September 25, 2006 at 10:07:43 Propriety and paranoia in the empire by Robert Jensen     Page 2 of 2 page(s) www.opednews.com

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If the combination of this superficial holier-than-thou moralism with an ignorance-based paranoia were idiosyncratic to marginal characters who fire off email rants after being primed by right-wing TV shows, maybe we could chuckle at them. The problem is that this stance is hardly marginal. Think about how many U.S. politicians take positions that, while less harsh, reflect that same mindset. Think Pat Robertson, who regularly condemns gays and lesbians, and openly called for Chavez's assassination earlier this year. Remember that Robertson, who runs a television network and a powerful political machine, made a serious bid for the 1988 Republican nomination for president.

It's a cliché among pundits these days that U.S. politics is too polarized, but there's nothing inherently dangerous about sharply divergent views jockeying for position in a democratic society. The real threat is in how this fusion of propriety and paranoia can trump humanity and analysis.

Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. His latest book, All My Bones Shake: Radical Politics in the Prophetic Voice, will be published in 2009 by Soft Skull Press. He also is the author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007); The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005); Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights, 2004); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2002). Jensen's articles can be found online at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html.

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