You’re new to the neighbourhood.
It’s a small neighbourhood — an older cul-de-sac with big, spreading maples reaching out over the road, a children’s park at the end of the street. Sometimes, there are shouts from a nearby soccer field.
You and your spouse know it’s old fashioned, but you decide to have a neighbourhood barbecue on the weekend. There are only seven other houses on the street, and you reason it might be a way to at least get to know your neighbours.
And you get lucky — the day of the barbecue dawns sunny and stays that way. The allotted time arrives, and so do the neigbours. Soon, the backyard is full, voices a steady hum as smoke wafts up from the grill.
Dave and Helen from No. 6 arrive a little late, and you distinctly feel the temperature in the yard change. Maybe that’s your imagination, or just a cloud skimming across the sun.
Dave shoulders his way up to the barbecue. Helen’s peering at the salads other neighbours have brought.
“Gimme a burger, you dope,” Dave says. “And get a move on.”
You’ve just gone through the first batch of burgers; there are burgers on the grill again, but they’re not cooked through yet. You say that.
“Don’t be such an idiot. You’re not one of those do-gooder health nuts, are you?” Dave says, and then turns his back.
Here’s a question; the next time you have a party, will you be inviting the folks from No. 6?
Remember, this is the first interaction you’ve ever had with Dave. He’s arrived in your backyard like an email with an unfamiliar address dropping into your in-box.
A couple of weeks ago, I did a column on handguns. In it, said I really wanted to hear people’s opinions: “I’m asking for your input here, so you can jump right in to the meat and potatoes of your argument,” I wrote.
If your opening sentence is offensive, belittling or insulting, you lose any audience that doesn’t already agree with you immediately.
I got many, many thorough and well-thought-out replies — some even talked about issues I’d never considered, like the need for an accurate record tracking where handguns used in crimes actually come from, and the significant amounts that some gun owners have invested in their collections of legally purchased, properly stored weapons.
But as one week stretched into two, the tone changed. More and more, it was as if readers had gotten as far as the end of the headline — “No one needs a handgun” — and started writing. Not about their support for handgun ownership — yes, there were still some of those, but for the most part, they were just screeds that began with a message about how stupid, biased and uninformed I was. (I’ll admit, I didn’t bother reading those ones as carefully.)
This is a big part of what passes for public debate now, especially on social media.
And we’ve got to stop it.
Calling Justin Trudeau “Turdeau” or “Trudope” might play well to a coterie of the likeminded, but it also telegraphs to others that there’s no need to keep reading. Calling Andrew Scheer a “dangerous Nazi” has the same effect for a different group of people. None of it advances anything. It just hardens the positions people already hold.
It also means we can’t have a discussion about issues or policies anymore — only a fight. And it’s relentless.
My advice? Stop shouting. And not just at me — at anyone who you want to understand something that you feel deeply about.
If your opening sentence is offensive, belittling or insulting, you lose any audience that doesn’t already agree with you immediately.
That is, if you really want an audience, or to change a mind.
And Dave? I’m not inviting him back.
Russell Wangersky’s column appears in 36 SaltWire newspapers and websites in Atlantic Canada. He can be reached at [email protected] — Twitter: @wangersky.
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