It's only natural. We can all lose our cool in the midst of impassioned debate.
Debate ought to be passionate. A lot of people appear to believe that means obstinate, belligerent and relationship-defining, but enough about Twitter, Facebook and online comment sections of most newspapers.
Thankfully, it's not common to get beaten down so badly in a disagreement over public policy or personal preferences that one resorts to the "yeah, but your mama's ugly" retort. Some, hopefully a minority, seem quick to reach that forensic point of failure.
My job might be accurately described as in the center of a vortex of opinions. Every day, I speak with people writing letters to the editor expressing their very strong opinions. Indeed, it's rare for anyone to be motivated by ambivalence to write a letter to the editor.
I've never gotten a letter that just says, "Dear editor, I don't care."
One sees a lot of false arguments when it comes to the expression of opinions. Whether it's letters to the editor or posts on social media, there's no law that says one's impassioned point of view can't be based on a weak argument. Just because they're wrong doesn't mean people can't hold the opinion that Avengers: Endgame is boring.
In editing letters to the editor, I will have a conversation with a writer if he says, for example, "The Arkansas Razorbacks aren't playing well because there aren't any Arkansans on the team." That's not just a weak argument, it's based on a falsehood. But if a writer says "The Arkansas Razorbacks aren't playing well because the coach can't motivate them," that's not a simple true or false statement. Whether there's a lack of motivation can be argued all day long, which may explain why we have so many sports radio call-in shows.
In our social media world, we can expect to see a healthy (not really) dose of the ad hominems, that is, the personal kinds of verbal attacks that in reality do nothing to advance one's fundamental arguments. For example, one or two emotionally racked critics of President Donald Trump have been known to use the coloring of his skin to express their disapproval of the president's policies or practices.
Agent Orange, a few have called him. Xenophobic sweet potato seems a popular option.
But as most of us have figured out, a man's artificial skin color is hardly a strong debate point. Catch me at the wrong time of year (about 51 weeks of it) and you might be able to accurately refer to me as a pasty white editorial page editor, but that's hardly going to win the day if you want to suggest my opinion is wrong.
How about the false dichotomy? Let's pretend this time it's a congressman who gets on CNN and says, "Either we build a wall on the southern border or the United States will cease to be a sovereign nation."
Really? Don't we have a couple of centuries that prove that's not really our two choices? Maybe, just maybe, the opportunities for compromise can be found between those two extremes.
Then there are, of course, the circular arguments, which refer to the disagreements that increasingly happen in Northwest Arkansas after vehicles collide in a roundabout.
There's not enough space to cover all the logical missteps we can all make when we're making an all-out effort to defend what we believe. If you express an opinion often enough, sooner or later you'll step into one of these traps, such as the gross or hasty generalization. "Democrats want everyone dependent on government" or "The Republican Party is just for rich, white guys" are such bogus generalizations worth steering clear of.
Let me close with this final thought: Every reader of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette thinks my columns are brilliant, therefore I'm the greatest columnist of all time.
Sounds logical to me.
Commentary on 05/05/2019