When someone in my life or one of my students says they think it’s valuable to look at “all sides” they never seem to mean it. First of all, this is something I’ll hear most frequently from someone who has (or is adopting) a right wing perspective and has been letting the YouTube algorithm choose content. Second of all, if pressed, the person will show they haven’t been engaged in anything resembling research discipline and most certainly haven’t been exploring “all sides.” What they usually mean by saying it’s important to consider “all sides” is that it is important that I (their current audience) accept the perspective of whoever’s in their YouTube feed at the moment when I already know the character in question is a gateway drug leading to khaki pants and Tiki torches or conspiracies about lizard people. It’s only a matter of time before they’ll accuse my tiny brain of being incapable of fully grasping the depth of conspiracy against (typically) white men. I’ve been called stupid a lot by people who are inexplicably incapable of producing a sliver of evidence for anything they say is true.
They’ll tell me to “do my own research,” as if I don’t already know exactly where they’re getting these ideas. As if having (and teaching) research discipline and showing people how to effectively (and honestly) argue legitimate perspectives I disagree with isn’t what I do for a living. What they want is their feelings validated. They’re like the person waving a Bible, making claims of truth about a book they never read. Truths often countered by actual experts on the text. They always seem to “know a guy” on the inside of every pertinent organization, which more than likely hints at the parasocial relationship they’ve built with a conspiracy theorist YouTuber. They present dogma and faith as fact and you can watch them concoct supporting “facts” out of thin air as the conversation continues. Ask how they know this stuff is true and they’ll change the topic. They’ve mastered the straw man and accuse everyone of using it.
Enablers—the people who like to smooth things over among family—will typically adopt a kind of neutral position, never challenging even the most absurd ideas or, possibly worse, claim there’s always some kind of happy medium between “both sides”—a center of pure truth wherever the disagreements meet. There’s a kind of rudimentary truth to this idea, but only in the sense that we can always negotiate the legitimately negotiable. The idea of a happy center in which truth can always be found doesn’t exist anywhere in which any one position is non-negotiable.
Non-negotiable arguments are often oversimplified, built of false premises, or focus on stripping people of their rights (and their lives). They are garbage. Negotiable arguments only exist after these garbage arguments are dismissed with prejudice. Worthy discussion recognizes real complexity, are self aware, and have the interesting trait of being just as potentially “right” as anyone else in the debate. These arguments are made by individuals who are capable of completely changing their minds when new information warrants it. Take the issue of climate change for example. Only idiots and grifters insist the existence of anthropogenic climate change is debatable. Cast them out of the discussion and what’s left are arguments about the best next steps for dealing with the situation.
I’m not necessarily counting shit perspectives that are “correct” on technical grounds. In the US there are some speech protections that mean people can say all kinds of cruel, bigoted garbage. If the argument is that a person has that right, they’re correct. But that’s never the argument, really. The argument is that people—especially people with stupid ideas—should have a consequence-free experience. That other people shouldn’t exercise their right to call a bigot a bigot or take other, punitive measures, like refuse to do business with bigots. The argument is that everyone should adopt the enabler role. Make nice. Let the racist uncle spout off at the holiday table unchecked. Protect the fragile emotions of the bigot so they never learn they’re a bad person. That’s the argument in this instance, which is just as garbage as denying ice caps are melting.
In the classroom, I illustrate the myth that all perspectives are equally valid by drawing a line on the board. On one side of the line, I write “Nazi” and ask the class what the core thesis is of the Nazi ideology. Here is where we encounter a little bit of the friction that happens when people’s minds start rubbing against the white supremacist ideology saturating US thought. Identifiable because I’ll sometimes get weird soft answers similar to the propaganda that the US Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. These are the people who’re ripe for or already participants of Holocaust denialism. Frequently enough, I get the right answer and don’t have to press. One of the core Nazi arguments, central to the entire thesis, is “Kill Jews.” Once we established that, I will write “Jewish People” on the other end of the line as the group with the biggest stake in this argument with the counter thesis “No thanks.” I’m sure it makes for a weird experience for anyone who wanders past the classroom and peeks into the window.
The next part of the exercise is to identify where in this argument a mutual truth might possibly exist. What is the “middle ground” at which both parties can walk away feeling like the answer is unsatisfying but fair to “both sides?” Obviously, if the argument is that one group of people simply shouldn’t exist, there is no middle ground. Certainly not for whomever is the target for such an argument.
The Nazi would (and still does) insist that we listen to “all sides” of the debate when they mean “my side.” As we saw with Nazis, and as we see with whatever they call themselves now (alt right, MAGA, or merely conservative depending on how reasonable they’re trying to appear), there’s never a valid perspective to the argument. Where is the middle ground when one side only seeks to end the other and “the other” is defined as anyone who doesn’t toe the line? Just look at how easy it is to find right wing politicians using death threats in campaign ads (and then claiming it’s a joke or that their a victim of the “woke mob” when the predictable backlash occurs). Also look at how easy it is to find people who aren’t exactly hiding their disturbing desire to murder political opposition.
So a question any of us could pose to someone who starts with that “all sides” comment is “are you, personally, listening to all sides?” Take that YouTube feed and weigh it against your opinion on trans people, for example. Are you listening to a content creator who’s actually trans? And I mean actually listening to their perspective, not showing up just to troll. Same thing with most of this type of argument. If someone who says “listen to all sides” about BLM, Women’s rights, LGBTQ equality, etc., without actually taking the time to listen to perspectives from people who actually come from these demographics, whatever they say has no real validity. They’re not offering a perspective, they just want their feelings validated. Take the police response to BLM—they bitch about having their feelings hurt instead of critically examining the difference between how policing works and how the people they allegedly serve want policing to work. They can’t take constructive criticism the same way an intro writing student can’t handle a comment about a confusing paragraph.
With that said, if a person is coming from outside the status quo on a lot of topics, they probably don’t have to do as much heavy lifting to understand their opponents’ perspectives. There’s a regressive, radical right that serves as the cudgel protecting what’s already in place that seems edgy or beholden to some kind of “uncomfortable truth” to an uncritical mind, but there’s nothing these figures protect that isn’t already familiar to everyone. Nobody is providing interesting insights on why capitalism is good, because we live within that system and see it every day to the point where some people think it’s a part of nature instead of a social construct. Black people don’t need to put any effort to learn white perspectives because everyone is steeped in the white point of view at nearly every turn. Just look at who’s on TV all the time. A trans person doesn’t need to understand the reason behind a transphobe’s rhetoric or “jokes.” Women grow up learning everything about men who are under no real obligation to understand the reality of a routine pelvic exam. Arguments by individuals in already protected and highly represented demographics are pointless if they’re not written by people who’ve legitimately considered views outside their experience. The trust fund kid people watch on FOX has never uttered a valid thing in his life. How could he? He knows almost nothing about the world in which the rest of us live.
It takes real work to legitimately see “all sides.” It takes self awareness and incredible discipline. It takes looking in the mirror and seeing exactly who we are and then making sure we spend actual time listening to people who don’t live in that mirror. Will we agree with everything they say? Maybe not. But we can’t have a valid opinion without at least trying to see points of view by people who aren’t us.
Take it from me, someone who looks like the status quo. The slim margin of validity in my perspective on anything is that I take extra effort to make sure I am in regular contact with perspectives from people whose lived experiences are something I can never fully understand. I’ve been wrong often. So much so that the only thing I assume anymore is that I’ll probably discover I’m wrong shortly after opening my big mouth. But one thing I know for certain is that any perspective a person can take that devalues human life or offers cruelty, humiliation, and violence as a solution has no real place at the table and it’s long past time to stop pretending otherwise. Another thing I’ve learned is that people who legitimately seem to review multiple perspectives consistently seem to view most issues as complex and nuanced. They may have a hard clear boundary where the millions of right answers stop and the wrong answers begin, and they may have a list of sources they’d suggest if you’re interested in knowing more about the perspective, but they don’t seem to market repackaged versions of the most horrific ideologies humans have encountered in the last few hundred years as part of an “all sides are equally valid” argument.