I watched a TED talk last night and one thing the presenter said has been bugging me ever since. She said,
“This is what politics looks like today. There’s no discourse anymore. There’s no conversation. There’s just blame.”
This is one of those things that sounds nice and appealing on paper or as a campaign slogan, but in reality it’s not and never has been the problem, and it’s becoming increasingly dangerous and disingenuous to keep suggesting that it is.
“There’s no conversation” and any variation of that statement implies that one should be willing to sit and have a conversation about everything. But let’s be real here — most Americans aren’t getting into arguments over the finer points of international trade agreements or involvement in overseas conflict or how to revise the tax code. Most Americans aren’t even equipped intellectually to discuss those things anyway. We are dismal when it comes to knowledge of history and civics.
The attitude that “You can’t even have a conversation anymore” will almost always involve individuals who want go back to topics that have already been discussed ad nauseum and aren’t (or shouldn’t be) on the table anymore at all, whatsoever.
For example, if you think employers should be allowed to fire LGBTQ people just because they are LGBTQ, damn straight I don’t want to sit and have a conversation with you about it, fuck off. The suggestion that I should spend my time doing that beyond stating “they are human beings and they deserve equal rights and protections under the law and you are wrong” is an insult. I shouldn’t even have to go that far because this is 2019, not 1919, and everyone carries computers in their pockets.
Not that this isn’t still a thing because unfortunately it fucking is, but just imagine if someone wanted to have a discussion with you on how they think we shouldn’t allow mixed race marriages. Unless you’re secretly the Grand Wizard of the KKK, you’d probably sputter and be at a loss for words and look at them like they came here in a time machine from the ’50s.
Then you’d come to the very real and accurate conclusion that they are racist, because when we look back on the people in the photographs who dug in their heels and fought against that sort of thing fifty years ago and dumped milkshakes on young black men’s heads and yelled at black women walking into their colleges, we call them racists and we call that racism, because that’s what it was.
But when it happens today we make all sorts of excuses and take every step possible so as to avoid calling it what it is in the name of ‘healthy discourse’ and tiptoe around all the people who insist on remaining ignorant, bigoted assholes.
The people who think we should be having discussions about everything and hearing ‘the other side’ are almost always the people whose rights have never been up for debate, or at least not in their lifetime.
—emily duchaine
Flommist Emily Duchaine lives in the Pacific Northwest. She likes to drink mead, learn about sharks, and listen to the Talking Heads. She pretends to be a professional businesswoman most days. Copyright © 2019 Emily Duchaine. Image source.
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