Searching for Civility

On my recent road trip down the long, wide stretch of I-5 asphalt from Seattle to LA, I quietly cursed the rental car company.

“Sorry sir, you requested Sirius satellite radio but your car does not have Sirius installed. Would you like us to remove that from your booking fees?” The answer of course was yes, please adjust the bill and no, I did not want to pay for something I would not be receiving. Sigh.   

There I was, thumbing between the AM and FM bands, and toggling between channels looking for something, anything… In addition to the spate of pop hits of today and years gone by, there was a profusion of Christian radio channels. There were more than a few Filipino and Spanish language channels which were outside of my linguistic wheelhouse.

So what to listen to when Fleetwood Mac fails to satisfy? I needed avoid falling asleep at the wheel after a bad night.  I had rented a Motel 6 room for $30 per hour.  They actually rented by the night but I amortized the cost over the hours of fitful sleep I “enjoyed”.  Coffee stops were few and far between as I gunned my KIA toward LA to beat rush hour (spoiler alert: I didn’t). I decided to challenge my left-leaning brain by parking myself on stations that featured right-wing talk radio.

It was kind of a weird experience. Post-election, mid-pandemic weirdness – a Bizarro world where the familiar seems utterly strange. President Obama was subjected to an intense working-over for past (mis)deeds while being referred to as “Barrack HUSSEIN Obama” in a growling, spittle-laden tirade. Obama had just poked the hornet’s nest with a great line in an interview with 60 Minutes. Asked what he would say to Trump about the election, he said: “And when your time is up, then it is your job to put the country first and think beyond your own ego, and your own interests, and your own disappointments.”

A lot of time was devoted to the ongoing challenges to the election process, especially those dreaded mail-in ballots. After all, elderly Democrat Jane Smith had cast her vote for Biden by mail. She was so elderly that she was in fact deceased! And thus, the whole process was clearly a sham. Maybe? It certainly would have been rather skillful and devious for the Democrats and their Antifa colleagues to use their programming skills and insiders to scrape presidential votes. Especially while throwing some Congressional seats and making sure they did not take the Senate. What a brilliant way to cover their tracks!        

And coronavirus, lots of attention to the liberty-crushing measures being put in place to combat the “China virus”. Some good times were had in jabs at Democrat Gavin Newsom, California Governor who had attended a large birthday dinner party at a fancy restaurant – in violation of measures he had just instated for the general populace. Talk about a dinner that did not go down well… urp.

I learned that there now an alternative to Twitter. On Parler, apparently you can pretty much say whatever you want without being tagged as “misleading” or having your posts deleted or account frozen. The last think you need is someone like the uppity-ups at Facebook or Twitter censoring you. You are not part of the “fake news” system!  Parler is there to make sure your voice gets HEARD… heard… heard… (That’s my impression of a right wing echo chamber).

At the end of the day, yes, having been delayed by the LA rush hour traffic, I rolled through the desert into the Phoenix metro area. A few liberal voices started to appear on the dial, and my frayed neurons were soothed by gentle strokes back to the left.

What did I get out of my foray into uncharted waters? I definitely got an appreciation for the sentiments that are causing a divide in America, and the enormity of the task ahead of Biden. And while I did miss my good old politically correct Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, I still appreciate the privilege of living in a society that allows different voices to be heard. Suspicion about government? In my experience, it is good to pay attention to the way governments treat you, your rights and your resources. In addition to the vanilla pudding zone that marks the centre of the opinion spectrum, we need the contrarians at the bookends to challenge us and make us question the status quo, lest we become “sheeple” as my dear friend Laurence likes to say.

A couple of more things came to mind. One is the importance of critical thinking, which seems to be in short supply. There are some fancy sounding ideas like “Occam’s Razor” which can help. “Occam’s Razor” can be simply explained as “the simplest solution is often the correct one”. Never mind the Dominion computer system, or Antifa or the cryptic musings of QAnon or what else might be described on Parler… the simplest solution is that Trump did not get enough legitimate votes to win. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep elections honest or even debate the merits of having an Electoral College. Voter suppression and stifling debate are the kind of autocratic moves we need to hold in check.

The second was that we really need to restore civility to the dialogue. Or I should say increase the level of civility as there are still many folks across the political spectrum who engage with each other civilly.
But when the volume gets too loud or folks are inflamed with anger – the substance is lost and no one can hear the nuggets of universal truth and commonality.

On the topic of civility, I recalled that I had an interesting book by P.M. Forni on my shelf. My post-road trip state of mind primed me to finally pull it down for a read. One of the opening chapters of 2002’s “Choosing Civility” sets the scene for respectful regard of our fellow humans. Forni uses a quote that is surprisingly appropriate for the current day:

“Maybe I was coming down with change-of-season influenza. If so, I should really consider buying a little white half mask for my subway ride home.”  -Sujata Massey

Let’s hope that, in the new era that begins January 20^th, 2021, this sort of civility spreads faster than viruses and misinformation in the “Plandemic” age.

Photo by Daniel von Appen on Unsplash