Tom Zoellner: This is why we fight, online

This guy is a U.S. Border Patrol agent, someone I barely knew in high school. We have almost nothing in common except that we’re the same age and we both grew up in Tucson. He’s a Trump supporter who thinks Hillary Clinton belongs in prison, that papers like this one are full of fake news, Seth Rich was murdered by Democratic Party hit men, immigration is a mortal threat and Barack Obama was a Russian stooge.

His views are ridiculous and abhorrent and all-too-common among people who should know better. He shouldn’t be worth a second thought, except he is, and my first instinct upon hearing the latest embarrassment to the Republican Party is to post it on his Facebook page with a needling comment. This sets off a firecracker string of assertions, chest-thumping and insults. His friends pile on. It’s just another day.

I cannot break free. In this unprecedented era of funhouse mirror public policy, when the warnings of Upton Sinclair and George Orwell are frighteningly prescient, he is my chance to yell back at the television screen or talk-radio gasbag with somebody actually listening and responding. When I wake up to incriminating news about Donald Trump — i.e., every day — I’ll slap the link on his page with a pointed comment. To which he’ll reply with the usual stew of benghaziemailsteeledossier, blah, blah, occasionally with a “socialist” tossed in like a dash of pepper. Though he can never be convinced, I try to bang some sense into his head. How can he possibly believe that? Why doesn’t he friggin’ see?

We drink a beer together every now and again , and we have a standing agreement never to discuss politics face-to-face. It should go without saying that I like him personally. He’s a devoted husband and father; he’s got an interesting job; he served as a Marine in the first Gulf War; he’s got a quirky sense of humor.

So why do I march into pointless battle with him every day? Another way of asking that question is why so much of the American political stalemate has moved onto the spray-painted walls of social media: A venue considered so central to our political conversation that Russian trolls made it one of their first targets. Why do we insist on the endless “debate” that goes nowhere?

Because we need each other. Political passion needs a foil in order to justify its existence. The ancient Greek poets knew that opposites take on dimensions according to each other’s polarities: Cold cannot exist without warmth, north must have a south, wet needs dry. Or as Heraclitus said: “The road up and the road down are the same thing.” Perhaps on some level, my center-left beliefs aren’t that interesting unless I can throw them at my friend and have them thrown back.

Most of my real-life friends don’t see it this way, and they prefer to avoid the trench warfare of the politicized internet. I can’t say that I blame them. The grade-school insults, the insufferable opinions, the seeming futility, the possibility that your arguments against a particularly idiotic meme are greeted with laughter in some control room in St. Petersburg: All of it is enough to drive most rational players away. And yet Heraclitus knew that the most energetic dialectics conform to an overarching law of stability: Objects may be hurled around the room, but the room never changes.

Our court system tells plaintiff and defense to hack at each other with merciless zeal with hope that some version of the truth might be left squiggling on the bloodstained floor. That may or may not happen. It is almost beside the point, because the struggle is the essence of the conversation. It isn’t a search for the truth: It is the truth itself.

Novelist John D. MacDonald told the story of two soldiers in a Korean War platoon who detested each other and exchanged constant verbal abuse. When one was killed in combat, his rival grieved his loss as though it was his best friend. I’d probably have a similar reaction if my Border Patrol agent stopped posting on Facebook or — even worse — ever took my side on the squabble of the day.

I can’t stand him. But I need him. This relationships functions through dysfunction, and in that way, is as American as can be.