How to Avoid Being Hustled By Activists

Photo by Tania Malréchauffé on Unsplash

Will banning certain guns make society safer? Is America a safe place for women? Are fundamentalist Christians really taking over the Republican Party? Regardless of the truth, you can bet some activist groups are trying to spin things for their benefit, not yours. They’ll use vague language, cherry-picked statistics, and creative framing of a problem to sell their own view of things. Now, these things can be done without malicious intent, but you can’t assume any activist presentation of an issue is 100% accurate. You need to be open to effective arguments and facts while also being a little bit skeptical.

Weasel Words

We’ve seen enough loaded language that maybe I don’t need to say too much. Anyone who pitches their idea by writing about a ‘crisis’ or an ‘invasion’ they are probably exaggerating or lying to get attention and sell ideas that can’t stand on their own. Here’s another problem that might be even bigger: terms that can mean lots of different things.

Will banning certain firearms make society safe? Are home invasions happening “all of the time”? Is the United States really the best place in the world in which to raise a family? No one can say. We don’t know what “all of the time” means or “best” or “safe” for that matter.

So, beware of absolutes. Safety cannot be absolute but people can definitely be more or less safe. To listen to gun control opponents, the gun control advocates are morons who think banning “scary-looking guns” will make us safe. That isn’t what gun control supporters want. They may talk about making society safe and some of them may have a rather simplistic understanding of how things work, but most people are (I hope) smart enough to understand a single new law isn’t going to stop gun violence.

Those people probably think something very different, such as: “Banning assault-style rifles will make society safer by making it harder for deranged or violent individuals to shoot multiple people very quickly.” That’s a nuanced position that is very different from “We have to keep our children safe by banning weapons that are only good for mowing people down in large numbers!!!”

Pick the “Right” Statistics

We know what cherry-picking is but might overlook it when it comes to causes that tug the heartstrings or stories that reinforce our existing beliefs. Be careful about any numbers that political pundits and activists use to sell their cause. This statistics thing could almost fill a book alone, but look out for these three things:

1. Numbers that come from an unidentified source
2. Graphs and charts — they are easy to manipulate
3. Using two numbers to claim a trend is emerging, because you can’t know from two figures

And, finally, don’t assume the numbers you read have anything to do with the problem or the solution.

Frame Things Dishonestly

What are we talking about? This isn’t a question about that cryptic subheading! What we are talking about might not be what we should be talking about. Influential radio hosts, politicians, and YouTubers may “frame” or present an issue in a dishonest or incorrect way. Let’s look at outright dishonesty first.

Is the minimum wage too low? Progressives are pretty sure it is, while conservatives disagree. Here we have two problems — What does “too low” even mean? You can be tricked into overlooking that question if I dishonestly use the cost of housing to show that the federal minimum wage is too low. You may have seen the meme explaining that no one anywhere in the USA can afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment on minimum wage. What standard of living should the minimum wage supply? The legislation that established it, well, could have been more helpful on that point:

The vagueness here and almost everywhere a social problem comes up is a Big Problem. We don’t have a precise definition of so many things. This makes it easy to get hustled by dishonest activists. This is because when you aren’t talking about things that can be measured, it is easier to be slippery with your logic. Consider the federal minimum wage.

Now, people are free to have their opinions on how high the minimum wage should be, or if there should BE a minimum wage. Those are two different issues. A talking head or activist might shift gears so they can talk about reasons to abolish the minimum wage or raise it to some arbitrary number.

People with agendas might shy away from defining what the minimum wage should do by using figures. This vagueness gives them room to attack minimum wage laws. You should be above the federal poverty level if you work 40 hours a week at minimum wage for 52 weeks per year. This is a precise definition. Either it happens or it doesn’t — in which case, reasonable people can insist the feds recalculate and adjust the federal minimum wage.

The federal minimum wage is just a bare minimum that applies across the nation. States and cities can adopt higher minimums that better reflect living costs. The $15 per hour figure could be what it takes to lift someone out of poverty in some places, but saying we need a federal $15/hour minimum is a bit shady. After all, isn’t the number supposed to be enough to keep someone just about the poverty level? If $8 an hour does that in Arkansas, maybe the state should go with that figure.

Focusing on the Wrong Thing

Sometimes activists introduce an issue by talking about one aspect of the issue or one number related to the issue. They expect us to follow their lead and consider their “thing” what’s most important. Gun violence is a good example of focusing too much on one thing where the problem of violence obviously has many aspects to it. However, and this is the important point — if you already decided that the country needs tougher gun control laws, you won’t notice the problem.

Stories are a great way to direct your reader’s focus to something that serves the cause. This might not be a good thing, as far as actually solving the problem. Poverty and violence are complex things. Stories about welfare cheats or homeless people who know run small businesses, well, they don’t tell us anything. Those stories just tend to reinforce a demonstrable lie — that poor people mostly deserve it. Welfare cheats are lazy bums who want free money. Homeless people could collect themselves and support themselves if they wanted to.

Two things can be true at the same time. This might seem like common sense, or it might cause confusion. Anyway, let’s go back to the welfare cheats. People can game the system to get more money than they deserve AND a taxpayer-funded welfare system can help many people escape from poverty.

Things You Can Do

You can learn to evaluate social problems and their solutions while still backing organizations or causes you care about. But don’t let charitable urges short-circuit your critical thinking, and don’t let hustlers sell fake claims about problems or their solutions. Here are four concrete tips that can help:

1. Stop listening to people who don’t understand the issue any better than you do. Get your analysis/opinion/evaluation from people who’ve done lots of work on the subject whether it is climate change, guns, or animal rights.
2. Stop watching political commentators, unless they are credentialled experts on the topic. You may want Lauren Boebert or Ilhan Omar to be right, but this doesn’t make them any more wise or knowledgeable.
3. Assume all activists are framing an issue in a way that makes them look good or makes the problem more serious than it really is.
4. Ignore stories that make the problem look super serious. These are almost all propaganda. Climate change is serious enough without giving attention to alarmists who say the earth is dying.

Conclusion

While you educate yourself on a social problem, please be on alert for weasel words, vague language, deflection, and dubious framing. Ideally, we’d be just as cautious if we agree that gun control is stupid or that the USA is #1 but that is unlikely. That’s still important. Being informed makes you a person who can resist being manipulated into wasting time, money, or your vote.