Hello, silence

This tradition now seems to be under assault. People are not trying to reach out, but trying to talk to their own friends who think like them, who agree with their views. Nowhere is this more obvious than in New York city, the great hotbed of American liberal discourse. In the aftermath of the elections, my friends in New York have gone strangely and perversely silent. They are willing to talk about anything but politics. When I make the point that in the context of the overwhelming power of the US, foreigners like me have a legitimate interest in their domestic politics, I would in the past have drawn them out. Now they prefer to change the subject. The articulate New Yorker has strong views on his or her political preferences, but has ceased to be articulate.

Gradually it dawned on me that while their unwillingness to talk to me is irritating, the fact that they are not talking to their own countrymen is extraordinarily disconcerting. It seems to strike at the very roots of the kind of discourse and dialogue that are essential for a healthy democracy. As one who is not that en courant about domestic social policy issues, I was keen to understand what the substance of the debate was about when it came to matters like “gay marriage” or “late abortions”. With the exception of one protean friend of mine, not one of the so-called “social liberals” seemed to know or care as to what their opponents were actually saying. When I gingerly tried to intervene that the use of the expression “marriage” (which after all has fertility and procreation as its associative ideas), in the context of homosexual relations, seemed to be stretching the point, the response was a shrug of the shoulders simply indicating a derisive dismissal because I may be siding with the bigots!

I did some digging. It turns out that much of the recent noise on the “gay marriage” issue, stemmed from a 4-3 ruling by a court in Massachusetts stating that under some existing statute, homosexuals could in fact “marry”. This had kicked off a spate of well-publicised marriages among gays. I tried to find out more. Was the debate about the use of the word “marriage”? Would there have been greater concord if it were called a “civil union”? Was the issue that this was a case of judicial over-reach by a split court trying to enact a law rather than interpret it? Strangely enough, I was not able to engage many folks in these nuanced discussions. It all seemed to be about “belief” or lack thereof. I was discovering in the liberal haven exactly the fanatical disdain for the other’s point of view which they accused the conservatives of the heartland of having. The political operatives of the Republican had capitalised on this opportunity. In several states they had managed to include as an addendum to the main elections a referendum on the issue of “gay marriage”, needless to say worded with complete absence ofnuance or texture. And this has touched off a chord in conservative America where, as has been the case with diverse cultures throughout history, matrimony is associated with fertility and is considered “holy”! Of course sacredness and religion turned out to be other code words for starting off what can only be described as “non-debates”…so little is the attempt by either side to respond to the other side’s point of view.

When it comes to Iraq, the quality of the discourse is even more lamentable. The Republican supporters want to “stay the course” which is a clever way of making a statement with not much content, while sounding wise and courageous. The response of the Democrats is completely fatuous. If they had their way, the US should host an international conference of sorts, where suddenly friendship and reasonableness will prevail and that, too, in large syrupy quantities. Everyone is angry about Iraq as if mere passion can become a substitute for analysis and reasoned critiques.

Today I leave New York for Texas and I am scared that there I will confront the other side of this pantomime, where people who are otherwise intelligent and sensitive have decided to dispense with words. And, of course, without the divine gift of language with which to communicate, discuss, argue and make progress, humans will be reduced to brutes. If the home of one of the greatest experiments in democracy, the longest continuously surviving constitutional republic of modern times, is going to give up its tradition of reasoned civic discourse, I wonder what is in store for the rest of us who deal with situations that are far more intractable and irksome. Clearly, a moment to pause, to feel anxious and to make a plea for the return of dialogue and debate, a plea that seems unlikely to have much effect. A sombre thought indeed!