From Twitter 01-08-2011

( Tweets. Scintillating, innit. )

Tweets copied by twittinesis.com

The things we choose to say

By now I think most people have heard about the shooting at a Tuscon, AZ Safeway that killed several people and wounded over a dozen more, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (AZ-D).

I’ve been keeping mum here about this mostly because I’ve wanted to avoid falling into the trap that seems to be the Outrage du Jour, namely blaming one political group or another for shooter Jared Lee Loughner’s actions. It occurred to me tonight, after seeing this video, that the conversation I didn’t want to have isn’t the conversation that needs having, and that the one that does need to be had needs to be had now.

Words have power. The words we use for ourselves, and for others, have power. They reflect and affect the way we see ourselves and one another. They color the discourse. What we call ourselves, our views, and those who disagree with us is the framework by which we form and understand relationships, friendly or bitter.

When we use the rhetoric of violence, when we use language that promotes fear or hate, when we position ourselves to disagree in ways that preclude even the possibility of discussion or discount that discussion because it is less romantic to us then barging in with guns and winning the day with a show of force, we perpetuate a culture in which shootings like this are not only possible, they are assured.

The last election cycle, in which candidates were explicitly telling their supporters to make their opponents fearful, and in which individuals carried and discharged weapons at rallies where candidates skirted sedition should have been our national wake-up call. We have so polarized the discourse that it is more natural than not to view the individual on the other side of the aisle as an enemy who wishes us harm.

People, I should not feel the same way about a political party with which I disagree as I was told to feel about the USSR when I was a child. Nobody should feel this way. Are the stakes incredibly high? For some of us, yes. But unless we dial back the rhetoric — not the ideals, not the causes, but the ways in which we engage them — this is not getting any better.

There’s a really excellent interview that Rachel Maddow did with John Stewart. It’s about 47 minutes long, and if you can hear it and have the time to listen to it, you should. One of the things he talks about is the 24 hour news cycle and how it hyper-dramatizes things, plays on our fears, and perpetuates the polarization and corruption in our system that allows it to thrive.

It’s exhausting. It’s a glut. And, if you’re old enough to remember a time before it, it’s not even a particularly skillful or useful glut. Worse, we’re not encouraged (or, if we are young, trained) to cultivate the discernment we need to differentiate between news-news and the opinion-makers on all sides who perpetuate the continued polarization of the national discourse.

In about a year, I’ll be spending more time than I like trying to explain to some of the otherwise intelligent adults in my life why the latest dumbshit political e-mail forward is a steaming pile of bunkum. I’m not looking forward to this any more than I am the fear and anger I experience when I see bumper stickers bearing the names of candidates who rally their base with rhetoric based on the idea that I am the enemy, that I am coming for them, and that should be harmed.

Closer to home in both time and space, I’m tired of this same rhetoric being used by causes and persons I support. I’m tired of the death of the distinction of fact versus opinion, of politically-motivated misinformation in the sciences, and of the way we are discouraged from picking through and finding the separate threads in complex situations instead of shouting (in 140 characters or less) that Julian Assange is Good/Bad and therefore cannot be a rapist/not a rapist/a hero/a terrorist/a lunatic/an idiot/a political prisoner.

You have one brain, and it is a magnificent tool. It is attached to your mouth, and to your heart. As a human being, I beg of you to apply these things to the best of your ability, and to encourage others (including me) to do the same with honesty, fairness, and kindness.

We will never agree on everything because the world is beautiful and strange and there is always more than one right answer depending on how you look. But oh, what I would give for just enough of us to cast off just enough cynicism to believe that these things can be a social good again.

Failing that, just put down the guns already. It isn’t helping.

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com