The Hatred in the Debate

I just finished reading articles in the DailyKos and another at Althouse that brought to mind the inability to have a reasonable dialog on politics these days. I've been wondering what happened. I remember when Democrats disagreed with Republicans because they didn't agree with their policies, so they put their point of view forward and tried to pursuade people. If they didn't pursuade someone, that was OK... disagreements are inevitable and don't mean you can't still respect each other. The same is true for Republicans. If a Democrat didn't agree, they weren't immediately labeled this, that, or the other. There was a dialog. Naturally, there were intense ideologues on both sides that couldn't countenance the other side, but those of us out in the world could have intelligent discussions and political disagreements with people we still regarded afterwards as friends. I even recall intelligent debates on television.

AH!!! Have we found at least part of the answer? With 24 hour news, we've spawned debate shows. Hardball. Hannity and Colmes. Etc. On these shows, politics has become professional wrestling. It's entertainment. And the shrillness of the debate is part of the entertainment value. The format calls for vitriol. Segments are short, so you'd better get in your sound bite! A guest can't listen thoughtfully to someone else's point, point out the areas of agreement, perhaps acknowledge where the other guest has made him/her think a little, then give their points. There's no time. That's not entertaining enough. Guests of opposing points of view don't even have time to dissect a poorly made argument, or to point out factual or logical flaws. All they have time for (and entertainment value for) is: "That's stupid. What we should do is..."

Anyone who has taken Logic 101 and listens to the (so-called) debates on the political shows has got to absolutely cringe at the falacious arguments that are made. There are Ad Hominem attacks galore. False analogies are practically the only kind of analogy you hear. (where would Washington be if someone pointed out every false analogy... and what would we do without quick access to the Hitler reference?)

I think part of the reason the political debate has become so base is that what we see on television, and hear on the radio, is politics as entertainment, and the entertainment is the vitriol. It is professional wrestling, and many of us who aren't on television have adopted that style, in the same way kids on the playground adopt the styles of the professional athletes they see (and displaying the same maturity level as those impressionable youths).

Also, I think there's the Clinton factor: Republicans hated Clinton and tried way too hard to bring him down. Unfortunately, Clinton gave them a lot of ammunition. But, it was WAY out of hand. It was very personal, and part of that was that the ammunition Clinton gave them was personal. I think what really angered the Republicans was that Clinton kept taking credit for their accomplishments. Frankly, it wasn't his fault that the Republicans were bad communicators. The personal hatred aimed at Clinton almost inevitably came back to haunt Bush.

Naturally, with a collective memory of just under a week, no one on either side remembers things that would force us to cut the vitriol out of the debate (if we were to be intellectually honest and not try to spin the issues). For example, in 1998 it was the Democrats calling for regime change in Iraq and talking tough, particularly about weapons of mass destruction. It is said that Al Gore wanted to invade. Now, Democrats act like everyone has always known there were no weapons of mass destruction and Bush made it all up, that they were the only reason given to invade Iraq, and that there was no reason to go in and no good to come out of a free and stable Iraq. For their part, Republicans forget that during the time when the Democrats were talking tough about Iraq, they were so engaged in their Clinton hatred that they dismissed what Clinton was saying and doing regarding the dangers posed by Saddam's regime as "wag the dog." This means it was the Democrats to first point out the dangers of Saddam and call for regime change, and the Republicans were the first to dismiss the arguments. Interesting...

Then, of course, there's the fact that there are so few trustworthy, unbiased, sources of information. Reporting, whether you believe it is left or right, is clearly no longer a "just the facts" type of endeavor. Even hard news appears to be approached from one perspective or the other. When do you see straight information, inclusive of all relevant points of view, dispassionately dispensed? You don't even open the sports pages without being able to detect the political leaning of the writer. So, most people are left with a choice of reading things they agree with, thus hardening their point of view, or reading things they disagree with and getting mad. There are few neutral information sources. With information pre-biased, which means conclusions are predetermined, our critical thinking skills get very rusty indeed.

I wish the Democrats had not hired a DNC chairman who has recently said, "I hate Republicans." I wish Republicans were less likely to call Democrats traitors when they disagree. To paraphrase a quote from the movie "The American President": These are serious times. We have serious problems and we need serious people to solve them...

We don't need to all become "political wrestlers."