let's posit two historical events that every American knows about, which represented pretty fierce disagreement:
1. the Civil War and Slavery
2. the Holocaust
each event featured "sides" that disagreed pretty strongly. They were life-or-death conflicts involving millions of people. Do we try to apply these "lets find our shared morals" / "present our side with the joy (of a missionary)" practices in these situations? Probably not. They were wars. Kind of the ultimate "disagreement".
If you are open to the view that conflicts happening today are fast approaching the scale / seriousness of the above two events, things like, one political party trying to overthrow the US government by force, widespread corruption of the rule of law and police, draconian rules meant to terrorize or imprison whole populations of women and immigrants, destruction of democratic norms, kids living their lives in terror of school schootings, then it's hard to take this article seriously.
If the above paragraph OTOH sounds ridiculous and one is of the view that things are pretty normal except for a little messiness on this social media thing, then by all means, present your view to that reality as a gift given with joy.
As of yet in America, the people willing to actually engage in things like 1-6 are a very small minority, and the ones willing to offer defenses for it are mostly those who feel trapped, that there's no other way their values can be preserved. These people can still be reached. But giving up hope prematurely is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Anyway, I'm not sure what your counter-proposal is. I assume it's not "just get the civil war started already", but if you actually give up on convincing your political opponents, there's not much left. Oh, there's "go vote!", I guess, but we already knew that one.
I'm not saying to forego discourse altogether, im saying that approaching the problem like a missionary ringing your doorbell who will then happily "debate" spirituality is not advised. religious missionaries have literally eternity to get their message across. dire issues like the loss of democracy can't really wait and can't really be reduced to "let's debate and wait for someone to win". "debate" with the goal to "convince one's opponent" is not really what's going on with the discourse that we're seeing. it is a war of sorts, where the "sides" are looking to engage their "side" as much as possible and to demoralize and humiliate the other "side" as much as possible, thereby creating a public impression that it is hoped will sway major political events, primarily through the psychology of who's perceived as "winning" and "losing".
also, virtually the entire Republican party from top to bottom supports the 1/6 insurrection, their methods, and their goals, and the party is actively electing attorney generals and governors who will actually see the insurrection through at the state level on the next go-around. The situation is in fact very dire.
I dunno, I think that point of view presupposes that everyone on the non-Slavery (for example) side is pretty much in complete harmony and has no need to exchange views in a way to evolve their shared perspective.
I think the article makes this point too: the approach isn't for every circumstance and shouldn't necessarily be used for every person. The pro-slavery people are not really the target audience.
> If you are open to the view that conflicts happening today are fast approaching the scale / seriousness of the above two events...
I'm open to it, but would need to see evidence. I'm not even sure what you mean by conflicts in this case, but I cannot think of anything that is on a trend line that would get take it even close to the level of those examples you name. What do we have that's about to become another holocaust, for example?
In general most things I can name have gotten noticeably better compared to the eras when those examples took place.
Because I agree with the author that attacking an opponent only makes them more entrenched in their position, I disagree with what I take to be the suggestion that, the more important something is, the more you should be willing to attack your opponent over it. The reason is that, unlike war, we can't just kill each other, we have to have to live together at the end of this. So, we should use the least centrifugal tactics we can.
> What do we have that's about to become another holocaust, for example?
While large scale genocide seems unlikely to be in the near future, the history of the rise of Nazi Germany has many parallels with the current rise of authoritarian governments around the world as well as among the right wing of the US. If there were to be large scale genocide, the conditions that precede such an event are certainly taking place right now within the right wing of the US as well as in authoritarian movements around the world.
> Politically, the president has certainly taken actions which are in many ways parallel to those of the early Nazi movement. As Evans rightly notes, his propaganda machine would be immediately familiar to Joseph Goebbels’s Nazi office. The recent executive order making administrative law judges political appointees subject to executive power cannot be seen as anything less than an attempt to bring the courts in line with the administration’s political ideology. The Nazis called this “Gleichschaltung,” or coordination, as they sought to co-opt government and private organizations. Even his management style has similarities to Hitler. Like Trump, Hitler was reluctant to surrender too much authority to one subordinate, and so his Cabinet (which he never called) was a den of backbiting and maneuvering underlings seeking the support of Hitler, who was the only one who decided policy. ...
> Let’s again be clear: Trump is not Hitler; Hitler was arguably a far more astute politician with deeply held convictions and the means to turn a fledgling democracy into a totalitarian state, something that should be much more difficult here. Nonetheless, these historical comparisons are not hyperbolic and should at least give us pause.
however, since this article was written, Trump has paved the way for *much* more astute authoritarians like Ron DeSantis etc. to take his place. A takeover of the US by authoritarian fascists and the end of whatever "democracy" the US has, replaced by sham elections that mean nothing while the government is turned into basically an enemy of the people with the exception of a very privileged few, would be a very serious, world changing event, and they are going for it big time right now.
> Do we try to apply these "lets find our shared morals" / "present our side with the joy (of a missionary)" practices in these situations? Probably not. They were wars.
Relatedly: As Barack Obama said in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, non-violence would not have stopped Hitler's armies.
1. the Civil War and Slavery
2. the Holocaust
each event featured "sides" that disagreed pretty strongly. They were life-or-death conflicts involving millions of people. Do we try to apply these "lets find our shared morals" / "present our side with the joy (of a missionary)" practices in these situations? Probably not. They were wars. Kind of the ultimate "disagreement".
If you are open to the view that conflicts happening today are fast approaching the scale / seriousness of the above two events, things like, one political party trying to overthrow the US government by force, widespread corruption of the rule of law and police, draconian rules meant to terrorize or imprison whole populations of women and immigrants, destruction of democratic norms, kids living their lives in terror of school schootings, then it's hard to take this article seriously.
If the above paragraph OTOH sounds ridiculous and one is of the view that things are pretty normal except for a little messiness on this social media thing, then by all means, present your view to that reality as a gift given with joy.