March 2024 – An Active Listener

Stefanie Land, author of Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive, wrote a small section of the book that had gotten under my skin. She questioned the value of charitable acts, and it was an offensive suggestion to me. Still, I couldn’t deny how much I enjoyed the book. Land brings an anecdotal light to the daunting challenges of American poverty – the excruciating work, and the obstacles of government help with a culture that looked down her. With further reflection, Land’s opinions became understandable to me, even if I couldn’t agree with her view on charity.*

Land begins a chapter by describing the faith-based charity work she was part of in her middle-class upbringing. The family had shared Christmas gifts with strangers while sharing the gospel in some way. Land then brings us to her future as a single mom, now receiving similar charities. “Now I’d be opening the door, accepting charity. Accepting that I couldn’t provide for my family. Accepting their small token – a new pair of gloves, a toy – in their impulse to feel good. But there wasn’t any way to put ‘health care’ or ‘child care’ on a list.”

Land seems to render charity as useless, and that people do it only for a sense of pleasure. I read these words as someone from a family who for years set up events to feed the homeless through church. Every Thanksgiving, my father led a team in making 20 turkeys for the community before coming home to make our own. For myself, I had been part of mission projects in college, having hope that my exchanges about faith would help bring a better world. Such memories made me take offense to Land’s comment. Should we have not done these things? Why bother giving then if it doesn’t solve the world’s problems? What’s the point? Land’s words came across to me as simply bitter, and to imply that my inspirations came from a kind of selfishness felt insulting.

It also seemed like her words had a political message rearing its head. We often read about health care and child care as we doom-scroll through headlines. Politicians also speak of these issues with a righteous proselytizing. If you don’t agree with me, you’re awful and don’t care about people. With these things in the back of my mind, I took Land to be saying the same thing. No one would have to do charity if we just voted the right way, or so I interpreted. My internal radar was set to detect such attacks, and it raised further offense in me. I wasn’t looking for a lecture, but it seemed like I was receiving one.

As I re-read the chapter, I was surprised that I had had no recollection of the rest of the chapter. Land goes on to describe her various struggles in adulthood. She fought for custody of her daughter from a verbally abusive father, and we learn of her hardships in finding affordable housing. The constant stress from her hardships, I could only imagine. And yet, the only thing I had previously remembered from the chapter was the “offensive” intro. Once I became offended, I had stopped paying attention to anything else. I had read the rest of the words, but they were not the focus of my attention.

In my second reading, it also struck me as odd for Land to combine her childhood charity stories with her future stories of hardship. Then it hit me: She once had security, but it was lost in adulthood. This would be a severe loss for anyone in their lives, not to be taken lightly. In her case, the father of her child, who should have been supportive for his new family, instead became a nightmare. Her society also wouldn’t be much help to her getting on her feet, financially and emotionally. Between the court battles and a culture that says to pull yourself up by the bootstraps, Land must have felt continual heartache and abandonment.

With all of this in mind, let’s now picture a middle-class family coming to her impoverished door with a pair of gloves for an offering. Regardless of the family’s intentions, the gift for her was impersonal and impractical. For Land, Christmas toys wouldn’t keep the heat on, and gloves wouldn’t provide day care while trudging to the next awful cleaning job. Even more than this though, the charity came to highlight her inability to provide for her family. It created a bruised ego with guilt and despair not far behind. These are understandable reactions to the offer. Really, who wouldn’t feel bitterness in living her life? I could now see Land’s point of view in an enlightening way, making the feelings of offense drift into dust.

Now this is the part where some would counter my newfound sympathies by highlighting the role Land played in her own story. Yes, she had put herself at the risk of having a child with an unreliable man. It was a precarious position, and one that would steer almost any of us toward financial distress. We can’t escape the reality of our choices, but I resolve that they shouldn’t decide how we think of a person in the present. We shouldn’t dismiss Land’s suffering over an unwise decision from the past. This leads to the arrogance that Land writes of when noting hecklers watching her pay for groceries with food stamps.** Judgements came against her for life as a single mom, and we should see how we can condemn others, in thoughts if not words.

With a renewed empathy for Land, I came to feel sympathy for her while still disagreeing about charity. Families and society should practice charitable giving, no matter the ratio of the gifts to the full needs of recipients. If we stopped thinking of charity as helpful, then the world would be left without the many billions of dollars it receives in the name of good will. Also, it seems we would go backwards in our mindfulness of the poor if we thought of giving as useless. We would think of others even less as we throw up our hands and shrug at the fruitlessness charity offers. It’s a scary notion, perhaps dividing classes even further. And in the end, we can’t predict the fruits that come from charity. Loving relationships can and do develop from the act, and there is genuine help from even the smaller gifts. When a family gives, the practice can become instilled in the minds of our children, and we shouldn’t dismiss these efforts.

As far as the notion that givers are fulfilling an “impulse to feel good”, we shouldn’t think of these feelings in a cynical way. Charitable acts can be both sacrificial and pleasurable. When someone answers a thank you with “It was my pleasure,” it confirms a sense of reward that comes from the act being done. Taking satisfaction from charity doesn’t take away from the moral goodness of doing it. In all cases, there was an expense for the giver, both in terms of money and the time and attention taken to give it. With this, people can be happy and sacrificial at the same time. The pleasure simply comes from the human recognition of goodness and justice being fulfilled, and this isn’t something to criticize.

All of this being said, I find myself now having a peaceful balance of understanding and disagreement with Stephanie Land. Before reading Maid, I had read two books on American poverty by Matthew Desmond. Readers find a world where people choose between basic needs, suffer the psychological stress of bad living conditions, and face obstacles requiring herculean efforts to escape. In Land’s case, she suffered through continual physical pain as a maid while being a ghost in affluent homes, with the health of her car being pivotal to the family’s survival. We should be happy for her escape from that life***, and we can understand her point of view without a disagreement dominating our perceptions. With this, I look forward to reading her sequel.

*This even assumes that I’m interpreting Land’s opinions correctly. I’m taking them from just a couple pages of work, and so flushing out her views with dialogue would be helpful.

**Land notes the sarcastic words of “You’re Welcome” from the hecklers, saying their taxes paid for her food stamps. I’ve never understood why this should make someone so angry. Tax revenue for poverty programs would, I imagine, only equate to a few cents from a family’s checkbook. Is the heckler really so burdened in life by the shopper needing the food stamps? It seems more likely that the heckler’s anger comes from feelings of righteousness over the shopper. Besides, if the cents go to feeding families in need, then it seems there’s far worse things the government can (and does) use with tax revenue.

***Again, it’s a presumption, but I assume someone whose bestselling book led to the creation of a Netflix series has been able to climb out of poverty.

There’s an argument Donald Trump brought to center stage in the 2016 election: The less his opponent’s popularity, the less we should take them seriously. In a primary debate, a Telemundo journalist asked a question on immigration, and Trump dismissed her by claiming drops in her company’s ratings. I was taken back by the response. It seemed a cruel way for a politician to answer, and reporters would feel the same wrath in the days ahead. In time, the argument seemed to become mainstream, at least in conservative circles. Others would imitate the fallacy, helping to bring discourse to new lows in peace and productivity.

There’s a part of me that wonders if the popularity argument has merit. If the public leaves a media company in droves, doesn’t it reveal a heavy bias that people should run away from? If a pundit fails to gain viewers after years of work, doesn’t it speak to their work? There’s a reason we’re drawn to the caption of New York Times Bestseller, and I’d be lying if I said I never dismissed a news clip or article with this in mind. It’s an argument that many take seriously, and it’s an easy way to dismiss someone who challenges your views.

Despite its appeal, we need to recognize that the popularity argument is a fallacy. It avoids addressing the subject at hand, distracting us with suspicions of bias and bad motives from the speaker. Whatever the reasons for the alleged drop in Telemundo ratings, the topic was the potential harm to immigrants by a future Trump administration, and this became lost in the minds of viewers. In debate classes, we learn that high popularity does not make an opinion correct. By extension, claiming an argument is bad because of low support commits the same logical crime. The fallacy deters us from tackling a question, and in a mean-spirited way.

Just like an Ad Hominem attack, the popularity argument can be a cruel course to take as we look down on others with contempt. Matt Walsh, a conservative commentator for The Daily Wire, is someone who uses the fallacy with enthusiasm. To be sure, Walsh will address the subject at hand, and his debate skills shouldn’t be underestimated. But he’ll poke at his opponents with insults, and among them claims that no one watches them. Therefore, we shouldn’t listen to them. If they don’t have a high enough audience (whatever this is supposed to be), then there must be something wrong with what they’re saying. It’s a tool that helps Walsh, Trump, or any like them to see themselves as winning the argument, owning the libs, and walking away with self-satisfying grins.

An absurd example of Walsh doing this is from a segment he did on transgenderism. On The Matt Walsh Show, he addressed the arguments that the pundit John Oliver had made on the need for transition medical care. Walsh threw his first punch by claiming Oliver’s show – Last Week Tonight with John Oliver – isn’t popular. He called it a “little-watched” show that followed The Daily Show – an even less popular one, according to him. In reality though, Matt Walsh has 2.85 million Youtube viewers, vs. 9.37 million for John Oliver. As someone who watched both shows, I knew of the imbalance, and so it was unbelievable that Walsh would attack Oliver in this way. Does he not know how much more popular Oliver is, I thought. Did he bother to look it up? It seemed that Walsh was either lying to an audience that would never look up John Oliver, or he was too careless or arrogant to bother looking it up.

Setting aside the falseness of his attack on Oliver, let’s follow the logic of Matt Walsh. With his greater popularity, shouldn’t I take John Oliver more seriously than Matt Walsh? After all, the side with less viewers can’t know what they’re talking about, right? With this, it won’t matter what the evidence is on the benefits and harms of gender-affirming care. The proof is in the number of viewers, or so we’re being told. The argument is an easy way to dismiss and dodge an argument. It is its own kind of Ad Hominem attack, as the merit of the one who raises the question becomes the question. It’s a fallacy that societies should call out, both in our minds and in public discourse.

There’s also a funny irony to me when seeing Matt Walsh make fun of others for a lack of viewership. I followed a blog that Walsh wrote before he became famous for The Daily Wire and the documentary What Is a Woman.* In other words, I knew Matt Walsh’s work when he was a nobody. Does this mean he didn’t have anything enlightening to say? Should I have not read his blog? He tells us in so many words to ignore people with few readers, but this means he himself wasn’t worth my time or attention. And even today, John Oliver and others are ahead of him in popularity. So no matter what good sense or strong points Walsh might ever made on current events, who cares. Just look at metrics like the number social media views, and we’re told that’s what matters.

All of this demonstrates the futility and absurdity of the popularity argument. Any pundit is a newcomer at some point, and everyone has to start from somewhere. This shouldn’t take away from the content they have to share with the world. And as for media outlets dropping in ratings, even if true, it shouldn’t matter for the argument, and to bring it up is to avoid the discussion. Yes, we should have some skepticism for a source well-known for bias, and this should inspire us to look further for truth on a subject. But those like Donald Trump take this healthy idea to a dark place for their own purposes. If the Trump administration had intended harsh restrictions and punishments on immigrants, then no one should care about the ratings of Telemundo. We should address the question head on, and we should recognize what the former president was doing.

If we can’t move beyond the attacks on a person’s popularity, then we should recognize the irrelevance. I can imagine hateful websites having millions of views while start-up writers make sound points on a subject. Should fame make the difference in who to believe? Donald Trump is mean-hearted in a variety of ways, and many have been inspired to follow his tactics. It’s sad to watch as contempt swells within us, and the pursuit of truth is taken off the rails. Recognizing the fallacy for what it is would be a step forward, both in our personal lives and in public discourse.

*I was disappointed when Walsh moved on to national media. He always seemed to be a better writer than public speaker, though he improved at the latter with time.