Adventures in Civil Discourse

This afternoon, as I often do, I headed over to the post office after work to drop off mail my boss and I had generated after our daily pickup occurred. I was looking forward to chatting with the employees there (yes, I go so frequently that I know the front counter workers and they know me). I pulled in to the parking lot and saw two young people on the sidewalk manning a table with fliers... under a large poster of President Obama sporting a Hitler-style mustache graced with the title "Impeach Obama." It appeared to be a signature collection effort toward that stated end.

I went in to the post office and got my stuff mailed. As I headed back to my truck, I paused and looked again at the poster. Against my better judgement, I decided to approach the table.

The young man turned toward me, gave me a once-over, and then turned away. Whether he brushed me off because I look like I'm twelve or some other reason, I don't know. I spoke up politely (I use quotes because what follows is literally what was said, I did not take any poetic license).

"I hope you'll reconsider the use of nazi imagery in your campaign. It's offensive and inappropriate."

He turned his head slightly to look at me out of the corner of his eye. "I'll stop doing that as soon as Obama stops funding nazis in Ukraine. You go tell him that." With a smirk, clearly satisfied in his superior knowledge and wisdom, he turned away.

Admittedly my primary interest is not foreign policy, but I consider myself basically well-informed. I spend a lot of time reading news from various sources and I listen to public radio pretty much all day during the week. Now, public radio in my area isn't just NPR. I get two hours of BBC news everyday, two hours of what I consider the best NPR show out there (The Diane Rehm Show), an hour of Democracy Now! as well as a few other news programs. I understand that the politics of what is happening in Ukraine are complex and all sorts of accusations have been leveled, including that one fascist/neo-nazi political party that has gained some power after Yanukovych's ouster (I had to look up the name of the party: Svoboda) is being backed by the United States and other western powers.

I realized, as I stood there in the parking lot for a moment, that none of my sources of information would be considered legitimate to him. His source appeared to be some sort of low-rent libertarian magazine. If I protested that the use of broad and charged symbolism prevents earnest discourse (the "only nazis are nazis" argument) because it is both ineffective at conveying one's point (its overuse has confused its meaning) and inflammatory (accusing someone of belonging to a party that attempted to use military force to claim many sovereign nations as its own territory and directed genocides against several minority populations is somewhat... extreme, to say the least) I would likely just start an argument with no possible satisfactory resolution.

So, I sighed. And said "I hope you'll reconsider." And left.

This has been Adventures in Civil Discourse. Join me next week when I attempt to convince the local Planned Parenthood protestor (yeah, we really only have one, she always looks a bit lonely out there with her sign) that supporting affordable and readily available birth control for all is the real way to end abortion and she should actually be donating to PP's family planning services.

(By the way, I'm not really going to do that. I know it's futile.)