Understanding and agreement are two different things.  So are people and their arguments.

What, exactly, has happened to us, anyway?  I’ve been thinking about blogging again and thinking about getting along with people and thinking about friendship and I realized that after one brief, tense period right around the time I started blogging, I stopped dismissing other people out of hand based on their political beliefs.  I have no problem at all getting along with people I disagree with, no matter how strong the disagreement.  And I get the sense that especially among bloggers, this is an increasingly weird way to feel.  Because I get the sense that folks with other views are supposed to be dismissed out of hand as mentally deficient, and thus unworthy of any kind of acknowledgement, much less friendship.

This makes me terribly, terribly sad.

It also strikes me as interesting that blogging has made me far more tolerant of this sort of disagreement.  I think we all had a lot of anger for a couple of years, there, and now it’s much easier to see how somebody who believes differently can believe differently.  The thing is that so much of the blogosphere was built on that anger that it’s practically a requirement to be taken seriously as a political blogger.  That’s not only weird but also a damned pity, since what drew me in in the first place was the fact that thoughtfulness was prized, even amidst the anger.  If I want pissed-off soundbites, I’ve got the MSM.  I don’t need blogs for that.

One of the things that really bothers me about all of this is that several times recently, both online and off, I’ve said something to the effect of, I can see why people think x is a good idea and immediately been told what an idiot I am for thinking that x is a good idea.  I didn’t say I thought it was a good idea, just that I could understand where the people advocating it were coming from.  Have we really reached the point where a lack of hatred of people who disagree with us constitutes some sort of ideological treason?  Do you have to hate an idea so violently that you can’t even acknowledge it to have any credibility? 

Bizarre.

Maybe it’s because I’ve grown to dislike both major parties pretty much equally, and maybe it’s because I think they’re both wrong right at the very base of the way they approach things, and maybe it’s just because I realize that the Diebold folks can’t read my mind and count any non-hatred-filled thoughts as votes and thus expressing sympathy for a view is a far, far thing from making it happen, but the way the debate is being framed disturbs me at least as much as the arguments themselves.  (Of course, this could be because 99% of American politics right now is people arguing over things that they really have no right to be arguing over, but that’s an entirely different post and not one that I’m likely to write any time soon.)

Anyway, it’s a pity.  Probably the inevitable outcome of all of the arguing over things that we have no right to be arguing over, but a pity nonetheless.

1. Deb, I hear you. In fact, it’s almost eerie how much your post resonates with my own thoughts on this point. At this stage, going on 5 years in the blogosphere, I find I’ve almost if not quite completely tuned out the big political blogs— the “fight blogs,” as I call them.

   The venom, the bile, the endless ideologically driven anger… I get very little of that out here in meatspace, so why should I gratuitously expose myself to it online all the time? At this point, I’m much more interested in people who blog about their own ideas, their own imagination, their own trials and joys, their own everyday life— instead of just regurgitating the same old same old angry ideological talking points, and what’s more feeling the need to trash anyone who doesn’t see it their way.

   Posted by Paul Burgess  on  07/25  at  09:25 AM  from 
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