“Hey; I’m Just Asking Questions!”

How “Just Asking Questions” People Have Upended Normal Discourse
(Part I of my new #MediumMonday Series where I publish a new piece every Monday)

Everyone knows the type. No matter what conversation you’re having (definitely more common with political or current events topics, though) they can’t help themselves. You can almost see it about to happen. The overly eager nodding. The “mmhmms” and “yeas” that are clearly meant to signify they want to speak. Maybe they are even fidgety; toe and finger tapping are good signs. The second that there is an opening, a pause, shit, if someone even takes a breath, they jump in:

“Listen, I know that I’m not an expert, but…” followed by a statement that frankly made the preceding words wholly obvious and unnecessary.

In all of human history, that sentence — “I know I’m not an expert, but” — has never been followed by a lucid or informed thought.

While the loud and uninformed opinion has always been around — many of us know the loud guy at the end of the bar — it’s fortunately been pushed aside, kept in the corner or the few places where that opinion was able to live. The advent of the internet definitely accelerated this process (“It must be true, it was on the internet!”) but even then, dismissing the uninformed opinion was always easy enough. There was always a clear divide between conspiracy theory nonsense and the informed opinion of real journalists, scientists, lawyers, and academics.

The problem with Just Asking Questions (I’m going to abbreviate this right now; JAQ or JAQs going forward) is in the last word; questions. If you pose an utterly ridiculous premise — let’s say “The Pittsburgh Pirates will win the World Series this year” — most people with any passing knowledge of baseball know that my Buccos are in dead last. Now, if you rephrase the ridiculous premise are a question — “Wouldn’t you say that it is possible that the Pirates win the World Series this year?” — any left responding would have to admit that, despite how small the percentage is, that yes, the Pirates could win the World Series this year (“So you’re saying there’s a chance?”)

A statement like this is benign in its implications, getting my hopes up notwithstanding (“Let’s go Buccos!”). When this same tactic finds its way into other areas, though, the results cease to be friendly and naïve; they become dangerous.

Let’s apply this stratagem to something a bit more nefarious. Let’s say someone wanted to make the following claim: “A cabal of wealthy Jewish benefactors have teamed up with South American socialists to hijack the country with fraudulent votes made out of bamboo from China.” Most people are going to see that and dismiss it (let’s ignore the other racist whackjobs — or whackadoodles, as my dad would call them — out there who were already on board with this). And it’s easy to see why. For this statement to actually be true would require tangible proof of a world-wide conspiracy that contradicts what were know to be true about current national and international politics. It’s absurd, it lacks any evidence, and it relies heavily on racist tropes and political fearmongering to do all of the heavy lifting.

But what happens when you rephrase it? Instead of stating it as a fact, if it’s presented as a “question” — “What if…” or “Isn’t it possible that…” etc. The question is still absurd. Once again, anyone with even a passable understanding of the core elements within would be able to recognize it as nonsense.

Here’s the issue. We all know that the burden of proof lies on the person making the accusation. When it’s not a statement of fact, or even just an allegation, but rather a “question” from a person “looking for answers,” it become much easier to sidestep that silly little matter of having, you know, FACTS, and instead places the question into an area of plausibility, a hitherto unanswered question with an infinite number of possible answers. JAQs attempts to legitimize the outlandish and nonsensical by taking a falsehood from our youth — “There’s no such thing as a stupid question” — and turning it into a policy standpoint and belief system on par with the expert consensus.”

Troublingly, this trend of JAQs is making our current social and political discourse increasingly murky. The line between JAQs and the proliferation of fake news is short and straight. Increasingly, Americans are getting worse at detecting nonsense. Perhaps most alarming though, is that we are getting more and more confident that we in fact can differentiate between the two despite evidence that we can’t. Confident and wrong; the new American national motto.

When blatant fear-mongering and wanton ignorance are able to masquerade as legitimate discourse and inquiry, it gets harder and harder to sometimes see the real picture. That used to be problematic enough on its own. It becomes dangerous when it’s the preferred means of conversation and debate for a sizable part of the population. It becomes an existential threat when JAQs become politicians and when an entire political party adopts it as its creed. Throwing out absurd hypotheticals, false equivalencies, and outright logical fallacies does nothing to clarify the situation. it is incredibly easy to construct that JAQ arguments and to throw them out with abandon. Pretty soon, you can inundate the market of ideas with them to the point where they become the dominant discourse.

In a mad scramble to get things back on course, well-meaning experts will devote precious time refuting these claims. In the time it takes to effectively debunk one claim, it’s too late; five more have sprung up. The hydra-esque quality of JAQs make them nearly impossible to stop.

This is exactly the point. Just about anyone who Just Asks Questions (in the vein I’ve been discussing here) knows that they are doing so in bad faith. MAGAs, GQPs, and the new alt-right (aka Nazis) know what they are doing. By muddying the waters it makes it impossible to land anything. If they can confuse and misdirect, obfuscate and mislead, they can effectively stall any conversation forever. It’s like filibustering but even more stupid.

There’s no easy solutions here. Those with the platform to educate the public need to continue doing so. A lot of blame can be placed on the media. We all knew that Rick Santorum was not operating in good faith during his tenure on CNN. And so did CNN. In a vain an misguided effort to present “all the sides” they gave a platform to one of the biggest Just Asking Questions Guys around. Eventually Santorum was fired when even CNN could not tolerate anymore of his shenanigans.

But the best tactic all along would have been simple; don’t give them the platform. Many pundits, academics, and other political experts opined back in 2015 how it was wrong to give Trump so much air time, effectively legitimizing his message. A lot of tears — crocodile for sure but some sincere — have been shed since 2016, as journalists and media executives realized their mistake far too late. Let’s not make that mistake again.