CxD #230: progressives attacking each other; architectural innovation for squirrels; Jon Stewart's logical views flounder
I’m at a loss of what to do with a story like this. A woman’s dog was attacked by an unstable person. She wanted to help find the attacker and remove him from the streets.
And then race enters the story—begins to play a dominant chord, rather—and things fall apart from there. People start attacking one another.It was a random incident that might once have been discussed by a group of dog owners. But now it had a forum for a much wider community, with arguments about policing, vigilantism, homelessness, mental health care and progressive obstinacy all feeding into a conversation that evolved beyond the crime that set it off.
“It’s complicated,” said S. Matthew Liao, a professor of bioethics, philosophy and public health at New York University. “It’s a conflict of values, between wanting security and social justice. Everybody has a responsibility in some ways.
“There are a bunch of issues here, a bunch of threats,” he added. “We can deal with them in a compassionate way, or a not compassionate way.”
I worry that we’re becoming so fixated on ideologies, of whichever flavor, that stupidity is taking the place of compassion.
Is there something obvious I’m not understanding from this story?
Source:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/07/nyregion/dog-attack-park-slope-brooklyn.html
2. Meanwhile, this guy made this, and we should all aspire to such architectural genius!
3. Watch this interview below as yet another example of rationality flailing and flopping when faced with a person holding fixed views, who doesn’t have the capacity to reflect on themselves.
What’s needed as a next step is more spaciousness in conversation, which the television interview format doesn’t (or can’t) grant. It’s hard to be vulnerable and open and open to self-reflection with cameras and lights and microphones and a structure set up for gotch-ya moments, no? So all that Jon Stewart can do is restate the problem which the person on defense can’t admit.
The rebuttal “I have some facts somewhere by someone I can’t remember who but I have them” is enough for the defensive posture to continue to dig in.
What’s another way to continue this dialogue? Perhaps stepping back and spending more time finding common ground?
One thing that especially upsets me is the expression on the Attorney General’s face, which seems to be one of impenetrable stonewalling—one that says I’ll do the interview, but I refuse to actually listen. Am I being biased here?
TLDR: I have facts but I can’t remember them isn’t a sturdy foundation on which to develop public policy.
