5 Tactics MAGA Uses to Avoid Discourse (First Half)

In the first half of the episode, we discuss 5 tactics MAGA uses to avoid healthy discourse in conversations and ways you can identify and steer the conversation in a healthier direction.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to
welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our
mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding. I am
your host, Ramsey's Ja.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
He is Ramsey's Jaw, I am q Ward. You are
tuned into Civic Cipher.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
That you are stick around today. We're going to do
something special because it is necessary. I want you to
stick around a little. Later on in the show, We're
going to have a nice long conversation where we stretch
our legs. We are going to discuss an essay written
by Stacey Muhammad entitled the Politics of Consequence. This is

(00:35):
something that she explores. This is where she explores narratives
that are built into the culture using media, television, movies,
things like this, and how those can affect our view
of each other on the ground. And we've actually covered
other stories that kind of do the same thing. We're

(00:59):
going to connect all those for you. But we really
think that that subtle influence really does affect how we
regard each other, and this can be particularly damaging for
marginalized communities. Historically marginalized communities, in particular black and brown communities.
We're gonna hear from Q Ward the modern cost of racism.
This is something that Q has sent over and we're
going to take today to make sure that we get

(01:20):
a chance to actually lean in to what racism costs.
We have had conversations over the years. John Hopebrien comes
to mind. But you know, we have some some audio
to share with you and of course Qu's thoughts, and
we're gonna start off the show talking about the five
tactics MAGA uses to avoid discourse. And this is not

(01:41):
meant to unfairly pick on MAGA. This is really pointed toward,
you know, trying to establish meaningful dialogue with people that
consider themselves to be MAGA supporters. And we're going to
share from Politic Revolt right now though, and as always,
would like to start off with a feel good feature.
Today's Ebony Excellence comes from the route Spelman's graduating class

(02:06):
is getting ready to throw their caps in the air
making history this year. Are the seven, yes, seven Spellman's
sisters who have earned the title of valedictorian because they're
shining academic record and they're on and off campus participation
in research internships and fellowships designed to help make the
future world a better place to celebrate this incredible history

(02:29):
making achievement for the Spelman students. The route did a
deep dive into who they are and what makes them
the students who have been selected to represent their class.
I do want to employ you to check out the
Roots article on these seven sisters. Obviously won't have time
to kind of give you full bios on all seven
of them, but trust me, these are fantastic folks. I

(02:50):
want to share their names because they deserve that much.
The names are Ayana Ringo, Alyssa Richardson, Nia Sorry, Perry,
Coreano White, Sophia Davis, Mariyama Diallo, Alexis Renee Sims. I
think that might be Nia Sarai, Not sorry, Okay Sai.
Oh yeah, Sarai, You're right, sorry, Nia Surai, Perry. Let

(03:12):
me make sure I say that right. And obviously we
chose this because on this show we cover a lot
of heavy topics that you know, sees black people usually
in the worst state, sometimes in the worst moment of
their life. And we are more than that. We are creators.

(03:39):
We are you know, obviously brilliant minds and valedictorians. We
are contributors to society, and you know, this feature exists
so that we can make sure to balance out the
heaviness that this show exists to really cover uh and
try to use the whole sum total of this content
to impact the way things are in this kind of

(04:00):
All right, let's move it on. Five tactics MAGA uses
to avoid discourse. Again, I want to credit the source
for this. This is from Politic Revolt. You're welcome to
search them on all social media platforms. Instagram would be
my recommendation, politic Revolt once again, Q and I, we
spend a lot of time in the space and it

(04:25):
is inevitable that we are confronted. Usually it's in the comments,
but only because that's the easiest place for people to
get their bars off. But in the real world too,
we are confronted by people who think they have something
to get off. They're going to have their gotcha moment
when they see us out in the wild. It never works,

(04:47):
And that's not a brag. Q and I were just
having this conversation. I don't think of myself as a
person that will brag. It doesn't work because it is
often illogical and it is either except dectionally self serving
which I believe to be morally bankrupt. Or these people
are incredibly misinformed, and they use talking points that were

(05:09):
fed to them by these right wing organizations that are
based in hate, and those talking points they use to
shield their hate. In other words, this flawed logic that
masks what often ends up being really prejudiced, and so
they don't really have a solid ground to stand on

(05:31):
if they want to make a logical, informed argument when
it comes to us. But one of the things that
we've noticed, and again politic Revote has pointed this out,
is that there's a lot of things that you can
expect when you engage in conversation what you might hope
to be healthy conversation with folks who are on the
MAGA side of things. Q usually gets on me because

(05:53):
sometimes I actually do have conversations and good faith with
some maga folks tripping, and I know that you know,
if they're maga at this point in the game, then
that you know they've had to They've made up their
mind long before they met Ramses, They've seen all the
things happen, and they know kind of where they are.

(06:15):
It's just odd that they would bring that energy to
me because everybody knows what I stand for. It's not
like everybody, it's literally what I do. So, without further ado,
let's get into kind of what you can expect in
terms of the tactics again that MAGA uses to avoid

(06:37):
healthy discourse in hopes. Again, this is our point, in
hopes that you would ultimately be able to find a
way to have a healthy, informative conversation with people who
maybe are standing in their own way and standing in
the way of the logic and the facts, and indeed
the gravity of the moment. So these are methods Trump

(06:57):
cultists use to argue or deflect against logic, data, and science.
These are the five core tactics they use to exhaust
discussions and make sure a real conversation or debate never happens. First,
and the one that you might hear most often is
called the straw man. Here's where you point out that
Trump started a war without going through Congress. Your mega

(07:19):
counterpart responds and says, you hate America and want to
see it destroyed. You never said anything of the sort,
but now you're defending your patriotism instead of talking about
that war. Your original point is completely deflected, and then
they are gloating like they want a conversation because they
argue against something you never said. That's called the straw
man fallacy. They take your actual point, replace it with

(07:42):
something adverse, and argue against that fallacy instead. To be fair,
the people that are this is ramses. These are my
words now. The people that do this effectively will often
replace your initial point with a point that is perhaps
adjacent or very closely related. And so they're conflating two

(08:03):
things that an objective person might see that connection. But
you might be having a conversation about the nuance because
a lot of times the nuances where the disagreement takes place,
you know, for reasonable among reasonable people who are debating
on good faith. And so again you have to be
mindful of that and kind of hold your ground. This

(08:25):
is the singular point I was making when I said
that thing what you said was not what I said.
And again they're very good at kind of getting close
to that and conflating it. And so I will continue
again from these are now the words again of politic
revote they go. In nineteen sixty, psychologist Peter Watson at

(08:46):
the University College London found that the brain does not
look for truth they're looking for the fastest way to
protect what they already believe. So their brain is not
asking if you're right. Their brain is asking how to
make you look wrong. Your question the war, you're siding
with the enemy. Address Trump's criminal convictions. You have Trump

(09:07):
derangement syndrome. By the way, the guy that came up
with that Trump derangement syndrome, I think he got arrested
for some kitty. Of course he did. Anyway, you ask
about deportations to foreign prisons, detensions with no to do process.
This is something that we talk about quite a bit
on the show Ice, namely and those deportations. They'll claim

(09:30):
that you want open borders. That's again not something that
either of us have ever said. They never want to
argue with what anyone actually says. They just try to
make sure that your argument never gets hurt. And so
this is sort of a blanket, a wet blanket that
they try to throw on the point that you're making
instead of having again that good faith engagement with the

(09:50):
very point that you're making in the conversation. So again
that is the straw man fallacy. And we got a
few of these to go through. Oh, I want to
make sure that you know we have a little bit
of back and forth, and I know that this is
something that you've encountered to, so continue, all right, Well,
then we'll move it on. What about ism? This is

(10:11):
something that I definitely know that you talked about before. Okay,
so what about isms? Let's say you address Trump firing
his attorney general, and then they say, well, what about
Hillary's emails? Okay, you mentioned the war started without Congress,
and they say, well, what about Biden? And they never

(10:31):
answer a single question because they know they can't answer it.
This is called what about ism. We're all extremely familiar
with this one. It goes all the way to the top.
Instead of responding to your point, they drag a completely
different issue into the conversation to divert away from the
original point. Psychologist Daniel Cainman at Princeton University found that
the brain can only track a limited number of ideas

(10:53):
at the same time. The moment someone introduces a second problem,
the brain splits its attention. Now, if you add a
third and a fourth problem, the brain can't keep up
and loses the original threat. They do this to exploit
the brain's attention or lack thereof, and they do this
because they see other people do it and it works.
It's not like they have some grand plan or anything.
Every time they say what about, they're not making a point,

(11:15):
they're running away from yours. What aboutism is not a defense.
It's a weak person's confession that they have no arguments,
so they deflect. Again, this is a tactic, that is,
we'll say, a similar tactic to the straw Man argument.
Not the same, of course. And again this is something
that I saw this on c SPAN recently, where I

(11:40):
couldn't name the folks I was watching on c SPAN,
but what I did see said there was a person
that was addressing someone in Trump's cabinet saying, or it
was Pete Hegseth. Actually they were saying, you know, Pete Hegseth,
you're the secretary of should be defense, but the secretary
of war. And you've seen the president go back and

(12:05):
forth on this, that and the third. Do you feel
that he is mentally capable of continuing to serve as
the commander in chief of the United States of America
in your opinion? And instead of addressing the points that
they made to say, hey, Donald Trump has done this,
He's been inconsistent with this. He's you know, we've had

(12:26):
some problems, and it's concerning the American people. What do
you say to people in so far as your assessment
of his mental faculties. Pete Hegsas says, did you ask
any of these questions of Joe Biden? And the representative
those questioning him said, well, sir, Joe Biden is not
the president of the United States of America. He says, well,
when he was, were you questioning him? And I forget

(12:48):
the line of where the rest of the questions went,
but I think it was something like, well, I wasn't
serving in this position when Joe Biden was a president,
so I did not have the ability to ask him
that Joe Biden did in Niggause the war blah blah blah,
Donald Trump is the president blah blah blah. The same
the third and so she kind of held her composure.
But what he illustrated was again this idea of what

(13:10):
about ism. So a couple of things to bear in mind.
And again, if you give them enough times to shift
direction in the conversation, it's more likely that you're going
to lose that original threat. Important to point out before
you move on. They use this to exploit the brain's
attention is nonsense. The next sentence is the truth. They

(13:30):
do this because they see other people do it in
your work now it is. They're not thinking with that
level of sophistication. They're not scholars who say I'm going
to use this eployse tatics your.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Mind and that No, they saw somebody on do it
on television. They don't actually have anything for usually just
talking points. So you're right, yeah, and it's the same
talking point. Ye, that's how you know. That's like a
pathulet they hand out. They all say the same thing.
Ramsey and I almost laugh when it happens. It's like, oh,
we thought we were about to have a real conversation,
but I have a conversation with somebody. You just one
of those.

Speaker 1 (13:58):
Things and often bunked, well debunked, and so we're like, oh,
And to even try to show them that the point
that they're trying to make is debunked, they just kind
of it's like trying to catch a weasel. It's very
very challenging. And so again, if you're moving forward in
good faith, you have to know that this is coming
your way. You have to remain diligent and vigilant. I

(14:22):
suggest writing the point that you're going to make, and
then let them do whatever they're going to do, and
then looking back at the point this is what I said,
This is the point I'm making. Are we prepared to
now have this conversation? Because writing things down makes it,
you know, static and rigid and inflexible, and a lot
of times you need some rigidity to get through a

(14:44):
good faith conversation with people who subscribe to this way
of thinking. I'll continue, yeah, please, okay, all right? So
ad hominem number three. You point out Trump is breaking
the law. They say you have Trump derangement syndrome and
you hate America. Trump is still breaking the law, but
now the conversation is deflected to whether you are crazy

(15:05):
instead of what Trump actually did. This is called an
ad hominem attack. To put it simply, they are just
insulting you to avoid answering any questions. The goal is
to attack your credibility before your argument even gets evaluated.
This is something that we deal with a lot here. Right,
Are you a lawyer? Right? Not? You know? Do you

(15:29):
have lawyers? Do you consult with lawyers? Are you a lawyer?
And if we are a lawyer, Well do you have
a PhD? And if you do have a PhD, have
you ever worked in politics? And if you have worked
in politics, have you ever been the president? You know
that at some point they will there is no line.
At some point they will find something that you haven't done.
It's to discredit you, right, not that I'm a reasonably

(15:49):
informed American citizen and this is what I do professionally,
and that's really what most people. And if you have
something that you can introduce in terms of facts journalists
sicarly credible sourcing or academic sourcing for your facts, I'm
happy to take a look at it and we can
have that conversation. I've had to, just by the virtue

(16:10):
of the fact of the work that I do, had
to change my mind several times, and I eat crow
on these very same microphones when I apologize to my
listeners for having made a mistake, or I will inform
them of hey, I have a change of opinion. Here's
the new information I have and this is why this
now makes more sense to me. Had to do it

(16:30):
many times. Okay, it's the people that use this ad
hominem stuff where you know, Okay, you're coming after me personally,
that we're not about to have a good faith conversation.
You're now starting to insult me. You want this to
turn into a fight, so I'll get frustrated. So again,
another thing to bear in mind, if you're having a
good faith conversation, you have to know this as a tactic.
Keep your composure. I suggest writing it down. It works

(16:51):
for me. All right, let me continue. Okay, number three?
All right, here we were. The goal is to attack
your credibility before your argument even gets evaluated. It's psychologist
Robert I think this is Kaldini at Arizona University found
that many people do not evaluate arguments in a vacuum.
They decide whether to listen based on who's talking at

(17:14):
Hominem makes the audience question you whether you are even
worth listening to before they even engage with what you said.
They can't argue facts, so they come after you instead,
and the moment you start defending yourself, the argument is
over and they have avoided answering any questions. So that's
kind of the end there. You want to continue, you

(17:35):
got something there, Just keep going.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
I'm glad that we're doing this because if we encounter
this with almost everyone that we come across, knowing exactly
what we do. Imagine, like you said, the lay person
at Thanksgiving dinner, or at lunch at work, or just
talking to friends in a group chat, not having any
weapons or tools struct to counter what we know for sure.

Speaker 1 (18:03):
Happens every time. Yep, every time.

Speaker 2 (18:06):
So I'm just kind of thrilled that we're doing We
need to do another show where the whole show is
sugg just that.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Yeah, we inside examples. Yeah, yeah, from the real world.
So I'm not mad at that. Okay, So let's move
it on number four. This one is the burden of
proof flip. All right, Charlie Kirk built his entire career
on this trick. Goes on to say he would show
up to college campuses, make wild claims with no evidence,

(18:33):
and then demand that students disprove him on the spot.
It was never a real debate. It was an ambush
on unprepared kids. This is called the burden of proof flip.
The person is sorry. The person making the claim is
always responsible for proving the claim. You show them a
court ruling. They claim the judge is corrupt. You show
them a study. The science is corrupt. You show them

(18:54):
a news report, the outlet is fake news. Every piece
of evidence you bring just gets added to the conspiracy.
There's no evidence they will accept because accepting evidence was
never part of the agenda. Psychologist Daniel Kinman found that
once someone convinces themselves of something, their brain treats every
piece of supporting evidence as proof and every piece of
contradicting evidence as part of their cover up or conspiracy.

(19:19):
Kirk was never really debating anyone. He was running a scam. Again,
this is the words of these folks. In a real debate,
the person making the claim has to prove their claim
to be true against another individual who was equally prepared.
Kirk never proved anything. He just demanded they disprove him
and call it a win. If they couldn't, that's not
a debate. That is a weak but effective scam. Because

(19:41):
he targeted kids who are under twenty years old. Most
of these people have no knowledge. They repeat what they
hear and call it an argument. They're not actually trying
to debate, they're trying to feel superior while pretending to
know things. This is another one that is kind of
strange because some of the things cannot be proven. They're

(20:05):
like faith based, and I don't mean faith based, like
I believe in God. But while we're here, let's go
with that. Okay, I'm going to show up, I ramses
Jah is going to show up on a campus and
I'm going to say I'm going to put up a
sign and a chair and I'm gonna say God exists.
Prove me wrong. Since the whole entire basis of that

(20:28):
belief is faith based, there is no evidence, scientific evidence
that anyone can show to prove or disprove it.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
And the most masterful trick with that is you're putting
the burden of proof on the other exactly that's within
yourself as expert, but you prove it.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
Yeah, And the only thing that you can prove to
me is that your faith lies in a different logic
tree I suppose, or a different you know, paradigm and
or the same right. But you cannot disprove the paradigm

(21:08):
in which my faith exists because it only exists in mind.
I could tell you, hey, I witnessed miracles, God talked
to me, blah blah blah, and you can't prove that
that didn't happen, correct, because you weren't there, right, And
so similarly, you know, and even if you do have
some data, a lot of times and Charlie Kirk wasn't

(21:31):
the only person. There's a lot of people that do
this sort of thing, and not all of them have
stages like Charlie Kirk's. A lot some of these people
walk up to me and Qan airports or in normal
life where we live by our houses or whatever, and
you know, they'll say, hey, so whatever the argument is,
you know, it really doesn't matter. But they'll say, how

(21:51):
do you prove that whatever the justice system wasn't weaponized
to go after Donald Trump? And again, everything that we
do on this show, everything that we do in real
life as a result, because our life is at least
a knowledge that we take into our day to day interactions,
is based off of the knowledge that we accumulate doing

(22:14):
this journalistically credible research on and for this program means
that we have verifiable sources. But just like this says,
people will attack the sources that you're listening to the
left wing you know media. Okay, oh, well, you know
those those schools are there, they're you know, schools are

(22:36):
left wing in doctrination, Chambers okay, And one of the
things that I've I usually see Q knows this, he's laughing.
Q knows this. But one of the things that I
seed up front is that the truth, the truth often frequently,
majority of the time, has a liberal bias to it,

(22:56):
a progressive slant to it, right, and that is just
the truth, the objective truth. The thing is you're more
likely to find this is not ramses. I don't have
the data in front of me, but at please google it,
and if I'm wrong, tell me, Please tell me. You
find me at Ramsey's job, crucify me. But I know
I'm not because this is not something I've come across.
Once again, we do journalistic incredible sources here. The lies

(23:22):
that are found in politics, the vast majority of them
come from the right wing. I didn't say all of them,
so don't come at me with that. I said the
vast majority of the lies come from the right wing.
Historically this has been true conservatives, and those lies are
often based in prejudice, faith based elements that cannot be

(23:47):
proven or disproven. And if they can be proven, the
data that is being used to prove the talking points
are half baked at best. They lack critical context. Remember
critical race theory. They've taught that critical context. You know
why Republicans tried to attack critical race theory. It's so

(24:09):
that they would not have to suffer the consequences of
enduring the critical context when they continue to spew their
racist talking points. Thirteen percent of the population commits seventy
percent of the crime. No, thirteen percent of the population
gets arrested for that many crimes. And let's talk about
the why. That's the part of the conversation they never

(24:30):
want to have. They never want to have. Okay, So,
who's committing all these crimes against children since you're so
dead set on protecting them. Oh, it turns out that's
white men. Have we ever had that conversation? Right? So
again these ad hominem stuff or is that what I'm saying?
We'll find it so oh no, sorry, the burden of
proof flip and the ad hominem stuf while we're here

(24:54):
is again a tactic that is often used while I'm
here too. I want to make sure that I don't
unfairly pick on white men. I know, white men or
my brothers. I'll always say that as often as I
have a mic and an audience. I do know that
many white men are aware of this data, but the
black data and the white men data, and are taking
meaningful steps to change that. But it's important to provide

(25:18):
context for all of these things. All right, Let's get
to this last point here, the slippery slope fallacy. You
say the government shouldn't be able to detain and deport
people without due process. That's something we definitely said on
the show. They say you want to let criminals pour
into the country. You never said anything about criminals, but
now they're arguing about something you never brought up. This
is called the slippery slope fallacy. They take one reasonable

(25:41):
idea and claim it will automatically lead to the most
extreme outcome imaginable. Man, if that don't sound like a
Trump supporter, And I say it's fear based often, and
you push back gently sometimes and say that it is
hate based. More likely it's tape based. But it is

(26:03):
the fear basis that allows them to get this bar
off and go to the extreme. And now you're dealing
with the extreme stuff. Let me get back to the conversation.
I'll let you kind of wrap it up here. They
create an extreme fallacy to deflect from your statement, no evidence,
no logical steps, They're just creating fear. Psychologist Paul Ekman
at the University of California, San Francisco found that fear
overrides rational thinking faster than any other emotion. Once the

(26:25):
brain perceives the threat, it stops evaluating evidence and starts
looking for an exit. The slippery slope is implemented to
trigger the fear response before the brain can ask whether
the threat is even real. Scare people enough and they
stop thinking. Fox News and people who stop thinking are
easy to control. Oh my god, just ask Fox News
and news Max. It says it right there. So so yeah, Q.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
Sometimes the points are made before we speak, like what
do I say after that? Just asks Fox News and Newsmax,
like not figuratively, literally to the tune.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
Of how much money? Uh it was uh close to
the three quarters were billion? It was more than three
quarters with billion that much? I know. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
So what's interesting is the slippery slope and the flip
are used in tandem.

Speaker 1 (27:13):
Sometimes, right they will.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
They will flip that fear onto you and or accuse
you of doing it. I was called a fear mongerer. Yeah,
that's right by real friends of ours for responding to
a threat that was actually happening in real life, were
spreading in real time against my children. Me responding to

(27:36):
that and making it know that it was happening made
me the fear mongerer who was brainwashed by left wing media.
Confusing because as you said, that was not a response
to what was happening. The response was you're that's not
happening to your kids.

Speaker 1 (27:53):
Nope. The question wasn't are your kids?

Speaker 2 (27:56):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (27:58):
Someone was made.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
Uncomfortb by what I was dealing with, and for whatever
one of these fallacies we want to introduce something about
the way that they think, feel and maybe even vote
was revealed in that moment. Yeah, because it auto like
it defaulted to one of those I was the fearmongering,
brainwash left wings.

Speaker 1 (28:21):
It's crazy for.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
Responding to a threat by our government, unfortunately against my children.
It's a scary.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
Place to be man, if I may please, for folks
that don't know this part of the story, the threat
and I saw this, The threat was can I tell
a little bit about it? Okay? So the threat was
ICE agents had been called to the school where your
children go to school. ICE agents had made it known.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
Rewind the Board of Education in the state of Arizona
in response to Trump lifting what was essential protection protections
for schools, churches, mosque hospitals. There were actually places where
you couldn't go. The President lifted that, and Arizona raised
their hand to say yes, sir. So the school reached

(29:15):
out to me to let me know, hey, ice activity
at the school is imminent.

Speaker 1 (29:21):
Yep, that was it, okay, and then you had to
leave the studio to go get your children from school.
I won't go into the details, but your children are vulnerable.
A lot of people's children are vulnerable to that, and
so again, this wasn't imagine. This was a real threat
to your actual family that you had to respond to.

(29:41):
And so having a what is it a fair conversation
with someone on the MAGA side of things is just
a tough thing to do, despite lived evidence. So stay tuned.
We'll be back on more after this