Disagreement, not disrespect

By SKIP MENDLER

I looked down the length of Main Street with just a bit of trepidation. As in the last couple of years, Waynepeace was again part of Honesdale, PA’s Memorial Day Parade. We were a small gaggle of about 20 peaceniks, led by an American flag, a Veterans for Peace flag and the Waynepeace “Seek Peace” banner. Some of us carried John Bromberg’s small “winged hope” puppets, and others carried cards to be distributed to the crowd with various words of peace. Andrea started up our song for the day—Pat Humphries’ benedictory round, “Peace, Salaam, Shalom”—and we were off, among the Boy Scouts, floats, antique cars and marching bands.

I always wonder before these kinds of events what kind of reception we’ll get—but I needn’t have worried. Generally, I have found people are either supportive or, if not supportive, at least polite; events have, after all, shown us to have been (let us say) more right than wrong in the concerns that we voiced before the invasion of Iraq. Even those who disagree with us recognize that we are exercising precisely the rights that our soldiers are said to be fighting for in Iraq, and they respect our right to do so. Our part in this unspoken arrangement is also to act with respect—so we carried no other signs and voiced no other slogans critical of the war or the Bush administration, but just tried to carry the message of our witness for peace.

That mutual respect is consummately important. From our point of view, after all, our call for peace would sound pretty hollow if we caused conflict in our own community. And on a more purely practical level, we all have to live together here, and interact face-to-face on a daily basis, and none of us have any reason to make our own lives more difficult by unnecessarily ticking off our neighbors.

Online, of course, no such strictures apply. I wander occasionally into the minefields that make up Yahoo’s message boards and discussion groups. In these spaces, the signal-to-noise ratio is depressingly low, although one can still find cogent observations and even some dialogue, and a perverse competition exists among some participants to see who can be more repulsive in their trashing of their opponents. (The practice is called “trolling,” and has no purpose other than denigrating and provoking people.) I recently got a broadside from some anonymous fellow who wouldn’t deign to tell me what I had said that was the source of his rancor, but apparently just wanted to sling insults back and forth. (“Nazi” was one of the more polite terms, and one of the few he used that I could print in a family newspaper.) I chose not to descend with him into those particular depths. As the old Southern saying goes, “Never wrestle with a pig—you both get dirty, but the pig kinda likes it that way!”—and after a while he went away.

That would be an ugly way indeed to handle everyday life. So I am very grateful for the acceptance that most people in our area have shown to diverse points of view. I hope that I’m successfully carrying out my side of the bargain—and I welcome dialogue with anyone who might feel that I step on their toes accidentally. The address is smendler@care2.com.