Thinking about intellectual suppression, dishonesty, and the rise of “no debate”.
I may seem outspoken but there are a handful of subjects I am AFRAID to broach even on my own pages.
There are a few things that are truly not debatable. Real racism, sexism, and homophobia of the old kind, free and fair elections, the existence of human caused climate disruption and the need to fight it, the fact that Joe Biden won handily in 2020, a woman’s right to choose, free expression of sexual orientation including all the same rights as heterosexual people, political violence has no place in civil society… and maybe a few more.
All of the rest must be debatable. But are not.
Some of these, such as racism, sexism, and homophobia, are not debatable because they were already debated in the past. And through that process the wrongs of the past were made socially unacceptable such that 90% of the population would never publicly own such ugly antiquated ideas. Some of the new sensibility was writers into our laws in the form of “protected classes”.
The debate on the ideas among educated people is over, but the implementation of the cure was imperfect.
Over time it became the goal of one political party to dumb down the population and scramble their thinking. This party and its allies have set back women’s rights by 50 years and they are just getting started.
A major factor in rejection of debate is a lack of knowledge about what a debate is. And lack of skill in practice.
Calling each other names is not part of debate, whether this name calling is crude and direct or sophisticated and sarcastic. This is the ad hominem fallacy. There are maybe a dozen others that a person must know and accept before a real civil debate can take place.
Another factor: there has to be a least a modicum of agreement on what a fact is, and on the method for determining what constitutes a fact. You can’t debate someone who does not inhabit the same reality as you.
Here are a few things that we should be able to talk about but can’t without stirring up so much toxic dust that the point is lost: vaccines, Israel and Palestine, what constitutes abuse, veganism versus other diets, capitalism versus socialism or something else, “gender” issues, and more.
As for climate denialism, election denialism, and the removal of settled rights from our citizens, the debate is over. Now the issue is mass delusion because the facts are known.
If we can’t fix this it will only get worse. When open debate is silenced the bullies always win.