Does Scotland Want Independence?
By DENISE MINA, NYT
GLASGOW — IN just under a year, Scotland will hold a referendum on whether to become an independent country. The issue is already so divisive that the comedian Susan Calman had to call for an end to the “name-calling, swearing and death threats” she received after making jokes about it on a radio show. It’s so controversial that it would be bad manners to bring it up with anyone who doesn’t agree with you already.
Without unpacking any of the issues of nationhood, belonging or identity, we’re stuck in a rut and things are getting nasty. Each side blames the other. Fervor has enormous social currency. The capacity to listen to people we disagree with is framed as indecision.
I recently appeared on a radio program to discuss the referendum. I was billed as “undecided,” and there were three men on the panel, one pro, one con, and one an academic political analyst. Two of them had a brutal falling out before the discussion even began — in fact, it was over the group e-mail chain giving us directions to the studio. It made me nostalgic for the ’80s; it had been so long since I had seen anyone called a Communist Stalinist.
Anyway, during the course of the show I outed myself as not “undecided,” but sick to death of the debate’s simplistic binary framing. None of you are listening, I said; voters are tuning out. Referendums have to be framed as yes or no because nuance makes terrible law, but the discussion needs to be expansive because independence is such a complex proposition.
It went down quite well. The rivals finally made eye contact. I felt, quite deeply, that in shifting the agenda from an adversarial one, I had won. Outside on the pavement we stood together and the rivals apologized for their manners. I felt like Gandhi, except with his foot on the chest of a toppled British Empire, his little walnutty face laughing triumphantly at its sobbing widows. Take that, binary discourse.
(More here.)
GLASGOW — IN just under a year, Scotland will hold a referendum on whether to become an independent country. The issue is already so divisive that the comedian Susan Calman had to call for an end to the “name-calling, swearing and death threats” she received after making jokes about it on a radio show. It’s so controversial that it would be bad manners to bring it up with anyone who doesn’t agree with you already.
Without unpacking any of the issues of nationhood, belonging or identity, we’re stuck in a rut and things are getting nasty. Each side blames the other. Fervor has enormous social currency. The capacity to listen to people we disagree with is framed as indecision.
I recently appeared on a radio program to discuss the referendum. I was billed as “undecided,” and there were three men on the panel, one pro, one con, and one an academic political analyst. Two of them had a brutal falling out before the discussion even began — in fact, it was over the group e-mail chain giving us directions to the studio. It made me nostalgic for the ’80s; it had been so long since I had seen anyone called a Communist Stalinist.
Anyway, during the course of the show I outed myself as not “undecided,” but sick to death of the debate’s simplistic binary framing. None of you are listening, I said; voters are tuning out. Referendums have to be framed as yes or no because nuance makes terrible law, but the discussion needs to be expansive because independence is such a complex proposition.
It went down quite well. The rivals finally made eye contact. I felt, quite deeply, that in shifting the agenda from an adversarial one, I had won. Outside on the pavement we stood together and the rivals apologized for their manners. I felt like Gandhi, except with his foot on the chest of a toppled British Empire, his little walnutty face laughing triumphantly at its sobbing widows. Take that, binary discourse.
(More here.)
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