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Given the division, rancor, and politicization of virtually everything—along with the social media-driven “hater” mentality—have we witnessed the death of discussion?
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #6 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.
During the U.S. Presidential campaign in February 2016, I stopped posting political content on social media. I just quit cold turkey.
Before this I’d tried to post about issues. I didn’t mention just one but always several candidates, attempted to be non-partisan, never spoke negatively of the previous Administration, and in no way attacked Democrat or Republican candidates or otherwise use my social media to campaign. In retrospect, I guess I was naïve. I actually tried to conduct a discussion about important issues. Usually, it didn’t happen.
I found that people didn’t read the nuances of what I said, and they didn’t discuss the issue. Mostly, they reacted emotionally, defending their partisan view and/or candidate—who I had often not even mentioned—and frequently did so with rancor not found in my posts.
I also noticed that my comments about political issues, in part because they got hi-jacked, divided my family, friends, and colleagues. People just couldn’t hang together for an issue discussion without quickly voting each other off the island.
At that point I decided political posting wasn’t worth dividing or losing friends. So I stopped.
Some of my friends have stopped referencing any social or political topic on social media too.
It isn’t that they don’t have opinions or that they don’t care, though perhaps some are less politically interested than others. They don’t want to get into a back-and-forth vitriol on opposite ends of the teeter-totter.
Think for a moment about “panels” on major television news channels:
these panels have largely devolved into shout fests about who can talk overtop the other. There’s not much reasoned discourse.
This same kind of phenomenon showed up not long ago when my wife and I attended a home-gathering comprised of people from the same church—middle class Midwesterners, most who’d grown up locally and graduated from the same high school and who otherwise had much in common. It was a very nice evening. Then someone mentioned the U.S. President relative to a given political issue. Just like that the group divided, including a few prickly comments and negative facial expressions that stayed that way until someone changed the subject.
Amazing. Good friends suddenly turned edgy when politics came up.
So the old maxim stands: “Never talk about politics or religion in polite company.”
Years ago, I wrote a book called “Christian Liberty: Living for God in a Changing Culture” (Baker, 2003). I talked about God’s moral absolutes—not a long list by the way— for all times, countries, and cultures, which we ignore at our own peril.
And I talked about the enormous room for discretion, or better, discernment with which God charged us as a way of making good decisions about cultural matters (Phil. 1:9-11). As long as our attitudes, viewpoints, and actions do not violate the moral will of God, he gave us the liberty to decide and to be different.
But I said then and I still believe today, Christian liberty is the least understood and least practiced doctrine of the Bible. I cannot prove this, but I experience it regularly. People in the Christian community do not allow for differences in others.
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Growing numbers of people in our country and culture do not want people to speak if their views diverge from what the dominant group considers correct.
The answer to opposing views is not a free and open debate on the merits of the argument but to silence, somehow to keep the other view from being heard.
If it is heard, then the solution is to react with emotional diatribe or attacks on the character of others who hold the “wrong view.” People who disagree with your view, or who might offer critique, are called “haters.”
The First Amendment’s guarantee of Freedom of Speech is no longer considered a sacred political ideal for whom men and women have given the last full measure of devotion to protect.
We’ve come to a point in a so-called post-truth culture in which politics and polarization are so pronounced we can no longer communicate, resulting in a virtual inability to discuss, much less debate, any social-political issue without it exploding into defensive partisanship, ideological condemnation, or lack of civility.
Discussion, at least public discourse, is dead on arrival.
I’d like to discuss political issues via social media but to do so invites dysfunction.
I think this is sad, among believers an absence of Christian liberty,and among the public, a disappearing understanding of what Freedom of Speech means in and to a constitutional republic.
This trend, whether from Left or Right, is not good for the future of this country.
Well, we’ll see you again soon. For more Christian commentary, be sure to subscribe to this podcast, Discerning What Is Best, or check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com. And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2022
*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.
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These kinds of disclaimers in articles have interested me for years. Here are two from the same piece today:
“A senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to brief the media.”
“A foreign diplomat, likewise speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to brief the media.”
In other words, people blab who are actually not permitted to do so. Yet they spill the beans.
I realize these may not be just loose lips that could sink ships—sure, maybe this person is a maverick, but then again they may in reality be staff who were indeed “authorized” by org superiors to speak, just not as official spokesmen.
Why would an org do this? To test the waters. To gauge reactions. To preserve org plausible deniability. To distance superiors from any backlash. To plant narratives. That said, please note I am sharing this insight on condition of anonymity because I am not authorized to speak by anyone, at least no one in the Biden Admin.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2021 *This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.
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I’m not a fan of presidential impeachment.
1868: Andrew Johnson - 1999: Bill Clinton - 2019, 2021: Donald Trump.
1974, in the wake of Watergate, facing impeachment and near-certain conviction, Richard M Nixon announced his resignation. VP Gerald R Ford was sworn in.
If anyone deserved impeachment and a vote removing him from office for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors” it was Nixon. But a month later, Ford famously pardoned Nixon. Ford was hammered for this and it likely cost him reelection. But I agreed with him and most others, much later, did as well.
Now in 2021, people are saying Joe Biden should be impeached because the Afghanistan withdrawal was not the “extraordinary success” he called it but an embarrassing, deadly, unnecessary debacle, and still an ongoing threat to American security.
I understand the anger and frustration. But impeachment isn’t the answer, nor is impeachment du jour good for the country.
Impeachments are partisan circuses and conviction is difficult. Just look at history. No impeached pres has been removed from office. More prescient than others, Ford knew a trial, even after Nixon departed, would simply divide the nation.
Impeachment would do that now, resulting in more harm than healing.
If you think Biden did the best he could, then impeachment is an unwarranted distraction. If you think Biden did badly, even immorally, then impeachment is still a deal with the Devil; do you really want VP Kamala Harris as Pres?
Politicians can be held accountable in many ways. Best one, even with debates about voting integrity, is called an election.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2021
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.
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I’m not a person who gets embarrassed. Maybe that’s some chink in my armor. I don’t know. But I’ve learned this about myself over the years.
I have to say that in the past couple of years, I confess I’ve periodically felt embarrassed for my country.
—when a President acted boorishly on the world stage, making juvenile comments about, well, a lot of things.
—when mayors, district attorneys, and sometimes governors blithely dismissed rioters, refusing to prosecute and hold them accountable before the law.
—when universities, corporations, and American elites rushed to adopt new sexual orientation and gender identity and critical race theory paradigms, ostensibly to demonstrate their woke virtue, but in actuality to preserve and develop their position and profit.
—when elected officials acted like wanna-be dictators, mandating a long list of lockdown restrictions in the name of public health.
—when a President talks about the debacle in Afghanistan in alternative reality terms no one, except maybe those who report to him, believes is happening on the ground.
It’s not so much a matter of pride or patriotism as it is a sense of lost moral credibility, a loss of place and purpose in the world that looks to this last best hope for democracy.
Ideals are important. Losing them to hubris or irrational idealism is not something I find comforting.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2021
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.
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I read articles written by conservatives, liberals, and leftists, many of which now regularly resort to juvenile insults. Name-calling masquerading as erudition.
Words like moron, maggot, idiot, their softer equivalents goon, clown, jerk, twit, the all-purpose hater, or the latest nasty epithet du jour are now the common parlance of pundits, politicians…and people on social media. Some even use vulgarities.
Former President Trump is a leading if not the lead example of this, but he’s not alone. Playground rhetoric has been used by the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senator Chuck Schumer, and many more politicians. It’s like there’s an arms race to see who can come up with the lowest, most childish nickname or rejoinder.
But what good is this kind of cheap shot? Calling someone with a different point of view a derogatory name doesn’t win the argument? It doesn’t encourage people to change their mind. Indeed, it can harden opposition. It only demeans, the speaker more than the recipient.
Name-calling has tainted US politics since before there was a USA. But insults accomplished nothing back then, and they accomplish nothing now. They only divide, which is the enemy of consensus and achievement.
We can’t make others change, but we can raise the level of our own discourse. We can have a sense of self-respect that intentionally improves the caliber of our vocabulary and incisiveness of our critical thinking. We can never use juvenile name-calling again, which is what most of our Mothers told us in 1st Grade anyway.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2021
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.
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For all the noise, politics cannot offer solutions to most of America’s problems, which are not political but spiritual/moral.
E.g., breakdown of the family, abortion, child neglect, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, trafficking, alcohol, opioid, and drug abuse, sexuality/gender issues, poverty, crime, racism, pornography, etc.
Solutions for these problems are matters of individual responsibility and accountability that come from our worldview, i.e., acknowledging God and truth, understanding right vs wrong, and making virtuous choices.
James Madison said, “If there be no virtue among us, no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people is an illusion.”
It’s not government’s role to instill virtue. This belongs to citizens and the church.
We’re losing this battle in many homes and certainly most schools, and churches too. The worldview being taught claims one’s circumstances are the source of problems, something outside ourselves: environment, family, government, anything but our choices. And wrong if it’s called that at all is not sin, which has been replaced by “bad luck” or victimhood or the medicalization of problems, etc.
Calling something sin sounds harsh or condemning, but if persons own their sin, they then can take personal responsibility and in turn have hope of real change through forgiveness, redemption, and reconciliation. So, calling sin sin is actually a truthful way to offer hope. But if our bad experiences are always determined by something outside us we can’t control, we have no hope.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2021
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.