What differentiates a kook from a contrarian from a cultural critic?

Yesterday, I was following these Senate hearings where the social media moguls were being grilled about, among other things, whether they are suppressing the distribution of conservative posts. Good hearings to have, it seems to me. I’d like to know how the bloodless bastards who run these companies decide who sees what. Maybe we should have these hearings about once a week.

But on the very same morning, I was on a Zoom call with a self-admitted eccentric, who was complaining that he worries the social media platforms are censoring his admittedly out-of-the-mainstream views. His expressed views begin with alleged scientific evidence that undercuts the value of masks in suppressing the spread of COVID. His views escalate to: The larger problem here is that people are overly afraid of their own death—and we sentimentalize lots of the dear vulnerable old people who are actually mean assholes, truth be told.

He also told me he’s frustrated by others’ unwillingess to “punch back” at these views, when he expresses them in shops and on Zoom calls.

So I asked him why he felt it unjust that he not be able to easily find a wide and high platform to air his sanguine attitude toward herd immunization by accelerated mass global death.

I asked him to think of another time in history when the broad distribution of extremely unfashionable ideas was socially supported, or a nation where it was constitutionally guaranteed.

And I asked him to think about how he would try to express a contrary opinion 100 years ago.

Like, say, during Spanish Influenza, you thought that masks didn’t prevent spread and people who wore them were a bunch of sniveling cowards not manly enough to face down unblinkingly their likely random death.

And say you wanted to spread that opinion around. What were your options, 100 years ago? Well, you could print pamphlets and pass them around on street corners. You could start your own newsletter. You could write a little letter to the editor of one of the daily newspapers, like so many cranks so often did. Or you could stand on the street and shout your opinion into the wind.

If you lived in Chicago, on a warm night you could go to a place called “Bughouse Square,” which was the nickname, slang for a mental health facility, of Washington Square Park on the near north side. There, orators called “soapboxers” would hold forth on every subject under the moon, competing with poets, religionists, anarchists and Industrial Workers of the World (known as “Wobblies”).

Bughouse square became world-famous, actually—a tourist attraction.

“Many speakers became legendary,” according to the Encyclopedia of Chicago History, “including anarchist Lucy Parsons, ‘clap doctor’ Ben Reitman, labor-wars veteran John Loughman, socialist Frank Midney, feminist-Marxist Martha Biegler, Frederick Wilkesbarr (‘The Sirfessor’), Herbert Shaw (the ‘Cosmic Kid’), the Sheridan twins (Jack and Jimmy), and one-armed ‘Cholly’ Wendorf.”

Ever heard of one-armed “Cholly”? No, I didn’t think so.

Never heard of most of those folks, I bet. That’s because what they were saying wasn’t popular. And what’s not popular isn’t as well known as what is popular. Almost, you might say, by definition.

Now, I’m sure The Sirfessor was pretty bent out of shape that the Chicago Tribune or the Chicago Daily American wouldn’t give him a regular column to expound on his Nietzscean ideas about Egoism. I’m sure the Sirfessor didn’t see himself as a crank any more than you see yourself as a kook.

The Sirfessor would have been good on radio, too! Wikipedia tells us he once took part in “a non-stop talking contest in New York in 1928. Although he dropped out on the second day, he attracted attention by describing himself as the ‘coiner of more new words than any man in the world,’ and as ‘transcending the wit of Shakespeare.'”

But did the Sirfessor have a legitimate claim that the newspapers and radio stations were criminally and fascistically preventing him from carrying his message to the masses, in all the great capitals of the world?

No, newspapers and radio stations weren’t about to do that, because they wanted to maintain economic viability by maintaining public credibility, and the way you do that is to keep within shimmering sight of the solid land that is mainstream public opinion.

You’d have to be ignorant or purposely obtuse (as many of us are these days) to believe that such a fundamental fact of capitalist society has changed. Twitter and Facebook aren’t against conservatism. They’re against social instability. And they’re against the widespread perception that they are endangering the society in which they do business by enabling the spread of social madness.

I am not saying it’s madness to believe that there’s a chance masks don’t work as well as we think they do, though I think focusing on that possibility seems misplaced. And over a bottle or two, I would love to discuss people’s evolving attitudes about death, and how they might play into public policy regarding a pandemic; I actually have a few things to say on that subject myself.

Much more absurd than those conversations is the one that says, “I deserve to have my ideas heard by the masses, no matter how grating or odd they may sound to the mainstream ear. And anything that keeps me from doing that is a sign of creeping totalitarianism.” That really is a kooky thing to say.

If you want to get truly disagreeable or disruptive ideas heard, you either need to make them seem more mainstream—or you need to organize, and make enough noise and collect enough signatures that even the Power Guys have to listen. Because the numbers you gather begin to make your ideas socially legitimate—again, by definition. But that takes a hell of a lot of work and a lot more than inventing new words and saying them with power and wit.

Everyone knows that—except some people I know. Maybe some people who aren’t used to having their views marginalized.

But as I told my aggrieved friend, the good news is that Bughouse Square is still there, and it still looks very much like it always did, and every summer they hold the Bughouse Square Debates, where you can still say whatever words you want, and if you’re up to it, you can talk for two days straight.

There’s also the newly popular social media platform Parler, which bills itself as “The World’s Town Square,” and promises its users a place to “speak freely and express yourself openly, without fear of being ‘deplatformed’ for your views.”

That seemed to interest my friend even more.

I’m thinking a lot about how to be a better American, now—no matter who you are.

I think it has to do with speaking our own minds, and taking pains to remind our audiences and ourselves that the truth we are speaking is just that: our own.

I’m thinking about it lately because I’m trying to figure out how Americans can continue to express ourselves without making our already enraged nation explode, without destroying our already strained relationships, even with politically like-minded friends.

I’m thinking that if we were born into a country this badly at odds—or if we knew we were born into a country this badly at odds—we would behave differently by instinct. And maybe the country would be less at odds.

For instance, wouldn’t it be better if we said, “This is what I think” rather than “this is the way it is?”

This is not a new thought. In fact, it’s one I used to reject, as phony and prissy.

My prudish dad used to admonish me to always preface an opinion with the words, “In my opinion.”

Yeah whatever, Dad. I thought that went without saying.

My first publisher, Larry Ragan, was one of the most authoritative writers I ever read. His writing voice had weight that would show up on a scale, and if you were going to argue with him, you’d better wear your work clothes and bring your tools. Yet, every word he published in the commanding column he wrote for a quarter century came under the humble heading, “As It Seems to Me.” If you read the column, which he hammered out weekly on a Royal manual typewriter that sounded under his fingers like a Gatling gun, you might have found “As It Seems to Me” to be disingenuous, or merely ceremonial—like touching gloves before a boxing match.

But looking back with wisdom of an older writer, I think of Larry’s column title as a real disclaimer, and actually a healthy jumping off point for anyone who wants to express an idea. If my first words are “as it seems to me,” I can speak of things I happen to know something about—professional football history, long-distance motorcycling, communication—and I’m likely to stick to aspects of those subjects that demonstrate my knowledge. But I can’t say, “as it seems to me, the early polling numbers in Wisconsin are skewed toward Biden.” Because what in the name of Richard Bong do I know about the political mood in Wisconsin, early polling numbers or math, for that matter? I might as well be opining about the price of palm oil in Sumatra.

More and more as they age, wise people know not only the limits of their expertise—but of their experience, too. They’ve been surprised so many times by an argument they hadn’t considered, an angle they hadn’t studied, a color filter they hadn’t seen through. Or just a human howl in a pitch they’d never heard before. Just as they know the smell of emotional dishonesty or intellectual plagiarism, wise people also know the sound of personal truth when they hear it coming out of other people’s mouths, even when it’s unfamiliar and strange and seems irreconcilable with their own frame of reference.

And it’s goddamned scary, running across people—especially fellow citizens of your country, members of your community, colleagues at your company, people in your own family who seem to hold honest views that you honestly can’t square with your own—that even threaten to delegitimize your own! And having faced that feeling many times before does not make it any less fearsome. And to the professional diversity, equity and inclusion consultant who tells us to “get comfortable being uncomfortable,” that same genteel old man of mine would reply, “I’ll make you uncomfortable in about two minutes!”

These days, pretty much no matter who you are, it seems you’re surrounded by people on all political sides who are lately “emboldened,” as we say, to express themselves in what seem like outrageous ways, in inappropriate settings, at deafening volume and without much consideration for how you feel, or what you’ve been through in your own life, or how good a human being you’ve tried to be over the years.

I’ve felt that fear and I’ve felt that anger. And I’ve forgiven myself those feelings. (And I’ll feel them again; and forgive myself again.)

I’m trying to listen better, yes. I’m trying to get quicker at feeling the fear and the anger and forgiving myself so I can listen.

But maybe even more mightily, I’m trying to make sure that when I speak, it’s clear to me and to you that I speak for myself.

“I think if I teach my child to keep an open mind and have ideas of his own,” my dad wrote in his book A Child to Change Your Life, “that I must teach him to preface his pronouncements with the words ‘in my opinion.’ For they will not only make is viewpoints more tolerable to others, but should serve as a healthy reminder to him, that just possibly, he might be wrong.”

A possibility—in fact, a probability—that all Americans ought to consider more often as each of us tries to determine who in this country we can communicate with, who we can’t, and how to know the difference.

As it seems to me.