The Culture of CaCa

When did the current level of debate sink lower than a sea cucumbers fartmaker? When did conversing in order to find a truth or compromise die a messy, painful death and leave a bloated carcass in the sun to mark where a chance for consensus once stood?
It would seem that the current infatuation with anti-intellectual clap-trap snuck up on us, which is embarrassing. It was about as stealthy as one of those giant walking tanks from the last decent Star Wars movie but it ninjaed right up behind the whole country and slapped an atomic wedgie on our best opportunity of improving our culture at the expense of Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann getting a shoulder ride around the gym while Formal Argument got a swirly in the locker room. And then, suddenly, it stood on our neck and called our mother names. Making a sound argument or appealing to supposedly universal ethics now make you as popular as a cello player at the football rally. How did that happen?
When was it that facts became the mullets of conversation? When was it that opinion came to be a flamethrower with attached shotgun and fact became the annoying hum from your fridge everyone has learned to ignore? What seismic shift occurred that led so many of us to believe that believing was more important than knowing and that knowing had nothing to do with proving? And when did proving come to be considered the social equivalent of spitting in someone else’s Big Gulp?
The surest proof of this final surrender is in the number of people who use the phrase “Nothing can change my mind.” If nothing can change your mind I don’t think you can actually call your skull-filler a mind. Even a rat will take the better way through amaze once it has been made apparent.
However it happened, it is too late to stand around placing blame like an overweight accident investigator. Let us fight back! How? Intolerance! The next time someone insists that their opinion is as valid as any fact treat them like a telemarketer with a lisp and thick accent. And even that is not enough. It is time to start reacting to sound arguments like chocolate in chocolate sauce with a chocolate filling. Congratulate people when you hear them being brave enough to cite a valid source. Give footrubs to the rational, offer a ride to anyone willing to debate clearly. Get out the carrot AND the stick. It isn’t too late.