Why Civility Failed
The Real Problem With American Politics
Why Civility Failed
“I tried to talk; I want you to remember that. I tried to reach out. I tried to understand you, but I think that you understand us perfectly, and I think that you just don’t care, and I don’t know whether you are here to invade, infiltrate, or just replace us – I don’t suppose it really matters now. You are monsters! That is the role you seem determined to play, so it seems I must play mine: the man that stops the monsters.” – the Twelfth Doctor, Flatline, Doctor Who
Why did the civility movement fail? Besides the increasing size of government, the false stereotypes used to describe those of particular opinion groups, the lack of basic knowledge, the failure of compromises, the ever-rising hateful rhetoric, the ubiquitous lies, and the rise of social media, there is a much deeper problem. Partisans love to argue and fight. They actually resist attempts to give in to their demands in exchange for peace. They don’t want peace. It’s not a problem of the mind; it’s a problem of the heart – and it goes far beyond politics.
No Cooperation:
It’s hard to get to understand another’s point-of-view when they won’t even tell you what it is. While my coworkers and friends flew free with political opinions, showing no inhibitions when they repeatedly spout offensive political nonsense, they will suddenly clam up if anyone asks a question or shows any interest in learning from them. I could not get anyone to meet me outside of work to discuss our common interests in politics – except for one lady one time – and she then revealed she had somehow assumed it would be for only ten minutes and we would never have to meet again. She was incredibly impatient. Considering how much she loved to talk about herself and her opinions during the busy period, you’d think she would be overjoyed to have the chance to speak without interruption. Nope.
I discovered, too, that some people simply have no answers. One college student told me she was a feminist. I asked her why. She said that women’s rights weren’t respected in this country and that was why she got into politics. “Can you give me an example?” I asked. I have never seen an expression more blank than the one on her face that day.
Even when dialogue occurred, my attempts to open myself up to be corrected were met with abuse. In an online debate with a fellow blogger, I agreed that I too had seen examples of bias on FOX News, but had yet to see enough reason to dismiss them as nothing more than a propaganda machine or that they were any worse than CNN, NBC, CBS, or ABC (MSNBC is definitely a propaganda machine). Instead of meeting me where I was to educate me, the blogger told me I was hopeless. Learning is very difficult when no one will teach you.
It was only recently that I heard it explained why capitalists are often accused of racism. Apparently, the idea is that capitalists oppose handouts, handouts are assumed to be the best option for the poor, the poor are disproportionally racial minorities, and so therefore capitalists must secretly hate racial minorities. It’s a stretch to be sure, but at least it’s the beginnings of an explanation. Until I heard this story, I had assumed capitalists were accused of racism only to discredit them because the liars accusing them were actually socialists who wanted to enslave all races equally under a totalitarian dictatorship. How was I to know different? Nobody even tries to explain themselves!
It was only recently that I heard why it is we have gay pride parades, but not straight pride parades. The story is that gays march openly to give encouragement to closeted gays that they are not alone and that if they stick together, no one will hurt them. Homosexuals dealt with a lot of persecution in the sixties and seventies. I get it now, but when I grew up in the eighties and nineties, homosexuality was practically celebrated. My impression was that gays started the parades only to make a nuisance of themselves, going out of their way to offend as many people as possible by making a mockery of arguably the most cherished of human activities and publicly celebrating what the majority would consider not only disgusting, but perverse. They seemed like jerks, but when I asked the perfectly innocent question of why there weren’t straight pride parades, I was called a homophobic asshole. Nobody even tries to explain themselves!
The “trans” movement is perhaps the worst at explaining themselves – so much so that they MUST be screwing it up on purpose. There is simply no other explanation. When I grew up, “sex” was used to refer to the act of intercourse while “gender” was used to refer to one’s biological role in sexual reproduction. All life on Earth fell into one of four categories: male, female, both, or neither. Since they were dynamically defined in relation to each other, there was no other option. I later learned that “sex” could also be used to refer to one’s biological role in the act of sex. Thus, “sex” and “gender” were synonyms, both referring to a purely biological phenomenon, not a cultural construct, but because most adults did not like to say the word “sex” (especially around children), they used the word “gender” instead. Around the same time (circa 2000), I heard of fringe political activists claiming that one literally is whatever they identify as – as if the mere words were enough to physically alter one’s chromosomes. They were ridiculous and easy to ignore. It is only as I put the finishing touches on this book in 2022 that I hear for the first time that gender is something other than biological sex. Why didn’t anyone say this sooner? Don’t they realize that using biological terms – such as man, woman, boy, and girl – when talking about gender is going to confuse people? Of course they do. They must want the confusion.
There is also an asymmetry in the blogs and books that are available and I noticed this even before I started The Understanding Project. People like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, John Stossel, George F. Will, Pat Buchannan, and Ben Shapiro continually explain what they think and how they think. There is no excuse for people to misunderstand them the way they often do. On the other hand, I have yet to hear a Democrat actually explain themselves. Their blogs are incoherent ramblings, their talk radio is seething hatred with no discernible cause, and their books are dry lists of facts (or lies) with neither pattern nor relevance. Due to their unwillingness to engage in debate, and thus bring more people over to their side, I can only conclude that they want to have enemies.
Silenced!
Learning is also difficult when those who would teach have been silenced. For much of my life I have studied different schools of thought on economics so that I might know the best policies so that I can both vote intelligently and teach others. I could be wrong, but my research has led me to believe that capitalism (when properly understood and implemented) works better than socialism at increasing wealth and quality of life for those of all races and socioeconomic strata. Now I am told for the first time in my life that I am “white” and therefore “privileged” and have nothing to say worth listening to. All across the country, those who could teach are told to “check your privilege” as a way of shutting them up.
I never had any real race awareness before, but now I can’t help seeing differences everywhere and wondering whether I am seen as the enemy by every black person I meet and whether those of mixed race are on my side or theirs. This is not healthy.
There are even people out there like Drew Westen, the most evil man ever to walk the planet, who in his 2007 book, The Political Brain, encourages people to change the subject from the issue under debate to make ad hominem attacks. He says, “Where there’s fire, don’t wave at the smoke…Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson…didn’t argue about the pros and cons of literacy in a democratic electorate to make a case against literacy tests. They didn’t argue about the utility or disutility of poll taxes in a republic. They understood that this was just the smoke, and that the real issue was the fire in the belly of those who were burning the crosses…You don’t put out a fire by waving at the smoke. You put out the fire. And if someone keeps starting those fires, you put out the arsonist.”
The problem with this strategy is that according to Westen, even innocent phrases that I have also used with no racial connotations intended and have legitimate concerns about such as “law and order,” “welfare queens,” “states’ rights,” and “soft on crime” are all code words for racism – but I’m not a racist. I think I would notice if I was.
People tell me I shouldn’t assume motives and I should never call anyone evil, but in this case, there simply is no other explanation. Rain doesn’t just fall out of a clear, blue sky. There is no form of reasoning, no matter how confused, that could ever justify what Westen proposes. It can only come from an evil heart dedicated to causing as much harm as possible. This is my genuine belief.
He advocates that we assume the motives of “conservatives” to be racist, sexist, and homophobic in spite of all evidence to the contrary when they raise points that any reasonable person would understand are good. So, I will follow his advice to assume his motives and “put out the arsonist.”
Semantics and Meta-Semantics
More often than most people realize, disagreements are illusions. We are merely using the same words to mean different things. I usually use the word “communist” to refer to those who want to take over the government, outlaw free speech, abolish private property, and erect a totalitarian state that tells us where to live, where to work, what to drive, what to eat, who to marry, and so on. One woman I worked with called herself a communist, but by that she only meant that she thought society would be better if we cooperated more and competed less. By her definition, I’m a communist too. If you dig just beneath the political slogans and talking points people throw at each other, sometimes you will find we agree more than we disagree.
I had thought that with a little patience, I could use this knowledge to learn, teach, and reach agreements. Instead, people will often misunderstand the words I use to correct the initial misunderstanding, only adding fuel to the fire. If I tell people I think they might have misunderstood me, they are insulted that I think they are too dumb to understand what I said. If I tell people I think I might have misunderstood them, they are insulted that I would imply that they weren’t clear enough. There is no way to win.
So many words we use in politics have no agreed upon meaning. The words conservative, liberal, progressive, leftist, classical liberal, libertarian, fascist, communist, and socialist mean different things to different people. Most people think they know what a Republican is and what a Democrat is, but they are often wrong in the details, and sometimes wrong about everything. In order to avoid labeling and being put into boxes, I have always called myself an independent. Now I find that some people think they know what independent means and do not really listen to what I have to say. I get put in boxes anyways.
I used to believe that our disagreements stemmed from a combination of misinformation and the innocent use of different definitions. I no longer believe this. I have now been in enough conversations where it was very clear that the other person was making up language as they went along. Furthermore, it is mostly Democrats that do this. While Republican supporters can be stunningly stupid or selfish on certain issues, I have never met a supporter of Democrats who was not completely committed to desperately chasing after lies and destroying language. It wasn’t a big deal when all they wanted was to change the definition of marriage. I think both sides made a bigger deal of the issue than it was. Now we can no longer agree on the definition of racism or consent and the words male and female can mean whatever you want them to mean. Speech is violence, silence is violence, and riots and looting are just “the language of the oppressed.”
Without language, we cannot communicate. Without communication, there is no such thing as community. Everyone becomes totally unpredictable and dangerous. It’s enough to drive anyone crazy. People act as if they don’t know why mass shootings are on the rise even as the total number of murders drops. The problem is you! Everyone plays games with the language and twists words around to the point that conversation is impossible. When you make it absolutely clear that all you want to do is fight, don’t be surprised when I give you what you want.
Even the meaning of the word meaning cannot be agreed upon. I once overheard a conversation wherein the woman did the right thing by recognizing the argument to be one of semantics and explaining what the problem word had meant to her, thereby allowing them both to be right. The man would have none of it, insisting that the only meaning a word could have is the one in the dictionary. They continued to debate the meaning of the word meaning far longer than the initial argument.
Another time, I had a disagreement over the word “disagree.” I had used it in its involuntary form – meaning to have a difference in belief. My conversation partner took it in its much rarer voluntary form – meaning to publicly declare my difference of belief. I tried repeatedly to explain how I had meant it, not understanding why he couldn’t understand me. Meanwhile, he made no effort whatsoever to explain himself. Finally, he angrily accused me of failing to understand that a word can have more than one meaning and stubbornly clinging to the first meaning I had thought of, himself not realizing that was exactly what he was doing and forgetting that I had used the word first! The irony!
I have found from overwhelming experience that there is absolutely no point in attempting to clear up misunderstandings or resolve ongoing issues. Such conversations only give another opportunity for additional misunderstandings. I have also found that nobody but me cares to be clear. While I will point at what I’m referring to, say things in different ways, ask questions to better understand the nature of the misunderstanding, and explain what I had thought of the situation so that the other person can understand where I’m coming from, the other person does none of those things. They seem to think if they just say the exact same stupid thing they said the first time louder and louder that suddenly I will be able to read minds.
But…I Agree With You…
Some people just won’t take yes for an answer. On more than one occasion, I have had to interrupt someone slipping into a long monologue, while seething with rage, to tell them that they were “preaching to the choir.” This only earns me further abuse since they are by that point incapable of listening.
Even when one is unwilling to fully embrace another’s position, efforts to defuse tensions by not opposing it either can backfire. I have overheard conversations wherein one participant attempted to defuse tension by saying “oh well” or “whatever” to show their acceptance of whatever the other person had decided, which the second person took to mean they were being dismissed and ignored. It was impossible to defuse tensions after that.
I once read a short article accusing talk show host Glenn Beck of anti-Semitism. Since the link to the video of his statements was right there, I watched it. He had said nothing anti-Semitic. If anything, it was the opposite. Strangely, the comments left to the article did not reflect this. Dozens and dozens of them poured derision on Beck for his alleged hatred and lies. One commenter even tried to correct Beck by saying exactly what Beck had already said in the video! Did not one of these people watch the video?
At the time, I told myself that these people were so politically biased that they simply accepted news critical of their opponents without bothering to confirm it – but it happens with non-political videos as well – including short videos that run automatically without any effort needed to follow the link. I once saw a video of a road rage incident. Only by watching the video could one discern who the video poster thought was to blame. I watched the video twice, very carefully. It was obvious who was at fault and who the aggressor was – and it was not who the video poster had said. Strangely, dozens and dozens of those commenting on the incident saw things the same way as it was presented. I alone saw it the other way. Talk about groupthink!
This is madness! Will other drivers get angry with me for making perfectly harmless and legal maneuvers? Am I expected to allow others to push me around without standing up for myself because then I might be seen as the aggressor? If we can’t even agree on the difference between bully and victim, how can we ever be at peace? More than anything else, this is the story of my life.
On contentious political issues, we need words of healing the most, but it seems that these days any words at all do more harm than good. When directly asked what he thought of homosexuals, Phil Robertson said that while the Bible taught that homosexuality was a sin, that was for God to sort out and his job as a Christian was simply to love everybody (48). It was an attitude far too rare these days in many churches. They were words of healing. Did they award him the Nobel Peace Prize? No, they tried to kick him off his own show.
Some time ago, the slogan “choose life” began to be circulated. Whatever one thinks about abortion, it is hard to argue against any option that preserves both life and choice. They are words of healing. Did they usher in a new wave of tolerance and cooperation? No, “choose life” has been rejected by pro-choice partisans who claim that choice is meaningless unless being used to end a life. I’ll have to remember that the next time I need to make a choice.
Perhaps the most stunning, over-the-top example of needlessly making enemies with those who are actually sympathetic to the cause is the sad case of Black Lives Matter. I believe the organization started with noble intentions, trying to hold police accountable for their misdeeds. The fact that they were focused on protecting black people and communities did not bother me at all; nobody is stopping Asians, whites, or Hispanics from starting parallel groups. Then they went bad.
Black Lives Matter is a black supremacist group and I can prove it: On more than one occasion, their leadership has prematurely taken sides in high-profile shooting cases before all the facts were in and solely because of race. They held a rally where whites were told not to attend (49). They have waged a war of words on allies who agree and sympathize when they innocently state in support that all lives matter (50). The only explanation for this can be that the Black Lives Matter leadership believes that only black lives matter. They should change their name to Only Black Lives Matter.
When BLM crashed an event for Governor O’Malley, he reached out to them with words of healing, saying, “Black lives matter, white lives matter, ALL lives matter, and that is why this issue is so important.” Bizarrely, the activists booed. This wasn’t just a fringe part of the movement. Those in positions of leadership, selected by those below to speak for them, backed up this nonsense. For the first time in history, “all lives matter,” became an offensive phrase.
It was later claimed that they felt that saying that any other lives mattered that were not black was distracting from the issue they had wanted to talk about, but in reality, the reason that black lives matter is because all lives matter. O’Malley spoke straight to the heart of the issue without getting distracted at all. He said nothing wrong. He said everything right. He spoke exactly the way I wish more of our politicians did, with sympathy, inclusion, and kindness. We desperately need more people to speak like this. It should be encouraged, not discouraged! He said exactly what I would have said.
Activists say a lot of things that get me scratching my head, and I will be the first to admit I don’t always understand them. I always give everyone the benefit of the doubt. I try to think the best of them. In this case, there is no doubt to be had: Black Lives Matter is a thoroughly racist, evil organization that no member of any race should have anything to do with. So long as the leadership pushes this nonsense about the phrase “all lives matter” being offensive, they should not even be acknowledged. Then they will eventually go the way of the KKK and become an unimportant fringe element of our society.
Note: I should also point out that governor O’Malley is a Democrat, so this is not an example of anti-Republican bias, where everything a Republican says is twisted by the media into the opposite of its intent. It really seems these BLM folks have a problem with white people of all political persuasions.
Then there were President Trump’s Charlottesville comments (39). It was a time when everyone was on edge. Even though the president is hardly required to speak out on every local tragedy, Trump did. At a time when our country needed healing most, the insulter-in-chief took a break from Twitter to bring us together. I was pleasantly surprised. He said nothing wrong. He said everything right. He spoke exactly the way I wish more of our politicians did, with sympathy, inclusion, and kindness. We desperately need more people to speak like this. It should be encouraged, not discouraged! He said exactly what I would have said.
What happened? The Democrats pretended to be offended, getting into the weeds over whether Trump used exactly the right words soon enough, and then continuing to spread rumors that he was racist. At a time when those of all races thought hate groups from other races might be out to get them, the Democrats spread unfounded fear that the president of the whole country hated black people simply for being black. At a time when people thought we were dangerously close to a race war, Democrats actively tried to stir one up. Democrats make me sick.
Some of them later claimed to have a problem with the fact that Trump mentioned that there were good people on both sides of the confederate statue issue – but there were good people on both sides of the confederate statue issue! What’s the problem with truth? That white supremacists happened to also want to keep the statues does not invalidate the good reasons to keep the statues any more than the fact that Antifa also wanted to get rid of the statues invalidates the good reasons to take them down. While the president repeatedly condemned the violence on both sides, Democrats kept telling me that by doing so, Trump was actually supporting the violence of one side (the white supremacists). According to Democrats, condemning is supporting. Words have no meaning.
The politicians are bad enough, but I soon found that even my friends and acquaintances inexplicably had a problem with what Trump said. That makes me wonder whether they are going to suddenly have a problem with something I say someday. I have to constantly walk on eggshells for fear of unwittingly offending them. It is impossible to be friends with people like that. More and more, politics invades my personal life. How can I fix the whole country when I can’t even fix my friends?
The same thing happened later when Ahmoud Arbery got killed. A pair of armed vigilantes chased him in a truck while he jogged and it was caught on tape. After seeing the tape, Trump said “It looks bad,” taking sides against the vigilantes (51). However, Trump also showed humility by pointing out that not everything was in view of the camera and he trusted investigators to find out the whole truth. It was this unwillingness to totally condemn the accused before the trial had even occurred that earned him accusations from his critics that he was somehow taking the side of the accused.
To reject words as helpful and beautiful as those of O’Malley and Trump sends the message to everyone not to bother trying to be nice. It sends the message that the only way to get respect is with insults and threats. I WILL REMEMBER THIS.
Chasing After Lies:
I used to work with a woman that fought tooth and nail against every tiny tidbit of fact I might claim, yet would turn her whole worldview inside-out after listening to someone else just once. She told me she was a liberal, rejected every objection of mine, then listened to Sean Hannity ONCE and told me she was a conservative. She was simultaneously the most skeptical and most gullible person I had ever met. She visited a boring, mainstream church in the area and told me it felt like a cult. She watched one video on YouTube and decided that the Gospels were completely made up because they were based on earlier myths from around the world. She was terrified of organized religion, but later she visited a domineering, legalistic church wherein the men and women sat on opposite sides of the room, they preached that only those baptized into their church could go to heaven, and she started spending seven days a week there, trying to convert everyone at work and claiming that Santa Claus was the devil and that going to church on Sundays was worshipping the sun god.
Such idiocy! They reject the obvious truth in front of them and desperately chase after lies. They run from the truth as fast as they can, desperately grasping at any excuse they can find for skepticism. They already know the truth. The problem is not underthinking, but overthinking. They are without excuse.
For most of my life, I have read every book and article I could get my hands on about psychology, marketing, sociology, and political science, trying to understand how people think and communicate so I could get people to see the truth. I now understand less than when I started. I have used every strategy there is to reach people, but nothing works.
If I remain unemotional and keep strictly to the facts, people assume I can’t really believe what I’m saying or else I would show emotion.
If I get angry, people assume that I am insecure because of a weakness in my position, and the anger makes them even angrier back at me.
If I plead with them, taking the role of victim, they tell me to stop whining. They then mock me and tell me that my behavior only invites further abuse.
If I am extra nice to them, trying to show them that I care about them and I am on their side, they misunderstand, seeing my outreach as manipulative and devious.
If I use humor to smooth things over, they either accuse me of not taking the issues seriously or they misunderstand the play on words to be not humor at all, but a contradiction or even a lie.
If I pretend I don’t care and don’t bother to counter every little thing I disagree with, they take it as proof that I am unable to defend my position and they steamroll me.
If I argue Socratically, asking questions to get them to use their own logic to see the absurdity of their positions, they lose patience with me for not just telling them what I think. When they do give answers, they are often not the ones I expect because they refuse to accept the most basic axioms of logic, morality, or even math.
If I try to learn what their underlying principles are so I understand why they have the positions they do, so that maybe we can work together on the same goals if I can convince them to try a different strategy, I invariably find that they do not have any underlying principles. They only have positions and slogans that they mindlessly repeat, but have never thought through.
If I state things in a straightforward way, the other person is always able to find a way to misinterpret it, twisting my words around into what they damn well know I didn’t mean.
If instead I try to pre-empt a potential misunderstanding by wording things a less-straightforward way, I inadvertently cause a new misunderstanding that would not have happened if I had just stated things in the most straightforward way.
If I allow the other to interrupt me and lead the conversation, dropping my train of thought every time they interrupt, we never ever get anywhere fruitful. They simply steamroll me, bring it all to the conclusion that I’m an idiot, and start the next subject, often assuming my position to be something it is not.
If instead I interrupt the other every time they begin with the wrong premise, not only do they get angry with me for being presumptive of where they were going with it, but sometimes I turn out to be wrong. Also, people are often wrong on so many different points at once that I usually have no idea where to begin my correction.
If they start attacking my character, and I show even the slightest hint of explaining myself, they then attack me for being “defensive.”
If they make a controversial statement of fact, and I tell them they’re wrong, they call me arrogant. If instead I say that the statement is wrong, they still call me arrogant. If I instead say merely that I have heard differently, they still call me arrogant. If I so much as ask them how they can be so certain, then they get really defensive – but it’s somehow okay when they do it.
Finally, if I offer to just drop it, they will not let me. It is too important to them to keep the argument going.
What do we have in common?
I often hear the claim that “we all want the same things,” but that we simply disagree on how best to achieve them. This is exactly what I used to believe. Now I know this to be false.
I have since read books by people whose vision of utopia is one in which planes, cars, and roads are banned, nobody travels, nobody has air conditioning, and we all work as gardeners. While I support the rights of those who want to live differently, and I value the health of the environment, I’m an explorer, not a gardener. Any future that does not include humanity bettering quality of life with technology and eventually exploring, colonizing, and terraforming other planets is not one I can tolerate. We do not want the same things.
I have noticed that some people see no value in play, art, or humor. They see work merely as a means of continued survival, not as a means to an end. Their lives are meaningless. I work so that I can store up resources to enjoy myself. I work to improve the lives of others so they can enjoy themselves. They work so that they can keep working in order to keep working in order to keep working. We do not want the same things.
While the issues surrounding homosexuality are complex and multifaceted, and gay-rights activists do make some valid points when it comes to the legal definitions, for most people it seems little more than a debate over taste. I have heard gays say things like “You can’t know you dislike it until you try it,” and “Love can happen with anybody; rejecting me as a partner is sexist.” They tell me that I can simply choose to switch orientations and that having a same-sex partner is better than me being single. They get angry with others for having different likes and dislikes. They get angry with others for opining that homosexuality is disgusting. They not only use the words sex, romance, and marriage to describe something that is in some ways the polar opposite of those things, they insist that there is no difference between them and any attempt to distinguish between them in the common lexicon (i.e. “traditional” marriage versus “gay” marriage) is bigoted and hateful. It’s not only about legal terminology: They demand that everyone use the same language they do in all parts of life. I agree that one has to adapt to an evolving language to both understand and be understood, but in this case it is the “gay rights” activists who are not adapting, but instead driving the evolution by intimidation. I even once read a magazine article written by a lesbian who insisted that straight America had to make special accommodations for her and actively endorse her lifestyle so that she would not imagine that she might be a target of discrimination. She could not accept that somebody out there might dare to express the belief that homosexuality is unhealthy or wrong. Clearly, some gays want everyone to be gay. We do not want the same things.
There are people whose ideas of utopia are total equality, where everyone and everything is the same and creative uniqueness is banned. They want us in the same clothes, the same houses, with mowed lawns and trees all in neat rows. The Maoists tried it. The Leninists tried it. The Nazis tried it. These are the types of people who take over homeowner associations, social clubs, and local governments. They remake the world in their image; dreadfully boring, oppressive, creepy, and disgusting. I crave variety. I want every spot unique. We do not want the same things.
I once met a guy who valued equality so highly, and liberty so little, that he wanted to outlaw private schools, home schools, and even answering questions, leaving it to the state to be the sole disseminator of “truth,” so we could all be equally informed (or uninformed). He thought it inappropriate to ever start a business or attempt to leave the working class or better oneself in any way at all, instead believing that all workers should instead unionize in order to squeeze just a tiny bit more out of the rich, without ever changing the structure of power that keeps the rich rich and the poor poor. He believed that all jobs across all industries should be ranked on a single scale, forcing one to master one job before moving up to a “higher” one, not allowing for the possibility of parallel scales to accommodate those with different natural skill sets. We do not want the same things.
Another time, another man told me that because the United States has done “bad things” in the past, such as killing civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was obligatory that we now sit back and do nothing as Al-Qaeda kills American civilians. Don’t tell me we want the same things!
The Need to Argue
One thing I’ve noticed is that most people – at least two-thirds of everyone I’ve ever had the opportunity to get to know – love arguing. They have a deep need for it and will create arguments out of nothing just for some excitement. At least it looks that way. In contrast, I’m the least argumentative person I know.
The most common tactic these people use is to lure me in gradually by first making what appears to be an honest mistake interpreting my words. Thinking I wasn’t clear enough, I attempt to explain myself again only for them to make another mistake and another. Before I notice that the mistakes have now become so preposterous that they must be playing with me, they cut me off and say, “Dan, I’m not going to argue with you!” They will say this even if they were the first to technically start the argument by contradicting something I had said first.
Another common tactic is for people to accuse me of wrongdoing, either criticizing my strategy in handling a task or by maligning my motives. If I make even the tiniest attempt to explain my thinking, they will accuse me of arguing – even if I never contradict one thing they say. If they accuse me of forgetting something, and I so much as mention that I was going to do it next, they will yell, “I don’t want to hear any excuses!”
There are also the countless times I thought I was just having a casual conversation or just asking questions to better understand something. When I get answers that don’t make sense to me, it leads to more questions. Other people take this as argument, but when they suddenly accuse me of arguing with them, it surprises me every time.
What also surprises me is when I am slightly inconvenienced by another person in a way that I interpret as an honest mistake, who immediately blows the whole situation out of proportion and then blames me for it. People are so quick to lose tempers and exaggerate non-issues. They look for arguments. I was once walking back to my car in a parking lot when an old woman pushing a cart suddenly swerved left in front of me. I slipped by without trouble for either of us and would not have given the event a second thought if she hadn’t started berating me for “being in a hurry.” I wasn’t mad at her; I thought it was an honest mistake that could easily have been mine if I was having a bad day. I saw no problem. If there was no problem, she had no reason to get after me. If there was a problem, IT WAS HER FAULT! This type of thing happens all the time – and not only with strangers.
There are also people who insist on formal apologies or else they will not drop the issue. It does not matter if I immediately catch the problem myself, acknowledge responsibility, and fix the issue well before it affects anybody. The mere possibility that there might have been a problem if history had gone differently is enough for them to totally freak out. Saying “oops” or “my bad” is not good enough. Nothing less than groveling for forgiveness will satisfy them.
I have also noticed that while relating some recent anecdote of conflict in my life, there are those that will attempt to defend the other person – someone who they have never met and know only from my description of them. Even though they weren’t present for the event and only know about it from what I tell them happened, they insist on telling me everything I did wrong, accusing me of things I never did and adding much to the incident that never occurred. Just to really rub it in, they insist I deserved everything that happened to me and they get really angry about it. I’d stop telling them my stories, but they don’t do it all the time and I don’t have many friends to begin with.
Related to this are times when a perfectly reasonable action or statement of mine is misinterpreted by one person, after which multiple people gang up on me. At one workplace, a customer needed help with something. Before I made the effort to carry the heavy item all the way to her car, I wanted to confirm she was actually committed to buying it and specifically which one she wanted – not at all an unreasonable thing to do. Somehow, she seemed to think I was trying to talk her out of buying it. Afterwards, my coworkers and manager echoed her words, telling me they would be mad if I had asked them the same question and asking me if I wouldn’t be mad if our positions were reversed. Even after thinking it over carefully for days, I learned nothing to make me change my mind. Today, I am as sure as ever that I said nothing that should have bothered anybody, certainly nothing that would have bothered me, and that no one could have legitimately interpreted my words the way she (and they) did. While I am willing to follow whatever procedures my boss tells me while I am on the clock, I am not going to jump on the bandwagon to endorse language protocols that I don’t believe in (and can’t even understand) or condemn language protocols I do believe in (and endorse outside of work) when asked my opinions.
Then there are all the times people tell me they “disagree,” when I had no idea that I had taken a position. Sometimes I am having a hard time understanding their position, so I lay out the possible position categories and their relationships to each other, but never hint at my opinion. They disagree. Other times, I might suggest that the answer is unlikely to be at the extremes, but somewhere in the wide middle. They disagree. Other times, I might say the answer could be anywhere, but is probably in a certain range. They disagree. Once this word is spoken, the conversation is over. They refuse to debate me or to support their claims. They only want to accuse me of being unable to handle disagreement.
Then there are those that take an isolated comment of mine and recursively magnify it into its worst-case scenario in order to get me to take a harder position than I ever intended just so they can argue with me:
I once mentioned I didn’t come from a hugging background and while I didn’t mind hugging, I was uncomfortable simply being expected to hug without warning. The guy I was with asked what I would do with a kiss of greeting. I told him that kissing was an even more intimate activity that was liable to get one slapped that tried it. I was simply expressing a common attitude in my culture; unsolicited kissing is generally considered sexual harassment. I have been taught to expect a slap (or worse) if I kiss someone without permission.
He then told me never to go to Spain where he insisted that I would be constantly caressed and groped simply in the course of casual social interaction. I didn’t believe things were really that bad, but I told him that if that were true, I would push people off and defend myself. “Even the women?” he asked. “It makes no difference to me; harassment is harassment,” I said. “Then their husbands, fathers, and brothers will beat you up,” he said.
I did not really believe that the Spanish would be so quick to pass judgment and assault innocent people this way, but that was the scenario he had set up. I told him that if that happened, I would be forced to shoot them – not at all an unreasonable response under the circumstances of getting beaten. He then told me that it was illegal to bring guns into Spain. I had no intention of really going to Spain, and if I did I’m sure I would follow all the rules, but since his scenario had me already in Spain being pummeled and possibly killed, I told him that I would find a way to bring guns across the border – and that if I was stopped I would kill the border guards. By the end of the conversation he had me launching a full-scale invasion and nuking Madrid – over hugging. I would never actually do this in real life…probably.
Why Civility Failed
As might have been expected, the issue of divisiveness in politics has itself become a divisive issue. “Uncivil” is hurled as an epithet by some of the most uncivil people ever to have walked upon the Earth’s surface. Incivility has effectively been redefined as “disagreeing with me” in many circles and compromise is now defined as “doing exactly what we tell you to do.” The hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance is sometimes overwhelming. Just to really irk me, when I take a stand against violence, people then accuse me of promoting violence. There is no way to win.
Misunderstandings poison everything. What bothers me most often is when people who have enough experience with me to know better, assume me to be much stupider or more cowardly than I am, or get something else about me completely wrong that I thought was answered long ago. They misinterpret my words, discarding the obvious meaning and substituting something they should know I could never mean. The same issues come up again and again. When the misconception persists in spite of my corrections, I know they have never listened to me. It hurts to know that someone I consider a friend might actually think that I am fascist, racist, sexist, and homophobic because they have twisted my words around.
Some pundits claim that social media is driving our political divide. This does seem to be partly true. That said, I have been in many situations both in person and online where there was absolutely no excuse to not get what I was driving at – especially considering that these same people understand movie characters and stand-up comics without the words having to be explained. People are so impatient and quick to rush to judgment. That’s the real trouble.
I expect politicians to lie to me because lies often benefit them. I don’t expect regular people to do so when the lie does not benefit them in any way. Yet they do. Why do people make transparent lies that convince no one? Why do they lie to me in private about things they know I am in a position to know otherwise? Let’s not pretend that any of these untruths are genuine mistakes. Let’s not pretend that all ideologies are equally valid. I have given people the benefit of the doubt. I have given them every opportunity to save face, but they still won’t repent; they only dig themselves in deeper.
In my previous book, The Nutcase Across The Street, I took the stance that we needed to start listening more and talking more – that isolation was allowing misunderstanding to drive us apart. I now see how naïve this was. There is no one on Earth who tried harder to make civility work than me. There is no one who tried harder to understand the other side(s). I can now say with some degree of certainty that there is nothing there to understand. Those who disagree with me are simply evil, pure and simple. There is no point conversing with them. People are not simply duped. They aren’t just uninformed or misinformed. They are not innocently arguing semantics. They don’t simply have “different ideas how to run the country.” They are evil. It is evil to condemn people in the news before all the facts are in. It is evil to negligently make decisions on issues (i.e. vote) that affect others without first taking due diligence to be informed. It is evil not to listen, dismissing the cries of the oppressed as propaganda, while showing contempt for logic and no interest in learning truth, deliberately avoiding anything that might call one’s assumptions into question. They have no goals other than chaos and destruction. They don’t want to win; they want to fight.
Can you be friends with evil people? Friendship is a good thing that by its very nature requires a minimum level of goodness. Nobody is perfect, but most people do not even have this minimum level. Whether the subject is politics or not, it is impossible to be friends with someone who twists your every word into the opposite of its obvious meaning, ignoring explicit statements and countless contextual clues to the contrary, and accuses you of the worst sins. Some people are such bad listeners that even if I give them everything they want, they still act like I’m arguing. Love and forgiveness only seem to make people more upset and leads to greater abuse. I don’t have time for people like that anymore; I’m too busy.
There is no political solution. No matter the institutional structures, evil people will find a way to corrupt them. No matter the words we use, evil people will find a way to twist them. The word evil exists in the English language and so it must refer to something. If evil refers to anything, it refers to American voters. The prime reason civility failed in America is because Americans are not civil people.
Why did the civility movement fail? Besides the increasing size of government, the false stereotypes used to describe those of particular opinion groups, the lack of basic knowledge, the failure of compromises, the ever-rising hateful rhetoric, the ubiquitous lies, and the rise of social media, there is a much deeper problem. Partisans love to argue and fight. They actually resist attempts to give in to their demands in exchange for peace. They don’t want peace. It’s not a problem of the mind; it’s a problem of the heart – and it goes far beyond politics.
No Cooperation:
It’s hard to get to understand another’s point-of-view when they won’t even tell you what it is. While my coworkers and friends flew free with political opinions, showing no inhibitions when they repeatedly spout offensive political nonsense, they will suddenly clam up if anyone asks a question or shows any interest in learning from them. I could not get anyone to meet me outside of work to discuss our common interests in politics – except for one lady one time – and she then revealed she had somehow assumed it would be for only ten minutes and we would never have to meet again. She was incredibly impatient. Considering how much she loved to talk about herself and her opinions during the busy period, you’d think she would be overjoyed to have the chance to speak without interruption. Nope.
I discovered, too, that some people simply have no answers. One college student told me she was a feminist. I asked her why. She said that women’s rights weren’t respected in this country and that was why she got into politics. “Can you give me an example?” I asked. I have never seen an expression more blank than the one on her face that day.
Even when dialogue occurred, my attempts to open myself up to be corrected were met with abuse. In an online debate with a fellow blogger, I agreed that I too had seen examples of bias on FOX News, but had yet to see enough reason to dismiss them as nothing more than a propaganda machine or that they were any worse than CNN, NBC, CBS, or ABC (MSNBC is definitely a propaganda machine). Instead of meeting me where I was to educate me, the blogger told me I was hopeless. Learning is very difficult when no one will teach you.
It was only recently that I heard it explained why capitalists are often accused of racism. Apparently, the idea is that capitalists oppose handouts, handouts are assumed to be the best option for the poor, the poor are disproportionally racial minorities, and so therefore capitalists must secretly hate racial minorities. It’s a stretch to be sure, but at least it’s the beginnings of an explanation. Until I heard this story, I had assumed capitalists were accused of racism only to discredit them because the liars accusing them were actually socialists who wanted to enslave all races equally under a totalitarian dictatorship. How was I to know different? Nobody even tries to explain themselves!
It was only recently that I heard why it is we have gay pride parades, but not straight pride parades. The story is that gays march openly to give encouragement to closeted gays that they are not alone and that if they stick together, no one will hurt them. Homosexuals dealt with a lot of persecution in the sixties and seventies. I get it now, but when I grew up in the eighties and nineties, homosexuality was practically celebrated. My impression was that gays started the parades only to make a nuisance of themselves, going out of their way to offend as many people as possible by making a mockery of arguably the most cherished of human activities and publicly celebrating what the majority would consider not only disgusting, but perverse. They seemed like jerks, but when I asked the perfectly innocent question of why there weren’t straight pride parades, I was called a homophobic asshole. Nobody even tries to explain themselves!
The “trans” movement is perhaps the worst at explaining themselves – so much so that they MUST be screwing it up on purpose. There is simply no other explanation. When I grew up, “sex” was used to refer to the act of intercourse while “gender” was used to refer to one’s biological role in sexual reproduction. All life on Earth fell into one of four categories: male, female, both, or neither. Since they were dynamically defined in relation to each other, there was no other option. I later learned that “sex” could also be used to refer to one’s biological role in the act of sex. Thus, “sex” and “gender” were synonyms, both referring to a purely biological phenomenon, not a cultural construct, but because most adults did not like to say the word “sex” (especially around children), they used the word “gender” instead. Around the same time (circa 2000), I heard of fringe political activists claiming that one literally is whatever they identify as – as if the mere words were enough to physically alter one’s chromosomes. They were ridiculous and easy to ignore. It is only as I put the finishing touches on this book in 2022 that I hear for the first time that gender is something other than biological sex. Why didn’t anyone say this sooner? Don’t they realize that using biological terms – such as man, woman, boy, and girl – when talking about gender is going to confuse people? Of course they do. They must want the confusion.
There is also an asymmetry in the blogs and books that are available and I noticed this even before I started The Understanding Project. People like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, John Stossel, George F. Will, Pat Buchannan, and Ben Shapiro continually explain what they think and how they think. There is no excuse for people to misunderstand them the way they often do. On the other hand, I have yet to hear a Democrat actually explain themselves. Their blogs are incoherent ramblings, their talk radio is seething hatred with no discernible cause, and their books are dry lists of facts (or lies) with neither pattern nor relevance. Due to their unwillingness to engage in debate, and thus bring more people over to their side, I can only conclude that they want to have enemies.
Silenced!
Learning is also difficult when those who would teach have been silenced. For much of my life I have studied different schools of thought on economics so that I might know the best policies so that I can both vote intelligently and teach others. I could be wrong, but my research has led me to believe that capitalism (when properly understood and implemented) works better than socialism at increasing wealth and quality of life for those of all races and socioeconomic strata. Now I am told for the first time in my life that I am “white” and therefore “privileged” and have nothing to say worth listening to. All across the country, those who could teach are told to “check your privilege” as a way of shutting them up.
I never had any real race awareness before, but now I can’t help seeing differences everywhere and wondering whether I am seen as the enemy by every black person I meet and whether those of mixed race are on my side or theirs. This is not healthy.
There are even people out there like Drew Westen, the most evil man ever to walk the planet, who in his 2007 book, The Political Brain, encourages people to change the subject from the issue under debate to make ad hominem attacks. He says, “Where there’s fire, don’t wave at the smoke…Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson…didn’t argue about the pros and cons of literacy in a democratic electorate to make a case against literacy tests. They didn’t argue about the utility or disutility of poll taxes in a republic. They understood that this was just the smoke, and that the real issue was the fire in the belly of those who were burning the crosses…You don’t put out a fire by waving at the smoke. You put out the fire. And if someone keeps starting those fires, you put out the arsonist.”
The problem with this strategy is that according to Westen, even innocent phrases that I have also used with no racial connotations intended and have legitimate concerns about such as “law and order,” “welfare queens,” “states’ rights,” and “soft on crime” are all code words for racism – but I’m not a racist. I think I would notice if I was.
People tell me I shouldn’t assume motives and I should never call anyone evil, but in this case, there simply is no other explanation. Rain doesn’t just fall out of a clear, blue sky. There is no form of reasoning, no matter how confused, that could ever justify what Westen proposes. It can only come from an evil heart dedicated to causing as much harm as possible. This is my genuine belief.
He advocates that we assume the motives of “conservatives” to be racist, sexist, and homophobic in spite of all evidence to the contrary when they raise points that any reasonable person would understand are good. So, I will follow his advice to assume his motives and “put out the arsonist.”
Semantics and Meta-Semantics
More often than most people realize, disagreements are illusions. We are merely using the same words to mean different things. I usually use the word “communist” to refer to those who want to take over the government, outlaw free speech, abolish private property, and erect a totalitarian state that tells us where to live, where to work, what to drive, what to eat, who to marry, and so on. One woman I worked with called herself a communist, but by that she only meant that she thought society would be better if we cooperated more and competed less. By her definition, I’m a communist too. If you dig just beneath the political slogans and talking points people throw at each other, sometimes you will find we agree more than we disagree.
I had thought that with a little patience, I could use this knowledge to learn, teach, and reach agreements. Instead, people will often misunderstand the words I use to correct the initial misunderstanding, only adding fuel to the fire. If I tell people I think they might have misunderstood me, they are insulted that I think they are too dumb to understand what I said. If I tell people I think I might have misunderstood them, they are insulted that I would imply that they weren’t clear enough. There is no way to win.
So many words we use in politics have no agreed upon meaning. The words conservative, liberal, progressive, leftist, classical liberal, libertarian, fascist, communist, and socialist mean different things to different people. Most people think they know what a Republican is and what a Democrat is, but they are often wrong in the details, and sometimes wrong about everything. In order to avoid labeling and being put into boxes, I have always called myself an independent. Now I find that some people think they know what independent means and do not really listen to what I have to say. I get put in boxes anyways.
I used to believe that our disagreements stemmed from a combination of misinformation and the innocent use of different definitions. I no longer believe this. I have now been in enough conversations where it was very clear that the other person was making up language as they went along. Furthermore, it is mostly Democrats that do this. While Republican supporters can be stunningly stupid or selfish on certain issues, I have never met a supporter of Democrats who was not completely committed to desperately chasing after lies and destroying language. It wasn’t a big deal when all they wanted was to change the definition of marriage. I think both sides made a bigger deal of the issue than it was. Now we can no longer agree on the definition of racism or consent and the words male and female can mean whatever you want them to mean. Speech is violence, silence is violence, and riots and looting are just “the language of the oppressed.”
Without language, we cannot communicate. Without communication, there is no such thing as community. Everyone becomes totally unpredictable and dangerous. It’s enough to drive anyone crazy. People act as if they don’t know why mass shootings are on the rise even as the total number of murders drops. The problem is you! Everyone plays games with the language and twists words around to the point that conversation is impossible. When you make it absolutely clear that all you want to do is fight, don’t be surprised when I give you what you want.
Even the meaning of the word meaning cannot be agreed upon. I once overheard a conversation wherein the woman did the right thing by recognizing the argument to be one of semantics and explaining what the problem word had meant to her, thereby allowing them both to be right. The man would have none of it, insisting that the only meaning a word could have is the one in the dictionary. They continued to debate the meaning of the word meaning far longer than the initial argument.
Another time, I had a disagreement over the word “disagree.” I had used it in its involuntary form – meaning to have a difference in belief. My conversation partner took it in its much rarer voluntary form – meaning to publicly declare my difference of belief. I tried repeatedly to explain how I had meant it, not understanding why he couldn’t understand me. Meanwhile, he made no effort whatsoever to explain himself. Finally, he angrily accused me of failing to understand that a word can have more than one meaning and stubbornly clinging to the first meaning I had thought of, himself not realizing that was exactly what he was doing and forgetting that I had used the word first! The irony!
I have found from overwhelming experience that there is absolutely no point in attempting to clear up misunderstandings or resolve ongoing issues. Such conversations only give another opportunity for additional misunderstandings. I have also found that nobody but me cares to be clear. While I will point at what I’m referring to, say things in different ways, ask questions to better understand the nature of the misunderstanding, and explain what I had thought of the situation so that the other person can understand where I’m coming from, the other person does none of those things. They seem to think if they just say the exact same stupid thing they said the first time louder and louder that suddenly I will be able to read minds.
But…I Agree With You…
Some people just won’t take yes for an answer. On more than one occasion, I have had to interrupt someone slipping into a long monologue, while seething with rage, to tell them that they were “preaching to the choir.” This only earns me further abuse since they are by that point incapable of listening.
Even when one is unwilling to fully embrace another’s position, efforts to defuse tensions by not opposing it either can backfire. I have overheard conversations wherein one participant attempted to defuse tension by saying “oh well” or “whatever” to show their acceptance of whatever the other person had decided, which the second person took to mean they were being dismissed and ignored. It was impossible to defuse tensions after that.
I once read a short article accusing talk show host Glenn Beck of anti-Semitism. Since the link to the video of his statements was right there, I watched it. He had said nothing anti-Semitic. If anything, it was the opposite. Strangely, the comments left to the article did not reflect this. Dozens and dozens of them poured derision on Beck for his alleged hatred and lies. One commenter even tried to correct Beck by saying exactly what Beck had already said in the video! Did not one of these people watch the video?
At the time, I told myself that these people were so politically biased that they simply accepted news critical of their opponents without bothering to confirm it – but it happens with non-political videos as well – including short videos that run automatically without any effort needed to follow the link. I once saw a video of a road rage incident. Only by watching the video could one discern who the video poster thought was to blame. I watched the video twice, very carefully. It was obvious who was at fault and who the aggressor was – and it was not who the video poster had said. Strangely, dozens and dozens of those commenting on the incident saw things the same way as it was presented. I alone saw it the other way. Talk about groupthink!
This is madness! Will other drivers get angry with me for making perfectly harmless and legal maneuvers? Am I expected to allow others to push me around without standing up for myself because then I might be seen as the aggressor? If we can’t even agree on the difference between bully and victim, how can we ever be at peace? More than anything else, this is the story of my life.
On contentious political issues, we need words of healing the most, but it seems that these days any words at all do more harm than good. When directly asked what he thought of homosexuals, Phil Robertson said that while the Bible taught that homosexuality was a sin, that was for God to sort out and his job as a Christian was simply to love everybody (48). It was an attitude far too rare these days in many churches. They were words of healing. Did they award him the Nobel Peace Prize? No, they tried to kick him off his own show.
Some time ago, the slogan “choose life” began to be circulated. Whatever one thinks about abortion, it is hard to argue against any option that preserves both life and choice. They are words of healing. Did they usher in a new wave of tolerance and cooperation? No, “choose life” has been rejected by pro-choice partisans who claim that choice is meaningless unless being used to end a life. I’ll have to remember that the next time I need to make a choice.
Perhaps the most stunning, over-the-top example of needlessly making enemies with those who are actually sympathetic to the cause is the sad case of Black Lives Matter. I believe the organization started with noble intentions, trying to hold police accountable for their misdeeds. The fact that they were focused on protecting black people and communities did not bother me at all; nobody is stopping Asians, whites, or Hispanics from starting parallel groups. Then they went bad.
Black Lives Matter is a black supremacist group and I can prove it: On more than one occasion, their leadership has prematurely taken sides in high-profile shooting cases before all the facts were in and solely because of race. They held a rally where whites were told not to attend (49). They have waged a war of words on allies who agree and sympathize when they innocently state in support that all lives matter (50). The only explanation for this can be that the Black Lives Matter leadership believes that only black lives matter. They should change their name to Only Black Lives Matter.
When BLM crashed an event for Governor O’Malley, he reached out to them with words of healing, saying, “Black lives matter, white lives matter, ALL lives matter, and that is why this issue is so important.” Bizarrely, the activists booed. This wasn’t just a fringe part of the movement. Those in positions of leadership, selected by those below to speak for them, backed up this nonsense. For the first time in history, “all lives matter,” became an offensive phrase.
It was later claimed that they felt that saying that any other lives mattered that were not black was distracting from the issue they had wanted to talk about, but in reality, the reason that black lives matter is because all lives matter. O’Malley spoke straight to the heart of the issue without getting distracted at all. He said nothing wrong. He said everything right. He spoke exactly the way I wish more of our politicians did, with sympathy, inclusion, and kindness. We desperately need more people to speak like this. It should be encouraged, not discouraged! He said exactly what I would have said.
Activists say a lot of things that get me scratching my head, and I will be the first to admit I don’t always understand them. I always give everyone the benefit of the doubt. I try to think the best of them. In this case, there is no doubt to be had: Black Lives Matter is a thoroughly racist, evil organization that no member of any race should have anything to do with. So long as the leadership pushes this nonsense about the phrase “all lives matter” being offensive, they should not even be acknowledged. Then they will eventually go the way of the KKK and become an unimportant fringe element of our society.
Note: I should also point out that governor O’Malley is a Democrat, so this is not an example of anti-Republican bias, where everything a Republican says is twisted by the media into the opposite of its intent. It really seems these BLM folks have a problem with white people of all political persuasions.
Then there were President Trump’s Charlottesville comments (39). It was a time when everyone was on edge. Even though the president is hardly required to speak out on every local tragedy, Trump did. At a time when our country needed healing most, the insulter-in-chief took a break from Twitter to bring us together. I was pleasantly surprised. He said nothing wrong. He said everything right. He spoke exactly the way I wish more of our politicians did, with sympathy, inclusion, and kindness. We desperately need more people to speak like this. It should be encouraged, not discouraged! He said exactly what I would have said.
What happened? The Democrats pretended to be offended, getting into the weeds over whether Trump used exactly the right words soon enough, and then continuing to spread rumors that he was racist. At a time when those of all races thought hate groups from other races might be out to get them, the Democrats spread unfounded fear that the president of the whole country hated black people simply for being black. At a time when people thought we were dangerously close to a race war, Democrats actively tried to stir one up. Democrats make me sick.
Some of them later claimed to have a problem with the fact that Trump mentioned that there were good people on both sides of the confederate statue issue – but there were good people on both sides of the confederate statue issue! What’s the problem with truth? That white supremacists happened to also want to keep the statues does not invalidate the good reasons to keep the statues any more than the fact that Antifa also wanted to get rid of the statues invalidates the good reasons to take them down. While the president repeatedly condemned the violence on both sides, Democrats kept telling me that by doing so, Trump was actually supporting the violence of one side (the white supremacists). According to Democrats, condemning is supporting. Words have no meaning.
The politicians are bad enough, but I soon found that even my friends and acquaintances inexplicably had a problem with what Trump said. That makes me wonder whether they are going to suddenly have a problem with something I say someday. I have to constantly walk on eggshells for fear of unwittingly offending them. It is impossible to be friends with people like that. More and more, politics invades my personal life. How can I fix the whole country when I can’t even fix my friends?
The same thing happened later when Ahmoud Arbery got killed. A pair of armed vigilantes chased him in a truck while he jogged and it was caught on tape. After seeing the tape, Trump said “It looks bad,” taking sides against the vigilantes (51). However, Trump also showed humility by pointing out that not everything was in view of the camera and he trusted investigators to find out the whole truth. It was this unwillingness to totally condemn the accused before the trial had even occurred that earned him accusations from his critics that he was somehow taking the side of the accused.
To reject words as helpful and beautiful as those of O’Malley and Trump sends the message to everyone not to bother trying to be nice. It sends the message that the only way to get respect is with insults and threats. I WILL REMEMBER THIS.
Chasing After Lies:
I used to work with a woman that fought tooth and nail against every tiny tidbit of fact I might claim, yet would turn her whole worldview inside-out after listening to someone else just once. She told me she was a liberal, rejected every objection of mine, then listened to Sean Hannity ONCE and told me she was a conservative. She was simultaneously the most skeptical and most gullible person I had ever met. She visited a boring, mainstream church in the area and told me it felt like a cult. She watched one video on YouTube and decided that the Gospels were completely made up because they were based on earlier myths from around the world. She was terrified of organized religion, but later she visited a domineering, legalistic church wherein the men and women sat on opposite sides of the room, they preached that only those baptized into their church could go to heaven, and she started spending seven days a week there, trying to convert everyone at work and claiming that Santa Claus was the devil and that going to church on Sundays was worshipping the sun god.
Such idiocy! They reject the obvious truth in front of them and desperately chase after lies. They run from the truth as fast as they can, desperately grasping at any excuse they can find for skepticism. They already know the truth. The problem is not underthinking, but overthinking. They are without excuse.
For most of my life, I have read every book and article I could get my hands on about psychology, marketing, sociology, and political science, trying to understand how people think and communicate so I could get people to see the truth. I now understand less than when I started. I have used every strategy there is to reach people, but nothing works.
If I remain unemotional and keep strictly to the facts, people assume I can’t really believe what I’m saying or else I would show emotion.
If I get angry, people assume that I am insecure because of a weakness in my position, and the anger makes them even angrier back at me.
If I plead with them, taking the role of victim, they tell me to stop whining. They then mock me and tell me that my behavior only invites further abuse.
If I am extra nice to them, trying to show them that I care about them and I am on their side, they misunderstand, seeing my outreach as manipulative and devious.
If I use humor to smooth things over, they either accuse me of not taking the issues seriously or they misunderstand the play on words to be not humor at all, but a contradiction or even a lie.
If I pretend I don’t care and don’t bother to counter every little thing I disagree with, they take it as proof that I am unable to defend my position and they steamroll me.
If I argue Socratically, asking questions to get them to use their own logic to see the absurdity of their positions, they lose patience with me for not just telling them what I think. When they do give answers, they are often not the ones I expect because they refuse to accept the most basic axioms of logic, morality, or even math.
If I try to learn what their underlying principles are so I understand why they have the positions they do, so that maybe we can work together on the same goals if I can convince them to try a different strategy, I invariably find that they do not have any underlying principles. They only have positions and slogans that they mindlessly repeat, but have never thought through.
If I state things in a straightforward way, the other person is always able to find a way to misinterpret it, twisting my words around into what they damn well know I didn’t mean.
If instead I try to pre-empt a potential misunderstanding by wording things a less-straightforward way, I inadvertently cause a new misunderstanding that would not have happened if I had just stated things in the most straightforward way.
If I allow the other to interrupt me and lead the conversation, dropping my train of thought every time they interrupt, we never ever get anywhere fruitful. They simply steamroll me, bring it all to the conclusion that I’m an idiot, and start the next subject, often assuming my position to be something it is not.
If instead I interrupt the other every time they begin with the wrong premise, not only do they get angry with me for being presumptive of where they were going with it, but sometimes I turn out to be wrong. Also, people are often wrong on so many different points at once that I usually have no idea where to begin my correction.
If they start attacking my character, and I show even the slightest hint of explaining myself, they then attack me for being “defensive.”
If they make a controversial statement of fact, and I tell them they’re wrong, they call me arrogant. If instead I say that the statement is wrong, they still call me arrogant. If I instead say merely that I have heard differently, they still call me arrogant. If I so much as ask them how they can be so certain, then they get really defensive – but it’s somehow okay when they do it.
Finally, if I offer to just drop it, they will not let me. It is too important to them to keep the argument going.
What do we have in common?
I often hear the claim that “we all want the same things,” but that we simply disagree on how best to achieve them. This is exactly what I used to believe. Now I know this to be false.
I have since read books by people whose vision of utopia is one in which planes, cars, and roads are banned, nobody travels, nobody has air conditioning, and we all work as gardeners. While I support the rights of those who want to live differently, and I value the health of the environment, I’m an explorer, not a gardener. Any future that does not include humanity bettering quality of life with technology and eventually exploring, colonizing, and terraforming other planets is not one I can tolerate. We do not want the same things.
I have noticed that some people see no value in play, art, or humor. They see work merely as a means of continued survival, not as a means to an end. Their lives are meaningless. I work so that I can store up resources to enjoy myself. I work to improve the lives of others so they can enjoy themselves. They work so that they can keep working in order to keep working in order to keep working. We do not want the same things.
While the issues surrounding homosexuality are complex and multifaceted, and gay-rights activists do make some valid points when it comes to the legal definitions, for most people it seems little more than a debate over taste. I have heard gays say things like “You can’t know you dislike it until you try it,” and “Love can happen with anybody; rejecting me as a partner is sexist.” They tell me that I can simply choose to switch orientations and that having a same-sex partner is better than me being single. They get angry with others for having different likes and dislikes. They get angry with others for opining that homosexuality is disgusting. They not only use the words sex, romance, and marriage to describe something that is in some ways the polar opposite of those things, they insist that there is no difference between them and any attempt to distinguish between them in the common lexicon (i.e. “traditional” marriage versus “gay” marriage) is bigoted and hateful. It’s not only about legal terminology: They demand that everyone use the same language they do in all parts of life. I agree that one has to adapt to an evolving language to both understand and be understood, but in this case it is the “gay rights” activists who are not adapting, but instead driving the evolution by intimidation. I even once read a magazine article written by a lesbian who insisted that straight America had to make special accommodations for her and actively endorse her lifestyle so that she would not imagine that she might be a target of discrimination. She could not accept that somebody out there might dare to express the belief that homosexuality is unhealthy or wrong. Clearly, some gays want everyone to be gay. We do not want the same things.
There are people whose ideas of utopia are total equality, where everyone and everything is the same and creative uniqueness is banned. They want us in the same clothes, the same houses, with mowed lawns and trees all in neat rows. The Maoists tried it. The Leninists tried it. The Nazis tried it. These are the types of people who take over homeowner associations, social clubs, and local governments. They remake the world in their image; dreadfully boring, oppressive, creepy, and disgusting. I crave variety. I want every spot unique. We do not want the same things.
I once met a guy who valued equality so highly, and liberty so little, that he wanted to outlaw private schools, home schools, and even answering questions, leaving it to the state to be the sole disseminator of “truth,” so we could all be equally informed (or uninformed). He thought it inappropriate to ever start a business or attempt to leave the working class or better oneself in any way at all, instead believing that all workers should instead unionize in order to squeeze just a tiny bit more out of the rich, without ever changing the structure of power that keeps the rich rich and the poor poor. He believed that all jobs across all industries should be ranked on a single scale, forcing one to master one job before moving up to a “higher” one, not allowing for the possibility of parallel scales to accommodate those with different natural skill sets. We do not want the same things.
Another time, another man told me that because the United States has done “bad things” in the past, such as killing civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was obligatory that we now sit back and do nothing as Al-Qaeda kills American civilians. Don’t tell me we want the same things!
The Need to Argue
One thing I’ve noticed is that most people – at least two-thirds of everyone I’ve ever had the opportunity to get to know – love arguing. They have a deep need for it and will create arguments out of nothing just for some excitement. At least it looks that way. In contrast, I’m the least argumentative person I know.
The most common tactic these people use is to lure me in gradually by first making what appears to be an honest mistake interpreting my words. Thinking I wasn’t clear enough, I attempt to explain myself again only for them to make another mistake and another. Before I notice that the mistakes have now become so preposterous that they must be playing with me, they cut me off and say, “Dan, I’m not going to argue with you!” They will say this even if they were the first to technically start the argument by contradicting something I had said first.
Another common tactic is for people to accuse me of wrongdoing, either criticizing my strategy in handling a task or by maligning my motives. If I make even the tiniest attempt to explain my thinking, they will accuse me of arguing – even if I never contradict one thing they say. If they accuse me of forgetting something, and I so much as mention that I was going to do it next, they will yell, “I don’t want to hear any excuses!”
There are also the countless times I thought I was just having a casual conversation or just asking questions to better understand something. When I get answers that don’t make sense to me, it leads to more questions. Other people take this as argument, but when they suddenly accuse me of arguing with them, it surprises me every time.
What also surprises me is when I am slightly inconvenienced by another person in a way that I interpret as an honest mistake, who immediately blows the whole situation out of proportion and then blames me for it. People are so quick to lose tempers and exaggerate non-issues. They look for arguments. I was once walking back to my car in a parking lot when an old woman pushing a cart suddenly swerved left in front of me. I slipped by without trouble for either of us and would not have given the event a second thought if she hadn’t started berating me for “being in a hurry.” I wasn’t mad at her; I thought it was an honest mistake that could easily have been mine if I was having a bad day. I saw no problem. If there was no problem, she had no reason to get after me. If there was a problem, IT WAS HER FAULT! This type of thing happens all the time – and not only with strangers.
There are also people who insist on formal apologies or else they will not drop the issue. It does not matter if I immediately catch the problem myself, acknowledge responsibility, and fix the issue well before it affects anybody. The mere possibility that there might have been a problem if history had gone differently is enough for them to totally freak out. Saying “oops” or “my bad” is not good enough. Nothing less than groveling for forgiveness will satisfy them.
I have also noticed that while relating some recent anecdote of conflict in my life, there are those that will attempt to defend the other person – someone who they have never met and know only from my description of them. Even though they weren’t present for the event and only know about it from what I tell them happened, they insist on telling me everything I did wrong, accusing me of things I never did and adding much to the incident that never occurred. Just to really rub it in, they insist I deserved everything that happened to me and they get really angry about it. I’d stop telling them my stories, but they don’t do it all the time and I don’t have many friends to begin with.
Related to this are times when a perfectly reasonable action or statement of mine is misinterpreted by one person, after which multiple people gang up on me. At one workplace, a customer needed help with something. Before I made the effort to carry the heavy item all the way to her car, I wanted to confirm she was actually committed to buying it and specifically which one she wanted – not at all an unreasonable thing to do. Somehow, she seemed to think I was trying to talk her out of buying it. Afterwards, my coworkers and manager echoed her words, telling me they would be mad if I had asked them the same question and asking me if I wouldn’t be mad if our positions were reversed. Even after thinking it over carefully for days, I learned nothing to make me change my mind. Today, I am as sure as ever that I said nothing that should have bothered anybody, certainly nothing that would have bothered me, and that no one could have legitimately interpreted my words the way she (and they) did. While I am willing to follow whatever procedures my boss tells me while I am on the clock, I am not going to jump on the bandwagon to endorse language protocols that I don’t believe in (and can’t even understand) or condemn language protocols I do believe in (and endorse outside of work) when asked my opinions.
Then there are all the times people tell me they “disagree,” when I had no idea that I had taken a position. Sometimes I am having a hard time understanding their position, so I lay out the possible position categories and their relationships to each other, but never hint at my opinion. They disagree. Other times, I might suggest that the answer is unlikely to be at the extremes, but somewhere in the wide middle. They disagree. Other times, I might say the answer could be anywhere, but is probably in a certain range. They disagree. Once this word is spoken, the conversation is over. They refuse to debate me or to support their claims. They only want to accuse me of being unable to handle disagreement.
Then there are those that take an isolated comment of mine and recursively magnify it into its worst-case scenario in order to get me to take a harder position than I ever intended just so they can argue with me:
I once mentioned I didn’t come from a hugging background and while I didn’t mind hugging, I was uncomfortable simply being expected to hug without warning. The guy I was with asked what I would do with a kiss of greeting. I told him that kissing was an even more intimate activity that was liable to get one slapped that tried it. I was simply expressing a common attitude in my culture; unsolicited kissing is generally considered sexual harassment. I have been taught to expect a slap (or worse) if I kiss someone without permission.
He then told me never to go to Spain where he insisted that I would be constantly caressed and groped simply in the course of casual social interaction. I didn’t believe things were really that bad, but I told him that if that were true, I would push people off and defend myself. “Even the women?” he asked. “It makes no difference to me; harassment is harassment,” I said. “Then their husbands, fathers, and brothers will beat you up,” he said.
I did not really believe that the Spanish would be so quick to pass judgment and assault innocent people this way, but that was the scenario he had set up. I told him that if that happened, I would be forced to shoot them – not at all an unreasonable response under the circumstances of getting beaten. He then told me that it was illegal to bring guns into Spain. I had no intention of really going to Spain, and if I did I’m sure I would follow all the rules, but since his scenario had me already in Spain being pummeled and possibly killed, I told him that I would find a way to bring guns across the border – and that if I was stopped I would kill the border guards. By the end of the conversation he had me launching a full-scale invasion and nuking Madrid – over hugging. I would never actually do this in real life…probably.
Why Civility Failed
As might have been expected, the issue of divisiveness in politics has itself become a divisive issue. “Uncivil” is hurled as an epithet by some of the most uncivil people ever to have walked upon the Earth’s surface. Incivility has effectively been redefined as “disagreeing with me” in many circles and compromise is now defined as “doing exactly what we tell you to do.” The hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance is sometimes overwhelming. Just to really irk me, when I take a stand against violence, people then accuse me of promoting violence. There is no way to win.
Misunderstandings poison everything. What bothers me most often is when people who have enough experience with me to know better, assume me to be much stupider or more cowardly than I am, or get something else about me completely wrong that I thought was answered long ago. They misinterpret my words, discarding the obvious meaning and substituting something they should know I could never mean. The same issues come up again and again. When the misconception persists in spite of my corrections, I know they have never listened to me. It hurts to know that someone I consider a friend might actually think that I am fascist, racist, sexist, and homophobic because they have twisted my words around.
Some pundits claim that social media is driving our political divide. This does seem to be partly true. That said, I have been in many situations both in person and online where there was absolutely no excuse to not get what I was driving at – especially considering that these same people understand movie characters and stand-up comics without the words having to be explained. People are so impatient and quick to rush to judgment. That’s the real trouble.
I expect politicians to lie to me because lies often benefit them. I don’t expect regular people to do so when the lie does not benefit them in any way. Yet they do. Why do people make transparent lies that convince no one? Why do they lie to me in private about things they know I am in a position to know otherwise? Let’s not pretend that any of these untruths are genuine mistakes. Let’s not pretend that all ideologies are equally valid. I have given people the benefit of the doubt. I have given them every opportunity to save face, but they still won’t repent; they only dig themselves in deeper.
In my previous book, The Nutcase Across The Street, I took the stance that we needed to start listening more and talking more – that isolation was allowing misunderstanding to drive us apart. I now see how naïve this was. There is no one on Earth who tried harder to make civility work than me. There is no one who tried harder to understand the other side(s). I can now say with some degree of certainty that there is nothing there to understand. Those who disagree with me are simply evil, pure and simple. There is no point conversing with them. People are not simply duped. They aren’t just uninformed or misinformed. They are not innocently arguing semantics. They don’t simply have “different ideas how to run the country.” They are evil. It is evil to condemn people in the news before all the facts are in. It is evil to negligently make decisions on issues (i.e. vote) that affect others without first taking due diligence to be informed. It is evil not to listen, dismissing the cries of the oppressed as propaganda, while showing contempt for logic and no interest in learning truth, deliberately avoiding anything that might call one’s assumptions into question. They have no goals other than chaos and destruction. They don’t want to win; they want to fight.
Can you be friends with evil people? Friendship is a good thing that by its very nature requires a minimum level of goodness. Nobody is perfect, but most people do not even have this minimum level. Whether the subject is politics or not, it is impossible to be friends with someone who twists your every word into the opposite of its obvious meaning, ignoring explicit statements and countless contextual clues to the contrary, and accuses you of the worst sins. Some people are such bad listeners that even if I give them everything they want, they still act like I’m arguing. Love and forgiveness only seem to make people more upset and leads to greater abuse. I don’t have time for people like that anymore; I’m too busy.
There is no political solution. No matter the institutional structures, evil people will find a way to corrupt them. No matter the words we use, evil people will find a way to twist them. The word evil exists in the English language and so it must refer to something. If evil refers to anything, it refers to American voters. The prime reason civility failed in America is because Americans are not civil people.