So, recently I’m getting a little numb to the political rhetoric of supporters both left and right seeming to end up little more than shouting matches decrying figures, and I came to a conclusion that, as a society, we may have given up trying to convince anyone anything through these discourses. It seems to me as if we’re now simply trying to shout louder than our opponents, defeat any facts they bring up, and in doing so feel like we’ve scored some ‘victory’.
Yet I’m wondering if there wasn’t a point at which political argument was there to get people informed or persuaded to switch sides? One would assume there would have to be. I guess what I’m getting at (and I’m putting it here because I suspect this discussion may get heated) is, Why don’t we try to convince people of our own concepts at this point, and, if we do not, can we get civil discourse back on that track again?
I wish. I suppose whatever civil, carefully reasoned, logical argument there is gets drowned out by the shouting and posturing. Such stuff is too long and difficult to read anyway–sound bites are much easier to deal with. And I’m not sure that our society values careful thinking or taking time to consider an opinion–you have to be fast and definite.
I think there are still people trying to have civil discourse, but they don’t get on TV–you’d have to go looking for them.
It is very hard to get someone, especially an adult, to change their opinion. Doing so requires the other person to admit they are wrong. Not too many people are able to say “despite my numerous advanced degrees in Brainiacology and Geniusonomy, it appears that I have been voting for the wrong party for the past 50 years.”
I’m not sure that anyone has ever been convinced of anything solely by discourse. Evidence occasionally has persuasive power. But discourse alone, changing someone’s mind? I’ve never seen evidence of that.
Well there’s a reasoned argument. Lump your opponents in with every wackjob you can think of, and pretend it’s a foregone conclusion that they’re all the same.
You assume that s/he doesn’t consider opposition to UHC a “wackjob” position. It’s certainly close to one. Especially as practiced in the real world with ranting and raving about “Death panels” and such and not some theoretical idealized reasonable opposition.
There are still pockets of civil discourse in this world, they just don’t have their own cable news shows.
The Brooks/Shields segment on the Newshour are always good debates between the center-right and the middle-left. Civil. Rational. Fact-based. More than a few blogs have good civil discussions, even in the comment sections. Check out Julian Sanchez, for example. You probably even have a friend or two with diverging political beliefs with whom you can have a civil and productive discussion. That happens all over America.
But, it doesn’t make anyone any money. For one, it is like collegiate wresting vs. professional wrestling. The former may have more integrity and character, but people enjoy watching the latter more. For another, in a world of comfort and apathy, 99% of political campaigns can win without convincing anyone. All they need to do is mobilize. So no one spends any money on the encouragement of civil discourse.
Just look at this message board. Who gets more attention, Shodan or Grumman? Measure for Measure or** Der Trihs**? People say they want civil discourse, but they’re more interested in the other kind.
(There’s also a sort of big picture problem of postmodern thought that has people believing that truth is relative, so the only thing we can ever really argue about are the consequences of shared assumptions - which may be few and far between. I this aspect of postmodernism has a real effect on day-to-day discourse, but that’s another thread.)
You might also add the fact that the countries with universal health care pay about half as much as we do (and yes, that’s counting the money paid through taxes), and that they live longer than us. So the people arguing against us going to a similar system are arguing that they should pay more for an inferior product, a behaviour which any economist could tell you is irrational.
This has been debunked in other threads. Look over in the ‘Soaking the Rich’ thread for some cites.
The $$ spent vs. life expectancy ‘analysis’ is often trotted out, most recently by our beloved President.
But US life expectancy is skewed lower by car accidents and homicides, two things that have very little to do with healthcare spending.
On a country-by-country basis, the US is also not on an apples-to-apples comparison with other G-8 countries because some of them do not include very early stage infant mortality in their denominator, and the US does.
When life expectancy is corrected for those factors, the US shoots to number 1.
Also, the mortality charts show that US life expectancy is number 1 once you make it to old age (for example, age 50). That is largely a function of healthcare spending and its effectiveness…for example, cancer and heart disease treatments.
I would have thought with the rancor surrounding the current debate, all of these ‘facts’ would have been fleshed out by now. Apparently not.
The problem is that we are really not a purely cerebral species. Making rhetorical arguments about the long term cause and effect of abstract policy really doesn’t sink well with a species of monkeys that evolved to survive in the savannah.
Most arguments that honestly seem to fire up the base play on us vs. them divisions, good vs bad divisions, real vs phony citizens, anger over abused reciprocation. Basically the most potent arguments seem to rely on evolutionary morality, which states that the respectable members of your tribe who contribute to the group deserve assistance, and that non-members, violators of moral code and welshers deserve to be ostracized.
In fact, there is an entire progressive industry led by people like Lakoff or Waldman designed to teach people how to frame progressive politics using these moral values of egalitarianism, fairness, reciprocation, justice, etc. The reason they started doing it is becasue they felt liberals were too willing to think a rational argument would be persuasive to everyone, when it is not. As it stands, barely 10% of the nation believes in darwinism by natural selection. The rest believe in creationism or intelligent design. Point being, we are a species that believes what it wants to believe, not what the truth is. Being in denial about yourself or the world is fairly common because sometimes truth is unpleasant.
So no, you can’t get rid of it. The reason you can’t is because it works.
Nonetheless, the US spends roughly twice as much per capita and 50-100% more as % of GDP for health care that is not as reliable or accessible as other wealthy nations have.
US cancer treatments are roughly the same as the rest of the world.
The highest survival rates were found in the U.S. for breast and prostate cancer, in Japan for colon and rectal cancers in men, and in France for colon and rectal cancers in women, Coleman’s team reports.
In Canada and Australia, survival was also high for most cancers.
Plus the elderly are on medicare, which is a single payer government health care program. So bragging that our elderly on government run health care do better than the elderly on government run health care in other nations isn’t a persuasive argument against UHC.
Long ago, when I was pretty new to this board, I got into a heated argument with Otto on gay marriage. I lost.
And I admit that. I think it’s important to admit that. Not only to change your position, but to acknowledge that you were previously in the wrong. Not easy, but important.
a) A vast number of discourses, both in general politics and on the SDMB, include participants who are not so much trying to persuade their immediate opponents as trying to persuade a decent percent of the folks reading and following along. Think Obama versus McCain in the debates: neither expected to convince the other, it was the audience who was the real target of their arguments.
b) In contrast, the small rooms of the US Senate (for one example) are the scene of many politicians coming together and making policy, coming to an accord with folks they are nominally opposed to. It is in large part because the audience is NOT there to listen that they are able to do so (i.e., they don’t have to worry that failing to score a debate point makes them weak; they can let their adversary make a point and go on to elaborate on it and bolster it, etc, knowing full well that they themselves, simply by withholding their own agreement, can negate all that persuasiveness as much as it needs negating. Hit me with your best shot, I’ll listen). Admittedly they also do quite a bit of “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”; the combo of putting aside the showy “arguments to convince an audience” in favor of making a blunt case on the merits, plus an often even more blunt case on the basis of the corollary fringe benefits of playing nice and doing a horse trade, yield the aphorism that one would not want to watch sausages or laws being made. But they do get work done.
c) Speaking personally, while I can’t point to anything and say “I came in here with Position X and was turned 180° around by people here who persuaded me I was dead wrong”, I have had my perspective on “right to life” oriented people in the abortion argument substantially changed during my days on the 'Dope. I once would have told you that everyone on that side of the debate was taking that position because they wanted to roll sexual behavior and cultural ideas of sexual morality back to the 1950s, pre-sexual-revolution, and to undo feminist gains in sexual equality. I would have said nary a single one of them gives a shit about a fetus and that it’s all about wanting a world where sexually active women run the risk of getting pregnant and being unable to avoid messy social consequences if & when that happens. I would not say those things now. I think most of them believe exactly what they say and they take the stand that they do as a moral issue and are quite serious about it. I still disagree with them fervently but I admire them for the commitment they feel and exhibit towards a concern that is real for them.
In terms of discourse on chat sites, there appears to be a conversational equivalent of Gresham’s law: bad argument drives out good.
By “bad” I mean the sort of abusive, name-calling, hectoring style which is so unfortunately prevelent these days here on the 'Dope when it comes to all things political and American.
I’ve had my mind changed by discourse many times. I hope and expect to have it changed many more times.
In my time on the internet (about 15 years), I have gone from a conservative, pro-life, non-practicing Catholic through libertarianism and minarchism, to where I am now–lefty atheist pro-choicer.