By Steve Witherspoon
[From your host: I’m thrilled that my request for guest ethics commentary on the current upheaval in Washington attracted an entry so quickly, and especially pleased that it arrived from Steve Witherspoon, who has contributed so much here over the years but who has been unjustly neglected in my Comments of the Day choices.]
I consider myself to be a consummate observer. I listen and observe the world around me and openly question why some people make certain choices that seem to me to be completely devoid of critical thinking and logic, delve into how choices can affect their lives and society around them, and how those choices can either damage or support our culture as a whole.
I devoted the theme of my blog (Society’s Building Blocks: Social Commentary Blog – Critically Thinking About Things That Change Our Society) to just such a perspective even though it appears that there’s almost no interest, but I’ll trudge on.
I chose “Debates We MUST Have As A Modern Culture” as the title because in a culture that has freedom of speech as a core foundation, without continuing open, reasonably civil debate regarding things that have changed and are changing in our culture, we tend to flail around with absurd anti-American culture ideals that are dominated by the completely closed minds of freedom suppressing totalitarians. We are then afflicted with cancel culture, speech suppression, and Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DEI), as well as willful rationalizations for open politically motivated Lawfare.
Let’s face it: when reasonably civil debates are tossed aside as a quaint ideal and people withdraw into their tunnel-visioned cultish cliques, bigotry ensues. Unchallenged, absurd groupthink takes hold and people become so gullible that they’ll believe just about anything they’re told that supports their bias without any critical thinking. They become ideologically-consumed parrots. This isolationist cultish groupthink has the power to completely destroy our culture, and that may be the goal of some of these cultish anti-Americans.
The United States of America is rapidly approaching 250 years old and there have been some turning points in our history that have redefined us and shifted our culture in very good and thoughtful ways. I personally believe that we are at another turning point and we are going to go through another cultural shift; I just don’t know how much of a shift we are going to see. What I do know is that this cultural shift needs to be based on thoughtful and well debated choices that are guided by our Constitution, general law and order, and how we want to present our country to the rest of the world. We need to honor our core foundations as we look to the future.
Let’s bring a little more focus and briefly list some of the current hot political topics that we must openly debate instead of simply tossing them aside as being unconstitutional, racist, genocide, apocalyptic, etc. Immigration law, law enforcement, self protection, firearms, birthright citizenship, when does individual human life begin thus giving that individual constitutional rights, protecting the environment, government overspending, and illegal drugs are just some of these.
We cannot continue to do things in the same way we’ve been doing them if we want any kind of real change.
President Trump is bringing, as brought, many of these things to the forefront of political debate and the debates MUST take place. Sure President Trump has a loose cannon mouth and does things in rather unorthodox ways and that rubs people wrong, but he’s getting people talking again. Trump is figuratively rocking the boat but those with acute Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) have a tendency to completely disregard anything he says simply because it came out of his mouth. What I’m seeing right now is that President Trump is doing is exactly what a President needs to do to lead the country. President Trump is inspiring debate; even if Trump is essentially trolling those that oppose him and ginning up the anti-Trump hate to get the debate going, the debates have begun. You can’t find what lies beneath the rock until you turn over the rock; Trump is being a bulldozer, and that (in its own way) is leadership.
I don’t know where the next four years of Trump in the White House are going to take us, but if the President continues to turn over the rocks the way he’s been doing, I suspect we’re going to see some cultural shifts away from the absurd extreme cultural shifts that have happened over the last 15+ years. The next four years are likely to be a bit chaotic.
Another relative unknown regarding President Trump’s political efforts is how the people suffering from acute TDS are going to react. We do have very recent history to look at to see what anti-Trump reactions were like to give us an idea of what could be in store for us. The anti-Trumpers clearly want our culture to shift away from the Constitution and more towards totalitarianism and those that have a tendency to support Trump want our culture to shift away from totalitarianism and back towards the Constitution. These kinds of core ideological differences can lead to extreme conflict.
Here’s my hope; I hope that the sometimes unethical manner in which President Trump does things inspires the kind of open debate needed for our culture to shift in a very thoughtful manner.
Will cooler heads prevail?
Ethics Alarms 
PRIMO, Steve.
“Unchallenged, absurd groupthink takes hold and people become so gullible that they’ll believe just about anything they’re told that supports their bias without any critical thinking. They become ideologically-consumed parrots.”
A comment from Mayor Bikeshorts’ Blog Post Dems Aren’t Done couldn’t illustrate that any better:
“Quit picking on the Dems. THERE IS A COUP GOING ON IN THIS COUNTRY.” (bolds/caps/italics mine)
YOIKES!!
PWS
Excellent commentary Steve.
Regarding debates. I have long advocated that candidates engage in what I would call the classical debate in which one topic is discussed with periods of cross examination and rebuttal instead of what we have today. I believe that a maximum of 5 overarching topics such as immigration and border security, national defense, fiscal policy priorities, foreign policy, or some other macro topic that could be expanded in sufficient detail over the 3 hour time frame would not only educate the electorate but also make the candidate focus on the issue and not the opponent. Our current process is reminiscent of childish squabbles egged on by a third party.
Jack,
Thank you very much for the honor of sharing a guest post and the kind words.
I wrote, “Trump is figuratively rocking the boat but those with acute Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) have a tendency to completely disregard anything he says simply because it came out of his mouth.”
There are really good examples of how acute TDS makes people flush critical thinking down the porcelain God, here is one titled “Serially Stupid. This Time About Gaza“. I did submit a comment to that blog post but the author hasn’t posted it.
I’m sure other EA participants could easily find more examples that show how those suffering from acute TDS has destroyed their critical thinking skills, that’s assuming they ever had the skill to begin with.
Jeez, the Dersch got awfully old all of a sudden. Is he OK?
He is 86 years old, so it’s not all of a sudden. 😉
No, he looked much better just last year. I’ve read several articles about how aging isn’t gradual but tends to come in big leaps after a period of stasis. Scary. You go to bed feeling pretty good about your state given your age, and wake up looking like the Crypt Keeper.
My first remark is that there are a number of prerequisites for a debate. In a debate it always takes two to tango, so to start we need to have two willing debate partners/parties who are willing to argue based on reason, and with mutual respect for each other. It also requires meaningful debate platforms, and independent moderators.
What we have seen in the last decade is the opposite: a party who is unwilling to debate on equal terms as they see the other party as morally inferior, name calling, platform yanking, cancel culture, biased moderators, biased media, censorship, and lawfare. This problem cannot be solved by merely debate; as I noted before it takes two to tango. The root problem is that one of the two parties has been captured by a cult, namely the cult of woke. This cult follows unquestionable doctrines, and maintains strict discipline. And as any student of the Enlightenment, it is hard for reason to debate with those who are unreasonable and obstinate, and willing to resort to power to shut down debate. This is why people like Voltaire used satire. The application for us that we need the Babylon Bee and Libs of TikTok just as much or even more than academic debate.
In November the United States received what it needed, namely a clear verdict of the electorate. In the first weeks of office Trump embarked on a blitzkrieg of action (J6 pardons, ICE, DOGE, Gaza, DEI, many EO’s), with a high approval rating of the population. The Democrats have a very low approval rating (31 %), and are at this powerless to stop Trump. The message is clear: the nation is done with as this woke bullshit, and is happy to see some action.
The Democrat party is at this moment in the wilderness, both politically and morally. The elections of new DNC leadership was a ridiculously apeshit woke affair, showing that the party is currently doubling down on their cultish beliefs. The Democrats in congress are in a meltdown, powerless in their protestations in front of many office buildings. For the many who voted for Trump this is an enjoyable spectacle, and precisely why they voted for Trump who is delivering on his promises. This is also a departure from the old GOP who after winning an election habitually got squishy, and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
So yes I am all for the debate, and I hope that the Democrats turn around to make debate possible again by becoming more moderate, and get rid of the cultish attitude. Right now I think it more time for securing the political victories, hereby guaranteeing a much more even platform for debate.
From a soon-to-be-spiked slobbering supplied by A Friend:
“Steve Witherspoon, who dozens of times in my perusal of this forum RESPONDS TO ANY DISSENTING VIEW BY CALLING THE PARTICIPANT A ‘PAID TROLL OF THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE.’ ” (bolds/caps/italics mine)
Easily, demonstrably, and pathetically false. After digging yourself in DEEP, the only reason you’d drop the shovel…is to bring in a backhoe!
PWS
No, actually it’s Old Bill who likes to do that… 🙂
I expected that reaction, though, as AF was constantly annoyed by “The Two Steves” (Steve-O-in NJ being the other.)
That A Friend comment was another of his typical trolling ad hominem comments, thus showing us why he was banned in the first place.
Technically, AF banned himself.
Jack wrote, “Technically, AF banned himself.”
Oops, I forgot that fact.
I retract my “thus showing us why he was banned in the first place” statement.
Of all of the necessary debates you list, I personally think that government overspending, particularly consistently-increasing deficit spending should be at the tippy-top of the list because it has the potential to become an existential crisis for the United States of America.
Even if we somehow balanced the budget, we’d still be paying interest on a gigantic debt that only serves to enrich other countries to our own detriment. (And in the case of China specifically, one could argue that we are enriching an enemy.)
In my living memory, I haven’t seen a serious attempt to balance the budget since Speaker John Kasich (during the Clinton administration) and I haven’t heard talk of a “Balanced Budget Amendment” since Regan.
We can’t keep going the way we’re going, and we certainly can’t spend ourselves out of debt. We can’t just pretend it doesn’t exist or make a decision NOT to pay it back because the 14th Amendment makes it clear that “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”
If I were trying to write a story about the near-future history of the USA, I could see its downfall happening over the course of several major events.
–Dwayne
P.S. Netflix, if you’re reading this, call me!
Steve,
The following topics may be worth debating
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