Since some elected officials can not control themselves on televised committee fiascos, and since the chair won't control them, we need to take all congressional committee meetings of the air. Those who understand these are but times for the Senators and congress people to show case how hard they fight. Yesterday with the Director of the FBI being treated very badly by the Senate Dems, most of the yelling couldn't even be understood. The intelligent and informed turn it off, the ignorant and wacko partisans eat it up and get motived to do almost anything. If they can't set the example of what a civil society is, we don 't need to see their lack of leadership skills.
There has always been bad/uncivil behavior in Congress, but I think the rise of the performative stuff neatly coincides with the introduction of C-Span cameras on both the chamber floors and in committee rooms. Everybody wants transparency, but the truth is it comes with trade-offs, and incentives completely change for politicians when they know they have an audience beyond those in the room.
The should change the rules such that various forms of rudeness cause one's side to drastically lose comment time and give it to the opposition. I'd like to see an end to people giving speeches to empty rooms as happens in congress so the speech can be read into the record and maybe used in campaign commercials. I'd much rather legislators speak to each other.
Thank you for this essay of common sense and civil discourse. In my humble opinion, we are more inclined towards tribalism and group think than at any time in my three score and ten lifetime. I put more responsibility for this on the political leaders and apparatus which have used the world of social, or more appropriately, un-social media, to juice the outrage, raise money, reward extreme views and candidates on both ends of the political spectrum and make it very difficult for candidates of moderate viewpoints to advance through a political primary. Our constitution was designed to work with a polity and governance that operated within the forty yard lines. Our "leaders " throw this to the winds for personal fame and gain. It is little wonder that the independent or non-party voter constitues a plurality of the electorate. I wonder how long this misalignment can endure, and more importantly, how much additional damage from this our country can endure?
Thank you again for offering concise and insightful wisdom to your readers.
Agree! I am not on Social Media (she types as she writes a parasocial missive to a blog author), and I'm a big advocate of in-person connection. One habit changer: if you are in discussion with someone, don't laugh at their "lib" or "MAGA" jokes. Every time you would use one of those labels derisively, instead insert "My Fellow American". As in, "my fellow American thinks that illegal immigration needs to be better controlled". And - for the love of God - if you have a platform, use it to engage with ideological opposites and treat them with respect. Lastly, speaking of libraries, add "The Vanishing American Adult" by Ben Sasse to your queue. Thank you!
It takes a lot of effort to stay out of bubbles and even then you might just be deceiving yourself. This can happen in meatspace too. The witch hunts of early modern times and the Cultural Revolution happened without the help of social media. The Great Sort is a big bubble factor in personal interaction though it happens for perfectly logical reasons.
It’s actually not that hard to stay out of bubbles. It actually takes work to enforce them and in my experience they are largely an issue for the upper 5% “laptop class”. I’m an old Democrat turned Trump as the clear lesser evil voter living in a West Coast college town. The mostly blue collar guys in my rugby club don’t live in a bubble. My center left, Harris voting, professional wife certainly doesn’t live in a bubble, but she does have serious concerns of the social & professional repercussions that would hit her if some of her colleagues found out I voted for Trump.
Your wife may not live in a bubble but it sounds like her coworkers do. Canceling her because of something you did seems over the top to me. Your reply to WR sounds like me. I didn't develop my dislike for leftists by reading right wing stuff. It came from reading their own publications which I do a lot of. Don't do social media where the real moonbats hang out but establishment left is bad enough. The LP is an island of sanity but I don't see them getting much traction.
"but she does have serious concerns of the social & professional repercussions that would hit her if some of her colleagues found out I voted for Trump."
Scary but I believe you. Glad to see (or I hope at least) that you and your wife can have civil conversations about politics without being at each other's throats constantly.
It’s fairly easy. We share the same small “c” conservative values and actually at least halfway agree on 70-80% of issues. We mostly just ignore our differences. She also knew I was an only partially civilized hillbilly when she married me.
One funny anecdote. We subscribe to the WSJ, NY Times & our local paper. The other day she mentioned an article in the NYT and quipped “I know you don’t like the Times but you should read this”. My response was “Just so you know the more I read the Times the better Trump looks in comparison”. Her response”. “Ok well just read the one article I texted you. “
That’s so awesome that you are both adult enough to tolerate each other’s differences. Every woman I’ve been with seriously has been rabid in their hatred for anything/anyone on the right. I am definitely center right so this has been a serious issue. Of course they’ve all been millennials so I think there in lies the problem.
My advice, assuming you’re looking in the professional class, would be to look for an athlete or someone who worked blue collar jobs to pay for school. Both tend to require breaking out of the upper middle class/wealthy bubble and learning to work with both a socially and ideologically diverse group.
This wisdom (good article!) reminds us of the wisdom and beauty of Jesus.
Here is a segment from his Sermon on the Mount:
"But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother[c] will be liable to judgment; whoever insults[d] his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell[e] of fire."
The politician we currently like the most is Governor Cox. He advocates this philosophy.
I don’t think we have the ability to stay “out of the library “ by our own means. It is not surprising at all that the rise of violence and hate follows the rise of secularism that is not grounded in a spiritual higher being , God. It is no coincidence that as many young people groping their way around their life are turning back to religion and God to ground themselves to deal with this chaos.
The library in my small town serves as the preferred place for free after-school child care. Not entirely a bad thing except for people who prefer the tradition of low noise there. It would be better if provided in the school buildings to those wanting it.
And further, some argue that humans are genetically programmed to be tribal from deep in the Paleolithic or pre-human times. Christian theology argues against this.
What did Jesus have to say about either human evolution or the sort of weapons that people should be allowed to own and carry anywhere they go?
While I doubt that Jesus was "divine," I respect that many of his alleged "teachings" were very "civilized" in advising people how to treat one another for their mutual benefit.
For the last several years the more time I spend online the more I fear for the future of this country, but when I spend in the real world talking to real people I become incredibly optimistic.
So true and great work! As I said in my very first post to Substack, Trump is not acting like a king but like a president with both houses of congress and the courts on his side. That is actually how democracy works, and if progressives don't like it, they need to win back voters and win some elections again. The impending congressional shutdown is just a leftwing Stop the Steal, its own threat to democracy.
Taking committee meetings off the air would be a form of censorship. I used to marvel at the way that most elected officials were more civil and intelligent in committee meetings than at their campaign events. Even though the balance has shifted in the wrong direction, there are still some elected officials who are civil and intelligent, and it is in the public interest that they have the opportunity to demonstrate that while performing their jobs.
Human beings need direction and guidance, especially while they are young and their brains are still developing. Personally, I am not religious, but it is obvious to me that, largely, religions have been the mechanism that delivered that guidance in the past. We can put aside religion (as I have done), but we had better find another way to promulgate that guidance. We have thrown out the baby with the bathwater.
John Halpin’s call for "emotional restraint, civic maturity, and personal accountability" is noble but ultimately naïve—perhaps even evasive. It places the burden of restoring democratic culture squarely on the individual while leaving untouched the massive structural forces that profit from the erosion of that very culture.
At the heart of the problem is Halpin’s likely belief—or at least his rhetorical stance—that social media platforms are the new public square, governed by First Amendment norms of free expression. But this is false. The First Amendment constrains only state action, and social media platforms are private entities with every legal right to curate, suppress, amplify, or monetize content however they choose. In fact, they are not restrained by constitutional jurisprudence—they are actively incentivized to distort public discourse for profit.
To speak of “the Library” as a cautionary tale while declining to acknowledge this reality is to play at moral philosophy while ignoring political economy.
More damning still is Halpin’s unwillingness to consider more forceful regulatory or legislative interventions—such as outlawing the dissemination of provable falsehoods, suppressing algorithmic amplification, or sharply limiting behavioral advertising. Instead, we get a sermon on civic responsibility, as if millions of Americans suddenly developing Stoic virtue will reverse the attention economy.
It is hard not to ask: Has Halpin learned nothing about human nature—or about the character of modern corporate capitalism?
The disinformation crisis is not the result of a sudden moral collapse among ordinary citizens. It is the logical outcome of a system built to exploit our worst instincts, unmediated by either meaningful democratic oversight or real market competition.
Until writers like Halpin are willing to name and confront that system directly—not with gauzy calls for better behavior but with real proposals for dismantling its machinery—they remain part of the problem they so gravely lament.
"The Library became the home for the city’s loneliest and most isolated people seeking to make some connections without any genuine human contact or real empathy." Cults like Heaven's Gate, the Moonies, the Branch Davidians, and the ghastly People's Temple are where the loneliest and most weak-minded people go to get some personal connections. We will always have them because every society in all ages has had some nut cases.
Since some elected officials can not control themselves on televised committee fiascos, and since the chair won't control them, we need to take all congressional committee meetings of the air. Those who understand these are but times for the Senators and congress people to show case how hard they fight. Yesterday with the Director of the FBI being treated very badly by the Senate Dems, most of the yelling couldn't even be understood. The intelligent and informed turn it off, the ignorant and wacko partisans eat it up and get motived to do almost anything. If they can't set the example of what a civil society is, we don 't need to see their lack of leadership skills.
There has always been bad/uncivil behavior in Congress, but I think the rise of the performative stuff neatly coincides with the introduction of C-Span cameras on both the chamber floors and in committee rooms. Everybody wants transparency, but the truth is it comes with trade-offs, and incentives completely change for politicians when they know they have an audience beyond those in the room.
The should change the rules such that various forms of rudeness cause one's side to drastically lose comment time and give it to the opposition. I'd like to see an end to people giving speeches to empty rooms as happens in congress so the speech can be read into the record and maybe used in campaign commercials. I'd much rather legislators speak to each other.
Mr. Halpin,
Thank you for this essay of common sense and civil discourse. In my humble opinion, we are more inclined towards tribalism and group think than at any time in my three score and ten lifetime. I put more responsibility for this on the political leaders and apparatus which have used the world of social, or more appropriately, un-social media, to juice the outrage, raise money, reward extreme views and candidates on both ends of the political spectrum and make it very difficult for candidates of moderate viewpoints to advance through a political primary. Our constitution was designed to work with a polity and governance that operated within the forty yard lines. Our "leaders " throw this to the winds for personal fame and gain. It is little wonder that the independent or non-party voter constitues a plurality of the electorate. I wonder how long this misalignment can endure, and more importantly, how much additional damage from this our country can endure?
Thank you again for offering concise and insightful wisdom to your readers.
Agree! I am not on Social Media (she types as she writes a parasocial missive to a blog author), and I'm a big advocate of in-person connection. One habit changer: if you are in discussion with someone, don't laugh at their "lib" or "MAGA" jokes. Every time you would use one of those labels derisively, instead insert "My Fellow American". As in, "my fellow American thinks that illegal immigration needs to be better controlled". And - for the love of God - if you have a platform, use it to engage with ideological opposites and treat them with respect. Lastly, speaking of libraries, add "The Vanishing American Adult" by Ben Sasse to your queue. Thank you!
Excellent. If only this column were reprinted in a major MSM outlet so fen more media might pick it up.
It takes a lot of effort to stay out of bubbles and even then you might just be deceiving yourself. This can happen in meatspace too. The witch hunts of early modern times and the Cultural Revolution happened without the help of social media. The Great Sort is a big bubble factor in personal interaction though it happens for perfectly logical reasons.
It’s actually not that hard to stay out of bubbles. It actually takes work to enforce them and in my experience they are largely an issue for the upper 5% “laptop class”. I’m an old Democrat turned Trump as the clear lesser evil voter living in a West Coast college town. The mostly blue collar guys in my rugby club don’t live in a bubble. My center left, Harris voting, professional wife certainly doesn’t live in a bubble, but she does have serious concerns of the social & professional repercussions that would hit her if some of her colleagues found out I voted for Trump.
Your wife may not live in a bubble but it sounds like her coworkers do. Canceling her because of something you did seems over the top to me. Your reply to WR sounds like me. I didn't develop my dislike for leftists by reading right wing stuff. It came from reading their own publications which I do a lot of. Don't do social media where the real moonbats hang out but establishment left is bad enough. The LP is an island of sanity but I don't see them getting much traction.
"but she does have serious concerns of the social & professional repercussions that would hit her if some of her colleagues found out I voted for Trump."
Scary but I believe you. Glad to see (or I hope at least) that you and your wife can have civil conversations about politics without being at each other's throats constantly.
It’s fairly easy. We share the same small “c” conservative values and actually at least halfway agree on 70-80% of issues. We mostly just ignore our differences. She also knew I was an only partially civilized hillbilly when she married me.
One funny anecdote. We subscribe to the WSJ, NY Times & our local paper. The other day she mentioned an article in the NYT and quipped “I know you don’t like the Times but you should read this”. My response was “Just so you know the more I read the Times the better Trump looks in comparison”. Her response”. “Ok well just read the one article I texted you. “
That’s so awesome that you are both adult enough to tolerate each other’s differences. Every woman I’ve been with seriously has been rabid in their hatred for anything/anyone on the right. I am definitely center right so this has been a serious issue. Of course they’ve all been millennials so I think there in lies the problem.
We’re GenX so that definitely helps.
My advice, assuming you’re looking in the professional class, would be to look for an athlete or someone who worked blue collar jobs to pay for school. Both tend to require breaking out of the upper middle class/wealthy bubble and learning to work with both a socially and ideologically diverse group.
Best of luck.
This wisdom (good article!) reminds us of the wisdom and beauty of Jesus.
Here is a segment from his Sermon on the Mount:
"But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother[c] will be liable to judgment; whoever insults[d] his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell[e] of fire."
The politician we currently like the most is Governor Cox. He advocates this philosophy.
I don’t think we have the ability to stay “out of the library “ by our own means. It is not surprising at all that the rise of violence and hate follows the rise of secularism that is not grounded in a spiritual higher being , God. It is no coincidence that as many young people groping their way around their life are turning back to religion and God to ground themselves to deal with this chaos.
Well, stay out of THAT library, but not libraries in general. September is Library Card Sign-Up Month. https://www.ala.org/conferencesevents/celebrationweeks/card
Absolutely!
The library in my small town serves as the preferred place for free after-school child care. Not entirely a bad thing except for people who prefer the tradition of low noise there. It would be better if provided in the school buildings to those wanting it.
Most places the children need to be older if left alone, but yes there should be room for quiet, too.
And further, some argue that humans are genetically programmed to be tribal from deep in the Paleolithic or pre-human times. Christian theology argues against this.
What did Jesus have to say about either human evolution or the sort of weapons that people should be allowed to own and carry anywhere they go?
While I doubt that Jesus was "divine," I respect that many of his alleged "teachings" were very "civilized" in advising people how to treat one another for their mutual benefit.
As the kids say these days: Touch some grass.
For the last several years the more time I spend online the more I fear for the future of this country, but when I spend in the real world talking to real people I become incredibly optimistic.
So true and great work! As I said in my very first post to Substack, Trump is not acting like a king but like a president with both houses of congress and the courts on his side. That is actually how democracy works, and if progressives don't like it, they need to win back voters and win some elections again. The impending congressional shutdown is just a leftwing Stop the Steal, its own threat to democracy.
Taking committee meetings off the air would be a form of censorship. I used to marvel at the way that most elected officials were more civil and intelligent in committee meetings than at their campaign events. Even though the balance has shifted in the wrong direction, there are still some elected officials who are civil and intelligent, and it is in the public interest that they have the opportunity to demonstrate that while performing their jobs.
Nice sentiment, but it seems most of current leaders have based their whole careers on doing the opposite of what you suggest.
Human beings need direction and guidance, especially while they are young and their brains are still developing. Personally, I am not religious, but it is obvious to me that, largely, religions have been the mechanism that delivered that guidance in the past. We can put aside religion (as I have done), but we had better find another way to promulgate that guidance. We have thrown out the baby with the bathwater.
John Halpin’s call for "emotional restraint, civic maturity, and personal accountability" is noble but ultimately naïve—perhaps even evasive. It places the burden of restoring democratic culture squarely on the individual while leaving untouched the massive structural forces that profit from the erosion of that very culture.
At the heart of the problem is Halpin’s likely belief—or at least his rhetorical stance—that social media platforms are the new public square, governed by First Amendment norms of free expression. But this is false. The First Amendment constrains only state action, and social media platforms are private entities with every legal right to curate, suppress, amplify, or monetize content however they choose. In fact, they are not restrained by constitutional jurisprudence—they are actively incentivized to distort public discourse for profit.
To speak of “the Library” as a cautionary tale while declining to acknowledge this reality is to play at moral philosophy while ignoring political economy.
More damning still is Halpin’s unwillingness to consider more forceful regulatory or legislative interventions—such as outlawing the dissemination of provable falsehoods, suppressing algorithmic amplification, or sharply limiting behavioral advertising. Instead, we get a sermon on civic responsibility, as if millions of Americans suddenly developing Stoic virtue will reverse the attention economy.
It is hard not to ask: Has Halpin learned nothing about human nature—or about the character of modern corporate capitalism?
The disinformation crisis is not the result of a sudden moral collapse among ordinary citizens. It is the logical outcome of a system built to exploit our worst instincts, unmediated by either meaningful democratic oversight or real market competition.
Until writers like Halpin are willing to name and confront that system directly—not with gauzy calls for better behavior but with real proposals for dismantling its machinery—they remain part of the problem they so gravely lament.
"The Library became the home for the city’s loneliest and most isolated people seeking to make some connections without any genuine human contact or real empathy." Cults like Heaven's Gate, the Moonies, the Branch Davidians, and the ghastly People's Temple are where the loneliest and most weak-minded people go to get some personal connections. We will always have them because every society in all ages has had some nut cases.