the smedley log - suburban scrawl

Societal poison

Unfortunately it seems there’s an atmosphere in this country that condones character attack in lieu of information.
-Gran Kestembaum

I’ve been trying to remember to track down the transcript from Monday’s edition of Larry King Live ever since I half heard the above quote. Gran Kestembaum, for those who are unaware, is a New Jersey woman whose husband died in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001; she was responding to a question about Ann Coulter’s now infamous (as most Ann Coulter screeds are destined to become) remarks about certain 9/11 widows.

Kestembaum wasn’t among Coulter’s specific target group, but her thoughts on the issue were impressively measured, and might I add, exactly in line with my thoughts on the matter.

I’ve not been especially interested in writing about Coulter’s latest PR campaign, mostly because I believe her to be a societal gnat, albeit one with a very loud megaphone. But she’s also a prime example of what may be most at fault for the large-scale societal disenchantment with political discourse. (But don’t get wrapped up in thinking I only blame conservative gnats – there’s enough examples of useless invective to go around.)

What I really mean to say is though I really like that lead-in quote from Mrs. Kestembaum, I profoundly regret the truth in her statement.

I can take it further and wish I didn’t do it so much, I feel like I personally demonize people who to me epitomize views I find hateful – usually when they give the impression that they’d be unwilling to give another view a thought. And I do feel like one allows themselves to do it more in “choir preaching” mode.

But on an intellectual level, I know that the emotion and the name calling is useless for consensus. I mean, would you want to ever try to figure out where a middle you can meet with someone is on when you’re being called a bastard? You really can’t get there when you don’t have people at the table who are willing to try to see WHY the other people want what they want.

I tend to personally, when I’m “on”, to try to find that – I think it’s so rooted in having such an atypical background and insecurity that noone would take it seriously. Right thing wrong reason maybe.

But in my family, I’m very much the black sheep (and I really hide alot of what I think on serious issues from them for this), and we all have the same background. I think that’s a case where we may truly want similar things but see getting them as only possible thru wildly different paths.

Of course, some of the emotion is rooted (for me) at times in feeling like the other side may know my view and deliberately ignore it, for the sake of something like, say profit. Does that make is more understandable than right?

I’m kind of nuts in that I’ve spent maybe the last year really in my head on the emotion/thought interaction thing anyway.

It can be difficult sometimes, Ellen.

I just came across this piece at Booman Tribune. I know there are a lot of knee-jerk cons out there who’d be shocked to see anyone at an online bastion of liberalism come out against someone for hating on Ann Coulter, but it makes my point on both sides better than I did in this post.

I did see that and I hold a lot of stock in “the opposite of love is apathy, not hate” theories – that by giving energy to people who choose to contribute little-to-no real argument but pure invective, it would be better to ignore someone like that. It is hard, but worthwhile if you can get the momentum going. It’s a little easier for me with Coulter in that she doesn’t really, for all her huffing and puffing, she doesn’t have the following yet. It gets harder when you start seeing people around you that you value (but yet can’t influence) give increasing weight to such emotional firestorms instead of trying to find the whys.

The struggle is to try to see what can be done to get discussions away from these easy but highly charged exchanges to a real place of discussion. And that even if I get ballsy enough to find a way to do it on my immediate level – how can we translate that upwards? Cycling back to the Jane discussion (citizen), how can we find and promote to office people who have the complexity to not argue in this way when they risk, by exposing complexity and depth, possibly not aligning with us on issues? possibly aligning with noone 100% but finding a way to align with most of us in the 40%-60% range. The easy sell and easy buy (to media and voters) is to do the “issues checklist”.

No easy paths, not even optimistic enough people want the spoils of going off the easy path either…

Extreme opinions + public exposure = $

All we have to do to silence people we’re tired of hearing is to totally ignore them… but we as a culture are totally incapable of just ignoring what we don’t like.

Omni

More Booman

At the risk of making this the thread that would not die – this spun my mind around a different side of this.

There’s the public that we wish would just collectively turn its back whenever someone like AC is given a voice and a mike.

And there’s the exchange between these two where the post’s author and “wingnut” had a first real discussion on politics. And author could see a little of what was under all the rancor, where the wingnuttery came from.

We as private citizens can ignore the likes of AC but should we really be calling for her not to be heard or published? Do you silence a voice (re: the people who are trying to ask that her books not be published) instead of refuting it or digging to get to a common ground – which is the default? Do you refute only when you think the person might want true discussion, and if so, who gets to be that judge? Do you refute hoping that those hearing the voices listen to the words and not for the entertainment value (hoping for a smackdown, say)? When you silent the big voices, what is getting to the little voices who believed that’s what they wanted?

I think there’s a lot of plusses and minuses in that post – the “wingnut” starting to see past some of the smokescreeans as a plus but his answer to stay home and game on election day a minus.In my ideal, and I know nonexistent, world there’s a way to find a voice to get to “wingnut” to make him part of the solution instead of disgusted and disenfranchised? And if this voice has the appeal shouldn’t it still have appeal (maybe stronger appeal) even in contrast to these shrill and distracting voices?