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Subject: On Debate
Posted by: DWetzel
- [33337117] Sun, Apr 18, 2010, 11:28
Boldwin posted the following in the "Future of the Forum". It wasn't directly addressed to me, but I think it gets to the root of my frustrations. So, here it is. Hopefully this will fill SZ's request from another thread to talk about something I believe. I'm going to ramble a bit. Please read it all and let it simmer a bit before making a knee-jerk response.
"I've got a related question.
Do MITH and PD think the their general tenor is different today than it was 4-6 years ago?
If so how would you two describe it?
I think it's a very very interesting topic that mirrors the whole culture and probably worthy of a thread of it's own. I'll be interested to see if you can see it.
At the very least can't we say that the shrill knob has been turned up more than one notch for everybody? "
Everyone's tenor has changed. Theirs has, yours definitely has. Though I wasn't an active poster on the politics forum then, I was an active lurker. Had I been actively posting then, my tenor would have changed from then.
Everyone has become a lot more--shrill isn't quite the word I'd use, but it's close.
What irks me more than anything in politics these days is the ridiculous lazy lumping of individuals into pre-packaged labels. From there, it's easy to say that "here's some people which I am putting in Group Y that believe something crazy. Therefore, you, person X, are part of a group with a bunch of crazy people, and are clearly crazy yourself and are not worthy of intelligent discussion." All this, of course, without finding out what Person Y actually thinks about a particular issue.
It's an easy trap to fall into. I do it myself more than I like. It's something you do all the time. And it's completely unfair to the target, because they get absolutely no chance to defend themselves. Your mind's already made up. |
| 1 | DWetzel
ID: 33337117
Sun, Apr 18, 2010, 11:28
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I think there are two main reasons for this: first and most obvious is the effective two-party system we have in this country. Politicians are forced to label themselves in order to get elected. Now, if you polled our 100 senators on a decently sized range of issues, I am quite certain that you would get 100 distinguishable opinions on an issue.
On the recent health care bill, by way of illustration, I'd bet my life savings against a penny that for each senator that voted for the bill, there's something in there they would change or vote against if they could. I'd make the same bet that for each senator who voted against it, there's something in there they like and agree with and would have voted for in principle.
However, when we resort to simplified lazy debate, we are reduced to either yes or no, one or zero.
The second reason is that there's just too damn much information out there for us humans to process. The Internet is a big part of this, and then blogs absolutely destroyed it. There are a million (probably a billion) different opinions being thrust at us every day, attempting to influence our minds on an issue here and there. How do we keep track of them all? We don't, that's how. We ignore a bunch of them as not being authoritative. The rest, instead of taking the time to digest them and dissect them and draw out the useful marrow from them, we skim over and file. Toss that one into the "liberal blogger" column, he must believe in 90% taxes and free 75% off first abortion clinic visits handed out at every junior high school prom! That guy over there, he seemed to like McCain more than Obama, therefore he must believe in nuking our enemies (Iraq, Iran, China, France, and probably eventually Canada) while having the unemployed slaughtered for cattle chow for farms owned by multinational banking conglomerates!
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| 2 | DWetzel
ID: 33337117
Sun, Apr 18, 2010, 11:30
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Which is, of course, a ridiculous way to try to have a conversation. When you think you already know what the other person thinks, there's no sense in actually asking them what they think about a particular issue.
So that's my humble request, to myself and to everyone else. Stop saying "oh, you marxist liberal disciples" or "hey, you Limbaugh-spouting wingnuts". We're a small enough place here where if you want to know what I think about a particular issue, ask me! Don't assume that, because you've painted me with a liberal brush that I want to take away your hunting rifle and your wallet and tape open your first grader's eyelids while he watches weird tapes (which I have of course paid for with increased taxes) all day until he becomes desensitized to it. (For the record, in an effort to inject a brief bit of humor into things, I don't own a gun and probably never will but I don't really care one way or the other what kind of gun you have as long as you don't point it at anyone; you can keep your money but if you're going to ring up a bill by blowing up the other part of the world, I ask that you pay cash and not credit; and I don't think anyone should be watching sex tapes until they're old enough to decide for themselves that for some reason they want to watch sex tapes. I decided long ago, without any particular prompting from anyone, that it's not something I would enjoy.)
When you come into the debate already assuming you know what the other person thinks, there's no reason at all to bother to listen to them. You just talk louder, trying to shout over each other. And it leads to, well, look around you.
So, if you want to know what I think about something, please ask. Please don't consult Saul Alinsky (or, for the other side, don't consult Ann Coulter). We've never met, I'm pretty sure they didn't consult any of my academic works while writing anything they wrote, and I'm quite sure that I didn't consult any of theirs when forming my own beliefs. So every time you throw that name into the conversation, you're effectively saying "I don't care what you think, I'll tell you what you think".
Which is completely disrespectful, and seems like a really awful way to try to have a discussion to me.
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| 3 | DWetzel
ID: 33337117
Sun, Apr 18, 2010, 11:34
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(Apologies for the triple-post opener--quadruple now! -- and apologies to Guru's spam filter. I sorta tried to post about eight times before figuring out that I had to say "sex tapes" instead of something a bit more, um, illustrative.)
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| 4 | Boldwin
ID: 11301223
Sun, Apr 18, 2010, 13:55
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I intend to leave you to your thread except to point out something that took me many years to learn. It is impossible to remember exactly where everyone stands on every issue. A certain amount of inaccurate or unfair generalization is inevitable no matter the best of intentions.
Nothing illustrates this better than how impossible it was for me to distinguish MITH's positions from Matt S. I like em both. I genuinely tried. Never could separate them in my mind.
Could you distinguish Wilmer McLean's positions from Steve Haupt's?
I'd like to think certain characters stand out as so different that everyone could keep where they stand straight. Toral and myself, Spachalagu, SZ...and yet I know from personal experience People misstate my positions constantly.
Sarge is sure I am ready to pick up a gun and institute a theocracy when I have repeatedly stated God's Kingdom will be created completely untouched by human hands, entirely by angelic action. I have repeatedly stated I don't have a gun, we highly discourage gun ownership among ourselves, we all don't vote or join/donate to political parties. In fact I am on record repeatedly predicting that Sarge will get his one world dictatorship briefly and no one is going to stop it from happening.
Yet it's only a matter of a brief period of time until I will be accused again of seeking to install a theocracy. Sarge and Tree will be drawing pictures of me down in the bunker cleaning weapons. You can bet on them doing so. You can bet the farm on it.
They'll be making an innocent or deliberate mistake? You tell me. But I can assure you everyone here does operate on a very imperfect estimation of where the other is coming from. Every poster here.
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