Ignore the linguistic central planners and talk about whatever you want.
Ignore the linguistic central planners and talk about whatever you want.
I n February 1907, a small newspaper in Harrisburg, Pa., demanded an “aroused public opinion” about the reckless way in which Americans were now living their lives. The paper condemned people who amused themselves “in a way that endangers the bodies and the very existence of their fellow citizens,” criticizing those who run railroad trains, electric trolleys, and automobiles at a speed “that implies an outrageous spirit of recklessness.”
The paper’s antidote for such carelessness? It suggested a “national conversation” to inspire a “counter-movement” in favor of safety.
In the early 20th century, it was odd for a newspaper to call for a national conversation on anything, because most newspapers understood that their readership was local. So when the Daily Ardemoreite in Oklahoma called for a national conversation in 1925 about whether eating oysters caused typhoid, it went largely unheeded. (Much to the dismay of oysters.)
But in this century, calling for a national conversation about a topic favored by the cognoscenti has become a rhetorical crutch, overused by progressives concerned that too many of the wrong people are having incorrect local conversations.
One need not be online long to bump one’s head on a call for a national conversation. Topics recently deemed worthy of the nation’s undivided attention include race, abortion, the Oscars, mental health, guns, high-speed rail, wildfires, reparations, pit bulls, drinking during the pandemic, obesity, and football. (It would be tough for us Americans to all talk at once about obesity while stuffing our mouths with sandwiches that use fried chicken patties as bread.)
Doubting the efficacy of calls for national conversations, in 2016 Wesley Morris of the New York Times searched a media database and found that in 2015, the term “national conversation” was used three times as often as in 2000, 2005, and 2010 combined.
“The term has become the sad equivalent of the jolly drinking axiom,” wrote Morris. “It’s always national-conversation time somewhere.”
If, following William Safire’s advice, clichés are to be avoided like the plague, one must then stay off the internet, as the online world is a wet market of hackneyed platitudes. In the case of calls for a national conversation, the cliché substitutes for an argument. Calling for an issue to be the topic of every coffeehouse discussion conveys that an issue is too serious for regular Americans to ignore. It’s assumed that the issue is of paramount importance, and who would question that?
But simply deeming a pet cause worthy of a national conversation isn’t the end of that argument. For instance, I believe there should be a national conversation about how people who put clothes on dogs should be barred from wearing clothes in public themselves. (Either you or the dog gets to wear an outfit, but not both.) I am not offended, however, if my strong opinions are not reflected in the vox populi.
Ironically, calls for a national conversation are more worthless than ever, yet they are coming at a more rapid pace. In the past, cigar-chomping newsmen could force the nation to pay attention to the agenda they set. Now, the conversations we have bubble up from hundreds of millions of social-media accounts on Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram.
Keep in mind, a call for a national conversation is never intended to provoke an actual conversation. It is simply a call for you, the unenlightened, to sit at the knee of the master and soak in the wisdom. No one calling for a “national conversation on reparations,” for instance, has ever conceded any ground on what they believe about racism in America. They just want you to hear what they know to be the correct answer.
Calls for everyone to be talking about one topic can often be a diversionary tactic to keep people from talking about an adjacent but less comfortable topic. When Vox called for “normalizing conversations about mental health” after Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman checked into the hospital for depression, it ignored the more important fact that Senate Democrats dragged a sick man over the finish line on Election Day, knowing full well he would suffer. Democrats torturing a man with a brain broken by strokes simply because they need his vote seems far more worthy of a national conversation than an anodyne reflection on mental health.
And who can forget the debate technique of then–presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who’d respond to ridiculous questions by saying that America needs to have a “conversation” about the topic. When a town-hall attendee asked her if America should allow murderers and terrorists to vote while sitting in prison, she replied, “I think we should have that conversation.”
(If you’d asked Harris if she wanted to have a conversation, she would likely have responded we should have a conversation about it.)
But trying for the centralization of discourse is ultimately worthless. People in different parts of the country are going to discuss issues important to them in the way they deem appropriate. Americans should just keep having local conversations about local issues.
In fact, what America needs is millions of personal conversations — discussions with friends, family members, and neighbors. What does your community want? What don’t you want? Regular citizens are far more likely to be convinced by arguments from people they know than by an opinion writer at a legacy outlet telling them what to think. If someone from, say, NPR sat me down and began lecturing me about climate change, I might be inspired to expedite the process and light myself on fire.
The temptation to nationalize conversations is understandable at a time when all news, no matter how local, can take on nationwide importance. With social media, a shooting at a bank in Fargo or a dustup at a school-board meeting in Ypsilanti gets vacuumed up by clout-chasers and then scattered across the country’s online devices. The ubiquity of these local stories makes citizens of all ideologies feel as if they are under siege: Liberals think there is a high probability their children will face some sort of gun violence at school, and conservatives are certain their kids will at some point be forced to take fentanyl by an illegal immigrant disguised as a drag queen.
It simply follows, then, that the only way to stop a sickness that has penetrated America as a whole is to have a “national conversation” about it. But what if Madison, Wis., wants to have a pot dispensary on every block while Ocala, Fla., doesn’t? What if my workplace has a stellar record on race relations — does my corporate leadership still have to hammer its employees with diversity regulations and sensitivity training?
In any sane federal system of government, an individual vote for city council should be more important than the vote for president. (It should not go without noting that the previously elected and currently indicted former president had a great deal to do with the nationalization of all issues; when you claim the country is broken and you are the only one who can fix it, people begin to turn to the president to ameliorate all their problems, no matter how personal.)
Further, the quest to be part of the “national conversation” can tempt corporations into clunky and embarrassing actions that ultimately hurt their consumers. The newest corporate fad, for instance, is environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing, in which portfolios are measured based on their adherence to trendy causes. A 2020 paper by scholars at the University of Exeter explains “why ESG investing generates value by having lower returns,” which is akin to a paper titled “How eating cyanide pills will help you lose weight.”
And who can forget when Starbucks tried to get their employees to start conversations with their customers about race? That ended in the time it took to mix a chai latte, as people merely jonesing for caffeine and a scone did not want someone who couldn’t spell their name correctly to lecture them on the conflicts between W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington.
And, of course, calling for a national conversation online is redundant. If you put it on the internet, your column can be accessed by anyone, anytime. Just make your argument, and if a lot of people want to hear it, it will be national. Demanding your observations be popular is the “please clap” of column writing.
So go ahead, have your conversation. Have it with a priest. Have it with someone on OnlyFans. Tweet it. Write a letter to the paper. If you strike a nerve, it might one day be a national one.
Ignore the linguistic central planners and talk about whatever you want with whomever you want.
Unless you’re arguing in favor of dressing up your dog. That is just mean.