Coercion as a Way of Life

Posted on July 18, 2004 in Culture Reading

The latest issue of Harper’s Magazine arrived on Friday, but it wasn’t until after we returned from Palm Springs that I had a chance to look at it.

An article by Marilynne Robinson entitled “The Tyranny of Petty Coercion” caught my eye as especially relevant to some of my life experience of late. Here is the conclusion:

The present dominance of aspersion and ridicule in American public life is a reflex of the fact that we are assumed to want, and in many cases perhaps do want, attitude much more than information. If an unhealthy percentage of the population gets its news from Jay Leno or Rush Limbaugh, it is because they are arbiters of attitude. They instruct viewers as to what, within their affinity groups, it is safe to say and cool to think. That is, they short-circuit the functions of individual judgement and obviate the exercise of individual conscience. So it is to a greater or lesser degree with the media in general. It is painful to watch decent and distinguished people struggle to function politically in this non-rational and valueless environment.


…granting that the consensus enforcement and the endless small concessions made to endless small coercions, are no doubt universal in human civilization, they cannot be without cost, precisely because they disable courage. No one can truly submit to unreasonable coercion — by suppressing one’s thinking, one’s identity, one’s metaphysics — without falling a little in one’s own estimation. And no one can deal in coercion without cynicism. Both sides of the transaction compromise.


Cultures commonly employ the methods of cults, making their members subject and dependent. And nations at intervals march lockstep to enormity and disaster. A successful autocracy rests on the universal failure of individual courage. In a democracy, abdications of conscience are never trivial. They demoralize politics, debilitate candor, and disrupt thought.

As I asseverated in today’s earlier article about Bashing, I think political leaders and media punditeers mold daily life disastrously. Think, for example, how many people at the Personality Forge just go along with the tyranny there? Or consider the email I receive from friends who benefited from my personal stand there and yet who smirk because it was me, not them, who had to make the sacrifice? That is just a microcosm of America today. My solace is knowing that I live freer than most because I am not dependent on or so enamored with technical prowess that I will endure mistreatment.

This article also made me think about how criticism and abuse have been confounded. Because of the way the media trains people to think, many cannot tell the difference between the two. Suggest a progressive change and you are called abusive. Call someone “unAmerican” or “terrorist” and you’re just being critical. Everyone who buys into the confusion pays the tragic cost. They wall themselves off from others who could assist them. They pay the price of not being smart about living and pursuing ends which can only lead them to vulnerability and isolation. They end up with fractured lives.

We must not let the poor example of our nation’s leadership destroy our happiness or cause our moral decline. Revolt by refusing to be a part of it.