The world is getting to be an odd place these days. There was a time, chronicled particularly well by Robert Sherrill decades ago in Gothic Politics in the Deep South. In it, he chronicles the sort of nonsense engaged by right wing ideologues where someone's capabilities and fitness were maligned by referring to them as a "notorious thesbian." Sherrill's book is still in copywright and available, and can be hilarious -- except it's entirely too true. Could easily be re-written with a new cast of characters, replacing Lester Maddox with Rick Scott and Herman Talmidge with Bob McDonnell. The new version of the old" entitled and progress-threatened" are smoother, don't so obviously smoke big cigars and drop" nigger, faggot, dyke, Cath-O-Lick . Macaca and Kike" as easily as their predecessors did 40 years ago. But, don't kid yourself that the old bigotry, parochial xenophobia and plain ignorance are still there. President Obama has ignored this for the most part, which I think has been a tactical mistake. Being above the struggle doesn't help either the struggle or yourself, when your pillar is torn down and you're dragged off to the nearest sour apple tree for lyniching. He's not confused, and knows exactly what he's up against -- he made a good humored but biting response to some of the nonsense when he told a crowd that the McCain campaign had just accused him of fathering two African American children. He should recycle that line...
Crispin Sartwell is a reasonably well regarded Political Philosopher. I say reasonably because he's entirely too prickly to ever be beloved by the philosophical community. Crispy is as much Demosthenes as Aristotle; a true small government guy, he's an anarchist. Seriously. And an associate professor of Philosophy at Dickinson College adjacent to the Army War College at Carlysle Barracks. Crispin has told me he really enjoys arguing and talking with the students and faculty there; he finds their candor and knowledge refreshing. Well, of course these are the service's intellectual high rollers being groomed for senior leadership roles. He probably never got to hang around a lot of complete idiots with stars like Tommy Franks or up and comming idiots like LTC (retired in lieu of Court Martial for violation of the Laws of Land Warfare) Allen West. Anyway, Crispin despite the being a practicing philosopher is a pretty level-headed guy and he wrote a piece today somewhat despairing of our ability to communicate in a radically polarized world.
"so insulated is each group from the other that the members of the opposite group sink to something like an inhuman or monstrous status. and within each group, the sources of information and opinion are shared, while almost no one, i believe, really goes and looks for something from the other side, which is strange to me. but i guess if it's already obvious that they're monsters or dolts, why would you? the funny thing is that if you subtract the politics and just work out in east berlin, pa or have lunch with a colleague, most all these people seem like ok people, so each one's idea that the other is evil or merely manipulated doesn't seem plausible. "
Crispin writes exceptionally well, especially when he's not writing philosophy. He tries, but as we all know, ever since Kierkegaard died of pneumonia and Wittgenstein got out of the asylum the idea of a philosopher writing something that makes you smile, laugh or yell, "Right On!" is a violation of the professional code and violates all the union rules about mandatory obfuscation and irrelevance. Anyay, he argues against taking your politics off the rack whether from Hannity or Krugman; he wonders about the actual degree of difference and the rhetorical exaggeration on both sides. I slightly part company with him here; the Krugmans, Blows, Finemans, Stiglitzes and others are quantitatively different than the Limbaughs and the Hannitys. MSNBC proudly trundles out Michael Steele and Steve Schmitt to discuss what's happening and I haven't heard Rachel Maddow or Lawrence O'Donnell tell them to shut up or that they're pinheads. So, the equation of MSNBC and FOX is something of a reach. But, he is right -- there is a separation of the extremes on both sides from reality. You're wrong to equate someone like Barney Frank with Allan West, but someone who is willing to listen to Barney the Dorchester Bear will probably want to strangle West while the West Fan would steam for a few minutes and then run screaming from the room yelling "Barney Fag! Barney Fag!" in loving tribute to Dick Armey and ilk. Crispin has a solution that might have some merit...but only at the far, far extremes. And at those extremes, it won't work....because they're not going to be able to suspend their animus and preconceptions...
anyway: you can do better than that! if you are a dem i assign you to watch fox news's election coverage, if a rep, msnbc. that'd be a start anyway. think of yourself as an anthropologist; you want to try to figure out how these people think. or start with this question: how did these folks, who are indeed folks, i.e. things more or less like myself, come to this orientation? 
I do have a tendency to resort to music to explain stuff like this.I keep thinking of Kris Kristofferson's Jesus Was a Capricorn as a way to approach this aspect of the human condition, writ large today.
Everybodies got to have somebody to look down on, whom they can feel better than at anytime they please; someone doing something dirty decent folks can frown on; if you can't find nobody else than help yourself to me...
The problem for rabble-rousing loudmouths in the pre-television age was that they were forced to babble in person to large crowds and their stuff was spread by papers and conversation. In the radio era, whether Gobbels,Roosevelt, Fr Coughlin, or Huey Long, the relationship became more conversational and direct. Roosevelt was the first real master of the medium, rolling his Rs with patrician ease and making you feel like you were there by the fireplace with him as he spoke. He was explaining these issues to you in words and phrases that made sense and were based not on rhethorical flourish but on a human connection. While Gobbels, Coughlin and Long spoke to the converted, the true believers, Roosevelt spoke to all. The master of this today, in the television era is Bill Clinton. Clinton is hot enough to burn down the barn, but he dials it back to toasty warm and explains whether he's on a stage speaking to 10s of thousands or just chatting with Jon Stewart in non-condescending, straight language. There are people in the media who are very good at this -- Chris Wallace has his moments for Fox; Maddow and Martin Brahsir for MSNBC. There are guest commentators on the networks in some cases are very good as well -- I enjoy hearing Paul Krugman, Peggy Noonan, Steve Schmidt, David Corn, Nicole Wallace, Karen Finney, Malika Henderson, George Will, Bill Krystall, Ana Marie Cox and others. However, there's so much air time to fill to sell commercials, and the various round table formats turn the whole thing into a TV Twitter environment. It woudl be fascinating to hear Steve Schmitt, Nicole Wallace, Ana Marie Cox and Karen Finney discuss the Palin debacle from their various points of view and experience. Ana Marie covered the McCain thing closely and was friendly with a lot of these folks; Schmitt blames himself but admits that everything else was going to hell so maybe Palin was inevitable; Nicole and Karen have had similar roles and can talk to each other's experience. But, they don't need Bill O'Reilly and David Gregory hosting the damn thing. Bill Moyers, maybe. Or, Jon Stewart.
Moyers is excellent at doing something we desperately need in our political discourse...he can dial down the noise. He understands the cool medium of television, the need for crispness and concision while adhering to pretty strong standards of decency, respect and tolerance even toward the indecent, disrespectful and intolerant. Other come close -- Jim Lehrer, Juan Williams, Bob Scheffer. But for the most part, it's turn up the volume and let the talking points duel to the death...
A ggod friend of mine from the very old days, Mary E. Hunt, wrote a piece for Religion Dispatches last week discussing the problems of separation of Chruch and State as well as that of primacy of conscience. Mary is co-founder and Flamentia Dialis of WATER, the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual, a feminist Catholic group headquartered in DC as well as having a background in activism and pastoral work in places like Argentina during the 80s. While focused on Catholics and ex-Catholics she is talking about a bigger picture. The conservative Catholic Bishops, and other denominations are horrified by the secularization of society and the resulting loss in their political clout She sees the furor over birth control in the Affordable Care Act as well as the entire abortion issue as a way for the institutional church to try and regain control of the congregants, to regain some respect. Hard for a Catholic bishop to show up in town anymore and demand respect as a result of having a crozier, a mitre and a letter from the Pope. We're actually probably nicer than some dioceses and parishes in Ireland, where they are downright hostile. Americans don't like them, figure they're just necessary evils and ignore them. So, the Church has forgotten about most of the gospels and the whole social justice thing in this country to demand lockstep obedience. Rather than outrage at this infrignement on liberty, Mary's attitude is more, "Really? Good luck with that. Let me know how it all works out..."
Cries that religious liberty is abridged when formerly entitled institutions cannot impose their will as they’ve become accustomed to are simply ignored, even laughed at. The marketplace is replete with spiritual options, for better or for worse, and none of them has an a priori claim in a democracy.The second and intimately related reality is that even for those who do remain Catholic, the institutional Roman Catholic Church, the largest single denomination, is losing ground fast. I suspect that these losses will be accelerated by recent pulpit calls for voting Republican. Many Catholics are insulted by the notion that local clergy—not high on most people’s list these days given the priest pedophilia and episcopal cover-up scandals—would dare to dictate how they might vote.
I really think she's got this one figured out; she sees it as the triumph of primacy
of conscience where it counts -- among the members of the mystical body of Christ. The hierarchy can do whatever it wants to, but most of what they are doing is speeding their own irrelevance. I don't think anyone who wasn't already going to vote for Romney will change to vote for him because Bishop Saltpeter of East Chippendale decided that he should. Mary begins her article by citing Billy Graham's add in the Times, demanding that voters elect the biblical choice, which is the wealthy Mormon exploiter of the workers. Jesus might have a different idea. Where Graham's article will have an impact is where Romney doesn't need the impact. It's like Jesse Jackson preaching to a Black Church telling them God calls them to vote for Obama. Who do you think they're going to vote for? Absurd background noise in a polarized mess, sound and fury signifying that the idiots are losing control of their essential body functions.
Which leads me to the piece that made me decide it was time to awaken from my doctrinal slumbers this time, today's Ana Marie Cox column in The Guardian Why I'm not freaking out about a Mitt Romney Presidency. Cox founded Wonkette, did some mainstream and new journalism, helping Time Magazine get it's blogging together for the 2008 thing, was recruited by Rachel Maddow for Air America Radio (which is gone, deceased, defunct, dead...) wrote for The Daily Beast, published a novel and generally has been a vagabond journalist and commentator. Why she does not have a program someplace amazes me as I mentioned earlier -- it might be because unlike a lot of wonks, she actually seems to have a life and is probably too much the Irish-Catholic-red headed rebel to really fit in a permanent role. Or she has ADD. Regardless, I enjoy all her work and would love to buy her a cup of coffee and a Danish sometime just to listen to her opinions on whatever the political issues of the day are. For the record, she gets TV really well, getting Rachel Maddow to blush, stutter and giggle during a discussion of "tea baggers and tea bagging and tea pary" in 2009 that was beyond classic.
But, while she excels at snark and satire, she's a serious journalist who seems to avoid the centers of mass and power so much as rather following stories and in her Guardian gig, she writes interesting and reflective articles. This one is very straight forward -- in the long run, the nation will survive, not because we're appointed by God to do so but because we may get things wrong -- horribly , terribly, disastrously wrong but our daemon is actually pretty cool about that. We figure it out eventually and get it right. The Republic, like the dude, will abide. And, it probably won't be that awful anyway. ..because there's enough resistance in the system that really crazy awful stuff can't happen while we're watching. Hence the overwhelming and enuring popularity Dubya and Darth Cheney...
Over time, we in the US tend to do OK. We've made serious mistakes as a country, sometimes dodging apocalypse or genocide by a combination of luck and sheer bloodymindedness. We've let our government take action in gruesome ways – internment camps, Vietnam, Iraq. And, as citizens, we've stood by while injustices rolled over other people's lives (this individualized list is too painful and too long to articulate).But we tend to learn from our mistakes; we tend to correct them, as best we can. Our always re-enforced self-interest and offhand sense of fairness produces a kind of lazy arc toward justice. Frustration and outrage bring wars to an end ("We're still in Iraq? Why?"). Protest and disenchantment with pursuing a failing cause allow rights to expand ("I'm not going to get up off the couch to keep gays from marrying")...
The chorus of fear-mongering from the furthest right is as galling as it is rootless. The idea that Obama wants to institute socialism, or make America subservient to the rest of the world? This hyperbole indicates a lack of faith in one's own country so profound that it should scare people, not the warnings themselves. The people who prey on fear and hate are the ones most likely to mask atrocities with Mobius-strip logic: we had to burn the village in order to save it. I don't believe these warning themselves, either, and I don't think I have reason to. You folks who worry about such things? I guess I believe in America more than you
Wow. I think that she has laid out our marching orders -- be involved, work for what we believe in, keep the faith and keep trying to push things toward the next tipping point. Ana Marie refers to one of the built-in protections as 'the inertia of small gains." Although these clowns may want to destroy everything since 1890, it's just not going to happen. The classic line about "Keep your government hands off my social security and my Medicare!" are superb examples of this -- we have these programs and we're not going back. You, the government, aren't going to screw with this, this is mine, this is ours...the next step is getting beyond this idea of being responsibile only for self, and moving on to the greater community. I think we may be seeing the birth of that. We'll see...While I normally channel Wilson Mizener and say "Life is 60/40 against," I also have to go along with the comments made by Vice President Biden to "Never bet against the United States." Is it wonderful? No. Is it better? Yeah. Wanna move to Canada? Probably not. Want to move to your libertarian paradise? Well, Panama and South Africa beckon.
The fact is that generations have fought, died, worked, struggled and argued, bitched, pissed and moaned to create something incredible. If it falls apart, then the world fails. If it survives, and it will, the world retains some hope that somewhere there is a force for good institutionalized in its records and written in the blood of heroes, pioneers and ordinary people. These guys are momentary glitches. We work to make it better, and it will get better on its own timetable, not ours. But it will improve...
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