Resolved: That Americans need to learn how to debate again
Part of me still believes in the healing power of spirited dialogue; still has faith in the capacity of the frank exchange of views to promote understanding, respect and possibly even lasting compromise.
That part of me first emerged publicly in early 2000 when, rather than write yet another column advancing arguments against capital punishment, I decided to ask one of the nation’s foremost advocates for the death penalty, Dudley Sharp, to participate in a written debate on the topic.
No interrupting, no name-calling, no filibustering. We’d have one, basic back-andforth of about 300 words each published in the newspaper, and then continue the exchange online with longer entries — up to 1,500 words at a crack — for three more rounds, with Sharp, as my guest, getting the last word.
It was not warm and fuzzy. Both of us threw some rhetorical elbows. I accused him of offering “a stinky socio-political argument” that says if the death penalty “saves only one life, it will be worth it.” He fired back that I have a “dedication to getting rid of the death penalty (that) is more important than a dedication to journalistic ethics.”
We didn’t end up agreeing on much. But by the end, after nearly 10,000 words, readers came away with a good understanding of the best arguments for both positions and, I hope, the realization that opponents of the death penalty aren’t just hankie-twisting bleeding hearts who want to fling open the prison gates, and that proponents aren’t necessarily bloodthirsty, kill-’em-all avengers.
My goal was not to change minds but to lower temperatures. To make it easier to agree to disagree.
Subsequent versions of the feature I called The Rhubarb Patch featured lengthy, respectful wrangles on abstinence-only education, school vouchers, public pensions, same-sex marriage, abortion, hunting for fun, concealed carry of firearms, immigration, health care policy and other topics.
Occasionally I would step out after the introduction and simply moderate the online conversation between two experts in the field.
The last Rhubarb Patch, a debate on the morality of the story of Noah’s Ark, appeared in 2014, but since then I’ve taken periodic stabs at shorter print debates/ discussions with colleagues and advocates. The most recent was an April dialogue about police reform and the March 29 police killing of 13-year-old Adam Toledo with civil rights attorney Sheila Bedi, director of the Community Justice and Civil Rights Clinic at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.
That conversation went well, but I’m increasingly of the view that reasoned debate on public policy has become dangerously out of fashion.
Cable news channels that used to have sparring co-hosts from both sides of the political spectrum are now almost exclusively ideological silos. Cheerleading for one side evidently gets better ratings than point-counterpoint. Balanced debates are intellectually challenging and therefore not comfort viewing.
One hand is enough! On the other hand hurts my brain.
“I’d rather watch head-butting than backslapping, “I wrote in May 2014, heralding the resumption of CNN’s legendary political conflict show “Crossfire.” “As much as I admire and tend to agree with MSNBC’s wonky Rachel Maddow, for example, I’m weary of how often her guests simply amplify and embroider liberal positions.”
Less than three months later, CNN put the show on “indefinite hiatus” from which it has yet to return.
You’d think social media would be to an ideal forum for a full consideration of differing views. Everyone can have say, and opinions will rise or fall based on the strength of the supporting arguments presented.
But no. Social media — particularly Twitter and Facebook where I hang out — encourages performative rock throwing and unreflective mob pile-ons where it’s almost impossible to edge toward understanding.
In fact, on Twitter if you get more comments on a tweet than you do simple “likes,” this is called being “ratioed” and gleefully considered numerical proof by detractors that your opinion was bad.
Why? Because the generally accurate presumption is that comments are critical. There’s no space for analysis or “yes, but …” within the 256-character limit on a Twitter post.
The prevailing view on both the right and left now seems to be that spirited dialogue is passe. Contrary, even edgy opinions on many issues are simply too toxic even to entertain, and dignifying them with anything other than scorn amounts to a poisonous concession. The devil’s advocate has been consigned to hell.
It isn’t possible, for instance, for a lefty to put forth the view that transgenderism poses some tough public policy questions without coming under fierce attack from the even further left as a heretical, transphobic hater.
In my own case, I found myself at the bottom of a Twitter dogpile in April after I wrote a column before any police bodycam evidence was released saying it was still too soon to draw conclusions about what happened in the Adam Toledo tragedy, as activists were doing.
For this I was branded a racist and a monster whose own children should be killed so I’d know how it feels.
Among those particularly indignant about that column was Northwestern University assistant professor of journalism Steven Thrasher, who tweeted that he was canceling his subscription to the Tribune because “there is no space in a newspaper for arguing for the murder of a child, and that it’s ‘never too early’ to think they are worthy of murder.”
A month later, after the hubbub died down, I reached out to Thrasher to say that’s not what I’d written and to ask if he’d be interested in “a more nuanced exchange by email.” I attempted to start that exchange by saying that “one of the jobs of a journalist is to question and challenge emerging narratives and conventional wisdom, to be clear about what we know for sure and what we suspect.”
His response, in full: “Your words make the murder of children more likely, and I have no interest in you, your unethical nature, your cynical worldview, or in communicating with you.”
I wasn’t hurt by this mischaracterization, the calls for my firing and other explosions of umbrage. My editors realized that Twitter has a tendency to magnify extreme opinions and they told me not to worry about it.
But imagine the paralyzing effect the prospect of seemingly mass indignation has on those without an institution behind them. For them, it’s far safer to say nothing or simply to nod in ovine assent to the orthodoxies of the extremely online.
The result is resentment and an increasingly polarized body politic where nuance gets trampled and weeds grow on the common ground.
The part of me that’s not disheartened by this still believes in the healing power of spirited dialogue. It continues to hope for a reemergence of fearless, rational discourse about challenging arguments, even stinky ones.
I’m increasingly of the view that reasoned debate on public policy has become dangerously out of fashion.
Re:Tweets
The winner of this week’s reader poll to select the funniest tweet was “Most people can be deceived with flattery. Except you. You’re too smart for that,” by @JaredATullos
The poll appears at chicagotribune.com/ zorn where you can read all the finalists. For an early alert when each new poll is posted, sign up for the Change of Subject email newsletter at chicagotribune.com/ newsletters.
Join me and the other regular panelists every week on The Mincing Rascals, a news-review podcast from WGN-plus that posts Thursday afternoons.