After a while, I quit writing about politics. It wasn’t that I had stopped paying attention, but rather, it just started to seem like a pointless activity. Oh, sure, being a lone voice amongst a sea of other lone voices was part of that feeling of futility; but, as time went on, another facet developed.

Journalists, activists, lawyers, advertisers – all of them will probably agree that changing someone’s mind is very difficult. Heck, in many cases it’s completely impossible. It doesn’t matter what you say, what evidence you present; if someone has already formed an opinion, you’re sunk. It’s scientific.

I was prompted to consider all of this again after reading this article at the New Yorker, by David Grann. It’s about one Cameron Todd Willingham, a man who was very probably innocent of the crime for which he was put to death by the State of Texas. The New Yorker piece is very persuasive on this point – at least, it is to me. But then, I have grave doubts about the death penalty, so I’m a receptive audience for this sort of thing. (Others, especially those who might face severe repercussions for their involvement in sentencing an innocent man to death, take up a different position.)

And that’s the problem. As compelling as the New Yorker article is, I sincerely doubt that the Willingham case will have the kind of effect that anti-death penalty advocates might hope for. Not because I think it isn’t shocking; it definitely is. And I certainly hope that the story is read by many people, that it’s spread far and wide, and that it gets lots of media attention — it’s an important story, regardless of whether or not it becomes the basis for drastic reforms to the criminal justice system.

The reason I don’t believe that this will be the so-called “holy grail” case that some anti-death penalty activists are looking for is simply that I don’t believe that there will ever be such a thing, probably. No case could be so perfect as to convince everyone. There are just too many moral, rhetorical, and psychological “outs”.

Even in something as important as life and death, people who have made up their minds already are often difficult to budge. That being the case, why are there so many people who still spend their time trying to change people’s minds? Is it possible that there might be some people out their who have not yet come down on either side of more than a few issues? Certainly.

And we hate them.

Undecided voters are idiots. Agnostics are pussies. Skeptics are closed-minded assholes. Pick any topic you like; if you look far enough into it, you’ll soon discover that anyone who fails to take up a position on one side or the other is either not welcome to the shouting-match, or is a target for unscrupulous partisans.

In reality, you don’t immediately have to start with a settled opinion on every available topic. For the most part, these broad issues will eventually have an subtle, persistent impact on your life, whether you’re right, wrong, or on the fence, so it’s vitally important that if you’re going to eventually pick a side you do a good job of it.

The problem is when you bow under the pressure to choose a position first, and then start picking through the arguments after the fact. Because you’ll almost certainly find plenty of evidence to back up your position, while ignoring everything that doesn’t – not intentionally, of course. But you won’t be able to help yourself. The only intellectually honest way to arrive at a position is to start with no position, before you begin to consider the arguments.

The purpose of much indoctrination and persuasion is to obliterate the non-binary option – to make having No Position an untenable choice. There are a few ways to do this. You could introduce an issue that most people haven’t thought about, or haven’t formed an opinion on, and then blitz them with as many emotional appeals or terrifying prophesies of doom as your PR machine can muster, all while aggressively suggesting that they must choose a side now, lest dire consequences result from their inaction. Or, you could find a population that has not formed any opinions of its own, and persistently reiterate over time what positions they should take on a wide variety of subjects, long before they acquire the mental apparatus to thoughtfully consider all sides of an argument.

In either case, once you have convinced a person to choose a side before they have a chance to examine the evidence, you’re in pretty good shape. Because that person will now use their own unwitting confirmation bias to gather supporting evidence for their pre-decided positions, while ignoring anything that contradicts them. They, in turn, may pass on these positions to others in much the same manner as they received them, which creates a self-sustaining feedback loop.

It’s getting more and more difficult to find even ordinary citizens who are able to research and listen without taking up a fixed point of view beforehand. This not about pure open-mindedness, which would require expending tremendous effort to demolish your own passionately held positions, out of fairness to those who suggest that they’re wrong. This is about all of the influences that surround you, inveigling you into taking positions before you’ve got any of the facts and had time to mull them over.

The people and organizations whose goal it is to force others to take up sides on issues before they are able to consider them from a Non-Position, seem to be getting rather better at achieving that goal. At least, that’s what I perceive – but perhaps it’s always been this way. Or maybe, in its current state,  the mass-media is simply better at amplifying the voices of only the loudest and most obstinate groups, however marginal they might be otherwise.

But, if what I perceive is correct, then pity poor us; discussion and discourse will eventually become incapable of resolving disputes. And, though there are other methods of resolution, they tend to be much more costly and destructive than even the loudest shouting match, by a long, long way.