Baby, baby – where did our civil discourse go?

Remember when we could agree to disagree, agreeably?

This is not an attempt to write the obituary for civil discourse – that has been done so frequently, it is almost cliché. The problem is, I believe, that a lot of folks believe it is still around, that it is an ethic common to us, regardless of who we are, or may be. No, civil discourse as a shared social value has been dead for quite some time. When it met its end exactly, I cannot say – I can only identify when I first noticed that it was nowhere to be found.

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In high school, I was not on the debate team. Along with those of the “clique” of which I was a part (I hate to use that word as it connotes that I was among the cool kids, and we most certainly were not), we regarded those in the debate club as the nurd depicted on the National Lampoon poster, and we tended to look down our noses at them, which was the height of utter hypocrisy because for all four years of high school, I was in band – like that was cool. As it turned out, those guys and the handful of girls (yes, even then, there were not many females on the forensics team), were the brave ones. They knew the scorn and mocking they were in for, and they did it, anyway. Now, I envy them – they were learning at age sixteen how to carry on an exchange of ideas, how to argue for or against any given position on any given issue based on factual evidence, to examine an argument on its merits, and apply both abstract and critical thinking in doing so. I would not even begin to develop those skills until my sophomore year of college. They knew how to argue, discuss, and disagree (agreeably) using more intellectual prowess in the tips of their little fingers than the rest of the student body (and perhaps even most of the teachers), combined. What’s more, if they didn’t win a debate, they dispassionately went about determining why that was, and be better prepared for the next contest. If the football team lost a game, the only acceptable response for us, the players, was anger, frustration, and the throwing to the ground of helmets and other articles of gridiron battle armor.

When I attended college at the small, state school in rural Minnesota (from which I would graduate in five years, and which would become my alma mater), for almost every 300-level course (and higher), there was always a term paper due, and there were standards to be met if it was even to warrant a grade. The debate skills I learned as a sophomore enabled me to turn in solid, well-written papers that in more than one instance, saved my ample behind with a grade of A, and helped me avoid a second stint on academic probation, which also would have resulted in my expulsion.

All of this to demonstrate that I was noticing for the first time, decades later, that civil discourse was now officially dead. For me, the moment came shortly after I created a profile on Facebook. Like many others, my initiation into social media was innocuous enough – I joined Facebook to share my condolences with others in a group created for, and dedicated to, the memory of a very dear friend who would soon pass away in hospice care. From such a humble and might I say, innocent beginning, my experience would be disheartening, at best. As I sought to engage others whose profiles indicated their backgrounds were significantly different than mine (which made no secret of my political conservatism, social libertarianism, Christian faith, and passion for foreign films), it became depressingly obvious that I was not in Minnesota, anymore. This realization was crystallized when it became clear that being able to think in the abstract as well as to think critically not only were no longer valuable in everyday life (especially on Facebook), but immediately identified me as a racist because such skills, along with above-average command of the English language were themselves, racist. Conceptual and critical thinking, and the use of proper grammar, were out – emotional rage and the judgement of others that came with it, was in.  

Hence, the ability to reason, to refute another’s argument without emotion or encounter the same, and to speak plainly and articulately is, I believe, one of the most tragic casualties not of social media, but of how much of social media has been managed. Blaming social media as a whole is not only intellectually lazy, but dishonest, as well, as social media is not the cause. To its credit, social media in general, and Facebook in particular, was (and perhaps still is) a powerful tool with which to reconnect with long-lost classmates, colleagues, and perhaps even family members. Such engagement was, for the most part, enjoyable, and the re-established connections were critical in restoring one’s faith in humanity, if only briefly. No, the sad state of social media today is that it is merely the reflection of a large number of users who clearly lack the decency, courtesy, and discretion that was once common to us all – and that may not even be the real story. If social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and even LinkedIn perhaps, are just reflections of the sensibilities of the most active users, isn’t that an indictment of public education (mostly), or maybe lack thereof? School districts nationwide dropped civics courses from their core curricula in favor of, “social studies” long ago (though, civics was what we learned in the social studies class I attended). I remember there being an all-out assault on the use of the Warriner’s English and Composition series of textbooks once the accusation was made that the books, in particular, were racist or perpetuated racism (I never did understand how that was so), and those were the guides I remember using, beginning in grade seven.

My apologies, I digress.

Upon further examination of the apparent correlation between the advent of social media, and noticing the absence of civil discourse, that many of us sensed this danger shortly after we first created a profile, and engaged with others that we knew, as well as with others we did not know at the time, is by no means atypical. However, for those like me who naively thought that Facebook was full of people like myself who genuinely sought to learn from others not at all like themselves, the awakening would be both rude, and painful.

This is why: by the time I was in my mid-twenties, I had traveled most of the northern hemisphere (even spending almost a month in the Soviet Union at the height of the cold war), and had learned first-hand the value of meeting and interacting with those of other nations, cultures, societies, and ethnicities. Bridging the divides of language and values through genuine mutual interest is invaluable, and there is no way to do it through a Zoom meeting. It is a privilege (no doubt about that, and it is relative) – but there is no shortage of opportunities, if you’re willing to look for them. Again, I honestly expected that I would encounter others who would be as willing to learn from me as much as I wanted to learn about them.

So, imagine my chagrin to learn that per my description in my profile, and my comments in various conversations, I was judged to be homophobic, xenophobic, and phobic any number of other ways. By virtue of the fact that I was white, male, middle-aged, held a Bachelor of Science degree, and was employed full-time, I was without qualification a racist, a bigot, and privileged. It seemed that through the prism of social media, not only did we only see one another’s profiles, but also what those profiles meant, the values assigned, and the judgement rendered. Of all social media’s drawbacks, it is the anonymity afforded subscribers through fictitious identities which empowered them to express the most vile, vicious, brutal invective toward others, that, in my mind, is easily the most egregious.

Decorum, such as it was, had mutated to reflect a sick and diseased ethic in which making death threats against individuals, sanctioning genocide toward ethnicities, committing violence and mayhem against a political ideology and those who subscribed to it to varying degrees, and threatening illegal discrimination against others, among other things, was now no longer shocking, but considered to be acts of bravery – but so only for those who identified with the left, and who so signaled their virtue with rainbow- and antifa-themed avatars, or showed their solidarity with various progressive causes in other ways. Conversely, if the targets of this vitriol dared to call it out for the attack on decency it was, the risk was being doxxed, character assassination, or perhaps even a coordinated campaign to have any given specific target’s employment terminated because said employer’s public reputation and public image on social-media would not tolerate the negative publicity. That whatever decorum might have remained had been so twisted as to be all but unrecognizable was depressing enough, but as it became clear that the narrative in the corporate legacy media was also the official narrative of any given social media platform, and that dissent would not be tolerated, the prospects for any kind of meaningful exchange of ideas died.

Copyright: RIBA Collections

A truly free marketplace of ideas might have been the hopeful promise of modern social media in the post-MySpace era, but given that it evolved from the academic culture of the ivy league (home to our intellectual, moral, and ethical betters), such was likely never meant to be – but it might have become thus, anyway, had its controllers sought to allow it to become a modern, digital public square.

Instead, they revealed themselves to be little more than tyrants, or minions to do the globalists’ bidding, such that those who dared to take a stand against the censorship and silencing that our government dare not attempt (but private enterprise, working hand-in-glove with said tyrannical federal government, can), never dreamed they would be brought to professional and financial ruin, and would risk being so pilloried in their own community as to be all but driven out of it – not because their friends and neighbours didn’t, couldn’t, or wouldn’t sympathize, but they could not afford to take such a stand, and so they remained silent, and let the bullies win. That, at its core, its essence, is the goal of the left. Imposition of a social order preferably through bullying, but if necessary, by force. Authoritarianism, in a nutshell, or fascism. Call it what you want, it’s still the same outcome. In this instance, the theatre of battle is the social media landscape.

Funny thing, though – and it only illustrates how sunlight is the best disinfectant – the more time I spent outside and encountered any of my neighbours, I could only see who they were in person – if any were on Facebook, I wouldn’t have known, and vice-versa. Talking face to face, there was no profile to read that might indicate how they felt about anything other than what we might have been discussing at any given moment. While I knew that we had widely differing political orientations, I’m pretty sure none of them wished me a slow, violent and painful death because of it. There was so much more we had in common. So, in early 2021, I made the decision to download all of my data, and remove my profile from Facebook – within days, I was feeling so much better physically as well as mentally.

BigTech has lost a great deal, but not all, of its clout with Elon Musk having purchased Twitter and shining a spotlight into the platform’s deepest and darkest corners of operation, and because of that, BigTech’s sphere of influence has shrunk. The layoffs at Facebook’s parent, Meta, along with those of the other charter members such as Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft tell me that market forces have yet to fully weigh in whether they can maintain the status quo before the governors of other states follow the leads of Florida, and Texas. The social-media authoritarians are only in control of the digital public square – they have no control, no influence over the physical public square, where people meet, where there is sunlight, where we understand each other only through conversation, not a chat room.

One reason my postings will be irregular is because if I have the option of pontificating behind a keyboard, or being out and about in my community, or in the saddle of Black Beauty (my 1992 Harley-Davidson ElectraGlide) on US Route 377 heading north out of Pilot Point, I’m going to opt for one of those last two, every time.   

Thanks, for reading.