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One of the defects of our political process is the degree to which it brutalizes us, and we brutalize it. Certainly, as, in essence, pacified civil war, whenever and wherever we succeed in substituting the verbal and ideological brutalities of politics for the physical violence of warfare we have taken an enormous step forward. But wherever we settle for the verbal and ideological brutalities of politics rather than reach further in our ongoing struggle to replace brutality with civility and irrationality with reason, we have cause for shame rather than pride.
Many people seem to believe that being a candidate is something that one does only for their own benefit, and, of course, one’s own benefit is generally a consideration, on some level or in some manner. But more often than not, wrapped up into what one perceives to serve their own interests is their commitment to certain ideals, or goals, that serve some public with which they identify (hopefully, but not always, the public as a whole). Politics is a human enterprise, a human endeavor, not fundamentally different from those enterprises and endeavors with which we all are familiar in our own lives: We aspire, we care, we want, we try, we succeed, and we fail.
Sometimes, we do so in competition with one another. If I start a business that sells widgets, then I am in competition with other businesses that also sell widgets. It is not unusual (though neither is it universal or inevitable) to feel some animosity toward my competitors, since their success comes at my expense, and mine at theirs. But we are both just striving to succeed in our chosen endeavors, and the animosity, unless for other reasons as well, is an unnecessary addition of brutality to a shared existence that is already far too brutal.
In politics, more is at stake. We are competing over how we will define ourselves, over who and what we are, over how we will organize our shared existence. And the emotions of those most involved run very high indeed. Some anger may be inevitable, may even be useful, but when some feel glee not only over the victory of their vision for our state and nation, but also over the loss and suffering of others, they contribute to what we should be trying to transcend rather than what we should be trying to augment.
To be sure, sometimes the animosities aren’t ideological, but personal. During my years posting on Colorado Pols, for instance, a few bloggers there decided that my form of argumentation made me a despicable person, and sought every opportunity to shoot any irrelevant barbs within their reach. On three occasions (twice for having knowingly and intentionally posted false factual assertions about me, and once for threatening me both physically and to virtually stalk me) I mentioned that there are legal limits to how they can express their hatred. Now, “Ralphie” (with the help of the one who both threatened me physically, and promised to stalk me on Pols, who recently posted a highly revisionist reference to that encounter) wants to turn that into yet one more vehicle for his relentless vendetta.
In the wake of the election, I’ve noticed them coming out of the woodwork on Colorado Pols, creating the same group-think reality, piling on as a form of entertainment (which helped inspire the following two posts: The Battle of Good v. Evil, Within & Without, The Battle of Good v. Evil, Part 2). Initially, I felt a far more muted annoyance than usual, the degree of pettiness appearing to me too obvious to be effective. But, to my dismay, others, including some who have been friends, helped reinforce rather than confront the meme, some casually and carelessly.
It is, in part, the expression of a strange cultural attitude, one which, on the one hand, cheers malice, and, on the other, dehuamanizes certain categories of people, including “intellectuals” and “candidates,” two categories to which I have belonged, or have been perceived to belong. That combination of approved malice against approved targets creates ideal designated scapegoats, against whom it is not only acceptable but customary to vent all pent-up aggressions, and to do so as rudely and crudely as you like.
The anger, and sense that there is a specially exempt political zone in which it is acceptable to express it with as much hostility, as little restraint, and as much indifference to what we consider to be basic decency in almost all other realms of life, extends beyond our attitude toward politicians and intellectuals (see The Politics of Anger). But a special sphere of heightened disinhibition is reserved for them, both, I think, justified by some perception that both are attempts to put oneself above others, and so inviting of being taken down a peg.
How strange and contemptuous that we should reserve our most vicious expressions of belligerence for those who have chosen to work on behalf of the public interest in these two ways, either by trying to understand or directly affect our social institutional landscape with the desire to improve it. And how dysfunctional that we should remain so committed to reducing our public debate over how to govern ourselves to a frothing-at-the-mouth hate-fest, one which not only drowns out reason, but seems most hostile to it.
The irony is that “Ralphie” and “MOTR” and many others like them do not direct their rage particularly at their ideological opposites, but rather at anyone who “contaminates” politics by treating it as something more than a fairly shallow exchange of arbitrary opinions. They perceive analysis as hostility and hostility as reason, in one of many complete inversions of reality particular to political discourse.
At the Jefferson County Democratic Party’s election night vigil at the Lakewood Holiday Inn at Hamden and Wadsworth, I sat with fellow candidates and supporters, in what was a very emotional night for us all. We rejoiced at our party’s victories, and mourned our party’s losses. We felt for our friends in office who were not re-elected, who we knew had given so much, with such a sincere desire to serve others, and who at times lost to opponents who, to our minds, represented the insanity of politics. Those of us who knew we could not win joked about the inevitable, and, if anything, found some joy and comfort in watching the culmination of our small slice of the shared story of this election cycle, one which we agreed was really a pleasure to have lived.
I will continue to argue passionately for the policies and perspectives that I believe best serve our long-term collective interests. And I will continue to seek out all people, of all perspectives, who are willing to engage in an ongoing discussion, in a context of mutual goodwill, as fellow human beings trying to do the best we can, regardless of what policies they believe would best serve the public interest. If we occasionally get angry with one another, let’s not enshrine our anger as the defining quality of our relationships. If we disagree, let’s not turn disagreement into justification for implacable hostility. If an olive-branch is offered, take it. If one might be taken, offer it.
If we err in our treatment of others, let’s use it as a reminder to redouble our efforts to do better. If others err, let’s give them every opportunity to find their way back to civility, and accommodate and encourage their efforts to do so. There is never any justification for viciousness and malice. There is never any need to condemn or mistreat any individual for any sincere belief about what best serves the public interest, but there is neither any need to insulate those beliefs from critical scrutiny and blunt challenges. We need to put everything we have on the table, set aside our animosities, strive to cultivate mutual goodwill, and work together as reasonable members of a single society working together to do the best we can.
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Click here to buy my e-book A Conspiracy of Wizards for just $2.99!!!
As some may know, The Day of the Dead in Mexico is actually two days, November 1 and 2, the first being the day of the return of the souls of dead children, and the second the day of the return of the souls of dead adults. How fitting (if tragic) then, that, on this election day, if predictions hold, we are about to see the return of the souls of dead ideas we had hoped never to see again.
The tsunami of political zeal approaching our shores, about to crash with destructive force against our homes and communities, our schools and clinics, our poor neighborhoods and last refuges of hope for those who we have already left with too little cause for hope, is not a defense of liberty, or of fiscal responsibility, or of the ideals of the American Revolution, but rather a return to an era of Robber Barons, of disregard for the injustices of poverty and inequality of opportunity, and disdain rather than compassion for those who are unfortunate enough to be born into disadvantaged socio-economic conditions.
It is a tsunami of anti-intellectualism, simultaneously declaring itself rational and those who oppose it irrational, while both carefully cleansing itself of any trace of reason and assertively pronouncing its disdain for the fruits of systematically applied reason. It is the dark side of populism, the angry torch-bearing mob looking for monsters to kill, accusing our president of every possible membership in groups that they consider evil: He is a Muslim, a non-American born abroad, a socialist, sometimes the anti-christ itself. It is the dark past of unreasoning and hateful bigotries rearing its ugly head once again, condemning all “others,” be they Muslims, gays, Hispanics, or simply all those who do not belong to the same unreasoning, hateful mob as they do.
I’ve engaged them in the blogosphere, on Facebook, in person and in email exchanges, and while there are some more moderate people who identify with the movement, overwhelmingly those who are its most vocal spokespeople and who set its agenda reject the notion of discourse, of engaging in a process which leads to subtler and richer and more useful understandings, of accepting that none of us have the final answers, that all of us must continue to seek out ever closer approximations of the truth. They call reason irrational and compassion hateful. They turn the world on its head, and will turn our world on its head in very destructive ways to the extent that we sit back and let them take control of the reins of government.
All reasonable people of goodwill, for generations now, have sighed in relief that the horrible ghosts of Social Darwinism and all similar rationalizations by those who are fortunate enough to live reasonably comfortable lives, justifying to themselves why they not only don’t have to care about those who are not, but should actively blame them for trying to take what is theirs (see, for example, Uncle Fish’s comments on various diaries on this blog).
Another pagan precursor of Halloween is the Celtic holiday Samhain (pronounced “Sowen”), in which, due to the Celtic lunar calendar, there were five days of the Celtic New Year left over every year, falling at the end of our October (the Catholic Church moved All Saints Day and All Hallow’s Eve to coincide with it, as it later moved the Aztec Day of the Dead to coincide with it) in which the boundary between the realm of the living and the realm of the dead was at its thinnest and most permeable. People dressed and put on make-up to make themselves look as unhealthy and unappealing as possible, to discourage dead spirits seeking new bodies in which to reside to choose theirs.
But as the dead spirits of horrible and hateful ideas now are roaming among us on this day, seeking to occupy our body politic, our halls of government, our institutions of cooperation and collective problem solving, determined to undermine them in their purpose, to deprive us of our instruments of national community and aspiration, to surrender to the problems and challenges that history imposes on us, we do not need to make ourselves look ugly, but rather beautiful, to oppose and defeat them. For Hope is beautiful. Compassion is beautiful. Commitment to the welfare of the least well off is beautiful. Humility and Awe in the face of God’s Creation are beautiful, and should inspire not the false certainties and militant ignorance of the Tea Party, but rather the seeking, hungry minds of those who know that they don’t know, but want to work together with all others to do the best they can to get it right.
If at all possible, drop whatever else you are doing today, and spend the next several hours making sure that every sane and decent human being you know takes their ballot to the nearest polling place, and registers their voice, their will, and their soul in favor of hopeful living ideas, and against the self-limiting and self-destructive ones of a poorer and less hopeful past that should remain dead forever more.
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Natural disasters and economic crises are not what plagues humanity; humanity is what plagues humanity. Humanity plagues humanity in the obvious ways, in acts of terrorism, in rogue-state escalations of tension and threats of military violence, in genocides and riots and acts of mayhem large and small. Humanity plagues humanity in contested but fairly apparent ways, by clinging to platitudes and engaging in the politics of ignorance and belligerence, of xenophobia and homophobia and a general fear of the “other”. But humanity also plagues humanity by indifference, by a lack of will, a lack of perseverance, a lack of commitment to confront the enemy within and defeat it each and every day, each and every week, each and every month, year, decade, century, and millennium. Humanity plagues humanity by failing to step up and contribute to the solution, even if never having contributed directly to the problem. Humanity plagues humanity by sitting on the sidelines and surrendering the field to the most ruthless, or the most enraged, or the best mobilized by the best funded but least altruistic.
Not only is the Tea Party the incarnation of our own worst enemy, but so too are the vast numbers of reasonable people of goodwill who can’t be bothered to stand up to them. The Denver Post reported today on “the enthusiasm gap,” assuring us that it is real, and tht it may be decisive (http://www.denverpost.com/ci_16367341). And when the Republicans take the House, and maybe the Senate; when they undermine through an assault of defunding and riders and amendments which chip away at the modest Health Care Act we fought tooth and nail to pass, and complained bitterly about it not being enough; when they turn the clock back a few years to the days when W made most of us ashamed; all of us who weren’t excited enough to keep it from happening will be to blame.
It’s not just those who do violence to the public interest that are responsible for the damage done, but also those who sit by and let them do it. We’ve got somewhere between zero seconds and 15 days to avert a political disaster. I suggest that each and every one of us spend just about every waking moment for the next two weeks doing every last thing we can to avert it. Don’t wait for the clarity of hindsight to recognize how urgent it is. Don’t forsake hope just because it didn’t serve you breakfast in bed the day after the honeymoon; you’ll miss it desparately when it’s gone.
