Yet another Frequently Voiced Objection to participating in civil discussion is that it can’t change the “spin” that the powerful put on the news and other political information:
It’s not that politics is a pack of lies. The problem isn’t propaganda. If it were all about misinformation, the right information would fix things. All we’d need would be for some media watchdogs or whistleblowers to just get out “the facts” and everything would be okay. The problem is deeper than that. No amount of facts can change how we see or understand the world. In politics, it’s always a question of who has the most power. Those are people who are in a position to put a “spin” on what’s going on. Not many people are in that position. So if you don’t have the power to spin the news, all you can do is resist the spin others put on it. All I can do is to try to keep my guard up and be skeptical. As for other people, I guess all I can do is encourage them to be skeptical, too.
This confession would make a certain John Philpot Curran proud. He’s the Irish orator and politician who gets the credit for saying, “Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.” But only to a point. There’s a difference between vigilance and cynicism. Much of life in a democracy is a struggle over how important concepts and values are understood. But throwing in the towel to avoid the struggle won’t protect you from the powers that be. It will only leave them less fettered and you more isolated.
Civil discussion cannot guarantee that you or anyone else will be the wizard behind the curtain, but it is custom-made for challenging conventional thinking of all types. Civil discussion ensures that participants consider multiple starting points. It brings together different sorts of people, and that encourages diverging perspectives. And it ensures everyone a fair hearing. All of these help counter “spin” of all types by sustaining an energetic search for answers, without requiring that anyone’s answers be shared by anyone else.
*Adapted from Adolf G. Gundersen and Suzanne Goodney Lea, Let’s Talk Politics: Restoring Civility Through Exploratory Discussion, Chapter 3.
