Sunday, January 09, 2011

Blood vs Discourse - What More Will It Take?

I have written posts about civility at BlogHer. At BlogHer10 we had a panel on How to Start, Engage in and Moderate Civil Political Debate because we wanted to be a place where folks could talk without poison or ranker to overtake valid differences of opinion.

People from diverse backgrounds have spoken of this need for civil discourse as well. We continue to do so because we did not want to see a day like this happen. We tried to tell people there is a better way to get your point across than verbally assaulting and damning groups of people, beliefs/non-beliefs and ideas.

And yet as I type this there are people trying to white wash what has been said, printed and recorded from the past few years as "Oh no, we didn't say that." or "Show me proof that my __________ had anything to do with the death of a nine-year old child."

Other people will present the idea that it was just a mad man, a crazy person who did this horrible thing. This event had nothing to do with what they are talking about or their concerns about the direction of the country.

Bullshit.

Yeah, I am still too angry to write what I truly want to say. I do believe in civility, civil discourse and healthy debate.

But I am a human being too. I have such anger against those people, corporations, political groups and media companies that profited from hate speech.

Blood money taken in pride of advancing their agenda. My anger does nothing to help but it does need to be expressed.

Because once I understand and focus my anger into positive energy only then can I see, express and provide resources that will take us from the darkness into the light.

Make no mistake. this is a very dark time.

1 comment:

  1. They say it's just words and words don't hurt anything. It's actions that matter. But we have a huge industry - advertising - built on the idea that words and images, many of them subtle - have a huge impact on behavior. They have proven over and over that words and images DO cause people to change their behavior. But now they are supposed to be able to say anything without question. Feh.

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