Much has been made of the Democratic Party's lack of message. The successes at holding off the assaults of the neo-con right wing have been good defense, but defenses alone cannot win a war. In this ideological war, the liberals need weapons of their own.
I don't think the problem is that Liberals have no ideas; I think Liberals are afraid their ideas will not be popular. They lack the courage of their convictions, and it shows. Rather than figuring out how to sound more centrist, or how to include more God language into their party, Democrats need to look at how the Right has made their strengths into liabilities. Reclaiming repressed parts of one's political psyche will reduce self-sebotage, will allow for real growth and will provide a real platform for democratic ideals to flourish.
A BUDGET IS A MORAL DOCUMENT
I suggest the Party rehabilitate taxes. The Progressives have been saying "A budget is a moral document." This is a very powerful idea. This reframes taxes outside of the burden/necessary evil dichotomy. Morality is a good thing. A good budget is good morals. The way you spend tells the world who you are. This permits the crusty, common sense thread of American thought to penetrate the jabber about values and to look at how the pigs are feeding. People with any sense will have a way to look at taxes within the frame of their own experience. "You cannot buy the powerboat because the children need to go to college" becomes "you cannot give a tax refund to your friends because the children of your employees need books and computers in their classrooms." "You need to put more money aside because your roof will need to be replaced next year" becomes "you need to put some tax money aside because the roads in your town are falling apart." You know your roof will not pay for itself out of your food budget, but somehow the roads are supposed to pay for themselves out of the Food Stamps Program. If we are talking morality, allows for black and white and shades of grey. Waste is bad, but pork is worse in a way that incompetence is unfortunate, but taking advantage of the weakness of others is repugnant.
DEMOCRACY REQUIRES ACCOMODATION
Anybody who lives in a family knows you don't always get your way. You don't even get to demand a happy compromise sometimes. But you stay in your family because you get enough of what you need that it is worth the frustration. Likewise in society, other people use the world you share with them in ways that make you crazy. Including people means solutions will be at best a compromise, and that nobody gets to be comfortable all or even most of the time. Living with others means living outside your comfort zone, but also means living a richer life, learning to love the future, and finding that you are happier when you're not always right.
So what is right or wrong with people forming groups that demand a share of the pie? Unions demand shares of the pie from their bosses, and often go to the government for support of their right to do so. If unions went to the goverment to demand laws that limited who a business owner could marry or do anything else outside the business world, that would be wrong. Churches form groups to worship, and if they go to the government for their support to do so, that is great. If they go to the government so that it will conduct the business of this country in alignment with their values no matter how others live outside of the halls of worship, then that is wrong.
THE FUTURE WILL NOT LOOK LIKE THE PAST
A powerful tool of consevatives is nostalgia, but nostalgia is essentially pessimistic and bitter. "The present is all ruined. The future is not hopeful. Let us return to the good old life of the past." This is negativity incarnate, and nostalgia is for losers. Liberals are forward looking and optimistic, believing like in the joke about a room full of shit that "there must be a pony in here somewhere."
Part of it is the goal. The game of our society is not a game that can be won, any more than the game of language can be won or the game of fetch with a dog can be won. It a game that is played for the pleasure of playing. Let us remind ourselves and our fellow Americans that America is a game that must be played with everyone and the purpose of the game is to keep it going with all of us into the future. This is why the phrase "love it or leave it" is so wrong for the game we are living. "Love us and play with us" would be better, because America is us.
Friday, July 29, 2005
A Democratic Stand
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Blame the Victim Christianity
Complaining about the lack of traditional values in others is part of a traditional pastime that employs a whipping boy to release pent up negativity. Often people laying blame are deeply unhappy and have discovered that if they discharge their existential discomfort onto others, using projection as their primary tool of inner peace, their lives suddenly blossom with value and purpose. These traditionalists go to war, figuratively and literally, with their neighbors just to maintain their own inner equilibrium. The equation is simple: I am uncomfortable or unhappy and it is all your fault. Then there is an implied coda: Not only is it your fault, but you must change your behavior to match what I think is appropriate. Missing in this equation is any reasonable argument about why the "other" should accept this burden, and so God must be brought in. God can not only make unreasonable demands, but God can kill you without proportional cause. And though God's permission, they can kill you, again both figuratively and literally, if you don't do what they want.
This sacrifice of the other to preserve one's self-image is Scott Peck's (The Road Less Traveled, The People of the Lie) definition of evil. Changing oneself is painful and difficult, whereas harming someone else turns out to be relatively easy on the ego. Behavioral studies consistently show that when one human hurts another, the one causing the harm begins a mental process that ends with a rationalization of how the victim somehow either deserved or brought on the harm done. The a priori assumption by the first person is that he or she is good, and since a good person never harms an innocent person, reasons must be found to strip the victim of innocence. "Blame the victim" is a refrain throughout history that continues to be sung today. The irony, for those who enjoy bitter laughter, is that the song is sung the loudest by those who claim the mantle of righteousness. It is not surprising that as our government and culture take a more self-proclaimed "moral" stand, that they would create and then blame whole new classes of people.
Take the 'culture of life" contradictions of the folks who are both anti-abortion and pro-death penalty. Take the consumer credit situation, where people with bad credit are charged 30% interest because they are least likely to pay and most likely to file bankruptcy, often causing them to be unable to pay and to file for bankruptcy. Take the war in Iraq, where the people fighting foreigners occupying their own country are called "insurgents" and the foreigners, who just happen to be us, we call "liberators." Take the efforts at "tort reform" where the victims are labeled greedy and the corporations that harm them in the name of the bottom line are spoken of as innocents by government officials who, when not in office, work for those very companies. Take the diatribes against gays for "destroying marriage" by the people most likely to marry early and divorce often. Take any of these issues and you will see the inherent contradictions and rationalizations of righteous anger.
We are living in a "blame the victim" world and if something bad happens to you in these times, God help you, because if you complain at all, your fellow man will rally round the "poor" person or company against whom you are tying to make a claim of injustice. The worst offenders in this "crying wolf" are the Fundamentalists, whose faith-based St. Paul the racist-bigot-homophobe views have gained ascendancy today They may be in the majority but they whine like the worst of their own parodies of minority victim-speak. College professors who expect you to defend your opinions with logical arguments are part of a liberal conspiracy against religion. The people who object to religious symbols on official state property or documents are denying the Christian origins of the Founding Fathers who thought they were creating a country where freedom of religion meant being able to follow whatever Christian religion you wanted. Prayer is a universal good and those who see otherwise are asking for God's wrath.
The Paulist Christians say that only God can do good, that it is not in works but in faith that we live a righteous life. So the Catholic Church does not approve of condom use even in Africa, even though it means innocents such as wives and rape victims will be infected with AIDS by more promiscuous men. Paulist doctrine says racial problems today are a result of Brown vs. The Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement, because the changes wrought by secular activists MUST go awry. St. Paul would approve of every oppressive and repressive act of government because it helps teach the poor to be meek and submissive and thus more likely to attain heaven in the afterlife.
Progressive ideals are anathema. Pity is okay, so long as you pray for the victims and don't actually try to fix anything. Moral authority though prayer should bring us into harmony and love, but when it doesn't, that just means God has a different plan. Submit to his plan. Don't complain about your treatment by authorities any more than you would complain about God's authority. Remember Job. Accept your cancer from pollution. Accept that your boss raided your pension. Accept that you were raped and now carry the child of your rapist. This is God's will.
