The DC/Marvel of political debate

[jpgray]

Our discourse is fucked. (So why discuss it? Why not? The bandwidth will be wasted anyway.)

When two sides debate politics in this country, more and more often I don't see two sides arguing reasonably for their positions. I see something akin to "Batman could totally beat up Spiderman."

Facts will be used in such a debate, but have no effect. These people enter into the argument already convinced of the righteous justice their cause enjoys, and then go looking for specific facts: justifying facts for their side; undermining facts for the other. At this point, it's simply a matter of braying yours and quibbling over theirs, to the death. This leads to strangely intricate but wholly unproductive arguments; battles of exhaustive detail and baroque logic that somehow fail to explain or signify anything at all. There is never a moment of "Ooh, you've got me there! My cause lies ruined, broken to inconsolate shadow in your sun of truth," because it was never about truth to begin with.

Once the opponent fails (inevitably) to see the "truth," it's time to go to personality war. On DU, we call critics whiners; strong supporters cheerleaders. "Critics do nothing for the party but whine on the internet!" is what one side will be spending an inordinate amount of time whining about on the internet. "Cheerleaders care nothing for our party's ideals!" will be shouted by the other as it pathologically avoids threads that show our party living up to them. In both cases, it's about the cause, and the cause's facts, but not the truth.

Now it's not that the two sides are exactly equivalent. I know people have trouble grabbing hold of this concept, but when any two different things are examined together this is not an argument that they are the same. Being different, they are not the same. Pointing out that they are not the same is not proof of a comparison's uselessness. In fact, attempting comparison is only utterly useless if the two things -are- exactly the same. The only point of bunching the two together here is that there are similar tendencies on both sides. One side might have more supporting facts! Another might have fewer but more -decisive- facts! But neither matters in this sort of debate. One side may be more willing to get reckless and cruel with its rhetoric! But again, in this sort of debate, that doesn't make for converts either.

It's also not that adherents of one side or the other are all radicalized to the same degree--many are not radicalized at all. But the divisive garbage floats to the top and gets the most attention. Think of DU. After wading through all the worst refuse, it's easy to associate the worst shit you've read from a whiner/cheerleader with even the mildest expression of critical/supportive views. "Aha! That one is pretty clever about expressing his utopian-anarchist/Obama-apparatchik tripe! Even couches it in somewhat reasonable terms! Hey, there's (horrible monster x) K&Ring the thread--the OP must be a clever plant or troll. Let me reach for my snark...."

But in the end it's not about whether Spiderman can -really- avoid a batarang, or whether Batman could cut through webbing, how "secret" a secret deal has to be to earn the appellation, whether a health care bill with some good things can still be called "worthless," or any of that crap. The emerging "truth" of such a debate is that there are true-believers out there, and that's pretty much all a potential convert takes away from it.

That people will believe different things from you while knowing the same facts is not something that can be practically changed once that belief reaches certain heights. While there's nothing wrong with true believers arguing over beliefs, maybe the prevailing tone of "-this- is the debate that will save or destroy our party! The one between opposing true believers!" is a little uncalled for?

[Pholus]

1. We're all here looking for affirmation. But it bugs us that we're not of a single mind.

So we bicker. It's healthy, I think and you shouldn't take it seriously. It's just the internet, after all! ;)