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November 09, 2004
Just grievances?
Is there more to this post election period than Republican triumphalism, Democratic wound-licking, and the usual arguments? Stuff has been making me think that there is. Stuff like "bink's" earlier comment. Like a letter I received from a friend (excerpt below). Like the tone of general conversations with liberal friends around here. And like this post by John Perry Barlow: I feel like I'm suffering the death of a loved one. I'm not sure which of the stages of grief I've reached at this point, but I'm pretty well past denial. I'm mourning a number of losses, one of which is the belief that "my side" is actually a clear majority that would reveal itself if we ever shuffled off our disdain for politics and voted in any force. ( Actually, we may be a majority - I don't trust these results - but even if we are, our margin is very slender and we were too dumb, diffident and disorganized to prevent the other side from successfully gaming the system. I would be angry about that if it would do any good, but I see where anger has gotten us so far.)There is an undeniable sense of genuine loss. And with that, there's a genuine need for grieving. This might not be something that most Republicans will readily understand (although I think Democratic crossover voters will), but I think it's worthy of discussion, because it isn't an opinion so much as it is a feeling. Surely anyone who has had a family member, a close friend, a lover or even a pet die (I've had all four many times over) will understand. Grieving is just something that comes over you and must be experienced. It is not rational, nor is it an opinion to be debated. When someone you love dies, it does not matter what other people might have thought of that person, they should respect your period of grief. I notice that one comment to the Barlow post says "FUCK BUSH AND FASCIST USA" 221 times, which interferes with grieving and makes the post tough to open, and shows that some people are stuck in the anger stage, and may remain there. (Another example, via Glenn Reynolds' link, is this hateful screed against the South.) Grief and rage are not rational, and I saw a lot of this watching so many die of AIDS. It was natural for some of their grieving loved ones to blame a vast right wing conspiracy, CIA scientists working at Fort Detrick, the drug companies themselves and a host of others. I had anger I never could process, and I am not sure I ever will. Grieving is something which has to be understood apart from the merits of any arguments. Yet as I say this, I continue to be fascinated by many of the arguments themselves. For some reason, I was quite taken with John Perry Barlow's view that this is part of a continuing war between the 1950s and the 1960s. Many of today's voters were not yet born in either the 1950s or the 1960s, and many more have only the dimmest memories of either of those periods. There's no denying that a culture clash occurred involving certain 1950s values being set against certain 1960s values, but I think both have been so stereotyped as to have little meaning to young people today. As for me, I grew up in the 60s, but remember being a boy in the 50s, and I continue to thrive on 50s nostalgia -- especially the music of the period. But I don't think that has much to do with the election. As to politics, I think there is a sharp dividing line in the Baby Boom generation between those born before 1953 and those born afterwards. The dividing line involved the end of the military draft, which ended the major motivation for opposition to the Vietnam War. (That's another long rant beyond the scope of this post.) Oddly, the 50s-versus-60s take on the election reminded me of a conversation I had with a recent college graduate. She's a Bush voter -- but her mom (a staunch Kerry supporter) was so upset by the election that she demanded to know why her daughter hadn't sent her a "condolence" email. Mom was not joking. She meant this most seriously, and had become so rabidly, irrationally anti-Bush that her daughter was afraid to tell her that she voted for Bush. She's literally afraid her parents will disown her. (They blame Bush for September 11, which they do not forgive.) OK, that's background for my own college voting experience. My parents were both staunch Nixon supporters, and, being the young Marxist that I was, I voted for McGovern. Far from being afraid to tell my parents, I'm ashamed to admit that I pretty much shouted about how proud I was in voting for the left, and against Nixon. I'm sure I wasn't alone. Yet when McGovern lost, I didn't grieve at all. I considered Nixon's victory "typical." Why the difference today? Things were much more contentious in 1972. There was a much bigger, much more unpopular, much more divisive war. The war between the 50s and the 60s was in full dudgeon. Watergate was on the horizon. I find myself recognizing that people are grieving, and naturally I respect it even if I don't understand it fully. Something seems to have changed in American politics. But where was the grief? One difference stands out. In 1972 America had not been attacked. Isn't it a big deal when your country gets attacked? How well have Americans been able to process that very real grief? So, just as I acknowledge the anti-Bush grief (so often manifested as/channeled into rage) I'm wondering, and I must ask: exactly what happened to the 9/11 grief? Where did it go? Might some of it be misdirected as anger towards Bush? I can't be certain, but once again, I'm reminded of AIDS. UPDATE: Don't miss Dean Esmay's "Letter To John Perry Barlow From A Pot-Smoking Deadhead Bush Voter." It's a real tour de force -- and as it turns out, Dean and I are fellow Deadheads! Who knew? (HT Steven Malcolm Anderson, whose full title is beyond the scope of this essay.....) MORE: Hey now! Speaking of Deadheads, how about constitutional rock star Randy Barnett for Attorney General? Well? We wouldn't want an unconstitutional rock star, would we? Besides, someone has to grease the skids for the Reynolds court..... I say the Constitution rocks! (EXCERPT FROM LETTER FROM A CLOSE FRIEND) I had to put my thoughts down on paper after this miserable election. I'm so disgusted with what I hear about "values" that I thought I would record my own for the record. I have followed and participated in the recent election to a greater extent than perhaps 1972 when I first voted. I am depressed by the outcome, not because I am a fan of John Kerry but because of the so-called mandate that the American people endorsed. I don’t blame anyone for voting against John Kerry, but I do question whether they intended to give George Bush the mandate he thinks he got. I have little time for politics. It is hard enough to feed, raise and educate a family and run two businesses. If I fail at work the people who work for me, their families and I will have an even harder time. Also I have far smarter and more energetic friends on both sides of the raging debates of the past year that could alternately blow holes in my logic or expand on my concerns. I am writing this, not to convince anyone of anything, but simply to state for the “record”, once and for all my gut feelings (call them “values”) about the huge and important issues that face each and every American. As an owner of a small business (who George Bush presumed to speak for), I am directly affected as well as unconsciously held responsible for the social conditions, such as the sorry state of health care, that people find themselves affected by. So I want to make completely clear how I feel. I want to make sure no one I know personally believes I support the Bush administration and then holds me responsible for the disasters that I feel are imminent. posted by Eric on 11.09.04 at 09:50 AM
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» pathetic from It's All Semantics
Maybe I am being unkind and discompassionate. Perhaps the Secular Liberals have just never resolved their grief over the September 11th, 2001 attacks. That's the interesting insight at Classical Values. [Read More] Tracked on November 10, 2004 10:42 AM
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I would assert that, sincerely, a lot of Kerry supporters were not emotionally prepared for a loss. This had a devastating impact on them. Some people, doubtlessly, viewed Kerry's loss as a sort of referendum not only on their point of view, but on themselves as people. I think that it was unwise of them not to prepare for this possibility. As with the friend who wrote the letter disavowing Bush before he even gets out of the gate, I have a similar impulse. I'm not sure where it comes from. bink · November 9, 2004 04:29 PM Another excellent post. I've got to go to the store now, but PLEASE BE ABOLUTELY SURE TO READ Dean Esmay's excellent reply to John Perry Barlow. Steven Malcolm Anderson (Cato theElder) the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · November 9, 2004 06:11 PM Randy Barnett! Randy Barnett for Justice or Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, I say! He's one of my heroes. Timothy Sandefur and Jonathan Rowe, too, on the Supreme Court. And Glenn Reynolds and Eugene Volokh. What a dream that would be. Actually, just about anybody on my blogroll would be fine, but these are the best legal minds. Steven Malcolm Anderson (Cato theElder) the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · November 10, 2004 01:40 AM Oh, and THANK YOU!!!! for the link! Steven Malcolm Anderson (Cato theElder) the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · November 10, 2004 01:41 AM This is what I wrote in Dean's World: HAIL TO THE KING!!!! I admire Dean I admire the Queen Every once in a while Dean writes a magnum opus that sums up just about everything he has been writing for a long time, and that sums up why I read Dean's World all the time. This was terrific. Thank you, Dean. Paul Burgess asked: I will. I have been doing so for a long, long time. I don't conform to the non-conformists. I deviate from the deviationists. Interesting spectrumology. The football players vs. the chess club? Dean has always struck me as a chess champion, a brilliant intellect, the defender of the liberal tradition in history, science, and philosophy. That essay reminds me of an essay Tom Wolfe once wrote in a symposium in "Commentary" back in September, 1976, on the various meanings of "Left" and "Right". He said that "Left"-"Right" conflicts come down to replays of high school conflicts between "jocks" vs. "freaks". The football hero gets all the cheerleaders, but ends up pumping gas in the middle of Nebraska, yet still roots for the winning team (police, army, etc.). The "freak" gets bullied by the "jocks", but ends up selling his art for $100,000s in the most fashionable section of Manhattan or San Francisco, but still roots for "the underdog". Interesting idea. Most interesting about all that, takes me back. Back in the good old days when I was in good old Central High School, Monmouth-Independence, Oregon, Class of 1973, "the Royal Orgy House" as some of us called it, we called the "jocks" the "soshes" (i.e., the "social" stars: athletes, cheerleaders, class presidents and other officers, prom queens) and the "freaks" we called the "hippies" (long hair, pot, protesting against Nixon and the Viet Nam War). There were also the lower-class "greasers", who liked cars and motorcycles, who tended to be the Right of the "soches". A conservative club, the "Synthetics", put out their own newspaper, arguing that the official school paper (which dealt with little more ideological than the latest football game or the problem of gum-chewing in the halls -- though there was the famous letter to the editor "[James] Mole Says Hippies Wrong") was too far to the Left. One young Rightist intellectual wrote: "....to me, hippieism is the same as communism...." That has always stood out in my memory. The _style_ of that! Anyway, I myself and my closest friend throughout high school, Charles William Harrington, stood apart from all of those groupings. We were loners. He and I both wrote stories and poetry. He had extremely short hair. He once drew a spectrum on the blackboard from collectivism on the Left to individualist anarchy on the Right. In my last year of high school (and then after until his tragic death in an auto accident) I became acquainted with another independent-thinking young man, David Lynn Smith. He wore his hair extremely long like a hippie, but he thought very differently from any hippies. He liked the hard, sharp, dualistic, _styles_ and passion of Rightists like Ayn Rand and the Rev. Dr. Billy James Hargis. We watched the Watergate hearings and we loved to hate Nixon. He and I created a two-dimensional, four-quadrant spectrum, the "Smitty'n'Andy" spectrum, which I have been refining and expanding upon ever since, spinning out endless variations and tie-ins, and have added a third dimension. We talked about making a board game out of that spectrum. The _styles_ of it all. Most interesting. Anyway, I totally agree with what Dean (the King) wrote about the vile hatefulness of people who want to throw other people in jail for smoking pot. I also feel that way, if you haven't noticed, about the people who want to throw other people in jail for having sex with other consenting adults. I'm against the government telling us what we can read or who we can marry. And, yes, I voted for Bush, I support the War Against The Terror Masters 100%, and I totally defend the right of the people to keep and bear arms. If the Democrats want to win our votes, they're going to have to clear away the fog of their stereotypes about Republicans and Independents. The comments to that essay by John Perry Barlow show very well, by way of negative example, why so many people did not vote for the preferred candidate of those commenters. These Leftists hate "the rich", and yet a commenter kept arguing that Kerry supporters travel more and therefore have higher IQs and are more enlightened and morally superior. Those who travel have more money! A blatant contradiction. Those asinine comments could have been written by Dean to prove his point! Anyway.... HAIL TO THE KING!!!! AND HAIL TO THE QUEEN....!!!! Steven Malcolm Anderson (Cato theEler) the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · November 10, 2004 02:48 PM |
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I think the anger and unthinking vile heaped on Bush is a direct result of America simply not knowing how to grieve about 9/11. I honestly believe that so many people were so frightened and traumatized by 9/11 that mentally/emotionally, they've reverted to an earlier time (9/10), and subconsciously blame Bush for attempting to make them deal with reality post 9/11.
Just my take on it. I have worked for a decade and a half with violent offenders. I think that the vast majority of Americans are good people who believe that other people are essentially good. They don't know how to cope when the tragedy of reality (some people are evil, murdering bastards) intrudes on their paradigms. So, they get angry at, for instance, the cops on the scene, inventing some imaginary thing that the cops did wrong that caused their loved one to become a victim. Never mind that the cops were far, far away when the crime occurred and arrived as fast as was humanly possible. They still serve as a visible scapegoat for the person's suffering.
Our nations' visible scapegoat, right now, for the left, is George W. Bush.