J. Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5, is an unusually thoughtful guy. Though his political leanings are left of center, he isn’t a knee-jerk as many of the movers and shakers in Hollywood. In a recent usenet post, he addressed the current low state of political discussion in America.
Much of what he says is quite good, and I’d encourage you to read it.
I would take exception to some of what he says, though. For example, regarding chaning the current impasse, he says:
[L]et me now proceed to the problem, and explain why so much of this rests at the feet of the Republican party.
For the last twenty plus years, the Right has hammered away at one consistent theme: that liberals are bad people, that Democrats are just shy of being traitors to America. You’ve had people like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter out there spewing bile into the American spirit of the most hateful, false, and demonizing sort.
What happens is this: those who would like to believe this, do…and thus view the other side with hatred and distrust and the sense that they are traitors. And you don’t compromise or deal with traitors.
On the other side of the political spectrum, you have people who you’ve just called traitors who know that they’re no such thing…and when you call people disloyal traitors, they have a tendency to get real angry about it. And you don’t compromise or deal with people who impugn your honor like that.
I think that there is a significant element of truth to what JMS is saying here. I don’t listen to talk radio or watch left/right debate TV shows because I can’t stand that attitudes displayed on them. Talk radio is filled with gloating smugness, and the left/right debate shows are filled with people yelling over each other (as well as gloating, question-ducking, and knive-twisting). I want to hear reasoned debate and disagreement, a challenging and testing of ideas, not an unrestrained snark fest.
But I have to question JMS’s laying this at the feet of the Republicans. It wasn’t Rush Limbaugh who started this style of discourse. In some ways, it has been there all through American history (I’ve got a little online project involving that which should be debuting soon), but JMS is right that there has been an uptic in it in the last few decades.
In the full version of his post (which I won’t quote here), he mentions how different things were in Nixon’s day than they are today, and he’s right. On the level of government there was more cooperation and statesmanship displayed by the parties.
But that’s when things were breaking down.
The protest movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s involved a huge amount of frankly irrational invective against "the Establishment" and those with traditional values. The media, by this point, also became infected with a rampant liberalism that it is still in denial about. The reason that Rush took off like he did and became as big a phenomenon as he did was that, as he himself put it, he was the equal time that conservatives had been denied for so long.
If the debate became more polarized after his advent, it was in significant measure because the conservative side was fighting back for a change instead of taking it on the chin as it had in previous years.
I’m perfectly happy to say that Rush and his imitators did things in an unhelpful manner and contributed to worsening the climate of discussion, but when it comes to the basic question of who poisoned the well, liberals dumped a whole load of poison in it before Rush and his ilk came along. Just listen to some of the over-the-top rhetoric that was used in the ’60s and ’70s. Listen to John Kerry’s over-the-top testimony, for that matter.
Now, perhaps one can argue that the problem went back further than this, that the level of irrational invective used by the 1970s liberals was equalled by rhetoric used by prior conservatives.
Perhaps.
We recognize the prior claim. But the reality is that Ragesh 3 has been
Centauri property for over a century. To start a war over blood spilt
so long ago – where does it end? You kill them and take their land.
They kill you and take the land back. On and on and on – a cycle of
hatred!
Seems like I heard that somewhere before.
In the present environment there is plenty of blame to spread around for the low state of social discourse. If there are Rushes and Coulters who wallow in snark, there are liberals who do so as well. Just look at the collective liberal snark fest that happened after the recent election, with the left’s pundits falling all over themselves to insult redstaters in ever new ways.
It seems to me that examining the historical eitology of the origins of the problem is less productive than simply trying to talk, today, in a calm and reasonable manner and urging others to do likewise.
I’m sorry, but I cannot be as charitable to this fellow as you are, Jimmy. For crying out loud, we have been through four years of the Left screaming that Bush is another Hitler, that conservatives are evil and scheming. And before that, every blessed election the GOP stood for “Get Old People,” remember? Who, exactly, besides the inflammatory Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter have been calling Democrats traitors? Nobody. Sure, they *complain* about it a lot, then turn around and call *Republicans* traitors. “HE BETRAYED HIS COUNTRY!!!” — Al Gore.
There are twenty other conservative commentators I could cite off the top of my head who provide reasoned discussion. Who, exactly, has the Left got? Thomas Friedman, Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd? They all demonize Republicans in general and Bush in particular.
Michael Moore sat in Jimmy Carter’s box at the Democratic Convention! Enough said.
Reasoned discussion from the Right is all over for this fellow to find. Whereas folks like Jerry Falwell are marginalized, I look around and see the mainstream Democrats echoing the Democratic Underground and Indymedia.
(I’ve got a little online project involving that which should be debuting soon)
Secret Project #1!!!!!!!!!!!!!
?
🙂
I blame Paul Begala.
😛
Paul Begala is one of the key reasons I can’t watch Crossfire.
He’s not the only one, but I find him absolutely insufferable.
Oh yeah, and this ain’t secret project #1 (or 2 or 3). Those are all much bigger projects than this.
You said that you don’t listen to talk radio. I assume then that you also don’t read Ann Coulter. If you think that they (Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter) are mean-spirited, you don’t listen or read them closely enough. They are on the front lines of the culture war; they risk the approbation of those who, as you, aren’t even marginally acquainted with their works. They use harsh language because harsh language is required. A Leftist culture that advocates homosexual marriage and routinely kills babies has no moral authority, and Straczynski’s accusation that Limbaugh and Coulter “spew bile” should be viewed by Pro-Vatican, Pro-Family, Pro-Life Catholics as a recommendation of their viewpoints. Limbaugh and Coulter, at every turn regarding homosexuality and abortion, agree with the pronouncements of the Vatican. That you would want “reasoned debate and disagreement, a challenging and testing of ideas” with baby killers kind of makes me sick in the pit of my stomach. Please rethink what you are saying. The Church needs to stop with all the dialogue and discussion and begin to denounce this culture with the authority that only the Catholic Church has. I hold you to be a dear brother in Christ.
On a related matter, there’s a Catholic “substratum” in J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5 series. I’ve never seen so many symbolic crucifixions in any sci-fi series before or after B-5. Moreover, religion is embraced in the series, not pushed to the side as in Star Trek. Sure, much of it is Zen-derived New Age mumbo-jumbo, but I also to point out that there was a whole order of Catholic monks who lived and served in the fictional space station. There were none in Deep Space 9.
I own the entire B-5 series in DVD. I think it was a very thoughtful, intelligent show.
Straczynski’s usually a fair minded individual. I think perhaps he hasn’t really been listening for the past 30 years. Or, maybe he just thinks slander is allowable as long as you mean well.
B5 got really good in seasons two through four. Five didn’t work that well, but there were certainly extenuating circumstances. But season one, whoooo! Wow, what a learning curve! Excruciating writing and character development, combined with a lead who was, well, less than compelling.