Have you ever noticed how most “conservative” pundits, and many politicians, have remarkably similar descriptions of how they came to hold their current political beliefs? They often go something like this:
I’m not much different than most Americans. My parents worked hard and were registered Democrats, back when Democrats fought for the working man. I went to a good University, and joined a radical socialist environmentalist group and experimented with drugs while enjoying my publicly funded education.
Luckily, I met my wonderful (first) wife, and had children. I was forced to grow up, and realized that my former embrace of liberal ideals was self-destructive. After accepting Jesus Christ as my personal savior, I became a registered Republican and began my crusade to protect the precious children and corporate profits.
Same bullshit "life story", repeated over and over. More of my disgust after the flip.
The recently unmasked
Jeff Gannon/J. D. Guckert, Michael Medved, David Horowitz and many other Neo-confederates have similar stories to tell about their rebirth into the righteous Americans we know today. Of course, implicit in the story is the flipside of that American Silver Dollar, that those of us on the left are still naïve, that we refuse to grow up and become adults.
They basically tell the same story over and over again, as James Wolcott notes:
It's always important to plan for the future, so I've been pondering what I might do a decade from now should I have a "change of heart," or, better yet, decide to bust a career move and declare myself a passionate born-again conservative. True, it's a crowded field with all those converts out there, but there's always room for one more conscience-wracked sellout looking to bare his soul and cash in.
snip
After all, Roger L. Simon took part in civil rights marches in the South. Michael Medved was a loyal soldier to Bobby Kennedy David Horowitz ran bootleg Afro Sheen for the Black Panthers. They can invoke the names of RFK and MLK to provide a rich depthful backdrop for their apostasies. If I go rightwing, all I have is a dinky anecdote about a horse possibly trampling my feet at an antiwar rally.
To sum up what I’ve learned from reading and hearing these heartwarming stories of redemption over the years: that becoming an adult means embracing political and religious beliefs that insist that it’s a dog-eat-dog world. To be considered serious, we must learn that only the foolish and naïve cling to the idea people can work together through institutions like government to make everyone’s life better. As I become an older man, I should accept that life is as Hobbes’ described it – nasty, brutish and short.
I need to forget that my understanding of human history is this: that people have often learned that overcoming their differences and finding ways to work together enhances their lives and survival. From the first roving bands of families that grouped together against a hostile wilderness to organized walled towns with formal governments and militaries, adults have learned to talk and negotiate and build ever more complex social structures and legal frameworks. Adults learn to work with their neighbors. Adults have more success and build a better future for their children when they work together and build institutions, including governments, to provide services and build infrastructure that they can’t do on their own.
The world of the right is one of perpetual warfare, not only in the international sense, but American versus American, neighbor against neighbor, rich against poor, with each family fighting desperately to hold onto what it has managed to grab.
It seems to me that that someone who is really grown up might want to leave their society a little better off than it was when they were children. It seems to me that this narrative of youthful indiscretion is a big con, a way to sell a narrow worldview to overworked and stressed out Americans. It’s dishonest, shallow and dismissive of thousands of years of human progress.
Most galling to me, they use the hard work and sacrifices of Americans we all admire to advance their this betrayal of the promise of America to greed and theocracy.
Wolcott puts it beautifully:
One thing I will never do, however, is take the names of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King in vain to burnish my political droppings. That would be too profane. Because, face it, if Bobby Kennedy were around, do you really think he would regard Michael Medved as anything other than a simpering schoolmarm? Or that Martin Luther King would have blessed the war empire America has become and the confirmation of an Attorney General for Torture?
No, I'm afraid that if those two men were still alive, they'd have to be assassinated all over again. If not literally so, character-assassinated, to be sure. Tim Russert would have Robert Novak on Meet the Press sliming King today just as he did then, and Bobby Kennedy would be mocked and McGovernized by every Harvard twit and think-tank pirahna in the pundit playground. Our political culture only venerates the victors, no matter how vile and destructive their victories.
crossposted from Liberal Street Fight