Have you ever found yourself reading an article, and needing to stop halfway through in order to ask yourself an important question: "Wait a minute, am I reading some dumb bullshit?" The question is not always easy to answer. If the author of the piece is a particularly gifted stylist, or adept at persuasive writing, you might find yourself needing to spend some time unpacking their arguments and deconstructing their sentences before you can figure out if you are indeed reading some dumb bullshit. Other times, the question is very easy to answer.
Here's a tip that will allow you to immediately suss out dumb bullshit whenever and wherever you encounter it: If the phrase "to be sure" appears at the beginning of a sentence anywhere in the text, then it is likely that you have encountered some of the dumbest bullshit ever written.
There are of course exceptions to every rule, but "to be sure" is a phrase that regularly appears at the beginning of sentences written by people who know, deep down in whatever qualifies as their heart, that they have committed themselves to a losing cause. When used this way, "to be sure" means, For the next 4-6 sentences, I am going to list a set of facts that completely undermines the argument I am attempting to make. It means, Let's not spend too much time dwelling on the fact that the thing I am arguing in favor of is obviously evil. It means, I'm the type of person who would kill my mother for a dollar and then easily find a way to excuse my own actions.
Here's an opinion piece, published this week by the Washington Post editorial board, in which you can take the To Be Sure Rule for a spin. It is headlined "The International Criminal Court is not the venue to hold Israel to account," and its essential argument is that there should be two different systems of international law: one that is applied to higher races and one that is applied to lower races. After making that argument for four paragraphs, the fifth paragraph arrives like this:
To be sure, far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed and maimed in Israel's 13-month-long war against Hamas: more than 44,000 have died, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. It says more than half of the fatalities have been women and children. The Israeli military says it has killed 17,000 militants; though its basis for that is unclear, even if accurate, it implies more than 60 percent killed have been noncombatants. Hamas is to blame for sheltering among civilians and hiding their weapons and command centers in tunnels beneath populated areas. But Israel, as a democratic country that is committed to human rights, must take responsibility for the civilian casualty toll.
Buried in the very next paragraph, you will find yet another "to be sure" at the start of a sentence:
Israel also has a responsibility to allow humanitarian aid to reach the millions of Palestinians displaced and suffering from an acute food shortage bordering on famine. On this, the Israeli government has fallen short. The State Department, in declining to impose sanctions on Israel for blocking aid deliveries, said it saw some recent improvements, such as a successful polio vaccination campaign in Gaza, another border crossing reopened, and an increase in the number of aid trucks allowed in over past month. But a Post analysis found that Israel has largely failed to comply with the U.S. government's three main demands—a surge of humanitarian aid, not a trickle; access to Gaza for commercial trucks; and an end to Israel's siege of populated northern Gaza. To be sure, aid could have flowed in more quickly if Hamas had accepted a cease-fire deal to free the remaining hostages, but Hamas instead insisted on a withdrawal of all Israeli troops from Gaza and a permanent end to hostilities.
If that's not dumb bullshit, then I don't know what is. Of that, you can be doubly sure.
