Hey, here’s a disturbing thought:
After 9-11, it dawned on one that there was almost no limit to what you could do if you were willing to violate the most fundamental rule and principle of civilization and of Nature Her Own Self: i.e., if you were willing to die. All of civilization is premised on the fact that the individual does not want to die. Indeed, he (or, okay, she) almost always stands in active opposition to that possibility.
As Pish-Tush sings in The Mikado, regarding the new law that held “flirting” to be a capital offense:
This stern decree, you’ll understand/Caused great dismay throughout the land/For young and old/And shy and bold/ Were equally affected/The youth who winked a roving eye/Or breathed a non-connubial sigh/Was thereupon condemned to die/He usually objected…
(Emphasis added.)
Thus, in the face of a cult of people for whom suicide is a sacrament and a consummation devoutly to be wished, the rest of us must take extraordinary measures, including but not limited to taking off our shoes and belts, to be x-rayed, before boarding a plane.
Now contemplate the current state of right-wing politics in the U.S., and consider the fact that in dealing with them–with the Palins, the Bachmanns, the Pravda-like apparatchiks of Fox News, and particularly their fans and supporters–we are dealing with a cult of people similarly indifferent to one of the most fundamental components of civilized life. These people are to the truth what suicide bombers are to their own lives.
They literally don’t care about the truth.
It sounds petulant, but I don’t know how else to put it. Oh, maybe I do. Try this: Just as the suicide bomber subjugates the most fundamental principle of life itself to a fantasy created and sustained only by belief, so do the leaders and followers of the lunatic right happily (if self-pityingly–they are never happier than when feeling persecuted and sorry for themselves) subjugate, not just “truth,” but the importance of it, to their own fantasies and beliefs.
Reasonable people can disagree over whether Sarah Palin is a pathological, or a witting and consciously-calculating, liar. And in that spirit, reasonable p. can d. over whether Michele Bachmann’s apparently pathological lies are “conscious” or not. (Cf. Matt Taibbi’s excellent discussion of this here.) We don’t, and can’t, know what they really think, because they’re public figures selling themselves in the marketplace of power and celebrity.
In the marketplace, you’re allowed, by the generous morality of capitalism, to be false, to deny or evade the truth, to idealize, to fudge, to tweak, to puff up and paper over. Fine. But what of their followers, the customers who buy what they’re selling? Read the comments on, e.g., Sarah Palin’s Facebook page, and you subject your poor neurons to the clamor of a crowd who literally could not care less what is true and what isn’t.
If there were video footage of Sarah Palin strangling a child, and if the audio portion of the segment included her clearly and distinctly saying, “This is fun. I enjoy strangling children, and I don’t care if my followers don’t like it,” there would be a sizable number of those “Palinistas” who would find a way either to deny that it happened or make excuses as to why it was necessary–or, rather, why it was praiseworthy and righteous. ”You go, Sarah! Choke that child just like the Founding Fathers used to do!”
I’m not talking about mere ignorance. When Taibbi says that Bachmann’s followers don’t know the difference between socialism and a Stafford loan, that’s depressing enough, yes, but it would be tolerable if, once that was pointed out, they (however grudgingly) cared to learn it–not in order to persuade them to agree with one’s politics or philosophy, but to establish that there is a reality superior to everyone’s politics and philosophy.
I don’t think these people–who in their daily lives are not insane, who assume that the people around them usually tell them the truth and who tell the truth to them in turn–acknowledge that. Rather, they have an emotional need to disregard, in politics, the most fundamental axioms by which they otherwise live. In this, politics to them is religion by other means; and they are no less cultic, irrational, and unreachable than jihadist suicide bombers.
Do I know any of them? No. Do I have to, in order to hold this opinion? I don’t think so. Read the comments on right-wing sites. What you see is, not argument, but slogans, catechism, and dogma. Now, every political site, across the spectrum, features comments containing slogans and dogma. And there are many Republican sites that promulgate lies written by people who, one senses, would have the decency to at least feel a little bad when, having been caught in their lies, they are forced to come up with new lies. These people, however repellent they are, are at least immoral.
The (in the words of the blogger Driftglass) “orc army” of the Palin/Bachmann right are amoral–if, by that, we mean “unaware of their immorality.” As such, they are the kind of people who have made possible every authoritarian nightmare of the previous century, from Stalin to Hitler to Mao to Pol Pot to Kim Jong Il and so on.
We’re all fundamentally ignorant. Each of us knows a fraction of what there is to know and, less forgivably, a fraction of what we ourselves could know if we weren’t so damn busy being distracted and entertained by writing and reading blogs. And, by definition, we don’t know the magnitude of our ignorance. But we respect the difference between ignorance and knowledge, and we respect the difference between opinion, fantasy, and fact.
I don’t think these people do, and it will be to the Democrats’ discredit and shame if, believing that they do, and that all these cultists need is enough information, they waste enough time, money, and effort to allow these loons to rise to real power.
Or is it me? Does everyone else know this, and have you all made your peace with it? I’m not there yet. And I may never be. It’s part of my specific neurosis to believe that I can persuade a crazy person not to be crazy. That’s how nuts I am.
I can’t find the link, but last week I heard on NPR someone talking about how little logic and empirical evidence has to do with political ideology. Apparently we’re hard wired to be either liberal or conservative. My take away was that we should stop trying to meet them half way or win them over with reason and truth. It won’t work. I wish I knew what would work.
Win them over with reason and truth? Whose? Ours?
What if they counter with theirs? Try explaining to them that our version is the correct, better alternative. Better yet, assume (in popular modern left fashion) that we alone are logical and reasonable.
Yes, it’s hard to see why such an approach tanks from the word go. (-:
What is “their” truth? Death panels? “Socialism”? “The Federal Reserve isn’t mentioned in the Constitution”? You seem to have missed the point of the last piece: their “truth” (your term) isn’t truth at all. It’s ignorance, propaganda, nonsense, and lunacy. Or are you going to defend the patently false things they say because you’re defending religion? If you’re so willing to condemn Obama for compromising with his mortal enemies–which you should, and with which I agree–why do you then grant validity and respect to people who are the mortal enemies of intelligence and facts? Because they’re “believers”?
You say, “Their version of truth includes grabbing all they can get as quickly as possible.” That’s not their version of truth. That’s their version of politics and of life. Perhaps I should have been more specific in discussing the relationship between calculated manipulation (by, e.g., the Koch brothers’ astroturf propaganda mills), and those whom it manipulates. It’s the latter who believe in these spurious, and demonstrably false, notions of “truth.” But they’re not the grabbers. It’s the witting liars and demagogues manipulating them who are.
Your question, “What can we do about it?”is mine, too. As I just wrote to my sister, “I ask this every four years. How can people be so stupid, and should we try to win their votes?”
First of all, in what way am I defending, respecting, or granting validity to these folks? I’ll do any of those when Hell turns into an ice cube. I’d love to know the basis for such a presumption. In pointing out that people have differing versions of what’s true and/or moral, I’m defending those people I’ve been voting against all my voting life? Let me ask YOU a question–are you this quick to insult me because I’m a “believer”? I’m a liar when I claim to be a progressive? Such is the bigotry the many liberals of faith have to put up with these days in our oh-so-tolerant party.
Their version of faith, just like their version of politics, isn’t mine. Why would I defend either?
Our (the left’s) version of truth–including our notions of democracy, justice, and equality–differs from theirs on primarily MORAL grounds, not factual grounds. Love of liberty, concern for the common good, a belief in inclusivity, and so on, are NOT fact-based positions; they’re based in a moral vision of the world. Like our foes, we love to think the Founders were on the same page as we are, but I can only imagine trying to explain “inclusivity” to a group of guys who owned slaves, who limited “We, the people” to their exclusive, male, land-owning club, and whose stance on church/state separation was closer to Palin’s than Dawkins’. In short, not many of our modern liberal values have jack to do with the founder’s truth/reality/take. We love to see our views as some logical extension of what our founders laid down, but the truth is that we don’t know, without resurrecting Jefferson and Co., how the hell those guys would sign in on modern issues, many of which would have to be explained very carefully to them to even make sense in the context of their time and experience.
My main points are simple: “truth” depends on who’s documenting it. Why? Because it’s a humongous abstraction, just like logic, reason, religion, “hotness,” etc. If you mean, do our opponents play looser with the facts, yes, they do. They’re much more willing to lie to reach their ends. Does this mean they don’t believe, or believe in, those ends? Not at all. To use a James Randi analogy, even the person who fakes a UFO photo may be motivated by a desire to spread the “truth” about UFOs. People often lie as a means of getting the “truth” out there. That is to say, when Cheney lies about Iraq and WMD, he’s presenting a point of view he believes in, screw the facts. No, that doesn’t make WMD real, but it doesn’t put a dent in Cheney’s vision of world conquest, oil for money, or whatever drives him.
And logic is notoriously circular. For instance, there seems to be much logic to our position on universal health care–the huge savings in administrative costs, the elimination of a for-profit base, the standardizing of claim forms, one formulary, etc., etc. From our point of view, the benefits far outweigh any drawbacks, especially given the huge amount we pay anyway for our broken healthcare system. However, if your party’s goal is to stiff the general public for the $$ benefit of the rich and powerful, then there’s no logic to taking on the huge expense and effort of medically covering everyone. Their goal of keeping people poor and sick is hardly served by universal health care. The difference in their take on universal health and ours? One of morality.
You said, But their version of truth includes grabbing all they can get as quickly as possible
It sounds like you grant “their version of truth” an equal validity to “the truth,” as though truth is a matter of subjective opinion. That’s what I was addressing. And you’re too thin-skinned, if you think I said that because you’re a believer. In fact (although I haven’t taken the time to say this yet) I’m intrigued by your earlier statements that a Christian can be one who does not believe in the resurrection. I know there are millions of Christians who don’t take the Bible literally, but I had thought (as I said) that at least they seem to believe that. And in a conscious, omniscient, etc., identity-having god who wants, loves, hates, punishes, and rewards.
But never mind that for now. I agree that the basis of our differences with the right are on moral grounds, but the original post was critical/mocking/despairing over what they think are FACTUAL grounds. Hence my invoking “ignorance.” Your response implied some sort of relativistic semi-equivalence: they, and we, have our own truths. But (as I actually think you believe, as do I) truth is exactly that which isn’t relativistic–especially in the crude, vulgar sense that I’m invoking when bitching about them.
Having said that, the fact that Cheney’s vision is undented doesn’t mean he has his own equally-valid truth. A person faking a UFO photo may believe in the reality of UFO visitations, but claiming the photo is genuine is an untruth. The person who fakes the photo may have a “sincere” belief or desire, but so what? Who doesn’t? “Truth,” in my sense, does not depend on who’s documenting it. It depends on what is or is not the case; the documentation comes afterwards, for better or ill. I can’t believe you don’t agree with this. Certainly, all politics comes down to what (in fact) I would call an aesthetic sense: everyone’s notion of human nature, and what is fitting and right, in the end has roots in a sense of “correctness” that I’m willing to call aesthetic. And, in that sense, the basis of these discussions doesn’t concern truth, but opinion. But let’s not smear the two words into meaning sort-of the same. You in fact invoke this when you call it “morality,” which I agree with.
I also agree with Debbie Wolosky, that they lie about much, much more than the worst of “us” does, and there is no moral equivalence between them and us. The media would like to promote the false equivalence that “both sides do it.” Cf., alas, the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert “Rally for Sanity,” as though both sides are equally “insane.” Which they’re not, and there is no metaphysical or objective (let alone historical) reason to assume that they are. It’s at best lazy, and at worst self-serving, to say “well, it’s politics. They all do it.” They all do it, but to vastly differing degrees.
“And you’re too thin-skinned, if you think I said that because you’re a believer.”
Actually, I’m introducing you to your own rhetoric. You accused me of showing respect for views I do not respect, and (even worse) doing so because the view holders are fellow believers. (Wow–that was stilted enough to impress Dawkins!) In fact, Palin and the other mutants in question are a different category of believers–I don’t know if they believe in much that I do. For one thing, they missed the boat on Christ’s instruction to leave tribal ethics behind and join the greater community of Man. Their worldview, being crimped, local, and provincial (vice universal) is necessarily self-serving and disdainful of the common good. We’re all believers of some sort–Palin believes in her clique over all others, Dawkins believes that nothing exists except matter (hence, his violent take on religion), and many drunk males believe they’re outrageously sexy. I believe that truth is transcendent as hell (vice negotiable–not the same thing), that everyone is equal in the eyes of God, that TV commercials are too abusively loud, and that analyzing the physical makeup of something only enhances our knowledge of what, not how.
Now, I still know little about what YOU believe (one-sided, isn’t this?)–for instance, I can’t assume you’re an atheist or a materialist, though I strongly suspect the latter. Certainly, you argue from that perspective, since you’re doing the currently chic thing of restricting truth to truth statements and the like, while treating all of my claims about truth as off-topic. Sorry, but as inclined as I am to believe in a single, objective truth (a true truth?), it doesn’t follow by any logic that truth is only one thing. That is, nothing rules out multiple versions/manifestations of the same truth. And I can’t deal with jumping from the abstraction of truth to the specificity of demonstrable truths (e.g., fire will burn ya), since individual truths have as much to do with truth as prayer chants have to do with religion. Or a god with God. Or the day I’m “having” to the human condition.
Like the neo-atheists I spar with at allegedly progressive sites (Daily Floss, Huff-Schmo), you go from broad to microscopic in the blink of an eye, and I consider such a practice evasive in the body of a debate. Going from what we can’t know to what we CAN is the epitome of false equation, and it creates a “gap” to rival the “God of the…” version. There is simply no meaningful relationship between what can be answered and what can’t be–or, to paraphrase the brilliant John Dean, the different between equivocation and lack of equivocation is 180 degrees. Testable facts are a subset of truth, yes, of course, but truth is not simply a preponderance of true (or “testable”) things, any more than material reality is ultimately a whole bunch of matter. Whether or not reality is relative, our understanding of it necessarily is. That is, one reality, many different takes.
Am I suggesting that all of those takes are equally valid? Not in a million years.
Being religious, I don’t care if my observations about truth always gel with the contingencies of matter, because I don’t think matter can logically function as the reference point for understanding its own existence. Studying matter tells us a heck of a lot about matter, but gives us no context for its being.
Well, you’re sure making me earn my moniker. So, as ever, religion equals unreasoning devotion to belief(s). Gosh, thanks!! I keep forgetting what an irrational person I am.
As far as “the truth” goes, if you have a corner on same, you’be better patent it quick. That’s all I can say. Yes, the right ignores all kinds of realities–for instance, their policy of greed for greed’s sake can only end in disaster for everyone, even those raking in the obscene profits of present. But their version of truth includes grabbing all they can get as quickly as possible, and damn the consequences. In that context, their behavior is utterly logical and consistent. Meanwhile, our opposition is not.
Our truth includes the need to care about the common good, to take responsibility for how our behavior affects not only the present but also the future, and so on. In other words, the left/right clash is a moral one. Why don’t we simply label it as such? Why portray it as faith vs. reason, smart versus stupid, deluded vs. informed, etc., etc.? What’s wrong with claiming the moral high ground? (No, wait–that’s their job!)
We’ve gone off the rails a bit here. I can’t talk about faith, because I don’t know what, if anything is beyond us and I’m skeptical of anyone who says they do know. But, yes, there actually are demonstrable truths that we can claim. Climate change leaps to mind. Evolution as well. These are indisputable and the other side lies abut these things all the time. They lie about much, much more to further their ends and there is no moral equivalency between them and us.
“But, yes, there actually are demonstrable truths that we can claim.”
When did I suggest otherwise? And in what way does my faith prevent me from claiming such truths? For instance, the Bible doesn’t tell me to doubt Darwin. Or which party to vote for, or what stand to take on reproductive rights, and so on.
I don’t know where, if anywhere, we go after we expire. I do know that religion has been reduced to that cliche by our pop culture, and I choose to go beyond that level in my faith journey. Call me an elitist….
Re moral equivalency, that WAS me who wrote our version of truth “differs from theirs on primarily MORAL grounds, not factual grounds.” You won’t ever hear me argue that evil and good are the same thing.
Again: You are the one invoking moral truths, and I agree with what you say. In my original post (to the extent that anyone can remember it), and in my previous comment, I was talking about factual truths. Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, the GOP, Fox News, etc., etc., daily assert things as being factually true that aren’t. You read on right-wing sites every day how “we are halfway to socialism” and “government has got to stop punishing business and obstructing individual achievement” and similar Randian crap, none of which is remotely true. As if this society isn’t obsessed, in media, commercials, and entertainment, with one’s “dream” and with “individual achievement.” (As I wrote on one idiot site, what we have today–the close cooperation of government and corporations–is closer to fascism than to whatever the wing-nut choirs think they mean by “socialism.”)
I mentioned “death panels” and you start invoking what we can and can’t know. I agree with your points but they’re at least one plane of generality or metaphysicality above the one I was writing about. There may be things we cannot, in principal, know, but whether or not Obama was born in Kenya, or whether or not he’s a “socialist” is not one of them–and that’s the plane of discourse I was addressing when it comes to the public careers of Bachmann et al. I don’t blame Tea Party members for having fundamentally different beliefs than I do. I do blame them for applauding when Bachmann tells them that “the Founding Fathers did all they could to eliminate slavery.” To that extent, your discussion of truth was indeed off-topic, however plausible and defensible it is.
And it would be nice if you could restrain yourself from saying things like “…you’re doing the currently chic thing of…”
Oh, and….
“Or is it me? Does everyone else know this, and have you all made your peace with it?”
Not really, but what can we do about it? After all, Obama is the one who insists on treating the opposition as reasonable people with a deep-down interest in the common good, despite the fact that their only concern is getting what they want, and screw everyone else (such as, oh, the electorate). His enemies have publicly vowed to oppose and destroy him, and so he makes every last possible concession to their absolute demands. If you want to see batpoop crazy, enter “Obama” into Google Images.
” [P]olitics to them is religion by other means”
You’ve hit on a basic truth here.
Ahem. To get back to Michele Bachmann: She has formally announced her bid in Waterloo, Ia. A hometown she apparently shared with both John Wayne’s parents, before he was born, and John Wayne Gacy, while he was mass murdering boys and young men. This has caused the same kind of press blowback many of her not-quite-accurate statements cause . The reason is not that she’s crazy, but lazy. Not ‘can’t stop watching TCM’s old movies’ lazy like me, but ‘can’t read through to the end of the report so she just assumes she knows what she’s talking about, but never quite gets the information straight’ lazy. Combine this with the kind of absolute confidence in her virtue, spilling over into a hubris, that allows her to foster 23 kids and you have her essence.
“Absolute confidence in her virtue” is telling, perfect, and essential. (And thanks for that “Ahem.” Very discreet.) In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if virtue trumps “lazy.” It’s not “can’t read through to the end of the report,” but, rather, “has complete confidence that there is no need to read through to the end of the report. because everything, including the report, always supports my assumptions and desires about the world.” Whether that kind of narcissism is technically “crazy” becomes a matter of semantics. Certainly it prompts her to say things out loud, in public, that are not only objectively untrue, but are universally known and easily proven to be untrue.
The question, then, is: What happens when the truth proves at variance with her assumption and desire? In public, she’ll make excuses, claim she “meant” something else, was mis-quoted, etc. Same with Palin. You can set your moral watch by their inability to admit that they were wrong about something. It’s a trait that proceeds from and contributes to that confidence. But, as someone said about Palin, “She’s not a leader. She’s a demagogue.” Actually I think Bachmann is, in that sense, more a leader: she would love to live in the right-wing corporate theocracy she wants her constituents to elect her to create. Palin is just in it for the money.
Meanwhile, it will (as it already has) start coming out that many, if not most, if not all, of the her 23 foster children were “raised” by Bachmann in the same sense that you can claim to “live at” the Four Seasons when you stay there for a special weekend.