When someone brings us an account of harm, there is a tempting shortcut: decide what we think of the person speaking before troubling ourselves with what they have said. If we can dismiss them, we may feel released from the whole uncomfortable business. Whoever needed a hearing is left waiting.
Amnesty International USA reports that Marco Rubio called the organisation a “fraud”. The supplied headline does not establish the context of his remark or the evidence behind it, so it cannot settle the dispute. It does, however, offer a reason to examine what happens when a sweeping judgement takes the place of a specific answer.
Calling an organisation fraudulent is a serious allegation. It needs particulars. Which claim is false? What evidence was misrepresented? Without those particulars, how is anyone supposed to distinguish an exposed deception from an unwelcome challenge?
There is an obvious complication. Organisations concerned with human rights must be open to scrutiny themselves. The seriousness of their work cannot make them infallible, and asking for evidence is no betrayal of the people they seek to help. An organisation can be right about one matter and wrong about another. That rather ordinary possibility gets lost when the choice offered is complete trust or complete dismissal.
This matters well beyond public arguments. A complaint at work can disappear beneath a discussion of whether the employee is difficult. A relative’s account of being hurt can become an argument about their temperament. Sometimes credibility genuinely is in question. Even then, examining the account requires more effort than finding a description of its author that everyone is willing to accept.
The consequence is practical. When we hear an allegation followed by an insult, we can refuse to treat the insult as an answer. We can ask what, specifically, is disputed, and leave room for evidence to change our understanding.
That takes time. It may also leave us without the satisfaction of choosing a side immediately. But if someone has suffered harm, our impatience with the messenger is a poor reason to stop listening before we have understood what happened.