The Story Needs a Villain
I’d like to hear reactions to this.
The mosque controversy is a struggle between the reckless and the prudent, between the dim-witted and the progressive. But we’re not the reckless radicals they wish for. No, liberals span the broadest range of American demography imaginable. We defy stereotyping, except for love of country. Look in your mirror, your shopping mall, your church, your grocery store–that’s us. Millions of ordinary people and extraordinary people. War heroes, sports idols, U.S. Presidents, and movie stars.
But the screeching hyperbole leveled at liberals has made these two camps so wary of each other, so hostile and confrontational and disrespectful on both sides they have forgotten that we are first Americans. I am asking all of us, on both sides, to take one step back from the edge, than another step and another… however many it takes to get back to the place where we are all Americans. Different…different, imperfect, diverse, but one nation, indivisible.
This cycle of tragedy-driven hatred must stop, because so much more connects us than that which divides us because tragedy has been, and will always be with us. Somewhere right now, evil people are planning evil things. All of us will do everything meaningful, everything we can do to prevent it, but each horrible act can’t become an ax for opportunists to cleave the very Bill of Rights that binds us. America must stop this predictable pattern of reaction. When an isolated, terrible event like 9/11 occurs, a group is chosen for blame. Right now, it’s American Muslims. Why? Because their story needs a villain. They want someone to play the heavy in their drama of packaged grief. To provide riveting programming to run between commercials for cars and cat food.
The dirty secret of this day and age is that political gain and media ratings all to often bloom on fresh graves. I remember a better day, where no one dared politicize or profiteer on trauma. Simply being silent is so often the right thing to do. But today, carnage comes with a catchy title, splashy graphics, regular promos and a reactionary passage of legislation. Reporters perch like vultures on the balconies of hotels for a hundred miles around. Cameras jockey for shocking angles as news anchors race to drench their microphones with the tears of victims.
Injury, shock, grief and despair shouldn’t be brought to you by sponsors. That’s pornography. It trivializes the tragedy it abuses. It abuses vulnerable people, and maybe worst of all, it makes the unspeakable seem commonplace. And Muslims are being cast as the villain. That is not their role in American society, and they should not be forced to play it.
Our mission should be to remain a steady beacon of strength and support for the First Amendment. We cannot, we must not let tragedy lay waste to the most rare, and hard-won human right in history. A nation cannot gain safety by giving up freedom. This truth is older than our country. Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Reactions? –Though if you have a pat answer, hold back and give others a chance to express themselves thoughtfully.
This is the result of wedge political strategy that Rove and Co. dreamed up some time ago. The politics that put Bush in office drove a deep wedge down into the personal lives of all of us. This is an amazing effective strategy on Rove’s part. Since 2000 my personal experience, wedges have been driven between me and countless number of family and friends. Maybe in the past before that there was a rough sense of where friends might stand politically, but people never pursued delving into that… politics was still seen as personal, basically none of ones business.
Prior to 2000, and especially prior to 1990, I didn’t care about politics because I typically believed that despite campaign rhetoric, whomever was elected would be presented with the same set of facts and do the pragmatic thing. My evidence of this was post Nixon policy towards China. Every challenging candidate, from Carter, to Reagan, to Clinton, would campaign on not coddling to Chinese communist dictators, yet when these people gained office the policies largely did not change. I figured, they were all given the same set of facts, and reacted pragmatically in the same way.
Beginning around October 2000, I inadvertently stumbled upon information that suggested the Bushies were radically ideologically driven. Some of their rhetoric seemed quite simply insane. The gotcha moment was reading in October 2009 that Condi Rice was suggesting ending NATO as we then knew it. This was fundamentally insane to me: for the U.S. NATO was a force magnifier and central to international stability and economic trade. I was shocked.
Upon gaining power, they eventually found they needed NATO, but their actions on other things were to me incredibly radical and/or insane (such as withdrawing signatures on international treaties).
My and my friends and relations politics never used to matter. Suddenly, foor some reason it did. In 2006 a friend of mines dad suddenly started yelling at me and blaming me for abortion. I told him, its not my fault. I never had one, and wasn’t in favor of doing so, of course being a male, it wasn’t possible. Likewise, my own father, a perfect gentlemen most of his life, but now with deeply declining mental abilities, finds himself angry much of the time. This is the result of watching and listening to right wing news and opinion shows.
I blame it on political news shows, mostly Fox, AM radio talk shows, mostly on the right but also on the left.
For at least 3 years now, I maintain that these shows are a form of pornography… a new form.
Everyone knows sex sells. I like watching “Two and a Half Men”, one because it’s funny, but also because I know I’ll see some wildly attractive bimbos. (The latter is the frosting on the cake.) News show, as a matter of practice, can’t do so (though Fox loves to show sex in its News whenever it can). Instead of sex, news show use anger.
I’ve noticed that before lifting weights, or working out, it’s helpful for me to watch Countdown with Keith Obermann, or even Rachel Maddow. In my mind, these shows doing little more than report on the latest absurdities committed by Republicans/conservatives, but that’s enough to get your blood pumping.
The obvious solution is to not watch news and opinion shows. The crowds on the mall for the Beckpalooza last weekend are a testimony to anger-marketing approach of this genre. Beck, quite simply, ought to be ignored as should most morons and idiots, but also because he represents a new form of pornography: Political Anger Pornography (PAP – your heard it here first!).
There’s a great need to arrest people attention to good deeds, to finding excitement in the positive actions. This is the battleplace with those feeding on fear and anger.
The “fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity” parable is perfect here – there’s no way to win this through the methods of the other side. The only way is to feel for them, name their motives with humble compassion – no anger but pity. This will make them naked, weak and defenceless – a pity incarnated.
Since 1985, American middle-class workers have been over-taxed $1.5T in FICA to fund their upcoming social security payments (and have earned another $1T in accrued interest), and their government-administered account (known as the SSTF) is needing now to tap this savings as cash inflows are beginning to be exceeded by payments (thanks to the economy and the first wave of the baby boomers hitting SSI eligibility age).
This $2.5T is 10X the value of the all the gold in Fort Knox, and with a few deft deceptions, can simply be disposed of as an ongoing liability of the general fund, saving the current American taxpayer these trillions of dollars.
$2.5T is also about the total benefit of the Bush tax cuts, so another way to look at is blowing off the SSTF’s treasury holdings is another way to get another round of that.
Follow the money.
Very thoughtful commentary, Luis.
One of your best.
Finally, a voice of reason in the cacophony of partisan bickering, blaming and fear-mongering.
It strikes a chord for honest discussion and exchange of ideas.
Keep it up!
–kensensei
But … I don’t see the left being so bad. All I can think of is that I don’t like it when Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow use funny voices when quoting someone. It’s childish. Could someone give me an example of bickering and fear-mongering and whatnot from the left please?
Lately, when I see the news and it’s all about what some right-wing figure said or did, what Fox News thinks about this or that, I’m frustrated — I don’t want those people in the headlines all the time. It was fun (in a strange way — maybe the smug satisfaction of knowing you’re right) to be angry during the Bush years, and it was sort of addicting to being enraged about the daily parade of stupidity, but now it isn’t. Now I’m just uncomfortable. Pornography.
I have a feeling the architects of wedge propaganda are a little surprised how well it has worked. I recently reread “Brave New World” — they subliminally brainwash children with nightly recordings, but talk radio and cable TV has done the same thing to adults, they spout slogans just like in the novel, know who to hate.
Like Tim Kane, I saw it in my own family, started after Clinton was elected. How many horrible hate-filled rants I’ve had to endure. Those relatives aren’t around anymore or I’d have to hear about the Muslims and birth certificates.
They weren’t like that before, when all they saw of politics was the nightly news like everybody else. They used to be able to have a civil rantless conversation and listen to others without insulting them. Their common sense eroded little by little until fully brainwashed, so outraged that it became their identity, almost.
At least for a foreigner, it is disconcerting to read that a Glenn Beck rally can attract one hundred thousand fervent followers and is national news: “America today begins to turn back to God”. Is that for real? Recently, I have seen a similar kind of rally in Mozambique, although it didn’t quite hit the headlines.