My son's been staying up too late recently, so last night I started a new bedtime regimen-- I read Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" to him out loud. Interestingly, the turgid adventures of railroad magnate Dagny Taggart put him to sleep in record time, but when I tiptoed out of the room, he woke up and yelled, "Hey! Where do you think you're going?" This seemed apropos, given Ms. Rand's mission to create a race of angry somnambulists.
A few people out there have told me that I'm helping them stay sane. This puts a lot of pressure on me, of course, and I feel like I should come clean about something. If the dry, even-keel tone in my writing gives you the impression that I'm calm and relaxed about the blight upon the land, allow me to cordially disabuse you of that notion right this minute. I'm not.
At least, not consistently. By saying this, I realize I'm opening myself up to the poking finger of gleeful online trolls, but the recent dose of democracy wrung me out like a rag. The worst moment of my life may have been when my son woke up late on election night and asked who won, and I couldn't bring myself to say it out loud. I just stared at him. It was horrifying.
I spent much of the next day on the phone talking with friends, trying to keep despair from taking over. In the evening, my thighs were chafing and I couldn't figure out why; I finally realized I'd been pacing around the room for about four straight hours. (If anyone is alarmed about the trend my writing is taking here, let me assure you that I won't be mentioning thighs very often in the future. Various thighs play an important role in my life, as I assume they do for many of you, but as a discussion topic they fall short.)
I do understand why many have taken exception to my beating the drum for civility, as it seems an eerie echo of long-ago appeasement. And I also understand the prickly response to pundits blaming liberals for the current situation. Sectarian infighting is an ugly thing, but it's also very human-- I've seen a lot of creepy hostility online from the right of late, but all the anger directed towards me has been from liberals and leftists. I'm not going to tediously re-litigate my case today, but I will say this: I believe there are different roles for different people. Some people bring their cudgels and maces to the front lines, and others make soup for the troops. I'm not really designed for either job; I see myself as a Merlin figure, stirring up potions and turning lead into gold while the knights ride off into the cold and damp. It's important to remember that the right had their Merlins decades ago, and we need some now as much as they did then.
When people haven't been typecasting me as a kind of piano tuner for their sanity, they've been badgering me with questions about how to talk to relatives and friends who have found common cause with the Death Eaters. I confess, lamely, that I didn't see this coming. And as painful as it was to get called out by friends (I mean real friends, not Facebook friends), it was harder still to respond to the not-quite-strangers who wanted my advice. I have cautiously come across with some suggestions, and I'm not convinced any of them were any good, but the gist of my advice is, ask people questions and listen to them. Don't lecture them so much. (I know, that's rawly hypocritical, coming from me.)
But after a while, I recalled a book I'd read by philosopher Daniel Dennett. I suspect I'm catching you in mid-eye-roll when I say he's a philosopher with a sense of humor. I didn't know such a thing existed, and perhaps he's the only one, but there it is. The book, "Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking," is packed with great tips about spotting bullshit (in your own arguments as well as others), and I'll be using it constantly as a reference tool on the radio show, but today I want to spotlight a chunk of it that may help you.
Dennett talks in the book about the danger of caricaturing your opponent's argument. We all do this; I've read anti-Obama screeds that seem to beam in from another solar system, and unfortunately for those of us on the left that believe we are always correct (that is, all of us), the people on the right are similarly puzzled by our criticism of Trump, as they have been by our take on cherished right wing orthodoxies in the past.
A big part of Dennett's job is arguing with other smart people, sometimes in front of a crowd, and he has some expert tricks to disarm opponents. He borrowed the following strategy from his brainy colleague Anatol Rapaport.
"How to compose a successful critical commentary:
1. You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”
2. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
3. You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism."
I can tell you that I've had success with this method. And by success, I don't mean that I managed to deprogram any conservatives. But I did have conversations with them that didn't end in yelling or violence.
Here's the last tidbit for today-- Dennett's book has a short chapter devoted to his jolly skewering of Stephen Jay Gould's rhetorical style. For many of you, that fact will not send you panting to the nearest bookstore, but for others, it may just be the cherry on top.
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