Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Rational discourse has been suspended

I've given up all hope of rational political discourse in digital format.  Having played a silly Facebook game for years, when the election hoopla started I had 1700+ FB "friends" -- friends who seemed to be predominantly conservative.  So I thought - COOL!  We can have conversations.  Discussions.  Debates, even.

But it was not to be.  My attempts to post thought-provoking articles that debunked fake news and explained rationally why Hillary Clinton was a good candidate for president were met with contempt that typically devolved into name-calling.  It turned out that my "friends" weren't just conservative... they were rabidly, fake-news-promotingly, Obama-disparagingly, anti-liberals (the people not the ideology), conservatives.  I was like a foreign body provoking an immune system.

So I'm (mostly ;) ) done with political posting.  After listening to the following NPR 1A podcast, I'm going to try to listen more, ask questions of people with different opinions than mine, and do it face-to-face, not digitally.

Politically Speaking: Talking to Each Other with Civility