On Civil Discourse

Inspirational song: What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love, and Understanding (Elvis Costello)

Three years ago or so, when I first started thinking about writing a blog, it was in reaction to what I perceived as the breakdown in our ability to speak to each other with civility. I wanted to address the hateful things so many people were saying, as I watched them throwing out broad insults on every topic imaginable, dividing us into insular groups, preventing us from working together, and shredding the gentler souls who were targeted. Obviously I am not the only person to be distressed by this, and I am probably not the most eloquent to address it. But at the time, I felt like I had something positive and productive to add to the discussion. Inevitably my general shyness overwhelmed my desire to lecture like a mother, imploring the public to remember that axiom, if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. So I put off starting that blog, and eventually dropped the idea, in favor of anonymity. But in the back of my mind, I kept wondering, was there anything I could do to steer folks back into more civil discourse, in person and on social media. 

Last night, an old friend of mine shared a meme that was intentionally misleading and designed to evoke an emotional response to a subject that dominated the news recently. I responded to the hypothetical question posed by the meme (it was a why are these things different kind of question), and my friend and I commented back and forth a few times, firmly disagreeing, yet never forgetting that we are still friends, and that each of us is a person of intellect and feeling, worthy of respect. My friend didn't create the meme, and I don't hold its existence against him personally. But then someone with his same last name, whom I've never met, chimed in, and immediately started calling me names (she used "idiot" in the first comment), made wild, hateful, sweeping statements, got some details backwards about the situation we had been discussing that had broad implications, and added very little to the discussion except bad feelings. I asked her outright why she was so committed to the "you people" attacks on me personally, and how did that help. Her answer was to practically cackle that she had no intention of helping anyone or anything. At that point it was midnight in my time zone, and I gave up and went to bed. By the time my man got home to his computer where he is, to read the thread, our old friend had deleted the whole thing, so I didn't have a neutral party who could read what I wrote to tell me whether I managed to stick to the topic without disparaging her personally, as I hoped I had.

This is a very specific example of why I had wanted to write years ago. This woman was deeply invested in character assassination, in a way that implied the outcome mattered to her personally. She absolutely could not see me or the people under discussion as worthy of respect or human dignity. Yet she kept talking, assuming things about me and the topic of national news that she could not possibly know, that for me were absolutely untrue.

I have heard a lot of people on tv talk about the "new normal." They suggest this mood of hostility and obstinance is here to stay, and we should get used to it. I cannot accept this. There is no reason we should refuse to work with people who differ from us, and there is no reason we must belittle them to give ourselves an inflated sense of who we are. I'm not saying we all have to agree. I'm just saying we need to recognize the basic humanity in everyone, including those who don't watch the same cable news channel or have the same Sunday activities. I know that on a personal level, I have a broad spectrum of friends and acquaintances, who are as different from each other as they are from me. I am in contact with people who are left-leaning, right-leaning, apolitical, and radical. My friends are deeply religious, profoundly atheist, and absolutely uncertain. There are plenty who are fantastically smarter than I, and some who really struggled in school. They are fat and thin, young and old, sweethearts and assholes. But most importantly, they are individuals, capable of making their own decisions about all of the above (well, except age). I don't want them all to be carbon copies of myself. I want them to be different, so that I can learn new things, and I want them to understand that even when we disagree, I know that they are still good people. It isn't so difficult to do this. Why have we allowed hate into the picture, and what can we do to get it back out again? 

It's more than I can answer in one short essay. I may have to revisit this one often, a nod to the original inspiration to write. The only photo I feel like putting with this is of the very angry Ewok, from our trip home from today's shelter visit. She desperately hates these treatments, as much as I dislike taking her there and smelling her on the way home. I think she matches my topic well enough.