Accentuate the Negative
So what was the point of the last post? Well, I've been poking around corners of the blogosphere that I don't normally frequent. Among other things, I've been reading more of the stuff on the far right. All this poking around has reinforced a couple of suspicions I already had. One of those suspicions is that cyberbalkanization is probably for real, conventional wisdom be damned. Another one is that part of the mechanism driving that phenomenon has to do with focusing on the biggest morons, worst arguments, and most irritating characteristics on/of the side of the political spectrum you don't agree with.
Why do we do this? Maybe in part for fun. Maybe in part to feel superior. My conjecture, though, is that much of it has to do with a tendency to focus on characteristics that just happen to piss us off and adopt political positions as a result. If spikey-haired, ambiguously-gendered jargon-spouting collectivist anarcho-feminists bug you most, you'll tend to move right. If puritannical snake-handling flag-waving my-country-right-or-wrong ultra-Christian uber-capitalists bug you most, you'll tend to move left. So, I guess, in some respects the aversions are antecedent to the identifications.
But I'm not so much interested in how it happens. I'm more interested in the phenomenon itself--focusing on the worst and weirdest of the other side. We'd make a lot more progress if we all thought more about the failings of our own favored parties. Physicians, heal thyselves. What, after all, is the point in spending all your time focusing on the failures of the Republicans if the only influence you have is with the Democrats?
This, oh my brothers, is a tragic waste of the human spirit. The faction of the future may very well be the descendent of the party which is most able to resist this urge to obsess over the perceived failings of its opponents. The faction of the future may very well be the descendent of the party which is most willing to focus on its own flaws and foibles. And to correct them.
Thus spake Raptothustra.
So what was the point of the last post? Well, I've been poking around corners of the blogosphere that I don't normally frequent. Among other things, I've been reading more of the stuff on the far right. All this poking around has reinforced a couple of suspicions I already had. One of those suspicions is that cyberbalkanization is probably for real, conventional wisdom be damned. Another one is that part of the mechanism driving that phenomenon has to do with focusing on the biggest morons, worst arguments, and most irritating characteristics on/of the side of the political spectrum you don't agree with.
Why do we do this? Maybe in part for fun. Maybe in part to feel superior. My conjecture, though, is that much of it has to do with a tendency to focus on characteristics that just happen to piss us off and adopt political positions as a result. If spikey-haired, ambiguously-gendered jargon-spouting collectivist anarcho-feminists bug you most, you'll tend to move right. If puritannical snake-handling flag-waving my-country-right-or-wrong ultra-Christian uber-capitalists bug you most, you'll tend to move left. So, I guess, in some respects the aversions are antecedent to the identifications.
But I'm not so much interested in how it happens. I'm more interested in the phenomenon itself--focusing on the worst and weirdest of the other side. We'd make a lot more progress if we all thought more about the failings of our own favored parties. Physicians, heal thyselves. What, after all, is the point in spending all your time focusing on the failures of the Republicans if the only influence you have is with the Democrats?
This, oh my brothers, is a tragic waste of the human spirit. The faction of the future may very well be the descendent of the party which is most able to resist this urge to obsess over the perceived failings of its opponents. The faction of the future may very well be the descendent of the party which is most willing to focus on its own flaws and foibles. And to correct them.
Thus spake Raptothustra.
posted by Winston Smith at
7:24 AM
8 Comments:
C,
I'm not arguing for moral equivalence of the two sides here. In fact, I think that right now the conservatives are a lot worse. People who are more extremist/loony have more power in the Republican party than comparably extremist/loonies in the Democratic party. Leftist loonies are marginal in the Dems, but in charge in the GOP--in my opinion of the matter.
I'm not trying to make any comparisons, however, in this post. I'm suggesting that that this is an affliction by which both sides are plagued--though perhaps to different degrees.
If I'm right about the difference between Dems and GOP, the GOP has to look farther afield for nutjobs to obsess over, though. So my guess would be that they're currently more severely afflicted.
I'm no more interested in arguing for a bogus equivalence between the two parties than I am in arguing for bogus differences.
My concern is: who is the danger? Is it a bunch of goofy posers who inflate their nutsacks and stand around a Berkely parking lot jerking each other off and saying "power to the people," while being ignored by precicely everyone, or a large caste of violence-endorsing extremists who, this is the important bit, HAVE THE EAR OF THE GOVERNMENT! Do you think for a second that Bill Clinton, or John Kerry, or any concievable Democrat would cut short his vacation to sign legislation specifically for the satisfaction of the Berkely book sale doofuses? Or have an entire news media devoted to cottoning to that extremism? The Schaivo case is, I think, a powerful example for everyone who thinks they're being rational and independant by hedging their bets, saying, "both parties have fringes!" It ignores the fact that one fringe is isolated, ignored by the party that it could be connected to and by the entire mainstream media, and the other is essentially THE BASE OF SUPPORT for the rulling government, which controls, at present, the entire federal government.
My essential point: It's not a question of taste "I'm bothered more by Christian fanatatics as a matter of personal preference" though that is certianly true. It's a matter of triage: what nutcases are actual threats to civil life in America? Since there is currently a massive push to overthrow evolution in public biology education and exactly no push to get Marx enshrined in academic economics, among about a thousand more examples, it's not even a contest.
Matt,
I disagree.
Of course both parties have fringes. What I want to note is that (here's the conjecture) to some extent many of us tend to allow the other side's repugnant fringe to determine our political positions.
I hypothesize, further, that if we take a look at our own side's fringe, we can get a taste for what bugs the other side.
I am not--I say again, NOT--asserting or suggesting that the two fringes are equal in power or annoyingness. I'm trying to remain neutral on that.
Temporary neutrality for the sake of examining one issue in abstraction from others doesn't entail a commitment to any view about the equivalence of the things in question.
FROM wmr:
Winston writes "We'd make a lot more progress if we all thought more about the failings of our own favored parties." Yes, but that's not the way the game is scored; progress takes a back seat to winning elections. These tactics are common because they work.
They work to encourage all of you who only marginally support the party to get out and vote for us because otherwise THESE are the crazies who will run your life—and ruin your life.
As I said once before, cyberbalkanization doesn't worry me nearly as much as cyberdemonization. Balkanization is inevitable--no one can even READ everything, much less think about or comment on what one has read. But hating the other side is a short term strategy that, historically, has never before worked for very long. Unfortunately, it works so well in the short term that few can resist—few, that is, of those who care only for power, not progress.
IMO, this will only change when the voters start grading on progress instead of sound bites and when the media begin to act as honest brokers of information and analysis. I realize that these may be counsels of perfection, but I can't see any other way.
=================================
I won't look into the worm cans about which side is worse. Needless to say, there's a lot in the above comments I disagree with.
We all argue about form and fringes far too often. The substance is that there are deep philosophical differences, as David Brooks ineptly tried to point out.
I would observe briefly that there used to be a religious left (Catholic Worker, etc.) but it's largely gone. The American left is in harmony with the (dominant) European one, which is non-religious if not openly hostile to religion.
"Higher power" vs. "reason," is how I see it.
But as Dick Morris put it, the party that wins is the "glass is half-full" party that still believes in America.
He points out that when the GOP was most loudly negative, the anti-Clinton years, it lost in the 1998 congressional elections.
(I love Morris' analyses, even though his predictions are almost always wrong.)
Think that will drive you some extra traffic?
Communities lost something valuable when they ceased seeking counsel from the elders on matters of import. Elders are more experienced and presumably wiser. Having made decisions at numerous crosroads, I am still around to pass on my two cents worth. Keep on learning is paramount as is seeking out new ideas like visiting your blog. Developing an appreciation for actuality, efficiency and mindfulness will eventually lead to peace of mind. Assisting others to find their own minds and helping them to see some of the forest through the trees is also most rewarding. happy thoughts
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