In the past couple days, I’ve noticed several attempts to rethink our political discourse through listening to those we disagree with. First, Nick Kristof at the Times posted an editorial warning of the dangers of an increasingly ossified and shrill political discourse, citing research that emphasizes how “We seek out information that reinforces our prejudices.” Moreover, conservatives are worse about this than liberals:
This resistance to information that doesn’t mesh with our preconceived beliefs afflicts both liberals and conservatives, but a raft of studies shows that it is a particular problem with conservatives. For example, when voters receive mailings offering them free pamphlets on various political topics, liberals show some interest in getting conservative views. In contrast, conservatives seek only those pamphlets that echo their own views.
Then,Meteor Blades prefaced an open thread with a long quotation from Susan Jacoby in the LA Times, also about the perils of only listening to and talking with those with whom we agree:
Whether watching television news, consulting political blogs or (more rarely) reading books, Americans today have become a people in search of validation for opinions that they already hold. This absence of curiosity about other points of view is the essence of anti-intellectualism and represents a major departure from the nation's best cultural traditions.
Finally (since we all know that it takes three instances to make a trend), Dracomicron published a diaryabout being banned from MyDD perhaps, he guesses, for suggesting that Democrats pop over to some republican websites to correct misinformation:
The only controversial thing that might have triggered this was that I naively said earlier that morning that I was considering going to post at Free Republic or another conservative site in order to hopefully debunk the lies that they love spreading about Clinton and Obama and Democrats in general. I wasn't admitting to being a Freeper or an Operation Chaos Dittocrat, I was suggesting that, perhaps, growing the base of support for our candidate involves talking to people we don't think we share values with. That's why I was at MyDD in the first place: We need to come together, and that's where the Democrats whose values are most different from my own are. I don't feel like I can contribute much if just preaching to the choir..
What’s going on here?
Maybe, in part, we have the outrageous partisanship of FOX and NewsCorp to thank. In a perverse way, the loud biases there have made it possible for other biases to emerge, and for us (or, more properly, maybe just me) to recognize the biases everywhere.
So now it’s part of the chatter to tease (or worse) Lou Dobbs for his one-note anti-immigrant tirades; it’s interesting to imagine what’ll happen when Hillary shows up on Keith’s show tonight, knowing that he’s scolded her forher negative campaigning; etc.
First of all, the internet has completely changed the American public sphere and I think this is largely good. In the days of strong newspapers and network nightly news from the big 3 (ABC, NBC, and CBS), European intellectuals looked down their noses at us, with our fantasies of “unbiased” reporting and our shallow faith in the free press. Europeans knew that you needed to read more than one paper to get the whole story. Moreover, with six or seven dailies to choose from, many in the large cities could choose two or three good papers, one to confirm their biases and another to tickle them slightly. The newsstands themselves performed the public good of broadcasting headlines with which they didn’t agree. So, you wouldn’t have to purchase the right-wing paper in order to
Now, with online newspapers, we in the United States get a version of this: we can get our news from any number of sources, be that a major print daily, the Huffington Post, Drudge, the DailyKos, or any of many, many other group and individual blogs, papers, and aggregators.
The problem is, with bookmarks and blog sidebars, it’s all too easy to avoid the other side. Kristof proposes a solution:
The only solutions I see are personal ones, to work out daily to build our mental muscles. Just as we force ourselves to nibble on greens and decline cheesecake, we should seek an information diet that includes a salad bar of information sources — with a special focus on unpalatable rubbish from fools. The worse it tastes, the better it may be for us.
I don’t know if I can do it. I’ve been on a diet (WeightWatchers) all winter and another kind of counting and measuring seems tough. Still, I see the merits.
So this diary really is a diary much more than a rallying cry. How are you working to listen to the voices of those who disagree?