I run a debate club that met monthly before the pandemic. Now we have the occasional Zoom discussion, but mostly we exchange emails. And boy have these emails gotten nasty. Here are some excerpts from the last few weeks:
[Note: the correspondents’ political labels are their own self-descriptions].
Conservative to Progressive: I thought we've been over calling people names. You gotta quit this habit if you want my respect, and I daresay the respect of others. The moral core of much of what you argue is to treat people well. I suggest that it would do you do your credibility good to be an example of what you argue, to practice what you preach.
Progressive to Conservative: I don't care if I have your respect. I haven't had respect for you since you suggested Michael Bloomberg would make a good president. My moral code is about ensuring all people have their basic needs taken care of. It does not include being nice to people who have harmful and/or immoral ideas about how the world should be.
I will say this for the sake of clarification: the reason I continue to participate in this group is not because I think most of the active members here have good ideas about how the world should be. Quite the opposite in fact. I find most of the active members here to hold conservative views driven by ideas that are racist, sexist, classist, and in most ways anti-progressive and antithetical to everything I believe. I feel I have a moral duty to challenge conservative ideology whenever I come across it, and in recent years I have become much more active in calling out such ideas. The reason I'm here is to practice and hone my argumentative skills by sparring against opponents who sincerely believe the ideologies I seek to disprove. I am grateful for the many people here who do their best to prove me wrong. But I do not respect them as individuals with morally or intellectually valid ideas.
Traditional Liberal to Progressive: If you replaced the word conservative with heretical and racist, sexist, classist with sinner, you'd sound exactly like a dogmatic evangelist.
Conservative to Progressive: I've seen this with racial and gender sensitivity classes on college campuses. Whatever the discussion inside the classroom, students often report a venomous hatred of those who are attempting to re-educate them. It's part of what is powering the backlash against feminism and now BLM. Who could possibly think that telling an ordinary student that he's a secret rape advocate or that he's racist without even knowing it could have negative consequences?
Progressive to Conservative: So what you're saying about striving for a perfect society is not tenable. It cannot be allowed. It's the plot of every science fiction dystopian horror movie.
Independent to Progressive: The ego on you. Do you think you're some freedom fighter and that your "sparring" with anyone will change the society? Wow. Rest assured your argumentation has failed to persuade anyone here of anything, and literally everyone you have engaged with has been more convincing. The only reason anyone is talking to you on topics is that they are debate junkies.
Progressive to Independent: All of that is your subjective opinion. No one is obliged to agree with it. Everyone here is very set in their ways and getting any of them to actually change their mind is nearly impossible. It’s futile to try to convince someone directly: what you do is debate in front of an audience and hope an undecided observer finds your arguments more compelling than the other guy’s. See, I’m trying to make the world a better place. Apparently you just like being an asshole to people.
Progressive to Conservative: It’s ridiculous to think I or anyone here would ever concede defeat. You’ve never done it, so why should I? Social issues can’t be solved logically because they involve people, who are emotional and irrational. There’s good evidence and bad evidence to support every claim, but what people think ultimately comes down to their personal moral compass, not a dispassionate evaluation of the facts. Being unbiased is difficult even when it comes to hard science: it’s impossible when it comes to social sciences.
Independent to Progressive: I'm "being an asshole?" That's truly rich coming from a person calling people racists, about the worst insult there is. You are delusional... and I'm not being an asshole, just giving you the truth. You are shooting the messenger. As for you "trying to make the world a better place", what a hogwash. Like so many far leftists who don't have any real problems, you're social "crusade" is solely about making yourself feel good and righteous.
Progressive to Independent: More subjective opinions. Why should I care about what you have to say?
Traditional Liberal to Progressive: You mangled what I said…You don't even know why a thought crime is an abomination, do you. Let me explain it.
A thought crime rests on the assumption that you can know what a person is thinking. In SJW [Social Justice Warrior] usage, anyone who says the wrong thing or is taken out of context is branded a witch and often subject to a cancel rage mob who will call his employer and say he's a Nazi.
If I'm a police officer, and I say something like "There were a lot of black people at that riot tonight", a descriptive fact that may or may not have carried any racial bias intent, the minions of the Dark Ages and destroyers of the Age of Enlightenment (known as a diversity officers) will skull fuck that poor cop and ruin his life because it MIGHT have been racist. I've seen this happen repeatedly. It has happened to friends of mine. It has happened to innocents who never intended to say or do something racist or sexist. It has happened to me. What you are proposing is evil.
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I find these exchanges quite depressing. The debate club is supposed to be about opening minds, as per John Stuart Mill:
“He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that…Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. That is not the way to do justice to the arguments, or bring them into real contact with his own mind. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form…” On Liberty
Or, per our website blurb: “With so much news available to us, it is easy to fall into the trap of relying on sources that simply support and reinforce our own limited beliefs. [This debate club] is a chance for you to expand your perspectives and understanding. We believe that when opinions are discussed in public, our critical faculties are sharpened as we are exposed to diverse viewpoints that we may not have considered before.”
If one truly believes “social issues can’t be solved logically because they involve people, who are emotional and irrational” or that “what people think ultimately comes down to their personal moral compass, not a dispassionate evaluation of the facts”, why even bother to engage people who think differently than we do? Today’s partisans might respond: the better to gain ammunition against the enemy.
But that’s not the spirit of my little debate club.