I remember
watching a documentary on the Manson family, and I recall some of the family
members recounting their turning point for rejecting Charles Manson’s influence - “It was when we could see he was lying”, they said. It’s usually easy to see
when people are lying – to themselves and to others - but it becomes even more
evident when you observe how people respond to questions. Because of how highly
complex the world is, and because political incentives are predominantly
overly simplistic and self-serving (at least in part), virtually all
politicians who support bad policies do so by continually lying - to
themselves, and therefore, to others. You can't lie to yourself without lying
to others, and you can’t lie to others without lying to yourself. Even if you
lie to others, knowing full well you’re lying, you’re still lying to yourself
because deception still reflects a deeper level of self-deceit and the
suppression of your own potential truthful qualities.
Lying to yourself is like weaving a web of deceit that ensnares everyone around you; when you distort your own narrative, you inevitably distort the narratives of those you interact with. In politics, it’s rather like a dance; as you convince yourself of a fabricated reality, you project that illusion onto others, forcing them to step along with you in your masquerade. Equally, in lying to others, you can’t escape the entanglement of that web of falsehood within yourself, tugging at your conscience and negatively shaping your self-perception. Ultimately, this web of lies creates knotty entanglements that trap us in our own illusions.
To see this most clearly, you only have to look at extreme people believing in extremely absurd things. For example, it's almost impossible to have an intelligent debate with a climate extremist/alarmist, as virtually every journalist and TV presenter is finding out. They don't want to listen to reason. When someone doesn't want to listen to reason, hitting them with reason and good arguments does little good - it just washes right over them. The best thing to do is to draw out some good in exposing their incompetence by asking them questions that they won't be able to answer - not because they are trick questions (they aren't) - but because their response requires reasoning and a grasp of multitudinous levels of complexity that they simply do not have the artillery to engage with.
There's a good reason why exposing their incompetence is a better strategy than debating with them back and forth. Even if you defeat them in a back and forth exchange, there will still be many people reading or watching who will remain convinced (and deceived) by their arguments, because some who are skilled in political rhetoric may still sound confident, assured and sometimes even partly-researched in a few key areas of the subject. But remember, it's what they don't say and what they don't understand that makes up most of their shortcomings - and it's easier and more fruitful to expose what they don't say and what they don't understand by asking them questions and observing them demonstrate that they don't understand things very well at all.
Do it to politicians if you get the chance; do it to influential figures in the world of climate hysteria; do it to young earth creationists; do it to social justice extremists – just ask questions, and ask further questions in response to their answers, and so on, and see how easily they tie themselves further in knots. Because it’s a near-ineluctable law of human psychology and morality - if you’re trying to defend things you know deep down are untrue, or that you know you haven’t figured out sufficiently, it’s virtually impossible to keep responding to challenging questions and not eventually choke on your own web of deception.
If you don't let them change the subject, and keep asking questions that demonstrate how out of their depth they are (you can do it courteously) so they feel less good internally, humbled and inwardly less assured of their position, then you have a better chance of stopping them influencing others, and the slimmest chance that you'll plant a subconscious seed that may bear fruit and help them grow out of it in maturity. It's better to help them trip themselves up with their legs in a tangle than it is attempting to trip them up with your own leg. You need them to distrust their own legs, not be annoyed at yours.
