David McElroy

One of the persistent myths of modern civic life is that well-meaning people can always work out disagreements if they’ll just sit down and talk about things. There’s this odd notion that as long as we have free speech, there’s a “marketplace of ideas” and the best ideas will win through high-minded discussion among intelligent people.

That’s sheer fantasy. It’s not how the real world works and it never will be.

The idea seems to be that intelligent, rational, well-meaning people are naturally going to gravitate to the same answers, because … well … there’s obviously one right way, if we’ll just be smart enough to find it. That’s an idiotic idea, and it leads people to be angry with one another and think other people are stupid. We all think our ideas are obviously right, so if other people don’t agree with us, they’re clearly stupid or dishonest. Right?

I’m reminded of this again because of a flood of people here on the site from the Christian Left who ran across an article I wrote recently about them. Starting Friday night, thousands of people were suddenly reading that article from a couple of weeks ago and it was suddenly hit by dozens of comments, some polite, some angry, some disparaging, but all vehemently disagreeing. A few people with views more similar to mine responded, but there wasn’t any real dialogue. I was writing at the time and didn’t have time to try to engage, so I mostly observed. It was interesting. (You might want to take a look at the article and especially the comments as context for the rest of what I have to say.)

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The doctors had been on strike for several days before anyone figured out what was going on, because nobody could read their picket signs.

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There was a time when I wanted to change the world through politics. I grew up believing that a great, moral people elected wise leaders, who then made decisions in our best interests. If I could just become one of those leaders, I could change so much and help so many.

But I finally grew up and quit believing in fairy tales.

I’m having more and more and more trouble lately being interested in politics, even enough to write about the subject. If you’re not a partisan of the two major “teams” — and you have no illusion that enough people are going to adopt your ideas to put them into practice — it’s pretty boring to watch the political spectacle. Have you ever tried to separate yourself from the shouting participants in the political process and just observed the way they interact with each other? It’s sickening.

If you’re a part of one side or the other, you imagine that the people on your side are the kinder and more intelligent and more well-meaning. You notice the positive examples of people on your side, but you don’t notice the many angry, hateful people on your own team. On the other side, you see screaming idiots who hate you and don’t have a good bone in their bodies. When you’re caught up in that trap, you have no idea how much the two sides are mirror images of one another.

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