All this arguing: cant we all just get along?

We spend too much time listening to small minorities who are incensed by other small minorities
from the Observer

You need the unbending Churchills to save us from the mass-murdering Hitlers but, with no Hitlers around, the Churchills are annoying as hell.

The medias obsession with conflict means that were confronted with it so relentlessly that weve stopped questioning why its there in the first place. We ask: Which side is right? Who do I support? but not: Do they really need to be arguing about this? Why is so much of our time taken up listening to small minorities who are incensed by other small minorities rather than the vast majority who just want to rub along OK?

When watching the news, its so easy to forget what most of us are like: pleasant, polite, socially shy. We dont want rows, we want a quiet life. We feel inadequate because we dont protest and argue more we dont stand up for ourselves. And, in feeling that, we forget that the sort of people who do stand up for themselves are cut from the same cloth as the sort of people you have to stand up to.

Its a tyranny of the argumentative, an unholy alliance of the unholy and the holy, of the extreme right and the extreme left, of Stars and Stripes-burners and Quran -burners people who define themselves by their mutual hatred, have a jolly good time doing it and leave the acquiescent majority running around in circles trying to pick up the pieces.

Well, Im not going to take it any more! By which I mean, Im sure itll work itself out.

David Mitchell
Comment is Free
The Observer

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