I've Been Wrong ... Have You?

One of the things I've noticed about recent political debates is the absolute certainty with which many (most?) people assert things. Ambiguous, it seems, and complex have disappeared from our lexicons. Saying something like I don't know or I'm not really sure or That's a complicated issue--there are several ways to look at that or You could be right or I hadn't thought of that or ... well, these are now sentences as rarely heard as conversations in Latin.

One major source of the problem, of course, is the commentary on the media--radio, TV, Internet. Most (All?) commentators are absolutely certain that they are correct--in every aspect--and acknowledging that they are uncertain or willing to learn or maybe even a bit ambivalent (or even wrong!)? These are signs of weakness. Of moral impurity, even. Cause for excommunication from whatever group they represent.

Has this always been so?

I don't think so. My father was a Republican; his best friend was a Democrat. Many times I heard those two men talking about political and social issues, and I never saw them get angry with each other. I never heard one accuse the other of being a Nazi or a Communist. Of course, both of them had fought actual Nazis in WW II. They knew the difference between a Stormtrooper and someone whose ideas about health care you don't agree with.

In the latter years of my life I have seen people and their positions calcify. Someone who replies with a discouraging word--or a counter-argument--is shouted down. Labeled. Branded. Dismissed. (Unfriended?) Excommunicated. In a recent FB post from a former student I read that Democrats are, well, evil--"radicalized enemies of our country." Really? I'm a lifelong Dem. And now I'm evil?

In another post I read that Social Security is just welfare--that you save all this money, and if you die early, well, someone else gets it. Correct! That's the way it's designed to work. Social Security is a tax, not a savings account. You pay during your working years to support the elderly and diminished. When you retire, younger workers start paying for you because—if you live long enough--you will receive far more than you paid in. So, yes, your SS check is based on what you paid into the system--but, again, it's not a savings or investment account. It's a philanthropic tax. I was happy to pay it to help others (my grandparents and other elderly relatives were, of course, among the recipients); I'm happy to receive the little I now get each month.

I try--very hard--not to brand and dismiss people--though it's not always easy. Because I was a teacher for nearly half a century, I interacted with kids and parents and colleagues who had political ideas very different from mine. Early in my career, I was a jerk--insisting on my interpretations of things (interpretations, by the way, that I "borrowed" from the New York Review of Books, the Saturday Review of Literature, and other Lefty sources).

Later on, I like to think I ... mellowed. Listened more. I can't say that I really changed my fundamental beliefs, but I did come to understand a little better where other people were (and are) coming from.

Now, I have hundreds of FB friends who are former students--some from the 1960s, some from the 2010s. Their political views differ sharply. I see, every day, posts and memes that are uninformed--and occasionally (often?) patently false. From both sides of the political aisle.

But I don't unfriend anyone. I don't reply with angry words soaked in umbrage.

Maybe that makes me a wuss. (I can live with that!)

I try to think critically about the political posts I read--on both sides. I ask myself: Does this argument make sense? Is this totally wrong? Misinformed? Biased? Closed-minded?

And, I guess, I like knowing what other people think--especially people who once sat in my classroom. Especially people with whom I disagree.

But all of us need to do our best to find out what the facts are--even those uncomfortable facts that contradict what we so very much want to believe. And we need to embrace ambiguity when it's there, dismiss it--firmly so--when it's not.