For most of my adult life, I firmly believed that reason would prevail. Now, I'm not so sure. Oh, I wouldn't mind being wrong, but doubts are starting to rise. Why? Well, just chalk it up to experience.
My recent trip abroad did little to resolve those doubts. How can reason even stand a chance if there's no dialog? I'm not talking about the friendly, idle chit-chat and small talk that occurs at the cash register in the store. I'm not talking about the let's-get-caught-up-on-the-time-apart of family get-togethers. And, I'm not talking about what passes for discussion when it broadcast after or around the news. No, I'm talking about real people discussing real issues with each other in real time.
Maybe I just missed it, but politeness and political correctness seem to have moved so far into the foreground that honest expression of a position on an issue makes too many people feel uncomfortable. When the semblance of a dialogue takes place, it is more like a statement and re-statement of positions, not a back-and-forth of ideas and facts supporting contentions and arguments. Whatever you do, don't confuse the issue with facts.
It's too bad, really. Though the US seems to be stuck in the times of its founding, it has lost much of that Spirit of the Enlightenment which drove much of the discussion of the time: in the Enlightenment, the unstated ideal was that the best argument would prevail. What I'm seeing though is the position that carries the day is the one whose proponents simply persevere in presenting.
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