tiptoeing around all the assholes

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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