Something red, something blue, something Christian, something flatly untrue.

Jane Smiley has now joined the ranks of the merely idiotic. Fortunately for America, she's only a novelist. Unfortunately for America, she's one of millions. Idiots, I mean. (There are millions of novelists, budding boring burgeoning aging aged and aggravating. But that's a separate kettle of fish.)

Please have a look. Don't read the article - it's not worth it. But have a look:

I grew up in Missouri and most of my family voted for Bush, so I am going to be the one to say it: The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry. I suppose the good news is that 55 million Americans have evaded the ignorance-inducing machine. But 58 million have not. (Well, almost 58 million—my relatives are not ignorant, they are just greedy and full of classic Republican feelings of superiority.)

[...]

Here is how ignorance works: First, they put the fear of God into you—if you don't believe in the literal word of the Bible, you will burn in hell. Of course, the literal word of the Bible is tremendously contradictory, and so you must abdicate all critical thinking, and accept a simple but logical system of belief that is dangerous to question.

[...]

The history of the last four years shows that red state types, above all, do not want to be told what to do—they prefer to be ignorant. As a result, they are virtually unteachable.

Awesome! Evidently America works the following way: Group A supports the 'rights' of Group B. (In any case, the A's have taken up the fight for the B's in one or another form, even if it's just talking.) Group C does not support these rights, for one or several of quite a number of reasons. Unfortunately, Group C contains many people who up and say, 'Those of Group B are too short/too greedy/inhuman/degenerate/leeches/servants by nature/unholy, and by taking up their cause, the A's have made themselves this as well.' The only fact in play is the hatred of the B's by some of the C's.

The A's bravely, selflessly, effectively respond by attacking all of the C's for being, among other things, evil/stupid/ignorant/puppets/bigots. No actual analysis of their motivations is undertaken, no attempt to communicate with the C's is made, the schism deepens, no matter how real it was in the first place.

I love America. Love it. It is evidently full to the brim of people who are considerably bigger assholes than I am!

-----

Dear Jane Smiley,

Ignorance is failing to see the difference between die-hard social conservatives and the many, many people who voted for Bush knowing that their social agendas and his do not square up. Ignorance is disdaining religious practices such as tithing and supporting identical secular practices such as taxing. (And vice versa.) Ignorance is calling for reasonable debate after decrying your opponents (er, I mean your 'fellow voters') as fools and worse. Ignorance is failing to understand that many millions support the work of man because it is a manifestation of God's Work - and then failing to understand how you might take advantage of that formulation. Ignorance is expecting most Americans to support gay marriage (when many many Americans, I would venture, find it abhorrent, instinctively - but not you and me, Jane, we're 'liberated' and everything, right? We've risen above those merely 'visceral' responses, I guess). Ignorant is not realizing the degree to which 'hate the sin, love the sinner' actually holds up in America - and as a consequence, being surprised by the weird egalitarianism of local Republicanism.

Jane, I have been planning on reading MOO for a while. I'm a sucker for campus novels, in part because I know how vitally important they are in turning around this country's social ills. I've also heard really good things about A Thousand Acres, and if MOO is good, I'd like to look at that book as well. If you want to send me a free copy, I'd appreciate it. But you sound like a fucking idiot in your Slate article, Jane. Your dime-store rationalizations help no one. You sound like precisely the stereotyped 'liberal elite' whose (imagined) egotism and hatred of - yes - ol' fashioned Christian values are among the reasons that right now America is facing the second presidency of an extremist religious nut with a seemingly decaying mind who actually thinks privatizing Social Security is going to work.

Accept it, Jane. You and yours may have made hay with your 'anyone but Bush' feelings, may have seen your vote as a strike against the Republicans, but of the 58 million who voted Republican this week, I'd wager that many saw their actions as a strike against you. Not a referendum on conservatism and liberalism, but a pissing contest between conservatives and liberals. An untimely rumination: perhaps the next election should be about something more than that.

Cheers,

Waximilian Banks

-----

OK, that's out of my system. There was going to be a longish post right here about the heterogeneity of the Republicans, the directionlessness and apparently self-destructive impulses of the Democrats, the obsessive need to see those who disagree with us as somehow limited - even some highfalutin' stuff about the philosophical underpinnin's of liberalism and how this election had begun to make me feel like its time had come! But no. Next time.

Please, reach out and fucking listen to a Bush voter today! Their candidate is an idiot, I think, and their party leadership is corrupt and dangerous. But the voters are not their candidate. They are not their political party, no matter how comforting we might find that formulation. Republicans and Democrats want the same happiness, fundamentally, and the only way Democrats will get power back in this country is to be able to find a way to promise that happiness! Then there's the separate problem of actually delivering it. Another post, another day.

[And by the way: hat tip to JCB, who said much the same thing in less space, though he didn't use the phrase 'liberal elites', so points for that. I also would add to his post that many people feel the government's big problem is ignoring the will of the people, rendering citizens' input impossible or useless or both. If there is optimism seemingly bubbling under my post here, I've been a bit disingenuous - I'm deeply pessimistic about this presidency. I just don't think writing off half the country is the way to go about affecting things in a positive way.]

Comments

[Adrian]

"Republican feelings of superiority" I love that. Because see, it's Democrats all week that I've heard saying that 51% of the country that lives in the middle are ignorant religious zealots. Wait, I'm confused, which one is supposed to be the one with feelings of superiority?

[Omri]

Testify! I'll have a few rants on this later.

[Wax]

OK Adrian, you're right to call Democrat commentators on their pig-headedness this week, but you know as well as I do that Christian evangelism (which walks hand in hand with Republican evangelism in much of this country) is by definition a manifestation of a feeling of moral superiority. 'I'm saved, how 'bout you?' is not a good basis for politicking. I'm not convinced it's a great basis for moral living, but that's a separate matter.

Calling people 'liberal elites' is the same kind of childishness as calling people 'fundamentalist hayseeds' or whatever the name du jour is. The same xenophobia seems to underscore each outlook. Christians (and yes, this is in part a discussion about Chrstian ethics) tend to point to Biblical 'law' as the basis for their moral system, and challenge 'the other side' to do the same. But where do you point? But that advantage in moral debates is goofy if you don't start from, for instance, the premise that God divinely inspired the Hebrew/Christian Scriptures. If your reaction to that premise is 'gimme a fucking break!' then you're not going to be swayed by insistence on Christian propriety.

Perhaps the major complaint stems from the fact that Christian morality has very little to do with the Republican Party of today, hmm? Never mind Santorum and the other crackpot fundamentalists in the party for the moment. The critique that the GOP is the party of Big Business and jingoistic patriotism (read: provincial, fearful nationalism) still stands. And you could make a pretty compelling argument (hey, Tom Frank has done just that in his book What's the Matter with Kansas?!) that one group of Republicans has ruthlessly co-opted the God-fearing working schmucks who always turn out to support the party.

You can imagine what that looks like from the Left: tens of millions of rubes, turning out in record numbers to stand up for politicians who have no connection with - and no concern for - the life of the common man. That's a criticism of the Republican Party, and its intent might be equanimity, but it's a backhanded slap to actual Republican voters. The trick is to get past that instinctual negative reaction to such a critique - and for those left-of-center to stop grounding their vitriolic anti-Bush rhetoric (which ain't stupid) in a feeling of superiority toward those who seem not to have their own best interests at heart.

I can't imagine what kind of candidate the GOP will run in 2008. If he's smarter than Bush - and God help him if he's not - he'll be harder to defeat. But I wonder whether he'll be as 'religious' as Bush...

[saurabh]

Here, read this.

Honestly, I don't know what you're talking about. This was not any kind of referendum, or even a pissing contest between liberals and conservatives. This was an election that was won by using cheap tricks and demagogery - which conservatives in general have been using for years to push people in this country steadily to the right. Contempt for 'liberal elites' didn't spring out of nowhere - someone coined and marketed the phrase 'liberal elite', just as they coined and marketed the phrase 'liberal media' and whatever else. Now these carefully planted ideas are bearing electoral fruit - and Democrats are caught with their pants down.

So what do they do? Give people their happiness? Please. This election had NOTHING to do with what people "want". Good Christ, people voting on the basis of their 'instinctive' abhorrence for gays is wholly unrelated to their happiness. No one would give a fuck about gays fucking if they weren't pressed to do so.

This "reach across the aisle" bullshit is sickening. Yeah, Republican voters are heterogeneous. Not all of them are gay-hating, ignorant assholes. But the Democrats did not lose because they fail to comprehend the souls of Republican voters (although, I'll agree with you, they didn't and don't comprehend). The Democrats lost because the Republicans are better at running elections, at firing up people over stupid, trivial issues that don't really matter to their lives. There's no greater lesson to be learned here than the fact that voters are easily manipulated.

[agi]

saurabh: berube is on this shit! excerpt:

Instead, we must devise a wedge issue that is as powerful and compelling as the campaign against gay marriage. And just as the campaign against gay marriage draws its deepest support from conservative rural areas hundreds of miles away from the nearest actual cohabiting gay couple, so too must progressives-- especially urban-identified, metro progressives-- seek to mobilize an energetic Democratic base by inventing a chimera that none of us have actually ever seen and cannot imagine anyone actually caring about.

Janet suggested this morning that we try alerting our fellow progressives to the fact that certain farmers in these rural areas are keeping sheep and goats in the same pen. It is an outrage, no question about it-- after all, these people are violating the proverbial imperative to distinguish the sheep from the goats, one of the most ancient proverbial imperatives in the history of proverbs-- but more important, it has no material bearing whatsoever on the conduct of our lives.

[Omri]

Okay, here's a rant on a small aspect of the red-blue divide
and how it helped get Bush re-elected.

[Mike]

Greetings to all the Republican, faith-based, bible beating asswipes out there. :)

Checkout www.zenarchery.com for a reality check from time to time.

"First I ask all you scumbags to send your children over to fight this worthless, unjust war. Then, I ask to raise your children, grandchildren, with the following beliefs. As "good ol' fashion Christian values" should be taken directly from the bible, right? As a WHOLE. Don't fucking pick, and choose what you see fit from it.

"What offends me is not faith; nor is it faith in something when all evidence points to the contrary. Please, believe that the Biblical version of humanity's origins are true if you like. Believe that the world grows from the navel of Krishna, if you'd rather believe that. If it comforts you, fine. It's not my place to force you to believe or disbelieve anything.

What bothers me deeply is when your faith or anyone else's gets in the way of teaching this country's children how to think rationally. Faith, almost by definition, is irrational. Creationism is faith-based. It is an irrational explanation for how we came to be here. Why would you even bother teaching your children about science at all, if you're then going to tell them that science is right about everything except the things you believe for no good reason other than, well, you just do? If you really want to teach your children the value of faith, take science away from them altogether; let them grow up with a medieval understanding of the world and our place in it. Tell them that the stars are really potholes in the floor of Heaven -- and why not? Science tells us that's not true, but science also tells us that Genesis isn't true, so clearly science gets things wrong. Tell your children that thunder is the sound of angels playing drums. Science tells us that thunder is the sound made when lightning displaces air molecules, but so what? Religion tells us that the Earth is at the center of the universe. Tell your children that.

The whole point of science is that it is consistent; any scientific experiment can be replicated by anyone who cares to undertake it, and any theory is based upon sound experimentation and/or observation. The same is not true of religion; God does not speak to everyone, and He doesn't even say the same things to the people who do claim to hear from Him. If he did, there wouldn't be three major Western religions and a dozen more Eastern ones.

I am sorry if my column offended you, but please understand: I am deeply offended by the notion that myths invented in the Bronze Age by superstitious desert nomads should be given exactly the same credence as the work of people like Darwin and Einstein and Euclid and Hawking and Newton. Our world is being driven further and further into irrationality by people who cannot reconcile their faith with reality, and therefore decide that it is reality which is lacking.

Look at the insanity in the Middle East: people who are totally identical in genetic makeup and who live almost identical lives are murdering one another because some of them believe in one invisible magic spirit and some believe in a totally different invisible magic spirit. Hell, not even that -- they're committing mass murder because one of them calls the magic spirit one thing and another calls him something else. Occasionally, for variety, they fly planes into our buildings because we don't recognize the power of their magic spirit. How many die in Northern Ireland because some of the Irish think Mary ascended to Heaven bodily and some of them don't? Is that not an absolutely idiotic thing to kill and die for? How about murdering someone who uses a different name when they pray to essentially the exact same God you do? Is that not barbaric?

And yet, that is faith: and how dare anybody suggest that someone's faith might just in fact be misplaced; that whatever it is they have faith in might just be irrelevant or in fact nonexistent. The problem with faith is that nobody's willing to simply have it, and let other people believe what they want; everybody wants to share their faith. It is considered perfectly okay for you to mock my perfectly rational ideas about evolution, but if I point out that your position depends upon the notion of a magic superhero in the sky, you'll probably take offense. Why? Why are irrational beliefs somehow less subject to scrutiny and dissection than rational ones? Why can't we simply point out in school that some people believe that God made the world in seven days, and that's fine, but there's no actual evidence to support that, other than some poorly translated writings that were cribbed from oral traditions that were already hundreds of years old before the first written copy of Genesis ever appeared?

Our children receive enough nonsense and misinformation on a daily basis; I think we should at least leave science class as the one -- maybe the only -- place where critical thinking and rationality aren't thrown out the door."