I have had and have many friends and associates who are republicans and/or religious people. I am happy to be exposed to their alternate perspectives. I don’t enjoy true debate simply to experience the frenzied anticipation of the victory of my team. I do enjoy the authentic discussion of different points of view. For this, I have been continually rewarded with new insights from perspectives I have not formerly considered. Some insights advance my own beliefs; some help me sympathize with the other side.
Political pundits have nothing to say but the obvious. They parrot their side from cheat sheets drilled into their brains by their respective mad scientists. Third political parties are not allowed and their perspectives are ridiculed. There is little true discussion going on in these times of mass, mass communication.
Susan Jacoby’s op ed article in last Sunday’s Los Angeles Time addresses this situation - this blind point in history that we have come to, our new dark ages, where the open-minded are the oppressed.
TALKING TO OURSELVES
Americans are increasingly close-minded and unwilling to listen to opposing views.
As dumbness has been defined downward in American public life during the last two decades, one of the most important and frequently overlooked culprits is the public's increasing reluctance to give a fair hearing -- or any hearing at all -- to opposing points of view.
This spirit of inquiry, which demands firsthand evidence and does not trivialize opposing points of view, is essential to a society's intellectual and political health.
No one but a news junkie has the time or the inclination to spend the entire day consulting diverse news sources on the Web, and the temptation to seek out commentary that fits neatly into one's worldview -- whether that means the Huffington Post or the Drudge Report -- is hard to resist.
As long as we continue to avoid the hard work of scrutinizing public affairs without the filter of polemical shouting heads, we have no one to blame for the governing class and its policies but ourselves.
I yearn to live in a society that values fair-mindedness. But it will take nothing less than a revolutionary public recommitment to the pursuit of fairness, knowledge and memory to halt, much less reverse, the trend toward an ignorant single-mindedness that threatens the future of democracy itself.
Susan Jacoby is the author of "The Age of American Unreason," "Freethinkers," and "Half-Jew."
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