84% reject civility

Kevin Drum points out the results of an astonishing survey showing that basic civility is dead in a vast portion of the blogosphere.

And no, this has nothing to do with profanity. The seven dirty words may be rude and inappropriate for children, but civility actually has very little to do with keeping one's language G-rated.

I'm talking about a much more fundamental rejection of the foundations of civil conversation, as measured by this survey by Right Wing News, "Rightosphere Temperature Check: Polling Right-of-Center Bloggers on Key Issues." Here is the dismaying response to the survey's second question:

2) Do you think that a majority of Democrats in Congress would like to see us lose in Iraq for political reasons?

Yes (53) — 84%
No (10) — 16%

So the overwhelming majority — 84 percent — of right-wing bloggers are operating from a presumption of bad faith. And they're proud of this.

This is staggering. Here is a group of people defiantly, enthusiastically rejecting the most basic and necessary starting point for civil discourse, for honest debate, for democracy.

Civility requires — that is, is impossible without — a presumption of charity. This is as fundamental to honest and meaningful conversation as the similar principle, the presumption of innocence, is to the legal system. Yet here are 84 percent of right-wing bloggers surveyed cheerily admitting that they view anyone who disagrees with them as guilty until proven innocent. Not just guilty, but treasonous, reprobate, evil.

This underscores why civility means so much more than politeness or decorum. Incivility of this degree renders conversation impossible. If you begin with the presumption that those you are talking to do not mean what they say then you have no basis for listening or responding to them. Their words, and the intent of those words, cannot be trusted. All that matters is their malevolent secret agenda, which of course they will deny because they are malicious liars.

Because they claim secret knowledge of this secret agenda, there's no need for these right-wing bloggers to engage the ideas or evidence presented by those with whom they disagree. This secret knowledge makes it seem reasonable to them to respond to any disagreement by jamming their fingers in their ears and shouting "La la la, I can't hear your evil lies, la la la."

This is how 84 percent of the "rightosphere" responds to the views "the majority of Democrats in Congress," and how they respond to the majority of Americans who voted that Congress into office. A poll finding that 67 percent of Americans disapprove of President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq is evidence to these right-wing bloggers that two-thirds of Americans "would like to see us lose … for political reasons." (Or, at best, that the ABC News/Washington Post pollsters want to see America lose, and thus are fabricating the results of their poll.)

I want to return to this presumption of malice, to explore further why it renders civil discourse — and therefore healthy democracy — impossible; to explore how it can make you stupid; and to discuss why it is counterproductive if your goal is to persuade others to agree with you.

For now, though, I just want to point out that this presumption of malice exists among the majority of right-wing bloggers. They are not merely uncivil; they reject civility as a goal or a value.