The Value Controversial Voices Bring To Political Debate
John Bolton, White House
Kings declared revolutions high treason in the days of our Founding Fathers. It was punishable by gutting, burning, beheading, dismembering, and scattering the offender. The pursuit of liberty was thus an act of controversy purchased at the high price of bitter death. Even with its cost, the Declaration of Independence started the revolution that ended the reign of 18th century monarchical tyranny. The empire that mutilated its society for exercising free speech was brought down by controversial voices.
For this reason, I argue that controversial voices have intrinsic value that must not be limited in society. Controversial voices are inherently valuable because they contest established narratives. In the American study of psychology, this inherent value is called “constructive controversy.” The value is instructive.
Voices that intellectually challenge the public narrative to go against the canonical mainstream and stimulate democracy. Only by controversial thought can democratic processes occur because their arguments stir new and different ideas, and drive two parties to reach a mutually advantageous compromise. Divergent voices challenge the social establishment concept. They challenge the idea that certain groups establish a society and must be inherently obeyed. By doing so, divergent voices create the needed motions that break social static.
The Peter Weir film Dead Poets Society offers us a fictional example of such a controversial voice in the form of the English teacher John Keating. Keating’s unorthodox way of teaching in an advanced prep school of 1959 New England challenges the social establishment of his time and day. Ultimately, it leads to his expulsion from the institution, yet throughout the arc of the story, he inspires his students who are challenged to “think for themselves” against the grain of the austere institutional environment. That which appears to the students as a revolutionary personality is treasonous to the establishment’s codes.
Within the film’s narrative, Keating serves as the self-aware narrator of his anti-establishment acts and explains the social functions of the “establishment” and “divergent” social personas. His description of the study and purpose of poetry gives us the necessary social comparison.
There are also the cases in which the sabotage exists in the orbit around a social character whose controversy and image are larger than their identity. The potency of social antagonism in the voices of such figures as Donald Trump has through massive collective image devalued purposeful controversy.
Trump, thus, sparks a fuel-injected movement in favor and an “anti-Trump” countermovement in opposition to his message. These two energies, as do magnets of separate poles, repel each other and defeat the purpose of controversial engagement. America is polarized not by Trump as a person but by the venom of the controversy which orbits his persona.
In this case, one might counter-argue the intrinsic values of controversial voices. Controversial voices, it would appear, are counterproductive because they are conducive to heated exchanges that are unwelcome in polite society.
Thus, one may suppose that such counter-narratives, if lacking in conformity to the canonical sensibilities of polite conversation, are a detriment to society. This coins political terms such as “hate speech” and “fake news” as convenience definitions for the underlying issue. America is uncomfortable with direct criticism based on science and reason that makes society more conscious of relying upon convenient narratives.
The absence of reason from political passion has thus led to spurts of this charged vitriol. Information gathering has been reduced to tabloid spin due to the pace that this framework of exchange demands. To politically emote has become an art, and tongues of convenience exchange silver for tin, swapping quality reasoning for a quota of responses. Suppose, then, that in the theater of American politics, the game becomes Jeopardy rather than Grecian debate.
John Bolton, former Trump administration security advisor, in his The Room Where It Happened, gives us criticisms of the Trump cabinet that were eviscerated by Trump supporters. Yet, this criticism is valuable research material to evaluate social perceptions.
Why does it elicit an angry response from the right-leaning, Trump-supporting demographic? What insights can the work give us into the character of John Bolton, and his variant thoughts on the Trump administration, of which he was a member? Why did the book, which was described by critics as “a clumsy read” so highly praised by the Trump opposition?
Observing the controversy from a scientific mind shapes an objective view of the work. To do this successfully, one must observe both the praise and the criticism that the work received. To observe the way the work is absorbed by the public is better than to form an opinion of the work-based solely on its material. Face value observation is not enough. The work is not a static political object, it is a chemical reactant in a chain of controversy.
The praise for the books is in the “devastation” it works on the Trump administration. It is being viewed as a work of expository victory by the anti-Trump party. Trump supporters counter this praise by saying Bolton’s book, and the timing of its release, imply Bolton had ulterior motives for writing it. They argue that Bolton was making a “cash grab” by publishing his memoir.
From this observation, we can understand how to extract value from controversial voices and reach a middle ground between the arguments. Controversial arguments are charged with vitriol, some of which could even lead to uncomfortable altercations in society, but they are necessary. They are inherently valuable if mediated with objectivity because they serve as a diagnosis for the social issues at present. The controversy itself creates the accurate reconstruction of the problem, even if the message delivery is inherently flawed.
In the case of John Bolton, his critics have observed The Room Where It Happened as an autobiographical think-piece that is more about Bolton than exposing Donald Trump’s failures as president. The book leads the public to focus on the personalities of the people in Trump’s White house rather than on the positive or negative outcomes of policies.
We see a similar issue in the controversy over the upcoming book by Jared Kushner. Jared Kushner has reportedly reached a 7-figure book deal for an untitled work to be published in 2022 by Broadside Books. The book promises to focus on Kushner’s work in the Trump administration on a broad scale including his work on Trump-era foreign policy.
Criticisms in the press of the upcoming book are not criticisms of what the subject material might entail or in what way Kushner’s Trump-era activities. The press focuses on narratives surrounding the Trump family. The attention centers on Donald Trump’s reaction to Kushner's book deal rather than what Kushner wrote. The press says that Trump is “jealous” of the book deal and continues to report that Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump have “distanced” themselves from the former president. The narratives divert attention from the information the book might highlight and the message it can offer public discourse. This sabotages the usable purpose of the Kushner book controversy.
Based on my analysis, I conclude that controversy must be objective to be constructive to political development. Objective controversy, proctored by unbiased commentators to analyze messages rather than make assumptions of character, is constructive. Therefore, free speech, and the platform of messages, both good and bad, must be allowed, for only by hearing the narrative and its counterpart can the audience reach a reasoned conclusion. Socrates speaks, with conviction and the Greek love of democratic reason, to the mind of this analyst, and democracy’s purpose is clear.
In this way, modern political commentators follow in the footsteps of the ancient philosopher, whose convictions and in-depth exploration of ethics in Greek politics had a profound impact upon Western thought, enough to shape centuries of debate and solutions.
