{"id":190,"date":"2008-11-08T14:14:15","date_gmt":"2008-11-08T19:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress65\/?p=190"},"modified":"2013-02-13T05:55:17","modified_gmt":"2013-02-13T10:55:17","slug":"putting-civility-back-civil-discourse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/putting-civility-back-civil-discourse\/","title":{"rendered":"Putting Civility Back Into Civil Discourse"},"content":{"rendered":"

My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to put civility back into civil discourse. And even if I can’t put it back into the general discourse, which became increasingly shrill and at times simply vile during the campaign, I will try to keep my own discourse civil.<\/p>\n

I don’t know if I succeeded during the election or not, but I hope I did. I won’t apologize for disagreeing with anyone or for stating my own opinions in sometimes strident terms, but I apologize if anyone feels I attacked them personally.<\/p>\n

I think I succeeded in my civil discourse goal the day after the election, in a long conversation with a co-worker. (We were in a car together, so she couldn’t get away from me.) She didn’t like all of the questions I asked her as I tried to pin down the sources of her dissatisfaction with our country, but neither did she accept my invitation to slap me if I went too far. I count that as a success.<\/p>\n

(At the risk of putting words in her mouth, I think she believes in the perfectability of our country and perhaps the entire human race. I do not. She admitted to being a glass half full person, whereas in the realm of geopolitics I’m more likely to point out that someone’s going to break the glass sooner or later so we’d better get a towel and a trashcan ready.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, I offer as an example an online discussion about how this election may affect the military<\/a> that I’ve had with my writing friend Dave Klecha on his blog, Bum Scoop<\/a>. We don’t agree, but we’re not gouging each other’s virtual eyes out, either.<\/p>\n

That, I think, is a good start.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to put civility back into civil discourse. And even if I can’t put it back into the general discourse, which became increasingly shrill and at times simply vile during the campaign, I will try to keep my own discourse civil. I \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1033,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions\/1033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}