The "No True Progressive" Fallacy
What people get wrong about progressives
Recently, I had Charles Love on the podcast who wrote a somewhat controversial book that I enjoyed called Race Crazy: BLM, 1619, and the Progressive Racism Movement. I really enjoyed my conversation with Charles although we’re from “opposing sides”. Currently, I’m reading the new Michael Shellenberger book San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities, and it’s not bad. Like me, Michael is passionate about the addiction epidemic and wants us to find solutions, and I’m excited he’s coming on the podcast soon to discuss what’s going on with addiction and to talk about an upcoming protest called “Against Drug Deaths”.
Although I respect their opinions, I keep thinking, “Wait…I’m a progressive, and I don’t think the way you’re writing about.”
So, I thought it’d be a good time to discuss this because it’s becoming a trend that we see not just when talking about progressives. And to be clear, although I opened with Michael and Charles, I respect both of them and their work, and this is not limited to them. I’ll be showing some other examples throughout this piece, but not only did I read or am currently reading their books, I know they can take it without getting butthurt about it.
In Charles’ new book, there are a few parts about progressives, and here are some examples:
“Equality is not the goal for this new group of progressives. They will stop at nothing short of equity. They now want raceto be the determining factor in many decisions including school admissions, government assistance, medical care, and commercial pilots.”
“Thousands of people fought for decades demanding equality, pushing to remove race as a determinant factor, only for “progressives” to set us back.”
It’s also important to note that Charles separates progressives, liberals, leftists, and anti-racists/woke people. We chatted about this briefly on the podcast, but this is one of the confusing aspects of our world today because Charles has a different definition than many I know who identify in these groups. But, we’ll touch on the problem with communication later.
While I’m still reading Michael Shellenberger’s new book, I did read this Substack piece he just wrote titled “Why We Must Arrest Drug Addicts”. In this piece, he says the following:
“Progressives blame laws that treat addiction as a criminal rather than public health problem, while conservatives blame lockdowns to covid.”
“According to the progressive victimologists who run San Francisco, and other progressive cities, the laws against public drug use, public defecation, and shoplifting, should not be enforced against Diane because she’s an addict.”
“It is Woke religion, a.k.a., victimology, which leads progressives to grossly misrepresent Diane’s situation. Progressives insist, against what they say are our lying eyes, that Diane is homeless not because she is addicted to fentanyl but rather because rents in San Francisco are too high. Progressives insist that the homeless on the streets are locals who couldn’t afford the rent, not people who moved to San Francisco because they knew the city would allow them to maintain their addiction at low cost without risk of arrest. And progressives insist that the only moral approach is to help Diane maintain her addiction, and not enforce the laws when she breaks them.”
When I see this, I see some pretty broad generalizations that leave little room for nuance or understanding that people are individuals. I will say that Shellenberger does a bit better by using terms like “many” or “some” when discussing progressives and pointing to specific people who identify as progressives. But one of my main concerns with this type of talk is generalizations and stereotypes that lead to further polarization of our already extremely polarized country.
They aren’t the only ones, either. Here are some other headlines from both the Left and the Right:
Personally, when I hear anyone call Joe Biden a progressive or say he’s pushing a socialist agenda, I don’t know if I want to get angry or drop dead from laughing so hard.
This tweet is a great example of what people think the stereotypical progressive is like.
Were they progressives? Are they still progressive?
Malaika Jabali makes a great point. This bill is being called progressive. Some progressives are loving it, and then there are people like me looking at it in the same way as Malaika.
Then, right as I was finishing writing this section, a guy replied to my tweet saying this is what progressives want:
Here’s a response from someone else to that same tweet:
And another:
The “No True Progressive Fallacy”
I think it’s important we all brush up on our fallacies so we can spot bad arguments. One of my favorites is the “no true Scotsman fallacy”. I see this one all the time, and I think it’s because we’re System 1 thinkers and love seeing everything in black and white rather than acknowledging nuance and complexity.
For those who are unfamiliar with this fallacy, here’s the gist:
This is probably the most common when someone identifies with a group, does something terrible, and the group wants to distance themselves. We see it quite a bit with religion and politics. A Christian does something awful like a mass shooting or joins up with the Westboro Baptist Church and they’re “no true Christian.” And remember when Liz Cheney went against her party pushing nonsense? It was instantly said that she’s “no true Republican”, and SNL even did a skit about it on last night’s episode titled “Republican or Not”.
I’ve had people on the Right tell me that I’m not a progressive when they find out I agree with them on a lot of topics. For example, I agreed with a ton of what Michael Shellenberger said in his article. And to be clear, Michael didn’t say this to me and probably doesn’t think it, but I imagine there are some who agree with him who would be confused that I agree; especially as a progressive former drug addict. I’ve also been pretty outspoken about some aspects of “woke” ideology and have hosted plenty of authors who speak out against it.
I’ve also had people on the Left who identify as progressives tell me that I’m not a progressive because I don’t have the same views as them that I think are a little extreme.
So, What is a Progressive?
Isn’t it annoying when people say, “The dictionary defense _____ as _____”? Well, Ima do it now, but I’ll use Wikipedia instead.
“Progressivism is a political philosophy in support of social reform. Based on the idea of progress in which advancements in science, technology, economic development and social organization are vital to the improvement of the human condition…”
When you put it like that, the definition is broad as hell, but this summarizes my ideology pretty well. It also summarizes the ideology of a lot of people I know or follow who identify as progressive.
Most of my progressive values are for policy change. In order to minimize confusion, I often say something like, “I’m a Bernie Sanders loving progressive.” This is a little easier because I support most (not all) of what Bernie Sanders fights for. In my opinion, Bernie fights for the equality of opportunity and not equality of outcome like some believe.
And this is where I plug in my quick reminder that meritocracy is a myth, and it’s the hill I’ll die on any day of the week.
But there are plenty of progressives who go a bit further into what some would call “woke” ideas. I think a great example is some of the progressive politicians we have in congress. There are a lot of policies that AOC, Cori Bush, and others fight for where I’m like, “HELL YES!”, and then there are things they say where I think, “Alright, you need to calm down a little bit because you’re making us rational progressives look bad.”
The reality I think we all need to recognize is that there are a lot of disagreements within groups, and it’s something we neglect to acknowledge all the time. So, since I picked on people who stereotype us progressives, I’ll take a moment to stick up for Trump-loving Republicans for a minute.
People on “my side” love the shit out of Jordan Klepper from The Daily Show because he goes around making videos like these:
Each time The Daily Show releases a segment like this, it’s guaranteed to go viral. As you probably know, there are many people on the Left who have created entire brands around this on TikTok and YouTube. They attend these events to “own” the other side and make them look dumb.
We get so high off of confirmation bias that people share this stuff all over social media and say, “See! They’re all idiots!” Common sense leaves the party and we completely neglect the fact that these are edited to show the worst of the worst people from the opposing side.
But, the Right does this too, and you need look no further than the extremely popular Twitter account Libs of Tik Tok:
I could go on and on, but when I look at this type of stuff basically saying “this is what they all think”, I always think, “it’s no wonder we’re so polarized.”
When you combined the fact that we get off to confirmation bias porn while sitting in our echo chambers and refuse to talk to anyone from the other side, all we see are these caricatures of what we think the opposition is like.
What’s the Solution?
I think the solution is a simple one, so I’ll make this short and sweet: we need to start calling each other out within our groups.
I’m all for having conversations across the aisle. I think it’s important to show people that your group isn’t limited to what they believe. I actually started doing this when I got sober in 2012. There are a lot of stereotypes and misconceptions about recovering drug addicts and alcoholics, so I try to act right so people maybe think, “oh! sober people aren’t lame.” But, I’m also a realist. I respect the hell out of organizations like Braver Angels, but they’re fighting a really tough battle of bringing opposing sides together.
The best way to start is to start telling our groups that they’re being silly. For example, I regularly remind people sharing those Jordan Klepper clips that this is highly edited to show them the worst people to feed our confirmation bias. I remind people in my group that I’ve spoken with plenty of conservatives who aren’t the way they’re describing.
So, if you’re on the Right, I recommend reminding your people that there are progressives who aren’t spouting some of these extreme views. You may also want to reply to the Libs of Tik Tok videos everyone shares and let them know that this is just one person. Regardless of the side you’re on, you’re most likely to have people from your tribe talking shit, but the only way to break conformity nonsense is to speak up.
I’m not trying to be the language police, and this doesn’t hurt my feelings when I’m stereotyped as a progressive. I honestly couldn’t care less. I just found the topic interesting and wanted to write about it. We also recognize how polarized and messed up the world is right now, and the generalizations and stereotypes are just making it worse. If we start holding each other accountable for avoiding nuance, we may be able to start having better conversations with the other side.
I’m currently writing a book about how we’re manipulated by the news, social media, technology, advertisers, and each other. It dives into the psychological history of manipulation, our biases, tribalism, and more.
To stay updated follow me on Twitter and Instagram @TheRewiredSoul and subscribe to the Substack.