Fight Fight Fight

Posted on February 10, 2004 in Citizenship IRC/Chat Rage & Annoyance

A few weeks ago, I left a political book discussion group because of a comment that a newcomer made. At the end of a particularly heated session, he said that he had enjoyed the sparring. I felt the lumps on my head that a bull-headed, press-pink-shirted Republican lawyer had laid there and decided that I would not participate again. Things were going nowhere. The comment woke me up to the fact that I was nothing more than a gladiator in a pit, one who could never lay a killing stroke, never die, and never transcend the walls of the arena.

I fight to resolve. I shun those who fight to win.

What fuels IRC political discussion, I believe, is frustration from powerlessness. This frustration purchases a hold in the American political scheme by affirming the root values of the system, which demand the one group dominate others. It also fuels pressure group politics. The so-called Family Values movement, for example, stems from this feeling of powerlessness over the government and over other members of their social group. Key in that sentence is the grounds of my criticism of that movement. They want power over the behavior and persons of others.

What they want for their families, they also want for America.

This style of conflict resolution leads to the more powerful party (usually the man) stifling the feelings of the weaker party (the woman and the children). Yule Heibel, for one often complains about the hamster wheel which drives us mad. I don’t think we tire from overwork as much as from not being able to speak up against it. It’s either win or lose in the family, in the corporation, in political circles. Very seldom do issues get resolved so that fairness rules the day. More often, the powerful throw a concession or two and call upon the rest of them for worship them for their magnamity.

Americans are unhappy, I believe, because we don’t express our emotions well. We fear anger. We believe that there can only be one of two outcomes to a verbal duel: either you get all the chips or s/he gets all the chips. Violence and emotional banditry characterize our fights. We dread them because there is too strong a chance that we will lose. And losing means everything.

In chat rooms, on both left and right, the idea is not to exchange views but to silence, humiliate, embarass, deprecate, attack, destroy, confuse, ridicule, and belittle what has been stated by others. What I see in #political chatrooms is a sorry ode to the American political and legal system where legislatures, bureaucracies, election officials, and courts declare winners and losers.

The partisanship among Democrats who base their votes on who they think can beat Bush is but another symptom of this malaise. They who ride the winds of opinion polls when choosing a candidate fear losing too much. So they end up selecting candidates who champion the status quo. In our lust for a win over the Republicans, we lose our principles and, even worse, our goals.

Much was made of Howard Dean being “too angry” for the presidency. I have found that those who claim to like anger the least often do the most to provoke it and to hide their own insecurities behind accusations of “boat rocking”. I think we can stand more anger, more outing of the manipulators among us, more frank talk about the state of the economy, the war in Iraq, and the banal, undifferentiated conservatism of the corporate media. We need to be permitted to be angry, to fight for resolutions with others, for new agreements. We need to rethink how we fight and for what ends. If we pay better attention to the means, avoid name-calling, work on the immediate situation, and join in a search for the best cure — the greatest good for the greatest possible number — our fights will yield better results.

The trouble is that fighting has become a form of entertainment and the media leads the masses into seeing that no idea ever triumphs except those values which allow them to continue their manipulation and to amass huge amounts of power and wealth at the expense of the greater body politics. IRC #political channels don’t cure this disempowerment: they contribute to it. The day when a political movement comes out of these verbal death fests is far from dawning.

Two things are missing: real power for reform and attitudes that hold that our fellow human beings have a say in the final result.

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The fellow from the politics reading group showed up to the philosophy group a couple of weeks ago, smirking as he had the night I first met him. I checked to make sure that I had no armor and no sword before I entered the circle of words. I expressed views and listened to views. Others did the same. The Smirking One even said a couple of things. Nothing was resolved, but neither was any blood shed or crowds thrilled. I believe as individuals, many people left the group feeling that they’d reached a higher level of thought, that they’d been taken seriously.

That betterment, I feel, is what we should strive for in our compassionate interactions with others. Self-esteem serves the whole. It must be based on treasuring the feelings of others and delivering the truth in doses that they can take.