UPDATE- Words can not express how uplifting it's been to read the supportive comments here. It was unexpected and it is flattering and it has really empowered me to believe that there might just be an audience out there (however tiny it may be) that wants to hear what I have to say. (even though their are others who see me a naive, uncaring, dissent shutting down, republican light, pragmatic fool :( )
I guess I should start by setting the scene. Yesterday I was mad. I had read things on the front page that quite literally had me furious. This wasn't the first time this had happened and honestly I figured you know what? Life would be so much better and I'd be a hell of a lot more productive if I just deleted that little bookmark icon on the top of my browser and went about my life. I didn't do that though. Instead, I decided to vent and write a diary. What happened after I pressed publish wasn't anything at all what I expected. It was an incredible experience that's not really all that easy to put into words but I'm going to try. Let me tell you more about it after the jump.
I'm going to tell you straight off I feel pretty nervous writing this. I can feel my heart beating and there's a knot in my stomach. I keep looking back at my intro seeing all the different ways my words will be twisted depending on who the reader is and it's a very uncomfortable feeling. I'm going to press on though, because I think it's important for me to be able to look back and try to make sense of what happened.
The first thing I learned was that when trying to make a point it's really important to choose your words carefully. When people feel incited something crazy happens inside them. They stop reading, they get defensive, none of which is productive. In my case two words that I should never used to describe those I disagreed with were sane and childish. SoCal Sal made that point to me very clearly with her/his clever editing of one of my passages.
--But what about the rest of us? The sane majority? Those that realize that this nation has tremendous problems that will never be solved by an analytical process of children that lacks depth?
If I had eliminated the bold elements (and other references) and added the "lacks depth" my point would have been much clearer and probably would have pushed far less buttons. If I had vigorously weeded out my generalizations that probably would have helped out a bunch too.
Maybe. To be honest I don't really know anymore. Yesterday had that much of an effect. The short of it goes like this- HollyDem writes diary, Hollydem publishes diary, HollyDem unleashes a shit storm.
A boy was it a shit storm! Immediate and relentless right from the moment the diary came up. I remember sitting there saying to myself could somebody have actually read it that fast? And then the comments continued and continued almost all of them negative. With every one I read I felt worse and worse until finally something mind blowing happened. The diary made the rec list and that's when it hit me.
You're not alone. A lot of people must feel the way you do. They may not be as loud, they may not see the validity on spending time writing comments but they're out there. I got to say it made me feel good.
So, I sat there. Watching the comments come in. Reading every one. Probably three negatives to every positive but still it felt good. Even after hearing myself called every name in the book- it felt good because quickly I realized one very important thing.
The diary wasn't about me. The appreciative positive comments, yes. They tended to be directly related to what I had written. The shit storm? Not so much. It was like what I had written had taken on a life of its own. People only saw what they wanted or possibly needed to see. Their comments veered to whatever direction the writer saw fit. It was full on defense mode. People clearly felt that somehow they were under attack and needed to fight back. It didn't make me angry just more curious, even more so when I realized I had seen this all before.
It was about a year ago visiting my conservative father in law around the holidays. The time of the great healthcare debate and he made no bones about how much he was "against it". I asked him what do you mean? You do accept that there's a problem and he agreed. So then I said-- what do you mean you're against it? All of it? There's nothing good here? Nothing you can support? Every proposal put forward? You're just against it? All of it? And he said yes. That's all. Just yes.
I didn't bother to push him more because I realized there wasn't anything to be gained. The reason for that was simple. My father in law couldn't choose to think about it because if he did he wouldn't be able to be right. I think that was some of the same dynamic that was out full force yesterday. There's no endorphine rush in seeing things in shade of gray. People need to be right for that to kick in. No issue was ever complicated. They were right and everyone else was wrong, or blind or a republican, or an Obamacon or God forbid a pragmatist! How in the world did that become a nasty word? In my thesauraus the synonyms for pragmatic are reasonable and practical! The horror! One commentator made me laugh out loud with his unintended irony when he said-- What I love about you "pragmatists" is that we TRIED it your way for TWO YEARS.
Which all brought me back to an old episode of Bill Maher where he interviewed Bill Bradley (a pretty reasonable guy who I'm sure did a lot of horrible things that I'll hear all about after I press publish) Bill M was ranting on about the bank bailout and he asked (or more like told) Bill B-- if we're going to be bailing them out shouldn't we at least own them? I'll never forget Bradley's answer-- You believe that because it's what's easiest for you to understand. Maher's jaw dropped along with mine and he immediately shut up. It was a powerful moment you don't see very often on TV anymore where someone realized that they might not be right (or had enough information to make an argument) and accepted it. It probably didn't feel too good to have to step down off the soap box but Maher did it and was probably a wiser man for it. I know I've done the same thing some times after hearing that and have always felt the better for it.
Last night I forwarded the post to my father a Democratic old timer from West Virginia for his thoughts. He didn't say much, he tends to think it through, but he did offer one real pearl of wisdom to latch on to, he said simply-- you think that's bad, you should have heard them when the civil rights act was passed. I wrote back-- Republicans? And he said-- no Democrats, there's always ten percent screaming about something.
Another one of people's big issues was that others wanted to get rid of dissent. I read that over and over and it got stranger and stranger. It was like the posters who cherished dissent took particular hubris to anybody who wanted to express dissent to their dissent. And then the name calling would begin all over again.
For the record as probably the only person who read all 900+ comments- none of them were out to squelch dissent. I can say confidently that that is 100% a straw man. All people were asking for (and I assume those who recommended but didn't comment too) is civil discourse. A back and forth of ideas, maybe an attempt to analyze things in their larger context. That's it. That's all.
If we try it we may all learn something.
Either that or there will be another shit storm.