Page 72 - Time Magazine-November 05, 2018

put the ball in Rosen’s court by asking, “Based on A MASS CRISIS DEMANDS
what you’ve said, there’s really no hope, we should
just get the hell out of there right now, right?”
Rosen was stumped. He admitted that he didn’t ac-
tually know what should be done, that withdrawal
might lead to a spike in sectarian violence and that
“it could be Rwanda the day the Americans leave.”
As a knowledgeable observer of a complex war,
Rosen knew enough, despite his first impulse, to
know he didn’t have the answers.
Civility is a style of argument that implicitly
welcomes response. It is a display of respect and
tolerance, which make clear that you are engaging
in a conversation, not delivering a last word. Un-
like contempt, which generally seems less about
your targets than about creating an ugly spectacle
for your own partisans to enjoy, a civil argument
is a plea to all fellow citizens to respond, even if
in opposition. It invites the broader body of con-
cerned citizens to fill in the gaps in my knowledge,
to correct the flaws in my argument and to con-
tinue to deliberate in a rapidly changing world.
Anytime we as a nation act in the world, we are
met with a host of second- and third-order conse-
quences, sometimes consequences of greater sig-
nificance than what we initially set out to fix. The
invasion of Iraq, and the rise of jihadism that fol-
lowed, taught us that. Debates about how to respond
to Saddam Hussein had to be followed by debates
about the insurgency, the breakdown of governance,
the value of international aid vs. military action, the
rising influence of Iran, the costs of inaction in Syria,
and the escalating refugee crisis. Critics of today’s
policy may have useful information for tomorrow’s
problems. Which means we should engage them in a
style of discourse that isn’t about “destroying” them
but about inviting them to respond.
Whether this leads to electoral victories is an-
other question altogether. The civil debates where
good-faith participants collectively grope toward
better answers to our most pressing challenges are
happening in small corners of the public square.
Meanwhile, we have a President who came to office
flinging insults. Clearly, stoking rage and contempt
in the public square can work. It excites us. It gives
us courage to act in the face of uncertainty. If in-
stead of hesitating before the other and acknowl-
edging that we do not fully know them or their
motives or the extent of their virtues and vices, Civility is a style
we reduce them to the least charitable caricature
possible. Then we feel on certain ground. But we’re of argument
never on certain ground. And while abandoning
a process of thoughtful deliberation can win you
power, what it can never do is give you a hope of that implicitly
using that power wisely.
welcomes response
Klay is the National Book Award–winning author
of Redeployment
54 Time November 5, 2018
A MASS RESPONSE
BY DAVID FRENCH
iT’s noT ofTen ThaT an obiTuary goes viral,
but this October a family chose to expose its im-
mense pain for all the world to see, and the story of
that pain rocketed around the Internet.
Madelyn Linsenmeir was 30 when she died from
her addiction. She first tried OxyContin as a teen-
ager, a moment that “began a relationship with
opiates that would dominate the rest of her life.”
Reading on, you find that she had a son. And when
she became a mom, she tried “harder and more re-
lentlessly to stay sober than we have ever seen any-
one try at anything.” But, her family wrote, “she re-
lapsed and ultimately lost custody of her son.” That
loss was “unbearable,” and her addiction took her
to places of “incredible darkness”—a reality that
friends and families of addicts know all too well.
Madelyn was one life among the hundreds of
thousands (72,000 in 2017 alone) lost to drugs.
Along with suicide and alcohol-related deaths,
overdoses are fueling a stunning three-year de-
cline in life expectancy in the U.S. These deaths
of despair are happening in a time of robust eco-
nomic growth in arguably the most prosperous and
powerful nation in the history of the world, and
the decline began even as more Americans had ac-
cess to health insurance than ever before.
When historians review this period, they’ll see
two seemingly disconnected cultural realities, ex-
isting side by side. Yes, they’ll see the astounding
death rates and the terrible spread of self-harm.
They’ll also see something else—a nation divided
by fear and anger. America has become a nation
that mourns and a nation that hates, and the two
are more related than they may appear.
Negative partisanship has infected nearly every
corner of political life. By 2017, 81% of Republicans
and Democrats viewed the opposing party unfavor-