MaxedOutMama
Sunday, October 24, 2004
About Factionalism and Emotion
One thing that we should all safeguard is our own rationality, or so I firmly believe. Right now people are ranting away against both Bush and Kerry. Plenty of people are also advancing reasoned arguments for their positions, but the public tone of political debate is trending downwards. I have linked to a number of different sources in posts below because I thought they illustrated this trend. The single causative difference I can detect is the change in news coverage, which has become both more partisan and far less factual. An additional factor may be that radio coverage didn't evoke the same emotions as TV, with its pictorial evocation of emotions.
When people are debating issues their minds are engaged and emotions are somewhat suppressed. If we simply toss allegations back and forth, inevitably emotions dominate the discussion. I would prefer not to end up in a society populated by 60-somethings with the emotional age of two. When a senator comes out with a quote like "Bush is brain-dead", we are falling into the pit of daycare debate. It doesn't help anyone or anything. There is no excuse for people busting into campaign headquarters, tearing up voter registrations, and harassing each other in polling lines.
I'm 43. When I was a kid, election coverage tended to be a lot more substantive and far less emotional. For instance, even my local newspapers would print the party platforms and long speeches by the candidate in their entirety. I discovered the blogosphere by googling for real news coverage of this election, and it so happened that many of the most interesting, thoughtful and substantive search results turned out to be blogs, and I was hooked.
In my lifetime there have been several crises, and when I was in elementary school the fear of nuclear war was a continuous presence. So although there are very urgent issues at stake in this election, those issues are not more urgent than those of my childhood.
Here Dr. Sanity discusses her reaction to a Krugman editorial.
I'm linking to her on this topic because she is analyzing her own reaction, and trying to explain what so upsets her as a psychiatrist about Krugman. You should also scroll down and read the comments, IMO. She writes:
"While granting that there is certainly a lot of hate in individuals of both sides (hate, after all, is a HUMAN emotion and all of us are human), the interesting thing about the hate that Krugman generates is that it is disguised and self-righteous. It is then "projected" onto Bush and the Republicans, so that he (Krugman) does not have to take any responsibiity for feeling that way. In Krugman's opinion, his way of viewing the world is the only correct way, so why should he have to provide any evidence?"
"The three psychological mechanisms (projection, denial, and displacement) that Krugman routinely displays in his writings are the source of almost all human misery, genocide, racism, anti-semitism, sexism, and now terrorism that we see all over the world."
When people are debating issues their minds are engaged and emotions are somewhat suppressed. If we simply toss allegations back and forth, inevitably emotions dominate the discussion. I would prefer not to end up in a society populated by 60-somethings with the emotional age of two. When a senator comes out with a quote like "Bush is brain-dead", we are falling into the pit of daycare debate. It doesn't help anyone or anything. There is no excuse for people busting into campaign headquarters, tearing up voter registrations, and harassing each other in polling lines.
I'm 43. When I was a kid, election coverage tended to be a lot more substantive and far less emotional. For instance, even my local newspapers would print the party platforms and long speeches by the candidate in their entirety. I discovered the blogosphere by googling for real news coverage of this election, and it so happened that many of the most interesting, thoughtful and substantive search results turned out to be blogs, and I was hooked.
In my lifetime there have been several crises, and when I was in elementary school the fear of nuclear war was a continuous presence. So although there are very urgent issues at stake in this election, those issues are not more urgent than those of my childhood.
Here Dr. Sanity discusses her reaction to a Krugman editorial.
I'm linking to her on this topic because she is analyzing her own reaction, and trying to explain what so upsets her as a psychiatrist about Krugman. You should also scroll down and read the comments, IMO. She writes:
"While granting that there is certainly a lot of hate in individuals of both sides (hate, after all, is a HUMAN emotion and all of us are human), the interesting thing about the hate that Krugman generates is that it is disguised and self-righteous. It is then "projected" onto Bush and the Republicans, so that he (Krugman) does not have to take any responsibiity for feeling that way. In Krugman's opinion, his way of viewing the world is the only correct way, so why should he have to provide any evidence?"
"The three psychological mechanisms (projection, denial, and displacement) that Krugman routinely displays in his writings are the source of almost all human misery, genocide, racism, anti-semitism, sexism, and now terrorism that we see all over the world."
