stogoe said,

Re: Darryl’s cute plea for tolerance and understanding in discussion with fascist theocrats:

No, they don’t deserve kindness or the benefit of the doubt. That’s something you have to earn, and for the past thirty years, they’ve consistently shown that kindness and civility on our part will be rewarded only with bile, fabrications, and backstabbing, without exception.

People won’t see you being calm and considerate in the face of crazy bugfuck rabidity; they just see you getting utterly demolished by ‘their team’.

I understand the Kumbayah impulse. But we have decades of evidence that no, it doesn’t work.

I think we need to check our impulses towards cynicism about these matters. If attempting to converse with the willing rather than alienating them by indiscriminate pugnacity strikes you as “cute,” perhaps you are more pessimistic than I.

I cut no slack whatsoever to the belligerent and dogmatic. Anyone who has read my previous comments on this blog can attest to that. I am keenly aware of the hypocritical hyper-nastiness of these folks. As the great Struther Martin said in the film “Cool Hand Luke:” “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach, . . .” I can’t improve upon that.

As an aside: can we all agree that the “kumbayah” cliche is so tired and outdated that we should exert ourselves a wee bit more and come up with at least a more interesting way to be dismissive?

No, they don’t deserve kindness or the benefit of the doubt. That’s something you have to earn, and for the past thirty years, they’ve consistently shown that kindness and civility on our part will be rewarded only with bile, fabrications, and backstabbing, without exception.

People won’t see you being calm and considerate in the face of crazy bugfuck rabidity; they just see you getting utterly demolished by ‘their team’.

I understand the Kumbayah impulse. But we have decades of evidence that no, it doesn’t work.

Richard Wade said,

May 15, 2007 at 2:30 am

Mriana,
I apologize. I shouldn’t tell you what to say or who to engage. I shouldn’t try to police this blog, it isn’t mine. I so enjoy your comments that I wouldn’t really scroll past any of them. I’m just tired of listening to the mechanical claptrap of psychotics. I used to do that for a living and I don’t want to do it for free. But that’s no excuse. Please forgive my arrogance. I’ll say no more.

No problem, no harm done. I forgive you. I understand your feelings about the psychotics too. Some are difficult to deal with sometimes.

Americans are great forgetters: Our optimism keeps us looking forward to a different and better future; unfortunately, we often ignore the lessons of the past. It seems that we deal with big problems only when they get so bad that they can no longer be ignored. This may be a natural result of our form of government and society as well as our ‘national character.’ Religion is a powerful force for good in the right circumstances, as our history shows; it is also a very destructive force in other circumstances. Perhaps not since the founding of our nation have we been forced by circumstances to have a national if not global conversation about religion. The time has come. We’ve got a problem that we’ve been sweeping under the rug. That luxury is no longer available to us. We must, I think, all come to some terms under which we can live together, or else we are in deep trouble.

Religious literacy is lacking in our country because it has not been seen as vital to an education. We may have been a victim of our own successes. Relative peace and prosperity have permitted us to ignore certain festering sores on the body politic. In the nation’s classrooms we have overemphasized some subjects and downplayed others. So much emphasis upon subjects geared toward material pursuits to the slighting of the humanities has left a vacuum in our national life that religion has been more than happy to fill. So long as church and state have remained separate (as they have in large part in the last century), public education could afford to overlook religion and its education—this was left to the churches and seminaries. It’s obvious to all that this situation no longer holds. We are, in my opinion, threatened both from without and within by radical religion. Such religion has infected our politics and poisoned our civic discourse.

I have recently noticed many comments on this blog that seem to indicate that the commentors do not even hear what others are saying—not to really interact—but seem to only try to proselytize. To have a national discourse, and perhaps a global discourse, do we not have to begin by identifying those things upon which we all agree? I can tell that there are many good and sincere people that comment on this blog who hold quite divergent opinions. It must be possible to come to some terms. We have a lot in common with each other.

Having done this, do we not then have to agree upon our definitions, our language, and the rules of argument and evidence? Short of this, the result of our many conversations is that we have succeeded only in scoring points and talking past one another. We ought to ask ourselves what we have come to this blog to do. What is our purpose? Perhaps we ought to do a self-check:

As we blog are we thinking more about listening, understanding, and learning, or about winning an argument? Some of our bloggers are exceptional at this (among whom I do not count myself).

Is it our purpose to try to convert others to our opinions?

Are we utterly honest with ourselves about whatever inner doubts and conflicts are raised when we listen to the opinions of others?

Can we admit the possibility that we can err?

Can we concede the possibility that there may be some vital knowledge that we do not possess, and that others with whom we converse might know?

Are we angry, desperate, restless, vengeful, anxious, fearful?

Do we hate, despise, mistrust, villify, denigrate?

Do we think that if we do not insist upon our opinions we are in peril?

Are we upset by this kind of discourse?

Are we obsessed by what we think about?

Do we believe that discourse is possible?

Do we value each other as equals?

There has to be a way to know.