A handy 10-step guide to defending yourself, your country, or your boss.

September 29, 2014 10:19 AM

How to Justify Any Policy, No Matter How Bad It Might Be
posted by Sticherbeast (16 comments total)

Just in time for my next performance evaluation.
posted by Renoroc at 10:27 AM on September 29, 2014

Prepare 3 envelopes?
posted by blue_beetle at 10:32 AM on September 29, 2014 [4 favorites]

He left out "There's explanatory information that can't currently be revealed."
posted by Obscure Reference at 10:46 AM on September 29, 2014 [3 favorites]

Is there another link? I read a bit in this and then it locks me out and wants me to register.

I just started reading it before it locked me out, and I was thinking this was going to be something like that canard where someone increasingly makes excuses that are contradictory and ends with a negation that the event didn't happen, despite the previous denial's assumption it did. I cannot remember the origin or classic formulation of that (anyone know what I am referring to?)

That's what I think about when I see people taking these tasks.
posted by dios at 10:47 AM on September 29, 2014

This reminds me of Robert Greene's book "The 48 Laws of Power" in that it rather blandly states things that One Doesn't Say Out Loud.

But if one is bold enough to listen and learn, one might dare to seize these tools and wield their power -- though at grave risk to the soul/credibility/career.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:54 AM on September 29, 2014

He left out "There's explanatory information that can't currently be revealed."

I don't think that's going to work with my wife.
posted by goethean at 10:58 AM on September 29, 2014 [2 favorites]

dios, I see a popup which you can dismiss in the upper-right corner. Does that work for you?
posted by Sticherbeast at 11:06 AM on September 29, 2014

Yeah, when I close the popup, it redirects me to main page and away from article only to have it happen again when I make my way back to the article. It's ok. I may register later tonight when I am doing my evening reading at home.
posted by dios at 11:32 AM on September 29, 2014

I'll save you the time. Here's all 10 steps, minus the blah blah blah to make this more than a mere listicle:

Step 1: "It's a lie. It never happened."
Step 2: Blame someone else.
Step 3: "OK, they did something bad. But they didn't do it on purpose."
Step 4: "They had no choice."
Step 5: "It was for the greater good."
Step 6: "Everybody does it, and our opponents do it even more than we do."
Step 7: Emphasize restraint. (aka, "It could have been worse.")
Step 8: Assert a special status.
Step 9: Play the guilt card and apologize.
Step 10: The Rumsfeld Defense. -- When all else fails, you can always fall back on the classic Rumsfeld Defense: "Stuff happens."

The Rumsfeld Defense seems pretty lame, but notice that he kept his job for another four years and was never prosecuted for any of the offenses for which he might have been charged. Instead, the Obama White House requested that he (and others) be granted immunity from prosecution. Even a lame alibi sometimes has value.

No, the crimes for which he and others might have been charged would have been a tough battle for anyone, especially the next president. Presidents regularly pardon the criminals from past presidencies.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:01 PM on September 29, 2014 [3 favorites]

something like that canard where someone increasingly makes excuses that are contradictory and ends with a negation that the event didn't happen, despite the previous denial's assumption it did. I cannot remember the origin or classic formulation of that (anyone know what I am referring to?)

Maybe this:

There's a lawyer joke you hear pretty early on in law school. It goes:

What did the lawyer say when accused of breaking a vase?

It's my vase . . .
. . . it was broken when you gave it to me . . .
. . . it was in perfect shape when I gave it back . . .
. . . and I've never seen that vase before in my life.

This is called "arguing in the alternative." Lawyers do it all the time. For some reason it seems to drive non-lawyers absolutely nuts.
[source]

posted by stebulus at 12:01 PM on September 29, 2014 [5 favorites]

We all remember the old joke about the borrowed kettle which Freud quotes in order to render the strange logic of dreams, namely the enumeration of mutually exclusive answers to a reproach (that I returned to a friend a broken kettle): (1) I never borrowed a kettle from you; (2) I returned it to you unbroken; (3) the kettle was already broken when I got it from you. For Freud, such an enumeration of inconsistent arguments of course confirms per negationem what it endeavors to deny - that I returned you a broken kettle...

posted by Sticherbeast at 12:12 PM on September 29, 2014

Ahh yes, that's it. And Sticherbeast's Freud reference led me to the Racehorse Haynes version of which I am most familiar:

Say you sue me because you say my dog bit you. Well, now this is my defense:

My dog doesn't bite.
And second, in the alternative, my dog was tied up that night.
And third, I don't believe you really got bit.
And fourth, I don't have a dog.

filthy light thief: thanks for the summary. Those excuses do all seem painfully familiar.
posted by dios at 1:23 PM on September 29, 2014

Take an ethics class. It gives students a grab bag of plausible sounding moves. If you're willing to play the game without regard for consistency and you're any good at playing with the logic you can make any course of action sound mandatory, not just forgivable.

Never trust an ethicist is what I'm saying.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 2:38 PM on September 29, 2014

The fuck logic riposte:

Yes that's my pickup truck. No--I won't help you move.
posted by mule98J at 7:09 PM on September 29, 2014

Stephen Walt himself is the king of apologia. He's notorious for his travelogue of Libya in 2010, a year before the bloody Libyan revolution. He starts by telling us that Libya

"doesn't feel like other police states I have visited ... there were fewer police or military personnel on the streets than one saw in Franco's Spain ... the overall atmosphere seemed far less oppressive than most places I visited in the old Warsaw Pact."

It's like Burning Man, but on the Mediterranean!

He concludes with the almost comically un-prescient remark:

One hopes that the United States and Libya continue to nurture and build a constructive relationship, and that economic and political reform continues there. (I wouldn't mind seeing more dramatic political reform -- of a different sort -- here too).

It's hard to imagine political reform of any sort that could be as dramatic as Libya, whose dictator died from (apparently) being stabbed in the anus, after having been extracted from the drain in which he took refuge. Libya is presently divided into at least two major portions and any number of smaller ones, and I don't think anyone really knows what's going on there.

What really gets me, though, is his article on the massacre at Itamar in which a family home was invaded and the inhabitants killed in the most brutal manner imaginable. You don't want to Google it. Walt addresses the massacre in an extraordinary (and much criticised) article which, while saying that he is "appalled", goes on to say that

But while we are at it, we should not spare the other parties who have helped create and perpetuate the circumstances where such crimes are likely to occur. [...]

Tl;dr: blah blah blah, (mostly) Israel's fault.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:05 AM on September 30, 2014

>Stephen Walt himself is the king of apologia.

It's a diverse court of many bingos.
posted by hawthorne at 8:24 AM on September 30, 2014