What you begin to realize is that on a whole host of issues, the GOP is going backward in areas of social tolerance, as they marinate in their own paranoia and purge every non-ideologue from their ranks. And as they go backward and feel, yes, left behind, their virulence and resentment intensify. It's a classic fundamentalist response to modernity.
It has a parallel in the way in which non-violent Islamists have doubled down on medievalism as they feel an overwhelming sense of their own failure to succeed in modernity. There is a profound insecurity and dysfunction in these subcultures which cannot make the transition to modern life and thereby surrender more totally to the ancient past and to hatred of those who succeed. The hatred of Obama - a clearly decent and obviously Christian man - is not about him. It's about them. It's about their resentment of a man who has integrated his own identity and made a place for himself in a pluralist world. They cannot do that - so, like Palin, they invent a world of ancient virtues and moral absolutes that they routinely fail to live up to in reality. I mean: look at Palin's family and Obama's. Whose is the more traditional? And yet Palin is allegedly the avatar of family values - and Obama is a commie subversive.
It would be funny if it weren't so sad.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Fear and Loathing in 2010
I find Andrew Sullivan one of the few clear-eyed political writers today. Here, he hits an important cultural phenomenon on the head:
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3 comments:
I've not read his blog before, but I've seen him on Real Time (and likely other talking-head shows). I find him to be a bit of an enigma, clinging to a motley - and not well thought out - ideology. In this horrible piece he pontificates against a straw man constructed from the inner feelings and world views, as he projects them, of ("non-violent"?) Muslims and Republicans. He is certainly not qualified to do so.
Cultural and political writers usually assess the state of things through a reading of actions, the writings, and the spoken words of the individuals or groups they're assessing. There's no mind-reading or divinations of inner feelings involved in Sullivan's piece. He's identified a cultural pathology that I find as clear as what's before one's nose. Except, as Orwell has noted, what should be clear to everyone really isn't, because of all the propaganda and misinformation that infects society (e.g., false narratives presented by Fox News, a news media interested more in drama than the truth, self-serving politicians, et al.)
I disagree. He can, in all fairness, speak to the actions and statements, but not the inner thoughts, of his targets. "They marinate in their own paranoia," "their virulence and resentment intensify," "they feel an overwhelming sense of their own failure to succeed," "There is a profound insecurity and dysfunction in these subcultures," "...their resentment [of Obama's success]," etc., are all unsupported projections from his bigoted mind. These hollow claims are not only vile, they set the stage for his straw man arguments, which don't demonstrate anything that is "clear as what's before one's nose."
I don't believe that every "non-violent" Muslim (BTW, why that distinction?) has consciously weighed modernity vs. medievalism and chose medievalism based upon their "failure" - whatever that means - in a modern world. Whatever parallel he constructs with the GOP is lost on me, but I think this "phenomenon," as you call it is best explained in other ways.
I also take issue with Sullivan, a Roman Catholic, equating Christianity with decency.
Beyond this piece, a few problems: Sullivan is a conservative (though a hypocritical one, being gay with a partner and calling for rights for same-sex partners). He supported the Iraq invasion. He voted for GW Bush. He called Cheney "sexy." He supports a US invasion of Israel to force a two-state solution. He doesn't support universal health care. He doesn't support the right of women to choose termination of their pregnancy.
He challenged Bill Maher on criticisms of religion and people of faith, saying, "To dismiss all religious people based on the actions of the most literalist [sic] dumb ones, I think is bigotry." Yet he defends his own homosexuality, or rather the hypocrisy of being a gay Roman-Catholic, by arguing that the Bible forbids same-sex sexual activity only when it is linked to prostitution or pagan ritual. This is a literalistic argument, no? And yet further, it was reported, and confirmed, that he advertised online for bare-back sex, despite being HIV-positive, while publicly arguing for greater monogamy among gay men.
What about him is so "clear-eyed," exactly?
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