Friends, I am so sorry.
It's been really painful to be here today. The candidate diaries are pretty awful. I've written about this before, and so have many others. What struck me today, though, was how destructive this is to my spirit . . . and I didn't even have to participate to be damaged. I just had to know it was going on. (Yeah, I'm sure it's all my fault for being hyper-sensitive or something.)
So it goes.
Anyway, my spirit was troubled. So I went to read some Gandhi and some King. I learned, after the first time I got beat up, that it helps me to think about non-violence when I feel that I'm in an unsafe environment, in a hostile place. And yes, DKos feels unsafe and hostile. So, I tried to apply what I was learning about non-violence to the "world of the candidate diaries," to discourse, to discussion, to debate.
This is what I learned. This is how I'm going to try and act here from now on. I'm not ready to stop coming here, but I can only keep coming here if I know I'm not hurting myself or others by being here.
Notes toward a non-violent discourse:
A basic principle for rational discourse (nonviolence) is that it does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent. The purpose of discourse to win friendship and understanding.
When we articulate disagreement with our opponents, when we criticize the underlying logic or emotions of our opponents, or as we express our own emotional reactions, it is important to remember that these statements are not ends in themselves. They are our means of educating, and we are educating ourselves even as we strive to educate our opponents.
At a minimum, we hope our statements inform or perhaps serve to awaken moral shame in our opponents. At best, we hope the sum of our discourse induces an ethical reconsideration by our opponent of his own discourse.
The aftermath of non-rational discourse is bitterness.
The aftermath of rational discourse is the creation of what Dr. King called "the beloved community."
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love."
--Martin Luther King
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Caveat 1: I'm not a smart person. I'm sure there are many people here who know more about non-violence and rhetoric and reason than I will ever grasp.
Caveat 2: I don't have solutions and you might not think there's even a problem. I just think that we could all do better than we have been. YMMV.