outrageous statements: #243 and #244

[Two Americas]

I have been in right wing suburban Hell for three weeks, having extensive discussions with many people. I have come to two conclusions.

1. There is no religion in the churches I visited. It has been all extreme right wing politics with Jesus thrown in once in a while for the sake of appearance and as justification for self-righteousness.

2. Right wing politics and support for the Republicans among white suburbanites is racism - nothing more and nothing less. It takes different guises, but that is the core aspect to it, the one "non-negotiable" the animating and motivating factor, and the one consistent thread through all of the "positions."

Important note - this is very different from rural conservatism, much more one-dimensional, hostile and aggressive and unyielding. Much more potent and powerful, as well.

OK while I am at it, outrageous statement #245 -

The difference between suburban liberals and suburban right wingers is very small and has more to do with style and fashion and personal preferences and prejudices than it does with politics. The politics are the same - the haves should be on top, and the have-nots should be on the bottom.

Liberals think that brown people should be paternalistically and condescendingly treated with kindness and then if they resist they should be harshly dealt with and disciplined and punished. Right wingers think they should be disciplined and punished, and never mind horsing around. Liberals think that poor people should be paternalistically and condescendingly "treated" and "fixed" so they can become just like good little suburbanites, and then if they resist they should be harshly dealt with and disciplined and punished. Right wingers wanted to skip the hypocritical bullshit and just get right to the punishment.

Those two groups of suburbanites are controlling and driving our politics, and are destroying the country in the process. The two groups, though they fancy themselves to be so oppositional to one another and so different, have much more in common than not. People in both groups are motivated primarily by a need to justify and rationalize their own privilege and prejudice; both are free market libertarians economically; both have contempt for their inferiors, those in the general public; both are controlling and domineering; both are extremely self-centered and self-serving; both have their spiritualized dogma and doctrine; both are modernistic and want to be rid of tradition; both are intensely consumerist and use that as a model for assessing all things; both embrace New Age notions and ideas; both are "pragmatic" and "practical" as an excuse for cutting corners and not taking moral stands; both project all of their own problems and shortcomings on the other group; both see personal success as the only important measurement of value and moral rectitude - to be "good" is to succeed; to succeed is to be "good." Poor people suffer because they are not succeeding, and that is because they are "bad" (liberals say "mentally ill" or "substance abusers") and that is why they don't succeed. Therefore, those not succeeding must be definition be "bad" or wrong or broken or otherwise deficient or flawed.

Suburbanites as a group have the resources and power to enforce this reality on the rest of us, which they then claim "proves" they were right all along.

We don't have a horse in this race. Neither group of upscale, striving, dominant winners gives a shit about anyone or anything else.

[maryf]

1. I live in a community with the first group

about 50 percent of the population. About 15 years ago there were still some cross burnings going on I've been told. I teach the offspring...

[karynnj]

2. I don't know what suburb you are in, but I hope never to go there

I have not seen that in the various places I have been. I have seen that even in very conservative churches, that within the community there is charity shown to those less fortunate. In the more liberal areas - where I usually am, there are people who reach out when they know there is a problem. the problem is the problems are often hidden too long.

I have heard no one cite the Calvinist creed that the good succeed and the bad fail. I don't see most people as libertarians, though my college age daughter has said that that is very common in her generation. As to suburban Republicans being racists - I know many who are not. (Including parents not concerned that their daughter is seriously dating someone black)

I am not questioning that your observations are not accurate in your community - but I am trying to say that at least in other areas of the country, they are absolutely not true.

As to not having a horse in this race, are you speaking of 2008? There are huge differences between McCain and Obama (as there would have been if it were Clinton or Edwards) on domestic policy, foreign policy and constitutional rights. I know you are disappointed that your candidate lost, but over time, take a second or third look at Obama. Before doing so, suspend any preconceived idea of who he is and especially ignore anything said by an opponent. After giving Obama a chance, then you can relook at those criticisms - some may seem less true or less important. Also remember that rarely will you find a candidate who 100% impresses you as special. I've voted since 1972 - and only once has that been the case.

I know Edwards was special to you and to this group, but he has strongly endorsed Obama, when he didn't have to. Obama had the nomination - with or without the endorsement. Consider why Edwards gave it. You know him better than I do, but I would guess that it was to help the people who love and respect him see that he does consider Obama a candidate worth supporting.

[cornermouse]

3. I don't really know what one thing has to do with the other

or why you would stretch so hard in an attempt to make your point.

I would point out, though that if you are really concerned, you could leave your community and go looking for those less fortunate. I rather doubt you would have to go very far before you found them.

[karynnj]

4. i was not saying that I didn't

As my husband and I both headed Social Action at our synagogue in the past, we have. What I was alluding to is that in suburbia, there are often people too proud to let people know that they need some help, but saying once they are known people do help. The fact is that in any community there are people in need - I don't see where you got that I didn't think that. I was countering the person I responded to who I thought was saying that neither suburban liberal or conservatives helped.

[Two Americas]

5. why so defensive?

You seem to have taken what I said personally for some reason, and are inserting some sort of candidate preference argument into the discussion.

I was talking about politics and economics, not who did or didn't "help."

[Two Americas]

6. I don't

I don't live in any suburb and never have.

The problems aren't "hidden" they are willfully ignored and neglected.

There are many good people everywhere. That isn't the point. I am not talking about charity, either, and it is good that you are personally involved in charitable activities.

It is demeaning and insulting to assume that I am talking about Obama at all, or that this is about "finding a candidate who 100% impresses me as special." Disagree with me if you like, but don't put words in my mouth or tell me what my thinking or motivations are.

I have worked for and voted for every Democratic candidate for over 40 years. A vital part of that work is to criticize the politicians who happen to have a "D" after their name. It is our right, it is our duty, it is our civic responsibility. I will continue to speak out. If the things I say make you uncomfortable, I cannot control that or be responsible for your emotional state. I am not "disappointed" that
"my" candidate lost. You are projecting your own identification with celebrity personalities onto what I said. Ask the Edwards supporters here - I used to piss some of them off because I was not blindly loyal to Edwards and was not "in love" with the personality, as too many people are today about various heroes.

So what of Edwards endorsed Obama? Does that mean we must all now think and say the same things? All march in lockstep?

I suggest that you read what I said again, give it some thought, and then offer some commentary if you like. If you have a counter-argument, I would be pleased to hear it. But complaining about the fact that I am saying what I am saying is suppressive and anti-democratic.

How does this angry, hostile and suppressive attitude you are taking help us defeat the right wingers? How does it disprove that the "winners" among us - as represented by those striving to get to the top, as expressed most clearly in the modern social and cultural phenomenon called "suburbia," liberal or conservative, are aggressive and domineering and intolerant of criticism or being challenged, and unwilling to look critically at themselves while looking very critically at everyone else?

[karynnj]

10. I did speak towhat you said in the first few paragraphs

The latter ones were in reference to your comment that you have no horse in the record.

I have lived in suburbs most of my life - including conservative ones in Indiana and liberal and liberal/Republican ones in NJ. Your statements are just not true here - nor anywhere I visited friends or relatives. As you say you never lived there, what are you basing those extremely negative statements on.

Nothing I said was angry, hostile or suppressive. much the opposite. I think that within most communities - world-wide, people generally treat people within their own community with kindness - even in third world countries. (This is why it is difficult for people in a country - looking at the basic decency of their neighbors to think of the US (or insert any country name) as anything other than a good country.) Why would anyone live in a place like your description of suburbia. I can see that I will not be able to change your opinion - just as you will not change mine.

As to your comments on religion - you are ignoring that in nearly all cases it is the churches and synagogues that do deal with the have nots. As long ago as the 1950s, I remember a great uncle picking vegetables and fruit from a quarter acre of land that he farmed after retiring, filling baskets that would be left on doorsteps by kids from his church for people known to need it. I don't know if he voted Democrat or Republican, I do know he cared for others. I am not saying that every thing is sweetness and light - it isn't - but more people care than don't. I also know a suburban college kid who spent a summer volunteering at an Eastern Orthodox connected family homeless shelter. In my suburban county, there are homeless and many kids volunteered to work with the kids in the family, doing crafts, reading books and helping with homework. Some volunteered via their church or synagogue and many through some of NJ most exclusive prep schools, all of which required community service.

That is the surburbia I know - not the Monkees' Pleasant Valley Sunday or the almost out of Dickens place you postulate.

[Two Americas]

11. what statements are not true?

As I said, there are good people everywhere.

I have performed and spoken in hundreds and hundreds of churches all over the country for 40 years, more so in poor rural districts and in poor urban neighborhoods, so I am not ill-informed.

Decades of living in a poor African American community have made ne well aware of the role that the churches play in charity and community cohesiveness.

Again, you are projecting things I did not say onto me - "the Monkees' Pleasant Valley Sunday or the almost out of Dickens place you postulate."

I understand that there are good people everywhere- nothng I said denies that - and I did not devalue charitable work, though I do think it iis a poor substitute for political solutions, and that it is often represented as just such a substitute.

If the things I said do not apply to you personally nor to the people you know, than stop taking it so personally.

It is the cultural, economic and political phenomenon of suburbanization - the system people are caught up in - that I am criticizing, not individual people. As politically active people, is it not the system we SHOULD be criticizing? Why is suburbanization to be seen as immune from criticism?

Why is it that the people least vulnerable are the ones we must rush in to defend? I only wish that the poor, the homeless, the forgotten and left behind, and minority people were the recipients af such a vigorous defense around here as professional successful suburban people are.

[saracat]

7. What I will never get is why the heck who anyone endorses should matter to a voter?

Endorsements are rarely given because the endorser"supports" the candidate It is given either because they are expected to as a member of the proscribed party or have been given something for it or promises have been made. None of those scenarios impress me and I could care less who Edwards or anyone else endorses. Edwards himself, before endorsing said "endorsements don't mean anything". He also said that he expected his supporters to make up their "own minds" and not have someone make a decision for them.

And secondly, I have no idea what John's endorsement of anyone has to do with this conversation? This seemed to be about politics and economics not any particular candidates or personalities.

[Two Americas]

8. obviously

In 1857 William Seward strongly endorsed every Whig candidate. In 1858 he was elected to the US Senate as a Republican. So much for "endorsements" and the value of party loyalty. There are things that transcend those petty and superficial concerns, and there are times in history when they should.

I don't know with certainly that this is one of those times, however the more that people try to suppress any consideration or discussion that it may be one of those times, the more I suspect that it is in fact one of those times. The party loyalty arguments that people are using today are identical with the party loyalty arguments being made in the 1850's by the Whig apologists, and I think the use of those arguments betrays an awareness on the part of people on some level that it is true - therefore the frantic need to deny it. This is of course what CJP and others mean when they talk about "cognitive dissonance" - the gap between what people know to be true and what they feel compelled to insist as being true. This is a childish stance - wishing really really hard for what one wants, and hoping that the "universe" delivers; in other words, that Mommy and Daddy in the form of Santa Claus or the tooth fairy or the Easter bunny make all of our dreams magically come true.

If we had a strong party and a strong candidate, there would be no need to suppress dissent and people would not be resorting to the weak "better than Republicans" arguments nor would we see the demands for loyalty; "loyalty" really meaning conformity in thought and speech to the script - the wish and the hope as to how things are, at the expense of and as opposed to speaking out about the way things really are.

The party and the candidate will not magically become stronger by all of us wishing it to be true, or putting our positive vibes, or suspending critical judgment, or being silent and falling into line, nor by chanting slogans in unison, or visualizing the results we desire, or "thinking positive." The right wingers will not be stopped by any of that.

[maryf]

12. Non sequiter here: Obama may be different from McCain

But I do question his choice of foreign policy advisor, Zbigniew Breszinksi (sp?); ZB is pretty darn close to being fascistic; I'd like to see Obama change that choice. I responded to your post before reading the rest of the conversation! hope this isn't too disconcerting! editted due to non sequiter status of my post!

[Two Americas]

9. anger and defensiveness

We run into a lot of anger and defensiveness around the issue of the haves versus the have-nots, and we see that on the poverty threads, on the homelessness threads, and on any threads that suggest - even mildly (which is not to say my criticisms are mild necessarily lol)- that there could be any flaws in the party, in modern liberalism, or in the activist community. We also see the same response when there is any critical examination of the suburbanization phenomenon as a cultural, social and political factor in modern life.

This tells us two things. First, the criticisms are hitting a nerve, which can only mean that on some level people know that what we are saying is true, but they find it uncomfortable to look at.

Secondly, it demonstrates beyond a shadow of doubt that these factors are strongly and intimately connected - suburbanization, modern liberalism, the demands for party loyalty and conformity in thought and word, control over the party by the relatively well-off with all attendant prejudices and biases, and the real problems of poverty and homelessness.

If people did not feel guilty about these things, they would not feel compelled to fight so hard against any discussion of them, they would not be so defensive and angry.

As CJP has pointed out so brilliantly so many times, what we are up against here is cognitive dissonance. There is what people know to be true - can see and cannot escape - about modern life, about the party, and about the way in which success is the problem, not poverty, the way in which the ethics and behavior and attitudes of the "winners" is the sickness and what needs to be fixed, not the poor and the homeless, and not the dissidents and critics, and then there is what people must continue to claim to be true and must try to force onto all of us, lest the entire framework of denial they are living in comes crashing down.

Challenging people's thoughts and attitudes in these areas threatens to undermine the justifications and rationalizations that underpin their entire existence, they feel. Of course it does not - in fact, they would be much happier if they were able to let go of the denial and the fantasy, much less conflicted and anxiety-ridden and hostile and angry.

I am not sure how to approach this with people, but I do know that it must be approached. The alternative - to continue to drift along in this fog of unreality and fantasy, of child-like wishing and hoping - is too horrible to contemplate. Too many people are suffering too much, and too many more will suffer if we do not arrest this slide by confronting and overcoming this cognitive dissonance.

[maryf]

13. Too many people are suffering too much

hear, hear, great post!