Punching water

Ideologies are gooey and complicated. While formal definitions for ideologies exist, advocates for ideologies often morph them into something more palatable. This makes critiquing certain ideologies very difficult. If you present a case against the formal definition, advocates will disagree with the definition in order to avoid the critique. If you address the advocates themselves, then you are not directly addressing the formal ideology.

This is a no win situation. It feels like punching water. It feels like everything moves out of the way of your critique but once you retract your hand everything goes back to the status quo. Your critique was valid. It was accurate and specific. But it didn't land — or, more accurately, it has no lasting effect.

It’s hard to provide succinct examples of this so here is a hypothetical one. Imagine that a particular political party advocates for three specific policies. The advocates for that party disagree about which policies are the important ones — but all of them agree that this party is the best available.

When you challenge a specific policy, the advocates for the party will point to the other two — suggesting that the second and third policies are enough reason to join the party. But if you address the second policy, suddenly people are saying that the first and third policies are enough reason to join the party.

You just got done arguing against the first policy! But no one engaged with the argument. They just moved out of the way. When you moved onto discussing the second policy, all of the advocates of the first policy reappear.

This is a blatant and absurd example but this is often what it feels like when discussing ideologies. You could systematically attack every point of an ideology but none of the attacks will land. Even if you silence some advocates, they will reappear as soon as you drop that topic.

If find yourself feeling like punching water, stop punching. You are being suckered into a conversation where your opponents are taking advantage of you. The more you get led around in circles the longer they get to preach their talking points. The goal of the conversation isn’t to discover the truth — it is to shout loudly and attract new advocates.