{"id":148227,"date":"2012-03-01T15:43:40","date_gmt":"2012-03-01T21:43:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coloradoconfluence.com\/?p=148227"},"modified":"2012-03-03T13:08:19","modified_gmt":"2012-03-03T19:08:19","slug":"irrational-belligerence-run-amok","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coloradoconfluence.com\/?p=148227","title":{"rendered":"Irrational Belligerence Run Amok"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Facebook posting of an audioless\u00a0YouTube clip of Michelle Obama whispering something into President Obama’s ear during a 9\/11 ceremony, the movement of her lips slight and completely indecipherable, with a caption insisting that\u00a0her unknown and unknowable words were\u00a0\u00a0a comment about the amount of ceremony surrounding the flag, eliciting on the Facebook thread the typical hateful comments about her being “the worst first-lady ever” and “not being a lady.” Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum disdainfully calling President Obama a snob for saying that he would like to see all children go on to higher education, whether college or trade school or technical training. The phenomenon I’ve dubbed \u201cSharianity\u201d<\/a>, in which any act of violence committed by any Muslim anywhere in the world is taken as proof that America is being overrun by Sharia law (huh?). The Basal Ganglia <\/a>of humanity dominating comment boards and Facebook threads.<\/p>\n

This is not a right-left issue. Yes, it’s true, the preponderance of the belligerence, especially on the substantive side (see The Basic Political Ideological Grid<\/a>), comes from the Right, but there is more than enough (especially in the form of how it’s expressed) coming from the Left. And there are both reasonable people of goodwill to be found on the Right, and irrational and belligerent people to be found on the Left.<\/p>\n

The real political divide is not between the right and the left, but rather between, on the one hand, people who strive to be reasonable people of goodwill, humble enough to know that they don’t know all of the answers, and committed to working together with all others willing to do so to confront the challenges of a complex and subtle world; and, on the other hand, people who surrender almost completely to their own irrationality and belligerence, attacking\u00a0any pursuit of knowledge as “snobbery” and\u00a0any attempt to implement knowledge as “elitism,” eager to vilify all members of all out-groups (e.g., Muslims, Hispanics, Gays, Non-Judeo-Christians and Non-Americans in general) and ostentatiously both wave the flags and crosses of the in-group while subjecting those who don’t to a soft-Inquisition into why they lack the virtue to do so.<\/p>\n

But, while the substantive positions of the Right are saturated in this error, the expressed attitudes of many on the left are so as well.\u00a0To paraphrase and adapt\u00a0Shakespeare to the current context, \u201cThe Fault, Dear Brutus\u2026.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0is not with those enemies over there, but with ourselves. If the Right turns hatred into planks in a platform, the Left too often turns into a habit of thought and speech directed reflexively against those on the Right. We have to attack the offending ideas more than the people foolish enough to embrace them. And we have to do so even when the offending idea is that those on the Left are pure and good while those on the Right are villains to be vanquished.<\/p>\n

I am not shy in my criticisms of right-wing ideology (see, for instance, the essays linked to in the box labeled “Tea Party Political Fundamentalism and Responses To It” at Catalogue of Selected Posts<\/a>). But I am no less inclined to let left-wing intransigence and belligerence get a free pass (see, for example, many of the essays linked to in the “Politics of Reason and Goodwill” box at Catalogue of Selected Posts<\/a>). And, despite the incessant attempts to equate this criticism of belligerence to a Pollyanna call for perfect civility and cordiality, a spirit of compromise that assumes and requires that others are reasonable people of goodwill as well, that is not, in fact, what it is. Reason and goodwill do not require passivity, or surrender, or an unwillingness\u00a0to confront irrationality and belligerence with\u00a0implaccable resolve.\u00a0There is a place for strong words and\u00a0“offensive” analogies (see, e.g., Godwin\u2019s Law, Revisited<\/a>\u00a0and Humanity v. Civility<\/a>), even occasionally for actual violence (such as to prevent a genocide), but only as long as they are done not in service to hatred or anger, but rather in service to a genuine commitment to humanity.<\/p>\n

People often aren’t sure how to tell the difference. Here\u00a0are some\u00a0guidelines: 1) Those who refuse olive-branches sincerely offered are acting in\u00a0pettiness rather than\u00a0in service\u00a0to humanity; 2) Those who revel in their belligerence are acting in service to anger rather than\u00a0in service to humanity; 3) Those who vilify individuals more than they critique ideas are acting in service to\u00a0hatred rather than in service to humanity; 4) Those who are certain that they possess the one, definitive substantive truth that\u00a0their political enemies\u00a0just don’t get are acting in service to \u00a0hubris rather than in service to humanity; 5) Those who cling to their false certainties rather than commit to processes by which to refine them are acting in service to\u00a0moral and intellectual laziness\u00a0rather than in service to humanity.<\/p>\n

We can do better.\u00a0One step toward\u00a0doing better\u00a0is for each one of us who is so inclined, each one of us who wants to act more in service to humanity and less in service to pettiness, belligerence, hatred,\u00a0hubris, and moral and intellectual laziness, to decide to strive to exercise the discipline involved, invest the effort involved, make the commitment involved, to\u00a0walking the walk as well talking the talk (see The Power of \u201cWalking the Walk\u201d<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Social change starts within each one of us, in the battle to be committed enough to do more than gratify our own emotional need to smite the enemy, in the struggle to be, not perfect, but sincerely committed to making this a better world, a commitment which requires each and every one of us to strive to make ourselves better individuals. Reason and goodwill, sincerely felt and sincerely advocated, are powerful forces, difficult to deny, easy to gravitate toward. All we need do is commit to them more diligently, make them\u00a0our guiding forces, and act accordingly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Facebook posting of an audioless\u00a0YouTube clip of Michelle Obama whispering something into President Obama’s ear during a 9\/11 ceremony, the movement of her lips slight and completely indecipherable, with a caption insisting that\u00a0her unknown and unknowable words were\u00a0\u00a0a comment about the amount of ceremony surrounding the flag, eliciting on the Facebook thread the typical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[4,22],"tags":[128,1299,807,934,11941,111,132,1487,803,849,11939,110,11940,60,1025,543,1057],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradoconfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148227"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradoconfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradoconfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradoconfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradoconfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=148227"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/coloradoconfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148528,"href":"https:\/\/coloradoconfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148227\/revisions\/148528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloradoconfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=148227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradoconfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=148227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloradoconfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=148227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}