OTWO, Nice try. Too bad it’ll likely fall on mostly deaf ears.
You are attempting to have a nuanced discussion about shades of gray with people that can only see things in black and white, or to be more politically accurate: red and blue.
As if there are no other colors ...
Forget reasoned debate; let’s just reduce it all down to emotionally charged-slogans and catch-phrases:
- less-partisan
- completely intolerant
- oxymoron
- racism
- racist
- pretend
- poisonous past
Loaded language is the tool of choice of propagandists and yellow journalism. They are effective because they stop us from thinking—unless we know the game. If we know the game, then we can avoid the trap.
Clear, dispassionate thinking avoids being unduly influenced by such biased words in favor at factual, balanced discourse.
This is of course much more difficult—which is why most people avoid it—but it is much more productive and always yields better results in the long run.
It takes incredible courage and personal integrity to respond to these difficult issues with thoughtful and reasoned responses. It’s just so much easier to give knee-jerk responses and degenerate into juvenile name-calling. No critical-thinking involved.
That being said, I do believe that many of us here on this forum do aspire to more thoughtful, rigorous discourse. But we must acknowledge this singularly uncomfortable fact: we were never taught how to think or how to take a breath and make a thoughtful and reasoned response.
But that’s no excuse: It’s not too late to learn how to think!
Now’s the time.
