One of the biggest weaknesses on the left-leaning side of the political aisle today is a tendency to oversimplify issues. This weakness is partially due to the increasing rapidity of digital “journalism,” which has primed Americans to expect their political content to be portioned out to them in bite-sized doses. Regardless of the intentions behind people who make Instagram infographics, YouTube-explained videos or even politically charged TikToks, they inevitably fail and misinform their audience when they purport their work as conclusive and all-encompassing.
I don’t criticize these attempts at journalism because I think that they are intentionally misleading, but rather because I think that they enable a certain smugness or complacency in their audience. The truth is, it takes a great deal of studying and learning to come to an educated conclusion on any given issue. And, even after that studying has been done, one still should not claim that the solution is obvious or that the debate is simple. More mainstream sects of the left have been doing this since at least 2016 — with the horrifying rise of Trump’s populism — and it has not been effective.
The reason that these efforts have failed and will continue to fail is that they carry implicit ad hominems. To say that an issue is not complex — that the facts are plain — is an insult to one’s fellow interlocutor. It implies that the other person is either stupid or has pernicious intentions — there is no other reason why they would not agree.
It is lazy to say that things are simple. It reveals a lack of engagement from the debater. If the left wants to combat climate change, for example, it must arm itself with an armada of facts, critiques, anecdotes and arguments. Just quoting NASA by saying that 97% of scientists agree that climate change is real is not going to cut it. It has no impact on the doubter’s mind, confronts no biases and, most importantly, carries no emotion. It will continue to fail in a big way every time.
With so much anxiety floating around in the breath of political discourse, it can be difficult to put oneself in another person’s shoes or to entertain an idea that someone else has already deemed idiotic or problematic. But that is exactly what has to be done in order to combat those ideas.
In lieu of emotion, this simplification connotes a sense of jaded superiority — a holier-than-thou aversion to engaging with the political Other.
Maybe climate change, gun control, etc. are simple issues, or maybe they are not. That is not important. What matters is that left-leaning individuals tend to be more college-educated than their conservative counterparts, and thus, it is their responsibility to use that knowledge and learning to the best of their ability. That means respecting ambiguity, asking thoughtful questions and admitting shortcomings. It does not mean talking down or turning away from the other side, and it certainly does not mean punting the intellectual work to them by saying they have to read/watch/listen to something if they want to be taken seriously.
If there is any explanation as to why some on the left have become so hesitant to engage deeply in controversial topics, it is likely due to our ultra-divisive, unforgiving political climate in America. This is a phenomenon that runs deeper than the exaggerated effects of “cancel culture.” Rather, it emerges from the tension between anonymity and permanence on the internet, where venom can be spewed at will with no repercussions for some, and misinformed, rash opinions can be career-ending for others.
With so much anxiety floating around in the breath of political discourse, it can be difficult to put oneself in another person’s shoes or to entertain an idea that someone else has already deemed idiotic or problematic. But that is exactly what has to be done in order to combat those ideas.
If the left wants to defeat Trump, slow down climate change, etc., it is going to take a polis that is both engaged and enthusiastic without being dogmatic or closed-minded. It will require genuine empathy and conversations not designed to ensnare or embarrass, but to come to a greater understanding.
Eva Apple • Nov 18, 2023 at 8:09 pm
So let’s talk, Adam. As an inveterate Trumper I happen to believe that the New York Times and Washington Post have never been anything more than PR firms for the Deep State. Think the opposite of 90 percent of what you read there and I guarantee us a long and happy life. Nevertheless I still find their prose models worth my attention—if, for nothing else, the vocabulary words. I can still learn from them and perhaps even master their cosmo reasoning to my own ends. But at this point, were we roommates, wouldn’t you prefer we keep our differences to an exchange of essays and only talk about interests we have in common. Reruns of The Apprentice, for example.