I want ALL OF YOU to lose the healthcare debate
Because everyone on every side of this infuriating “conversation” is being nasty, dehumanizing other human beings, and scaring the crap out of me.
A conversation with a voice of reason and sanity:
ME: I think I found the thing that’s going to make me give up Twitter.
HILLARY: What?
ME: The healthcare debate.
HILLARY: [LAUGHTER LAUGHTER LAUGHTER]
ME: I was lulled into a false sense of security by surviving the election. I thought, if I can withstand that much unrelenting malice from all sides of the spectrum coming at me from the firehose on a daily basis, I can take anything. But this is EVEN MORE ANNOYING.
HILLARY: Well, you only have to put up with it for eight more years.
ME: EIGHT MORE YEARS? I wasn’t thinking that far ahead! Now I feel even WORSE!
HILLARY: Sorry.
ME: I keep telling myself it’s a good way of practicing tolerance.
HILLARY: It could be!
ME: But it seems like some people think that as long as they have what they consider the most “compassionate” politics, it’s okay for them to be a gigantic asshole.
HILLARY: That is certainly true. But I think it would be good for you to approach this as a challenge - to detach from the issue and instead focus on why people believe the things they do.
ME: I try! But when I ask them, with no sarcasm, “Why do you think that?” - because I’m genuinely interested at how a mind arrives at some of these beliefs - they think I should know because “it’s obvious” and that if I’m asking, I must be a REPUBLICAN.
HILLARY: Sometimes, for your own sanity, you just have to ignore people. It’s like the elderly, racist relative who uses the n-word and is a complete jerk. There’s no real reason to debate them at every family gathering as if they have an ounce of sense. It’s pointless.
ME: True. But the awful thing is the incredibly stupid things being spouted by people who do, when it comes to other matters, have sense. My sense of disappointment is right up there with my sense of revulsion.
Strategy for survival:
1) I’m going to try using TweetDeck’s ability to block certain keywords from appearing in my Twitter stream to see if that helps. (Keyword list suggestions welcome!)
2) I’m also going to try to tell myself that, if I drill down far enough, I’ll find common ground - surely everyone taking part in this wants everyone in this country to be healthy and not bankrupt through no fault of their own, right? (I’m going to pretend so, anyway.)
3) If all else fails, I will unfollow everyone who insists on turning their Twitter stream into a poor imitation of really offensive cable news output.
In the meantime…feel free not to try to “educate” me on anything. Republican or Democrat, you don’t need my buy-in to continue wrecking this country.
Filed under: Life
Yes, it is best to avoid pointless conversations. What I miss are actual debates between unlike minded smart people. I have no need whatsoever to agree with people or even to persuade them–but I would like to talk to them and bandy about ideas without reductive name calling. Jackie, during that conversation you mentioned that people here in California often react to your expressing a view other than their own by saying in an accusatory or dismissive tone, “Oh, you must be a republican!” I’ve encountered that too. From my mom, no less. But I’ve also found that, if you can get down to the actual issues, avoiding buzz words and the like, most people actually agree on most things. Strange but true.
The problem is that the people I encounter can only do the “other=REPUBLICAN” equation. It’s really freaking stupid, and annoying.
I find that most people (by people I mean those not within my relatively small circle of real life friends) don’t agree on most things. In fact, most (many is likely the appropriate word) people have all kinds of ideas about how OTHERS should live life. Or what is a just way to live that life in the context of the global “community.” There is an extreme abundance of (ridiculous) social engineering schemes that come out of the mouths and minds of ostensibly intelligent people. Folks simply like to meddle. It gives them something to do or believe in.
In other news, my Twitter use is down 80% since April.
I’m convinced humans don’t need this type of saturated information flow. It may actually be unhealthy, but I’ll leave that to the next social science best seller on the topic.
Also…I like parentheses.
And *Hi* Jackie!
This is a direct result of years of politics being broken into two arbitrary categories. Balanced media means looking at “both” sides, while ignoring the possibility that there could be another perspective.
I’ve grown so tired of the debate that I just make it clear to anyone who wants to talk to me about it that regardless of their view, my opinion and my rhetoric will offend them on a profound level.
I think that George Carlin had it right: “Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.”
I just make it clear to anyone who wants to talk to me about it that regardless of their view, my opinion and my rhetoric will offend them on a profound level.
This is an EXCELLENT idea. I will put it into action. Thanks, David!
Dave: I’m pretty sick of the “You should be free to do whatever you want…as long as you want to do the ‘right’ things” attitude in people who fancy themselves liberal. I want to tell them to hand back the label until their views are commensurate with it.
As for the so-called conservatives: Don’t get me started on the statists on the other side of the aisle…
I want my 19th Century definition of liberal back as well. :)
For a lot of the time, people in the US and people in the rest of the English speaking world are talking about more or less the same things. However, when the Democrats elect a new president the Americans argue about health care for a year, we shake our heads largely in incomprehension (not in terms of not being interested in healthcare or because we necessarily think our systems are better or worse, but just in the sense that the conversation is all about the structure of and filled with the jargon of the US system, which is of little relevance to us), and then a year later the “reform”, the president has to reinvent his presidency as being about something else.
I am looking forward to this time next year, personally.
I meant to say the “reform” collapses in acrimony and the president has to….
Sorry.
Ah yes, the “get an education” standard response to encountering someone who does not tow the party line… to which the standard riposte is some variation of the following:
“To state my disagreement with you views springs from a lack of education suggests you think “an education” leads as an inevitable consequence to your point of view, presumably because the conclusions you have come to are self-evident when “all the facts” are known.
This is what is known as being “narrow minded” and suggests a deep seated fear of getting in an genuine argument as that might involve actually having to look at you views from first principles. But then telling someone to “get an education” is much easier as it takes very little thought and implies deep wisdom without having to demonstrate it.
Hee hee! Glad I looked in today - I am also trying to practice compassion by not going ballistic when I get some of the more insane Far Left news from friends or the internet, or more insane Cable News emails from my parents. If I did not try to use this all as My Perfect Teacher I’d sprout an(other) ulcer.
Good luck!
Perry, how dare you suggest that people should critically look at their own opinions and beliefs. If they do that, they might be forced to reevaluate a conclusion that had been fed to them by parents, professors and pundits. That just seems inefficient. It’s easier to continue on the same train of thought for the rest of your life.
People’s reasons for spouting crap are many and complex, but there are a couple of reliable variables involved in this kind of situation:
1. the level of addictive-paranoid-ego attached to the other person’s prejudice,
2. the degree of diplomacy one can be bothered to employ while addressing the person.
I tend to assume that 1. is generally in operation at some level, and that it isn’t worth bumping into because I hate observing people at their worst. Mostly I stop talking earlier in the process, because if people’s emotions are involved, they’re not going to be having a rational debate.
It’s not spoonfeeding that causes this problem though- it’s just the same basic human failure that’s behind every area of our lives where we’re in prejudice & denial, choosing immediate comfort over openness & truth. Where people aren’t ready to give up their addiction, there’s no point in pushing them, they just get nastier and nastier.