Today
is Day Three of Week Five of the Omer. That is Thirty-one Days of the
Omer. The Theme continues to be Happiness.
An experience yesterday and today
prompts me to write about discourse, about the way that we discuss issues. I know that I have already addressed the
topic of the way that we communicate on social media – meaning, essentially,
Facebook – and how it is calculated to make us miserable rather than
Happy. But I’d like to return to the
subject, because it illustrates the point that I wish to make today.
A Facebook friend posted a link to an
article on the Jewish Telegraphic Agency website, about how Jewish Americans
should be worried – very worried – because the candidacy of Donald Trump
for President of the US has increased the amount of blatant Anti-Semitic speech
in the public square.
Okay, you who are right now rolling
your eyes and thinking: Not Trump
again! This is not a blog post about
Mr. Trump. It’s about the way that we
carry on discourse! It just happens that
a friend’s post about Trump occasioned the illustration I’m going to use. Now, stop hyper-ventilating and relax!
So
my friend posed the question: as Jews,
how do we feel about the Anti-Semitic Tweets by Trump ‘supporters’ that
have been occasioned by criticism of Trump and his family by Jewish
voices? It sounded like an honest and
thoughtful question from a man whom I’ve come to see as honest and
thoughtful. So I responded. I posted that I feel some consternation over
the tone of these Tweets, just as I feel consternation over Tweets from the
Left, from supporters of other candidates.
I wrote that I didn’t think the problem is Trump, but what passes for
discourse today. We take negative
labels: Anti-Semite, Racist, Islamophobe,
Homophobe, Misogynist. And we invoke them
in response to something we disagree with, never mind that it doesn’t fit the
description. But we hurl these labels,
because in a world where ‘discourse’ means the firing of salvos at one another,
we’ve lost the tools for making rational and thoughtful cases for what we
support. For example: in today’s public square, anybody who doesn’t
support state sanction of same-sex unions as ‘marriage’ (and no other
nomenclature will do), will be called a ‘Homophobe.’ Now it may well be, that any given member of
the population who doesn’t think two men or two women should be defined as a ‘married
couple,’ could very well be a ‘Homophobe.’ But to assume they are, is a false premise. So the problem is that the word ‘Homophobe,’
because it is thrown around so freely, has no meaning any more. Ditto the terms Anti-Semite, racist,
Islamophobe, Misogynist, et cetera. All
these terms are used to label people who have given no particular indication
that that’s, in fact, what they are. So
what happens is that when one encounters someone who actually is a
Homophobe, Islamophobe, et cetera, and calls him or her out for it, it
means absolutely nothing.
Well!
You should have seen the vehemence of the responses! Of course Trump is an
Anti-Semite! Poor benighted Don is just
blinded by his allegiance to the Republican Party, to see this self-evident
Truth! It was funny in a way, because I
think I can count the times in my life that I’ve voted Republican, on the fingers
of one hand. At least, in a national
election. So when I asked for some
documentary evidence that Trump is an Anti-Semite, nobody could provide it;
instead they filled my newsfeed with opinion pieces that were negative of the
New York businessman but offered no evidence of Anti-Semitism.
This is the pitfall of public discourse today. And the anger that goes along with the
hurling of the epithets Homophobe, Islamophobe, Anti-Semite et al, conspires
to keep us from being Happy. Think about
it. If I’m going to react to something
said by, for example, Donald Trump by hurling the label, Anti-Semite, then
I am almost by definition (unless I’m simply using the term to be chutzpadik;
see yesterday’s post!) being angry.
I’m getting hot under the collar.
My blood pressure is rising. I’m
craving a Prozac. How could I possibly
be Happy??!
Isn’t
it self-evident that, iff we feel led to engage in discourse of any
kind, that we should do so from a rational and reasonable mindset? And not out of anger, throwing epithets and
labels and getting ourselves completely out-of-kilter? I think it is. Want to be happy? Maybe it’s best to avoid political discourse
altogether. But it isn’t only politics
that evokes this anger today. Increasingly,
it’s just about anything and everything.
So a better strategy is…don’t get angry when you discuss it! And one way to keep from going down that
path, is to avoid using labels that are calculated to turn the conversation
angry. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone
who hurls such words around loosely and is even remotely Happy. Think about it. A good day, all!
No comments:
Post a Comment