Saving Civil Discourse
I am convinced that men hate each other because they fear each other. They fear each other because they don’t know each other, and they don’t know each other because they don’t communicate with each other…
Martin Luther King — Oct. 15, 1962.
Another day, another argument — more toxic political debates on social media. We all know the routine. Scandal abounds; someone is offended. Tweets fly free; everyone huddles in their bubbles. Within minutes, insults are spewed; opposing views are silenced. Others are mislabeled and cast out, all for the crime of liking someone on Facebook or Twitter.
And in the end, only the loudest, most extreme voices are heard, graciously peddled along by outlets waiting to profit off the backlash. Sensible voices are drowned out, deluding the largely apolitical public into thinking that the country is more divided and ideological than it actually is. But worst of all, society’s appetite for controversy festers, forcing the cycle to continue another day — bringing fresh scandals and voices with each repetition.
At this point, it should come as no surprise that today’s political debates have been reduced to stereotypes. Where once was nuance and sincere discussions, now there is only memes, 140-character soundbites and angry “whataboutisms.”
Like when someone says X about Barack Obama, another immediately says Y about Donald Trump, and vice versa. Rarely do we pause and think about an argument’s merits without first discrediting another’s character and intentions. Here, rational debate and discussion take a backseat to virtue signaling, the need to demonstrate our moral correctness to one another.
More often than not, these debates degenerate into vicious squabbles of “who’s the bigger hypocrite?” But when both sides believe themselves to be factually and morally correct, how can this overt reliance on emotion help us?
When we hear the term “Trump” or “Hillary” supporter, what images come to mind? Does emotion and anger rile up inside us? Do we feel disgust over flippant accusations of racism and politically correct snowflakes? Does the mere mention of a Trump or Hillary supporter color our expectations about a person’s thoughts and intentions? More generally, do we attach labels to silence and spite others without even caring for what they think or say?
It goes without saying that these habits are incredibly dangerous. We all live in our media bubbles where ideology continues to trample on practical thinking, distorting our views on society and each other. As a result, the left and right continue to stereotype and deride one another. For liberals, Trump supporters are enablers, if not outright endorsers of racism, fascism and xenophobia. For conservatives, liberals are crybaby hypocrites who want to destroy the country with their cultural perversions and tolerance.
For some liberals, the appointment of any and all Trump cabinet picks is embraced with immediate disgust, typically without explanation. Even the venerable Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch was not immune to this backlash.
As for some conservatives, events like Thursday’s town hall protests at Rep. Jason Chaffetz’s home state of Utah are dismissed as “infiltrations by professional liberal protesters.” After all, no conservatives could reasonably criticize the Trump administration, let alone protest.
Speaking as a moderate myself, this puts me at a precarious position. If I criticize the political correctness of a vocal progressive minority or support a single policy of the Trump administration, then I would be ostracized for abetting an oppressive system. On the other hand, if I criticize the Trump administration, I would be singled out as a violent liberal and cast as a hypocritical Hillary supporter. Whichever way I lean, I am bound to be falsely labeled and criticized.
This makes civilized discussion nearly impossible since such attributions are often accompanied by moral outrage. According to a study in the journal Nature, we have a natural tendency to punish the selfish actions of others when they have no effect on us. But this is not the noble outcome of any indignation on our part. Instead— at least at a subconscious level — it serves as a “form of personal advertisement.” Moral outrage signals our trustworthiness to others. Here, our arguments become extensions of our own legitimacy. Simply criticizing one’s beliefs is tantamount to questioning their credibility as a moral, trustworthy person.
But why is this only a problem now? When our social and political groups consist of only those who think like us, opinions start to feel more like facts. Absent dissent and rigorous debate, arguments begin to take a quality of obviousness and truth. Only the uneducated or ignorant could disagree with us — after all, we have the facts.
This is nothing new; some have argued that liberals are particularly prone to this bias. The reason this problem is so prevalent now is because our political bubbles have expanded.
Technology and new forms of media have replaced hard truths with more comfortably spun “alternative facts,” separating us further along ideological lines while actual fake news continues to outperform leading mainstream articles in exposure.
Another more worrisome trend is highlighted by a 2013 study from researchers at the University of Wisconsin. They found that when subjects are offended, they are not only less likely to accept a news story’s facts, but are more likely to change their “interpretation of the news story itself.”
Throughout the election, there was a flurry of articles that insulted Trump supporters. This led angry conservatives to respond in kind. Compounded by media distrust among both sides, fact itself became tinged with hints of red and blue.
We have conditioned ourselves to view the other side with malice. No longer are liberals and conservatives simply people whose values differ from our own, but now their very association offends us. We expect them to hate us so we hate them back, all without uttering a single word. And when we do speak to each other, we deafen ourselves with pent-up anger. This needs to stop.
This dangerous “you’re with us or you’re against us” mentality by both sides is anathema to our democracy. In a recent underrated Senate speech, Marco Rubio made a poignantly blunt point on the subject. “We are reaching a point in this republic where we are not going to be able to solve the simplest of issues because everyone is putting themselves in a corner where everyone hates everybody.”
If we continue to hate one another as a matter of principle and convention, then we are not only going to jeopardize our democracy, but the very pillars that constitute us as Americans — our devotion to justice, liberty, diversity and hard work.
We must restore faith in the principle of compromise which has been sabotaged by ideologues who consider it self-defeating. In their eyes, only total victory is acceptable. Complete obstructionism thus becomes a legitimate means of protest.
This is a foolhardy approach, and to be clear, there is a distinction between obstructionism as a means of payback, as Democrats have recently shown, and obstructionism done under the pretense that any and all compromise is unacceptable. For those of the latter persuasion, such action is self-destructive, alienating instigators while the rest of us suffer. In government, the painful price is a gridlocked and dysfunctional Congress.
Nevertheless, the prognosis is not all dark and gloomy. There are Americans of all stripes who actively seek to inform themselves and engage with their counterparts. I was especially comforted by the candor and respect shown by both Senators Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders in a recent CNN debate on the Affordable Care Act. Not only did they often agree with each other, but they refused to impugn each other’s character. They did not typecast one another as partisan punching bags, forcing them to answer for the sins of their colleagues. Instead, they spoke to each other as adults with their own unique histories and beliefs. This should be the norm, not the exception.
Steps Towards Preserving Civil Discourse
First and foremost, we must uphold an inviolable commitment to free speech, and yes, this unfortunately means allowing controversial figures to speak without fear of violence or shutdown at campus events. I sympathize with those who would ban hate speech to avoid violence and the alienation of minorities. In fact, if a particular speaker was openly advocating for any form of imminent violence, then censoring him or her would have been appropriate (and likely consistent with the 1969 Supreme Court ruling in Brandenburg v. Ohio).
But by resorting to violence and protests to shut down speech, opposition to these individuals only succeed in empowering these figures’ views and credibility, all while undermining the resistance’s message of peace and tolerance. I understand that in instances like at UC Berkley, violence was perpetuated by outside groups of anarchists. Yet protesters (and campus police alike) made no significant attempt at stopping the damage. As a result, liberals are painted as enablers of violence in much the same biased manner as liberals do so against conservatives.
To combat such figures, rather than resorting to violence and censorship, we should debate them and identify the blatant flaws in their remarks. This way their reputation and credibility could fall naturally. And if they decide to troll us as a way of deflecting genuine engagement, just as provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos has done in the past, then it is best to ignore them altogether. For one, we could avoid attending their events, much the same way we would avoid responding to an Internet troll’s nasty comment on Youtube or Twitter.
Of course, free speech is no cure-all for intolerance; I concede that point. It is a double-edged sword, a blade immune to the rumblings of political transitions where once benevolent speech laws are twisted for tyrannical purposes. Echoing Yale Law School Dean Robert Post, free speech also protects minorities since hate speech laws enforce the social norms of the majority population.
But most importantly, free speech both enlivens our democracy and provides the greatest means of stopping intolerant people. In my opinion, this is preferable to hate speech laws which force bigots to retreat to hidden pockets of society—the reason being that factors like group think and alienation would not only cause these anonymous communities to thrive, but become more extreme over time, increasing the risk of unexpected violence and discrimination. With free speech absolutism, preventative intervention becomes much more viable since bigoted individuals, whose views would be more public, are much easier to spot.
A European-styled approach, by contrast, which even includes laws that punish deniers of the Holocaust and Armenian Genocide, would be counterproductive to these efforts — a position I hold despite my protestations as a person of Jewish and Armenian descent.
Now, to be fair, there are legitimate concerns over free speech’s ability to allow hate and intolerance to spread unfiltered. Some would go as far as saying it normalizes it.
Though is it not our responsibility to be informed enough to drown out such bigotry? This does not imply that words have no consequences (the deceptive shouting of “fire” in a crowded theater being a prime example), but it is possible to have free speech without the threat of normalizing hate. All it requires of us is consensus on the information we receive so that dangerous fringe views never reach the mainstream.
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To accomplish this, we need to maintain a solid, shared grip on facts. It is impossible to conduct debate when both parties lack a mutually agreed set of truths. If I am holding a red colored apple and genuinely believe that it is purple, you would be hard-pressed to convince me otherwise. Likewise, when people outright dismiss statistics and news, it becomes nearly impossible to advocate our positions.
This is where faith in the media becomes crucial. Today, less than 15% of Republicans and 55% of Democrats express a fair degree of trust in the press. We all bemoan what we perceive as biased news outlets. While conservatives lampoon the liberal “mainstream media” like CNN and the New York Times, liberals are quick to criticize Fox News for similar reasons. This is where the predicament takes a turn for the bizarre.
We change news channels because we despise their partisan bias. Before the election, most people did this for political reasons, not because they thought that Fox or CNN were “fake news” that spouted misinformation. And yet this partisan entrenchment has gotten so bad, in no small part due to Trump’s own accusations, that the facts of any opposing news network are now deemed illegitimate. Whether through cognitive dissonance, ignorance or our own moral outrage, we dismiss the media because of its associations, not its content — much like we do with actual people.
Frankly, today’s obsession with media bias is rather silly. On the one hand, news channels pick and choose what they want to cover, constituting a bias by definition. On the other hand, while the press is free and independent, it has always conducted itself in the country’s national interest. A recent article I wrote on media bias and fake news shows how American journalists inadvertently defend rather than objectively analyze American foreign policy. Just like any other country’s media, ours has always been biased.
Yet only recently did we weaponize this bias for our purported benefit.
How often do we see arguments shut down for nothing more than the excuse that someone watches CNN, “fake news” or gets their information from the “mainstream media?” I understand questioning information when it is obtained illegally. This has a lengthy legal history. But to deny evidence simply because we dislike the source is fallacy writ large. Facts and ideas transcend individuals and organizations.
To solve this information gap, the onus is on us and the media itself. We must restore faith in fact, charging headstrong in our attempts to destroy and discredit all fake news and misinformation. Most importantly, we must contain our own biased tendencies.
While liberals are more likely to block and silence opposing viewpoints on social media, conservatives are more likely to huddle together with like-minded people, rarely exposing themselves to other perspectives. Both habits are dangerous in their own right.
Blocking others for political — not harassment — reasons may feel like a convenience, but it also silences others, inflaming moral outrage while preventing any remote possibility of dialogue.
Does this thought not make us wince in disgust? Blocking and accusing others of bigotry for reasons that have no bearing on what they actually think or say is dehumanizing. It is equivalent to stroking our own egos while silencing helpless others from defending their integrity. Basic empathy demands us to see the absurdity of this situation should it be flipped the other way around.
With conservatives, opinions are more likely to feel like facts because opposing viewpoints are so rare. With such dismal media trust ratings, hearsay from friends and relatives begin to feel more truthful than anything said by the press. We become especially vulnerable to conspiracies and fake news, arguably more so than liberals.
Thus the solution to this problem consists of three central steps.
- As I argued in an earlier article, “[o]nly by removing value judgments, sensationalism and narratives in journalists’ — not opinion writers’ — content” can impartiality and media trust be restored. If Americans continue to rely on conveniently spun truths from fringe websites, then finding common ground becomes very difficult. The media must make every effort to purge hints of bias so that it can reclaim its place as the nexus of news and facts for all Americans. Economists Matthew Ellman and Fabrizio Germano provide some basic recommendations on this front.
- Liberals and conservatives must hold themselves accountable for preserving the truth. Articles should first be read, not shared on Facebook or Twitter because of their clickbait titles or stances. If an article is controversial, then it should be cross referenced for accuracy with other major publications. We should avoid dismissing facts solely because they challenge our beliefs; We should not believe stories simply because they were told by President Trump, Democrats or any other politician, no matter how much we may support them. Nor should we blindly support anyone at all without first thinking honestly for ourselves. Even the controversial stories shared by our trusted friends and neighbors should be taken with a grain of salt.
- Lastly, we should actively read the comments and viewpoints of those across the political aisle. This is quite easy to do. Conservatives can simply go on Facebook, like the pages for the New York Times, CNN, POLITICO and The Huffington Post and read the comments in their articles. Likewise, liberals can look at the Facebook comments in articles for Fox News, the National Review and Breitbart.
Are we bound to find angry comments in the process? Yes, but that is not the point. The purpose here is not to spark a flame war between commenters but to understand that other opinions exist outside our comfort zones. It allows us to see others’ logic and the cultural values that shape them to believe what they do. It is, essentially, the first step towards popping those odious bubbles of ours.
And yes, this also requires us not to block dissenting views on social media, even when they make us feel uncomfortable. The gravest mistake we can ever make is by assuming that everyone who disagrees with us does so with the express intention of harming us. Dissent does not imply malice. It is our responsibility to dig deeper into one’s thoughts and reasoning before we can judge them in this manner.
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The third recommendation is likely the most obscure. We need to change our method of debate. Etiquette may be enough to turn an argument civil and bearable, but civility does not convince people to support us.
And neither does our reliance on data.
Spouting facts and figures may seem like a reasonable strategy, yet it rarely succeeds at convincing others. In truth, facts which challenge another’s convictions are likely to strengthen, not weaken their beliefs — a phenomenon researchers call the “backfire effect.” Whether out of cognitive laziness or some need to maintain internal consistency, we instinctively twist and ignore facts to defend our points of view.
In light of this and other biases, I recommend an empathetic approach to debate.
When we argue, we should avoid being the first to push our facts and beliefs. Rather, we should aim to understand the other’s point of view, placing ourselves in their shoes. This way we defuse the situation, bypassing those pesky knee-jerk reactions that make us feel offended and uncomfortable before a debate even begins. Once we have a clear idea of their opinions, we role-play.
Through our conversations we simulate their ideas, bringing them to their practical and logical conclusions. We identify the gaps in logic, the paradoxes and moral vices. We engage rather than accuse, testing the limits and veracity of these beliefs. Once we get our counterpart on the fence, or at least willing enough to hear a better argument, then we can push for our position.
But as we do so, we must be mindful to refer back to our counterpart’s flawed arguments. We cannot say we are right because their ideas are imperfect. Instead we must prove that our own position avoids those same logical and moral problems in the first place. Once this is done to an appreciable degree, then discussion should flow naturally, even if our own ideas fall under scrutiny.
Of course, if all attempts at empathy and respect fail, and our counterpart is simply unwilling to hear us out, then civility demands us to disengage and avoid the topic entirely, at least for the time being. Whether we choose to pursue the question later on is our choice, but by avoiding unnecessary arguments, we save ourselves from needless anger and frustration.
This approach avoids the negativity of confrontational debates, allowing both parties to talk cordially about facts and ideas. Admittedly, this method is unworkable on social media, but that only goes to show the value of face-to-face interactions (or their video equivalents) for holding genuine political discussions.
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The fourth and final recommendation is simple but requires us, as President Lincoln once pleaded, to summon the better angels of our nature. Put more simply, we must stop stereotyping those we have never met. We should not see each other as punching bags whose purposes are to answer for the crimes of their political colleagues. We should be decent, patient and respectful. We should condemn all acts of violence and hatred, lest we spark a vicious cycle of aggression that tears down the social fabric. And we should not jump to conclusions during times of tragedy and confusion to advance our political agendas, especially in the absence of complete information.
Debates are not zero-sum games where only the victor benefits. In their purest form, debates leave both speakers more satisfied and informed than they were before. All it requires of us is open-mindedness and a willingness to admit when we are wrong.
An Important Takeaway
Whatever your politics, today’s divisions may seem bleak and unassailable. It may feel like enemies are easier to find than compatriots. But this does not have to be the case.
More often than not, divisions, stereotypes and dangerous competition are all defined by social—not biological — pressures. We need but work together and see each other as Americans first to rekindle those bonds of brotherhood that have been lost in recent years. Few, if any, studies make this point more clear than the famous “Robbers Cave” experiment of 1954.
During the study, social psychologist Muzafer Sherif randomly paired two groups of eleven boys from similar backgrounds into teams at a summer camp in Oklahoma. None of the boys had known each other previously and they were all unaware of the existence of the other team. This continued on for the first week of the experiment, allowing the boys to bond and even adopt their own team names and traditions.
But after this initial week of mingling, Sherif introduced the teams to each other through a series of competitive situations. Oftentimes the boys were paired in physical challenges like baseball and tug-of-war where consolation prizes were nonexistent. Other times, Sherif would benefit one team at the expense of another, like when one group of boys was delayed from going to a picnic. By the time they arrived, the other team had eaten most of the food.
This competition led to a shocking rise in hatred between the boys.
At first, this prejudice was only verbally expressed, such as taunting or name-calling. As the competition wore on, this expression took a more direct route. The Eagles burned the Rattler’s flag. Then the next day, the Rattler’s ransacked The Eagle’s cabin, overturned beds, and stole private property. The groups became so aggressive with each other that the researchers had to physically separate them.
In a matter of weeks, regular everyday middle-class boys with no prior history of violence began to hate and revile each other, all because of the social pressures of competition. Prejudice and violence spiked because it was easier to disparage an entire group than to selectively separate the good from the bad.
The study of course had its methodological flaws but its significance is clear. We may not be boys but our hatred for each other is largely artificial, a construction of our polarizing society. This is why the concluding portion of the study is so powerful.
At the end of the competitive stage, Sherif introduced “superordinate” goals to the challenges. Trials now required both teams to work together rather than against each other. At one point, the boys had to fix a disrupted water supply. At a later stage, they had to repair a broken supply truck, using every resource and personnel at their disposal.
What Sherif found after these trials was that boys of both teams began to befriend each other. Much of their prejudice and hatred towards one another vanished simply because they were forced to work together. Exposure alone allowed them to see each other as individuals, not as caricatures — not as “the other team” or “the opposition.” They saw similarity where their groups once saw only difference.
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So whether we’re summer campers at Oklahoma, coal miners in West Virginia, or file clerks in New York City’s cubicles, we are all in this together. We as Americans want only the best for ourselves and our country. Liberals are not actively seeking to destroy the United States and neither are conservatives. We may differ in our values and approaches, yet our hearts burn with the same unyielding passion and humanity.
So let us marshal our energy towards dialogue and change. Let us no longer see compromise as an impediment to, but as the means for progress. When next we speak to someone of a different party, we should see them as Americans first, not the opposition. Perhaps once this is done, once we speak to each other with respect and the mutual understanding of our shared human experience, then maybe, just maybe can civil discourse not only survive, but thrive for years to come.
