House of Eratosthenes

It’s a dicey, personal subject and I don’t like to vent about such a thing on the innerwebs…even on my own, personal pages, which as we’ve said many-a-time before — altogether now — nobody reads anyway. But this time, the aggrieved party was sufficiently gracious to explain her feelings very early on. Not so early that she behaved with consistency. But early enough that it’s pretty simple to retrace what happened here.

I wanted to know if we had a wager in effect about the 2010 midterms. Or if our first upcoming bet was about the President being re-elected.

She presented a chart showing the public debt (as a proportion of GDP) has been going up when Republicans were office, and down when democrats were in office, from Truman onward anyway.

I questioned which party had Congress during those times, and sent her the chart exploring where the debt is projected to go from here-on-out.

She sent back a soothingly scolding retort observing that she “must have hit a nerve,” counseling me that her husband likes to argue but she does not.

How else do I put this? I’m tired of pretending it’s my problem. I understand good manners involve one side acting completely guilty and the other side acting completely innocent. I understand the protocol expected is for the righty-tighty to leap, chest-downward, on the grenade. I understand the expectation is to repeat the scene where Tom Sawyer gets the whipping so Becky whats-her-name’s glorious butt cheeks remain unscathed. I get all that.

I’m just tired of doing it. It comes down to something very simple. ONLY LIBERALS CAN PRESENT “FACTS” WITHOUT BECOMING EVIL.

So I replied as courteously as I possibly could. Bearing in mind, on the previous installment I did tease, and perhaps that didn’t go over as positively as I thought it would. Clearly I had done something unintentionally abrasive. But I’m tired of ignoring the elephant in the room, and the elephant in the room is this: The abrasive thing I did was to present factual evidence incompatible with the desirable trope. I presented some hard numbers that would compel a newcomer to at least remain open to an alternative point of view. That was my infraction. And I’m tired of pretending otherwise. Did I mention how tired I am of it?

Uh oh, I was genuinely afraid of that. The wise thing, I think, would be for me to let that go without comment, but it occurs to me that this would be dismissive on my part…perhaps even unfriendly. And that is not my aim. So I think the well-mannered thing to do here is to offer one of the half-apologies, so meaningless when offered by politicians, perhaps more genuine when exchanged among friends: To the extent my remarks caused offense, I apologize.

Let us endeavor not to repeat that type of exchange again. Lord knows it’s taken me long enough to learn my lesson(s). But I’m going to need some assistance from your class, the one that continues to be offended. Be consistent — FACTS ARE IN OR FACTS ARE OUT. Just call it my own personal weakness: I can’t deal with this rapid oscillation…your charts and graphs are wonderfully educating, mine drip with bile, make no point, instantly cause the exchange to turn ugly.

Xxxxxx and I have been making a habit out of watching “Boston Legal” reruns. The show has earned a stellar reputation for presenting both sides of the most contentious issues of the day. I have found it to be entertaining, and we have plowed our way through quite a few of them. After twenty thirty or so, I turned to Xxxxxx and said, sadly, “you know…I don’t think I’ve seen a single conservative idea expressed on this program, at least the way someone sympathetic to it would look at it, even one single time. So why do people give it high marks for presenting both sides?” After watching some more episodes it became clear: There are a lot of liberals out there who think this is what “honestly arguing both sides” looks like. They only want their side presented. The other side is just supposed to be lampooned. They don’t think there is a school of thought on the other side of the fence, there’s just lecherous old men who like to sexually harass the office help and shoot people.

And then I realized all those times Xxxxxxx Xxxxxx came into the office, wanting to engage me in an even-handed, open-minded, highbrow dialogue about politics — I really did violate rules of etiquette, from his point of view. Presenting hard information that illustrated why people had a different take on things, which is exactly what he was supposed to be wanting me to do, was an act of incivility. Wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing. I was supposed to just sit there like Denny Crane and say things to make myself look foolish.

Like I said, if you want a conversation to go that way you need to explain the rules at the outset. People are NOT going to anticipate them; it isn’t as natural as you seem to think it is…You’re a decent person, and it seems you’re trying to form a bridge between two worlds that aren’t compatible. Not between conservatives & liberals, but between people who are destructive, and people who aren’t.

The conservatives & liberals, once they form an honest and decent respect for how the other side “ticks,” can respectfully get along with each other. The destructive and not-destructive…not so much. Anyway. Now you know, save the charts for people who aren’t likely to have something else to show you in return. Really sorry if I upset you.

Now on this one, like I said it’s crystal clear what happened. She presented fact, I presented fact, and wham-bam oh dear now we’re in something that has just turned ugly. It isn’t too hard to infer from that how things work: I can’t present fact. You can’t draw any other conclusion.

But this is one of the easier exchanges. I brought up the conversation. Sometimes, it’s the liberal that brings things up. What to do? I shouldn’t have said anything. If she offered some illusion of being interested in commenting on current events, I should have, for her benefit, doubted her. That is what I should have done. I recognized the dichotomy at work, demanded that she clarify the rules, and simultaneously offered my counterpoint. Obviously, that wasn’t good enough. I should have stood my ground on that virtual-disclosure-form, demanded something equivalent to a signature on it, before I said one single thing. Or sidestepped the entire thing altogether. Apparently, what was required of me, was nothing less than one of those two things.

Or go the Crane route: Sip some scotch, polish a shotgun, and make some comments about shooting people. Fit into the stereotype, in other words.

We have an entire generation of decent, otherwise-intellectually-capable people — actually multiple generations! — who have been lulled into thinking they have mentally noodled something out. Vote for this Replacement Jesus, get-on-board, be-a-part-of-this-thing…oh and here’s a cherry-picked graph, or statistic, that makes it look like the outcome of a deliberate cognitive process. Presto. They’re all rocket scientists and they know what they’re doin’. But they cannot withstand an idea that doesn’t fit in, even if it’s better supported. They cannot withstand a challenge to what they have decided to do..either the outcome of it, or the way it was decided. They cannot withstand any doubts about their inner decency, or the decency of their iPresident, or Mouthy Joe.

Cumulatively, all those things add up to the problem that cannot be mentioned in polite company: They cannot withstand anything. They want to “good-naturedly” talk some politics. Until they don’t.

[…] About Politics Memo For File LXXXIX “They Won Their Freedom” If Palin Were President Tired of the Charade, Pretending it’s My Problem “Populations That We Don’t Want to Have Too Many […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 07/14/2009 @ 19:51
[…] discourse, which I also think is a good idea. On this point though, he’s drinking kool-aid. As I pointed out earlier, it has emerged as a favorite left-wing tactic, both in cloakrooms at capital buildings and in […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 07/18/2009 @ 09:17

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Tired of the Charade, Pretending it’s My ProblemFriday, July 10th, 2009

Tired of the Charade, Pretending it’s My Problem
Friday, July 10th, 2009