Beck to the Future
Everyone rags on Glenn Beck, and there certainly is much reason to, but I think we need to spend more time looking hard at ourselves and how our society has come to a point where his style of discourse is the preferred method. Even though many of us might disagree with Beck factually, are we really doing a good job of upholding a higher, more logical, form of discourse? Don’t we seem to be running towards buzzworthy capsules of information and away from well constructed arguments, regardless of the position of those capsules? And we certainly don’t seem to be doing a very good job of teaching kids how to construct and interpret arguments, based on my experiences in ENGL 30 and other classes with peer editing. Aren’t our methods ultimately much closer to Beck than not? If his method of discourse truly takes over, how will anyone ever be able to argue against his assumptions (it’s already impossibly difficult)? Dunno, man.
