Criminalizing those who disagree

Sid Schwab illustrates just how disagreeable disagreement can be. He is trying to deal with his own feelings and perhaps should take a careful look at his own post.

The derision. And the take-no-prisoners attitude — the downright hatred, so it often seems — toward “liberals,” suffused throughout.

…

But reading some ER blogs, unlike any other category in the healthosphere, is like listening to Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter. It’s a polemicist’s playground.

…

I consider George Bush the worst president we’ve ever had (and no, Mr. Bush, history will not vindicate you).

…

it’s just that the rightward ER docs blog, and the leftward ones go home and tie-dye.

The issue is one of judgment versus opinion. All too often it seems that those who do not see things as they would are perceived to not only disagree but to be wrong or, even worse, criminal. Groups are created and bad behavior assigned to everyone in the group.

Here, the use of polemic implies a negative yet the entire post fits the definition of the word. The choice of people to label with polemicists as an epithet is indicative of significant ignorance of the actual behavior of those people. Seldom do you see the health blogs engage in polemics such as in Dr. Schwab’s own entry and the commentators he cites, while definitely engaging in polemic discourse, do not engage in the sort of dishonesty and detachment from reality he illustrates.

Dr. Schwab sees hatred but does not illustrate what he sees as such. His perception of the prosecution of “liberals” does not fit any rational observation and, as such, indicates that his own perceptions may be suffering some bias from his feelings about things. If there is any hatred to be seen, look no farther than his comments about the President. The pulling in of prognostication about history is quite indicative that emotion is at work and not rational thinking.

What you have here is not a “I disagree” but rather the expression of disagreement as a judgment. This is a confrontational approach that indicates a closed mind driven by emotion. It is an approach that does not indicate a high level of intellectual integrity.