Reposted for those of you looking for the article mentioned in today's USAToday.
There was a time, it seems to me, when we Americans were more tolerant of each other. Losing political parties waited a decent interval before launching a scorched-earth campaign to destroy their successors. Perhaps, they even did some soul-searching to try to understand why they lost. Everybody agreed on certain basic notions of civic order; like it's probably a bad idea to have people carrying guns to political rallies or high school basketball games, for that matter. Everybody agreed that habeas corpus was a damned good idea and that John Wayne never drew first. When well-known people died--even deeply flawed well-known people--most of us remembered the part where our mothers told us not to speak ill of the dead. Perhaps, we even gave them some slack if two of their brothers were lifelong public servants who had been gunned down by nuts with guns.
Or maybe I'm just having an old person's rush of nostalgia or perhaps no such time ever existed but, if it did, it is no more. Thanks to the internet (which began its existence as a publicly-funded government program, by the way) and social media--specifically blogs and Twitter--we only need don our hip waders and bulletproof vests and venture into the comments section of virtually any political blog or follow some of our perpetually aggrieved internet-famous pundits on Twitter to see that the stream of political discourse has become polluted beyond all productive use.
I'm not going to bookmark more examples for you because I want to talk about social media, not politics, but an endless supply of hair-raising posts and tweets are easy to locate. The fair-minded journalist in me wants to say you'll find scary examples on both the right and left of the spectrum but the truth is that it is mainly in the redder precincts that you encounter a level of vitriol and undiluted rage and racism that goes beyond simple name-calling and makes you think you're channeling Terry McVeigh on abad acid trip. Many of these fellow citizens are not just conservatives who believe in small government; they are nilihists who believe in no government. And, they are really,really frightening.
It's a sobering reminder that our friend Valeria Maltoni's terrific post today represents only one side of the social media spectrum--the use of social software to collaborate, be productive and possibly even make the world a better place. That is certainly important but we shouldn't forget that there is a darker underside to the web where all kinds of mean, nasty things lurk. Those same social technologies provide a platform for bigots and racists and fringe political movements to spew their venom to a potential audience of millions. More often than not, especially in comments sections, the most vicious drive-by attacks are done anonymously by people using aliases. These are fertile breeding grounds for skilled propagandists, politicians and assorted charlatans who seek to manipulate ignorance, fear and irrationality for their own power-grabbing needs.
I know, I know. Blogs don't trash people; people trash people. Freedom of speech and all that. Unfortunately, like so many other things in American life these days, this is not something you can even have a rational discussion about. The web--at least, the part of it devoted to politics--and social media may have killed reasoned debate forever.
I am not without some guilt in this matter. Although I own a liberal group blog that was once pretty popular, I stopped writing much there several years ago when I realized that doing so was making me unhappier and more mean-spirited than usual. But, alas, I dipped in just a couple of days ago so I could refer to a prominent Conservative blogger as a "moron." I plan to do my part to make the web more civil by doing less of that kind of impulse blogging.
And could we all agree that the web would be a nicer place if people who want to make nasty comments were required to use their real names?
Probably not.