I recognize that we cannot control the behavior of others; I am just glad someone cares enough about civil discourse to take a stand on the issue. There is so much more I could say, but many of your commentators already have expressed quite eloquently similar thoughts to mine.

Thank you again.
Judy

Jamie I’m really glad you came by. Have seen lots of your work — I can see where editorial cartooning would really put one continually in the middle of these kinds of questions. Yesterday while beginning research on the real history of the Tea Party movement (as opposed to the “received wisdom” I’ve gained through by means of my own particular filters in the mainstream & progressive media, including blogs), I came across the NPR Ombudsman’s discussion of Mark Fiore’s controversial “Learn to Speak Tea Bag” animation, which appears on NPR’s site. Talk about your thorny: satire, stereotype, funny to a large segment of the population — the NPR Ombudsman opined that “It’s actually not that funny”, but I remember laughing when I saw it — but tremendously offensive to Tea Partiers. While the comments I’m seeing especially at Phil’s & Linda’s blogs indicate that some progressives have come face to face with behavior that seems well-reflected in Fiore’s cartoon. For example, someone commented at Phil’s blog (where he crossposted Linda’s article):

This [what Linda wrote] is so true. When I protested at Sarah’s Columbus book tour the taunts I got were mostly hurtful things about my “lack of Christianity” (They said I was in league with the devil etc), or told me where I was going to be after I died (in hell etc) or they gleefully said they would laugh at me when they were being lifted into heaven in the rapture as I stood on earth to be punished. But they also said things about my intellect (I was mush brained etc). Not everyone in line yelled at me but I saw no one protesting or disagreeing with the those yelling.

All these things were said with no proof of anything other than what it said on my sign: I am a real American; Sarah Lies; Sarah uses her children as props; Sarah quits; and Sarah blames others.

It was very scary and there were two times that the police had to ask Sarah’s fans to move back from me. I am glad that I protested because I am not sure I would believe the level of evil that they project when you are in their way if I had not experienced it first hand.

But I’m wondering how much of that nasty behavior comes from flocking or mob behavior. Would each of those same people act that same way were they to sit down at a table with this protester, have a cup of coffee, talk? How much of our ugly behavior stems from seeing it enacted all around us?

I don’t know, really. I’ve seen more than my fair share of ugliness from the right — remembering all the “Truth is Not Hate” hate speech at last year’s Assembly hearings on AO-64. But I don’t like any more seeing that kind of ugliness issuing from the mouths or pens of my friends & allies.

Mel,

I was watching today the 1964 film Seven Days in May when I saw this great exchange in the Oval Office between George Macready as Secretary of the Treasury Christopher Todd, and Fredric March as US President Jordan Lyman. The exchange about ‘the enemy,’ the ‘lunatic fringe,’ and disenfranchisement is so germane (particularly to the idea of your upcoming blog post {and this topic as well}) 46 years later:

Christopher Todd:
I think it’s time we faced the enemy, Mr. President.

President Jordan Lyman:
He’s not the enemy. Scott, the Joint Chiefs, even the very emotional, very illogical lunatic fringe: they’re not the enemy. The enemy’s an age – a nuclear age. It happens to have killed man’s faith in his ability to influence what happens to him. And out of this comes a sickness, and out of sickness a frustration, a feeling of impotence, helplessness, weakness. And from this, this desperation, we look for a champion in red, white, and blue. Every now and then a man [or a woman] on a white horse rides by, and we appoint him [or her] to be our personal god for the duration. For some men it was a Senator McCarthy, for others it was a General Walker, and now it’s a General Scott [and 46 years in the future, it might be a Sarah Palin].

Mel’s recounting of times spent sitting at the same table with other folks who have diverse and differing positions reminds me of many conversations had in bars with people I normally wouldn’t interact with – that’s the great equalizing influence Interior Alaskan weather can have: at fifty below, *everybody’s* cold.

The flip side is drawing editorial cartoons: I’ve recently been doing some mulling over the issues and how effective caricaturing the opposition is – or isn’t – with some other cartoonists on another site. Not pulling any punches, taking a stand and potentially offending people is part of the job description, or at least an occupational hazard, and it calls for the same sort of constant self-questioning of motives.

Unapologetically playing a part in the ratcheting up of rhetoric is a conscious choice with consequences, and after returning several times to this one comment thread I’ve learned a lot from some new and different perspectives.

Many thanks.

He also refers to an older post of his on blogging guildelines where he laid out the guidelines he was going to do his best to follow in his own political blogging. The lengthy discussion on labeling & namecalling is especially worth a read — here’s an excerpt:

Name calling tends to turn off the intellect and turn on the emotional defense team. Sometimes it is useful to name or label someone or some action as a way identifying it. Don Mitchell’s calling Palin “a celebrity” rather than a politician is an example of trying to clarify the role she plays. But calling people nasty derogatory names, while causing the partisans to giggle, makes the open exchange of ideas that much harder. Extreme partisans on either side aren’t likely to change their views, but there are lots of ‘independents’ who may shift when they see reasonable people consistently presenting useful information and ideas.

I find myself in the course of these discussions (here, on Steve’s blog, on Progressive Alaska) rethinking some of my own past behavior in posts, comments on blogs or the Anchorage Daily News website, etc. I can’t control other people’s civility or lack thereof, & some people are obviously unconvinced that namecalling & contemptuous behavior towards people who aim the same kind of behavior at them is at all wrong. Oh well. But I can at least exhibit control over my own behavior.

So I’m rereading Steve’s personal blogging guidelines, & thinking about my own.

Meanwhile –

Alaska Pi — the way I figure it, hanging on with tenacity to your own integrity — in this case being tenacious about being civil even while the other people were lambasting you with names — might not be easy, but sure does a lot more to sway people than resorting to namecalling yourself would do.

SofyaDeb & Bones AK — My attitude about anger & incivility is very much informed with what it does to me when I go off in a rage. A friend of mine told me a few months ago that she couldn’t watch Prevo’s sermons because they made her so made she’d be up by the TV yelling & screaming at it. Well, I can do that too… but for me, explosion is almost always followed by implosion. It’s like that quote of MLK’s that Ron pointed out — “Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit.”

There’s an ethical statement, often called the Wiccan Rede — it’s frequently found in Wicca & other neopagan circles, & while I’m not neopagan it works well for me — that goes like this:

Harming none, do as you will.

It’s always seemed to me that the goal is to keep oneself balanced on that comma in the middle. And that there are a couple of corollaries:

Harming others, I harm myself.
Harming myself, I harm others.

I think Jesus’ statement, Love thy neighbor as thyself has much the same meaning — except that unfortunately a lot rests on how the person who claims to live by that defines neighbor. Not to mention that if people don’t know how to love themselves, they’re also going to be pretty lousy at treating others with love. Still, Jesus was aiming at the same idea. It’s a big challenge to see people who are treating you or people you care about meanly & contemptuously as “neighbors,” but I’m pretty sure that’s what he was asking people to do. We all have the Kingdom of God within us (per Jesus), we all have Buddha-nature, other religions have other ways of saying it.

Which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t defend ourselves when we’re attacked. The way I reckon it, if I allow myself to be treated as a doormat, then I’m not only permitting myself to be harmed, but I’m also harming the person treating me that way by letting them think they can get away with it. So yeah, if someone slaps me in my face, you can damn betcha I’ll let them have it right back, & I might even call them names as I do so in the heat the moment. But that’s in physical circumstances: in verbal contexts, like on a blog, there are other ways to fight back that are more effective than namecalling to begin with.

This conversation has reminded me of the peculiar ( in the sense of singular ) experience I had of being the only so-called liberal on a jury.

Initially, I was the only one calling to convict the accused.

The trial lasted a day. Deliberations lasted two and a half. The process was marred at some level by folks calling me names and more than a few poorly veiled threats got flung across the table at me, but in the end the group fell to discussing the actual facts presented instead of voting within their prejudices.

It was an enormously stressful situation for me , trying to push to stay on track with facts and the law amidst the namecalling and insults . The shifting alliances within the group are fascinating in retrospect but were almost bizarre as they unfolded.

In the end, we convicted ( I think very rightly ) the accused person for ALMOST the right reasons. However, the struggle to establish civility amongst jurors was the hardest work done in that jury room. I didn’t convince anyone by force of personality nor political view that it was necessary. Some of the jurors told me afterwards that by hanging onto the core of the issues we had to look at and staring down the easy-way-out name callers I allowed them the space to really think about what we were charged with accomplishing and not giving into pressure by others.

This speaks to the core of what true civility can do…not namby pamby go-with-the-flow-be-nice-to-everyone notions of civilty, nor watered down notions of compromise, none of that stuff can be the tool true civility gives us in stepping up to do our most difficult work.

Anyway, whatever else this is, it’s been a good discussion. Whatever people decide to do with their stuff, is up to them. When I say I’m sickened by the namecalling, I mean that very literally — & I’ll make my own choices from that. But never to write off my friends, which you (& Phil as well) are counted among.

This whole discussion makes me think of the torture debate. Is it okay to torture them because they would torture us? No. Our position is that we do not torture. As others have said before, two wrongs do not make a right. If they call us horrible names and say we are haters, we should respond with reasoned arguments, not hateful comments that prove their point and diminish ours.

John Stewart and Stephen Colbert have shown that it isn’t necessary to be uncivil to make your point – you can even be quite ribald and funny without resorting to using these kinds of names, especially if you use their own words against them. My favorite line from last night – “Palin 2012 – Abandon all Hope!” You can say you don’t like what they do or what they stand for. But when you demean them as human beings, it reflects more on you than on the person to whom you refer.

I don’t want to say I read something on xyz blog and have someone say, “How can you believe anything you read there? Have you seen some of the vicious things they have written?” It diminishes credibility to be connected with that kind of language.

I struggle to be able to look in the mirror and feel good about the person I see there. When you surround yourself with anger, hatred and bitterness, it invades your entire life. You become desensitized to it, until suddenly you realize that you are writing and saying the same kinds of things. It is contagious. Frankly, I don’t need the ugliness in my life.