My Nickel's Worth  /  The Bulletin  /  February 4, 2010

Over the past several months, the Op-Ed pages, for example, have shown many of us have tried to form opinions about important socio-political issues. There has been no shortage of pundits and advocates eager to inform us about the issues. I’ll call them “opinionists,” aware that my spell checker does not recognize the word. I’m frustrated that the only opinion I formed over these last several months is that dialectics is dead. With very, very few exceptions, the modus operandi of the professional and amateur opinionists is to inflame belief and extinguish effective reasoning. I have identified what I believe are some of the operating rules of opinionists and would welcome help completing the list.

Rule 1: Create “bad guys” to make the issue personal
Rule 2: Opinionists/bloggers with the same opinion make impeccable references.
Rule 3: Never explicitly label assumptions.
Rule 4: Acknowledging and identifying trade-offs is a debilitating waste of time and effort that might lead to compromises.
Rule 5: When confronted with cognitive dissonance (when factual details conflict with the opinionist’s opinion), retreat to a higher level of abstraction. Example: Forget the factual details of a proposition. You have to agree democracy is good and taxes are bad.

Ron Knapp

Bend