Letters to the Editor
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@ theinkspot
"The real question is what is the solution? All of us can sit here and point fingers at the other. It's the repbulicans' falut, it's the whites' fault, it's so and so's etc..."
Imo, the solution (inasmuch as there can be "a solution") is education, education, education.
You don't expect a surgeon to operate without a minimal degree of relevant competence, right? Nor should you expect a productive or even promising discussion without a minimal skill-set for discussing.
We've lost (if we ever had--I don't know, I'm in my mid-thirties) our ability to empathize with "the other" in a serious way (perhaps because we don't read novels and poetry and the films we watch are vacuous?) as well as the ability to formulate and evaluate an argument.
Somehow we've gotten to the point, encouraged by talk radio, or by some perversion of "democratic" ideology, where all opinions are deemed of equal merit. (Except the opinions of those marginalized as outside of the mainstream, of course.)
If you watch how "discussions" are conducted on the television, you'll find that there can be no advance of discourse because no one listens and no one is held accountable as far as adhering to the basic rules of logic.
"Discussions" are just false premises piled on top of false premises.
Case in point, the business about Clinton's "lie" concerning the sniper fire.
Logically, before it matters whether she was lying or not, the first question to ask is: how is her story germane to her argument that she has experience?
Giving her the benefit of the doubt, the question still needs to be asked: "Ok, so you went to Kosovo at a time of war, how, as you see it, is this germane to answering a 3am telephone call?"
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but somehow we all take for granted that it is germane but then rush to discredit her for the apparent deception.
But the real deception is in her advancing that anecdote as substantive proof that she is qualified to answer the 3am phone call when to me, it seems a complete non-sequitur.
Or maybe it's not a non-sequitur, maybe it is legitimate experience, but we never actually have that discussion, which would be subject to the rules of argumentation because the media themselves are just as ill-educated (or choose not to employ their educations, if they have them) as the public.
It's enough to make you want to despair.