The Argument Conservatives Must Concede - updated after a year

--Revised on 1/2/2022--

As we prepare for the one-year anniversary of the first time America failed to have a peaceful transition of power, supporters of the former president need to remember the following:

It’s not enough to hear you disavow those who violently stormed the Capitol. 

We need you, as conservatives, to acknowledge that the former president did immeasurable harm to the nation.  

Here’s why we need such an explicit rejection: When we told you this was coming, you dismissed us as dupes or pawns. 

For years, at family reunions, during backyard bull sessions, in comment threads, you've been telling us our worst fears were a figment of the mainstream media's imagination – a propaganda campaign led by the political class – a plot conceived to get your guy out of office by any means necessary. 

You've yelled at us, called us hateful, and said we were foolish to suggest that the Former President was abusing his power or undermining democratic norms. 

When we presented proof, you told us the proof was a lie. You told us we were suckers to fall for the lie.

And now it's settled. He is the monster we were warning you about. 

• He gathered a crowd of his followers on the day Congress was set to certify the election results.
• He assembled the crowd near the Capitol.
  
• He told them they had been robbed.
• "All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats, which is what they're doing." 
• He told them they had to fight.
• "And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."
• He told his followers their country was being destroyed.
• "We're going to have somebody in there that should not be in there and our country will be destroyed and we're not going to stand for that."
• He said they had to stop that from happening.
• "We must stop the steal."
• He told them they could never win if they showed weakness.
• "Because you'll never take back our country with weakness."
• And then he sent them marching to the Capitol as the legislators and his vice president were in the middle of the certification process.

The crowd beat a cop as they sang the National Anthem. They waved flags emblazoned with their leader’s name. They broke windows to gain entry to the Capitol. They chanted calls for a public execution. They stopped a session of Congress. And they did it because the Former President told them to do it. 

He used his power as our nation's leader to make that happen.

Allow me to repeat this: You don’t get to act surprised. We told you it was going to happen. You just wouldn’t listen.

And as a follow-up: You don't get to deny what happened. The guilty pleas are flowing now. This was perpetrated by proud Trump supporters who thought violence was an appropriate way to seat a president. 

You've tried to deny what happened. You've tried to downplay the severity. You said we were wrong. You told us we had been lied to by the media and the “faux-experts.” You said you were wiser, smarter, better Americans than us. 

But you weren’t. We were right. We were the ones defending democracy. And now you're angry because we are going to require you to acknowledge that. 

Everything we've been saying about the former president was proven true last year. He cultivated a basket of deplorables: Followers willing to spread lies, publicly espouse hateful views, call for violence, and yes, willing to thwart the will of the people to hold onto political power. 

If you try to justify, diminish, or dismiss the disgraceful actions of the former president and his followers, we will reject your anti-democratic ideas. We will shame you and label you unamerican. If you attempt to use force to back your views, we will fight back and we will win. The law and decency are on our side. 

On Reaching Middle Age

I started maintaining this blog back in February of 2006, shortly after turning 30. 

After 15 years of sporadically producing informal writing about the ways we argue, I have reached middle age. At least, I think I have. 

As my 45th birthday approached, I asked, "When does a person become middle-aged?" 

Turns out there's an argument to be had there.

According to the US Census Bureau, I'm already five years in. They claim middle age begins as early as 40. The American Psychiatric Association's DSM, however, pushes the start of middle age up to 55. They're giving me a decade before I have to apply the label. 

When I bump into these kinds of disagreements, I'll often look for a more recent and/or reliable publication to settle things. According to a peer-reviewed article in a 2020 issue of The Lancet, middle age starts at 45. 

The article is less than a year old, and The Lancet is a widely respected medical publication. So I think I'll go with... Of course, it was a 1998 article in The Lancet that gave us the anti-vax movement, and according to an October article in The Lancet, the spreading of that kind of disinformation presents a threat to public safety.  

I suppose someone reading this could use The Lancet's argument to present a strong case against using The Lancet to support my claim. 

And there we have it. Once again, either everything or nothing's settled. It all depends on how we argue.

I've spent these years rolling a question around in the back of my mind, "How should we argue?"

Here in the middle of, or at the threshold of, or on the cusp of middle age, I'm ready to make some recommendations on that front:

• We should argue less and inquire more.
• We should ignore unimportant arguments.
• We should engage the important arguments.
• We should always ask why we're arguing.
• We should take arguments only as seriously as they merit.