George Rebane
The ongoing debates on current issues such as budget, deficits, gun control, healthcare, climate change, immigration reform, … highlight one of the most robust aspects of how Left and Right thinking are fundamentally different. As witnessed by RR’s Liberal Mind category, this is a long abiding subject of interest to me, and apparently becoming so to others inhabiting the polar regions of our ideological globe. There is something fundamental and basic to how both sides present and argue their positions on the issues. And since RR readers fervently debate these issues, I want to introduce a couple of new terms from the technical field that, perhaps, best capture the meaning of the different approaches.
A pair of arcane terms in science and technology that have yet to follow ‘feedback’, ‘bandwidth’, ‘in the loop’, ‘cloud’, … into the common lexicon are ‘synoptic’ and ‘topical’. Dictionaries often define synoptic as “affording or taking a general view of the principal parts of a subject”. In science and technology synoptic denotes notions that refer to an area in the large, be it the entire history or time window of a process, the overall design of a large-scale system, the complex inter-relationships of this with all of those, or a stream/collection of data in a database. A synoptical argument captures the large scale of the subject that may even include objectives and measures of utility. Something synoptic is of encompassing scope.
The other end of the semantic notion of scope is topical which denotes anything of limited scope. Again, the more common definition of topical is that “pertaining to or dealing with matters of current or local interest.” But in the broader context I’m discussing here, things topical are limited in time and space, they are arguments, notions, appeals to the here and now, or entail some specific example(s) of a larger scheme, examples that need not be at all representative of the whole. This last point is very important in the understanding of the proper meaning of topical. Specific examples/incidents are sometimes also called anecdotal, and therefore a topical description of something subsumes the semantic of anecdotal examples, occasions, happenings, samples, etc.
With this understanding, I now can make a more powerful proposition regarding how the Left and the Right contend on issues in the public arena. The Left overwhelmingly presents its support and/or promotion of ideals and issues in distinctly topical frameworks. Whether it is healthcare or gun control, we are regaled with stories of a specific individual who is denied a critical medical procedure, or have eleven bullets pumped into their little body.
The Right’s position on the same issues seeks to convince on the basis of the relevant synoptics. Their contentions cite the scope and breadth of the problem, the overall objective of any solution, attaching numbers and statistics wherever possible. In their synoptical approach, they hope to strike a responding chord of reason in the listener, to illustrate that the solution to the problem needs to address the more encompassing factors.
And in that difference lies the rub. Those who take the topical tack immediately appeal to a larger audience, because the barrier to understanding judiciously selected topical arguments is between very low and non-existent. Pandering politicians are the virtuosi of the topical.
While the synoptic perspective is arguably the proper one when making policy/decisions to apply across a broad landscape, it is a perspective that requires two things in short supply – intelligence and attention span. Even if the Left believes it has the proper synoptical arguments or rebuttals, it will not use them. Instead, they wisely come back with yet another instantly accessible topical bon mot. And correctly so, because talking to their faithful constituencies, topical sticks.
The double problem for the Right is that countering with topicals doesn’t work very well. When a picture of a ten-year-old lying there in a pool of blood with eleven bullet holes in her is painted, it is hard to compete with a story of how an elderly widow scared off a drug-crazed burglar with her gun. And no matter what the (synoptical) numbers connected with such incidents with the old lady, out there in television land such numbers, no matter how compelling, don’t trump the topical little girl dead on her classroom floor.
That such arguments work with the sheeple is understandable, but that they also work with progressives claiming reason is still a puzzle. Studies like the ones recently completed at the University College London (here) and University of Virginia (here) are beginning to shed some light. However, even a complete understanding of the clinical factors involved cannot bring comfort to anyone on the Right of the argument.
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