I’m So Tired of This July 18, 2008

Lately there’s been some political bashing going on facebook that I’m pretty tired of hearing.  It’s probably well-known that I’m “liberal” or whatever the hell that means.  I’m really not that liberal, but since I support Obama, I’m freaking public enemy #1 of most of the people who go to Evangelical Institution and claim to be my “friend.”  I’m not just talking facebook friend here, I’m talking people that I have gotten to know over the past few years and who are more than just acquaintances.  I’ve had discussions with these people, I’ve invited these people to events, I’ve gone through really harrowing times with some of these people.  What bothers me the most is that each and every one of these people claim to be Christians.  They can keep reifying those stereotypes if they want to.

I want to make it clear that I’m not calling myself the “victim” here, because there really is no victim, just some political differences.  I’m not suffering because of what they’re doing, but I am highly annoyed, and honestly, a little surprised.  Maybe this speaks to my naivete about human nature (I always seem to think that people are much better than they are, and I expect people to act with a certain dignity, even if I don’t always fit the bill.)  I guess I just expect these people to be civil.  I would hope that in the past, if I have had problems with people that are as shallow as political differences that I have at least been civil to them.  I may have been unable to understand them, and I may have been privately (sometimes publicly) pissed, but I hope that I haven’t taken it out on them in a vitriolic way.  I recently failed at this goal for myself.  I just couldn’t take it anymore, and I started putting angry comments on a facebook wall.  It began when someone was mocking my facebook political views and it ended when they accused me of having my “panties in a twist.”  I just wanted them to “leave me the hell alone.”

There is one thing that I understand about things like facebook, and this blog (which is why I choose to remain anonymous): it’s a public forum, and I can only expect my views, or, for that matter, anything I put up, to be criticized.  I don’t mind criticism.  I like it most of the time, because it helps me to develop what I believe more fully and it helps me to better communicate what I believe.  But this recent criticism differs from the ideal for public discourse about beliefs:  it is not civil and it is not constructive.

It’s really just harassment,  unwarranted harassment at that.  It happens when someone looks at my facebook wall and sees that I support Obama or really dislike McCain, or am a vegetarian, or even put up a facebook note about a button which was, admittedly, an overreaction which I corrected.  When people see these things, their first reaction is to pounce.  I’ve gotten quite a few comments that were just plain mean and didn’t do anything to challenge me or to start productive conversation.  The only goal seemed to be to piss me off and bully me.  My question is: why do these people think it is necessary to do this?  I don’t really know.  And the only reason I can think of is that they a) have nothing better to do than find people with different viewpoints and harass them; b) are just ugly people lacking compassion or at least civility; c) think that harassment is an effective tool at beating people down who hold different viewpoints; d) genuinely lack understanding of what constitutes civil public debate.  The funny thing is that the majority of these people were former debaters with me, and we lived by the understanding that debate rounds included nothing personal and that ad-hom arguments or ones lacking nuances didn’t get as much mileage as the ones that were reasonable, measured, and evidenced.  Perhaps they forgot.  If this isn’t true, let me know.  I’d like to understand why.

Really, what this harassment achieves is intimidation.  The end of it is that the person on the receiving end doesn’t feel free to voice viewpoints because he/she knows that in the future, nothing productive will come out of it, and no debate will happen.  This is what leads me to believe that the people who engage in this type of public discourse want the other person to be silenced because the harasser doesn’t agree with them.  In the end, civil public debate dies, and the definition of public discourse becomes one of intimidation and domination.  Nobody wins, except maybe the harasser.  He/she gets to feel in control and self-righteous and gets to have a little power trip.  His/her viewpoint, though, doesn’t become anymore valid or right.

I went through my phase of berating and disparaging other people.  This seemed to be the vogue when I was on the debate team.  We didn’t seem to get the core concept of the activity we were participating in.  Then I grew up.

Honestly, I’m glad to be done with this school.  I met very few people who had the mental capacity to understand how civil debate works.  The rest just engaged in name calling and an ignorant level of argument.  The impression I got was that they were afraid of what was different and that they were too lazy to think about it more than the shallow level of their debate showed.  Life after Evangelical Institution probably won’t be much different, but I hope that as people mature, they can understand how to argue and at least attempt to understand, perhaps even sympathize with, viewpoints that are different than their own.

All I’m saying is that I welcome challenges to my beliefs.  I did post them publicly, after all, and so I can’t expect everyone to agree with me and to co-exist in a bucolic world because I ask them to.  I do expect, though, that challenges be reasonable and productive, and that people engage me in a way that is constructive.  I would hope that there could be a mutual respect between two people who have reached their own conclusions about the world around them.

Maybe I hope for too much.