Many superficial reasons are offered for the sorry state of our political culture. Members of the opposite party are often considered to be enemies of America. Language of political debate often seems to flow from the sewer. Demands for apologies by people who themselves ought to apologize are rife on both sides of the spectrum. Gridlock in Washington is the rule, not the exception.
To be sure, many divisive issues have entered American political culture, abortion primary among them. To be sure, the current wars and the deaths they bring are divisive. But World War II brought more deaths than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined, yet WW II unified the country. And abortion is hardly less divisive than slavery in an earlier era. It is not primarily the issues that poison American political life today.
Some fault the growth of talk radio, which, whether liberal or conservative, mostly indulges in daily doses of disfiguration and hyperbole. Talk radio, we would argue, is not the cause, but the result of the decline of our political discourse. For the cause, one must look elsewhere.
To us, the ultimate cause is the decline of reading, specifically, of daily newspapers. Reading? you might squint. What does this have to do with acid rudeness between many candidates, widespread animosities on Capitol Hill and the bellicosity on the radio? If news is acquired in snatches and sound bites, if complicated issues are reduced to screed on the Internet, if the quiet of the kitchen or the living room is no longer the crucible of thinking about politicians and political issues, then thinking declines.
And when thought declines, oversimplification rises. When news is absorbed primarily via the ear rather than the eye, emotion intensifies. When a complex set of facts laid out in cold, hard, unchangeable type is not absorbed simply because it is no longer read, the alternative is, well, just what we have. Snap judgements. Aggressive characterization of opponents. The inability to see the other side of an argument. In a word: a non-literate way of being.
We are moving from one mode of learning and evaluating a deliberate, fact-driven mode into a very different mode quick, superficial, impression-driven. That is one of the many consequences of the decline of daily newspapers. Our political culture is hardened.
People speak of a paperless society without thinking of the consequences. When information is absorbed primarily, or only, on a moving screen; when a difficult set of facts cannot reside in the mind for a period of time, and cannot be returned to for reexamination, as the physical artifact of a newspaper can be returned to, thought declines. A paperless society might save on pollution, but, by the same token, it will intensify the breakdown in thinking, thus leading to bad decisions about the environment. Environmentalists need to think twice about ultimate goals before advocating a paperless society.
Politicians who forswear newspapers for the Internet in disseminating their message and raising funds cannot complain when the political culture returns to bite them. When the culture of reading is bypassed and derogated, people who yearn to become political leaders learn that politics can eat them up alive. As we say, there are many consequences of the decline of daily newspapers.
People need to sit up and realize they can make a difference, that a daily newspaper is not just some independent force out there whose fate is subject only to unknown factors. Quite the contrary. Newspapers depend, ultimately, on readers. Its a long-range strategy, to be sure; but if you dont like the meanness and airheadedness in much of our political culture, subscribe to your daily newspaper. Read it. Let it make you think. Decide for or against any candidate or issue you like, but do so on the basis of a sophisticated and deliberate understanding of the facts.
