These are interesting and difficult times for all Americans, though the predicament of our Republican brothers and sisters bears special reflection. Economic philosophies establishing corporate personhood, privatizing profits, and socializing losses have proven disastrous. Surrendering vigilance over our integrity, we sold the American soul to feed our addiction to oil, paying military profiteers with blood and treasure.
Now, to top it all off, shamed through the basest instincts of greed and fear, we excuse ourselves through denial and obfuscation. Admitting the culpability of our policies is embarrassing and depressing, but public acknowledgment of a flawed ideology would profoundly disrupt a well-established collective mythology. While the left reacts with naval-gazing and apologies to the world stage, the right... not so much.
Dealing in Hatred
Escaping accountability for one's actions results in contempt for authority. Witness the arguments of children attempting to weasel out of punishment. Best pretend it wasn't us. Yell, "Buffalo!" and point in the opposite direction. Toss sand and blow smoke. Blame others.
On a national scale, right-wing denial manifests through an epic projection of negativity toward fellow Americans, pelting them with any contemptuous racist or political epithet that might possibly stick. The smartest conservatives recognize the implications, but rather than lead their fellows to higher ground, they guide them into the depths, fueling chants of hatred and playing the fears of their constituents like a fish on a summer line.
Like the pushers they are, they manipulate ignorance, paranoia, and restlessness to their own ends and depths. The tactics are elementary, like making someone trip on their own shoelaces. Play on the elimination of civics classes and the decay of critical thinking skills. Play on the instinct to "hang-em-high" and the confusing (hey, let's call it pinko!) Latin term habeas corpus. Make believe that guns will be confiscated and pretend that babies and grandmas will be stalked and killed by death squads. Whip it up. Make loud noises and pretend you're going to pass out. Play on holocaust imagery even if you really don't believe that the holocaust happened; think ghost stories. Pretend the other guy is really scary, maybe - THE BOGEYMAN. Pay no attention to the eerie rhetorical correlations between American militia and jihadists. Play or be played. Either way, you increase your numbers.
Stupid - The New Opiate
Too many of our countrymen and women surrender to these obvious tactics and embrace their most primitive instincts. Embarrassing to admit one's ignorance has been tapped. Easier to brazenly celebrate ignorance, ridicule intellectualism and education, then, crazy like a fox, play dumb, NOT SURE if Obama is an American, NOT SURE if facts are facts.
Serve a tea steeped in ignorance, a tea which turns everything it bathes into stupid. As with any opiate of the masses, we have the drug, the druggie, and the dealer. Dim the once bright light of a tempering conservative integrity. They'll buy anything we sell them which counters their self-interest, as long as we fan those quivering fears and keep the snake oil hot.
Implausible Deniability
Hypocritically offering a half-hearted mew for criminal threats to cease, Republican leaders feign innocence: "Nuh, UH! It's not OUR fault that our people foam at the mouth and take literally our red-meat-rhetoric. These are just innocent words, patterns of letters . . . Reload to destroy the Obama Antichrist regime, annihilate evil socialism, and clean your weapon to prevent the Armageddon of health insurance reform! It's not inflammatory, it's true, an' anyway, butter won't melt in these mouths ... 's not OUR fault we're frightened! We're not bigots, you are! Everything you say bounces off me and sticks to you." Political bullies . . . such fine examples for our youth.
Such tactics scorn the precious treasure of our national dialogue, reducing it to taunts between petulant vicious grade schoolers. Republican pundits maintain that the phrase "social justice" is CODE for something dark, deeply disturbing, and to be feared at all costs. On the other hand, hangman's nooses and talk of shooting census workers with a shotgun is merely metaphor ... not at all code ... more tea, dear? Pretty soon, you have to double down for real depth. Have some seditious hate speech with that, it won't hurt 'cha -it's been cut with pure metaphor. Makes you hear chainsaws and banjos!
Perhaps rejecting the Death Star and Beelzebub as a bit too sci-fi, conservative hyperbole nonetheless effortlessly conjures images of freedoms lost to an evil empire of black government helicopters, easily imagined by Americans steeped for decades in the imagery of Die Hard with a Vengeance and 24. The paratroopers landing outside our schoolyards are not those from Red Dawn, but rather are from God-Zillan Democrats Eat America, only, OHMYGOD, it's not a movie! It's real, true life, AAAGH . . . metaphorically speaking. (I'll see your fear-mongering hyperbole and raise you a bit of ridiculous parody!)
We see little movement toward higher ground. Instead, conservative leaders stick their fingers into their ears yelling "Lalalalala!" at the top of their lungs, filling media space with their own denial. "Cut taxes!" "Small government!" the surrogates bleat like windup toys whose batteries are failing. Read your hand if you forget. Nothing else comes out - no nuance, no recognition that our problems are multi-faceted. "You know what? We're gonna take our marbles and refuse to participate!" pouts the crotchety old non-maverick elected to our participatory government ... as if refusal is by choice rather than grief over destructive philosophies and a bankruptcy of solutions.
Stoned on Ignorance
Perhaps we should show compassion for our fellow Americas now rearranging the ideological deckchairs on the Titanic of their disintegrating belief system. But, then.... "Intellectual elites!" they grumble petulantly in desperation. Really? Up with Ignorance? Down with smart? Up with falsehoods and disingenuous spin? Down with logic because it upsets your cultural mythology? Indeed, how will you sustain your story with all these gaping holes? Celebrate stupidity . . . that's your strategy?
As a matter of fact, it is. A recent tea party convinced my neighbor that our taxes should not pay for children to go to school after the eighth grade if they don't want to go. Let the little buggers get a job and contribute THEIR taxes toward the education of students who really DO want to attend. Counter-arguments be damned 'cause they might make sense. A travesty of this magnitude does not represent the best hope for America.
The Dangers of Second Hand Depths
To make matters worse, the tea appears to have slopped out of the pot, for the left too often surrenders the high road. "Snark" is in the air. The blogosphere is filled with the bullying energy of liberals gleefully dancing and gloating around conservative posts: "You're an idiot - no, YOU are!" Acting out becomes the oh-so justifiable norm. Honest, solution-based dialogue can be characterized as pushing a car uphill with one's nose.
The Clean and Sober Higher Ground
From across the world, from the left, the center, and the right, voices begin to lift above the berserker cries of the tea-crazed - the political substance abusers of our time. The call grows for a self-reflection that embraces higher principles of thinking and behavior. It's not about accusations; it's about admissions. It's about admitting that one has been scammed, and maturing beyond being a mark for political manipulators. Some admit their own ideological culpability and engage self-reflecting quests for the problematic roots of societal ills. Others reject seditious tactics steeped in distortion, contrived outrage, and discredited smear and fear. They seem outnumbered.
At the same time, we have to accept that the recalcitrant Americans are ours - our neighbors, coworkers, friends and families, and we don't kick them out, or kill them, or scream abusively, or put them in a closet, or somehow give them back. We don't deprive them of tea ... we redirect. We stand arm in arm with thinkers of both parties, and we begin to serve tea of a different leaf. The sweet, wise, soothing teas of truth and compassion, of listening and asking, as one should with bullies, "What's brought this on - what do you fear?"
As together we offer hands toward higher ground, the axis shifts from a horizontal tugging between left and right, to a vertical lifting from fear and deception to courage and truth. We whisper the frightened into a healthier way of being. This way is safe. Thinking is safe. We newly articulate the best of our collective values, and offer systemic solutions that all Americans can embrace. We begin to see ourselves in terms of our community - a part of something that requires the health of the whole. By tapping our brilliance and compassion, we reseed integrity, hope, and creativity into our family, learning, labor, and environment.
Leave vengeance to the Lord, or in some way behind us, in the depths with Beelzebub. Leave behind our fears and unhealthy, irrational hate. Up with integrity, hope, truth, and health.
Accountability? That's different. What will we let stick to us, condone, and allow within the boundaries of our self-definition . . . our history? What will we reject? What kind of people are we, really? At a time when our citizens must reclaim education, ensure the survival of critical thinking, and treasure truth over manipulative prowess, the journey we take will surely upset our national narrative of steroid superiority. Let it. It's a chance worth taking, for in the process, we may recover our integrity, our self-respect for the authority and competence of we-the-people . . . and the gentle elegant imagery of tea.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-lakoff/the-poll-democrats-need-t_b_537993.html
Too many of us lack the critical thinking skills to understand, much less act, on his proposals.
I was reading an article in a medical magazine yesterday where they were discussing what happiness is. We know that some babies are born naturally happy while others, of the same parents and upbringing, have a sour nature. So there is a genetic connection....but what?....a happiness gene? Anyway, the latest thinking is that happiness is 50% genetic, 10% conditions, and 40% that is left up to the individual. If you win the lottery you will only be a maximum of 10% happier. Why do I mention this?
I am 70 years old. That's a lot of reasoning, discussing, arguing, and observing people do the same. I am absolutely convinced by now that many people have a....something.....perhaps a genetic handicap that will not allow their brain to process either reality or reason. Sorry to say it is a waste of time trying to communicate with them. While I share your desires I cannot share your optimism. I know you won't stop trying but keep in mind that this may be futile through no ones fault.
Bin Ladin maintained that he needed only sow the seeds of fear and we'd crater ourselves from stem to stern. The Republicans felt that fear and crumbled like old cookies. Refusing to stand against irrational fears and paranoia, they instead live within that energy of fragmentation, making it their home.
At the brink of fear - cynicism, where one has given up and refuses courage.
Yet, courage is characterized as "action, despite despair." Our suffragist grandmothers and abolitionist ancestors embraced creative solutions despite the despair of irrational opposition. Our history is of progressive successes that prove our better angels can kick the tail of our worst demons. We don't get there by refusing to take heart amid the optimism of our fellows.
I say, come on, David. Join the parade. Don't surrender. Perhaps we WILL discover that we can medicate Republicans into rational behavior, OR, perhaps we'll reintroduce critical thinking and civics into our classrooms, thereby seeding future generations with discernment.
Either way, let's spend our energy on the high road, lifting out who we can, and ensuring that we're encouraging the disheartened to refuse their fears. Courage! It's a far more satisfying path than the alternative!
Yes, this is the type of thinking that HAS to be done....The only thing that might work. To cure any problem you have to first find and then address the cause of that problem. The mistakes I have made are what I see a lot of people doing....Flailing against the symptoms.
How did our suffragist grandmothers and abolitionist ancestors achieve change? Just asking because the people who were causing them problems are still sippin' tea.
This is the discussion of this early century. The problem is that all the palaver is between each side talking to its own. Until that changes, I despair.
And I don't have a clue as to how to fix it. Down with apathy, yes! But how, Susan, how?
Argggghhhhh!
Specifically appreciate your call to arms in your response to David's post:
"Yet, courage is characterized as 'action, despite despair.' Our suffragist grandmothers and abolitionist ancestors embraced creative solutions despite the despair of irrational opposition. Our history is of progressive successes that prove our better angels can kick the tail of our worst demons. We don't get there by refusing to take heart amid the optimism of our fellows.
"I say, come on, David. Join the parade. Don't surrender. Perhaps we WILL discover that we can medicate Republicans into rational behavior, OR, perhaps we'll reintroduce critical thinking and civics into our classrooms, thereby seeding future generations with
discernment. "
It occurs to me that a lot of what we're experiencing is smoke and mirrors. I agree that the greater majority is more rational than what we're led to believe by Fox and company.
And this is really the crux. The control of media combined with a corporate control of government is a deadly combination. This is the noxious brew that manipulates the press and leads people to believe that there is more to this Tea Party than actually exists.
Fox regularly showed erroneous footage of tens of thousands when in fact at various Tea Party gatherings there were but a fraction of that. Their rhetoric is loud, mendacious, abusive and disruptive. The rest of the MSM does little to take them to task. All of it is corporately sponsored to further the various agendas of the neo-con elite, moving the true center further and further right.
For me, these ruling elites have cornered themselves. They realize that there is a heaving mass in their wake that is ready to subsume them and their only option is "fight or flight". Since there's no where for them to flee, they are rabidly trying to scare the creeping mass into submission. It's like an animal that has been cornered. Their instincts are purely atavistic.
Ultimately, they will be subsumed. How much damage they will do until then is truly frightening.
You can't escape the rhetoric here - but we are a deeply Republican swath of New Mexico. (Our Hispanic population to the north actually carried New Mexico - and now they are being lumped together and demonized as illegal aliens.)
So - I think you're entirely right about the root of the problem, it just seems that there are a LOT of followers, whether they attend the tea parties or not. I hope not - perhaps it's just our little redneck of the woods that makes it seem so.
A big part of the problem is that the underlying fears of a lot of these people are very, very real even if their anger is somewhat misdirected. See Elizabeth Warren's excellent lecture on the disappearing middle class.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A&NR=1
I say somewhat, because it's clear that the ruling elite of the Democratic Party has sold out. What these Tea Partiers define as "socialist" is in fact the naked corporate interests who've bought both parties. These interests control the media and paint Obama as socialist, when in fact he's doing their bidding at every turn.
While we're all focusing on the "Conservative/Liberal Puppet Show", Obama stacks his economic team with the same Friedman freaks Bush employed, holds that anyone who relied on and operated under the "torture memos" would be immune to prosecution, continues rendition programs, continues to make a mess of the middle east, continues the "don't ask don't tell" policy, not only for gays in the military, but for TARP funding as well, uses and upholds the same language and reasoning that gave us DOMA, holds secret meetings with Pharmaceutical reps, secures mandates that all Americans buy private insurance policies and allows the Public Option to be whittled away (ensuring a windfall for the Private Insurance Industry), accepts the Nobel Peace Prize defending war and arrives days late to the Copenhagen summit promising fully ten percent less emissions reductions than was expected. The latest off-shore drilling programs make me wonder if "drill baby drill" was Palin's slogan or Obama's.
We on the left spend so much time defending this adminstration from the "wing-nuts" that we're particularly blind to what it's actually doing which, sadly and shockingly, is not that different from the last administration. All of this extreme rhetoric from the Right only serves to give Obama "socialist" cover to continue business as usual.
At some point the majority of the mass will realize that they're being had by both parties and, hopefully, there'll be something resembling progressive consensus to deal with the myriad of problems we face.
Her essay is entitled "The Curse of the Wow Factor"...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/10/opinion/10collins.html
We have a huge problem in America. The public has been convinced that "Stupidity" (you) or "Wow Factor" (Ms. Collins) - which draws people's attention the way a car crash does when you're driving down the highway - is the most important cultural attribute we need in our leaders.
Intellectuals have been shown to be unable to produce positive change (even though that change is blocked by forces beyond their control, such as what stories the news media chooses to cover and how they choose to cover them), so America appears ready to "let the inmates run the asylum".
There is a way out of this crisis, but it's going to take something the folks in DC (as well as ABC, CBS, and NBC) appear unable to give us.
As Collins mentions, the Palin/Bachmann phenomenon leaves us stunned as to how to respond to such unrelenting childishness. We feel as frustrated and as powerless as when children insist on the validity of faulty logic. The tactic is certainly effective, but does such a disservice to the American traditions of discourse.
To my mind, the left is bringing adult rationality to a child's silly party - the proverbial knife to a gun fight. Hard to come out ahead when we are playing by different rules, with entirely different tools.
You suggested, though, that thinking is safe. It's not. This is the crux of the Republican problem. They deal in absolutes, resisting shades of gray. But thinking is not safe. It's just safer. It is an imperfect matter. It gets things wrong.
They love to point at things that are wrong because they indulge the improper calculus of believing that a demonstrated error or falsehood is condemnation of a theory. If thinking can err, they effectively suggest, then one must not think. If listening to Democrats can err, then one must not listen to Democrats. They are always careful to avoid the notion that listening to Republicans has the same perils, and would have unwanted conclusions by this faulty calculus.
Republicans are more like Democrats than they wish. The Democrats could fall to that level of pettiness if they tried, but thankfully they have not, perhaps because inclusiveness and tolerance is central to their platform. Republicans could use more of that. The Republicans have many good ideas, they're just lost in the sparks of unnecessary battle in a foolish war. They've chosen a STRATEGY of separation, and it's led them astray. If they focused on goodness of ideas, avoiding ad hominem attacks, they could still be friends with democrats and many good chats could be had. A bit more gentle sipping of tea at a party based on pleasant conversation would go a long way. How civilized.
You mention the black and white absolutes of the right - surely there's a way to entice people toward nuanced thinking - toward something besides crayon block drawings of the world and meat and potatoes thinking. Let me know when you find the answer! As always, you offer some keen insights and a lot to consider - thanks for dropping by!!