Post Mortem, Civil Discourse, Part II

No excuses of training in the mountains outside of Boone, North Carolina can explain my blog hiatus this time.   No, this hiatus I attribute primarily to the fact that it is both midterm of the semester as well as the beginning of teaching a M-Th second-half-of-the-semester 8 week course, both of which are successfully kicking my ass at the moment - but really we can always make the time.  But I was also, and I am somewhat annoyed with myself to admit, a bit disheartened by our Eden exchange highlighted below.  Not disheartened as Eden claimed in one of his posts because “he was mean to me” – probably one of the best clues to his “I know you are but what am I” child-like argumentation skills.  Disheartened about the state of deliberation in this country, the “I am right and you are evil” practice that at times appears to dominate the public square, at least certain public squares.  And this is not one of those claims of “I have never seen political rhetoric so heated” because Peter Porcupine (and his Porcupine Gazette) and Benjamin Franklin Bache were shredding one another and John Adams and Thomas Jefferson two hundred plus years ago.  Disheartened mostly by what I thought was a sincere effort to have a productive, civil conversation with folks that disagree.

So, if you have been reading below, you are aware that Thesaurus brought to our attention the blog StartingThinkingRight and its proprietor Michael Eden a while ago.   Thesaurus proposed contacting Eden to engage in a deliberative debate via our respective blogs about a societal issue of his choosing as we thought this would (1) be a worthwhile, across-the-aisle conversation, (2) expand the nature of our blog, (3) be a cure for our momentary stagnation here, and (4) a chance to write and think and constructively argue with and critique another blogger and he likewise do the same for us. 

Thesaurus’ respectful invitation:

“Your opinions differ radically from my own, which is why I want to invite you to debate an issue of our mutual choosing. Think of this as a respectful blog debate regarding politics, religion, and/or citizenship. Are you willing to attempt such an endeavor?”

 The invitation was received with the following response from Eden:

“Why can’t you just leave a dang comment on an article that actually attempts to refute the facts I provide and demonstrate your own case instead of being hoity toity?

You kind of remind me of the evil Syndrome character in “The Incredibles” who just can’t stop himself from “monologuing” (the common weakness in all super-villains such that they defeat their good hero enemy but then give them time to escape because the evil guy just can’t shut up).”

Thus, an invitation to a respectful blog debate was perceived as “hoity toity”(?) and the claim of “monologuing” (?) and finally an ad hominem attack.  The communication above speaks for itself.

So, we moved on, mildly amused by his immediate claims of being “hoity toity” – code for elitist in his world – and elites are the problem in America as we know; and the first of many ad hominem attacks as a diversion.

Nevertheless, I checked into his site one or two more times out of curiosity and came across his hateful and fallacious argument about gay adoption.  I posted a simple reply to his argument noting that his argument was a hasty or sweeping generalization as he equated one instance of pedophilia as evidence for why ALL gay people should not be allowed to adopt, and also commented on the hateful language in his email.    

He replied by blasting me with adjectives like “evil” “useless” “stupid” and “idiot” to name a few.  And of course he did not respond to my simple claim about his argument and produced a bizarre red herring argument about homosexuals and their ability to pro-create.  I attempted two more times to re-focus his attention back to my initial claim of the fallacy at the core of his argument, and each one of these posts was again blasted with more name-calling and more red herrings and eventually conflated my posts with another post.  Other than a mildly snarky comment about his use of all caps in his writing and his poor spelling ability, not once in my three posts did I personally attack him and thus committing his favorite argumentation appeal: the ad hominem fallacy.  And he never once simply stated: “you’re right that is a hasty generalization” – you can never admit you’re wrong anymore, the Bush Doctrine II.

As I noted above, I let this get to me a bit and became frustrated with blogging for the last week or so. But I think I get it, the explosion of blogs, notably political affairs blogs, began during President G.W. Bush’s presidency.  He was pummeled daily from multiple blogs that began to gain an audience, popularity and were more and more turned to as sources by mass media outlets.  These blogs rarely, maybe never in some instances, spoke of W. in a positive manner – it was a relentless, at time vicious, negative campaign.  On the extreme, Bush even became immersed in conspiracy theories about an “inside job” on 9/11 or his questionable military record.  Clearly Eden and many like him have adopted the same strategy for President Obama – bash him every day for everything from his American-ness, the birth certificate insanity, socialist plans for the United States, and so on.

But this is the playbook for the past three presidencies: the Clinton, Bush and Obama presidencies – the opposition party begins a relentless campaign to de-legitimize the president before even entering office.  So it was Vince Foster and Whitewater with Clinton, it was National Guard and the Florida debacle for Bush, and now the stakes have raised as Obama has to prove his citizenship, his democratic principles, and on and on.  I am not sure how many previous presidents had to endure such similar, widespread and widely reported campaigns, beyond our three most recent presidents, but it is distressing, damaging, and stifling for our democracy.  This had a momentary impact on me these last two weeks as well.  Hope it doesn’t happen again.