The Current State of Civil Discourse w/ Dr. Lance Strate & Dr. Paul Levinson

of August, you know. I chose the slogan intelligent conversation to describe this podcast as a response to the far too often acrimonious debate and blather that has seemingly replaced civil discourse, especially in a society that has become extremely fractured politically. I believe that we all have been guilty, at one time or another of raging on someone of

a diametrically opposing point of view. I know that there have been times when it has taken great self control for me to not end the conversation with a single word idiot. This conflict has certainly been exacerbated by our reliance on the relative on anonymity and security of social media, and it's not related solely to personal conversation either. Just recently, former President Donald Trump had a particularly contentious interview with a panel of journalists at the NABJ conference. In fact,

many including me, found it shocking. So in our quest for intelligent conversation, we have two great guests to explore the question can we return to civil discourse? And did we ever really have it in the first place. I call him the renaissance Man because he does so much. He's an author or musician, professor of Media at Fordam University, and so much more, including the author of the book In Radio Play Its Real Life, An Alternative History of

the Beatles. He is also a frequent contributor to Being Frank. Welcome again, doctor Paul Levinson, Paul, thank you for joining us again.

Association and the New York Society for General Semantics. Doctor Straits is the author of eleven books, including Brave New World Revisited, Mediacology and Approach to Understanding the Human Condition Concerning Communications, Epic Quests and There Were Excursions in the Human Life World and many more with more on the way.

Here's the recipient of many awards, including the Media Ecology Association's Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book and the Walter J. On Award for Career Achievement in Scholarship in Eastern Communications, Distinguished Research Fellow Award, also the Global Listening Center's Outstanding Research Award and the New York State Communications John F. Wilson Fellow Award for Exceptional Scholarship, Leadership and Dedication in

the field of Communications. Dr Strait, thank you for taking time to join us.

I really appreciate that. Guys. I want a little a little bit of if I might just departure just for a second and get your comments on the breaking news just recently, the prisoner Exchange, if you will, and particularly your comments on the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gerceovich. Guys, I know both of you were storm supporters of the First Amendment, et cetera, so i'd like to know your feelings on that.

who the exchange is being made from. For that is the difference between the folks that we're getting back and the type of folks that he wanted back, you know,

being assassin's murderers and other criminal types. But I think, you know, we see the same kind of thing when Israel makes a swap with say, you know, many of the Arab you know, generally terrorist organizations where they're very much one sided swaps where it's ten to one or fifty to one between folks who are taken hostage or prisoners of war in military sense, versus people who are arrested for terrorism, and maybe in some cases people who

are wrongly arrested. But you know, certainly folks who have a legal system that they can work within.

Vladimir Putin, and I don't make that comparison lightly. So it was here they are landing, and I have to say I was moved to tears watching that, and one point in particular, a lot of people, as we know, and you know, you and I have been talking about this, Frank for months now, and I've been talking to other people about it, the alleged decline of Joe Biden's cognitive capacities, and in particular, you know, some of our listeners may

have heard of a syndrome called sundowning, which happens when sometimes people get old. They're okay during the day, but they really have a sharp decline in their cognition in

the evening, hence the word sundowning. And I can't tell you how many people have pointed that out to me when I've came and I have been coming to Joe Biden's defense ever since the debate, and I have to say, you know, in fact, I posted something on Facebook book it was eleven fifty nine PM and I had just witnessed Joe Biden not only welcoming the hostages back, which was a wonderful moment, but basically fielding all kinds of questions from the media that went on for about ten

or fifteen minutes. I don't think any of us right here, you know, in this podcast, could have done a better job than he did. So I know this is a slightly different topic, and I'm not unhappy that Kamala Harris will be the Democratic nominee, but I just want to say I'm very unhappy at the way that Joe Biden was hounded out and not really given a chance.

And I think your point was maybe we could ask what the hell they were doing there in the first place and why anyone would be there, but you know, we should set that judgment aside and just you know, understand that this is the right priority. And my analogy with Israel is along the same lines. And in fact, it's one reason why we can so many of us are critical of net and Yahoo is because he doesn't seem to have that priority, the priority of the hostages uppermost.

the purpose of journalism, which is to discover. So we lock ourselves out again in conversation for another day. But the point I'm trying to make was the amount of response I got from from many people, all of them who I like and respect, was all over the board. The spectrum of responses was incredible to to yes, I agree, I understand, So like you're missing the point, and then within that people going after each other and in the ways that you know, do you really need to get there.

But let's develop that. But before I have a few questions, and I think maybe lay some background. First of all, let's want to come back to you and the Institute for General Semantics. It's a big word for most people. Fancy word, if you will, for most people. Break it down for us, what is it? Uh? You uh? Conceptualized it? Tell us about it, why it's important? What you do there?

evaluate and make sense of the world. You know, how do we know what we know and how do we represent that in a faithful faction fashion, faithful to facts. So we look at the perhaps the best known saying in general semantics is the map is not the territory, which is understanding that, you know, first of all, what we perceive about the world is not what is actually out there, but we can be more or less accurate.

And then the way that we describe the world is not the same as what's out there, and it's not even as the same as what we perceive about the world, but we can do better. And general semantics is about finding ways to do better, better ways of perceiving and talking about the world and evaluating the world. And you know, part of that is to understand the basic principle of non identity, that nothing is the same as anything else,

and everything is constantly changing. But when we talk about things, we act as if they're static and stable and nothing dynamic is going on. And to understand, you know, conscious of abstracting the fact that we move, we take information from the environment, and we get more and more general, we put things into categories. We get more and more subjective as we do that, and we get further and further away from actual reality. As it is, so a

lot of the problems. You know, in one sense, I could take this back and say, well, what do we mean by civility? And and I like the fact that you pointed out you asked, is are we really less civil? Because I think a lot of people would assume that we are, But it's not entirely clear that we are in fact less civil than we were before. And in a more concrete sense, are we less if we are? And I think a lot of us have the feeling, and we can go with that, we can talk in

an imprecise way about that. You know, we feel like something's changed, but in what sense? And to whom I think people were probably a lot less civil, uh say, to African Americans one hundred years ago than they are today, So to whom also makes a difference. But so I would look at all of these these kinds of questions. But if we're talking about civility here in incommunication, you know, then at least one of the things is we have to be clear and what we're talking about, you know,

what is it that we're referencing in the world. And when we stop doing that and we just start to talk to talk about things in these very vague categories and put people into categories of stereotypes and say you're a liberal or you're a maga, you know, or whatever, and we're just dismissing them left and right. We're bypassing, we're talking past each other. And what the best way to get past that is to go to specifics, go

to what's going on. One of our great sayings, along with the map, is not the territory, and the word is not the thing it represents is the acronym WIGO, which stands for what is going on. That's the primary question to ask in any situation, what is going on specifically, concretely, what is going on here?

it's very relative to our conversation. Moreover, my purpose in this essay is to consider the relationship between democracy and reason, that is, between democratic politics and rational political discourse. As a product of the Enlightenment. Modern democracy merged out of a particular kind of semantic environment, a particular type of

media environment. When that has happened as the semantic and media environments that gave birth to democracy have been changed and transformed, please explain that a little bit more detail. I think that's very much at the core of where we're at here.

It's coming out of modern science and the idea that we can go out into the world and see things for ourselves and determine whether things are true or false, statements are true or false, or generalizations at least are falsifiable, That we can think in a rational way, and that democracy is dependent on that ability to act in a rational and relatively dispassionate way in your decision making. And that can work on two levels. I mean, I can do it in terms of self interest and ask is

it good for me? And if it's good for me, I'm going to support it. You know, I can be selfish, you know, we call that enlightened self interest after all, or I can do that in a more kind of group minded sense and say is it good for my community, is it good for the collective, you know, society? And if so, you know, if I can make that rational determination, then I support that. And if you can't give me evidence for why that's the case, then I can say

that we need a different kind kind of policy. So and and all of that comes out of very specific media environments. And by the way, Frank, I mean in that article, I also kind of tie this together that democracy is sort of like the tip of the iceberg, and it's founded on really more basic is rule of law. And it's something that we're also agonizing about today. But rule of law is very much about being dispassionate and rational and controlling your semantic environment and saying, you know, yes,

this counts as evidence. Yes, this is a fact, No, this is opinion. Can you distinguish between them? And this is a fact based on what you've observed. This is a report that someone else has said that you yourself have not observed. That's an important distinction. This is an inference you're jumping to. You're assuming that this is true, but you don't actually have the factual basis to determine. Making these kind of determinations is very much at the

heart of that. So we go from there that both of these are founded on a sense and even the ideal of justice, which I think is paramount, they're founded on this notion of reason, that we can act based on reason rather than on other factors. But that these arise out of cultures in which literacy has taken root.

And again, if we talk about rule of law, or go back to say Babylon with their syllabic form of writing, and then the ancient Israelites with the first alphabet, and ancient Greece with their alphabet, and then the modern form coming out of typographic literacy after Gutenberg introduces his printing press. So we create a specific kind of media environment and semantic environment in which rational discourse can thrive. And then

we get to the electronic media. And this was the point where our both poemized former professor Neil Postman, you know, made the point of amusing ourselves to death that in with electronic media and especially with television and it's undermining rational discourse in favor of amusement, entertainment, drama, and the sort of emotional responses to to politics. And that means that rational discourse is becomes problematic in our time, and that is it really raises the question can we have

democracy without that as the ruling form of discourse? And it's not here that we can.

which we talk about very controversial political topics. And it occurred to me a long time ago, because I've been doing this for many years, that students deserve a professor's civility. They're paying tuition, they're taking a course, they are entitled whatever their point of view is, whatever their political point of view is, even if they are a Trump supporter. And I've had students who are Trump supporters. But I'll

make this very interesting point. I was, I think I was one hundred percent civil to them in our classrooms. But relationships continue very often after the university relationship has concluded. And so I became friends with some of these people on Facebook and other systems, and you know, I have to tell you, and this goes back to twenty sixteen.

I had to unfriended and block some people former students of mine, because they were saying outrageous things back then about Hillary Clinton, using all kinds of obscenities in a public discourse to describe Hillary Clinton. I warned them once I won them twice, they not only did not get better, they got worse. So I basically blocked them. And I don't feel the least bit guilty or bad about that. So I think students deserve oursibility, Our children deserve oursibility,

Our pets deserve oursibility. You can't get mad at a dog for bothering you, because it has to go side, you know, to relieve itself, even though it's inconvenient for you.

we all do as it you mentioned. I got a person I don't know but commented on a Facebook post and at some point I said, let's get beyond politics, let's talk about the value of a person, of a human being. I don't understand how people got past the initial trumpion when he mocked the disabled reporter who was a Politzer Prize winner, et cetera. It's all there right in front of us, So I said, I don't.

a very civil way to respond to things. And and I, you know, the way I see it is that a lot of this has to do with, you know, we have a particular kind of semantic environment that we function in, and that semantic environment has certain rules about what is acceptable and not acceptable behavior. And those rules, you know, are generally not formally established, but they are generally known by the participants, and you know, they can change over time.

But so you know, in fact, what Paul was pointing to is that in the classroom, the classroom is a particular kind of semantic environment where you have expectations and rules or I feel like norms about how people are going to communicate. Now, one of the problems that comes up is the fact that once the electronic media come into play, they have this effect of blurring boundaries, breaking down borderlines, and kind of creating this mush of semantic

environments that once were distinct. And I think a great example of this is that was it the Access Hollywood tape that caught Trump and know and that he later then dismissed his locker room talk. You know, and if you think of the locker room as a semantic environment and all male environment, then you know, he might be able to argue that that kind of talk is acceptable in that semantic environment, which, of course, that's not the environment in which Trump and was it, Billy Bush, what

was happened to be in? But and based on what I know about millennials and gen Z's and and all, I don't I think that's not the semantic environment that you'd find in a locker room today. But it you know, for those of us of a certain age, it wouldn't be that far afield from from what you would call that, you know, locker room talk.

cursing like a drunken sailor. So you know, that was understood. And I think when we talk about civility, maybe a more more concrete way to talk about it is about formal rules when we communicate, and that there used to

be many more formal rules about communication. A child addressing an adult would refer to mister or missus or miss and would not call someone by their first name, you know, and understood that growing up when I was a kid, you know, little little kid growing up in Queen's and my mother would take me to Manhattan, you know, go by subway. She'd say, we're going to the city. You have to dress dress up, right, I mean you have to dress differently to go to the city, to go

into public. You know, people acted differently and differently in movie theaters. You know, people wouldn't think of shouting out or applauding, you know, or doing these kinds of things. I remember when that started to happen in the seventies, you know, and folks, you know, media studies kinds of you know, mediacology type folks, you know, saying, well, it's sort of like people have gotten too used to television

and they're acting like they're in their living rooms now. Uh, but I think that's a lot has a lot to do it. When the Sopranos came on, you know, it suddenly it became much more. There was much more of

a license to curse in public. And nowadays, you know, I remember having my son when he was little and being at a McDonald's and at a table next to me there are people cursing up a storm, you know, just thinking like, well, geez man, you know, you're in a public place, you're in a place that kids eat,

you know, and you're talking this way. So I think at a certain point, you know, this is really what we're talking about, that when we have formal rules and this idea that you are violating them, you know, you know, things are actually are much more civil, and there's been this gradual erosion. And when Trump came along, he just took it, you know, I mean he pushed it up, you know, did a quantum leap on it. But not

discontinuous from what has been going on all along. But you know, obviously we're all kind of mindful about how much how badly this has gotten out of hand.

in the nineteen thirties. And I said earlier that I think Vladimir Putin is the closest living person to Hitler in power today. But even Putin hasn't gone as far as Hitler went, and that was in an age of radio, not television. And on the other side of it, I just I'm finishing a course I'm teaching at Fordham University this summer. And there's a media theorist that I'm sure Lance is familiar with his work, Andre Mehr, who wrote a book just about two years ago called post Journalism

The Death of Newspapers. And what he argues in that book, and he's obviously not the only one who's arguing this, is that it's social media that have brought us to this pitch of incivility and why is that it's because unlike television, which is not a perfect medium.

tell the truth, say something in between. And all that people care about, and we've talked about this at great length as well, Frank, all that people really care about social media is not whether something is true or not. It's whether something is provocative enough to merit likes and shares. And that's that's the story right there. And so if we're worried, and I think we should be, about the deterioration of our public discourse, if you want to blame

a media system. It's Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, et cetera.

actually quite more formal than Americans. I mean, American culture has a long history of informality relative to others, but there was nothing uncivil about the way Germans interacted with others, except to the point where when we talk about people who are considered not worthy of their respect or their civility, which goes back to my point about say African Americans in the United States one hundred years ago, or many other minority groups for that matter. So it's really not

about that. And I think television definitely has resulted in this because for all of the commercials for say, feminine hygiene pop products, a lot of the distinctions and our Paul's old classmate Joshua Morwitz makes this point about again breaking down barriers that areas that formerly were very formally distinct. This is this is what men talk about and what men know, and it is kept from women, and this is what women know and talk about and it's kept

from men. All of these boundaries start to break down and we get this coarsening of the culture. And it didn't start with social media, and it really did start with the television culture. You can see it. And I have nothing against the music, but in the kind of style of punk rock, you know, we see, we saw that coming out, and it's again, it's been it's been continuous. I will say that. You know, again, Paul, you through in polarization.

be your waiter for today. I don't want to know your name, just get me my damn food.

You know, to me that again, this idea of rules, you know, uh, you know, and it and that can be for evil. There's that old cliche of the bad guy who's always an upper class guy, and he's said, you know, like manners, mister Bond, you know, one must have manners. You know that that that sense of civility is not it does not correlate with ethics or morality, but it does serve as a basis and it has to be extended.

But I'm not wearing a jacket and tye. But I'm wearing a vest and you know, pretty nice shirts. So but here's the point. Anytime I was on television, and this still applies to some extent, I'm on my best behavior because I'm aware that God knows how many people are listening to me seeing me, et.

mediation in the human system. And so that's why I think social media are the main impetus for the attack on civility.

we're seeing people acting in very uncivil ways. And that's not counting dramatic series where again, the the the you know, it's gotten more and more uncivil as time goes by, as you go from Leave It to Beaver say to the sopranos, and you know we're seeing that happening, do.

Humor might be better. Should we be absolutely clear, this is the way I feel, I will not tolerate this. Our boundaries important. What's an effective way to deal within what we said, the medium that we have right now, which is social media, et cetera. What is the most effective way to deal with people who we run into all the time, who vehemently disagree with our points of view.

And in fact, you know, I mean the idea there are only two sides to every issue, you know, the pro and con. But there are many sides. You know, let's understand that there are many sides, and let's look at you know, there are fifty shades of gray. There are fifty million shades of gray when we're talking about what is going on. But you know, the first thing is to say, what are the facts, you know, what is really happen happening here? And then the question of

policy is what should we do about it? Where we can uh, you know, look at you know, how do we how do we understand these facts? And you know, what what are effective plans for dealing with them? And maybe we can disagree on what would be most effective.

But uh, you know, again, if we can do this, of course civilly, it is your point, you know, without resorting to name calling, without resorting to labels and stereotypes and insults, And uh, I would question humor is the problem with humor comes up where you know, it means I'm making fun of you because we disagree. So I

don't think that's going to to work. Uh, you know, and it does tend to create put us on different sides, uh, you know, for me to make you the butt of a joke, or or to make fun of something that you're taking seriously. So let's take it all seriously, and let's always on understand. I always go back to as Paul knows, I'm a big Tolkien Tolkien follower, and it's

it's a line. It wasn't in the movies, but it's in the books from Lord of the Rings when these Hobbits run into the Ants who are the giant tree herders, and they've never met them before, and they ask them whose side you're on, and the ant tree Beard answers, I am not all together on anybody's side, because nobody

is all together on my side. And I really love that those words, and of course he goes on to say, but I am no friend of those tree burning orcs, you know, which is let's also have some moral clarity here, Well.

correlates very highly with intelligence. And if you can find someone who appreciates your humor and they appreciate you appreciate their humor, they appreciate your humor right then and there there's like a connection between the two of you, despite your political differences. But realistically in terms of who we can talk to in a way that's less provocative and less nasty than the way that increasingly people are talking to each other.

a majority. And then of course gets more complicated, you know, because some states are swing states with the electoral college, etc. But I think that those are the people who, for whatever reason, are in the middle. They have problems both with the Democrats and we're just talking politically here and the Republicans and what you don't want them to do to give up on the system and say, so the hell that I'm just not voting. And by the way, people in their twenties are among the most extreme in

that group. Obama was thrilled when he got close to sixty percent of first time voters in their twenties. I mean, that's insane. It should be ninety eight percent or something like that. But I think that that's where we have to try to reach out as much as possible, turn near the cheek when we can in the hope of engaging these people. However many they are who are on the verge of giving up on the political system in total, don't have any.

favorite podcasts. That includes Apple, Spotify, iHeartRadio, and all the rest. And because Being Frank is archived, you can listen to any of our programs anytime you like. Find a link for Being Frank on the Hudson River Radio Facebook page or at our website Hudson Riverradio dot com. Just click and you're on. My guests. Fordham University media professors doctor Lance Straight and doctor Paul Levinson had a wonderful discussion

up to this point. We only have a few minutes left to pack in all this great stuff, and I want to talk a little bit about former President Trump, who's incendiary political rhetoric from day one only seems to get fiery, if that's a word, more fiery incendiary. Most recently at the NABJ conference with a very confrontational interview with a number of panel of journalists. But you know, we see it as firing up his base. Is he part of the root of the problem or our leaders?

Do we follow them that to that degree where his incendiary rhetoric becomes his follower's rhetoric lance, Why don't you take that first and we'll follow up with Paul Well.

being nasty. And I think in that instance, I would just go back to this context collapse that is characteristic of the electronic media in general, and here in this case in television, where you could go back to Ronald Reagan who understood that when he gave a public address, his audience, his real audience, was not the people gathered in front of him in the face to face situation. It was the folks watching on at home, and that he would look into the camera and not at the audience.

So while he was called the great communicator, he in fact was a poor public speaker, but an excellent television personality. So I think in the same way, Trump's audience, as he understood it, was not the African American journalists gathered there at that moment. It was people who would be watching in that moment or watching clips of it later on Fox and among his followers via social media, where he would be seen as standing up to these you know,

woke and you know, leftist types. So I think that was really what's going on there. But in terms of your question, you know, absolutely, you know, once again, I think it's this amplification. Trump understood television quite well and understood electronic media and just pushed it in the direction that it was already going. In mediacology we talk about

the bias of the medium. The bias of this medium, of all electronic media, is towards greater informality, less boundaries, less for you know, less distinctions, and he just he understood that, you know, perhaps not in a in an overt way, but certainly in an instinctive way and just pushed it to where it could go, and it served him well for him.

of fascism with obviously disastrous consequences. I mean, arguably everything that's going on in the Middle East is even a result of all that, because Israel was formed in the aftermath of the Holocaust and it really destroyed not only civility, but all kinds of important and good things in our society. But the reason why I keep going back to the nineteen thirties in Nazi Germany is I think that fascism is something that has been inherent all over the world,

including sadly, the United States. And why does Trump continue to say these outrageous things, And you and Lance both you know, said as much. It's because he knows that there are people out there, disgruntled people, you know, angry people, people who feel they've been pushed aside, left aside, and now suddenly they have a champion who is speaking what they've been feeling, and they love that, and nothing is ever going to get them to stop voting for Trump

when Trump. Just give one tiny example, when Trump came down with COVID nineteen, when he was still president, I saw a guy, you know, he looked, I don't know, like you know, like a typical Trump supporter, you know, a big, angry guy, you know, furious. His face was like perpetually red with anger. And he was standing outside the hospital and he was crying. He was so upset, and he said, I don't know what's going to happen

to the president. And I realized that this man loves Trump because Trump epitomizes and vocalizes everything, every unfortunate, horrendous thing that he has been feeling for most of his life. And we need to recognize that that fascist impulse was not destroyed at the end of World War Two. It was pushed back down and under, yes, but it certainly wasn't destroyed. And what we're still seeing, you know, with and this answers your question in another way, who can

we be civil to? I have no problem being civil to a traditional Republican. I have no problem at all saying, hey, I know you think it's good. You know, trickle down economics. Let's give tax breaks to mainonnaires and bionaires. They'll make better commerce, everybody will benefit. I disagree completely with that economic point of view, but I can express that difference

with civility and respect. I get people have different points of view, but I can't be civil, and there's no point pretending that I can be to an adult who so strongly identifies with and supports Trump and now his new underling lack ejd Evans.

So you know, if we're saying that you know, I'm hurting, and you get this sort of like polite response that doesn't speak to who I am as a person, then that civility it feels, you know, like an upfront And the fact that Trump was able to just like knock that all aside and his communication is what appealed to these people who are feeling disaffected, who are feeling shut out, and that you know, so you have to understand that civility is not an unmitigated good and that it is

used as I said, you know too, you know, for class distinctions and to shut out people who are who you don't like or who are not like you, you know, the deplorable, so to speak, and so on that night.

Note I mean, I would differ with my friend Paul, and I would say that everyone deserves civility, everyone should be treated civil, even if they're not civil back to you, and that that is the only way, just as as a parent you treat your child, you act as an adult even when your child is being juvenile and immature and acting out. That is the only way to get past this.

public Facebook account. You can message me and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you, so we appreciate that. And of course, one quote that I always think is kind of appropriate to our show. It's one of my favorites from Marcus Aurelius, and I think it's appropriate. It says, waste no more time arguing about it. What a good man should be be? Okay, and Paul, we another reason I love to have you on because you always bring music with you. What are we going to listen to for this program?

And when I was recording my album Welcome Up, Songs of Space and Time at Old Bear Record Studios up in Betavia, New York, I brought along this demo and has a lot of scratches on it, and I said to the producer, Chris Hoysington, Hey, this sounds a little like rain, doesn't it. Maybe you can put some special rain effects in there and you won't be able to tell the difference between the square ratches in the recording of the raad. He said, good idea, So he put

in some harmony and a couple of other instruments. I put in a little harmony. That's what you're going to hear. Cloudy Sunday with me singing the lead.