Reading Catbus’s account of abortion protesterswas pretty discouraging. I sometimes like to pretend that people who disagree—even on an issue as loaded as abortion—can at least communicate. Even if they can’t understand the other’s perspective, perhaps they can at least accept the other side’s good intentions.
Before going on, I must concede that not everybody on every side hasgood intentions. Some have ulterior motives. Some people are malicious or crazy. Others are so consumed with zeal they are willing to compromise anything to get their way. In college, I accidentally exchanged a few emails with Randall Terry, who personally damned me. He is one crazy dude.
But the existence of some fringe elements shouldn’t mean the rest of us can’t communicate. When Catbus sees an old guy standing outside a clinic with a rosary, she sees lunatic. I see a guy with a genuine passion to protest (or perhaps pray over) something he considers a terrible wrong. When she sees “old white dudes speaking Spanish to anyone who doesn’t look white enough for the Aryan Nations,” I see somebody trying (and obviously failing) to make an extra effort to speak to somebody in (what he erroneously assumes is) their first language.
I would be more critical of these characters if effective communication was easier. Newborns cry to let everybody within earshot know that something is wrong in the world. Maybe they’re hungry. Maybe they need their diaper change. Maybe they have early-onset existential angst. It’s not a very precise message. Unfortunately, we don’t get a lot better at communication with age. We act aggressively toward strangers because we worry about somebody we love. We snap at trivial or imagined offenses because something entirely different upset us earlier in the day. We blame personal frustration on distant or imagined enemies. We pick fights with unknown people because we want somebody to notice us. We are bad at personal connection.
Perhaps this is why I’m skeptical about extreme language from either side. Empathy is difficult enough without assuming the worst of others. Graphic posters of dismembered fetuses or baby strollers splashed with fake blood don’t help people understand each other. Neither does calling opponents of abortion “right wing nuts who are in a full-blown panic over the fact that they don’t have a legal right to control and punish women who have unapproved sex lives.” Maybe this sort of thing energizes the base, but it doesn’t build any bridges.
