What we need to do differently when we talk politics

To the extent that society can be understood as a big family, psychologist John Gottman has important suggestions for improving our communications. Based on his track record, Gottman is someone to whom all of us should carefully listen. His techniques have allowed him to predict with 90% accuracy which newly marriage couples will still be married six years later. Gottman describes many of his techniques in The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, a 1999 book that has enriched the lives of countless married couples trying to get back on track. In this book, he demonstrates that there is no better way to destroy a working relationship than to employ the following four techniques, which he labels “the Four Horsemen”:

A) Attacking another person's character or personality; B) Showing contempt through such things as sneering, sarcasm, cynicism, name-calling, eye-rolling, mockery and hostile humor. C) Defensiveness that proclaims that “The problem isn’t me, it’s you.” And D) Stonewalling: tuning out completely.
When I read this list, it struck me that these four techniques precisely describe the state of political dialogue in this country. These are also the techniques by many of the people who conduct interviews in the media. Think, for example, of a typical Bill O'Reilly interview, though O'Reilly is merely one of the more egregious examples. Many news programs expect and encourage conflict in an attempt to keep the audience mesmerized so that the network can sell more advertisements. The resulting conflict commonly manifests itself through these four above-mentioned techniques. It is critically important to note that none of these techniques is necessary, no matter who the other person is and no matter what he or she is saying. Smart and disciplined people don't stoop to these techniques. Period. Here's another important cause of communication failure: In functional relationships, the parties communicate at least five times as many positive ideas as negative ideas to one another. Consider that the ratio of positive to negative in public forums is probably the reverse of the minimum optimum. In most contemporary forums where political ideas are discussed, it is a rare bird who dares to admit that one's opponent has any decent ideas at all. Instead, we hear the parties villainizing each other and attempting to totally destroy each other ideas. Success is all too often seen as publically demonstrating that the other person, almost always termed one's "opponent," is an idiot. In short, the way we publicly attempt to communicate with each other regarding the important issues of the day has been scientifically demonstrated to be a guaranteed formula for failure. What is the solution? For starters, it would require that we stop using the above techniques when we attempt to communicate. In fact, until we call a cease-fire regarding these four techniques, further attempts to communicate will only exacerbate conflict and paranoia. Until we change the way we attempt to talk with each other on many news programs, it would be better if we stopped talking at all. That's how bad things have gotten.

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Knowing someone versus loving someone

When I was a teenager, I sometimes got annoyed hearing people getting all excited when they talked with their children about the Disney characters Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck. I thought this was strange, because very few people could tell me anything at all about the personalities of these cartoon characters, other than what they looked like. In fact, I had seen a few old cartoons involving Donald and Mickey, and many of them left me unimpressed, bored or disturbed. Donald often flew off in a fit of anger. Not always, but often enough. Mickey didn't have the anger problem of Donald, but people who "loved" him usually couldn't tell me anything about him other than that he appeared in some cartoons, including "Steamboat Willie." Is he an exemplary character? Very few of the people who love him seem to care. I see the same phenomenon today. Tonight, I ran across this especially disturbing cartoon of Donald Duck, probably not one that you'll see featured at Disneyland. I can hear it now . . . "Hey, kids, look! There's a funny cartoon where Donald Duck commits MURDER!" I'm sure that most people don't care that Donald committed murder. They "love" him no matter what he has done. This cartoon goes to show you that people can think that they love a character without knowing anything at all about that character. We are really good at projecting, filling a knowledge void with good things (or bad things) about a character, a movie star or even a God. Case in point is Jesus, whom many people claim to know or love yet they know so very little about him. Or think of the people who insist that God loves us, yet they aren't interested in knowing about the many genocides committed by the God of the OT. Or consider a more modern example of a person who many people "love" or "admire" without knowing anything about her: Sarah Palin, who I've previously compared to "Helly Kitty." It turns out that many modern corporate characters are intentionally left empty, allowing the public to drum up their personalities in their imagination.

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Where It Begins

I watched a family friend turn into a Nazi. Back when I was a kid and didn't know very much about the world or people or anything, really, except what was in front of me that I thought was cool or what was around me that hurt, my father owned a business. A number of his customers became friends. One in particular I remember because he was a Character. Let's call him Jonah. That wasn't his name, but he did get swallowed. You read about these sorts of fellows, amiable, not well-educated folks with mischievous streaks. Jonah was like a great big teddy bear. He stood over six feet, spoke with what might be called a hillbilly drawl. I don't know what he did for a living, exactly. At ten, eleven, twelve years old that didn't seem important. He was an avid hunter and that more or less formed the basis of his relationship with my dad. Jonah was always quick with a joke. He was the first man I ever met who could do sound effects: bird calls, train whistles, animal sounds, machinery. He had a gift for vocal acrobatics that brought to mind comedians on TV. He could get me laughing uncontrollably. I suppose a lot of his humor, while outrageous, could be considered dry because h had a marvelously unstereoptypic deadpan delivery. Jonah came to our house regularly for a few years, mostly on the weekends. He ate at our table, helped dad with projects occasionally. He had a wife and a couple of kids. The kids were way younger than me, so I didn't really have much to do with them. I remember his wife being very quiet. I would say now that she was long-suffering, but I didn't know what that meant then. She was a rather pretty woman, a bit darker than Jonah with brown hair so dark it was almost black. She wore glasses and tended to plumpness, what we used to call Pleasantly Plump. They lived in a shotgun house with a big backyard. Which Jonah needed. He collected junk cars. This is what made him rather stereotypical. There were always three or four cars in various stages of deconstruction in his yard, various makes and models. He'd find them. Fifty dollars here, a hundred there. He himself drove a vehicle that probably wouldn't pass inspection today and he was always fixing on it. He found these cars and would proceed to develop grand plans to cannibalize them and out of the three or four, sometimes five, heaps he intended to build one magnificent vehicle that would run better than Detroit assembly-line and last forever. He would get energetic, tearing into them, and according to my dad he exhibited an almost instinctive ability to mix and match parts and actually do engineering on the fly. He came up with some first-rate gizmos out of all this, and from time to time an actual vehicle would begin to take shape. I can only assume he applied much the same philosophy to the rest of his life. He owned one decent hunting rifle, which my dad managed to improve, but also owned several "clunkers" which he was always bringing in to my dad's shop to fiddle with. Jonah never seemed to finish anything. I didn't perceive this as a big deal then.

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Amy Goodman interviews Glenn Greenwald on the corruption of the American media

Glenn Greenwald, a former constitutional law attorney, is now a contributing writer at Salon.com. He is the author of a number of books. His most recent book is titled Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics. Greenwald, a severe critic of the American media, discussed the state…

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