Because this is the last column I will write for some time, I wanted to use this opportunity to sit down, take a deep breath and think about the enterprise as a whole.
I have been writing columns for this newspaper for nearly two years. I have written dozens of them — some in response to outspoken readers, some from events happening locally and
I have learned much more from shockingly poignant reader responses to an under-researched column. Nothing feels quite so embarrassing (or is as useful) as seeing your arguments ripped to shreds in front of your face in a public forum.
But I return — again and again — to one question: why? Why is it worth anyone’s time to think about, say, Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine when any given person reading this most likely has zero influence over what happens there? Is it all just a waste of time? Some bourgeois diversion?
The answer I’ve arrived at is this: it is important to be precise about your opinions because it is impossible to escape them. When faced with opposing ideologies, chances are that your human prejudices will yank you into one corner or another.
For issues that are easy to
This is disorienting, even if it turns out you are on the “correct side.” (What some people now annoyingly call the “right side of history.”) You find yourself fighting for a cause because of who you are and not what your reasoning faculties lead you to believe.
You find that you have been conscripted — by your instincts — into fighting a war that you have not chosen to engage in.
Opinion writing is an attempt to moderate, if not shackle, gut reaction to the events of the wider world. Of course, if you are a true moral exemplar — a Mandela, for example — then your gut instincts are usually the correct ones.
But, no matter how accurate your moral compass is, there is never any idea or practice that
Most people don’t allow themselves to do this because their identity is so wrapped up with their pre-formed political or social opinions. Injecting unavoidable doubt into the inner monologue of these people is the highest goal of opinion writing. It is the first step in trying to teach people how to control how they approach issues. It is also very hard to do.
The ability to choose how one thinks is doubly important because it is impossible to escape some issues, no matter where or how you live your life. Everyone who claims “not to have an opinion” about subjects as important as global warming or animal cruelty is lying to you.
This lie is understandable. Perhaps the speaker doesn’t know enough about the subject and wants to avoid sounding foolish. Perhaps they don’t want to voice an unwelcome sentiment. Most Americans generally don’t bring up politics or religion in casual conversation — perhaps they consider themselves polite.
But they are lying to you all the same, in the same well-meaning manner that The New York Times lies to you when they suggest that everything on the front page is important, unbiased and 100 percent factually accurate.
The people behind those news desks are wired in the same way as everyone else: prejudiced toward theories that confirm their beliefs, quick to dismiss unpleasant facts and capable of being very, very wrong.
But because they know that they are capable of error — and are duty-bound to own up to it publicly when they fail — these editors and writers try as hard as they can to be as sure as possible about the information that they have.
Theirs is the kind of careful thought process that is the true mark of an educated person. For them, each new piece of information — no matter how biased or inaccurate or just plain silly — is worth considering. (Donald Trump is a fount of this kind of stuff.)
Not because the faulty, ignorant information is compelling in itself, but because it gives the viewer an opportunity to test their preconceived and imperfect notions of how the world works.
For the people who can control their instincts to jump to an ideological side, a phrase like “Heritage, not hate” is an opportunity to consider why such an outlook is wrong-headed, and how one might go about carrying out that argument.
So much that is important about ourselves is determined without our input: sex, race, class, gender and, more often than not, religion. It is a sad fact that, for many people, the way they think is based on these five arbitrary pieces of information.
The best opinion writing teaches not only what is worth thinking about, but also how one should construct and challenge the thought process itself.
Camille Paglia, Christopher Hitchens and Ta-Nehisi Coates are masters of the form, in different ways. They are the kind of people I feel OK disagreeing with from time to time, because I know — when I’ve finished reading them — that what I have learned from is far more than just the subject matter.
They’ve given me and countless others the tools to control — and challenge — the way our heads work. It is a priceless gift. It is one worth working toward.