THE STRAUBINICAL CASE FOR CIVILITY

  THE STRAUBINICAL CASE FOR CIVILITY

I'm reading a partisan book filled with advice on how to effectively discuss ideology and politics. It lays out the challenge of communicating with the other side, due to their many faults.

1. The other side wraps itself in an ideological cocoon that no inconvenient fact can penetrate

2. You can't reason with them

3. They are stupid while we are wise

4. They are deluded

5. They are nut jobs

6. They are willfully ignorant

7. The worst of them are sociopaths who bicker instead of argue, rant instead of talk, and parrot instead of think

8. They fill their Facebook pages with Unabomber-level diatribes

  The book goes on to offer copious ammo for the person who has to go up against this wall of dangerous and intractable idiocy.
It's packed with examples of the most egregious hypocrisy and logical fallacy of the other side, and is shot through with a gallimaufry of insults, wisecracks, and putdowns to use against the maroons that are stupid or corrupt enough to oppose our ideology.

The book dwells on the daily pain and frustration of being quiet and right, while constantly encountering people who are loud and wrong.

It also provides a litany of principles and institutions whose virtues are surely at the core of what America is all about, but are nevertheless disrespected and derided by the opposition.

The general tenor of the book is that people disagreeing with our ideology are the enemy. We must train ourselves to beat them in arguments, humiliate them with insults, and gradually convert them to our ideology so that America will be the country it was meant to be.

Occasionally the book pays lip service to this honorable  notion of gradually converting the enemy through re-education, but it's not immediately clear how the hilarious insult approach will eventually lead to the humiliated looking deep within themselves and realizing the error of their ways.

  Herein lies the problem.

  Nowhere in the book is there any serious discussion of attempting to empathize with the other side, or talk to them with civility about their ideas. Nowhere in the book is it mentioned that our side has any responsibility of any kind to do anything but fight and win. It is presumed that we are always correct, in the areas of morality, facts, and logic. And to the extent that bad behavior happens on our side (such as punching an ideological opponent in the face), it's implied that this is merely an unfortunate natural result of the preponderance of nastiness and stupidity on the other side.

  I suggest to all that the marching orders detailed in this paperback cannot fix even one thing that is wrong in America.

  Think about your own views. Do the ideas I've excerpted here represent your thinking about the other side? What do you honestly believe will be the short term or long term results of such strategies? What would disgust you more, the discovery that this book was written by the other side, or the realization that it was written by your own side? Are you already preparing your response to me, and does it include the belief that the other side is so much worse that if our side thinks this way, it's entirely justified?

  This kind of thinking is encouraged by both major political parties. People who think this way about the other side are liable to accept giant lists of faults, misdeeds, and outrageous statements from a candidate who attacks the other side rhetorically rather than doing the heavy lifting involved with crafting and explaining policy. People who think this way are credulous about claims that the other party causes all the problems while our party is honest and does only good things. Both parties benefit when partisans think in this self-indulgent manner.
  I don't care for the two-party system, myself. It discourages coalitions and compromise, and makes gridlock and opposition a winning political strategy. It encourages self-righteousness and self-congratulation, and rewards ignorance. The two-party system has slowly led to an extreme polarization that may be impossible to dislodge. (As an aside, I'll mention that the so-called third parties haven't done much to counteract this. Perhaps they've tried to, and I just haven't heard about it.)
  I've come to believe this polarization is the enemy. I also realize, wearily, that many reading this will say, Yes, yes, I agree with your basic point, but now's not the time to deal with it. Things are so bad right now that we have to fight the other side with everything we've got, and later on we can return to this discussion.
  I invite you to think back to when you first started believing this. Then look at the landscape today. Is polarization getting better? How will it get better if you don't start making small sacrifices now to help America?

  The big question we should ask ourselves every day is this: How can we stand up for our values, and stand against opposing values, without contributing to polarization?

  If there's an answer that doesn't involve civility, I don't know about it.