Even in desperate world circumstances, let's foster the appreciation of complexity, which is the "crown jewel" of the liberal tradition.
Fast, scorching blazes do not for calm discussion make, and right now, in this nation and globally, there is a lot up in flames.
American progressives of all political stripes are basically agreed on the urgent need for an Iraq exit strategy, the urgent need to protect abortion rights and what's left of the social safety net, the urgent need for healthcare reform, the urgent need for electoral reform, the urgent need for clean money, the urgent need for clean energy, and so on. It's quite some list.
During my days as a technical writer in the high-tech industry, a colleague thoughtfully described the frantic, get-it-done-yesterday corporate culture, "Each project around here is coded one of two ways," he said, "'It's urgent,' or 'We need it right fuckin' now.'"
People you know, and people you don't, are suffering and dying every day, for the corruption and incompetence of our own government. No shit. We have to do something. Right fuckin' now.
But does the conflagration jeopardize a distinctive "liberal" virtue, the appreciation of complexity?
Liberalism, at its best, has always fostered a respectful curiosity, regarding all points of view that bear on a given situation, even those of people who take very different positions from oneself. "Good" liberalism also encourages scrutiny of one's own attitudes.
The Christian Right, the paradigm that has sunk America and the world into so much trouble, has no such tradition of inquiry to point to. Neoconservative beliefs are essentially authoritarian, that's been their mass appeal, and those beliefs have easily abetted the Right's promotion of big-money interests over humanitarian concerns. Time and again, neocons have disingenuously boiled emotionally charged issues down to inflammatory cliché. There are no "shades of gray" in the rhetoric of George W. Bush, there is only a "right" and a "wrong."
Then there are certain subjects I am disturbed to see routinely over-simplified by progressives, from whom I'd expect better. In these instances, the liberal base resorts to "firefighter" language--short, emphatic sentences that can sound at times like slogans--to describe situations which should rightly inspire questions of thoughtful and fair-minded people, questions that can only really be done justice through nuanced discussion.
One polarized, unfairly simplified discussion concerns the fate of the late Terri Schiavo. A Kossack recently posted a letter he or she had written to a Connecticut paper, questioning the Lamont campaign's embrace of Michael Schiavo, the late Terri's husband. The letter was so distinctive, so poignant, because Michael Schiavo is generally lionized by liberals, who describe his long quest to disconnect his unconscious wife's feeding tube as "heroic." But the letter writer and I, and probably other liberals, question the place of this worshipful attitude in the "liberal canon."
Along with other progressives, I decried the cynical theatrics by top Republicans last year who wanted to continue Schiavo's feeding after the courts halted it. I believed their antics amounted to exploitation of the family's tragedy for political gain.
Yet, I see room for reasonable people to question the "liberal" dogma that Terri Schiavo's life in a helpless state was without value--or, as one popular blogger proclaimed before her death, that she was she a "vegetable." Hey, I wondered, what about disability rights?
Then there are troubling questions about Schiavo, himself, as the Kossack letter-writer understood. Terri Schiavo's parents allege that their son-in-law cruelly domineered the family in matters of her care, overriding their wishes for treatment they believed would have greatly enhanced her life. Schiavo, like the man who beat his 11-year-old stepdaughter into a coma, and then fought to retain legal custody of her, may indeed have had ambiguous personal motives in regard to his ill wife. To this day, he declares that his late wife's parents are "in denial" about her physical state during the final years of her life. Liberals generally revere this pronouncement as definitive. Disturbingly, those who question it find themselves derided in liberal circles as "neoconservatives."
For "over-simplified discussions," I am thinking also of the response of Kossacks to a recent diary about Krissy Keefer, the Green Party challenger for Nancy Pelosi's House seat.
The whole issue of third-party candidacies has been sullied by the egotistical hi-jinks of Ralph Nader in '04. No, of course he shouldn't have run against Bush and Kerry, if not because of the danger his candidacy posed to Kerry under the current voting system, then because of voter hard feelings over his presidential bid in 2000. Nader needed to do the honorable thing, instead of accepting Republican money for his campaign, just staying the hell out of the race.
Notwithstanding, I was disappointed by the response of Kossacks to the sympathetic diary about Keefer's campaign. The writer was reviled in comment after comment, apparently because numbers of Kossacks were unable to distinguish their sentiments about Nader, from the issue of third-party candidacies in American elections, generally.
Calling the Keefer diarist a "troll," as at least one commenter did, was an instance of polarization-- "firefighter" language, again--where a proper consideration of all sides was called for.
Other nations, and at least one American city, accommodate multi-party candidates in their elections without any problems. They use instant-runoff voting, so there isn't a "spoiler" effect, where a maverick candidate siphons votes from the more liberal mainstream candidate. Can third-party candidates in our own system be blamed because our electoral system doesn't offer them a forum? Is it right to "hate" them or their supporters, instead of hating our clumsy, unresponsive electoral process and working to reform it?
Yes, there's a lot aflame. I don't exaggerate to say that key freedoms based on values and assumptions progressives hold dear are in imminent danger today. Emphatic language may well be called for, in putting down some dreadful legislation or other, or keeping some clinic open, or getting out the vote.
I'm thinking ahead to a time when the blaze has died down, or is at least better contained than it is today, when the current administration is neutered or gone. If we haven't shepherded our marvelous liberal knack for free discussion, or tough-minded questioning, when it's time to rebuild, where will we be? What will we have?
Please, let's not over-simplify.