Of Lefties and Righties
Sunday, September 18th, 2005What strikes me most about fellow armchair pundits of antipodal positions is an overview of emotions that leak out in our writing. Us on the political left suffuse our writing with frustration, resentment and sometime with humor. Those I find on the political right, however, share only one emotion: Rage.
Despite the obvious difficulty of reading expressions of opposing political views, discourse is necessary for Democracy to thrive. To be forced to read the conservative hoipoloi spewing hatred is counterproductive to any healthy debate; one cannot win an argument by shouting. One cannot foster modern political debate by promoting hatred, intolerance, or by subscribing to hate-speech.
As example, read this article. Now read a Righties’ take on it, and a Lefites’ viewpoint. Pam, on the left, does insert a few derogatory monickers, but largely sticks to reportage. Trodwell, however, blasts right in, using as many inflammatory references as he can fit in his junior-high sentence structure - talk about a festering gob, to use Trodwells’ own phrase.
Such open hostility is killing national debate; partly because somewhere within their tiny, charred hearts, the right-o-sphere knows their inflammatory pustules cannot hold up to logic and erudition inherent in objective debate. Better to gun down opponents - figuratively speaking, of course - than to withstand the brutal reality of not owning the Truth-As-I-See-It.
Real men (and women) can admit to being misguided; our current crop of Republican keyboard know-it-alls cannot. To most people branded by the scarlet letter “L” by the spittle-flecked and fiery-eyed, it’s no big deal to be found wrong. To admit error is to grow, and growth is advantageous on both the personal and political spectrums. Therein lies the essence of what being liberal means: being broad-minded; accepting.
How can that be a bad thing?