How Long Has This Been Going On?

My 16-year old son and I got into a big fight this afternoon over the previous post.

Partly it was his exhaustion after a hard week of school. (Afterward he took a 3 hour nap.) Partly it was his natural inclination to play Argument Clinic over just about anything.

But he got me to thinking. Just how long has this been going on?

Unlike many trends this one -- calling the other candidate a danger to the planet -- can be dated precisely, at least in terms of mainstream use. The ad above ran once, and Lyndon Johnson was heavily criticized for calling out Barry Goldwater as an ignorant, war-mongering nutcase who might blow up the world.

But Johnson won, and the ad tapped into something in our lizard brain. Republicans, who had been thinking such things about Democrats since the era of Joe McCarthy, saw the ad as legitimizing the tactic, and have been impugning Democrats' patriotism ever since.

Today, of course, even Democrats use it against one another. Ads like Clinton's 3 AM ad are pernicious because they end discussion. They do not further debate. They call all those who disagree illegitimate, unworthy, and call their supporters traffickers in treason. Beneath that any kind of corruption may freely hide, since there is no such thing as legitimate dissent from its premise.

The excuse commonly used for attacking another candidate's legitimacy is that it's always been that way. The 1800 campaign of Thomas Jefferson and the 1860 campaign against Abraham Lincoln are often used as antecedents. But the candidates didn't do it in their opponents' faces, and the attacks weren't considered legitimate at the time. (Picture from City University of New York.)

Now they're not only legitimate, but de rigeur. They're expected, demanded even, by a press corps which has become so obsessed with playing referee they've forgotten their job is really just to witness. This, combined with the overt politicization of much of our media (conservatives buying media outlets specifically to twist news coverage in their favor) has made our political campaigns a cesspool.

My point to my son, which was not taken, is that it doesn't have to be that way. We can reject those who engage in that kind of tactic, reject the journalists who engage in that kind of coverage, and slowly, over time, regain civility and balance.

It is possible.

But extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. This election offers that opportunity. People across the political spectrum are worried about their own lives, their country and their world as never before. We're engaged, and we want this to be about us. Not the candidates, and certainly not the supercilious media.

Barack Obama tapped into this, and the counterattack has begun, with this desire being called a mere tactic, or phony, not just by his political opponents but by the cynical among us. Well, if it is, and he governs cynically, we can deal with that.

But before we can have civilization again, we need civility. We need to stop assuming that other Americans are evil, or consort with evil, that they have evil intentions or evil hearts. They don't. They're just different is all. Their assumptions may differ from ours, their philosophies and beliefs may be radically different from ours. That does not make them bad people. Just mistaken, in our eyes.

Returning to civilized discourse starts with telling both the candidates and those who cover them that this pageant is not about them, that we're not cheering them.

It's about us. We're cheering us. An American election is the greatest miracle this nation has ever produced. It's our most important export.

Stop polluting it.

Comments

[phx]

Well said. It always seems to me that we've evolved in so many ways over the decades but the level of our political discourse isn't one of them. Maybe I'm wrong, but the level we're on sure doesn't seem worthy of us. On the other hand, the candidates this year still have time to set an example of decency and rationality that will be a tribute to us and them.

[JackPowers]

"But before we can have civilization again, we need civility. We need to stop assuming that other Americans are evil, or consort with evil, that they have evil intentions or evil hearts."

Last Saturday:
Dirty F'ing Haties
http://www.danablankenhorn.com/2008/02/dirty-fing-hati.html

"Stop fearing Rush Limbaugh and Neal Boortz and Michelle Malkin and their ilk. Laugh at them. Right in their faces. Laugh at them. They don't scare you anymore, they're buffoons, they're figures of fun, they're circus clowns, every single goddamn one of them."

"Next, I want you to do the same with anyone who takes them seriously. Anyone who listens to them ... Anyone who blogs approvingly of them -- don't read that person. Don't take a word they say at face value. Don't address any of their points. For God's sake, don't argue with them. They're drug-addled, the drug is hate ..."

"Laugh at them instead. They're idiots, they're imbeciles, they're useless...."

"Next, I want you to go to their enablers. Their advertisers, their employers, anyone who takes them seriously. Let them know that you don't, that you no longer take them seriously, either, because they're keeping this garbage alive. ... that anyone who supports lunacy is a lunatic themselves."

Civility. D'yeah, right.

[Dana Blankenhorn]

Two points need to be made about the "Jack Powers" comment above.

First, "Jack Powers" left a phone e-mail address.

Second, what is so uncivil about laughing in the face of hatred? I'd say it's the essence of civility, and far better than haters deserve.

Isn't that what Chaplin gave to Hitler?

[Jesse Kopelman]

That was the post your son called you out on!? How is there even anything to debate there? That's taking devil's advocate a bit too far. It brings me back to something my father once said to me, maybe 10 or so years ago, that he had no interest in talking to anyone under 30. Being much younger than he, my threshold is set a bit lower, but I certainly appreciate his sentiment more and more each year (and my age threshold continues to rise). It's not so much that the young and inexperienced can't be 100% correct. It's more that I just don't care what they think. The more experiences one has the more one begins to differentiate between opinions born of hard experience and opinions born of mere research. While both can be equally valid, only the later is generally of much interest to anyone beyond the opiner.