On the Death of "Reasoned Debate"

Maybe we aren't politically polarized, so much as we just like to argue with each other. We argue all the way up to, and past, the point of reasonableness and civility. That's Michael Wolff's point in Mean and Proud:

Now, vituperation—abuse, invective, scorn—has, I would argue, in its ideal state, no necessary political ax to grind. The desire to verbally rough somebody up is not a partisan impulse.

Of course, that’s far from where we are. We’re in a left/right world rather than a funny/not-funny world.

Indeed, polarization, or the pretense of polarization, is the only thing that seems to provide a socially acceptable excuse for vituperation. It just may be that as a function of American uptightness and verbal correctness, we’re forced to invent a political excuse to say something unkind. The end of civility, this corrosive discourse, the taking up of opposite sides is perhaps just a smoke screen under which we can express the natural desire to be impolite.

We may not be so left and right. But rather, more generally, and diffusely, we’re dissatisfied, ambivalent, annoyed, bored. Instead of left and right, we just don’t like the bland, blah-blah, pointless, and point-of-view-less media we’re getting. Hence, the restless quest for newer, more interesting, more radical forms.