If you want to accuse someone of going on a rant, look to your own long winded, increasingly defensive responses… It’s not that I’ve been incoherent, it’s that you’re uncomfortable with the points I’ve made, and need to find a way to tear them down and invalidate them, rather than self reflect.

Speaking of the pot calling the kettle black. This is precisely the point I was trying to raise with you, in as respectful and productive a manner as I could, and you’ve come back with the equivalent of: I know you are, but what I am?

I’m actually not uncomfortable with the things you’re saying. I simply think they miss the point. The fact that I’m trying to discuss it with you through “long winded” responses should show I’m not attempting to tear down and invalidate what you say. I’m being quite open and honest here in reality, when your own responses could just as easily be called increasingly defensive.

Also, I was clearly using the term “Woke” ironically.

Yes, I got that you meant it that way. Do you think it makes a difference to what you said in your first comment? Why should it? Part of the issue with ‘cheap’ buzzwords is that they often elicit gleeful and equally cheap condemnation that doesn’t advance anything, either. Your use of it is a perfect example of this.

But, isnt “Ok, Boomer”, as it is typically used, itself a rather flippant response?

Yes, it is. I’ve already stated why I don’t think that in itself is a problem. A flippant response to someone heckling you, mocking you, or preaching without listening to you is not inherently a bad thing. I brought this up because once again you are throwing around accusations you are far from innocent of yourself. Talk about invaliding rather than self-reflecting.

If there is no universally accepted standard for where the high road is, and if taking it is no longer part of the understood social contract we have with each other, then the broader social conversation devolves to the lowest common denominator.

Michelle, I do think we probably agree on a lot more than we disagree on. You might really enjoy my essay on “The Eclipse of the Modern American Public,” since it talks about this in particular in great detail (then again, it is a long one, so perhaps you wouldn’t, lol). But one problem I keep seeing coming out of these conversations about the high road and civility and so on is that they are usually couched in very black and white terms even when we don’t intend them to be. It is perfectly possible to criticize someone’s ideal of the high road without rejecting all standards. If you go back and read my last comment, I was careful to note that I don’t believe there are no shared or common standards.

However, social contracts, social conversations, and the high road itself are all part of a broader landscape of social norms that determines how these concepts are understood, and which evolves and changes over time. That we often resort to complaining about why there are no standards anymore just from the fact that someone is saying something critical about your standard is perhaps a sign of the deeply polarized times we are living in. But it does also suggest a lack of awareness or appreciation for the way that social norms function and shape the standards we have for ourselves and often assume to be universal. I think there needs to be a humility and an honest conversation about this tendency and the problem it presents before we can really make productive assertions about what universal standards there are.