Can We Get Along? Will We?

 

New York Times columnist and liberal thought leader Ezra Klein recently penned a second impassioned reaction to Charlie Kirk’s murder, and appended to that content a recent podcast with right-wing influencer Ben Shapiro. There’s a lot here I don’t like. Klein doesn’t go nearly far enough to empathize with the utter plight of people who do not look like him and therefore do not have the inherent privileges he has. “We can agree to disagree” is far easier for some to say than others, and when faced with no easy way out of oppression, rage is a natural and understandable reaction that Klein seems to dismiss toe easily. 

Shapiro, on the other hand, has clearly not engaged in good faith with people who have differing opinions like Klein and Kirk have, so his demeanor feels like “let me say what I just said but louder” when pushed back against, rather than seeking to explain better or even giving room to listen to others and reconsider his positions. Particularly egregious is his calling certain comments by President Obama about race to be race-baiting, when most Americans would consider them to be an honest and fair opining of how race works in America from the perspective of someone who is himself affected by how race works in America. 

All that said, I resonate with the central premise of the post, which is that no matter how divided we are and how aggrieved we feel, we do have to get along somehow. We simply cannot, in a pluralistic democracy, do things like retreat to our echo chambers and wish ill of the other side and celebrate when our opponents are targeted and harmed. That doesn’t mean that cordial discourse is sufficient (although I personally would stop short of “burn the whole thing down” revolution). It does mean that there has to be a realistic end game that isn’t “all my opponents should concede they are wrong and change their minds” or “all my opponents should leave the country” or “all my opponents should be threatened into silence” and definitely not “all my opponents should be lined up and shot.” 

I don’t know what the solution is that allows us to co-exist. A tragedy of Kirk’s murder is that a big part of that solution is probably some version of what he did every day, which was try to engage on hot topics in spaces in opposition or even hostile to his positions, in a way that allowed people to hear and speak differing viewpoints and be respected for it. I say “a version” because his methods for expressing his positions were not above reproach, to say nothing of your take on how reasonable or reprehensible his positions were. 

I will close by saying that I acknowledge that my temperament is perhaps uniquely suited to rationally contemplate a wide range of opinions and data points. Where most people’s impulse is to respond to an outrageous statement by an opponent with, well, immediate outrage, my impulse is a bunch of other things, such as: 

1. Is this article even real (increasingly there is so much misreporting and outright deceptive new stories) 

2. Is the sound bite in the article being interpreted correctly, or is there a broader context that needs to be consumed in order to understand what someone is saying

3. What is the broader worldview that leads to a particular position that I may vehemently disagree with, if not to agree with it then to better understand it 

4. Is there any reason I shouldn’t extend humanity to the person holding the position and those who support them 

You may argue that I am speaking from a place of privilege to litigate media content in this way. You may be right. But I would say in response that none of us have the privilege to immediately rage at the latest sound bites sent our way. That sound bite might be completely unrepresentative of people’s positions. And even if it isn’t, it’s usually a position held by a lot of Americans, who we have to share this country with, if not peacefully and constructively then moving ourselves dangerously close to a collective ruin.