Can We Hear Each Other Again?

From Blind Rage To Blind Faith, Reading Novels To Casting Ballots, Six Writers On The Promise And Pitfalls Of Bridging America's Political Chasm

THE ENDURING EMPTINESS OF OUR PUBLIC RAGE '

BY PHIL KLAY

RECENTLY A FRIEND ASKED ME, WITH WHAT I thought was a hint of suspicion in his voice, why my writing was so “apolitical.” It’s not the first time it’s happened, but it always surprises me. I’ve written about military policy under both President Obama and President Trump. I’ve questioned what we’re doing and tried to write about what flawed policy looks and feels like to those tasked with carrying it out. To me, this is inescapably and obviously engaged political speech.

But to my friend, a smart guy who nevertheless spends a surprising amount of his time online coming up with inventive ways to crassly insult his political enemies, there was something lacking. Something to do with my inclination to be “unfailingly polite,” as he called it. I try to avoid making personal attacks, or casting my arguments in the typical good/evil binary of partisan politics. My friend is a veteran of a tough deployment to Afghanistan. He’s acutely conscious of how thin our public discussion of the wars has been. And, more than anything, he’s acutely conscious of the ways our collective failure as a society to demand serious oversight of the wars has direct, physical, violent impact on people we know and care about.

If you look back on the human waste of the past 17 years and are not filled with rage, is there not something wrong with you? And if you want to be honest in public debate, if you don’t want to engage in the kind of lies and obfuscations and doublespeak proliferating across our body politic, don’t you have to let that rage slip into your speech?