Polemics for adults

All right, dudes and dolls!  So far, in my discursive travels in these final weeks leading up to the election, I’ve been called a fascist and a racist (check comments at these links, not post bodies).

So nobody’s exactly said Nazi yet.  (Just throwing that out there if you’re looking to call me a name, and you value novelty.)

Of course I’m neither a fascist nor a racist, but that doesn’t matter!  This is the process, and ad hominem is just part of it!

Actually it matters a great deal, and no, it’s not just part of it.  In fact, to my thinking, most of the time it gets you excused from the grown-up table.

Folks, look.  I’ll get in there and go toe-to-toe with you.  Most of the time I can articulate reasonably well why I think something, and I’m delighted to tell you about it.  Furthermore, I’m delighted to hear why you think something.  I assume you are an intelligent and reasonable person, and that you have arrived at a position thoughtfully.  I want to hear it.  Disagreement has shaped many of my views.

And I never have to look far for disagreement.  I’ve encountered damned few people as far left as I am socially and as far right as I am fiscally.  Sure as shit, I think something that pisses you off.  Check here.

But we’ve got to have that basic mutual respect, and name-calling destroys it more quickly than just about anything else.  The arena for a mature and stimulating exchange of ideas is a mutual construct.

I’m not altogether innocent.  I think that, however, should you be bored enough to research such, you’ll find that on those rare occasions I’ve called someone a name, it’s almost always return fire.  I much prefer to keep our engagement intellectual and ideological, but if you’re going to make it irrational and personal, then I haven’t been above throwing it back at you.

(I’m offering that much more as disclosure than attempted justification.  There’s a rocking ton to be said for being big enough to walk away too, and there have been times that I haven’t been big enough.)

There’s a hell of a lot going on in my head, and there’s a hell of a lot going on in yours.  Reciprocal acknowledgment of such and accordant behavior isn’t too much to ask.

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