Perspectives, politeness and reality

I'm getting more and more frustrated by the dominance of rhetoric in our political and economic discussion, and the refusal (by all sides) to face facts. There are far too many commentators who blame one side or the other ("It's the Democrats' fault!" or "It's the Republicans' fault!" or [from both Democrats and Republicans] "It's the Tea Party's fault!") instead of looking objectively at the realities of the situation.

Courtesy of a link from fellow blogger Blunt Object, we find a Canadian editorial that puts matters nicely into perspective. Here's an excerpt.

At the beginning of the year, liberals passionately condemned the violent rhetoric of conservatives; seven months later, a liberal columnist, in a liberal newspaper, launched a rhetorical blitzkrieg.

Conservatives went bananas, naturally. But liberals? There were hundreds of comments about Nocera’s column in the Times’s website. Most are long, informed, and articulate. Most agree with Nocera that the behaviour of Tea Party Republicans has been astonishingly foolish. (For the record, so do I.) But very, very few condemn Nocera’s language, and most of those appear to have been written by conservatives.

So what’s the conclusion? If I were ideologically straitjacketed, as far too many columnists are, my ideological commitment would determine the answer to that.

If I were a conservative, I would call liberals stinkin’ hypocrites and my ideologically straitjacketed conservative readers — the only sort I’d have — would all cheer and feel superior and have a good time.

But if I were a liberal, I’d use all the ingenuity at my disposal to come up with some explanation for why Nocera’s violent rhetoric is completely different from conservatives’ violent rhetoric and it’s completely ridiculous to suggest there’s any equivalence whatsoever. Or, like the Times readers, I just wouldn’t notice and there would be nothing to explain.

But I am neither a conservative nor a liberal, so I’ll draw a different conclusion.

Extreme commitment poisons reason.

Identify yourself with a tribe, work passionately for the tribe, make the tribe’s advance your highest goal, and the tribe shapes what you see and think and believe. You still talk of evidence and reason. You insist your beliefs are determined by careful consideration of all the facts and competing arguments. But this is nonsense. In reality, the facts and arguments you cite are determined by your beliefs, and your beliefs are determined by the tribe.

All this is obvious in the other tribe, the bad tribe, the dishonest and deluded tribe. But your tribe is entirely free of this irrationalism. Why, it is precisely because your tribe is reasonable that you adore it.

. . .

This isn’t a liberal or conservative thing. It’s a human thing.

And personally, the effect this has on public discourse worries me a lot more than violent rhetoric.

There's more at the link.

The man speaks sound common sense. Until we get rid of the rhetoric in favor of rational, factual analysis and discussion, we're not going to get anywhere.

(Of course, I'm not guilty of partisan political bickering. I blame everyone! . . . everyone else, that is!)





Peter