posted
Let me state a few things about myself so you know me a little better: I am a 32-year-old, heterosexual man with two children and a wife of ten years, and am a proud American democrat. If you were to use a number line to represent political alignment with 0 being non-aligned, 10 being extreme right, and -10 extreme left (go ahead and make your jokes about leftists being negative, I won’t keep you from it ), I would categorize myself as a -6. I consider myself to be an open-minded and empathic person.
I entered the Hatrack forums a couple of months ago as my interest in writing fiction began to pick back up after years of thinking about it but doing nothing. Why Hatrack? Well, because one of the first and very best books on writing I ever picked up was yours, Characters and Viewpoint. This book had been referred to me by Canadian hard sci-fi writer Robert J. Sawyer. He told me most of the books out there weren’t really worth his time, but that Characters and Viewpoint was one in particular that he really liked. Seeing as I like Ender’s Game I thought I’d give it a go, and so I did. Very good book by the way.
After I entered Hatrack (I always want to call it Halftrack, after WWII APCs) I began to read your column. I found some of it funny, some of it good, much of it well thought out, but a great deal of it bitter. I chose articles at random by picking things in the subject line that interested me. Oddly, I never picked anything that held your political views or your views on gays or gay rights. I dismissed much of the harsh elements simply because I didn’t dive into the essays, they were mostly light reading for me as I was waiting for this or that to download off the net.
I came into the forums a few days ago to see if I could glean any new information on the Ender film as a buddy of mine at work had been asking about it. I found the thread about the ’00 interview, and without reading any of the other posts in that thread I jumped into it to see what you had to say about whatever you were being asked. I found the journalist that conducted the interview to be highly judgemental and extremely prejudiced. The media needs to be liberal by its very nature IMHO, but it has a responsibility to find the truth and present it’s findings in an impartial manner. Jerks like this chick or Dan Rather who go out of their way to use their jobs to bash elements they disagree with need to be dismissed, shunned, and made examples of by the entire country. Oh, and while I’m at it, Ann Coulter and Michael Moore need to be shot…many times…in painful areas of the body…and then be allowed to live. It is extremists on both sides that are tearing our nation apart, not just one side or the other. I’m getting off topic though so lets move on.
The article steamed me. Even though the journalist was way off base I could not believe how you answered her questions. I attacked right away on the Hatrack forums and was met with both calm and understanding as well as annoyed and angry posters. I began to talk with others and over time they swayed me slightly to see things a little differently.
You entered the thread and boldly stated your stance on the attack which I conducted. Even though I had stated that I went too far already it was well within your rights to counter the original post because you hadn’t had the chance to yet. Anyway, after you and I exchanged some civil words, you challenged me to try and see something from a different point of view other than my own. I paused. Wasn’t that just what I had done, I thought? Well, you know what, I hadn’t.
You said that I should take the “challenge of empathy” all the while I argued that I was an open-minded person. So the next day I went to work and thought about it the entire time I was there. It wore me the heck out; I work 12.5-hour shifts and had got a miserable hour-and-a-half sleep the night before. I went to bed that night without summarizing any of my thoughts on the matter because I needed to give my mind a break before I could put it all into perspective. I awoke this morn and it all came to me: A person cannot have an open-mind without having empathy for the person who is expressing views counter to their own. It’s near impossible.
Did I have empathy for you when I read ANY of those essays or interviews? No, I had not. Suddenly I felt ashamed. I had spent the majority of my adult life telling myself I was a good person because I could consider the views of others. But somehow I had lost empathy for others. I’ve had the trait in the past, because the moment I realized I had lost it was also when I realized when it had ended: 1996-, during Bill Clinton’s second term.
I was probably a -3 on the political scale at the time, but the right wing’s rhetoric on how evil and damaging to the country the left was galvanized my views and positions firmly on the left without me knowing it. In essence, I had lost my empathy for others. If people were going to call me an idiot for my beliefs, then my feeling was f---‘em, their beliefs were the ones that belonged to idiots. I let slip an important part of having an open-mind. Thank you so, very, very much Orsen (if I may call you that for a moment) for pointing this out to me. You can’t see it or feel it right now, but my eyes have swelled up a bit and a full feeling has entered my heart. And if it makes you feel good, you probably swung me back to a -4 from my -6. I know my scale is a gross oversimplification, but you get the picture.
So with my old friend empathy and I firmly embracing each other once again, I set out to re-examine your and my points on that thread just as I promised:
1. You said you disliked the fact that you could disagree with homosexual marriage but then be labeled a homophobe and a gay basher because of it. My thoughts: Yes, this is exactly what I did. For shame, because I realized that’s what I do with everyone on this topic. It is possible to be against certain aspects of a group without having any other opinions (or maybe even good or bad ones) for that group. You changed my views. People who want to keep marriage what it is are just that, they are not necessarily homophobes; they are just people whom value marriage and what it currently stands for
2. Communism. My thoughts: Again, although I thought I wasn’t calling you a Marxist, I was. Like marriage, it is possible to believe in X, without holding Y or Z in high regard or contempt as well. My buddy empathy at work again.
3. The charge that: “Why doesn’t it seem to occur to you that maybe I am EXACTLY the man you thought I was from my fiction…” My thoughts: You know what, you’re right yet again. What I saw in your writing is exactly what I see here: A man who can use empathy and understanding to keep an open mind on other possibilities and views that are not necessarily his own. But where I lacked empathy for you, you fail to show that you have it yourself by the way you express your point of view in your essays.
Summary: You feel extreme leftist America has taken empathy as their own and labeled those that do not agree with them as wrong. I counter with my own experience: Maybe both the right and the left’s extremes have hoarded that word for themselves. Not because they want to destroy the country, but because they too have lost their way. So much name-calling and opinion-bashing has been going on that maybe both sides have galvanized and not figured out yet that they threw their empathy out the window. I challenge you now: It is the responsibility of all of us who still have our empathy intact to do our best to get others to see things from a different perspective. Not so we can push our own values, but so we can heal the wounds and find common ground. If we can get enough on both sides to do this, then maybe we can go back to arguing our values while patting each other on the back and having a beer together. So what this means is I’m going to use my empathy with those I used to argue with and you’re going to be more diplomatic when you criticize others in your essays. Agreed? We cannot make a difference in other people by acting the way we have been. I know you think you are being candid, but honesty can still be achieved without being so dang blunt. So I put it to you now: Can Orsen Scott Card, a man who showed a blind, closed-minded, left-winger that he was indeed closed-minded through the use of compassion and diplomacy do the same when he writes about things he disagrees with?
I have found exactly the same phenomenon in my reading of OSC's essays and the reactions that they receive. Speaking as one who is probably around the +4 mark on that scale, maybe higher, maybe lower, I usually agree with the positions OSC actually holds in his essays... and it is my position that a lot of what he says gets misunderstood in part because of the knee-jerk associations that people tend to make, but also because of the way he phrases his positions.
I've always assumed that this is a matter of space available in which to present a point, mixed with the fact that his target readership (Rhino Times readers) typically agrees with his views anyway, so he feels less of a need to explain the process that leads to those views, but the potential for misunderstanding is nonetheless vast:
1) When OSC puts quotes around the "marriage" when referring to homosexual unions, it's very easy to picture the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons gesturing with the fingers of his hands and speaking very sarcastically in scorn of everyone who would propose that the idea is anything other than preposterous. People who already are annoyed simply because OSC's position is different from theirs will gravitate towards that interpretation of his meaning, and the stronger they disagree with his position, the harder it will be for them to ever see that word in quotes without assuming the worst possible hate-filled voice behind it. But it is my interpretation that the quotes do not indicate scorn, but are instead simply a shorthand reminder that he believes the word doesn't apply to homosexual unions.
2) Specific to homosexual issues: Card doesn't spend enough time elaborating the difference between homosexual actions and homosexual inclinations. Thus, because he states his opinion that the one is morally wrong, a natural assumption is made that he believes the other is wrong also, and therefore any person who experiences these inclinations must necessarily be evil to a greater extent than the rest of us. Read his articles without that assumption in place, and a very different picture of the man behind them will emerge.
3) OSC almost never makes plain the distinction between "the fanatical Left" or "extreme Leftists" and "the average Left." In fact, you almost never see anyone on "the Left" referred to except with one of those two adjectives, which makes it seem very much like he doesn't believe it's possible to be "Left" without also being "fanatical" or "extreme." In this way, the adjective backfires: instead of being a clear separation of extremist from common, it once again just makes Card look scornful. Just a simple parenthetical appearing after the first use of either of those phrases in an essay would solve this issue completely.
4) The phrases "everybody knows" and "anyone who has any knowledge of history" are always rather foolish to use, because the fact is that not everybody knows, and most of us simply don't take the time to study history to the same extent Card has... and there's nothing stopping even someone who has from reaching a different conclusion, perhaps based on different sources or different base assumptions about human nature. When using one of these phrases, the statement following should always be qualified or explained in someway; otherwise, it makes it seem as though Card is just covering for lack of a valid argument. Unjustified arguments always appear as arguments without justification. (I mean, c'mon, everybody knows that.) In the event that an explanation would take too much space, simply include a reference to someone else's version of that explanation, be it in a book or (preferably) online.
These are examples of where I believe people's misconceptions and assumptions about Card's attitudes originate. In most cases, I believe these are easy enough to fix, and I'm actually rather surprised he hasn't done so yet. It's not just a matter of diplomacy; it's a matter of making sure that people properly understand what you're actually saying, and to date the articles simply haven't shown much of an effort in that direction.
Of course, I could be wrong. It's possible that OSC really does just hate anyone who identifies himself as gay and believes that anyone who didn't vote Bush is a traitor to all of humanity, but I prefer charitable assumptions to uncharitable ones.
Posts: 293 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
While I appreciate everyone's votes of confidence greatly, I'm going to wait for OSC's response before I start patting myself on the back.
After realizing I had a lack of empathy for others I had to go back to my old gaming clan and apologize to them as well. I attacked members there for their views on the clan's policies and left on very bad terms. I had violated the trust of the clan's leader by disclosing personal information to the other members that he told me in personal confidence. I am so ashamed for the person I used to be. I look at the posts I made in that first thread here and I don't even see the same person anymore.
But is this not the point of life anyway, I tell myself? Self-improvement is something we should all strive for. I'm just glad you all could help bring me to my senses. Thanks to all who participated in that thread and showed tolerance for my ranting.
Posts: 339 | Registered: Mar 2005
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That's okay. I'm just glad I've made a change for myself.
I understand why he would be like that. Any celeb that opens themself to the public will have lots of people hounding them. Just wait till the movie hits. I'm sure it will be much, much worse for him.
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I have had the "open-minded" discussion with friends for years. I have often been called a close-minded person by individuals with much more liberal viewpoints than my own. This led to me asking the question about the definition of being "open-minded". Open minded does not mean "accepting", rather it means listening to as many differing viewpoints and very importantly, making a decision based on those viewpoints.
Most often I find that people have been trained or told how to think or act in a certain way and they will stick to that. I am guilty of it myself and I think the number of people who are constantly re-evaluating their thoughts and actions are far and few between.
I enjoyed your post as it offered a very introspective approach to thinking.
Posts: 117 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Dr. Evil: Open minded does not mean "accepting", rather it means listening to as many differing viewpoints and very importantly, making a decision based on those viewpoints.
I agree, but without empathy for others you cannot hope consider another’s viewpoint. I was lacking this badly.
You have no idea how much this introspective changed me. I agree that it is very hard for most of us to break out of our mindsets and really see things with a truly open mind.
posted
I was still maybe a -4 on my conception of a liberal scale before the dreaded events of Fall 1998. What broke me was the insistence of many of the left that "adultery is not against the law". The fact that they had lost sight of Clinton's crime being wrongful termination of an employee and ... I can't remember now if it was obstruction of justice or contempt of court. But their emotional wrapping of the situation in the Scarlet A drove me out of the left.
Sure there were a lot of folks on the right who did think Clinton's crime was having sexual pleasure, that the things he did were treasonous even if they had been with his wife... yes, these were also irritating. But they weren't insisting that I be more "fair" to someone who had fired a 24 year old for being nice to him. Anyway, I'm not trying to engage you in debate, just talking about my process from that time period.
Loyalty is a very compelling value for me. I can understand those who felt Clinton was being attacked and drew closer to him. I loved Al Gore. I had read his books and I really can say I loved the man. But there comes a point past which my mind, at any rate, cannot open any further.
So, that's the confession of a Nader Republican.
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It was witness tampering, which is a form of obstruction of justice; and felony perjury. I don't think he got contempt.
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The entire Clinton sex scandal was handled wrong. The right treated it like Clinton had murdered a box full of puppies every morning in honor of Satan, and the left acted like nothing was the matter as they pulled their blinders on so they wouldn’t have to face up to their leader’s mistake. It was very, very silly. For the love of God, the man fooled around with one woman on one occasion (that is provable of course) and it somehow turned into Watergate and the Cuban Missile Crisis all rolled into one. And people STILL talk about it like it was such a big deal.
Why doesn't anyone get so upset over JFK's infidelity? Everyone seems to hold that man in such high regard, yet he was hit'n tail left and right all the time.
I thought both sides on that issue acted like children, and Clinton himself just needed to be a man and fess up for his mistake. I love how the right likes to judge him for the EIGHT YEARS of service he put in using only that. I hear it all the time as I argue my views on Bush. "Yeah, but Clinton had sex with Monica." "So?" I answer back, "You don't know anyone that has ever cheated before? Did you discredit their entire professional career because of it too?"
The whole thing was blown WAY out of proportion. Clinton acted poorly as our leader in that respect and deserved to be shamed for it. Nothing more, nothing less.
I sided blindly with the left, because at that point I was already burned by the right and they way they acted like us on the left were somehow trying to destroy the country. My views had already galvanized by then. But in retrospect, both sides acted like vicious (red) and ignorant (blue) little children. In some ways, I think that scandal helped to pull our two sides even further apart. So if Clinton is responsible for anything beyond being unfaithful to his wife, it would be that.
Posts: 339 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
JFK is a different example. He wasn't exposed while he was in office, and he was murdered so that puts him the 'better than he really was' light. Clinton looked us straight in the eye and lied to us. More than once. He committed perjury on more than one occasion. He knowingly had others lie for him. He disgraced the most powerful office in the world. He committed troops to combat in Somalia at the same time he was with Lewinsky. The whole thing was blown way out of proportion because Clinton kept lying about it and would not admit fault. He just wanted to get back to work for the American people. Had he admitted it early on things would have been much different. He would have kept lying about it had it not been for the dress. I would discredit Clinton for more than just telling this lie. He just had one scandal after another. Renting out the Lincoln bedroom for campaign donations, sending technology to China and accepting donations from China, his pardon for Marc Rich, Whitewater, phone calls for donations hiding, commerce secretary Brown;s murder, rape allegations, Vince Foster, etc... His eight years of service are filled with debacles that get completely overlooked. No one shed a tear for the innocents that we killed in Kosovo, or Somalia. That was just fine because Clinton was in office. We had a booming economy with a low unemployment rate of 5%, as opposed to our terrible economy now with a high unenployment rate of 5%. The press focused mostly on the Lewinsky scandal so it seemed like that was the most important one, they mostly ignored all the other scandals because they weren't as juicy as reporting the Lewinsky one.
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Clinton looked us straight in the eye and lied to us. More than once. He committed perjury on more than one occasion. He knowingly had others lie for him. He disgraced the most powerful office in the world.
*polite cough* Um.... Okay. I won't say it.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
You won't say the everyone in the world believed that Iraq had WMD's (including John Kerry, the French, the UN, and every intelligence agency in the world)? You won't say that no one knows where Iraq's WMD's went to? You won't say that Bush would not have had to make Iraq comply with UN resolutions if Clinton and the UN had done their jobs properly instead of reaping huge profits from the Oil for Food program and letting Hussien openly flaunt the UN? That's OK, I can say it for you.
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I'm relieved. I was afraid for a moment that there would be a yawning gulf of silence. Listening to you patronize me has spared me that awkwardness. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Um, DarkKnight. The U.N. said that they couldn't find any "Weapons of Mass Destruction." If Iraq had these unconvitional weapons, they have myssteriousl vanished from the face of the Earth. Maybe the aliens took them.
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
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ALL politicians lie to you. Period. Get used to it. Not one of them has ever ascended to power without having this trait.
What you need to ask yourself is when does the lie cross the line? In my opinion, Clinton's lies over getting some tickle time are much less of a concern to me than say, the lies regarding the Regan administration and the Iran-Contra affair. And I'm not making political distinctions here BTW. I'm not saying Clinton is better than Regan; I'm just pointing out how they all do it and how some lies are worse than others. You have to decide between the ones that are worth having an uproar over and the ones are not.
We shouldn't have to tolerate this at all, but it is one of the truths of the world we live in.
Posts: 339 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Umm, Anna, France supplied Iraq with all kinds of weapons and technology before the first Gulf War. French companies, along with many other companies, helped Iraw develop technology to create WMDs. So yes, the French knew.
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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I agree EM that all politicians lie, my point was that Clinton's lies and scandals that were actually major things went mostly unreported. Lewinsky was focused on and the others overlooked. Sorry about the Iraw instead of Iraq in the above post, haven't had my coffee yet Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote: I agree EM that all politicians lie, my point was that Clinton's lies and scandals that were actually major things went mostly unreported.
I hate to ask this, but where were you living at this time? I was actually working as a journalist when these scandals were in the news, and "unreported" is not a word I would use to describe them, especially given how fictional most of them were.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Washington state for most of it. I do miss the whole Pacific Northwest area, it's very beautiful out there! Seattle was a great city to go out and have fun in, big enough to have a 'big city' feel yet still on the small side so you can feel safe walking the streets at night. If you ever get the chance to have lunch (a lot cheaper than dinner) in the Space Needle I really recommend it, they have a revolving restaurant Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Hm. It's possible that Seattle in the '90s may well have been one of two or three places on Earth that did not print every single report of every single hiccup from the Clinton era. *grin*
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Tom, out of curiosity, when you say you were working as a journalist at this time, what sort of work were you doing? (i.e. newspaper, magazine, etc.)
Were you covering politics?
Posts: 194 | Registered: Mar 2003
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yea, Seattle is pretty laid back. My impression was that the Monica story was covered to death, and the other stories were mentioned but not beaten like a dead, decaying horse like the Monica one.
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Again, people forget that there is a difference between a mistake and a blatant lie.
Every member of congress looked at the same evidence that Bush did and they all came to the same conclusion: the use of force was an option that had to be given to the President.
Did every member of congress lie? Or did they make a mistake?
Posts: 201 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Every member was swayed by intel that was presented as hard fact when it was very, very shaky at best. Even Dubyah has admitted the intel was not very good. Yet he pushed hard for war.
Posts: 339 | Registered: Mar 2005
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Colin Powell gave a terribly complelling presentation to the U.N. detailing, through things like radio intercepts, how they knew that there where WMD and that the Iraqis had a active program to hide them from the inspectors. Even he came out later and said that this information was obviously fraudulent. He called for an investigation of how he was handed this information and told that it was accurate. Suprisingly enough, this investigation never materialized.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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EM, I think you like living up there lots of people moved from SoCal to Portland and even to Seattle. It's a different world, but you can adapt I spent about 9 months near Vallejo
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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I love it. I took my wife up last year so she could see it while we did some scouting on real estate. She likes it a lot too.
Portland's architecture reminds me of San Fran and New York mixed together. I love the miles and miles of nature up there. It's my kinda thing.
I live in the valley right now. The air quality here is awful. It's so bad that my kids get hospitalized every year for asmatic bronchitis. This is our main reason for leaving California. We have lots of other reasons too, but this is the big one.
Posts: 339 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote: Every member of congress looked at the same evidence that Bush did and they all came to the same conclusion: the use of force was an option that had to be given to the President.
Doesn't the power to declare war lie only with the president?
Posts: 2756 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
No, the decision to declare war lies only with Congress. The President has the right to move troops around and such.
However, that statement is either a mistake or a lie, as neither did every member of congress vote to allow the use of force nor were they all privy to the same information that the President had.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
""So?" I answer back, "You don't know anyone that has ever cheated before? Did you discredit their entire professional career because of it too?"
Did I not say that this is the exact sort of thing liberals always say? He was a sexual harasser. He took away her job. He took away other women's jobs. Both for having "sex" with him and for not having "sex" with him. Monica was removed from the Whitehouse before the reelection campaign. How can a true liberal be okay with having a sexual harrasser in charge?
But anyway, I guess both sides circle their wagons when the captain is under assault. (post edited)
posted
But by the same turn of the coin, how can a true conservative be okay with having a murderer in charge? As you said though, captains and wagons.
I was making a generalization about the whole scandal. I wasn't addressing anything you said specificly. Sorry if it looked like I was debating. I can see now how you may have discerned that.
Oh, and I like Gore too. I have to give the man credit for sticking to due process in the '00 election rather than acting like a little baby and pulling out all the lawyers. It disappointed me, but it was big of him to do that.
posted
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Exploding Monkey: [QB] But by the same turn of the coin, how can a true conservative be okay with having a murderer in charge?
There are those of us who do not see him as a murderer....that's a pretty horrific thing to say about someone.
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posted
Wait, I'm confused. Where is this monkey? Exactly? And why is OSC challenging a monkey to a fight?
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