Recently, there have been a spate of diaries and front-page stories here that attack people like me. The comments posted to them have been even worse...truly inflammatory. They have questioned the fitness of people like myself to not only govern, but vote!
There are millions of people like me, and it's not a laughing matter. Maybe you don't suffer from my problem, but that doesn't mean you can go ahead and make fun of me, and rule me a second class citizen.
I am a hypocrite. And I have been all of my adult life.
People suffering from hypocrisy generally display a syndrome of problems. The classic "saying one thing and doing another" is just a superficial trivialization of this serious psychological condition. The need to control oneself is so searing that the verbalizations are, like every obnoxious act, a cry for help. And the involvement in politics is simply an attempt to enlist the world's most powerful force, the United States Government, and the social power of the media, to that end.
Please understand me and respect me. Take away those criticisms. I am fit to not only vote, but to lead this great nation, and take care of your children as well. With children, when they ask about drinking, smoking, and having sex, I simply say, "Do as I say, not as I do." And I can say the same things to adults about using gay prostitutes, managing Congressional Pages, and showing compassion to the needy in this country.
OK. I'm sure most of you have your long knives out and are ready to kill me, at least figuratively. Maybe a few of you are confused...perhaps you missed the outstanding diary that I and many others recommended yesterday on a similar topic. Of fucking course I'm not trying to make fun of that diarist or anyone else. What I am doing instead is a lot of what this site is about: opening up, examining, and formulating the parameters and details of our political strategy.
I will employ a Socratic approach.
So if we're going to criticize politicians and our fellow Americans who support them, what is fair game then?
Well the currently accepted cutoff would seem to be that you can't criticize anyone for something they can't change about themselves: race, sex, etc.
How about obesity? Can we criticize people for obesity?
The research right now is showing that obesity can't be changed so easily: the individuals aren't simply lazy gluttons, but their metabolism is jiggered in such a way that they will gravitate sharply to a given weight, and it will require quite a bit of struggle and self-sacrifice to alter that with any consistency.
OK what about religion? People can change that, right?
Religion is often a choice made for someone by their parents, and they grow up within that framework. Different people seem to need more or less of it, and as they mature may change the nature and degree employed. The specific practices of the religion, the things it asks of its members (for instance, that they turn over all their material possessions, that they are chaste, that they commit suicide) may or may not be fair game for criticism. The criticism is usually, at its best, a warning to the rest of us (if not ourselves) not to choose that religion.
That said, criticism of religious choice is generally strongly frowned upon in American culture, which had religious freedom as a founding principle as far back as the 1600's.
Now how about politics? Surely we can criticize politicians and the people who support them? They can change! And their choices affect us. This is our homeland, and we're more or less stuck in it.
Political criticism is not frowned upon in this culture, certainly. That is fair game. The question is precisely how you do that criticism. Can you criticize Republicans as suffering from a form of mental illness? We saw here yesterday both that you can, and that you can hurt other people in friendly fire as you do so.
So what about your ironic example in the intro? Can we criticize politicians and voters for hypocrisy?
My defenses of my purported "problem" weren't entirely disingenuous. Hypocrisy is likely something much like obesity. You can fight it, and certainly, people who have just a little extra weight can probably take it off without too much hassle. But people who try to enact laws and lead movements in diametric opposition to their own secret personal practices probably have that pattern as part of their personal makeup. If you want to define that as a form of mental illness, you may.
So you're saying that people with certain mental patterns they likely can't change should be fair game for political criticism?
Well I do think it's true that some people would make for poor airline pilots. And I don't want to be stuck on a plane they are flying. Similarly, I don't want to be stuck in a country whose political leadership has significant psychological challenges twisting their judgment...even though I may sympathize should they seek help in a way that doesn't affect my life.
Can we make judgments about entire groups then? Movements? Or do we have to restrict our criticism to specific individuals?
Our brain's method of learning and dealing with the complexity of the world is to recognize patterns and make generalizations from them. Tigers are dangerous; lambs are not. Both are furry four-legged animals. Saying that furry four-leggers are dangerous is wrong, but saying that tigers are is, most likely, right. At least it's damn good practice to give a tiger a wider berth than you might a lamb.
But that's not an excuse to avoid the whole petting zoo. Should we embrace Republicans who demonstrate they are sound of character and vision? I guess that's a personal choice. But should we reject partisan politics as a whole as being of the same wrongful generalization as racism, homophobia, classism?
Well?
Well that's not the way this system works. We have a partisan political system, even though Washington warned strongly against it. And we need everything we can get in our struggle to prevent the other party from damaging this country as it has done to our Treasury and thousands of our young people these last six years.
Everything?
The other party certainly holds little back for shame. Can we compete fairly?
So can we publicize a study that purports to show deeply psychotic individuals preferring Republican government?
I actually think if you field tested that specific approach, it would move a number of people from Republican to Democrat, because people are largely driven off pride. Being mentally ill is a source of shame in this country, even if that's unfair. And so no one wants to associate with, or act like, a deeply mentally ill person. Marketing methodology (using supermodels to market things unrelated to beauty, for instance) has demonstrated that manipulating positive and negative association works in changing personal preferences.
Also, as pertinently, the brain is what we think with, and the suggestion that there is something wrong with Republican thinking seems to jive with the observation that the people who have the most wrong with their brains vote Republican. This might seem to suggest a cause for what we consider faulty thinking by their candidates and their electorate alike.
So is all this apologia for yesterday's front-page posting?
Not at all. I'm more concerned that we may find ourselves in a spot where whatever criticism we make of individual Republicans or them as a whole group, we're going to be hurting a group of our own as well. And that will blunt us, as we do have shame and humanity.
So it isn't the sex, it's the hypocrisy? It's the lying?
What are you referring to...our last President, or their congressmen and ministers? Our recent Governor of New Jersey?
Hmmm...
Yeah, you could certainly come to the conclusion that technocracy should be what we restrict ourselves to: simply evaluating specific policy of the differing parties and choosing between them sanely. But that makes politics dry and sterile: it's in our interest to interest a large number of people in the process, as all those policy decisions come back to affecting them. This is how we do it. By being a tabloid with just enough fig leaf.
OK. We'll call it a draw for now. Just be a little more sensitive next time?
Fine.