Falling In Love vs. Falling In Line | Monkeys in a Barrell

WilliamPitt

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Thu Sep-18-03 12:48 PM
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Falling In Love vs. Falling In Line | Monkeys in a Barrell

I had a fascinating conversation the other day with a DUer in New York who gave me a detailed layman's explanation of the phenomenon of Group Dymanics. He did so with DU specifically in line. The crux of the explanation led me to decide that trying to keep people in this forum from 'bashing' each other or 'bashing' a candidate is a complete waste of time.

Group dynamics when everyone can see each other is chaotic, and leads to the kind of chaos we see here. Group dynamics in a situation where everyone is anonymous and emboldened by the ability to hide behind a fake name, a keyboard and a screen makes the group dynamics phenomenon even more insane.

So the hell with it. Go bash each other. Shred every candidate. Nothing I nor anyone else here can say or do anything to stop it. We're a bunch of monkeys in a barrell, and we're going to bite each other's asses and sling shit until the barrel is full of blood, and there isn't anything anyone can do about it.

I do, however, have a pretty good explanation for why we seem so compelled to destroy our candidates, to lop our noses off to spite our faces even as we stare down the shotgun barrell that is another four years of Bush. It was the Biggins himself, former President William Jefferson Clinton, who laid it out in that perfect way he has of phrasing the obvious.

At Harkin's Steak Fry last week he said, "The biggest difference between Republicans and Democrats is this: Democrats want to fall in love, and Republicans want to fall in line."

Woop. There it is.

We all want to fall in love, and we do. We fall passionately in love with our candidates. Love is, itself, the most incredibly irrational phenomenon in the universe. When we see, or percieve that we see, someone 'attack' the one we love, when we feel that the one we love is threatened, we freak out completely. This is as true here as it is in your bedrooms.

That's why this forum is so nuts. Many of us have fallen in love. We don't like to hear that we're getting fucked without even getting kissed, and we want to part of hearing bad things about the ones we love. There isn't a single thing we can do about it. The phenomenon of group dynamics, coupled with the fact that this is a house full of insane love-struck monkeys, means there is no cure.

I would say this, however. I must credit this simple stripe of logic to Al Franken, who laid this out in his new book. He was talking about the question of patriotism, and the difference between liberals and conservatives on that important question.

Franken said that conservatives love this country the way young children love Mommy - Mommy is good and we love Mommy and Mommy can do no wrong and anyone who says bad things about Mommy is automatically evil.

Franken said liberals love this country with an adult kind of love - a love that sees all the good and all the bad together, and works towards fostering the good while working to change the bad. You can't change the bad without talking about it. That's not "We hate America." That's "WE LOVE AMERICA" with the kind of adult love that sees the bad and the good as a coherent whole, and works towards creating that more perfect union with all the data in hand.

It won't make any difference whatsoever, but it might be helpful here on DU if people approached their own candidate, and the others, and the love that is there beyond rational consideration, to work towards that adult kind of love which accepts and copes with the good and the bad simultaneously. Right now we have a lot of baby love, Mommy love, stupid love that is as conservative as supply side economics, and it is bullshit and juvenile, and it sucks.

So that's that. We can cross the "Get in line" bridge, and probably burn it, later on.