WHAT ROUGH BEAST? America sits of the edge

I find it much more far fetched to suppose that liberals are by nature more objective and restrained in their political discourse and propaganda than are conservatives. Their behaviors in other areas does not suggest that. It is much more likely that the groups are indeed equally bad, each in the way deemed most advantageous. TV news reporting has indeed degenerated to entertainment with a point of view. Both NPR and the BBC do indeed have points of view, and you cannot be surprised at this suggestion.

Consider that the ground for Limbaugh's rapid success was prepared by decades of systematic liberal bias. Print media remain largely in liberal hands. It was amusing the other day to read the New York Times' defense of its Pulitzer awarded in the '30s for their reporter's glowing reports about Soviet collective agriculture in the Ukraine while he knew that millions of peasants were being starved to death by a tyrannical government.

Well my comment about an administration that eschews the appearances and cant of the East/West Coast liberal establishment, and yet remains purposeful and self-confident had more to do with our all-too-human tendency to react more intensely to the superficial manifestations of alien tribes or classes than to their real thoughts and actions. The Republican party is strongest in the Midwest, the South, and in the inter mountain states: the Democrats on the coasts. There are different styles and manners associated with each. Bush very strongly evokes the Texas element in his manner and his choice of words and phrases. Some of these are red flags to his liberal opponents.

Craven,
Our disagreement about the war likely prevents any reconciliation of our views on this. The Republican view is that Clinton wasted eight years in allowing the problem of Islamist terrorism to get worse without facing this, and many other, issues. I guess the Democrat view is that we could have gone on forever just talking about it. We'll never know. History doesn't reveal its alternatives.

I understand that to be the position of those who favored the war, but substantial numbers around the world have indicated a disagreement with that opinion, and regardless of the validity of any of the opinions it's (the war) certainly something that can be pointed to as having engendered some ill will toward this administration.

To me that, among several other specific moves by this administration, are a more obvious source than this administrations "self-confidence" for the wellspring of anger.

I haven't yet heard of a government that hasn't been called self-confident by someone.

Surprised by 40%? Not me.

george wrote:



I don't see Christianity itself under attack as much as the fundamentalist version of Christianity. In my experience many, if not most people want and need to believe and practice their religion and any reasonable, non-coercive religion is fine with me. The fundamentalists are more a danger to mainstream, hopeful Christianity than are any liberals or atheists. No religion should dominate. We should all be free to believe as we do. This is a founding principle of this country and should be protected.



I have not yet done my best, george on the reading materials I can provide. I'm working on some research. But do read on and save up those cigars............. Oh, but I wanted to be sure I said that I have not used the word "conspiracy" on purpose. When I do that, people call me paranoid. We'll call it instead a government take over, this describes it better I think anyway.

Now let me see what I can find to smoke...........

george
I'm set to give up on you, I'm afraid. You continue to divide all questions into a binary opposition, placing equal qualities on both sides, while saying you have a preference for one and I for the other. Each argument, each reference, each example is dealt with in this manner. Thus it does not matter what might be presented to you, your stance will be the same. You will insist that the arguments or examples are fallacious or uncompelling, or that the 'other side' is equally guilty of whatever fault is demonstrated. Whether you actually believe this, or are just not willing to give ground in public, becomes in the end a moot point. I'm happy to share knowledge and references and viewpoints, but only where some consequence is evidenced. Have you taught? The good students are not the ones who do not change. The good students are the ones whose eyes light up. They'll fight and argue and stand up for what they believe to be so, but only sometimes. Other times, they sit there with their jaw a little slack and the bells inside ringing. You just fight.

george

Sadly, I really don't know what more you and I have to talk about on the subject of American political issues.

I'm a Canadian, completely unafilliated with any political party here. I've been active only in the late sixties, before I could vote, and that was in support of a very unusual man. My interest in world politics arose in late childhood from the pressing fear of nuclear war, and my interest in American politics arose with the incredibly ugly events surrounding the civil rights movement in your country. Our family would, after dinner, watch the news footage of black people being truncheoned, herded, run over by horses, beaten by citizens, or their bodies being dug up. We'd listen to American politicians, and church-going people on the street, who wanted to get the goddamn niggers out of America. The experience was shocking, confusing, unsettling, and...extremely curious. How could a nation, or a large part of a nation, believe such things...do such things? We knew about Washington and the apple tree. We knew about Lincoln and slavery. We knew about Davy Crockett and had our own coonskin caps. We knew about the constitution. We knew, finally, that there was a reality and there was a mythology and that the two were different.

We watched and cheered as the Kennedys, then Johnston, brought the power of your federal government, and the intentions of your constitution, and the humanism of the christian values of equality to bear upon this racist and inhuman horror. Your family may have watched and cheered too, I don't know. But we both know many American families did not cheer. Perhaps there was more cheering on the east coast, or up in San Franciso. I'd think that likely, do you? Another curious phenomenon, that.

A couple of decades or so ago, news reports from down your way began to note instances of an odd and unexpected turn of events...people were taking school boards to court, not because their kids had been beaten up by a schoolyard bully, but because evolution was being taught. They wanted, it seemed, to teach children that the Garden of Eden story was true, and that God had placed those great big bones into the ground merely to test people's faith. It appeared this wasn't happening so much in Manhattan schools, or in Vermont schools, or even in Los Angeles schools. We found this all very curious too.

Last evening, on television, the kindly husband and wife team who are the Van Ip Ministries informed the viewing audience that Pope John Paul II would be succeed by another holy man, but that the Pope who would come immediately after, signalling the endtimes and the second coming, would be an evil one, an agent of beezlebub. We, my daughter and I, were curious, and wondered aloud as to the consequences for the church of Rome in Alabama and Texas or in South Carolina. We thought, probably, diocese in the Northeast would probably be the last to be firebombed. But who knows?
How can such a sentence as this be allowed to escape your keyboard, george? How did you come to believe this? How can you know so little about your own country?

Okay, I have two responses to George. Well, no, about George.

1. I think he's dug in. I suspect his blinders are inherited and

uh oh

2. He's dick-driven. I don't say that lightly, but his metaphors are interesting both with respect to his politics and what he's said about his personal relationships. In his world, conservatives are strong, sensible and "purposeful," a word he uses often (above). Their moves are clear-cut and the result of well-managed decision-making. They deal with reality in a very masculine, uncomplicated way. In contrast to the liberals who are scattered, vocal, insidiously influential, hard to deal with, yet manage to be in charge and complicate things. These two have to work it out somehow -- they are like husbands and wives. But damn, we know (of course) who should be running things!

Blatham,

You have put quite a bit on the plate. Several core issues exposed, and, though we may never fully agree, i suspect both of us would acknowledge that our ability to view through several facets of the prism is improved. I'll start with a response to the 'binary' question.

You have twice expressed frustration with a tendency of mine to, "divide all questions into a binary opposition, placing equal qualities on both sides, while saying you have a preference for one ...". You are correct. I did and I do, though until you pointed it out I wasn't much aware of it. Be assured it isn't a conscious rhetorical trick or anything like that. I have reflected on it, and note that in the cases you cited I was expressing a deeply held belief that, taken in large numbers, different groups of people generally exhibit the same mix of good and and bad intent, honesty and deceit, generosity and selfishness, etc. Superficial manifestations of these and other like qualities can vary a great deal, but when one cuts through that, the same spectrum of human behavior usually becomes evident. Individuals are unique, but the central tendencies of core human qualities in large enough groups are generally the same. Thus I find it hard (not impossible) to believe that liberals are more or less honest than conservatives, that (in the same circumstances) Canadians would be more or less intolerant than Americans, and so on.

I don't at all deny that there are large and meaningful differences between groups of people in different nations, belief systems, social classes, regions, and all the rest. I do however believe that these differences are most often the result of the different adaptations of the same human material to the circumstances of their nationality, belief system, social class, region, etc. Beyond those adaptations, the same core mix of human character and motivation is likely to be found.

I do believe there is an enduring and meaningful difference between liberals and conservatives, and it is that liberals hold what we call liberal ideas concerning political and social issues, and conservatives, conservative ones. The rest are merely artifacts of social class, region, indirectly related belief systems, etc.

I can see how in an intense discussion of the relative merits of liberal and conservative methods of political action and propaganda my thoughtless tossing out of an idea that I have rather fully internalized, could be a bit infuriating to a hot tempered Anglo Ukrainian, living in a coastal paradise in BC. Be assured that was not my intent.

Pour a glass of wine, light up something, call Lola.

Tartarin,

THAT was funny ! (I think). So I'm a contemptible, contemptuous, dick-driven, toilet seat leaving down, husbandly, insensitive, clod!

Well,you've probably got me there. (although I have always seen myself as a sensitive, caring guy with a well-developed sense of the lyric in poetry, music, and visual art. - though even my taste in these things will likely be found to reveal my inner limitations.)

Frankly I'm inclined to agree with the model you infer, and note that we usually do work it out, though often in spite of ourselves.

I've lived with and loved the same woman for over thirty years, and still don't believe I fully understand her - though she claims to understand me (and eventually discover all that I do). I stand in awe at her lack of doubt and uncomplicated conviction that her purposes and goals in anything are beyond question and the means to achieve them are mere details. Interspersed with that is a need for reassurance in relatively minor things that bewilders me. Sadly I fear she often sees me as Tartarin does.

One of the many mysteries of life. Perhaps it is just penis envy, Waddya think Tart?

I've often wondered about women and penis envy. George. I like compactness. Don't like things sticking out, getting in the way (in the same way I don't like to wear a watch or rings or silicone breast implants. But often things sticking out of others can be very nice, as both genders know.

Glad my interpretation didn't strike you as completely odious and off-base. I should not have written that as though you weren't there -- that kind of academic, disassociated style. However, many of us are struck by -- and disturbed by -- the degree to which many Americans admire the extremes of gender differences: on the one hand, the overblown military, the macho politics (domestically and internationally), the might makes right attitudes. But they are no less repulsive than the passive aggression at the other extreme, the self-absorbed, unremitting, intruding, emasculating, know-it-all mother. What both extremes share is a need for control and... Lola should weigh in here, pick up the thread.

I'm interested in the growing libertarianism in the US, the weary, frustrated, get-out-of-my-face crowd, and share some of their viewpoints.

george

Thank you kindly. I confess to a slight advantage re this notion, having bumped into the work of Claude Levi Strauss (thanks to a wonderful professor). Strauss held that we tend to build our thinking on a structure of binary opposites. That notions has proved to be one of the most helpful and revelatory ideas I've had the pleasure of finding. But as one works this idea around, and observes the world, one finds that this simple structure does not account for all the ways we think....we are more sophisticated than that. Sometimes. Some of us. I think the urge towards the simple answer, the 'magic bullet' cure-all, finds its home in this. So the fellow with tattoos and piercings who holds that all will be well if we eliminate clearcut logging frustrates those of us who have a more complex understanding. Or the young turk at Standard and Poors who holds that from unfettered capitalism all good will arise.

What I wish you to observe is that the rhetoric of Gingrich, Coulter, et al promotes such a binary view. It is a truly paltry version of reality. I also hope you'll see that the evangelical world view, as presently expressed, is of the same dualistic and simplistic nature. And the last desired epiphany is that this simplicity is deeply dangerous.

I'm at a bit of a loss to account for the appearance of this tendency in the strength we see it now. A response to a greatly materialistic culture? or to the complexity of modernity? or perhaps just the consequences of population concentrations (the famous old 'mice get jittery when too many are in the box' thing). Whatever factors bring it about, we ought not to welcome it.

I did not bring into this discussion any of the classical elements of, say, a Chompskian analysis of the role of wealth in US power structures and US policy. Because though I think that a very valid address to the US's behavior this century, I wanted to concentrate on something I think is new (not in type, but in properties) rather like a system reaching a point of critical mass. Or close to it.

So, to speak in the language of 'liberal/conservative' is to merely forward the simplicity, and to add to the dynamic.

I included the little bit on the Van Ip Ministries to suggest to you that such a dynamic, unloosed (and Dworkin is worried of this too, but in that other sphere) may very well place you in its sights.

Certainly in terms of online conversations, the difficulty for liberals has been that their belief that a single answer may not exist, that several possibilities always offer themselves, that certainty isn't always helpful, have met with real derision from conservatives who want their satisfaction NOW and will inflate the public's perception of risk to justify it. The dampening of debate by those who haven't gotten beyond the binary (and Blatham -- your mention of Levi-Strauss is important and helpful, particularly when one emphasizes the Levi!) has been the trigger for so much of the anger and frustration felt by liberals. Couple that with the perception on the part of liberals that the extreme right (and as Traub points out, the Republican Party has never been so extreme in its Rightness) regularly chooses authoritarian, anti-Constitutional, a- and immoral methods coupled with moralistic rhetoric.

By the way, at lunch the other day with fellow-suffering libs who are also friends of Hightower and Ivins, there was some talk about the latest books, the onslaught of liberal revivalism. Although I didn't say so, I have no intention of reading either one because I already know what they say! When it comes to party and presidential politics, I'm not much interested in reaction to the present situation but rather in building a future in which America grows up beyond the binary base. (Apparently there is a reform movement going on, rapidly, urgently and excitedly, within the Democratic Party -- and that would indeed be interesting to read about, so I may relent and cop a look at a few pages in the bookstore!!)

YES, that is it, exactly!!!

and let's not be putting down being driven by cigars........george, I'm sure, is not the only dick-driven person on this thread.......laughing

But, george, I still love you.

Blatham, That's yet another reason why I support the development of additional political parties -- for a much healthier political future. Why we should have so many more detergents or toilet papers than ideas beats me!

I don't allow myself to be dick-driven.

I will occasionally allow it to press the accelerator, but never do I let it steer.

What a picture! And the setting? 610!

So that's how they manage to terrify me in Houston traffic!! Next time I'm taking my periscope.

Well Tart, something remarkable has happened. We actually spoke to each other! I did notice the third person reference, but the rest was such an improvement that I didn't care.

My reference to penis envy was just a smartass attempt to throw back a little of the hair of the dog that bit you. However, as you noted, there are things here which none of us fully understands, and to some extent we all do have inborn blinders. However, things that stick out and things that are soft and warm do not lose their appeal.

I think anything overblown and forced, - whether it is machismo or cloying, politically correct euphemisms or strident, doctrinaire advocacy - all a bit offensive. I'm sure that in the eyes of many I violate that principle, but we all carry our own reference points. I agree with you about the libertarianism, though I suspect I had fewer doctrines to let go of in that respect.

Ironically I found less machismo in the military than I find in business life. Certainly on the surface there was far more in the military but it was a mile wide and an inch deep. Much less on real issues. In a squadron everyone had seen everyone else, as we would say, 'scared shitless and out of airspeed and ideas' up close several times. Once the masks were off, there was no putting them back on.

Funny, George, I was thinking "scared shitless" when I saw you'd written it. There's a huge difference (drawing on what I've seen of the military in my own family) between the attitudes and effectiveness -- and honesty -- of desk military and those who are out there, scared shitless. To make the distinction, let's talk about the military establishment, the military-industrial complex, those with a much larger agenda than defending the nation -- they're the guys I'd go after, as well as their toadies in uniform. I think where the system breaks down and breaks lives (vide the alienated vets living in parks or elsewhere at the edge of society) is once again the distance between reality and "Be all you can be" -- and other crap which seduces and often destroys. Once again, it's a matter of honesty: how we paint it vs. what it is, what we say about America vs. how we behave.

Bullies, machismo flaunting guys, are the problem -- and they usually surround themselves with bluster but send others to do the really tough stuff. I hope you can see why so many laughed at(and were embarrassed by) the image of Bush on the aircraft carrier, of Reagan forgetting he hadn't been in the real military, only in a movie about it.