Friday, February 21, 2003

Talk, Talk, Talk

When did the United States become a country addicted to talk? Because it certainly is. We have talk radio, we have television interviews and pundit shout-fests, we go to movies as much to hear the characters talk as to watch them slug it out or cut to the chase or tumble into bed once the talk no longer satisfies. We have deliberative bodies everywhere: P.T.A.’s, school boards, city councils, legislatures, committees, committees, committees. We meet in classrooms, workshops and seminars, therapy sessions, reading groups, garden clubs and gossip circles, where we talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.

Go to a party in America, and what do you do? Do you dance? No. Do you drink? Well, yes, but all the while you are talking. At the bar, in your car on the cell phone, there you are: talking.

Last week I took a cab to the airport, a twenty-minute ride. The driver wanted to talk about the prospect of war in Iraq. This was at 5 a.m., mind you. But, hey, I’m an American. I can talk. The cab driver, a former marine, approved of war, but he was also worried that his eight-year-old son might one day be caught up in the “war on terror.” Yet he felt that if we don’t get rid of Saddam Hussein now, things will get much worse. The terrorists will see that our threats don’t mean anything, and they’ll get bolder and stronger.

I was familiar already with the argument. What shocked me, though, was that he couldn’t in the least imagine how anyone could oppose the war. “I think the protesters are just trying to get attention,” he said. “They don’t care about peace.” The demonstrators were, in his view, just nutty. I find the same sort of perception sometimes on the other side of the debate: peace activists who view their opponents as simply crazed, blood-thirsty. Such adversaries talk all the time, but not with one another, not listening, not searching together.

As a teacher, I’m accustomed to debate. It’s my job to search out diverse views in the press as well as among my students. I’m also in the habit of moderating these views from a distance, refraining from expressing my own thoughts and feelings. And so in response to the cab driver, I merely suggested some reasons why people are protesting. Some, I said, are afraid that a war will lead to more terrorism. War will raise the level of anger and frustration in the Muslim world and drive many more young men into the terrorist camp. Other people speak out against the war because they don’t want America to be an aggressor, a nation that chooses conflict when peaceful solutions are still possible.

I don’t know if our talk had any effect on the cab driver. I myself was encouraged by it. Understanding is always possible as long as we’re still talking.

American civil society is, above all, deliberative, talky. Our nation’s founders started the habit, rebelling against the monarchy not primarily through violence but by talking. Between 1776 and 1788, between the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the ratification of the Constitution, the framers talked their way through to the creation of a new republic. That process demonstrated what has become our best tendency. It isn’t, however, our only tendency. To avoid the worst (I mean the worst in ourselves), we need the strength to turn off our televisions and radios for a time. We need to turn to one another in our daily lives and talk about this, talk it through as fellow citizens, hear one another out. When we stop talking, when the noise all comes from the mass media; when our mouths open only to say “amen” or “ditto,” then America will be a dead idea and, finally, not worth fighting for.

Talk is what makes the U.N. worth preserving as well. The United Nations is founded on a very American faith in the efficacy of talking. War is the failure of talk, a moral failure. If war is the last resort and worst solution, that is because it requires us to betray our humanity, to abandon our good words, turning from one another in despair. As long as we are finding a way to continue talking, we are affirming our highest values.

Broadcast by Joe Chaney on February 21, 2003
Media & Technology • Peace & War • Permalink • Printer Friendly
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