LISTEN. THINK. SPEAK WELL ... OR REMAIN SILENT?

I have been following Tommy Robinson's relentless problems with the U.K. establishment for some time. I see Tommy as the proletarian who has awakened to his assigned status of "less than" in his society after attempting to be what he thought was normal, like being a soccer hooligan. 

Watching Tommy is so frustrating. You see, I identify with part of his personal struggle. I was raised speaking a local dialect of Boston accent, a dialect which identified me as a yob. People in my birth environment tried to win arguments by yelling louder than the opponent. And, if that didn't work, violence was inevitable, among both men and women. My Jesuit teachers were kind enough to shame me out of that accent in high school. 

Tommy has become the tortured voice of British proletarian angst. I don't think the bourgeois media and threatened authorities want to understand that he does not only represent the angst of White Brits. Tommy represents the angst of national populations all over The West who have been ignored as the powerful design global economic and immigration policies in a misguided attempt to avoid conflict.

It is easy to dislike Tommy's rhetoric. It is unpolished. It escalates, even when he is alone in a room with his own camera. What he is trying to say is undermined by repetitious verbosity, poor diction, limited formal education and the inability to be measured in the presentation of his passionate beliefs. But Tommy's rhetoric is more common than many with academic degrees would like to admit.

Twitter is a polluted stream of Robinson-esque overstatement and rage, spewing forth from anonymous trolls, primarily from the self-validated with nothing intelligent to say. But many of them are middle class people with university degrees.

We are losing the ability to listen in The West. Everyone wants to voice their immediate reactions to everything. I include myself in this. But I am trying to work through the impulse. 

Listening actually means reading as well. Smart phones and computers are like personal interpreters. The fingers try to convey something in digital print that otherwise would be spoken to an individual's face or to a room of people. And those least capable of conveying their reactions in a coherent verbal way are probably most prolific on forums like Facebook and Twitter, as opposed to YouTube. 

Listening, thinking and speaking well in reply used to be called "conversing". Now it is confused with debate. Some of this can be attributed, I believe, to the typing culture. Some is attributable to the vast anonymity on line and in actual society, which breeds a chronic defensiveness, especially for those who are open about their real identities. 

We have seen what has happened to Tommy Robinson for being identifiable. None of his recently voiced opinions have warranted the type of persecution he has suffered. None. Yet a large portion of the British public have shrunken from openly defending him while a small segment of the establishment have persecuted him. The Brits who actually understand his rage and say nothing behave like the loathsome people who watch a single person being beaten up on the street without helping. 

Ultimately, I have to support Tommy Robinson. Not because I like Tommy Robinson. I don't have to like an unknown victim in a street attack before I intervene on his behalf. Nor do I have to remain silent after listening and giving thought to what I decide is mental garbage. Tommy doesn't either. That is what "free speech" means. That is how we protect it from those who would kill it. 

Free speech is an essential tool to human advancement. It is a tool. This means some can use it to craft beauty. Some misuse it to craft ugliness. Some will never be able to use the tool eloquently, but that does not prevent others with intelligence from listening and thinking about what they have to say. Cutting someone off, no matter who they are and how they speak, before trying to consider what they are trying to say with sincerity and civility is, and always will be, a form of intellectual self-deprivation. And that is the essence of stupidity.