Americans Can Talk Only with Those Who Already Agree: Susan Jacoby Article and Schmookler Interpretation
I think this piece by Jacoby raises an important topic. I’m not sure she understands what’s at the root of this problem.
First her article, then my take on the matter.
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Talking to Ourselves
By Susan Jacoby
The Los Angeles Times via truthout
Sunday 20 April 2008
Americans are increasingly close-minded and unwilling to listen to opposing views.
As dumbness has been defined downward in American public life during the last two decades, one of the most important and frequently overlooked culprits is the public’s increasing reluctance to give a fair hearing – or any hearing at all – to opposing points of view. A few years ago, I delivered a lecture at Eastern Kentucky University on the history of American secularism, and was pleased, in the heart of the Bible Belt, to have attracted an audience of about 150. The response inside the hall was enthusiastic because everyone there, with the exception of a few bored students whose professors had made attendance a requirement, agreed with me before I opened my mouth. Around the corner, hundreds more students were packing an auditorium to hear a speaker sponsored by the Campus Crusade for Christ, a conservative organization that “counter-programs” secular lectures at many colleges. The star of the evening was a self-described recovering pedophile who claimed to have overcome his proclivities by being “born again.” (And yes, it is a blow to the ego to find oneself less of a draw than a penitent pedophile.) It is safe to say that almost no one who attended either lecture on the Kentucky campus that night was exposed to a new or disturbing idea. Indeed, virtually everywhere I speak, 95% of the audience shares my political and cultural views – and serious conservatives report exactly the same experience on the lecture circuit. Whether watching television news, consulting political blogs or (more rarely) reading books, Americans today have become a people in search of validation for opinions that they already hold. This absence of curiosity about other points of view is the essence of anti-intellectualism and represents a major departure from the nation’s best cultural traditions. In the last quarter of the 19th century, Americans jammed lecture halls to hear Robert Green Ingersoll, known as “the Great Agnostic,” attack organized religion and question the existence of God. They did so not because they necess! arily ag reed with him but because they wanted to make up their own minds about what he had to say and see for themselves whether the devil really had horns. Similarly, when Thomas Henry Huxley, the British naturalist who popularized Darwin’s theory of evolution, came to the U.S. in 1876, he spoke to standing-room-only audiences, even though many of his listeners were genuinely shocked by his views. This spirit of inquiry, which demands firsthand evidence and does not trivialize opposing points of view, is essential to a society’s intellectual and political health. Richard Hofstadter, in his classic 1963 work, “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life,” argued that among “the major virtues of liberal society in the past was that it made possible such a variety of styles of intellectual life – one can find men notable for being passionate and rebellious, for being elegant and sumptuous, or spare and astringent, clever and complex, patient and wise, and some equipped mainly to observe and endure. … It is possible, of ourse, that the avenues of choice are being closed and that the culture of the future will be dominated by single-minded men of one persuasion or another. It is possible; but insofar as the weight of one’s will is thrown onto the scales of history, one lives in the belief that it not be so.” Hofstadter was of course using the word “liberal” with a small “l,” in the sense that the term had been used in the past – as a synonym for open-mindedness and concern for liberty of thought instead of as the right-wing political epithet it has become during the last 25 years. When I recently spoke about the militant parochialism of American intellectual life on a radio talk show, a caller responded by telling me that there was nothing new about Americans preferring to bask in the reflected glow of their own opinions. Talk radio and political blogs, in his view, are merely the modern equivalent of friends – and haven’t we always chosen friends who agree with us? Well, no. Tell it to John Adams and Thomas Jeffers! on, who certainly had many, often bitter disagreements about politics and whose correspondence nevertheless leaps off the page as an example of the illumination to be derived from exchanges of ideas between friends who respect each other even though they do not always share the same opinions. “You and I ought not to die, before we have explained ourselves to each other,” Adams wrote Jefferson in 1815. It is doubtful that today’s politicians will spend much time trying to explain themselves to one another even after they leave office. They are, after all, creatures of a culture in which it is acceptable, on the Senate floor, for Vice President Dick Cheney to tell Vermont’s Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy to “go [obscene verb] yourself”
There is a direct connection between the debasement of political discourse and the public’s tendency to tune out any voice that is not an echo. “Swift boating” can succeed in politics only because of the correct assumption that huge numbers of Americans lack the broad knowledge that would enable them to spot blatantly unfair attacks. If Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee, we will surely hear, from the slimier corners of the blogosphere, a renewal of the lie that he is a Muslim. John McCain got the same treatment from George W. Bush supporters in the 2000 campaign, when the rumor that his adopted child from Bangladesh was really his own illegitimate African American baby cost him votes in the Republican primary in South Carolina. Voters of any political persuasion who watch only cable news shows or consult only blogs that support their preconceptions are patsies for these kinds of lies. Ironically, the unprecedented array of choices, on hundreds of cable channels and the Web, have contributed to the declne of common knowledge and the denigration of fairness by both the right and the left. No one but a news junkie has the time or the inclination to spend the entire day consulting diverse news sources on the Web, and the temptation to seek out commentary that fits neatly into one’s worldview – whether that means the Huffington Post or the Drudge Report – is hard to resist. Genuine fairness does not mean the kind of bogus objectivity that always locates truth equidistant from two points, but it does demand that divergent views be understood and taken into account in approaching public issues. In re-reading Hofstadter several years ago, I was struck by the fairness of his scholarship, a serious, old-fashioned attempt to engage the arguments of his opponents and to acknowledge evidence that ran counter to his own biases. I had not noticed that when I read the book for the first time in the 1960s because fairness was, to a considerable degree, taken for granted in those days as an ideal for aspiring youn! g schola rs and writers. A vast public laziness feeds the media’s predilection today to distill news through polemicists of one stripe or another and to condense complex information into meaningless sound bites. On April 8, for example, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the U.S. armed forces in Iraq, testified before the Senate in hearings that lasted into the early evening. Although the hearings were on cable during the day, the networks offered no special programming in the evening, and newscasts were content with sound bites of McCain, Obama and Hillary Clinton questioning the general. Dueling presidential candidates were the whole story. Absent from most news reports was testimony concerning the administration’s ongoing efforts to forge agreements with various Iraqi factions without submitting the terms to Congress for ratification – a development with constitutional implications as potentially serious as the Watergate affair. No matter. Anyone who wanted to hear Petraeus bashed or applauded could turn o his or her preferred political cable show or click on a blog to find an unchallenging interpretation of the day’s events. The tepid interest in the substance of Petraeus’ testimony on the part of the public and much of the media contrasts sharply with the response to the Senate Watergate hearings in 1973. All 319 hours of the first round of the hearings were televised, and 85% of Americans tuned in to at least some of the proceedings live. I remember those weeks as a period when everyday preoccupations faded into the background and we found time, as a people, to perform our civic duty. An ongoing war may lack the drama of Watergate, but it is doubtful that anything short of another terrorist attack on our soil would convince today’s public that it ought to read the transcript of a lengthy congressional hearing or pay attention, for more than five minutes, to live news as it unfolds. It is past time for Americans to stop attributing the polarization of our public life to the media, the demon entity “! Washingt on” or “the elites.” As long as we continue to avoid the hard work of scrutinizing public affairs without the filter of polemical shouting heads, we have no one to blame for the governing class and its policies but ourselves. Like Hofstadter, I yearn to live in a society that values fair-mindedness. But it will take nothing less than a revolutionary public recommitment to the pursuit of fairness, knowledge and memory to halt, much less reverse, the trend toward an ignorant single-mindedness that threatens the future of democracy itself.
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Susan Jacoby is the author of “The Age of American Unreason.” ——-
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My response.
Jacoby’s presentation I think excellent– as far as it goes. Here’s what I think is the underlying dynamic.
There are many things mentioned in the article that are old and enduring. Yet the degree of separation in America –the extent that we lack meaningful dialogue across our divisions– is, as Jacoby says, something new.
The reason has to do with the rise of evil forces (“evil,” as always when I use it here, being a complex concept I’ve tried to define and elucidate at some length). The extend of evil’s reach has risen to the point that it has been able to enculturate, on the right, a major segment of the population into a close-minded, fascist mentality. That mentality has not been so characteristic of Americans in most times in history as it has been lately. That 30 precent that Bush keeps –almost A THIRD of our population– has been taught to be impermeable to anything that is not handed down from the Party.
People like Rush Limbaugh have been teaching millions of Americans to disregard what any liberal says, what any member of an intellectual or cultural elite says, what any journalist says, what any foreigner says– and that leaves their own party line.
This is one of evil’s ways of making everything into a war.
With nothing possible to achieve through dialogue for the more liberal-minded, not-fascist component of the American body politic, that part has been compelled to write off those in the grip of this power-warped, lie-drenched propaganda of the right. With the truth powerless in the face of lies stamped with authority from the LEADER, from the wielders of the flag, from the commander-in-chief, from the true faith, the holders of the truth, those practitioners of the process of inquiry –those free of the grip of manipulative dogma– CAN ONLY SPEAK OF THE TRUTH AMONG THEMSELVES.
Keeping the faith. Holding open the chance for brighter times ahead when our countrymen might awaken from their fascistic trance.
That is what we do here on NoneSoBlind, is it not?
May 1st, 2008 at 10:34 am
Jacoby certainly, is memory gifted but discriminates against those americans who are not; most are not – there is no history beyond the morning and tomorrow is another day; besides, there are chores to do. In america, intellectuals are viewed with suspicion. Their performance is abysmal, contrary to common sense as history has shown. Europe was sacked in `45, but they lamented the impossibility of any chance of recover. Those common sense people with the shovels proved them wrong. The hoards of intellecturals at the Pentegon urged the sacking of Irag and now the situation is hopeless. When Obama speaks ove the heads or at the people rather than to them, they see the absurdity of intellectualism in full bloom. You do not reason with the populace, you appeal to their hearts! Jacoby`s heart is cut off from her fabulous memory; you can reason with her but the details drown out any form of common sense.
May 1st, 2008 at 10:44 am
I’m going to congratulate you Andrew even though it’s a little early.
The tide turned after Obama’s speech in Philadelphia. I felt it in the heart’s of the people, through the T. V , or the internet. I’m thrilled.
You have been a rich place to visit for inspiration. Remember those “good” Christians I mentioned in America, alive and well? The young voters are going to give us back our country. The reason being, the best of America
is going to come together and bury the bushites.
I hope your other visitors realize what an important voice you are.
Thanks so much Andy. Waiting for your next message of beautifully, Scientific, TRUTH
May 1st, 2008 at 11:00 am
If you drew a crowd of 150 at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond then consider yourself very lucky.
Richmond is right on the edge of the eastern Kentucky mountains where people fervently believe in the rapture, speaking in tongues, and born again Christianity.
It’s scary in that part of the world. People will go out of their way to help you but if you try to discuss politics or religion with them you are in grave danger of being shot, stabbed or beat about the head and face (and I am not kidding). The majority of the people in Eastern Kentucky believe that all except born again Christians are going to hell….that includes Catholics, Jews, Muslims, agnostics, and anyone who doesn’t believe as they do.
So, though I have ranted on, my point is that you are absolutely correct. People do not have an open mind – they want to have their beliefs confirmed and validated.
May 1st, 2008 at 11:35 am
James,
You spite shows through. Most American’s do not have problems with their memories, they just watch shows that put the appropriate memories in place for them. And they choose to watch those shows to boot. I myself, primarily check out liberal site online, but every now and then, I check out right wing and conservative sites too. If for no other reason than to see what the other side is doing. I work with conservative right wingers but many are also liberals.
I think one of the reasons Americans do not discuss politics is because we live in a class society and woe is it to speak ill of something the higher class believes in, i.e., the boss. I have not been able to keep my leanings secret here at work and do not try too hard to keep it quiet either, but neither do I force a political discussion on anyone. Sometimes I will bring a particularly egregious nugget up for discussion on an individual and non-controversial basis and so have discovered most of my colleagues are leaning liberal. I have discovered that most of the conservative, right winger wear their politics on their sleeves and shout out their convictions to the world. They are not subtle with their politics.
I do believe I am in the minority in checking out the other side. It has been years since I attended a speech on either side. Perhaps I should begin again in the near future. If for no other reason, all should seek to understand the other side, if for no other reason than to see the arguments they will use even before they see them themselves. And who knows, maybe you will change your views as well. One good site for right wing views is newsmax which can be found at http://www.newsmax.com, happy reading from the other side!
May 1st, 2008 at 1:02 pm
It is sardonic that an intellectual, who prizes “the playfulness of the mind, rather than intelligence, the sharpness of the mind”, hammers away at “a vast public laziness” which prevents “scrutinizing public affairs” but then joins with the guilty who “have no one to blame for the governing class and its policies but ourselves”. So much negliglence. Why hasn’t all that play settled on a better analysis of why things are so bad now? Why hasn’t it uncovered a synthesis which draws people out of the valley? Why does the crow settle on blame and evil?
That uneasy cold-war liberal, Hofstadter, carried some of this hypocrisy. “Hofstadter showed his preference for intellect over intelligence, the former recognized as a “unique manifestation of human dignity” and the latter as a quality in animals as well as humans.” He had a prescription for the foreboding prognosis that “culture of the future will be dominated by single-minded men of one persuasion or another.” He, Heidegger-like, prescribed throwing the “weight of one’s will [...] onto the scales of history”; thereby “one lives in the belief that it not be so.” Well, maybe that conceit was not enough.
Hofstadter accounted that colleges founded in the antebellum era (1800-1860),
And Hofstadter abandoned the left due partly to his snobbery and elite sympathies but also due to his conviction that “racism, anti-Semitism,
and right-wing sentiments were an ineradicable part of populism”. In his liberalism, he found that “the masses—and mass movements—were
not to be trusted. For such older dichotomies as the people versus the interests, the historian David Potter would later observe, Hofstadter tended to substitute the equally misleading dichotomy of the rational versus the irrational.”
But while Hofstadter was straddling the fence and trying to defend intellectualism to utilitarianism, the MIC was busy pushing it’s own goods. That’s why the condemnatory tone you hear when Jacoby says, “A vast public laziness feeds the media’s predilection today to distill news through polemicists of one stripe or another and to condense complex information into meaningless sound bites” is so inadequate. She can’t bring herself to name the beast.
May 1st, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Indeed!!
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:12 am
I myself do not discuss politics with other people, and I also do not read right wing opinions. I also do not read left wing opinions. I listen to people. I don’t like NSB so much because it is liberal but because I like Andy, and his holistic views. I also like our differences; they inspire me. I feel I can learn here. The combination of intellectual, and intelligent, and seeking, and knowing, and daring, and all of the above, and more. And I like the people who come here because I think they are also attracted by what Andy has to offer. I also like NSB because it is small and personal.
I do though, have friends who vote Republican, and I must say, I get along with people, no matter what they vote. It seems to me that people are really misguided, and I agree with Andy about the lies, and all that. Because, the people i know personally who vote Republican, and who support Bush, they really do not support Bush at all. They support what they believe Bush is all about. They themselves are not Monsters. But then again, I am not a man among men, but more so, a woman among women, and also a woman among men as individuals; maybe that makes a difference.
And I can also really get along with someone, and like him, even if I don’t agree with his political, and religious, opinions that much, like David.
I still think we are more alike than different, or have more in common than not. Personality matters a lot.
I guess, I am really not that politically oriented in the first place.
May 2nd, 2008 at 10:04 am
I also like Andy and this website because of his holistic views and also because I believe he comes from the good, even though I do not agree with every single one of his opinions. I also enjoy the insight that often comes forth from the discussions. Sometimes heated but still moderated by a fair moderator. Not all my postings have been accepted as posted and I altered them as requested. I never felt that any such modification was inappropriate. And even it I did, it’s Andy’s website, not mine. But I do believe he is more than fair enough.
I also get along quite well with most people of whatever political leaning. The few I note who seem a bit bizarre in their opinions are usually conservative, but then again, that may be me seeing them through the lens of my liberal opinions and worldview. Knowing that you have a worldview that colors your perceptions is one step in the direction of increased consciousness.
May 2nd, 2008 at 7:54 pm
I am not sure if this is at all the way it is, but my sense has been that being a Republican is a really ‘male’ thing. The women who are are Republican are so because their fathers are, or their husbands are. They either do not vote at all, or they vote what they are told by their husbands. I don’t know any Republican women who are much involved in Politics at all. It’s sort of their ‘man’s’ thing, and something men discuss among men, and they are not included in.
These days, all the Republicans I know are also working class people, and they are not professionals, and they have high school degrees.
And I also understand how difficult it would be to really have exposure to the truth about Bush, unless you are educated, and use the computer.