philcrissman.com

Before I leave the restroom, I like to check that the fly of my jeans is zipped up. Call me crazy. It’s just a common courtesy that I like to extend to society at large, sparing people the awkwardness of either needing to pretend they don’t notice, or of overcoming social barriers to let me know that it’s down. I’m just looking out for you, that’s all.

I had the fantastic good fortune of having once had a history teacher who went out of his way to try to get his 12th grade history class to actually think. Among the things he attempted to get us to notice were the various words and phrases which people use which virtually broadcast their biases and preconceptions to you. When you hear a pundit talking earnestly about “U.S. imperialism,” for example, you can often (perhaps not always) assume a worldview behind it that owes a debt to Marxism. Which is not automatically a bad thing; the Marxist economic model has a lot of common sense to it. Whether you agree with his ultimate conclusions or not, it’s absurd to simply try to brush him under the table… but that’s a whole other rant. The point is not whether having a Marxist-inspired point of view is right or wrong; the point is that by way a person uses the word “imperialism” in relation to post-World War 2 history, you can fairly accurately place them in this worldview. They don’t even have to tell you.

However, what the unwitting broadcast of worldview does do is indicate that the speaker may be unaware of the extent of their own bias. The problem with being unaware of your own bias is that you can’t really engage in dialogue. To even have a rational conversation, someone needs to point out that you are making one or more assumptions, which you may or may not be willing to admit to holding.

But maybe I’m being biased here, myself; let’s talk about the term ‘imperialism’ again, for a moment. By taking exception to the phrase ‘U.S. imperialism,’ am I just being an apologist for U.S. foreign policy? Argh. God forbid. That’s the last thing I’m even interested in doing. The problem is the allusion to ‘imperialism’ as practiced historically by the European powers; as soon as we start to draw a comparison like that, we’re making just a little bit too large of a jump. Take Leopold II of Belgium, to provide some context. It is fine to take issue with the current foreign policy of the U.S., or any other nation. But to label it with the blanket term “imperialism” is a bit too drastic of a comparison, unless there is a very real comparison to be made. All too often the term is only barely applicable (if at all) and serves solely to demonize whichever nation it’s being applied to.

It’s like a broader application of Godwin’s Law. Man, as soon as you start comparing anyone to Hitler, you are pretty much broadcasting that dialogue with you will be impossible. Either the characterization is accurate, which is (I’m sorry) extremely unlikely; or, the individual under scrutiny is not really analogous to Hitler, but you’re choosing to make the comparison anyway. Either way, there’s not a lot to talk about. (The assumption being that in the edge case that “another Hitler” ever really rose to power in some nation, it would be obvious, and the real matter would be what should we do about it.)

Here’s some words or phrases off the top of my head that expose so much bias they are apt to stop any meaningful dialogue in its tracks:

• “Imperialism”: already talked about.
• “Fascism”: similar to above. If it’s really fascism, you don’t need to point that out. It probably isn’t.
• “Liberal media”: Some readers are going to cheer at the inclusion of this phrase, others are going to be mad at me. The point is, a blanket characterization like this doesn’t actually accomplish anything. If you’re going to throw around terms like this, how can we actually talk about anything?
• “[whoever] is/could be the anti-Christ”: This is not intended to belittle anyone’s religious beliefs. But look, if you’re willing to earnestly suggest that a given person might be The Antichrist, well…. It’s like a Christian version of Godwin’s Law. We can’t really have a rational chat about a person if you think they’re the Antichrist, can we?
• “vast right wing conspiracy”: Are you serious? Same category as “liberal media”. I mean really, as if the collective listenership of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity could band together for some sort of clandestine agenda.

There are doubtless countless other key words or phrases that reveal the speakers bias; probably many even more subtle and hard to pick out.

Here’s the thing: if we’re going to have any sort of rational discussion, we need to be at least willing to consider that we could be biased — that is, that there may be assumptions we are making which the person we are talking to is not making; that there may be conclusions we have already accepted as fact which our associates have not; that we could be dismissing arguments reflexively without even listening to them, because we “already know they’re wrong.”

It’s probably impossible to completely eradicate bias; I’m not even sure it’s desirable. I mean, you want to at least have a point of view. But let’s at least be aware of our own biases, and at least attempt to give our loyal opposition (whoever that happens to be) the courtesy of hearing them out without prejudice. And where possible, lets avoid loaded phrases that carry mountains of assumptions along with them and broadcast our biases indiscriminately. It’s sort of like walking around with your ideological fly unzipped.