The corrosive effects of excessive sentiment in American life
As the tone of the post-Newtown debate has inevitably spiralled downward, this Pamela Haag essay is worth revisiting:
As the tone of the post-Newtown debate has inevitably spiralled downward, this Pamela Haag essay is worth revisiting:
If the expanded uses of sentiment had demonstrably benefited our public life over the past three decades—if they had made us more sensitive, kind, compassionate, and gentle toward each other—they might be worth these downsides and perils. But where is the evidence that this is so? Instead, the drift in public life...is toward insensitivity, political incivility if not murderous rage, lack of manners, ironic detachment, cynicism, mutual estrangement and cultural sorting across creeds ... If anything, we seem more brutal and calloused toward each other. ...
It may even be the case, ironically, that the proliferation of a cloying, saccharine culture has contributed to a less forgiving, meaner attitude in public life. After all, the flip side of a sentimental public culture of weepy confession, fast if not fraudulent empathy for victims, and the infusion of emotion into public discourse is that it establishes precedent for the public, political currency of all the darker emotions on the spectrum of sentiment: anger, fury, and hatred. When emotions of one, gentle kind are privileged in public culture and invited into political discourse, then emotions of another kind can slide in just as easily and gain stature and political relevance, too.
