Outside the Echo Chamber (or, the anatomy of anxiety knots)

Hello (-ello -llo -lo), echo chamber?

Sometimes a post reaches my feed from outside my choir—I have friends and family who are conservative (and of course many who aren’t political at all).

I like this for several reasons. The most important is that I would feel wrong and discriminatory if my conversation included only carbon copies. (I love you, my like-minded friends! but you know what I mean)

Another benefit is that I get insight into the thoughts of people dissimilar to me. (This is also why I love to read books.) This insight improves my experience of the world, and it (usually) makes me feel better about the basic humanity of people, because when I engage in conversation, we can reach a point of agreement—among many points of disagreement, true, but one is better than zero.

Seeing posts from those who disagree with me causes two reactions: interest or anxiety.

I love when the posts cause interest, because I can read further and try to understand.

Unfortunately, much of the time, they trigger anxiety instead (and sadness and anger and disbelief). (Yes, the same anxiety whenever I read the news in 2017.) There is a now-familiar physical reaction I have when I see these posts.

START of knot in my chest, a little tightening and dismay

QUICKLY, I skip over the post and try not to think about it (ie, flight)

INEVITABLY, I do keep thinking about it and whether I should respond (fight); the anxiety-knot grows and intensifies

In most cases, it is best not to comment on the post. If people comment on my own posts—which is excellent and I hope continues to happen—that’s one thing. But wading into someone else’s feed, alone and scared, is asking to be overwhelmed and saddened further about the discourse that passes for argument.

The latest cause of this anxiety is a meme that features a photo of a monument with the caption, “This is a monument dedicated to Buffalo Soldiers, the black regiment formed in 1866 that slaughtered Native Americans. What the hell do we do with this one?”

Later in this post, I’ll self-medicate by taking this meme apart. But first, I have to look at those who share it and comment favorably on it. (My feed did not include any comments against it.)

It’s a safe assumption that those who posted and commented in agreement were white.

Were they unaware of their own racism? Impossible to tell. So let’s pursue the two possibilities, 1, yes, they know they’re racist; and 2, no, they don’t know. (The third possibility is that they are not racist. Ha ha! No, it’s not a possibility. To share or comment favorably on this meme, is racist.)

1. If yes, they know they are racist, then their views align with many across this country and I just have to bear it. They certainly won’t listen to me, and reasoned argument is futile.

anxious knot in my chest: large and intractible

remedy: anti-anxiety meds and take a walk/read a book/listen to music/call a friend

outcome: knot persists for a few hours and dissipates until the next one hits

2. If they don’t realize they are racist, then do I have a responsibility to point it out to them or otherwise argue? The more so if one of them is a friend or family member?

anxious knot in my chest is joined by guilt and indecision, leeching into every part of my day and inoculating me from distraction

no remedies have been found; I try writing a blog post

My companion, the anxiety knot, spurs action; and I write and I mentally argue and I read posts from like minds. Eventually—after a day or two—I can find equilibrium, mostly because time has gone by, not because anything has changed. So here we are. 

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Back to the Buffalo Soldiers meme.

There are three reasons the meme is racist: it is racist for cherry picking the characterization of the Buffalo Soldiers (in two ways), it is racist for reducing to absurdity the Confederate monument debate, and it is racist for assuming that its audience will be repulsed by honor given to black men.

Cherry picking (a k a suppressed evidence)

Cherry picking is a logical fallacy that betrays a lack of reason. Basically, it’s cheating and lying—picking just those elements that support the argument and ignoring the many that don’t.

The meme ignores the true nature of the Buffalo Soldiers and reduces their actions to “slaughtering Native Americans.” As members of the US military after the Civil War, the contributions of the Buffalo Soldiers were, by all accounts (well, except those of racists), honorable and varied. Any “slaughtering” they did was part of America’s so-called wars against the Indians, which I agree were wrong in intent and action, but certainly should not be laid at the feet of a small set of regiments among the US Army of the 1800s.

(Interesting side note: General John Pershing—yes, the same Pershing recently slandered by Trump—was a vocal supporter of the Buffalo Soldiers.)

In this way, the meme also cherry-picks one set of regiments (those who are black) to bear the responsibility of killing Native Americans, when overwhelmingly it was white regiments who did so.

Reducing to absurdity

Another logical fallacy is reductio ad absurdum, Latin for “reduce to absurdity.”

We do it all the time. Someone says, “I like that sandwich.” Friend replies, “Why don’t you marry it?” <guffaw>

It derails actual progress in debate—it stops the discussion cold because it brings us to a place that is untenable, the absurd.

In the debate about Confederate monuments, we have to wade through a lot of stuff that is simple crap. One is, as a commenter on this meme said, next we’ll be “erasing history books.” (The history books relate how the Confederacy actually lost the war, as you’d know if you’d ever read one.)

The other is that if we start removing monuments, any that have even the slightest tinge of controversy must go. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson are robust and obvious symbols of slavery and oppression of blacks (not to mention treason). The president (using the additional logical fallacy “slippery slope”) then likens two Founding Fathers, Washington and Jefferson, to Confederate traitors because they were slaveowners. (I’m not excusing the slaveowning; I’m pointing out the difference between a hero who has important flaws and a traitor, full stop.)

And then someone has to search the country to find a monument of a black person (which can’t have been easy). And then he (pretty sure it was a “he”) has to fabricate some reason that it is tainted so that he can show that black people are terrible.

Assuming the audience will be repulsed by a statue honoring a black man

Could he have pulled back the reins a little, and maybe have chosen some otherwise unimpeachable white soldier? By doing so, he would have lessened my charge of racism. But no, he had to make sure he co-opted a black hero, the subject of songs. He had to tap into his audience’s predictable reaction to the elevation of a black man.

No wonder we are all anxious. We have to witness lies and racism every day from the White House, of all places. And then from our own facebook feed.

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At the risk of bribery: I think knowing people have read this will help lessen my anxiety-knot, and a comment—in support or argument!—here or on my facebook feed would be very healing. thanks, friends of all persuasions