wolf.
On a related note, why should anyone believe the USAID official’s stat about the 300 African babies? The agency has basically operated as a slush fund for the types of activist NGOs and foundations that routinely make hysterical accusations to further their political agendas. Why should taxpayers assume that’s not the case here?
The strongest moral argument against foreign aid is the one that nobody seems to be making: That countries receiving foreign aid become dependent on it, and fail to become self-sufficient and build up the sorts of institutions that could make their own people safe and prosperous.
This is analogous to what Vance said about European military defense a few days ago.
Personally I still think PEPFAR is worth doing despite this objection (I like what BB said in a comment, "I'd probably cancel all other foreign aid if it was the only way to save PEPFAR.") but it still deserves to be taken seriously.
I think a better use case for the phrase “moral blackmail” is when activist types try to ram through highly dubious claims based solely on appeal to emotion. Like when they accuse someone of “literally killing trans people” for using the wrong pronoun or saying you can’t change your sex.
I think the phrase is fine. Conservatives view USAID as a slush fund for leftists to pursue their ideological project (at taxpayer expense). We might disagree with this empirical assessment, but conditional on believing it to be true, the term makes sense.
The right-wing accusation is that the left is saying, "if you don't let us continue to run USAID the way it has been run, babies will die of AIDS." The concept "moral blackmail" appears to perfectly capture this notion. Again, we might disagree with the premise that this is actually what the left is saying, but this is precisely the allegation Justin and Misha made.
But you’re just saying that any appeal to cause and effect is emotional blackmail! I can do that with a million arguments the other way. Here’s one:
Anti-police progressives (I’m not one) believe that the police serve no useful purpose and only exist to oppress POC and protect capital, and therefore should be defunded. Someone who disagrees says that if we defund the police, people will be made much less safe and even be killed. Isn’t this “emotional blackmail” by your definition? What’s the difference?
As with most concepts there are no hard edges, but I think the term is being used to describe justifications for resistance to reform and/or overturning ideological capture.
Suppose the anti-police progressive wants to institute some reform like repealing qualified immunity. Or suppose some police department has been captured by hardcore RWers who harass criminals with impunity, and someone proposes having a new oversight committee who cares about the rights of criminals.
Now suppose the police department says that if you do that, then we're going to stop enforcing the law and people will be made much less safe and even be killed. I think that would qualify as moral blackmail.
I think the difference is that in your case, the loss of the good is a direct causal effect of the proposal, while in my case/the Misha/Justin allegation, the potential loss of the good is being leveraged to protect control over other things, which better fits the definition of blackmail.
I think you've just given an excellent example of moral/emotional blackmail. Unfortunately, it in no way matches the Pepfar debate.
The key phrase in your scenario is, "suppose the police department says that if you do that, ***then we're going to stop enforcing the law*** and people will be made much less safe and even be killed." In other words, the police is saying that *they will change their behavior* unless they get their way. Someone in another comment here gave a similar example on an individual level: "If you break up with me, I will kill myself." These are *threats,* pledges to act a certain way if one's conditions are not met! Which parallels the definition of regular blackmail: the blackmailer says, if you don't do what I want I'll release the photos (or whatever).
With Pepfar, however, no one is saying "if you undertake reforms, we will intentionally stop helping people and people will die." They are saying, "this money saves lives, withdrawing it will cost lives." They are talking about a direct causal effect, just like my example of defunding police leading to lives being lost.
After all, we're not even talking about hypothetical effects! Look at the Gobry tweet again: someone says that babies have contracted HIV as a result of the "pause" in Pepfar, and he calls that "moral blackmail." If the relief workers gave the babies HIV on purpose, like the Joker poisoning the water supply, I guess that could be considered moral blackmail, but of course that's not what he's saying. He's saying that *bringing up harms the policy has caused" is moral blackmail. That's incoherent.
I think we're talking past each other. You're framing the discussion in terms of defunding PEPFAR itself, but I'm talking about reforming USAID.
Look at the Misha tweet again: he explicitly *supports* PEPFAR, but worries the good it does as part of USAID is being used to justify resistance to reforming/canceling *other* USAID programs.
I'm operating under the assumption that Gobry is using the term "moral blackmail" as shorthand for Misha-type concerns, but ofc I could be wrong.
That doesn't affect our disagreement. I'm saying that if the term "moral blackmail" is to mean anything, it has to mean a threat to *do* something (or fail to do something) in order to influence someone's behavior. Appealing to bad consequences that will (allegedly) directly result is not moral blackmail.
I also don't understand the "shorthand" description of Gobry. Someone says, "babies have gotten HIV." Gobry says "emotional blackmail!" How is this anything other than an attempt to disqualify arguments from consequences (or even just a mention of consequences, with or without an argument attached)?
Misha clearly thinks the left is saying, "attempts to reform/defund a "single stagnant, ineffective policy" threaten PEPFAR, so you can't do reform; this is emotional blackmail, just like in the case of my fictional police department. On this reading, the term is sensible.
As I said in my original comment, we're free to disagree with him on the merits! The left is not using PEPFAR as an emotional cudgel to protect their other policies; the left really wants to protect PEPFAR itself.
Not that I agree, but I guess the implication is that some people are defending PEPFAR, not because they’ve always cared about babies dying, but only because it’s the issue "du jour" that can be used to make the right wing look fascists.
If they move on to the next trendy topic when this cycle is over, the idea would be that they are hypocrites and only used the story to win a political argument through emotional blackmail.
Again, I am not accusing anyone but I think that’s how people who use the phrase see it.
Yeah, it’s imprecise but it’s just an expression. The blackmail part is that people threaten to make you feel bad or call you a psycho if you don’t agree with them.
Yes, this idea (not saying Ax is saying this) that "we get to take this drastic action but you don't get to talk about the merits of it" is obviously not going to fly.
Put bluntly, your political tribe ("Effective Altruists" and State Department people) are the reason babies are dying of AIDS in Africa.
So no, it is not acceptable for you to use their suffering as a demand to arrogate even more power for the State Department. Their suffering is on your hands.
I'm not going to take moral lessons from the people who destroyed civilization in Africa, point at the devastation THEY CAUSED and pretend that they are the only people who care about human suffering. Then they demand that I and my people pay THEM and keep them in power.
No. The State Department has caused more human misery than just about any other organization on Earth. I wish I had the ability to help Africans and also defeat the State Department, but for the sake of the long term future, defeating the State Department is more important.
I think he's one of the types who thinks the end of colonialism was a bad thing, and that if Europeans had continued to dominate a continent full of people they treated like dogshit, there definitely wouldn't have been any infectious diseases that killed lots of people, because the Europeans were genteel and kind enlightened rulers. The poor dumb Africans just got bamboozled by the State Department into thinking that their European overlords were perfidious looters!
I suppose that there technically wouldn't have been AIDS, but only in the stupid sense that there wouldn't be Covid if Hillary Clinton had won in 2016.
Africa is, for the most part, much worse governed than under colonialism. But AIDs would have happened without de-colonisation. And, in any case, decolonization was mostly a function of increased population making colonial rule unsustainable rather than the State Dept.
> Africa is, for the most part, much worse governed than under colonialism.
This simply isn't true. It's based on not understanding history at all. European colonial powers treated Africa like shit. They lied and broke treaties and created fake treaties they then violently enforced in moments of weakness. They butchered their colonials, they gladly starved them, they tore up any institutions that weren't raw resource extraction operations. The Congo Free State is infamous for all the cut-off hands, but when the DRC attained its independence from the Belgians, literacy was under 40%; today, literacy is over 80%. Only a vanishingly small minority of Congolese even got to attend high school, and it took until 1956 for them to build a university. When it got independence there were a whole 30 university graduates in the whole country. Today, there are more *universities* than that number. In 1960, when the Congo gained its independence, life expectancy was 40.55 years; today, it is 60.1 years. This is the Congo - hardly known as the most successful state on the continent.
Life expectancy, literacy, by any ordinary metric of human flourishing, the people of Africa are better off on their own. Europeans did not govern their colonies like they governed their metropoles. They governed them horrifically badly, and did lots of damage. It's pure nonsensical rightoid copium to act like the horrific, genocidal regimes of European colonizers were actually some noble attempt to help the Africans, reliant on the fact that the terrors of the present are nearer to memory than the terrors of the past.
By literally the exact same argument you use, it can be established that colonialism was good - including even Belgian colonialism - since life expectancy rose and all the other metric you use also rose.
Firstly, not really. The Congo was under Belgian control (or Leopold's control) from 1885 to 1960; it took until 1956 for them to build a single university, whereas the period of native rule has built dozens in a shorter period since independence. Life expectancy barely rose under colonial administration, but spiked under the DRC. Etc.
Secondly, you could also look at the fact that the government of European colonies was generally explicitly racist, the European empires were perfidious in their treatment of Africans before the various conquests, put about zero effort into local development, and treated the entire population of the territory as a giant resource extracting operation, for example. Why exactly do you think that the Europeans ran the colonies better?
Other than the claim that the Bantu are just genetically dumber than the Europeans, which hasn't stopped Botswana from having the same or higher GDP per capita as Moldova.
The Congo Free State was bad. A lot of colonies were not the Congo Free State. A lot of ex colonies underwent horrible civil wars or other conflicts that destroyed typical measures of human flourishing.
You're wrong about the role of the State Department.
As for AIDS, yes the disease still would have emerged, but there was a time within living memory when Western missionaries ran most schools in Africa and they preached against sexual promiscuity. Many of the missionaries were doctors as well. The missionaries were forced out or massacred.
Had they been allowed to stay, the AIDS epidemic would have been much smaller.
This is extreme social constructivist thinking. Bantus are unintelligent, have poor impulse control, and the men have higher testosterone, i.e. are more horny. In addition, almost all bantu cultures have extreme promiscuity (even after marriage!) deeply ingrained over thousands of years. There is absolutely no reason to think that more Christian missionaries would move the needle, but, in any case, Africa has loads of Christian missionaries.
The main reason why colonial rulers would have handled AIDs better is more basic: less government money intended to provide medical care and AIDs prevention would have been embezzled and other basic areas of state competence. But again, it's moot, because the explosion of African population made the colonial model unsustainable. Even if control had not passed from Europe to America and the Soviet Union, the Europeans would have had to switch to post-colonial rule by African proxies.
Most historians who have actually studied colonialism in detail are left-wing. You are just a random anonymous racist fuck on substack no different than that forumposter proton mail guy. Do something better in your life than being a racist cunt on substack.
Please use your extensive knowledge of history to explain how Effective Altruism, a movement dating back to the 2000s, is responsible for babies dying of AIDs in Africa.
You're either not from America or you're being obtuse. The "Effective Altruist" community is part of a distinctive social milieu which has controlled the State Department and much of American journalism for decades.
Some unsolicited advice: you’ll have more friends, less people blocking you, more professional and academic success, and overall more happiness if you stop gratuitously insulting people. I’m trying to ask a perfectly legitimate question.
It's actually not a perfectly legitimate question.
What you're asking is similar to: "Wow I've never heard of the Holocaust, How are the Nazis responsible for the Holocaust, that doesn't make sense to me?"
I know many people have been systematically misinformed, so I'm willing to elaborate, but I'm also going to acknowledge that this is kind of a ghoulish conversation to be having.
The American State Department strongly and actively supported the destruction of functional states in Africa in order to replace them with regimes which are just frankly evil. This process was called Decolonization. One of the Decolonization regimes was led by Idi Amin, a Ugandan man who liked to feed people to crocodiles and boasted about eating human flesh. His regime killed an estimated 400,000 people.
Among educated people, it is well known that the US State Department and other Western foreign services were broadly supportive of Decolonization. It is also well known among educated people that the track record of African governments since Decolonization has been extremely bad.
The basic facts are not really in dispute. It's just unpopular in some circles to put two and two together and point out that the record of Africa since Decolonization shows the actions of the State Department and other Western anti-colonialists to have been an enormous moral crime.
It was necessary to spell that out because it definitely wasn’t obvious just from “EA and state department people are the reason babies are dying of AIDs in Africa.” That statement is open to all kinds of interpretation.
Also—using your analogy—if an otherwise intelligent person were somehow systematically misinformed about a hugely important issue, yet came to you in good faith asking to be informed, why would you take such a condescending and aggressive tone? Do you realize how many people you are alienating? I’m genuinely stunned you don’t seem to see how you come across.
Idi Amin was cultivated by the British as a suitable ruler for a territory they couldn't afford to run. Then he switched to being a Soviet puppet. You talk in vague generalities about complex historical trends involving dozens of different factors, like Moldbug but without the flair, and rely on abuse to iron out the wrinkles. Try something else.
All of this is confused rambling but even if what you say is true I have zero idea why you think pepfar funding is so central to the state department’s power
Sam Harris argued (imo convincingly) in 2020 that this resignation from morality, escape from shame and guilt, freedom from the weight of moral duty, is a key part of Trumps appeal. I think that tendency has only become clearer on the right with Trump 2.0. Or as many liberals and leftists like to put it “the cruelty is the point”.
https://youtu.be/j3xBUNIkA_c?si=O-p4kSz1PA8A-YrU
“One thing that Trump never communicates, and cannot possibly communicate, is a sense of his moral superiority. The man is totally without sanctimony. Even when his every utterance is purposed toward self-aggrandisement. Even when he appears to be denigrating his supporters. Even when he is calling himself a genius, he is never actually communicating that he is better than you, more enlightened, more decent, because he’s not, and everyone knows it.
The man is just a bundle of sin and gore. And he never pretends to be anything more. Perhaps more importantly, he never even aspires to be anything more. And because of this, because he is never really judging you, he cannot possibly judge you, he offers a truly safe space for human frailty and hypocrisy and self-doubt. He offers what no priest can credibly offer, a total expiation of shame. His personal shamelessness is a kind of spiritual balm. Trump is fat Jesus. He’s grab-‘em-by-the-pussy Jesus. He’s I’ll-eat-nothing-but-cheeseburgers-if-I-want-to Jesus. He’s I-want-to-punch-them-in-the-face Jesus. He’s go-back-to-your-shit-hole-countries Jesus. He’s no-apologies Jesus.
And now consider the other half of this image, what are we getting from the left? We’re getting exactly the opposite message. Pure sanctimony. Pure judgement. You are not good enough. You’re guilty, not only for your own sins, but the sins of your fathers. The crimes of slavery and colonialism are on your head. And if you’re a cis-white-heterosexual male—which we know is the absolute core of Trump’s support—you’re a racist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, sexist barbarian. Tear down those statues, and bend the fucking knee. It’s the juxtaposition between those two messages that is so powerful . . . and so central to Trump’s appeal.”—Sam Harris
Well said.
The thing Harris leaves out is while Trump certainly has tons of flaws that are totally valid to criticize, people of Harris’ ilk flaws are way worse and so when they point out Trumps they look ridiculous. Sam Harris said he wouldn’t have cared if the US government and the Biden family covered up the murder of innocent children as long as it meant Trump didn’t win. Does that sound moral to you? Compare that to the fact he grandstands about some pussy comment that while obviously inappropriate was said privately in a dressing room. To even ask the question which is worse is insulting to anyone who isn’t brainwashed by their elite status. At the end of the day the real question is who’s morality is correct and liberal’s morality is quite insane
"Compare that to the fact he grandstands about some pussy comment that while obviously inappropriate was said privately in a dressing room"
I must take exception with this - I know it isn't the focal part of your comment, but I've encountered this defense of Trump, and it bothers me.
Trump's statement is objectionable not because Trump used the word 'pussy' - it's objectionable because it is a window into the mind of Trump. He's the sort of fellow who will go around and grab women by their pussies. He's a pussy grabber. Saying, "I'm a pussy grabber" isn't offensive because you said the word, it's because you are the sort of person who does things like grabbing pussies without consent.
This can't be dismissed as so much 'locker room talk'.
I don’t really see any evidence that Trump is worse sexually than any liberal who advocate for divorce, normalization of adultery and polyamory, sodomy, abortion, birth control, and mutilating children. Not to mention that nearly all liberals defended Roman Polanski. I’d prefer a candidate with a committed sacramental marriage as I’m sure most GOP voters would, however again it’s all about comparison
Liberals who advocate for those things do so because they sincerely believe that they are not morally wrong, and are often morally good. Trump, by contrast, talks and behaves like someone who knows what he is doing is wrong, but doesn't care. In terms of personal character, there is a large moral difference between a person who wants to do good, but disagrees with you about what good is, and someone who just doesn't care.
Additionally, there is a large difference in moral character between someone who breaks a law, and someone who advocates that the law be changed. Liberals generally want to revise the law to legalize behaviors they approve of. Trump does not, he just thinks himself above laws and norms. He does not want to legalize pussy-grabbing, he would probably be pretty upset if someone grabbed his wife's or daughters by the pussies.
Do you honestly think Trump is different than other politician morally? You would have to be completely delusional to think so. The difference is what Trump fights for. He fights for conservative interests because it gives him power and makes him popular rather than fight for the interests of the uniparty who are all corrupt and engage in insider trading and tons of illegal stuff. As for liberal wanting to follow the law, that is actually insulting. Biden tried to force vaccines, student loan forgiveness, allowed millions to break the law for electoral benefit, threatened to pack the court, tried to declare the ERA in his last day, pardoned his entire family and that’s just one guy lol. Not to mention the entire progressive era which liberals descend from is known forcing unpopular opinions from the top, the New Deal was completely unconstitutional, and the Warren Court legislated from the bench in the 60s so liberals pretend to follow the norms but only because they have a rigged game
Yes, I would say that Trump is an order of magnitude worse than the average politicians of either party, both as a politician, and as a human being (although that may change as he is working hard to drag the rest of the Republicans down to his level). He is a con artist who scams the people who trust him. He has few real principles, is brazenly corrupt, and harms the electability of other Republicans in order to advance himself.
His main policy that made him popular enough to win was to just stop trying to cut entitlements, but to keep trying to cut taxes. Whereas previous Republicans understood that you need to cut spending if you want to cut taxes, Trump just considers the deficit to be Future America's problem.
He has conned Republicans into thinking his terrible behavior is a superpower that lets him advance Republican interests, but has not done anything that a normal Republican like Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio couldnt have done better. He won both his elections for structural reasons, not because he was a good politician (the first time Hillary ran an incompetent campaign, the second time people were unhappy about inflation). His election denial led to the Republican party losing seats.
"I don’t really see any evidence that Trump is worse sexually than any liberal [snip]"
I didn't argue that he was - the point was that you're misunderstanding the nature of the complaints about the "grab 'em by the pussy" comment.
The concern is that he's going around groping women without their consent, not that he's using bad words. Making a reference to it being said 'privately in a dressing room' suggests that you think the problem people had with it was that it lacked decorum.
I'm sure I don't know what Roman Polanski has to do with all of this - I sometimes tell my daughter that her room is dirty, and "my brother's room is also dirty" is no defense against the charge. If I were to suggest that her room is *dirtier* than her brother's, then maybe it would be. I wasn't arguing that Trump is worse than the other candidates.
According to the BBC, the full quote was:
Donald Trump: "Yeah that's her with the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know I'm automatically attracted to beautiful... I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything."
Billy Bush: "Whatever you want."
Trump: "Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."
The typical defense I've heard conservatives give for this is: "Trump wasn't boasting about raping women. He was expressing his amazement at the fact that when you're rich and powerful, women make themselves a lot more sexually accessible to you; suddenly, random women you encounter will tend to be open to your advances, because your celebrity status causes you to be extremely attractive to them, even on a first impression."
I wouldn't be surprised if male celebrities in general (rock stars, movie stars, etc.) have also noticed this phenomenon: when they became famous, they found themselves surrounded by women who are readily sexually available. That said, you could reasonably worry that there will be a nonzero error rate if even a very famous, high-status man overgeneralizes and approaches women expecting them to react the way they *usually* do in his experience. Some women are going to not be receptive, and leftists argue this makes Trump's behavior inherently rapey--because anyone with this "all women love me by default" policy will be wrong at some point, and make an unwanted advance.
The charitable assumption would be that Trump isn't socially retarded (being an accomplished politician, it would be surprising if he was); he can read the room and tell whether a girl is giving him receptive nonverbal cues and act accordingly; but if a girl seems hostile or uninterested, he doesn't. On a charitable reading, it's implied that the point he is making is most women *do* look at him with the kind of initial attraction that makes him feel permitted to make a move. Remember that when Trump made these remarks, it was before he went into politics and became a controversial figure. He was just the "you're fired" guy that everyone assumed was a badass billionaire and beloved celebrity.
(But whatever, if you don't want to grant Trump a charitable reading, because you hate him, I guess you can just assume he's a rapist. But just remember that that actually wouldn't prove he's a rapist, it would just prove that when you assume he's a rapist, you will take him for a rapist.)
Of course, even if we charitably assume rich and famous people make a good faith effort to target their advances on willing women, misunderstandings are inevitable unless they adopt a policy of total celibacy. After all, a woman can give every appearance of consent without really meaning it (I've done this with golf, for example; pretending to my buddies that I like it and want to go out with them for a game when I don't really).
I do think we need to have a conversation about whether we really want to live in a world where men are always required to obtain explicit verbal permission before making any form of flirtatious physical contact or before exchanging any kind of sexual banter--think about how extreme this would be: this would rule out, say, tucking an errant strand behind her ear after she closes the space between you in a private room, smiles and bites her lips, and stares deeply into your eyes, etc.. When that happens, are you really required to take a step back, hold up your right hand and say, "Now, I seem to be getting signs that you're interested in potentially some form of physical intimacy with me. Am I correctly reading your body language at this present time? Splendid. Let us perform the rites of Venus."
It seems like ANY sexual norms are going to have some nonzero rate of causing misunderstandings, barring a policy of total abstinence always. Even on the "explicitly guaranteed verbal consent required" view, women can give explicit verbal consent and every possible sign of enthusiastically agreeing to sex without actually meaning it or wanting it deep down (say, out of a misplaced sense of their self-worth or whatever; don't underestimate the depths of neuroticism people are capable of). So if your standard is "we must have norms that never allow misunderstandings that lead to any form of sexual contact to ever occur, ever" then you're going to have to sign up for complete abstinence for everyone... otherwise you're an evil, disgusting rape sympathizer, right? But that's clearly a ridiculous position to take.
So we have to set the bar somewhere higher... but then, where do we draw the line? Any standard is going to lead to misunderstandings. Some women really do want to be grabbed by the pussy--just not by you; only by extremely high status, famous, powerful, enormously successful men. And Trump happens to be the most successful man on the planet.
These are some fair points. Any sexual advance runs the risk of offending, and I agree that Trump is likely better than most at reading receptivity.
That said, grabbing women by their pussies is just TOO aggressive, even if you're a high-status male to whom women are generally attracted.
You’re not responding at all to the subject at hand: why the people who advocate against moral responsibility and against extending empathy, generally against morally good things, are consistently drawn to Trump. There is no corresponding tendency among liberals/leftists. Of course not every Trump supporter are drawn to him for this reason, but those who look for anti-morality as an ideal easily find it in both Trump the man and the wider rhetoric that many in his movement spread.
Again you’re begging the question on what counts as moral and responsible. For example Democrat party orthodoxy is to allow the slaughter of millions of babies per year through abortion. One could just as easily reframe the question why do people who are so evil and corrupt when it comes sexual ethics drawn to liberalism? People like Trump because for better or worse he fights the liberal order which people either see as evil (Christians) or people see as absolutely suffocating their way of life for stupid “woke” reasons (non-religious Trump supporters). Again this is because it’s an issue about first principles and who’s moral system is correct, nothing else
Respectfully, it does not seem like you have a particularly good theory of mind for how liberals view the world.
I should also point out that defining people who have different values than you as irredeemably evil is the kind of thing a sanctimonious whiny liberal would do.
I think the term can be salvaged if we insist that the person doing the blackmail have some kind of agency over the outcome.
"If you break up with me, I will kill myself." is ostensibly an attempt to explain cause and effect. One will lead to the other. But realistically, if we allow people to argue like that, it can be easily abused. So it's good to have a phrase that can describe this tactic.
But PEPFAR advocates are not threatening to release AIDS if they don't get their way! It really is cause and effect.
Unfortunately, it seems the Right is getting the hang of a trick the Left likes to use, where you define some term, declare it bad, and then call the thing you don't like by that term. It allows you to sidestep actually defending your point of view and make your argument via the transitive property.
Yeah, that's the original meaning of the term "emotional blackmail." Rightoids who just want to act immorally picked it up and changed its meaning to "any instance of someone making moral demands based on the consequences of your actions."
These people clearly can't process being called out for being morally crentinous pieces of shit, so they engage in mental gynmastics such as labelling any comdenation of them "moral blackmail".
Great piece.
I think much of the right / anti-woke scene has devolved into calling someone a libtard for not being Patrick Bateman. At the very least, there's a shift from "I don't agree with [the left-wing's] proposed solution, but I still share some core values (e.g. equality of opportunity, liberty) with them" to "having any universalist values is super lame"; a manifestation of this would be the so-called vitalists. I suspect there's a pendulum swing underway, as I did *not* see those folks until recently.
At the same time, I will add that the overuse of certain phrases doesn't disqualify them from having any substantial meaning. What distinguishes expedient pattern-matching from actually pointing something out is whether those terms are part of a premise in a counterargument, or whether they're a conclusion.
I've seen a fair amount of arguments that will distill any meritocratic convictions down to sounding "racist/sexist/homophobic/xenophobic/antisemitic/Islamophobic"—actually had a debate teacher (damn you, Ms. Hartwood!) call me those epithets because I argued that culture and religion don't (or rather, shouldn't) matter in the face of more universal/Enlightenment-era moral frameworks such as utilitarianism—the problem is not that they recognize that prejudice based on arbitrary traits is wrong, but that the (well-deserved) extremely negative connotations of said prejudice are used as cudgels to push increasingly asinine and spurious advancements. That would actually be a good example of moral/emotional blackmail.
Sadly, people throw out babies with bathwater quite often, and we then have "uhhhh you think that caring about babies is important? sounds like emotional blackmail!!". In other words, pattern-matching begets pattern-matching? Haha.
Re: God of the Gaps:
It drives me up the wall to see someone argue for YE creationism based on something like irreducible complexity. I don't dismiss it as dumb because "all my friends sneer at it"; I say this *after* entering a good faith discussion with that crowd--those arguments aren't seriously making use of inductive reasoning and do actually deserve the title. But if I were to not even consider the SIA argument *because* "God of the Gaps", then that title is a rather egregious thought-terminating cliché.
Moral blackmail now=feeling guilt for the consequences you have wrought on others. I think the etymology of the term was originally in response to Russian aggression, where the Russians basically threatened to cut off energy if the West helped Ukraine (or something like that - it was a bluff). The distinction between that and what the conservatives are whining about is that the Russians were going to act immorally in response to the west's actions, while the negative thing is going to happen as a result of the conservative's actions.
The terms “Moral/emotional blackmail” have been used since the 1940s, it’s not new.
Turns out it may be older than that: a quick google search says it may be from the 16th century.
On the plus side, I guess none of these people will ever again engage in the moral blackmail of condemning abortion!
> But if you say that any moral argument that elicits an emotional reaction is emotional blackmail, and any that doesn’t elicit an emotional reaction is the morality of a computer, then you have a fully general method for dismissing all moral arguments.
Exactly. What is going on is known as reward hacking.
In principle we are supposed to do what is good and therefore be "rewarded" by feeling fulfilled and moral and being a good person. On the other hand, if we do the bad thing we are "punished" by feeling guilt and being a bad person. A good person is someone who does good things.
But some people instead decide that they are good to begin with. They are good people, therefore whatever they do is moral, therefore they are supposed to feel good about themselves. And so when something makes them not feel good about themselves, they assume that the problem is not in them, no way, the problem must be with this something! Now all that is left is to name it somehow sinister and the job is done. Instead of reinvestigating the premise "Am I actually a good person" they assume that whoever made them doubt themselves is the bad one.
Now, there is a direct parallel to epistemology. In principle we are supposed to collect evidence about the world and change our mind based on it and be rewarded by having correct belief and feeling being right. But some people inverse this mechanism in the similar manner. They assume their prefered conclusion, feel right about it and then start making other assumptions to encorporate the available evidence ad hoc. How this is relevant to theodicy and theism in general, is left as an exercise for the reader.
Moral/emotional blackmail is certainly a real thing. Once you’ve met and interacted with enough people you’ll experience it someday if you haven’t already. I think the “right-wing” argument in this case is something like: “We want US taxpayer dollars first and foremost going to US citizens, and any $ going to foreign aid should be thoroughly scrutinized. Currently we don’t think that is happening, and when you say ‘oh so you want babies to die?!’ that mistakes our aims. It’s not that we want babies to die, we want our country run well and this is our money you’re spending, and you’re trying to inappropriately shame people into agreeing that our money is better spent on foreigners than on us.”
Personally I’m not opposed to foreign humanitarian aid in principle so I don’t totally buy the right wing argument, although I understand where they’re coming from. The idea is that you’re telling them “you’re evil if you don’t spend your money on what I think you should spend it on.”
BB is viewing this situation in black and white terms, as if there’s only one obviously correct policy position and one obviously immoral one. This is only true, however, if you look at the situation in a superficial way and fail to consider all the relevant moral considerations (such as the fact that tax money is the money of Americans and we have the right to give it to whoever we wish, including to no one.)
All this being said, I agree that excessive use of phrases like “moral blackmail” can become an excuse not to think about criticisms, which isn’t good.
The problem with this argument is that most of the people celebrating the fall of USAID are not actually paying for it because (a) most Americans pay negative net tax and (b) many, and I think probably most, are not even American! (see the tweets captured in the article).
Yeah I’m talking less about the particular tweets and more about generic RW responses, including ones I’ve heard from friends/acquaintances in conversation.
Good comment. I do think, though, that one can understand why an EA like BB would have a strong moral viewpoint on this issue.
An EA will be thinking to themselves that if PEPFAR programs save African lives at 1/20th (making this number up) the cost that comparable Federally-funded domestic programs save American lives, that redirecting dollars from PEPFAR to domestic priorities of any type is a utilitarian moral catastrophe. Compared to that, the "tax money should go to Americans first" argument seems like the superficial one, actually.
I also think the EA argument would include the point that it doesn't matter if voters "want" babies to die, this will be the consequence of these actions regardless, and "right wing" view adherents should confront this reality rather than wave it away as blackmail.
That's me steelmanning BB. Probably the strongest argument I could make against what I just said is that nobody is under any obligation to interrogate their own belief set (and we have no mechanism to force people to do so in a liberal society), so if being preachy about it just gets people to shut down and claim "blackmail", that's not helping anyone. This is partially why Noam Chomsky and Jill Stein policy preferences are politically impractical.
All that said, personally as an American taxpayer I would happily pay significantly more taxes to fund an expansion of PEPFAR by 10x or 25x, and I think it sucks that things are moving in the opposite direction (foreign aid programs are getting shuttered AND congressional Republicans are trying to give me a tax cut).
Deeply silly comment here there’s a few issues.
Taxes do not fund spending and private property rights are fake and basically indefensible on a number of grounds so it’s absolutely not your money in any meaningful sense but even if that wasn’t true consider the following example
If you were watching a child slowly die knowing that you could spend a fraction of a fraction of your money and have your quality of life be essentially identical and you chose not to save the child would it be wrong for someone to think you’re behaving deeply immorally? Would you in this situation similarly not be comfortable with someone engaging in “moral blackmail” by saying “you shouldn’t let that child die because you could save him at basically no cost to yourself”?
The issue with your final point here is that this is basically as close to black and white as you can get in terms of policy the question is “should we at basically zero cost to us prevent immense suffering?”
Right wing opposition to the aid referenced in this piece is either fueled by a misunderstanding of the funds and their uses or by a deep moral bankruptcy
I think that if you want to defuse the charge that Leftists use the banner heading of foreign aid to enrich themselves and/or promote unrelated political goals by bundling in gross leftist shit with programmes like PEFPAR, you should provide a list of USAID programmes that you agree are frivolous or actively harmful and suggest that these be permanently cancelled in return for saving PEFPAR.
However, I think the vast majority of leftists would prefer to do the opposite: cancel PEFPAR if it meant keeping their gross leftist shit.* If so, it is perfectly reasonable and precisely accurate to accuse them of moral blackmail. You may object that it is not reasonable to say this about you and other EAs, but you and other EAs are not an important part of the Democrat coalition, in fact they hate you.
*After all, if GW Bush has not won the election there is no reason to think PEFPAR would have happened at all.
I'd probably cancel all other foreign aid if it was the only way to save PEPFAR.
But the real question is: if it were within your power to do so, would you redirect the PEPFAR budget to the ethical treatment of shrimp?
What's it like to be a shrimp?
You're putting a lot of weight on shrimp being aware. I know they're decapods, but they're at the small end and the work was done on hermit crabs, lobsters and crabs (or so CoPilot tells me).
Thanks for that.
I think I'd want awareness rather than just sentience.
A lot of those behaviours would apply to single-celled protists too, (but I probably need to check the detail).
Of course any generalisation to "all decapods" includes their planktonic larval states which are comparatively simple organisms. (If you want to use the "potential" argument, then that also applies to human sperm cells but nobody cries over spilt milt!)
Anyway, I've made a note of the link, so thanks again.
It is not the burden of someone defending foreign aid to provide a list of frivolous or harmful aid programs. It's the burden of the people making this charge to provide that list, and then we can assess on a case-by-case basis. It's also their burden to cut only those programs, and not the extremely important lifesaving ones, if they don't want people to accuse them of being heartless assholes.
Also, most of your comment just begs every relevant question. Leftists see "gross leftist shit" as things genuinely making the world and country better, and sometimes they are right. The median USAID program almost surely does more good for the world than the median dollar spent by the US federal budget overall.
In my preferred world we would have a blanket moratorium on all "they hate you" discourse. It's unfalsifiable and does nothing except gin up resentment. We could use less resentment in our politics.
Agreed
Was this reply supposed to be for Axelrod’s comment on shrimp, above?
Sorry - misread the indentation - I thought you'd agreed with him and not Nonzionism
If moral blackmail is blackmail in any ordinary sense then it seems those who use it aren’t using it properly.
E.g. they’re not threatening that they’ll spread some concealed truth about someone for some form of payment.
I think your assessment of the interaction between Vance and Ro is incorrect. Vance is commenting on cancel culture writ large, where journalists go out of their way to dig up dirt on individuals with the whole purpose of smearing people to achieve political ends in mind. When people speak out against this process -as JD Vance was doing- people often respond by trying to do emotional blackmail —as Ro was doing. “You don’t think this guy should be fired? aren’t you concerned about the rights of your own children?” it’s disingenuous. People don’t dig up this dirt because they care about Indian rights or whatever, they dig it up to find ammunition and appeal to our collective moral values to drop people for the take of political ends. JD Vance was absolutely right to call this out as emotional blackmail and I’m happy he did. You of all people have been victimized by people appealing to “moral virtue” in order to smear you.
"Political ends" and "caring about Indian rights or whatever" are not exclusive categories. The reason Democrats want those people dropped from positions of power is not because their Republican replacements will be any less conservative on taxes or other unrelated policy issues. It's because their prior statements reflect noxious racial mindsets that are especially dangerous in public office. Upholding moral standards in public officeholders is perfectly valid. And "going out of their way to dig up" information of interest to the public, as it assesses someone's qualifications to represent their values in government, is kind of journalists' whole job. Not everything they dig up should be disqualifying, but it's reasonable to think these statements are.
> "... it's disingenuous. People don’t dig up this dirt because they care about Indian rights or whatever, they dig it up to find ammunition and appeal to our collective moral values to drop people for the take of political ends."
I don't think we know that Ro was being insincere. It seems reasonable for me to believe that he was acting in good faith as an Indian-American. I do take your point that many instances of these sorts of interactions are fueled by bad faith appeals; that's certainly how Vance interpreted the dynamic. But if Ro was sincere and Vance mistakenly interpreted the comments as insincere, then what we have here is a really unfortunate failure to connect and find common ground.
Pretty much this. If leftists hadn’t spent the last 10-15 years engaging in frivolous accusations followed by ruthless cancellation campaigns for obviously political reasons, their accusations today would carry a lot more weight. At this point, they’re the boy who cried wolf.
On a related note, why should anyone believe the USAID official’s stat about the 300 African babies? The agency has basically operated as a slush fund for the types of activist NGOs and foundations that routinely make hysterical accusations to further their political agendas. Why should taxpayers assume that’s not the case here?
The strongest moral argument against foreign aid is the one that nobody seems to be making: That countries receiving foreign aid become dependent on it, and fail to become self-sufficient and build up the sorts of institutions that could make their own people safe and prosperous.
This is analogous to what Vance said about European military defense a few days ago.
Personally I still think PEPFAR is worth doing despite this objection (I like what BB said in a comment, "I'd probably cancel all other foreign aid if it was the only way to save PEPFAR.") but it still deserves to be taken seriously.
I think a better use case for the phrase “moral blackmail” is when activist types try to ram through highly dubious claims based solely on appeal to emotion. Like when they accuse someone of “literally killing trans people” for using the wrong pronoun or saying you can’t change your sex.
I think the phrase is fine. Conservatives view USAID as a slush fund for leftists to pursue their ideological project (at taxpayer expense). We might disagree with this empirical assessment, but conditional on believing it to be true, the term makes sense.
The right-wing accusation is that the left is saying, "if you don't let us continue to run USAID the way it has been run, babies will die of AIDS." The concept "moral blackmail" appears to perfectly capture this notion. Again, we might disagree with the premise that this is actually what the left is saying, but this is precisely the allegation Justin and Misha made.
But you’re just saying that any appeal to cause and effect is emotional blackmail! I can do that with a million arguments the other way. Here’s one:
Anti-police progressives (I’m not one) believe that the police serve no useful purpose and only exist to oppress POC and protect capital, and therefore should be defunded. Someone who disagrees says that if we defund the police, people will be made much less safe and even be killed. Isn’t this “emotional blackmail” by your definition? What’s the difference?
As with most concepts there are no hard edges, but I think the term is being used to describe justifications for resistance to reform and/or overturning ideological capture.
Suppose the anti-police progressive wants to institute some reform like repealing qualified immunity. Or suppose some police department has been captured by hardcore RWers who harass criminals with impunity, and someone proposes having a new oversight committee who cares about the rights of criminals.
Now suppose the police department says that if you do that, then we're going to stop enforcing the law and people will be made much less safe and even be killed. I think that would qualify as moral blackmail.
I think the difference is that in your case, the loss of the good is a direct causal effect of the proposal, while in my case/the Misha/Justin allegation, the potential loss of the good is being leveraged to protect control over other things, which better fits the definition of blackmail.
I think you've just given an excellent example of moral/emotional blackmail. Unfortunately, it in no way matches the Pepfar debate.
The key phrase in your scenario is, "suppose the police department says that if you do that, ***then we're going to stop enforcing the law*** and people will be made much less safe and even be killed." In other words, the police is saying that *they will change their behavior* unless they get their way. Someone in another comment here gave a similar example on an individual level: "If you break up with me, I will kill myself." These are *threats,* pledges to act a certain way if one's conditions are not met! Which parallels the definition of regular blackmail: the blackmailer says, if you don't do what I want I'll release the photos (or whatever).
With Pepfar, however, no one is saying "if you undertake reforms, we will intentionally stop helping people and people will die." They are saying, "this money saves lives, withdrawing it will cost lives." They are talking about a direct causal effect, just like my example of defunding police leading to lives being lost.
After all, we're not even talking about hypothetical effects! Look at the Gobry tweet again: someone says that babies have contracted HIV as a result of the "pause" in Pepfar, and he calls that "moral blackmail." If the relief workers gave the babies HIV on purpose, like the Joker poisoning the water supply, I guess that could be considered moral blackmail, but of course that's not what he's saying. He's saying that *bringing up harms the policy has caused" is moral blackmail. That's incoherent.
I think we're talking past each other. You're framing the discussion in terms of defunding PEPFAR itself, but I'm talking about reforming USAID.
Look at the Misha tweet again: he explicitly *supports* PEPFAR, but worries the good it does as part of USAID is being used to justify resistance to reforming/canceling *other* USAID programs.
I'm operating under the assumption that Gobry is using the term "moral blackmail" as shorthand for Misha-type concerns, but ofc I could be wrong.
That doesn't affect our disagreement. I'm saying that if the term "moral blackmail" is to mean anything, it has to mean a threat to *do* something (or fail to do something) in order to influence someone's behavior. Appealing to bad consequences that will (allegedly) directly result is not moral blackmail.
I also don't understand the "shorthand" description of Gobry. Someone says, "babies have gotten HIV." Gobry says "emotional blackmail!" How is this anything other than an attempt to disqualify arguments from consequences (or even just a mention of consequences, with or without an argument attached)?
Misha clearly thinks the left is saying, "attempts to reform/defund a "single stagnant, ineffective policy" threaten PEPFAR, so you can't do reform; this is emotional blackmail, just like in the case of my fictional police department. On this reading, the term is sensible.
As I said in my original comment, we're free to disagree with him on the merits! The left is not using PEPFAR as an emotional cudgel to protect their other policies; the left really wants to protect PEPFAR itself.
Not that I agree, but I guess the implication is that some people are defending PEPFAR, not because they’ve always cared about babies dying, but only because it’s the issue "du jour" that can be used to make the right wing look fascists.
If they move on to the next trendy topic when this cycle is over, the idea would be that they are hypocrites and only used the story to win a political argument through emotional blackmail.
Again, I am not accusing anyone but I think that’s how people who use the phrase see it.
So this just sounds like an accusation of hypocrisy. "Blackmail" is a kind of threat.
Yeah, it’s imprecise but it’s just an expression. The blackmail part is that people threaten to make you feel bad or call you a psycho if you don’t agree with them.
> but only because it’s the issue "du jour" that can be used to make the right wing look fascists.
they made it the issue by defunding it
Yes, this idea (not saying Ax is saying this) that "we get to take this drastic action but you don't get to talk about the merits of it" is obviously not going to fly.
> Conservatives view USAID as a slush fund for leftists to pursue their ideological project (at taxpayer expense)
Yeah, famous leftist Marco Rubio
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/politifact/2025/02/11/how-marco-rubio-fully-flopped-on-his-support-for-usaid/78341970007/
If conservatives don't want to be called amoral idiots, they should probably stop being so stupid and evil
Put bluntly, your political tribe ("Effective Altruists" and State Department people) are the reason babies are dying of AIDS in Africa.
So no, it is not acceptable for you to use their suffering as a demand to arrogate even more power for the State Department. Their suffering is on your hands.
I'm not going to take moral lessons from the people who destroyed civilization in Africa, point at the devastation THEY CAUSED and pretend that they are the only people who care about human suffering. Then they demand that I and my people pay THEM and keep them in power.
No. The State Department has caused more human misery than just about any other organization on Earth. I wish I had the ability to help Africans and also defeat the State Department, but for the sake of the long term future, defeating the State Department is more important.
“your political tribe ("Effective Altruists" and State Department people) are the reason babies are dying of AIDS in Africa.”
Why do you say that? How is EA or the State Department to blame for AIDs deaths in Africa? That doesn’t make sense to me.
I think he's one of the types who thinks the end of colonialism was a bad thing, and that if Europeans had continued to dominate a continent full of people they treated like dogshit, there definitely wouldn't have been any infectious diseases that killed lots of people, because the Europeans were genteel and kind enlightened rulers. The poor dumb Africans just got bamboozled by the State Department into thinking that their European overlords were perfidious looters!
I suppose that there technically wouldn't have been AIDS, but only in the stupid sense that there wouldn't be Covid if Hillary Clinton had won in 2016.
Africa is, for the most part, much worse governed than under colonialism. But AIDs would have happened without de-colonisation. And, in any case, decolonization was mostly a function of increased population making colonial rule unsustainable rather than the State Dept.
> Africa is, for the most part, much worse governed than under colonialism.
This simply isn't true. It's based on not understanding history at all. European colonial powers treated Africa like shit. They lied and broke treaties and created fake treaties they then violently enforced in moments of weakness. They butchered their colonials, they gladly starved them, they tore up any institutions that weren't raw resource extraction operations. The Congo Free State is infamous for all the cut-off hands, but when the DRC attained its independence from the Belgians, literacy was under 40%; today, literacy is over 80%. Only a vanishingly small minority of Congolese even got to attend high school, and it took until 1956 for them to build a university. When it got independence there were a whole 30 university graduates in the whole country. Today, there are more *universities* than that number. In 1960, when the Congo gained its independence, life expectancy was 40.55 years; today, it is 60.1 years. This is the Congo - hardly known as the most successful state on the continent.
Life expectancy, literacy, by any ordinary metric of human flourishing, the people of Africa are better off on their own. Europeans did not govern their colonies like they governed their metropoles. They governed them horrifically badly, and did lots of damage. It's pure nonsensical rightoid copium to act like the horrific, genocidal regimes of European colonizers were actually some noble attempt to help the Africans, reliant on the fact that the terrors of the present are nearer to memory than the terrors of the past.
By literally the exact same argument you use, it can be established that colonialism was good - including even Belgian colonialism - since life expectancy rose and all the other metric you use also rose.
Firstly, not really. The Congo was under Belgian control (or Leopold's control) from 1885 to 1960; it took until 1956 for them to build a single university, whereas the period of native rule has built dozens in a shorter period since independence. Life expectancy barely rose under colonial administration, but spiked under the DRC. Etc.
Secondly, you could also look at the fact that the government of European colonies was generally explicitly racist, the European empires were perfidious in their treatment of Africans before the various conquests, put about zero effort into local development, and treated the entire population of the territory as a giant resource extracting operation, for example. Why exactly do you think that the Europeans ran the colonies better?
Other than the claim that the Bantu are just genetically dumber than the Europeans, which hasn't stopped Botswana from having the same or higher GDP per capita as Moldova.
The Congo Free State was bad. A lot of colonies were not the Congo Free State. A lot of ex colonies underwent horrible civil wars or other conflicts that destroyed typical measures of human flourishing.
Yes, one of them is the DRC.
You're wrong about the role of the State Department.
As for AIDS, yes the disease still would have emerged, but there was a time within living memory when Western missionaries ran most schools in Africa and they preached against sexual promiscuity. Many of the missionaries were doctors as well. The missionaries were forced out or massacred.
Had they been allowed to stay, the AIDS epidemic would have been much smaller.
This is extreme social constructivist thinking. Bantus are unintelligent, have poor impulse control, and the men have higher testosterone, i.e. are more horny. In addition, almost all bantu cultures have extreme promiscuity (even after marriage!) deeply ingrained over thousands of years. There is absolutely no reason to think that more Christian missionaries would move the needle, but, in any case, Africa has loads of Christian missionaries.
The main reason why colonial rulers would have handled AIDs better is more basic: less government money intended to provide medical care and AIDs prevention would have been embezzled and other basic areas of state competence. But again, it's moot, because the explosion of African population made the colonial model unsustainable. Even if control had not passed from Europe to America and the Soviet Union, the Europeans would have had to switch to post-colonial rule by African proxies.
Most historians who have actually studied colonialism in detail are left-wing. You are just a random anonymous racist fuck on substack no different than that forumposter proton mail guy. Do something better in your life than being a racist cunt on substack.
Do you know anything about the history of Africa post WWII?
Please use your extensive knowledge of history to explain how Effective Altruism, a movement dating back to the 2000s, is responsible for babies dying of AIDs in Africa.
You're either not from America or you're being obtuse. The "Effective Altruist" community is part of a distinctive social milieu which has controlled the State Department and much of American journalism for decades.
This is just empty word-logic and aggression posing as an argument. Are you Jewish?
Are you fucking serious?
Some unsolicited advice: you’ll have more friends, less people blocking you, more professional and academic success, and overall more happiness if you stop gratuitously insulting people. I’m trying to ask a perfectly legitimate question.
It's actually not a perfectly legitimate question.
What you're asking is similar to: "Wow I've never heard of the Holocaust, How are the Nazis responsible for the Holocaust, that doesn't make sense to me?"
I know many people have been systematically misinformed, so I'm willing to elaborate, but I'm also going to acknowledge that this is kind of a ghoulish conversation to be having.
The American State Department strongly and actively supported the destruction of functional states in Africa in order to replace them with regimes which are just frankly evil. This process was called Decolonization. One of the Decolonization regimes was led by Idi Amin, a Ugandan man who liked to feed people to crocodiles and boasted about eating human flesh. His regime killed an estimated 400,000 people.
Among educated people, it is well known that the US State Department and other Western foreign services were broadly supportive of Decolonization. It is also well known among educated people that the track record of African governments since Decolonization has been extremely bad.
The basic facts are not really in dispute. It's just unpopular in some circles to put two and two together and point out that the record of Africa since Decolonization shows the actions of the State Department and other Western anti-colonialists to have been an enormous moral crime.
It was necessary to spell that out because it definitely wasn’t obvious just from “EA and state department people are the reason babies are dying of AIDs in Africa.” That statement is open to all kinds of interpretation.
Also—using your analogy—if an otherwise intelligent person were somehow systematically misinformed about a hugely important issue, yet came to you in good faith asking to be informed, why would you take such a condescending and aggressive tone? Do you realize how many people you are alienating? I’m genuinely stunned you don’t seem to see how you come across.
I think you're overestimating the percentage of people who share your sensibilities.
Idi Amin was cultivated by the British as a suitable ruler for a territory they couldn't afford to run. Then he switched to being a Soviet puppet. You talk in vague generalities about complex historical trends involving dozens of different factors, like Moldbug but without the flair, and rely on abuse to iron out the wrinkles. Try something else.
That reminds me: I muted you so why am I still seeing your comments? Anyone know how to address that?
I blocked that daft racist as well. It worked for a bit, perhaps substack has a regression.
All of this is confused rambling but even if what you say is true I have zero idea why you think pepfar funding is so central to the state department’s power
As has suicidal empathy. Right wing just loves to make virtue out to be a bad thing.