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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
We all know that white trash Christians are morons. And we all agree that there's nothing quite so exquisitely painful as the stupidity of others, especially when presented in ways that we find hard to avoid in going about our day to day lives.
But what really bothers me about the usual display of American credulity and assertive blindness that always accompanies our electoral carnivals is not so much what Bubba Lumpen has to say about God and Flag, but the idiotic way so many of our more prosperous and "sophisticated" folks can blithely conflate their own self-interest with some higher so called "principle." In other words, the problem with this country, I'd say, is not really so much how stupid the stupid people are, but how stupid the smart people are.
After a year of watching the "smartest boys in the room" make infantile, self-destructive capital allocation decisions that have brought our "free market" economy to the brink of total destruction, you'd think people would've learned a lesson about the idiocy of unbridled greed, as well as the tax-favored risk taking enterprises built on greedy assumptions. But no, even here, in liberal New York, you still have the most naive attachment to the notion that the classy people know better, that "redistribution" is a threat to the moral purity of rigorous capitalism, that Obama is playing a dangerous game with his indulgence of "socialist" rhetoric. Just a moment ago, in fact, here in my work place, discussing the election with a very smart, very well educated cosmoplitan younger lawyer, I had to listen to the same ominous nonsense about Obama the Socialist that Sarah Palin is purverying out on the stump to her adoring fans, the authentically Amrikan plumbers and their aspirational cohort.
Never mind the simple fact that we're talking about a shift of mere points in the tax code, merely undoing a dimwitted maneuver by the most dimwitted Administration in our modern history (a tax cut informed by Dick Cheney's moronic insistence that "deficits don't matter"). When people, even or especially nominally smart people, feel their own personal values or interests are threatened, no matter how unjustified or blindly self-destructive those values (ie, greed) might be, they fall back on ideological power words and magical thinking. Calling Obama a "socialist" is no more intellectually valid than calling him a Muslim terrorist.
While Salon's readers might be savvy enough to recognize the idiocy of the latter, one can only wonder how much the first year of his presidency will be shaped our culture's inability to recognize the sheer economic illiteracy of the former attitude. The idea that "redistribution" is a threat to our way of life (well, except when the beneficiaries of any "expropriation" are bankers and lawyers) will surely be washed into our brains by endless repitition by some of the politically savviest people around.
It seems to me the involvement of Fundamentalists in mainstream politics has been something of an unstable innovation, brought about quite deliberately as a development of the Southern Strategy. (Not all Fundamentalists are social conservatives, but most of them are.) I think a good many of them have by now realized that they were being cynically exploited, and that in any case the promotion of utopian or other-worldly religious values does not go along well with the dirt and viciousness of day-to-day political struggle.
The level of political ignorance expressed by some of the individuals interviewed for this piece was breathtakingly extraordinary. I thought initially the author was mixing some satirical elements into his piece, but now I'm simply aghast that such uninformed voters will be allowed to...well, vote. No wonder this country has been so deeply divided over the past decade or so. If those who were quoted for this article are in any way representative of the far right's conception of reality, there's little contructive discourse to be had between liberals and conservatives.
I tire of the doomsday plots written in BIG CAPITAL LETTERS, warning us of the looming ultra-conservative theocracy movement just pining to put the country into an intellectual choke-hold.
Believe it or not, there are millions of thinking Christians in this nation who don't espouse theocracy, don't believe in the obliteration of the church-state divide (originally created to protect the Church from the State, mind you), and who don't believe in carrying around sandwich boards plastered with photos of aborted babies.
We believe in Jesus, and we believe that His teachings ought to influence our worldviews -- and, often, our votes. How, pray tell, is this any different in principle from those who espouse the writings of, I don't know, Noam Chomsky, unabashedly allowing his ideas to influence their worldviews and their votes? Both camps vote their values. But somehow, the former is blindly bigoted and the latter is enlightened and egalitarian. Please.
And by the way, some of us are sorry we voted for Bush and Cheney. However, respectable alternatives would have been nice.
Lotus,
Thanks for your reply. I don't believe I've pardoned them at all. I've pointed out, correctly I believe, that there are many nuances.
And while I don't agree with Minister Farrakhan, for example, I'd be a bit hard pressed to compare him with the likes of Pol Pot, Stalin, etc.
That's all.
Peace.
Yours is a great, great post. Thanks ever so much.
"I'm afraid Obama is going to change our country into a Muslim country," said Melody Edwall, 51, a manager for an air carrier who lives in Colorado Springs. "I do. I'm afraid of him." Edwall was pretty sure Obama wanted to change the country too much. "This is America -- you don't like it, leave," she said. She'd heard Obama wanted to change the flag and the symbols of the country somehow. "He wants it to be this one big -- I don't know -- it's not America. It's going to be something else, and I don't know what it's going to be.""
Why is it that the typical Republican voter will choose a candidate based on irrational, false or exaggerated information?
Do they choose not to be informed?
The Republican party has consistantly relied on these people to win elections.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
