Monday, October 10, 2005
real time and on conservatism
Very odd episode of Real Time with Bill Maher this week.
Ann Coulter was pissed at Bush, Andrew Sullivan sounded like a populist, Ben Affleck sounded like a spokeman for the DLC and Salman Rushdie was doing standup. It was bizzaro TV.
Coulter's liberal-hating and Sullivan's conservative righteous indignation brought something to mind for me: we've spent a lot of time as progressives fighting Bush's agenda and have generally lost sight of the larger picture, at least in how we engage in public discourse.
The bigger picture of course is the folly of conservatism itself. I read something recently that talked about how Reagan effectively changed the perception of government from a tool for the common good to a tool for survival of the fittest with his infamous "are you better off today than you were four years ago" rhetorical debate question. The article I read talked about how that one word - "you" instead of "we" - went unchallenged then and has led us to where we are today, with self-proclaimed conservatives controlling everything. It's a lot more complex than that, but the premise makes sense.
Back to tonight. The assumption that conservatism - less government social safety net and more intrusion in our private lives - is the solution to all our ills is just stupid and counterintuitive. And yet we give them a free pass now without challenging this intellectual dishonesty.
It's not even a matter of ideology. Conservatism just doesn't make sense as anything other than a worldview for the selfish and power-hungry. I was struck tonight by how the tenets of conservatism were just accepted as valid and productive, against all logic and evidence, by Sullivan and Coulter. And that foundation was left unchallenged by Maher and Affleck and Rushdie.
Coulter is reprehensible and kind of ridiculous in how rabid she is, but she is damn effective at bashing liberals and distorting our goals and view of the world. And in the void of progressive politicians defining precisely what we stand for, she does a pretty good job of setting forth her own definitions, regardless of how wrong they are. At least she's articulating something, even if they are outright lies.
In the earlier days of his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, Howard Dean was very clear about how Democrats need to be playing the game. Just as in sports, when your team is down on the scoreboard and it's the fourth quarter, you play an aggressive offense, targeting your opponent's weak spots and taking every opportunity you can find.
Conservatives now have weak spots in spades. Now is the time to go on the offensive and make the case to the American people not just of a failed Presidency, but of an entirely failed political belief system. Conservatism failed the people of New Orleans, it fails women, it fails people of color, it fails queer people, it especially fails poor people and yes, it even fails the middle class.
We must tie the corrupt leaders of this political ideology to the political ideology itself. We have to make the taint clear and unshakable. A lot of jokes have been made about how it only took the Republicans 10 years to outdo the corruption it took the Democrats 40 years to achieve as the party in Congressional power. I submit that a lot of that has to do with the fact that the very basis of conservatism is more conducive to corruption: conservatism is about personal gain over the common good. It's not that it took ten years for the conservatives' corruption to happen, it just took ten years for the public to realize they were corrupt because of how they see the world.
As long as they can keep the focus on individual events or policies or politicians and not their larger failed worldview, the conservatives will always have the upper hand. Coulter and Sullivan are the poster children for privilege, which is the vehicle by which conservatism is passed on. Privilege isn't inherently bad, but only if it's put to use helping people who don't have it. Heck, conservatism isn't inherently bad, it's just prone to corruption and too often advocates limited opportunity.
America deserves better.
Ann Coulter was pissed at Bush, Andrew Sullivan sounded like a populist, Ben Affleck sounded like a spokeman for the DLC and Salman Rushdie was doing standup. It was bizzaro TV.
Coulter's liberal-hating and Sullivan's conservative righteous indignation brought something to mind for me: we've spent a lot of time as progressives fighting Bush's agenda and have generally lost sight of the larger picture, at least in how we engage in public discourse.
The bigger picture of course is the folly of conservatism itself. I read something recently that talked about how Reagan effectively changed the perception of government from a tool for the common good to a tool for survival of the fittest with his infamous "are you better off today than you were four years ago" rhetorical debate question. The article I read talked about how that one word - "you" instead of "we" - went unchallenged then and has led us to where we are today, with self-proclaimed conservatives controlling everything. It's a lot more complex than that, but the premise makes sense.
Back to tonight. The assumption that conservatism - less government social safety net and more intrusion in our private lives - is the solution to all our ills is just stupid and counterintuitive. And yet we give them a free pass now without challenging this intellectual dishonesty.
It's not even a matter of ideology. Conservatism just doesn't make sense as anything other than a worldview for the selfish and power-hungry. I was struck tonight by how the tenets of conservatism were just accepted as valid and productive, against all logic and evidence, by Sullivan and Coulter. And that foundation was left unchallenged by Maher and Affleck and Rushdie.
Coulter is reprehensible and kind of ridiculous in how rabid she is, but she is damn effective at bashing liberals and distorting our goals and view of the world. And in the void of progressive politicians defining precisely what we stand for, she does a pretty good job of setting forth her own definitions, regardless of how wrong they are. At least she's articulating something, even if they are outright lies.
In the earlier days of his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, Howard Dean was very clear about how Democrats need to be playing the game. Just as in sports, when your team is down on the scoreboard and it's the fourth quarter, you play an aggressive offense, targeting your opponent's weak spots and taking every opportunity you can find.
Conservatives now have weak spots in spades. Now is the time to go on the offensive and make the case to the American people not just of a failed Presidency, but of an entirely failed political belief system. Conservatism failed the people of New Orleans, it fails women, it fails people of color, it fails queer people, it especially fails poor people and yes, it even fails the middle class.
We must tie the corrupt leaders of this political ideology to the political ideology itself. We have to make the taint clear and unshakable. A lot of jokes have been made about how it only took the Republicans 10 years to outdo the corruption it took the Democrats 40 years to achieve as the party in Congressional power. I submit that a lot of that has to do with the fact that the very basis of conservatism is more conducive to corruption: conservatism is about personal gain over the common good. It's not that it took ten years for the conservatives' corruption to happen, it just took ten years for the public to realize they were corrupt because of how they see the world.
As long as they can keep the focus on individual events or policies or politicians and not their larger failed worldview, the conservatives will always have the upper hand. Coulter and Sullivan are the poster children for privilege, which is the vehicle by which conservatism is passed on. Privilege isn't inherently bad, but only if it's put to use helping people who don't have it. Heck, conservatism isn't inherently bad, it's just prone to corruption and too often advocates limited opportunity.
America deserves better.
