As a college professor attending seemingly innumerable numbing committee meetings over four decades, I grew accustomed to arguments that hinged not on dispassionate reason, but rather on ad hominem attacks and on interminable restatements as each committee member had to voice a view often voiced by someone earlier in the meeting. Ho-hum. Boring, but telling. Almost always, any personalizing of argument won the day, at least in the minds of self-proclaimed “winners” and their supportive likeminded colleagues. Unfortunately for those who didn’t find themselves aligned with the dominant crowd, depersonalizing arguments to move them into the realm of passionless rationality was an impossible task. In the hallowed halls of academia dispassionate intellectualism is more ideal than real. In the main, there’s a long history of pots calling kettles black. If it’s that way in academia, where hallowed halls encase supposedly the best minds, imagine the personal nature of argument outside the ivy. Yep. Personal. Very personal and very derogatory.
Now, I know that the foregoing is at best general. I have not provided any specific examples, and that even if I had so provided, the claim of cherry-picking anecdotes could be leveled. How could I demonstrate scientifically that my statements are true? Did I somehow categorize the language in all those meetings I attended? Certainly, I didn’t. I made it a habit of getting out as soon as I could, leaving colleagues to haggle sometimes for hours after I left the room. Yet, I am inclined to provide my perspective of a species that labels itself “wise” (sapiens) without exemplifying that character even among the most erudite.
What I found regularly over the course of a four-decade career in academia was that once individuals and groups predetermined their final position, they gave themselves no chance at compromise or alternatives—to say nothing of capitulation. Much of their reticence to acquiesce to logic derived from assaults on their favorite hypotheses and theories. I think, for example, of American geologists scoffing at Alfred Wegener and his “continental drift” hypothesis that has since morphed into plate tectonic theory. Wegener provided objective evidence, but those geologists adhered to the prevailing views.
With regard to the college debates I witnessed over those many years, I will note that invariably, those who cast aspersions or subtle innuendos during debates seemed to be haughty individuals whose self-justification lay in fawning sycophants or in a closed-mindedness that belied their claim to intellectual purity. Don’t get me wrong; I probably also adhere to positions that are tinged with assumption. Fortunately from my perspective, those many meetings led to nothing but reports that found their way into the circular file. Now these many years later, I ask myself whether or not anyone who is still alive can remember the topics discussed or whether in remembering they can recall the nature of the argument.
Here I’d ask you to go back a few lines to see, “If it’s that way in academia, where hallowed halls encase supposedly the best minds, imagine the personal nature of argument outside the ivy.” Well, last night, September 1, 2022, I watched that personalization of argument on national television when the political analog of my experience with university committee debates was on display as the US President condemned Republicans.
Because I know that the last sentence is subject to debate because Democrat pundits praised the President, I will note that the President’s condemnation of Republicans might simply have been the result of his speech writers having gone full Hitler and Goebbels. Republicans, regardless of the self-righteous stand of pundits, and specifically those Republicans who align with the slogan “Make America Great Again” because they favor strong states’ rights and limited federal control, yes, those “MAGA” people, are now the new “German Jews” who are “enemies of the state.” I suppose I could accept such condemnation if it had been delivered with dispassionate deductive reasoning that provided evidence for the labeling and that didn’t ignore the many Democrat-pased Jim Crow laws. But Biden’s noting that those who question the results of an election were enemies of democracy ignores those months of Floridians counting chads after Al Gore lost, Ohioans recounting votes after John Kerry lost, and Hillary Clinton refusing in books and interviews to accept the legitimacy of her loss. His speech ignores the demonstrable hoax perpetrated on the country by the DNC, the Clinton campaign, and FBI agents that a presidential candidate had “colluded” with Russians.
As I saw in those many committee meetings, so I saw on September 1 the appeal to emotion, the dismissal of history, and the refusal to use specifics instead of generalities. How, I might ask, are the efforts of a few, such as those who invaded the Capitol on January 6, logically ascribed to the many? And how—I suppose this was in his thinking—was the Supreme Court decision to send abortion policy back to the states an anti-democratic attack by those Republicans that Biden had recently called “semi-fascists”? And—Big How, here—how was the assassination attempt of a Supreme Court Justice by a Left-leaning man, not a more serious attack on Democracy? Am I missing the link between states having the right to decide their own nature and fascism and the link between a Court decision and the destruction of democracy?
I don’t want to belabor the problems I found in the divisive speech the President gave because you might have already thought it was inspiring—what with the Marines standing at attention in the background of blood-red bricks. But it was a national speech that provided no information about specific crises—many of which the Administration engendered—other than the President’s fear that an upcoming election might not turn the nation more in his direction.
What was the urgency? Certainly, the President did not address problems that seem to affect Americans personally, such as 1) the high costs of energy, 2) high inflation, 3) threats from foreign powers emboldened by the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan that left billions of dollars in military equipment to the Taliban, reestablished a safe haven for Al Qaeda, and deprived all Afghani women of their recently gained education opportunities, 4) some 12 agencies and at least 45 US government agents shutting down the flow of free speech on social media and in the mainstream complicit Press, and 5) the flow of illegal drugs across a border that—regardless of the Administration’s claims—is wide open to human traffickers, illegal immigrants, and drug cartels that have pushed 10,000 pounds of fentanyl into the country just this year, causing tens of thousands of overdoses. Ostensible—at least to me— actual threats to democracy, safety, and prosperity of the United States, those five issues alone warranted a national address, but the President did not address any of them, did not provide solutions. Instead, like some academician in his lab or classroom, the President lectured the American people on the evils of being Republican (I suppose on the evils of having voted against him).
We live, as all our predecessors have lived, in crazy times and in a time of blatant censorship of opposing ideas. There’s little new in the current attack on free speech by opponents to the administration in power. Even Thomas Jefferson subtly condemned the Press for its “lies.” That censorship subtle or overt, which the censored understand and the censoring group fail to recognize troublesome, has made this an era of extreme “Ad Hominemism.” If future Americans look back on this era, they might call it the Age of Pots Condemning Kettles. It’s the ad hominem ad infinitum I saw during those four decades in academia when I longed for dispassionate reason and an end to personalizing debate.
Now, I know that the foregoing is at best general. I have not provided any specific examples, and that even if I had so provided, the claim of cherry-picking anecdotes could be leveled. How could I demonstrate scientifically that my statements are true? Did I somehow categorize the language in all those meetings I attended? Certainly, I didn’t. I made it a habit of getting out as soon as I could, leaving colleagues to haggle sometimes for hours after I left the room. Yet, I am inclined to provide my perspective of a species that labels itself “wise” (sapiens) without exemplifying that character even among the most erudite.
What I found regularly over the course of a four-decade career in academia was that once individuals and groups predetermined their final position, they gave themselves no chance at compromise or alternatives—to say nothing of capitulation. Much of their reticence to acquiesce to logic derived from assaults on their favorite hypotheses and theories. I think, for example, of American geologists scoffing at Alfred Wegener and his “continental drift” hypothesis that has since morphed into plate tectonic theory. Wegener provided objective evidence, but those geologists adhered to the prevailing views.
With regard to the college debates I witnessed over those many years, I will note that invariably, those who cast aspersions or subtle innuendos during debates seemed to be haughty individuals whose self-justification lay in fawning sycophants or in a closed-mindedness that belied their claim to intellectual purity. Don’t get me wrong; I probably also adhere to positions that are tinged with assumption. Fortunately from my perspective, those many meetings led to nothing but reports that found their way into the circular file. Now these many years later, I ask myself whether or not anyone who is still alive can remember the topics discussed or whether in remembering they can recall the nature of the argument.
Here I’d ask you to go back a few lines to see, “If it’s that way in academia, where hallowed halls encase supposedly the best minds, imagine the personal nature of argument outside the ivy.” Well, last night, September 1, 2022, I watched that personalization of argument on national television when the political analog of my experience with university committee debates was on display as the US President condemned Republicans.
Because I know that the last sentence is subject to debate because Democrat pundits praised the President, I will note that the President’s condemnation of Republicans might simply have been the result of his speech writers having gone full Hitler and Goebbels. Republicans, regardless of the self-righteous stand of pundits, and specifically those Republicans who align with the slogan “Make America Great Again” because they favor strong states’ rights and limited federal control, yes, those “MAGA” people, are now the new “German Jews” who are “enemies of the state.” I suppose I could accept such condemnation if it had been delivered with dispassionate deductive reasoning that provided evidence for the labeling and that didn’t ignore the many Democrat-pased Jim Crow laws. But Biden’s noting that those who question the results of an election were enemies of democracy ignores those months of Floridians counting chads after Al Gore lost, Ohioans recounting votes after John Kerry lost, and Hillary Clinton refusing in books and interviews to accept the legitimacy of her loss. His speech ignores the demonstrable hoax perpetrated on the country by the DNC, the Clinton campaign, and FBI agents that a presidential candidate had “colluded” with Russians.
As I saw in those many committee meetings, so I saw on September 1 the appeal to emotion, the dismissal of history, and the refusal to use specifics instead of generalities. How, I might ask, are the efforts of a few, such as those who invaded the Capitol on January 6, logically ascribed to the many? And how—I suppose this was in his thinking—was the Supreme Court decision to send abortion policy back to the states an anti-democratic attack by those Republicans that Biden had recently called “semi-fascists”? And—Big How, here—how was the assassination attempt of a Supreme Court Justice by a Left-leaning man, not a more serious attack on Democracy? Am I missing the link between states having the right to decide their own nature and fascism and the link between a Court decision and the destruction of democracy?
I don’t want to belabor the problems I found in the divisive speech the President gave because you might have already thought it was inspiring—what with the Marines standing at attention in the background of blood-red bricks. But it was a national speech that provided no information about specific crises—many of which the Administration engendered—other than the President’s fear that an upcoming election might not turn the nation more in his direction.
What was the urgency? Certainly, the President did not address problems that seem to affect Americans personally, such as 1) the high costs of energy, 2) high inflation, 3) threats from foreign powers emboldened by the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan that left billions of dollars in military equipment to the Taliban, reestablished a safe haven for Al Qaeda, and deprived all Afghani women of their recently gained education opportunities, 4) some 12 agencies and at least 45 US government agents shutting down the flow of free speech on social media and in the mainstream complicit Press, and 5) the flow of illegal drugs across a border that—regardless of the Administration’s claims—is wide open to human traffickers, illegal immigrants, and drug cartels that have pushed 10,000 pounds of fentanyl into the country just this year, causing tens of thousands of overdoses. Ostensible—at least to me— actual threats to democracy, safety, and prosperity of the United States, those five issues alone warranted a national address, but the President did not address any of them, did not provide solutions. Instead, like some academician in his lab or classroom, the President lectured the American people on the evils of being Republican (I suppose on the evils of having voted against him).
We live, as all our predecessors have lived, in crazy times and in a time of blatant censorship of opposing ideas. There’s little new in the current attack on free speech by opponents to the administration in power. Even Thomas Jefferson subtly condemned the Press for its “lies.” That censorship subtle or overt, which the censored understand and the censoring group fail to recognize troublesome, has made this an era of extreme “Ad Hominemism.” If future Americans look back on this era, they might call it the Age of Pots Condemning Kettles. It’s the ad hominem ad infinitum I saw during those four decades in academia when I longed for dispassionate reason and an end to personalizing debate.
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