On Historical Perspective and Political Discussion

It’s difficult to talk to someone about how things are if you don’t share, or at least recognize, their understanding of how things have been. Anyone who has been reading this blog for very long will probably have stumbled across me ranting about the “kids these days” genre of social aggrievement. (I happen to think kids these days are pretty good and that, in any event, every generation seems predisposed to belly ache about the younger generations. Get off my lawn!)

I have similar feelings with respect to lamentations about “how things are nowadays.” Things are generally good nowadays. (Though it’s tough to escape the fear that things could rapidly become much worse, particularly given the current crop of lawmakers.) But, my opinions about relative merits of today versus yesterday aside, it’s tough to even discuss the subject if you don’t know what version of “yesterday” a person is using as a benchmark.

I like to read Tipsy’s blog because: a) he’s a friend; and b) he posts stuff I would never come across on my own. Today’s offering includes some quotes from David Gelertner. His benchmark of the history of journalism is maybe somewhere in the 50s or 60s, and he is unhappy with the liberal trajectory of journalists caused by journalism schools:

[On the Cultural Revolution of the past 50 years] the growing importance of education schools and of journalism schools were three of the most important aspects of this big change. The transformation of journalism from a battered-hat group of rough-speaking, hard-drinking, widely-admired “ordinary guys” who were thought to be mostly conservatives to penetrating, opinionated intellectuals who are mainly liberal is a major story in itself.

This caught me off guard, not because of the “liberal media” accusation but because, when thinking of the historical progression of journalism, I wouldn’t have started with the 50s guy. In my mind (and I’m not saying this is at all accurate), I have dim thoughts of publications associated with 16th century London coffee houses, the political essays of the Founders (and libelous muck by the likes of James Callender),  and then to what’s probably my real historical benchmark for journalism — the yellow journalism of Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst.

With that as a benchmark, in my mind, the import of journalism schools is a progression from Hearst’s “you furnish me the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war” brand of yellow journalism to a more serious profession, grounded in the importance of objective facts. This is something I regard as generally positive, though I do have my opinions on the shortcomings of “objectivity.” It creates a blind spot by ignoring that every narrative has a bias, and it leads to a “both-sides” style of reporting that has trouble grappling with the situation where one side has a great deal more substance behind its arguments. On my own, thinking about that history, I barely would have registered the icon of the grizzled, alcoholic “common sense” noir journalist of the 50s and 60s. Without recognizing that as a point of departure, a hypothetical conversation between myself and Mr. Gelertner on the merits of modern versus historical journalism probably wouldn’t be very productive.

I have similar issues when he talks about the history of citizens, religion, and government:

[W]e all know that faith in the Judeo-Christian religions is dramatically weaker than it used to be. But human beings are religious animals, and most will find an alternative if the conventional choices are gone.

The readiest replacement nowadays for lost traditional religion is political ideology. But a citizen with faith in a political position, instead of rational belief, is a potential disaster for democracy.

I’m not sure what his historical benchmark is here, 1950s America again? But my thoughts on the subject are a mashup of places and times. You have a lot of societies where government and religion were the same: Egypt, Mesopotamia, Rome, and China come to mind. Right now, I’m reading about the period where political tensions between the (Constantinople-centered) Christians of the Roman Empire and the Zoroastrians of the Persian Empire led to greater religious fervor in both places (coupled with persecution of minority religions). The battle between those political powers weakened both and opened the door to the rise and spread of Islam which prevailed, in part, by practicing religious tolerance — particularly with respect to Christianity and Judaism. Christian American — and especially Judeo-Christian America — is a blip on the historical landscape.

I would not be surprised if Mr. Gelertner is smarter than me, knows more about history than I do, and/or knows more about religion than I do. But I think it’s safe to say neither of  us is dumb or ignorant in these areas. Yet, we probably come to radically different conclusions about how today compares to yesterday, simply because yesterday is so vast in terms of its potential scope of places and times.

I think this is a common problem for political discussions generally. So, find out what your counterpart’s vision of “yesterday” might be.