STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS SATURDAY
A lot of things have happened this week that have entered the airy cavity sitting atop my neck and floated around waiting to be recognized as conscious thought.
I can imagine all these little snippets of inner dialogue waiting patiently in some line, bitching about how slow a goose I am at moving them from the dark of my subconscious where they effect my thinking in mysterious ways, to the light of consciousness where I can examine them, caress them, milk them for their illuminating properties.
It’s easy to allow emotion to crowd out valuable insights that appear from time to time. At best, we recognize through reflection that perhaps we shouldn’t have written this, or said that, or made a mistake in judgment when analyzing something else. You end up wishing you hadn’t snapped back at your spouse, or yelled at your kid, or dismissed a co-worker’s attempt to be friendly.
I could start a blog and fill it with such reflections without any trouble - as could most of you, I’m sure. Learning from our mistakes is the essence of being human - probably the major factor in the rise of Homo Sapiens. Don’t get too close to that mammoth or you won’t come home from the hunt. Going after a Saber Tooth cat alone is not a good idea if you want to pass your genes on to the next generation. Trial and error not only advanced human evolution, it forms the basis of modern science and has led to the astonishing outpouring of creative thought we see today in everything from computers to razor blades.
Some venues do not allow for such errors. Political blogging is one of them. As ideology is set in stone and cannot be changed or challenged on either the right and the left, variance with the established themes and theses is not only frowned upon but punished severely. Here, “getting it wrong” does not mean that you are necessarily “incorrect,” only that you are in disagreement with the vast majority who march in ideological lock step. Deviate from the shining path and you are cast out as an apostate.
No matter. I came to the conclusion years ago that I could try to be honest with myself and my beliefs, incurring the wrath and disapprobation of those who consider themselves guardians of the Ya-Ya Conservativehood by challenging the underlying assumptions of their excessive and blindered ideology; or toe the line, betray my true beliefs, and enjoy the warmth of fellowship found in their ever narrowing definition of the “true conservative” path.
Lest some believe I am nailing myself to a cross by wallowing in self pity and whining about conservatives - most anyway - not taking me seriously, allow me to disabuse you of that notion. I celebrate my freedom from conformity every fu**ing day. I will lord it over those who, when confronted with a new issue, a new attack, feel lost and alone until they are told by others how they must think, be it Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, or other “movement” leaders.
To be fair, most conservatives don’t really need to wait for the word coming down from on high. All they have to do is unthinkingly, uncritically, hold a mirror up to whatever the left is saying about an issue and simply reverse the image. That’s what the Limbaughs of the world do anyway. There’s no reason or rationale to it. That comes later - at least the rationale - as the right congratulates those whose “insights” are the most vitriolic and hateful.
The ideological screen through which most opinion on the right is washed has become internalized so that favorite themes regarding the left - unpatriotic, hate America, socialists, communists, liars, traitors - can be pulled off the shelf and slapped on to any “analysis” to make it conform to the “right thinking” brigades of hysterical paranoids who believe themselves guardians of Reagan’s legacy or, in extreme cases of delusional thinking, of conservatism itself.
(I hasten to add that there are exceptions to be found in the writings of some conservatives like Ed Morrissey, Allahpundit, Victor Davis Hanson, and several other independent thinkers on the right. But as a general rule, I believe my analysis stands.)
In this way, ideology at the expense of rational thought is celebrated and rewarded.
And yes, we find the exact same kind of irrational, nonsensical paranoia on the left. There is no difference. One is not worse than the other, except perhaps there is a bigger responsibility generally recognized throughout history for the majority to treat the minority with respect. But this hasn’t been true in American politics for decades so why bother discussing it?
Barack Obama, to his credit, said yesterday that opposition to his policies is not based on race, but on the fear of change:
In a number of interviews that will air in fuller form Sunday morning, the president also addressed the tone of a heated summer debate over health-care, and the contention of one former president that much of the criticism Obama faces is because he is black.
Some of the most heated opposition to the president’s initiatives are not racially motivated, Obama suggested in response to comments that former President Jimmy Carter had made earlier this week, but rather reflective of the turmoil that is common “when presidents are trying to bring about big changes.”
“Are there people out there who don’t like me because of race? - I’m sure there are,” Obama told CNN’s John King. “That’s not the overriding issue here.”
Instead, Obama maintained, it is concern about sweeping government change that has fueled much of the “passion.”
“It’s an argument that’s gone on for the history of this republic,” Obama told NBC News’ David Gregory. “Wbat’s the role of government?… This is not a new argument, and it always invokes passions.”
He is absolutely correct, of course. Not sure that “fear” is exactly the right word to describe what conservatives are feeling. Anyway, I am very glad he said this. But we must demand he go much farther in condemning the wild, out of control explosion of charges being made by his supporters that tar opposition to his policies as motivated solely by race. I realize this is very difficult for him to do because he benefits politically by this ridiculous, false, and hateful rhetoric coming from the left. But as long as his allies continue to deliberately, knowingly, and smugly raise the issue of race and use it as a political club, he will be seen as giving such deceitful arguments credence by the wink and the nudge.
In response to a comment from my brother Jim on my Mary Travers remembrance post, I tried to make the point that there are acceptable and unacceptable ways to engage in political combat, and they all boil down to this:
I joke about lefty folkies, of course - more playing to stereotype than reality. But we are of a generation that perhaps learned valuable lessons about civic disagreements and how they can truly lead to bloodshed unless we all remember that we are Americans who love our country and wish only the best for it. If only we could all start from that premise, I think a lot of the ugliness in our politics would be muted and we could get down to the business of truly addressing some of the problems facing the country today.
Does believing this make me any less passionate in my opposition to what I see are the wrongheaded, dangerous polices and politics of Barack Obama? Does not calling the president a Communist or Marxist disqualify my opinions because they are not hateful enough?
To some, yes. And those who cannot see what this kind of rigid, uncritical, self-defeating thinking is doing to our country - both right and left - may live to see the day where useful dialogue and reasoned debate become an impossibility and our country dissolves into weak, divided, quarreling bunch of ideologues who prevent us from facing vital challenges both at home and abroad.
“But we must demand he go much farther in condemning the wild, out of control explosion of charges being made by his supporters that tar opposition to his policies as motivated solely by race. I realize this is very difficult for him to do because he benefits politically by this ridiculous, false, and hateful rhetoric coming from the left. But as long as his allies continue to deliberately, knowingly, and smugly raise the issue of race and use it as a political club, he will be seen as giving such deceitful arguments credence by the wink and the nudge.”
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Besides you, Mr. Dreher, and Dave Frum what folks on the right are doing the corollary that you’re requesting the president and his allies do.
I mean, can’t the exact same thing be said about the language coming from some quarters on the right. Aren’t some folks on the right knowingly and smugly using race as a club (well I’ve never seen his birth certificate… I’m looking at you Senator Shelby).
Southern GOP field offices emailing racist literature to web groups, signs at rallies with Obama sitting in a watermelon patch while dressed in safari grass with a bone in his nose, one of the Tea Party organizers on national TV calling the president a Kenyan welfare thug.
A white southern Congressman calling a 50 year black man a “boy” while another calls him “uppity “. This stuff is just unreal. And we should be honest and call this the race baiting that it is.
Shouldn’t there be folks on the right going farther to condemn this out of control vitriol that IS based on the president’s race? Perhaps this is difficult to do because appeals to racial resentment have been beneficial politically to some folks in the GOP. I don’t know.
I’ve read your blog for about two years now and you appear to be very sincere in aiming for a reasoned discourse.
But look at the flak you take from people on the right when you point out the real obvious stuff. Just reflect on the pushback you experienced after your essay taking down the birthers and Geoff Davis this summer.
If folks can’t see that calling a grown black man a boy and that passing out images of President Obama in jungle garb, with a bone in his nose, IS racially antagonistic then reasoned dialogue isn’t possible.
Comment by Augustine — 9/19/2009 @ 9:38 am
Augustine, please clarify for me which congressman called which black man a boy.
Comment by Mike — 9/19/2009 @ 12:13 pm
Here is my stream of consciousness: Please, please stop with the “both the right and left” nonsense. At least say “the left, for years and years and years,” and “the right, more recently.” The political climate we find ourselves in today is wholly a creation of the left, which was permitted by the nation’s media and political elites to launch blood libel after blood libel for years with absolutely no filter, no shame, and no calls for party introspection. It continues today with “racists,” “teabaggers,” and now allusions to John Kennedy and 1963. I would really like some “reasoned, rational” person to acknowledge that our poisonous political climate was given to us by the poisonous left, of which our president is a member, that he has benefited greatly from that poison in his political ascension, and that he has never, ever chastised his own side for its many, many vitriolic excesses. Now, the right is taking a page from the left’s Alinsky playbook — to their political benefit, as well, I might add — and it’s time to put on the brakes and seek “rational discourse”? The political left are like wife beaters who want to have a glass of wine and “talk” when the beating’s over and the police have been called. This entire conversation reminds me of the liberal parent who tells her son, after taking a beating at school day after day, to seek “conversation and common ground.” Then Uncle Joe comes over for a visit, sees the kid’s black eye, pulls him aside, and says “They’re gonna keep hitting you until you hit them back. The next time they jump you, punch the biggest one there right in the face.” The left have been bullies for far too long, and now that the right is hitting back, they are, like all bullies, crying and looking around for mommy to come in and save them, complete with their whining pleas that “It’s not fair!” I don’t think the environment will ever change until the leaders of the far left — and that is the president himself — demonstrate some introspection about their very large role in bringing us to this point, and THAT is never going to happen. So, I’m glad the bullies are getting hit back. It’s petty, perhaps, and maybe it doesn’t help solve all “the problems” of the nation, but neither has letting these bullies abuse unfettered all these years. If this is the political climate we have — hardball and invective all the time — and I believe it is, then it’s a good thing both sides are bringing some muscle to the fight. It’s about time.
Comment by Anon — 9/19/2009 @ 3:54 pm
May I ask by name which supporters of Obama have saud the charges are soely based on race?
I can’t think of any.
What I do hear is them saying it is clear some of it is based on race and more importantly pointing out what their see as evidence. And what hear them asking for for voices other than yours, Frum, and Dreher to denounce it when the evidence supports it.
I believe I am quoting you accurately when you say you don’t believe Rush is a racist, rather a racial agitator. What is the difference?
Except that the race agitator is more cynical and damaging since they know what they are saying generates heat precisely because of race and that they say those things even when they know it is based on bulls**t.
I completely get that the teabaggers are angry at everybody. What I don’t get is why Senators and Congressmen from the GOP can’t say without equivocation or qualifiers that the birthers are whacked out about Obama and the reason, obvious to me, is his race.
That’s not everyone on the Right, that’s the birthers on the Right who the GOP politician won’t call out because when it comes down to voting day they expect them to pull the lever for the GOP.
Can you understand why a Congressman who is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans would get no benefit of the doubt about his motivations for disrespecting the President.
We see the GOP katowing to a segment of their base who romanticize their “lost cause” and can never admit their ancestors were traitors who lost a war they started. We know this because the leadership of the party can never come right out and say the Confederate flag should not be flown on government buildings (or like McCain they say it and recant when it’s politically expedient).
Bob Jones University is known its ban on interracial dating. The ban was lifted after George Bush I visited, not because the leaders there think it was wrong in the first place but because it had became known. When Dole, Bush II, and McCain go there during GOP campaigns we see it as a wink to the segment of the party that can’t accept blacks.
We believe there is a significant segment of the GOP who follow and agree with the writings of Samuel Francis, Peter Brimelow, and others connected the American Renaissance. These people state explicitly that blacks are inferior and use that as the basis for how they approach everything from welfare reform to health care.
These groups and many like them are founded by current and former members of the GOP. The don’t wear sheets and they’ve learned to to say that word, but its pretty clear what they believe. Not all of the GOP, just some.
I don’t overstate their influence, I simply state their existence and why certain parts of the Republican apparatus uses their manpower and money to stay in office.
They buy their mailing lists and aim direct mail efforts at AmRen types, knowing they don’t have to come right out and say why the GOP pols believes they have similar aims:
I am not saying the GOP agrees with what these people believe, I am saying their are those in the GOP who aim their advertising to these people solely for political gain.
That is what we are asking to the GOP to won up to and to cease. I write about it to encourage you to add this to the list of things you’d like the Republican party to stop do on small or large scale. Stop it period.
Comment by Richard bottoms — 9/19/2009 @ 6:24 pm
Is there any lengths to which some Obama supporters won’t go in order to discredit a particular swath of criticism? I think not. It’s sort of like a bad political game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
Attributing motives to one’s opponents in an attempt to discredit the message is an old and well worn game played by both sides, but as Rick has noted many times eloquently in the past, the “racist” label is a powerful trump card. The “un-American” or “un-Patriotic” label used by some of the right doesn’t even come close.
http://rightwingnuthouse.com/archives/2009/09/16/its-a-shame-dueling-has-been-outlawed/
Comment by sota — 9/19/2009 @ 6:48 pm
Greetings:
President Obama’s comment about the opposition to his “initiatives” is the flip side of the damning with faint praise coin. In the video, he assumes his most beatific countenance and then releases his opponents from responsibility for their ignorance and malfeasance in an act of near total forgiveness. It is one of the many poses that he returns to and will continue to return to time and time again. It is a pose and he is the poseur.
Comment by 11B40 — 9/19/2009 @ 9:01 pm
Telling ideologues from the left or right that their words and actions are wrong and hurtful is, in my opinion, useless. Why? Because it will not change these ideologues, it casts a pall over the good people that do not have these ideas, and, more importantly, it wastes time, effort and brainpower on the part of people such as you that could have far better things to say about how to change things in the country for the better.
How to make the conservative movement better. How to win elections in 2010 and 2012. What the winning issues are, and how to sell them. How to have a positive influence instead of a negative one. Yes, “how to win friends and influence people!” How about simply ignoring BDS’ers, birthers and truthers, etc, and look for worthwhile ideas for a change?
Comment by mannning — 9/19/2009 @ 10:39 pm
Civic disagreements and civil discourse is always the counterweight to over the top rhetoric in any democracy. I think you will always have the two, maybe we need them but I always thought the ability to tolerate the political opponent was America’s great strength. I guess I mellowed with age but I liked your analogy of the ying and yang when looking at democrats and republicans in American politics. To all the folks saying but the left/right did this and now we strike back without mercy etc I ask you this: of all the countries in the world would you rather live in Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Russia etc or in bad, bad Massachusetts/Texas (depending on your political leanings). I mean, Come on…the world isn’t going to end.
Comment by funny man — 9/19/2009 @ 11:29 pm
Now, having gotten that out of your system could you address the specific issue of paying for mailing lists to magazines that are known to be popular with that who are unquestionably racist (i.e. Spotlight) in order to reach their readers without having to actually say anything racist yourself.
Will the GOP explicitly take on the issue of the Confederate flag in official government settings?
Will the GOP stop using vote caging and voter roll purging tactics in areas dominated by black voters?
A simple yes or no will do for a start. Details can follow.
Comment by Richard bottoms — 9/20/2009 @ 2:06 am
The history buff inside me is reminded of the public and political vitriol of the 1850’s when thinking of all the madness that is currently occupying our lawmakers and media outlets. (Abraham Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech has never sounded more relevant, today’s lack of moral clarity on either side notwithstanding.) All democracies face touchy and divisive issues that spilt citizens opinions and votes, yet history tells us that only a very few specific topics are capable of tearing nations apart.
Therefore, is it too much to ask that the Stimulus/Deficit and Obamacare struggles return to a respectful tone and not further inflame our worst passions? Otherwise, I fear it will take generations for our country to heal from all this…
Comment by Surabaya Stew — 9/20/2009 @ 2:36 am
Sometimes the stream of consciousness carries you right on out to sea. In order to stay anchored, I’ve turned to satire: fun and nutritious!
I think Michelle would approve.
Comment by Dewey From Detroit — 9/20/2009 @ 10:13 am
Mike,
“Augustine, please clarify for me which congressman called which black man a boy.”
Not speaking for Augustine, that would probably be Rep. Geoff Davis, R-Ky. in 2008: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/04/gop-congressman.html
He was speaking of then-Senator B. Obama. Rep. Davis appears to be white in his bio picture on wikipedi. (and to answer your question completely, B. Obama is half-white, half-black but is generally considered black.) Rep. Davis subsequently apologized.
Rep Davis is about two years older than B. Obama.
Comment by Bill Arnold — 9/20/2009 @ 4:03 pm
“A simple yes or no will do for a start. Details can follow.”
Sounds like a fun game. I’ll give it a shot.
“…could you address the specific issue of paying for mailing lists to magazines that are known to be popular with that who are unquestionably racist (i.e. Spotlight) in order to reach their readers without having to actually say anything racist yourself.”
No.
This doesn’t lend itself very easily to a yes or no answer, but I’ll assume for now that you meant something along the lines of the other questions (Will the GOP stop paying for mailing lists…?).
Frankly, in the end, I don’t believe candidates on either side of the aisle care much about the opinions of the people who vote for them. Mailing lists are simply another tool both sides use to drive people to the polls (hopefully, to vote for them). I think we’d all be pretty disappointed in the types of people politicians go vote-hunting for. In fact, I suspect most Democrats would be happy to have those racist GOP’ers pull the lever for them rather than their opponent.
“Will the GOP explicitly take on the issue of the Confederate flag in official government settings?”
Yes.
Eventually. If you think this issue is driven only be race (or even largely by racism at this point), then you need to dig deeper.
“Will the GOP stop using vote caging and voter roll purging tactics in areas dominated by black voters?”
No.
Neither party will stop doing questionably legal things to drive people to or away from the polls if it benefits them. The GOP has no lock on that tactic.
My turn.
Other than racism, do you see ANY possible motive for any of those things you’re asking about? Or are these things automatically racist?
Comment by sota — 9/20/2009 @ 5:21 pm
Yet I see this same approach coming from you, Rick. You call a reader of your site that he is a closet klansman for trying to explain a statement from Rush that you feel he takes out of context. It seems to me that the supposed “non-ideologues” have their own brand of rigidity. You assume Rush Limbaugh does not offer reasoned debate (that I disagree with you on) and so when someone tries to point out where you are wrong, you name call.
Seems to me that you should look in the mirror before you attack the rest of Conservatism.
Comment by Sal — 9/21/2009 @ 10:19 am
They aren’t automatically racist.
If however your target’s for vote caging are always black then that is de facto a tool to hurt black voters.
I’ll give an example of something that I am sure no one in their heart thinks is racist but turns on the loathing of the GOP to 11.
It is the assumption that all black people care about from the Democratic party is welfare. It is as if some time warp exists and these people think it’s always 1972.
Turth is most black Democrats care about the same thing every other Democrat cares about and most Republicans too. Having a good job in a safe environment, good schools for their kids, adequate police protection without violating their civil rights, and clean water.
The goodies we do want are the same as everyone else, Medicare, Social Security, unemployment benefits at a decent level when we need them.
Welfare is a non-issue. It was dealt wil nearly 20 yars ago.
Personally when the economy is on its feet I make over six figures and that’s not counting my wife’s income.
I’ve never been on welfare nor do I know anyone who has. That’s one insult, one we perceive as solely based on race you could put a stop to right now.
Comment by Richard bottoms — 9/21/2009 @ 10:42 am
BTW, please also assume that no watermelon jokes, monkey jokes, any references to cotton or witch doctors will be given the benefit of the doubt.
Ever.
I’m 54 so I’ve heard them all and we have no sense of humor about it.
Comment by Richard bottoms — 9/21/2009 @ 2:19 pm
hi das ist ja mal wirklich schön, weiter so ich werde noch zum Stammleser hier
Comment by the pick up artist lars — 9/27/2009 @ 5:12 pm