I had some thoughts regarding Colin's post on shame and intelligence as weapons in the battle against the Crusaders. I hope you don't mind, Colin, if I start a new post on the subject, and hope that I've got the gist of your argument right.
In high school I did a theater workshop at the Kennedy Center. In the drama class, we did an exercise with the characters we were portraying in our monologues. Make a list of character traits for your character and for yourself. Find what you have in common and where the greatest differences are. But what if you don't have anything in common with your character? asked one of my classmates. What if she's just -- mean? Well, our teacher replied, no one really things of themselves as wicked. Except in melodrama, of course.
We justify our behaviors to ourselves. We avoid cognitive dissonance.
That's why I think it's difficult to impose shame on another. Your mom can shame you. Your group (friends, church, bowling league) can shame you. But an "outsider" can't. Our defenses are too high; we'll reject the effort of the outsider to shame us, even if they point out our hypocrisies, lies, and deceits.
So when Joseph Welch asked McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" (decency, not "shame" as is usually quoted), McCarthy could quite simply ignore him. Just so much background noise. (Although, he probably did not have a sense of decency, or shame.)
This tendency, I believe, is all the more powerful when the accuser is our (perceived) foe -- and when we buy into a story of persecution, victimhood, and zealotry (of the religious or non-religious varities.) I'll again recommend What's The Matter With Kansas? as the best book out there that explains how PVZ has taken over the GOP. And this, Colin, is where I think your formula "Intelligence wins by modelling security" needs a bit of work. I fundamentally agree with your approach -- calm, rational argument; focus on reduction of fears. But it begs the question, security from what fears? What you and I fear, what we think is threatening the country, is quite different from what "they" think and fear. (Yes, I'm lumping "them" all together, for the sake of argument; go back to Wayne, Mr. Brooks.) We can calmly demonstrate how a policy will free us from the fear of terrorism, or financial risk, or poverty. But if their "enemy" is atheism, elitism, and Hollywood, what good does that do?
I suggest that modelling security will be difficult as long as there's money and votes and power to be gained by peddling insecurity. Or mongering fear.
But if you make a new post, I have to make a new M----- Comment!
That's OK, I have time. Here:
I think your high school workshop illustrates one of the issues I was trying to highlight on the original thread: making caricatures of your opponents is neither useful nor effective. I think your teacher was dead on - people don't self-perceive as wicked. I also agree that you can't effectively be shamed by someone you don't respect. So it is pretty easy to dispense with shame in the political arena. Not gonna work.
But what about this "intelligence" thing?
Well, the problem there is a different sort of caricature. You suggest we defend ourselves from outsider shame by rejecting the worth of the outsider. I agree. But we also bolster ourselves with "insider approval." We fundamentally believe that our ideas must be backed by intelligence, logic, calm, grace, beauty, etc. because, well, we think of ourselves as smart, logical, clear-thinking people. And, especially if we surround ourselves with like-minded people (you know, the smart ones like us), we reinforce that to ourselves and our community over and over again.
This leads to a big problem when someone fundamentally disagrees with us. If we are smart, logical and kind, and someone takes an opposing viewpoint, we have to explain their disagreement (after all, our position is so . . . right!). And, especially where politics is involved, we often seem to come to the not-so-logical conclusion that their position can be explained by the fact that they are some combination of dumb, illogical and/or wicked.
Look at some of the wording in your post (maybe for effect, I understand, but still). You picture yourself as "calmly demonstrat[ing] how a policy will free us from the fear of terrorism, or financial risk, or poverty," but having those arguments fail when addressed to an audience that fears "atheism, elitism, and Hollywood."
That's fine, but I guarantee somewhere, on some right-leaning blog someone pictured themselves as "calmly demonstrating how a policy will free us from the fear of terrorism (support the Patriot Act!), financial risk (support Social Security 'reform' using private accounts!) or poverty (workfare, not welfare! Jobs through tax breaks!)," and laments how those arguments will fail when addressed to an audience that hates "Christianity, family and decency."
Both are untrue. The 'right' as an organism no more fears Hollywood than the 'left' fears Christians. It is just easy and convenient to characterize the people of Kansas as thumping Bibles and hating Hollywood the same way others characterize the people of Brooklyn as sipping lattes and persecuting people who want to pray.
Another good example is "fear mongering." It's a great phrase, but it seems to be something that only the "bad guys" do. Is Paul Krugman "fear mongering" when he spends pretty much every single column predicting doom for social security? Well, that probably depends on whether you agree with him from the get-go. If you do, he's doing a wonderful public service by bringing attention to an important issue. If you don't, he's a no-good fear-monger (or is it "fear-mongerer?" Not sure.)
Did the left fear-monger over Iraq? Dunno. Certainly the worst-case scenarios never came to pass, so maybe they did. But then again, the best-cast Wolfowitz fantasies never came to pass either and it was, in fact, a lot messier than we'd like to pretend. So maybe they did a service. Probably somewhere in the middle. Did the right fear-monger over Clinton's health care reform? Dunno. It never saw the light of day so we don't know if the right saved us from catastrophe or denied us fundamental humanitarian reform. Probably somewhere in the middle.
Your final suggestion is, I think, too pessimistic and has the same internal bias. It seems like you are lamenting that your desired approach (modeling security with calm rational argument) is doomed because the bad guys peddle insecurity to gain money, votes and power.
But what if the "bad guys" aren't peddling insecurity to gain money, votes and power but instead are pushing ideas that they truly believe will prove beneficial in the end? What if the "good guys" are peddling insecurity to gain money, votes and power? Last time I heard, the left liked power too.
Most of all, what if the rank-and-file right aren't a collection of dupes who have been fooled by a slick fear-mongering machine, but instead have chosen between two positions (as so many political debates foolishly seem to break down into) and didn't pick yours?
My counter-suggestion is that honest dialogue is not possible when you believe in either your own virtue or your opponent's vice. The fundamental framing notion that "we" are guided by rational thought and "they" are manipulative, fear-mongering, power-hungry bastards poisons any attempt at progress from the get-go.
Have lunch with a right-winger. They're nice and they don't have a problem splitting the check. Though they do tend to get a little worked up over the tax.
Comment #1 :: link :: April 7, 2005 10:26 AMJim,
You bring up some excellent points.
On the broad-brush thing: The point I was trying to make was that you have to understand what a person fears -- or rather, what their basic assumptions are -- in order to have a meaningful conversation with them. Certainly I don't believe that all conservatives / right-wingers / Republicans think the same way. Or that they're all dupes of the powerful elite, false consciousness, etc. You know me better than that, Jim. (Speaking of that, check out this cool handy guide to the big GOP tent!) You'd want to use different arguments to convince a libertarian, a member of the Christian Coalition, a small-government type, etc.
The straw-man Kansas Crusader I posited (yes, it's a straw man after all...) was there to show that if you go in with certain ideas about what constitutes "security" you may be brought up short, if the person fears something different than you do -- or than you think they do.
Recently I had an eye-opening conversation with my stepfather, who is usually rightward of me on political issues. He asked what I thought about the Social Security situation. I launched into a careful reframing of the issue, trying to paint Social Security as a social insurance program, not as a investment program. To my surprise, he absolutely agreed with me, and went even further, saying that any crisis in the financing of the program was a sham, because it's all goverment money anyway. (Makes sense, Clint!)
Second, fear mongering. You are right, politicians of all stripes monger fear. Fear sells! Son Number One asked me the other day if I liked scary movies. Sometimes, I replied, it's fun to be scared, especially if it's pretend. He then told me he liked Captain Hook and the "octopus," which after some disucssion turned out to Ursula from the Little Mermaid. That's a complete tangent, but a cute kid story, eh?
So I don't really know what the answer is when it comes to trying to get someone who disagrees with you to agree with you. (Although this guide to arguing over the Internet is instructive.) At the end of the day, I think everyone who disagrees with me is dumb, illogical and/or wicked, and if you don't like it, you can consider yourself BANNED!!!
By the way, you are so not a troll, Jim. Please stop using the "M" word, it makes my heart rate go up. And not in the good "I've been exercising" way.
Comment #2 :: link :: April 7, 2005 4:00 PMMike -
Sorry about that. Meant to put that comment on the comic book thread.
To your points:
I agree with all of them, and yeah, cute kid story.
And I'll stop using the M word. . Can I at least still call myself the most-right-wing-poster-on-Ish?
By the way, part of my passion on this particular subject comes from my personal life. For various reasons, I have a lot of friends, neighbors and co-workers who did radical and offensive things like voted for Bush (twice!) and generally lean right. And they are neither twisted nor evil (well, a couple of them - GET YOUR LEAVES OFF MY LAWN, BARRY!!!).
And, in fact, there is a HUGE amount of common ground between us. I totally agree that you need to understand your opponents' fears, but I think the problem is more your second point - we mistakenly assume we know what "others" fear or think (they hate gays! they don't care about the environment! they just want capital gains tax breaks because they are greedy! why won't they think of the children! blood for oil!).
99% of the time, me and my conservative friends completely agree about the problems facing America - we just differ on the solutions. And they are nice people (just . . . misguided, as illustrated by their failure to agree with me).
The only thing I didn't understand from your post was the refernce to 'exercise.' What is that? I'd be interested in hearing more, as I'm not familiar with the term. Anyway, back to World of Warcraft . . .
Comment #4 :: link :: April 8, 2005 9:26 AM
