Pavlov's Wolverine (The story of how we have all trained to approach anyone who disagrees with us like a cornered grizzly approaches its pursuers)

Hello to you all, Internet!  How are you all?  Great/We all have those days/I'm sorry to hear that (delete where appropriate).  The other night, I went out to dinner with an old family friend and his wife and niece. The wife and niece both believe in intelligent design, whereas I am an agnostic and regard intelligent design as a theological position, fine to believe in but not the same as science.  Now, as I hope is apparent, I am very much a believer in intellectual discourse, but I still had to fight back the impulse to let go with a torrent of insults, statistics, and half-remembered Dawkins quotes.  By the look on my father's face (another evolutionist with even stronger political and scientific views than mine) he was having the same issue. They were both having the same problem on their side, I suspect, presumably trying not to jump straight to calling us both hell-spawned heathens who want to take all morality out of America and remake the country into the new Sodom.  Later, I thought about why this happens.  I have concluded that we have all been trained by a lot of absolute cretins who call themselves reasonable proponents of these positions that the only way to have a political discussion is to pile-drive the other side into oblivion with a lot of statements with a tenuous at best connection to logic and insults disguised as supporting arguments while shutting out their equally illogical and insulting ideas until they give up and leave in disgust.  It's a kindergarten argument with bigger words, but exactly the same effect, and while most people agree that this is not productive, we can't seem to get out of it.
As I tried to figure out why, I thought back to all the political discussions I have had over the years with people who I do not consider friends.  In most cases, they follow a very predictable path.  They open with a question to which the questioner knows my answer.  "Should schools be allowed to religiously indoctrinate children?" I reply with the answer they know I'll give, in this case, "Of course not.  Religion is a personal choice."  They then say something along the lines of, "If religious indoctrination is wrong, than why do you support teaching evolution in schools and banning creationism?"  To which my reply is something like, "Evolution is science, and taught in science class.  I have no issue with teaching creationism in theology class, but it isn't science, according to the definition of science as things that can be proven."  They go on to ignore most of what I said and say several predictable points: Science is just a belief, religion is important to child development, the Bible says it happened so it is fact, and, if they're really clever, that evolution is just a theory (using the colloquial definition of theory, not the scientific one, which is another hot button issue of mine, but that's an entry for another day).  By the way, these are all quotes from a real conversation I had a couple months ago, including the one in the next paragraph.
The problem here is that we are having two different conversations.  I am intellectually debating something, while they are attempting to convert a nonbeliever. This become apparent in the inevitable response to my next statement, regardless of what it may be, which is generally reminiscent of "You just want to strip away morality from our children so that your communist gay agenda can go forward.  You're a hypocrite who indoctrinates children with your 'science' and pretends it's anything more than another religion.  You should be more open minded."  This is about where I just give up and walk away, because they have already locked in the track of this conversation, and no matter what I say they will reply with the exact same thing every time.  The dancers and the stage may change, but the dance is always the same, and that dance is a spastic, poorly executed waltz set to Benny Hill music that leads straight into an open septic tank.
I use this example because it is a fight I have pretty often, as I know several creationists and consider it rude to flat-out ignore someone starting a conversation despite knowing where it is going.  The same thing happens with abortion debates.  Lest you think I'm being overly critical of the right and defending the left, you will have a similar argument if you try to defend the continued existence of religion to a rabid atheist, and heaven help you if you get cornered by someone who is of the hyper-militant bent of  feminism, veganism, or, worst of all, the political correctness crowd (as in, "you can't use that word, it might be offensive to X or Y minority who have never expressed any objection to it and I am now going to force you to listen as I explain what a terrible person you are) who usually combine all the worst qualities of the groups above with a healthy dose of socialism.
I have no problem with any of these groups on their own.  If you want to be a creationist, go ahead, that's a personal religious choice.  If you don't believe in abortions, don't get one.  I actively support equal rights for women, gays, and minority groups.  So, if I am neutral or supportive toward these groups, why does their mere mention provoke irrational rage?  Here we get to the title.  I assume you know about Pavlov's dogs, and if you aren't take a second to look it up on Wikipedia.  Learning is good.  Much like the dogs were trained that the bell meant food, we have been trained by years of exposure to these people that any political statement means the speaker is going to attack us and that there is no point in trying to defend yourself with logic and calm intellectual debate.  Much like the dogs eventually started slobbering at the sound of the bell even if there was no food, we have started to react to any public mention of political views by getting defensive of our own and shutting out whatever they have to say.s
This is a problem in two main ways.  The most obvious is that it makes everyone hate each other.  How can it not, when everyone who is not a known supporter is a potential attacker to be eyed like a wolf circling another wolf, sizing them up in case it comes down to fangs and claws?  However, the other outcome is so much worse: we have lost the ability to compromise.  Political discourse stopped being about finding the best way to run the country and became a no-holds-barred fight for pack dominance, where the winner is whoever shouts the loudest and sticks with it the longest.  There is no room for compromise, there is no agreement that maybe both sides have something of value to say, there is no synthesis of ideas into something workable.  Like a trained attack wolverine reacting to an intruder, we leap to the attack with a hiss and claws outstretched, hoping that we can maul our opponent into submission before they do the same to us. That is hardly a way to run a country, don't you think?

On the Origins of Stupid: The Culture and Climate of the American Idiot

Hello, Internet!  Due to a combination of technical difficulties, final exam stress, spending quality time with my family, and the recent death of my grandfather, ModeRadical has been offline for a while now.  I am happy to tell you that this blog should be getting onto a regular schedule now, including a couple of guest writers if they send me anything.  Now, recently, I have noticed something a bit disturbing about American culture, as I have started watching the news again.  As an aside, when looking for news, go to Al Jazeera America or the BBC.  They have neither the gibbering racist ignorant lunacy of FOX nor the smug, self-righteous, self-satisfied, equally ignorant leftist dogma of MSNBC.
  Now, anti-intellectualism.  Our culture today is rabidly anti-intellectual.  I grew up an intellectual, so I'm quite familiar with this effect.  People use "nerd" and "geek" as insults, but they're just terms for people who are smart or particularly obsessively familiar with something.  These should not be insults.  It should not be commonly accepted practice to insult someone by calling them smart and good with technology. That's just idiotic and backward.  It would be like wallowing in a septic tank and then insulting someone for not smelling like human feces.  Yet that's basically what we do.  Not only do we do that, but we actually glorify stupidity and ignorance.
  Let's take a moment to pick on reality television. Specifically, let's pick on a show called Swamp People.  The premise is to follow the carefully scripted lives of a bunch of people who live in the swamp without the benefits of technology for no discernible reason.  Why are we glorifying this lifestyle?  If they lived in Africa or South America, we'd be sending them aid money, but here in the US we give them their own reality TV show.  What?
  Think about that one for a minute.  If you think this isn't a problem, consider the fact that there are people out there who really, genuinely believe that vaccines cause autism, based on the fact that the people supporting this position publicly have roughly the same intellectual capacity as tree slugs, while vaccination supporters all use big words like "inoculation" and "clinical trials".  We are so anti-intellectual that some people would literally rather let their children die of smallpox than accept that someone might be smarter than they are.  Does it sound to you like those people should be running the country?  I could say the same thing about the anti-GMO movement, global warming deniers, those people who believe video games are the gateway to Satan, the abstinence only movement, or pretty much any other reactionary movement that looks at progress and starts shrieking "Bad! It burns! Hissssss!" and trying to pass legislation to send us all back to the Stone Age.
  Some people in those categories I listed have legitimate, researched reasons to believe them.  If you do, then good for you, and I say that without an ounce of sarcasm.  Send me an email explaining it, I really would like to know and I really would like to be able to have a reasoned discussion about it.  But supporting a position because you don't understand the other side and defending your position with the argument that if it were right it would make sense without explanation is so far from logic I'm pretty sure anything smarter than tree slugs can see how wrong it is.  Don't be like the tree slug.  If you don't understand something, learn about it.  Form whatever opinion you like, just make sure that opinion is based on facts, not fear of them.