Yesterday I listened to the latest pod cast by Dan Carlin of Hardcore History and Common Sense. In it, he made a point virtually identical to the point I made in my post of a few days ago. He asked a question, for which he didn't have an answer: what to do, in an open society, when our differences have devolved into a hatred so intense that we cannot live together?
There are, of course, several ways to answer that question. The first, the most obvious, is to cease being an open society. That, of course, is my over-riding fear. An open society is predicated on several values, but the most important value, the one that keeps us "open," is the "duty to tolerate." With free speech, for example, if I wish to speak my mind as a right, then I have a duty to tolerate others who speak their mind, particularly when I find that speech objectionable. It is no trick to follow through on a "duty to tolerate" when we agree, it is only a trick when we disagree. We all exist in a world of rife with human frailty, and there are provocations for us all that push us beyond the limits of tolerance, but if it were easy to follow through on a "duty," it wouldn't really even merit the sobriquet of "duty."
Knowing, however, that we live in a world rife with human frailty with provocations for all, there is a corollary value of "civility." It is difficult to tolerate another's speech when it is aimed at me, as a person, and it lacks any form of civility. We should not mistake "civility" for "political correctness." The latter implies an enforced agreement with a comprehensive ideology or doctrine. The former implies, not enforced agreement -- being a "good communist" or a "true conservative" or a "good christian" -- but simply avoiding offense for the sake of offense -- i.e. avoiding language like the following:
The Republicans have been here before - and will always look away if the target is a Democrat - Funny how many now take issue with Trump. It is simply because he is hurting Republicans. That is the only problem for them. Patriotism means little to these people - power is their only objective.
Such language is designed to offend and draw boundaries. The moment we start objectifying people, setting them apart as "these people," and simplifying their world view to the point of non-sense, we have ceased to be civil and have failed in our duty to tolerate. Of course power is an objective for republicans. Power is an objective for both republicans AND democrats, and in both cases it is simply instrumental to the fulfillment of a "vision" for the American future. I disagree, sometimes strenuously, with the world view implicit in the republican vision, but "these people" are nevertheless people who no doubt love and worry for their families as much as we love and worry for our families. I have to be reminded of this by my wife, who tells me at times that I wear my disdain all too visibly across my face, and I could have plucked examples of incivility from my own blog posts, but the undeniable fact that I am rife with human frailty does not make civility, in a civil society, any less important.
We can look back at history for examples that seem in some ways to mirror today's malaise. The late 60s/early 70s come quickly to mind -- the racial and ethnic tensions, the weariness with a war that seems never to end and to lack definable "purpose," the growing severity of action and reaction to the political status quo -- but history is always an imperfect mirror. There is a difference today, and I've alluded to it in my previous post and above -- social media. It abets communication in many ways, not all of them good. So much has been written about the "new" phenomenon of cyber bullying, trolling, and the like that I doubt I can add anything new to the discussion, but would simply point out, along with Carlin, that it abets the speed at which "disputes" escalate. It has removed, as it were, "time for reflection." In the 70s, I wrote several letters to the editor of the Omaha World Herald, only one of which was published. I have no idea how many "liked" it, nor did it occur to me to care. I had expressed myself, and was glad that the paper's audience could hear what I had to say. Today, I can post a response to a response to an article in seconds, but then so can everyone else. If I want to be noticed amid the babble, if I want to accumulate "likes" or provoke responses, it helps if my position is more "extreme," less "civil," more "provocative." So much too has been written about the "new" phenomenon of the virtual, echo-chamber community, that here again I doubt that I can add much new to the discussion, but would simply point out that even the most extreme points of view can find their virtual community, their reinforcing and reassuring echo chamber.
The comment above is taken in response to an article in the Huff Post, entitled "The Media is on the Edge of a Murrow Moment." It suggests that the current media is about to call out Donald Trump (see, trying to be more civil) in the way that Edward Murrow called out Senator McCarthy. My gut level response is bologna. The media today simply cannot have a Murrow moment. In Murrow's day, there was a sense of journalistic integrity, which meant, in effect, reporting on the day's events with some sense of "objectivity." We assumed that journalists struggled to maintain their objectivity, but that they had a duty to do so, that they had a duty to report all the facts, not just the amenable facts. In the world of Murrow and Cronkite, where there was a sense of journalistic integrity, it was shocking for a Murrow to call out a Senator McCarthy, for a Cronkite to call out the Vietnam War, a dash of cold water to the face of the American public. Today, of course, there is little sense of journalistic integrity, and even more mainstream outlets -- Fox News and MSNBC -- have come to resemble the reinforcing and reassuring echo chambers of a "monetized" social media. For those in the Fox News echo chamber, they have called out President Obama so many times, in so many ways, all of them "pre-escalated" to apocalyptic terms, his malignity has become a head-bobbing truism, not a shocking truth. He is, as my dinner partner the other night put it, "out to destroy America" with malice aforethought.
The difficulty, of course, is that the walls of the bubbles are growing thicker, less penetrable, more vitriolic in their view of the other bubbles. Dan Carlin referenced the Trump rally violence in San Jose as a case in point and led him to ponder an America where the vitriol had become so intense, the hatreds so malignant, the threat of violence so pervasive, the duty to tolerate others with civility so burdensome that the differences themselves can no longer be tolerated. What then? The response of government forever has been to close down the open society and silence the opposition. Knowing that, it matters -- it really really matters -- who we put into power. It becomes imperative -- even absolutely imperative -- that the person in power, the POTUS, reflects our world view. We, of course, do not want to be shut down. We want the others shut down. We do not want their vision of the future imposed upon us. We want to impose our vision of the future on them. When we have closed down the open society, we enter a world where civil disagreement, much less civil disobedience, can no longer be tolerated -- where one form or another of "political correctness" actually does reign supreme, where simply expressing an "difference of opinion" has life altering consequences. Those who long for a "strong leader," one who can simply "over-power" the stagnation in Congress, are asking that we close down the open society.
What though if you are on the outs? What if the hated other has taken over the government? The mass of men and women are more like sheep than wolves, and there is sufficient historical evidence to suggest that the masses would simply keep their head down and go on grazing. Most of us, however, do not like to think of ourselves in that way. We assume that, in the face of an opposing tyranny, we would join the resistance. Does "our vision of the future" matter enough, is our hatred of the other imperative enough, that we resort to violence? We have, of course, experimented with civil war in the past. Here again, though, history is an imperfect mirror. Such a civil war would be "unthinkable" today in part because the federal government and its military is qualitatively "different." We were verging into modern warfare with artillery and the first rapid fire "machine" guns -- and the introduction of those weapons into traditional military tactics accounted for a good deal of the bloodshed -- but for the most part the average farmer with a rifle and a horse had pretty much the latest in military technology. The second amendment aside, the average militia man today does not have anything resembling the latest in military technology. There would be no dividing up and squaring off, as there was during the civil war. Some Texas legislators fantasize about succession, but their fantasies assume that, given a vote to break away, they would simply be allowed to do so. I doubt that would be likely. If the federal government decided that they wanted to maintain the union, however, they could easily quash any "armed" rebellion and restore a semblance of order. The only on-going alternative for the "rebels" would be a continuous terrorist war against a federal government "forced," so to speak, into countervailing violent repression. It would mean, effectively, the end of an open society with any semblance of a "right to privacy." Any such rights would be quickly sacrificed on the alter of "security" and we would become a surveillance state outright.
The previous paragraph is written from a speculative "what if" point of view, but for many who have internalized the over-heated rhetoric of talk radio, the hated other has ALREADY taken over the government. For many, Obama, and all that he represents, has ALREADY taken away our freedoms. The so-called religious freedom acts, with their insistence on "states rights," are a case in point. I have talked about the laws in previous posts, but they are dog whistle laws designed, under the cover of religion, to protect a freedom to discriminate, laws that protect individual measures that would free us from the hated other. In that sense, Obama, as a black president with a "questionable" background, represents a federal government that has, since the Johnson administration, interjected itself more and more to TAKE AWAY their freedom to discriminate, their ability to free themselves from the hated other. Federal anti-discrimination laws go beyond a simple "duty" to tolerate and create a legal obligation to tolerate those who, for many, are simply intolerable. What to do when the federal government seems to ignore the will of the people, or at least the will of the people who think and act like ME? If you live in an "algorithm" driven bubble of Facebook friends, if advertisements feed one a constant stream of "products you might like" along with "opinions you might share," the people who think and act like ME would seem to be legion. What to do then when the federal government seems so opposed to the will of the people? For true "patriots," those who feel the federal government has ALREADY "extend[ed] and unwarrantable jurisdiction," those who feel the federal government has ALREADY a "history of repeated injuries and usurpations," it is not difficult to use the language of our founders to initiate a call to "institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
It is, of course, easier to live in a bubble if one is rural or one lives in a"gated" community, where the "other" is mostly an abstraction, and my neighbors are for the most part just like ME. It is more difficult to live in a bubble if one is urban, where the "other" is the person just ahead of you at the grocery check-out, making small talk about their children with the clerk, who shares the same ethnicity. It is difficult to sustain a reciprocal duty to tolerate with an abstraction, particularly when that abstraction can be so easily vilified in the on-going media feed. It is more prudent, if not altogether easier, to sustain a reciprocal duty to tolerate when it is clearly a matter of maintaining the peace and safety between contiguous neighborhoods. As an aside, even apart from arming a militia to oppose the federal government, it is easier to feel that gun laws are an "unwarrantable jurisdiction" and one is being deprived of constitutionally given rights where guns are used principally for hunting and self-defense is an abstract fantasy. (Hearing my neighbors talk about self-defense, I always imagine the scene from A Christmas Story where Ralphie uses his red-rider bb gun to "protect" his family from masked robbers slithering over the fence in stripped shirts, but their mental vision is more r-rated and adult but essentially the same.) It is harder to feel that gun laws are an "injury and usurpation" where guns are used principally as tools of illegal aggression and there is no gun-based self-defense from the stray bullet that comes through your living room wall during a drive by aimed at someone else entirely. I sketch this rural/urban divide simply to point out that some of the deeper divisions within our country stem from that divide. Part of the motivation for the religious freedom laws, for example, was to over-turn even more local -- that is to say, more urban -- laws prohibiting discrimination.
Nevertheless, what if, just for the sake of argument, Texas actually succeeded from the union? What if the duty to tolerate the hated other and their "injuries and usurpations" became too burdensome? What if Washington, so to speak, said "peachy fine, see yah" and allowed a peaceful succession because they didn't have the stomach for killing hundreds of thousands of Texans. It's likely that they would be just a smaller version of the current United States, with many of the same divides. Although Texas is a "red state," about as red as one can get, the majority of the voters in Dallas County, home to Dallas, nevertheless voted for Obama. The same pattern holds throughout the US, the possible exception being Utah, a predominantly urban state that is consistently conservative mostly because of a Morman stranglehold. Texas remains red mostly because it is predominantly rural, and while succession would give ascendency to the rural attitudes in the short term, the fundamental divisions and the fundamental problems that go with them would remain. What if, though, just for the sake of argument, we assumed that Texas was uniformly red, that there were no divisions in the state, and that on succession the people of Texas uniformly and enthusiastically adopted a "true conservative" constitution -- if they did away with social safety net programs like SNAP, Obamacare, medicaid and medicare, and social security then reduced taxes accordingly balancing the budget? -- if they did away with the separation of church and state, put religion back in the schools, and allowed a state sanctioned religion to determine, among other things, a mandatory curriculum in the public schools and universities? -- if they had no restrictions on the purchase and sale of weapons of any sort including those that have only "military" utility like assault rifles and armor piercing rounds? -- if they deported all "illegal aliens" and built up the "military" to patrol the border and enforce stricter controls on immigration and raised taxes accordingly balancing the budget? -- if they "relaxed" current fourth amendment protections and increased internal surveillance, particularly on suspected minority populations like Muslims, to improve internal "security?" -- if they relaxed the requirements of the 24th amendment to the current constitution and put into place additional restrictions on "voting" rights to include various forms of "poll" tax? Would it make Texas a more or less desirable place to live? For whom?
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