Allow me to interrupt this wonderful and highly approvable moment of Colin-Powell-inspired unity, as we are all enjoying the glow of knowing that good Democrats can sleep easier, knowing that everyone's favorite UN-lying, medal-decorated, Republican is on our side, thus proving our case that we're patriotic, real Americans on this side after all!
I'm writing this diary for one reason only. I'm disheartened, and tired of even our left-wing friends here at Daily Kos bending over so far backwards to prove that, if wingnut America (27%) only knew us better, they'd appreciate that we're all (of course) equally blood-and-guts "real" Americans of the kind they could love.
With all due respect and nothing personal, I do get a bit afraid when I see left-wing posters touting their family military connections, cop connections, hillbilly cred, etc. (Please don't get me wrong. I am not saying soldiers, cops, and rednecks are cretinous or objectionable. These are just all categories we like to run up the pole because they appeal to Republican leaners. And yes, I'm as likely to shed a tear over moving pictures of people like my own Appalachian relatives coming around to believe in Obama.) The problem with this is that it (as a side effect in addition to its political utility) perpetuates the whole bullshit "real America" meme Sarah Palin is pushing. If we have to cash in on such proofs, even for the audience here, that we are not to be confused with the anti-American branch of American life, then will we be able to devastate the unchecked slander against those Americans who don't have such convenient and reassuring props and tokens of being "true-blooded Americans"? Will the forum of our politics only give ear to these Americans, if at all, as a grudging afterthought?
The flipside of this is, of course, we are sometimes overjoyed when we can mock a Republican for being a draft-dodger or for having some other trait similarly distasteful to right wingers and the almighty Independent Voter. I say, let's just remember to attack the hypocrisy and not the deviations from the Focus Group Approved Demographic Characteristics.
I'm saying, give me your potheads, your pierced kids, your Muslims (the decent family men among them already stump McCain's world view, but I mean all of them!), your gay men who don't happen to look just like conservative America for the purposes of this political comparison (sorry, we realize lesbians can often be more politically photogenic, but we couldn't get one to represent all gay people at such short notice for this portrait of real America), your college professors who are elitist in actually devoting their lives to understanding things better, your atheists, your people who take real socialism seriously, your ex-cons (am I asserting a moral equivalency? No, but maybe I'm coming "perilously" close to it in saying that we are morally obliged to include and respect everyone in this political community), your bicyclists who'd even rather be pedaling in spandex than driving their Priuses... These are real Americans too! I'm tempted to cry out, "You don't love America if you don't love real Americans like these!" But then I think about Sarah Palin's 27% again, and... well... Good Christ-like universal love is dandy & meets with my approval, but I can't bring myself to prescribe it to everyone...
...even if aligning my position with the Jesus-approved one would make some darn nice political propaganda for my cause. (That'll finally show those fundies!)
Political propaganda will remain useful for President Obama to govern effectively after the election. So I'm not suggesting we swear it off. But let's remember the purpose of that propaganda. It's to actually bring about the day in this nation where America is united around real values.
What are real values? Now, I'll willingly enter into the mind (and cultural comfort zone) of any of my fellow Americans for the purpose of political persuasion. The trick is to do it without selling my soul. I will not confuse the ability to say "I've got a son in Iraq" with a special title to patriotism or citizenship. Another important ramification of this is that I will not value money above all else. We all love it when Democrats can clinch an argument by saying, "And by giving the uninsured proper healthcare, the National Treasury will more than recoup all its expenditures!" Or, "Obama's tax plan will leave you, with your $180,000 income, with more BUCKS in your pocket to spend on yourself!"
But these are not the highest values. It matters more to provide every resident of this land proper healthcare because it is decent and humane to do so, our moral obligation to our fellow human beings. The best tax plan is the one that is just and fair and promotes the human dignity of everyone who lives here, period.
The New Yorker recently printed a 1999 letter from Norman Mailer (a real Marxist, more or less). I don't agree with all the views here quoted (I like most of you am more of a capitalist than Norman Mailer!), but he gets the values issue:
The Republicans are a psychotic monstrosity. On the one hand, they’re God, flag, and family—although few of them would know Jesus Christ if he were standing at the next urinal pissing along with them—and an astonishing number never served in the armed forces nor heard a bullet, and being politicians, they cheat like jackrabbits on their wives and families. But all right, what’s the use of being a politician if you can’t make a living at being a hypocrite? The point is: the Republican Party is schizophrenic: on the one hand, they are, as I say, for God, flag and family, but on the other, they are for the unbridled expansion of capitalism, and thereby leave out something that might still be important to you which is that Jesus, like Karl Marx, thought money leaches out all other values. Indeed, it does. If the whole country is going to pot, and it certainly is, I think you could graph the decline not only in morals, but in a sense of social éclat and social standards—I think you could plot the decline right next to the rise of the Dow Jones—the higher the Dow, the lower the standards. Money destroys all other values. I can even respect the right wing Republicans for holding to a few standards, as they do, but they never take on capitalism which, unbridled, is the worst scourge of human value that we have right now.
I honor national unity, and I want all the Pennsyltucky police sergeants to be painted into the portrait of Obama Nation, too. I will weep with joy to hear the evangelical preachers of the Deep South proclaim my version of charity and justice from the pulpit. But this diary exists to plead that, at the end of our day, we also work on building a kind of ideology and rhetoric that can proclaim our duty to, and even our pride in, the other Americans.
The younger generation is coming out huge for Barack Obama. They don't share as widely or as deeply the prejudices of the Luntz Panel Approved Swing Voter(TM). They are the future of the country. They can be a really, really bright future of the country, if our society becomes truly more respectful of the worth of everyone.
[If anyone notices this diary, I fear it will attract flames as much as anything else. All I can say is to repeat that I am by nature the most conciliatory person in the world, and in phonebanking and living my life I will meet anyone on their ground. I just had a shiver of existential doubt that some of the center-seeking propaganda of an election cycle might leach into where it would do more harm than good. So this diary is an unapologetically partial plea for the side of our nature, and of our nation, that does not fit election year politics so conveniently.]