On the Virtues of Not Always Being Nice

First, when we make strong charges, or even weak ones, against another person, I believe we have a moral obligation to provide reasons that can in principle be disproven to back up our claims.  If I say you are a murderer I'd better be willing to offer proof, and be willing to retract the charge if the proof does not add up.

Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and others of their kind use language similar to that in my last post.  That's no coincidence.  I modeled mine on theirs, but with a key difference. I and many other critics offer facts and reasons, they make rhetorical claims without facts or reasons open to challenge, or worse, with outright lies.

Regarding terms like 'moral monster,'  either such a person is impossible,  and what Mao tse-Tung, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot and Josef Stalin did was not morally monstrous, or the term has meaning.  If it does, is it used correctly?  Do I use it correctly?

Knowingly to justify torture that was designed to wring false confessions out of innocent people is morally monstrous in my view.  Using those confessions to justify war is equally so.  Designing aggressive war is also morally monstrous to me.  Is my view wrong?  Why, then, are these things not morally monstrous?

I think it is bad to attack people unnecessarily.  But I also think it is bad not to speak up strongly against the monstrous when they have the power to injure and we have an opportunity to be heard.

That's my first point.

My second regards humor.  Jon Stewart is a national treasure.  But I noticed something very interesting about political humor during the Bush years.  When Bush seemed unstoppable, the humor was at its best.  It was how we coped with disaster in which we felt powerless.  It was like the great jokes that emerged in Eastern Europe during the communist years, such as "Under capitalism, man exploits man.  Under Communism it's the other way around."

When Bush began to fade in his popularity, so did the number of jokes. Humor is the wepon of the powerless, and the means by which they cope with their situation.

Stewart speaks truth to power, be it Bush or Obama, or the corporate media, and does so brilliantly.  But Stewart is not trying to provide analysis except through brilliant use of their own words against them.  Stewart takes them down a peg or two, but as a comedian he does not offer explicit solutions.  If he did, it would not be through humor, and he's likely lose his show.  In a very real sense, humor is Stewarts' weapon given the position he has.

Not only do I not have his genius or his resources, I am trying to provide analysis of deeds and particularly of those who support deeds that are monstrous.

That's my second point.

Thirdly, these people have monopolized moral language, and they have done so immensely destructively. They have replaced a mostly pragmatic politics with a politics of continual moral absolutism.  This was done deliberately.  Pat Buchanan sent a memo to Nixon before Watergate saying that the only hope for his presidency was to deliberately split the country, with Republicans getting "the larger half."  

Nixon tried and failed.  His crimes caught up with him.  But his successors kept with Buchanan's recommendation.  That is why they painted everything in terms of "values."  We can easily compromise over most issues, but not over most values.  They are easily stated in absolutist dichotomies with those on the other side being depraved - as Ann Coulter, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and so many others have so well demonstrated.  This is a time honored tactic of tyrants, and, if it happens, is how American democracy will be destroyed from within.

I think it is vital for our country and our future that these people be seen as the moral zeros they are because in a democracy politics mostly needs to be over issues with which people can compromise. When that ceases to be, politics splits and divides in such a way that neighbors become enemies.  When this happens the political process often rewards those who divide us rather than those who can find common ground. 

By the way, this is a genuinely conservtive argument, one Edmund Burke would have endorsed.

That's my third point.

Finally, when I first began researching the "Christian" right and what claims to be "conservatism" these days - and in my view these people are neither Christian nor conservative - I was appalled that neither reason nor good will mattered to them in public discussion.  When people have cut themselves off from reason and good will, they have cut themselves off from being open to genuine CO-mmunication.  There are no common standards across which or through which people who disagree can search for common ground.

Consider the evidence that leading "conservatives" and right wing "Christians" almost always employ personal attacks whenever they are criticized.  This was standard operating procedure in the Bush White House even for former allies and continue today.  Look at how Colin Powell is treated: he can have no respectable reasons for his views when he criticizes the Right.  As Limbaugh said, Powell supported Obama because Obama was Black.  No other reason than Powell's alleged racism made sense to him.  Dick Cheney reminds us  that Rush Limbaugh is better for the Republicans than Powell. 

In such an environment sociopaths and the like flourish. But decent people on all sides tend to flee it as toxic.

There does seem to be some hope that most right wingers can be brought back to standards of civilized behavior.  Cheney recently said he supported gay marriage.  Rather obviously that is because his daughter, Mary Cheney, is gay.  He could actually empathize with people different from him through appreciating the situation facing his daughter.  Right wing Democrat Jane Harmon was unconcerned with our phones being illegally tapped.  When hers was legally intercepted because of another person being tapped her attitude changed.  She became a strong advocate for privacy. Apparently right wingers who are not sociopaths can be reached morally when they experience something personally, or through a loved one, that opens their hearts to the reality of people different from them.

There are many other examples.  I suspect that most right wingers suffer from undeveloped moral imaginations. I suspect this is why they find empathy such an inappropriate value in judges who might empathize with people different from themselves.  (They had no objection to such claims for empathetic capacity when mentioned by right wing judicial candidates such as Alito, who were like them)

So perhaps the salvation of our country will take place around Thanksgiving tables, as Dar Williams so wonderfully sees.