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| Why Liberals Are So Angry (You Wanted to Know, Didn't You?) |
| Books & Magazines : Educational |
| 03/15/06 |
In recent days there have been a lot of bitching, complaining and finger-wagging in this forum from Conservatives who are aghast at the less-than friendly way some Progressives have referred to them in postings. It seems the Conservatives find it hard to grasp how it could be that there is so much hurt, frustration and anger among those of us on the Left side of the aisle.
Well once and for all, here is your answer.
In short, the so-called "cultural war" raging in America is a battle for the heart, soul and future of our nation, between two vastly different and probably irreconcilable levels of consciousness. To put it in terms Conservatives and others to whom such terminology is alien might be able to understand, the following detailed explanation is offered from the Progressive point of view.
We Progressives are not uneducated, mentally defective or psychotic as some of you suggest. By and large, we're exactly the opposite. In fact, many of us have considerably more education and worldly sophistication than the typical Conservative (that's why you find such a concentration of us in elite educational centers like Boulder, Berkeley and Cambridge). What we are is hurt, frustrated, and yes ... damned good and pissed-off. For good reason. And we're beyond being "nice" about it at this point. We call you out because we see you and those who think like you as representing a mortal danger to the future of our nation, and of standing squarely in the way of that which would bring greater peace to the world as well as greater freedom, happiness and material wellbeing to the American people.
This is what we are hurt, frustrated and pissed-off about:
1. Despite being far from perfect, the United States of America throughout most of its history has been justly regarded as a beacon of freedom and opportunity, and has been looked to by much of the world for leadership based on the moral authority earned through our good works and the enlightened values we have generally upheld. Yes, there was the Cold War and tensions were high at times between us and the Communist bloc, but most of the world's people thought well of us. This is no longer the case, due almost exclusively to the actions and policies of the Bush administration. This administration is arrogant, bellicose, intransigent, unyielding to reason, and utterly ruthless in imposing its agenda upon other nations. This is true in the political, economic and military arenas. Their preferred tool for resolving conflict is naked force and coercion. While this may temporarily result in reduced tensions (for us), it is a guaranteed recipe for disaster in the long run. The reason for this is that human beings innately resist oppression and injustice, and while they may be forced by guns and bombs to abide with it for a while, they will inevitably rise up and strike it a deadly blow when the first opportunity presents itself (as we experienced so vividly to our horror on 9/11). Anyone with a modicum of wisdom understands that human problems are not solved at the level of consciousness at which they were created. This simply means that if you are interested in putting an end to terrorism, you must address the root causes of the anger and resentment that fuel it. You cannot bolt a lid onto a pan full of water, turn the flame up to high, keep increasing the heat, and not expect the lid to violently blow off at some point. The attitudes and actions of the Bush administration with respect to the Islamic world have served mainly to exacerbate the already lethal levels of enmity that exist in their perceptions of America. By advocating an increasingly arbitrary, oppressive and militaristic course of action with respect to this problem, you and those who share your perspectives are greatly endangering the American people as well as the future, the safety and the prosperity of our nation. You conservatives are a very big part of the continuing problem in all of this, and are dead-set against the solution.
2. Republican economic policies of the past 25 years have had a ruinous effect upon the middle class, and have led to the greatest disparity between the "haves" and the "have nots" that has ever existed in our nation's history. Those of us who grew up in the post WWII period remember a time when a father's income was generally sufficient to support a growing family, when the minimum wage was enough to keep a person away from shelters and food banks, when Americans saved a respectable portion of their income, when legions of homeless and mentally ill people were not roaming the streets and sleeping under bridges in every American city, when our jobs marketplace was not being inundated by an out-of-control avalanche of cheap-labor illegal immigration aided and abetted by those at the top levels of the business world and government, when women mostly were at home raising their children, and when our grandchildren and great-grandchildren were not being forced into economic servitude by the recklessly irresponsible mismanagement of our economy in which military spending, corporate welfare and tax breaks to the wealthy dwarf what is being spent on providing a safety net to the poor and disadvantaged. Over the past 25 years this has changed dramatically, and the single biggest reason for it has been the upward redistribution of wealth resulting from Republican economic policies (including taxation policies) that have overwhelmingly favored the world of big business and the wealthy over ordinary salt-of-the-earth, working class Americans. Additionally, the outright contempt the Republicans have had for the poor and the disadvantaged has resulted in a significant percentage of people at that stratum of society being literally abandoned. We are paying for this in unprecedented levels of societal dysfunction, violence, drug addiction, trouble in our schools, rampant criminality and all of the governmental mechanisms that are necessary to beat back the tide of hopelessness and anger that is flooding over us and poisoning America. It is no coincidence that our prison population has increased by several hundred percentage points during the past 25 years (while, for the "haves", the Dow Jones average has increased in value by several hundred percentage points), and that we now have the highest percentage of our citizens behind bars of any nation on earth. Is there not something direly wrong with any picture in which that is true of the United States of America? From what we read in your postings, you of the conservative ilk are perfectly happy with this economic train wreck and want more of the same, mainly because you and those you support stand to benefit from it.
3. Beginning with the administration of Ronald Reagan, freedom and Democracy as articulated in the US Constitution, as well as the will of the vast majority of Americans, have been under relentless attack by ideological extremists within the so-called "Religious Right". The Republican administrations of the past 25 years have given free reign to the agenda of that faction, which is determined at all cost to impose upon the face of American society a social order in which their religious ideology is the law for everyone. In this respect, they are no different than the Taliban and the Osama bin Laden's who also embrace the vision of a rigid, oppressive, state-sanctioned theocracy. The Bush administration has unabashedly supported this process, and has placed religious ideologues in positions of great power and influence, i.e. former Attorney General John Ashcroft and various appointees to the US Supreme Court. We are already in some quarters witnessing the kind of self-righteous positionality, judgmentalism and persecution that characterized the Inquisitions, Crusades and witch-burnings of the Middle Ages, and under the Bush administration this alarming trend has substantially accelerated. It needs to be remembered that the United States of America is NOT a "Christian" nation any more than it is an Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Pagan or Atheistic nation ... it is supposedly a FREE nation of accepting, respectful, cooperative peoples of ALL persuasions, living peacefully together and protecting each other's freedom to privately worship (or not worship) as we choose. More often than not, those of the Conservative persuasion are in favor of this religious hijacking of America by the Religious Right, and the increased polarization that results from it. We Progressives are quite certain that if Jesus Christ were to return to this world today, the belief systems, attitudes and actions of the Religious Right would be the last things he would be aligning himself with.
4. The Bush administration has made a concerted effort to undo generations worth of hard-won civil rights advances, women’s' rights, reproductive rights, workplace protections, legal remedies to corporate abuses, environmental regulations, etc. and has consistently chosen to align itself with the interests of the corporate world and those in positions of entrenched (and often corrupt) institutional power, at the direct expense of everyday Americans. In doing so, the US Constitution has not only been cynically subverted but also purposefully ignored. This is not in the best interest of America, and it is moving us rapidly in the direction of a totalitarian society in which the will and the wellbeing of the people are largely irrelevant to those in leadership positions so long as favored special interest constituencies are served and the lobbyist gravy train continues to pay big dividends .
5. The Bush administration is fundamentally dishonest, paranoid, mistrustful, greedy, scheming, avaricious, arrogant, ungrateful, defiant, disrespectful of other nations and largely indifferent to the plight of people who are not instrumental to its game plan for global domination. Its Machiavellian mentality has made us the laughing stock of more civilized nations, and it is exactly why most of the world hates our guts and even some of our traditional allies can't believe how we are behaving and aren't willing to support us. Our credibility in the eyes of the world has been set back by decades if not generations in the 5 short years this administration has been in power.
6. The Bush regime and its supporters -- and you Conservatives KNOW in your heart of hearts that this is true -- flat out stole the Presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, and came to power under extraordinarily dubious circumstances. Without the active complicity of biased election officials, corrupt politically motivated judges and even the people who made the machines the votes were cast on, it never would have happened. To put it mildly, there is no "broad mandate from the voters" as Bush has insisted, and the very legitimacy of his occupancy of the White House is highly questionable. Nonetheless, he and his crew have charged ahead, arrogantly hell-bent in their determination to remake the American system in their own image, and have been unequivocally the most ruthless abusers of ill-gotten power in our nation's history. In doing so, they have been contemptuously dismissive of the expressed will of more than 100 million American voters (both elections combined). This infuriates us, with good reason. Even more infuriating is the tendency of Conservatives to rub Bush's tainted election "victories" in our faces as supposed irrefutable proof of the innate superiority of their sociopolitical perspective and their guy in the White House.
7. The Bush administration and its Conservative supporters, inclusive of those of your who post here, have unashamedly and maliciously resorted on a regular basis to stooping to one of the most despicable tactics imaginable in marginalizing legitimate dissent: they (and you) have repeatedly and habitually maligned your critics (especially where the criticism is most valid and deserved) as America-hating cowards and traitors who are determined to see our nation in ruins and our people under the yoke of tyranny. Or, even worse, "Communists", which as you very well know is the ideological equivalent of calling someone a "nigger". Do you really believe this facilitates a respectful understanding between people, or that it engenders constructive dialogue? Of course it doesn't. What it does is make your unjustly maligned opponent want to kick your teeth in. Another thing: what Karl Rove and his minions did in falsely impugning the character and the patriotism of John McCain and John Kerry -- decorated military heroes and combat veterans who were honorably serving this nation at the risk of their lives while George W. Bush was pounding down drinks with the River Oaks Country Club set in Houston nightspots and slouching off on his National Guard obligation -- was one of the most shameful displays of bare-knuckled political thuggery in American history.
8. The Bush administration steadfastly refuses to admit mistakes, and its attitude of hostility and sneery disdain for anyone (the media, American citizens and/or other nations) who dares to question its actions is one of its central defining characteristics. Great leaders have humility and an acknowledged awareness of their human fallibility. They listen, they care, they welcome constructive criticism and they are accountable. Tinhorn dictators do as they please and tell you to go fuck off if you don't like it. That's what Bush does.
9. The Bush administration has crossed a moral and ethical line never before crossed by Americans ... a line that cuts to the very heart of what we purport to be as a people. We are now kidnapping people, torturing and otherwise cruelly abusing them, confining them without due process of law, convicting them before secret kangaroo courts, sometimes summarily assassinating them, and thumbing our noses at the civilized world when objections are raised. This is what they do in places like the Sudan and North Korea. It's what they did for generations in South Africa. It's what the Idi Amins and Augusto Pinochets and Saddam Husseins have done. It is NOT what the United States of America does. The damage done to our image and credibility by this kind of behavior is unimaginable, and it hurts and angers us that many of you Conservatives ardently support such conduct.
10. The Bush administration has crossed a line that represents, in the long run, possibly the most ominous development all: in its unremitting quest to gain, use and protect its power, it has begun to turn the apparatus of that power onto, and against, the American people. Cases in point: the Patriot Act, illegal wiretapping and the outing of Valerie Plame. Without exception, every time this line has been crossed in human history, the results were disastrous for the society in which it happened. Hence, our references to Hitler, Fascism, etc., because that's the road they went down and they destroyed not only their own people but also much of the world in the process.
There is much, much more that could be said in articulating why Progressives are so upset with the direction our country is going in, and why we are so critical of George W. Bush and those of you who are actively complicit in his efforts. Unfortunately, if past history is any indicator, this explanation will have little or no effect upon the thinking of most of you, nor will it compel you to be more compassionately disposed toward those who have an opposing vision of what America and the world might be. You clearly have your ideological feet encased in the concrete of a Darwinian, dog-eat-dog view of life, one in which the self-centeredness and malignant narcicism of Ayn Rand is your code of ethics and the notion "I am not my brother's keeper" is your mantra. (By the way, do you suppose it's coincidental that the Darwinian concept of life and the ideology of predatory, free-market capitalism appeared at virtually the same time?)
If nothing else, this may give you a tiny peep of insight into the hearts and minds of those you are so fond of thinking of as traitors. There may even be one or two among you who will give pause for just a moment, in considering whether our Progressive vision of what America is and can aspire to be, might be an infinitely more enlightened, elegant and humane vision than that shared by those who are determined to keep us in the ideological dark ages.
One thing that could be accurately said about those of us on the Progressive side of the debate is that we believe that human beings are ALL IN THIS WORLD TOGETHER. Whether you understand or respect that truth or not, it is nevertheless true and always will be true. What's more, we will ALL ultimately sink or swim TOGETHER. That is why your ideology of bellicose nationalism, hate, intolerance, greed, shortsightedness and self-interest will NEVER work. All it will do is cause more and more and more injustice, misery and suffering. If a few of you were to actually read the Bible instead of just spouting twisted and distorted misinterpretations of it, you might come to understand the truth in what is being said here. But then, that's not very likely to happen, is it...?
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