On the Ides of March, I went on the radio in Virginia to do the radio show about which I'd posted here a few weeks in advance. (See "Bogus Arguments Impede Iraq Discussion: My Next Topic on Virginia Radio." at http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/manage.php?submit=view&storyid=31209.)
I had hopes that the framing of the show could foster a constructive conversation. I took no position on the war itself --in the past, I took plenty of heat here on NSB from some people for not being certain just what the right course on the war is, given that we're there and that the nation is in the mess that our invasion created of it-- but focused on the four bogus and propagandistic arguments that I see the Bushites using to prevent any rational and realistic discussion of the real choices America faces in Iraq.
I guess those hopes were naive. As has happened on other occasions when I've gone up against Bushite orthodoxy with that audience, my heresy brought out a set of defenders of the faith. As I wrote about a year ago, in a piece entitled "Fieldnotes from Bush Country: The Closing of the Bushite Mind," at www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=116).
Over the years, I’ve noticed – in this rural Virginia culture—that certain kinds of issues tend to bring more of the closed-minded warriors out onto the battlefield, while the more moderate people remain silent. This seems to happen when matters of core allegiance –“You’re either with Us or with Them”—are at stake.
That previous show was intended to be about certain matters of the Constitution.
As on that earlier show, on this most recent one also how I framed the question seemed entirely irrelevant to the issue on which the callers charged forward to attack me. My call to get past slogans and propaganda to find out what America's real options are was pretty much ignored. Instead, the callers approached me as if my message was just "cut and run." Actual arguments --using logic and evidence-- were irrelevant. What I actually had to say was not really acknowledged.
My patriotism was impugned. I was accused of "aiding and abetting the enemy."
And indeed, not one of the callers, nor the host either, offered a single word of support for anything I said. If there were more sympathetic people in the audience, they did not make it onto the show. Maybe it was a matter of their being intimidated by the culture's way of protecting its dogmas. Maybe it is just because all the lines were lit up and they couldn't get through.
But whatever the reason, the listener to the show would think that I was the only one around who thought as I did. Which is a shame, in terms of the educational value of such a show, I think: it would do much to legitimate an idea if it gained affirmation from within the audience.
And I must add, there is room for question as to whether I handled the onslaught in an optimal way: besieged, and caffeinated with an unaccustomed cup of coffee, I may have been impolite in those heated encounters.
The whole experience makes me wonder all over again if there really is anything accomplished by attempting to communicate across the divide about these delusions operative in the world of the Bushites. Perhaps I should take heed of the fact that these people --that 30 percent in the polls who seem determined not to budge-- have managed to maintain their Bushite view of the world despite ALL THE MOUNTAINS OF NEWS AND ANALYSIS that should have revealed the huge gap between the Bushite rhetoric and the accumulated torrent of contrary facts.
Is it perhaps folly for me to believe that my efforts to use the rigors of argument and fact to undermine those false beliefs will succeed where years of news have failed?
Or should I not be so pessimistic, holding out the hope that the "silent majority" in the audience hears and learns, even if the callers see me only as the enemy?
I can't be certain.
But I do not like the experience. It is bruising. It is unpleasant. It feels thankless. I end up feeling not only battered but also in some way polluted. (Afterward I got an email from a Lt. Col. in the US Army who, among other things, said that hearing me on that show made him feel like throwing up.) And I'm not sure it does any good.
Andrew Bard Schmookler's website www.nonesoblind.org is devoted to understanding the roots of America's present moral crisis and the means by which the urgent challenge of this dangerous moment can be met. Dr. Schmookler is also the author of such books as The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution (SUNY Press) and Debating the Good Society: A Quest to Bridge America's Moral Divide (M.I.T. Press). He also conducts regular talk-radio conversations in both red and blue states.
The silent majority is silent , but they do hear. Keeping the message of a better nation , its goals and objectives may not elicit a response excepting those that wish to argue--but it does maintain a path of progress. Keep up your fine efforts.
by
Eliot Gould (12 articles, 0 quicklinks, 21 diaries, 134 comments)
on Monday, March 19, 2007 at 12:31:48 PM
My proffessor at University studied the mindset for years and came up with some fascinating conclusions. He posted his book online for free so I hope you'll take advantage of it.
I've enjoyed your op-ed pieces very much and wanted to share with you that we seem to have a great deal in common. You see, I too have been an avid issue provocatuer, ie., chronic op-ed writer, of the liberal/progressive/leftist/eco-radical ilk for many years. To try to make a long story short, I presently live in rural Culpeper, Va. with my grown family, on a secluded knoll in the woods a few miles from the base of Rag Mtn. Back in '05, the editor of our local paper, The Star Exponent,invited me to write a weekly column from the liberal perspective, to which I excitedly accepted. First time columnist naivete quickly gave way and brought me back to the scary reality of small-town, small-minded, xenophobic culture. My columns ran for about 12 weeks before the lynch mobs came for me. Okay, actually no lynching, but the mobs surely came in the form of record numbers of letter writers (so said the eidtor), 90% of which were angry, ignorant "Bushie" supporting tirades. Not to mention the blind faith "Fundies", or fundamentalist Christo-fascists who would've happily thrown me to the lions for breakfast, with compassion of course.
My topics included environmental protection, growth restraint, Katrina, anti-hunting, anti-war, including a "town hall" meeting on the Iraq War, military recruitment in our schools and the insidious provision in the NCLB Act, "illegal" immigration (that's where the xenophobia came in), and even a couple of "fluff" pieces on the town itself. Well, I stood up quite well to the attacks on my politics and character, of the "he's nothing but a spineless liberal 'aider and abetter' of the enemy" type responses, but what finally helped me decide to quit and tell the editor to shove it where the sun don't shine was when he published a really unecessarily nasty letter from a local titled, "Top Ten Reasons Why We Don't Like Glenn Kirk". The editor sold me out as a sacrificial liberal lamb by printing this mean spirited drivel and not shielding me from that sort of attack. He set me up knowing full well how "his town" was going to react and was all too happy to sell sooo many more papers during my tenure. Ah, the power of the press.
So, I seem to know exactly the experience you've described regarding your radio show participation and the particular mentality of our rural Virginian "Red Staters". They ain't pretty are they? The reasons why they've been devolving so fast are obvious, what I worry about is that I do not know exactly what the outcome may be. I have stopped writing around here though. I have switched to submitting my work on this site. Perhaps you might like to look my stuff up in the archives?
I would like to know more about your experiences here if you might like to write back to me and share.
Peace,
Glenn Kirk
by
none (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 6 comments)
on Monday, March 19, 2007 at 9:01:54 PM
I had a simliar experience here in Oklahoma City. I read a blog in reactionary right wing rag, "The Daily Oklahoman" which is the only newspaper in the state, making requirements for conceal and carry less stringent.
I wrote something to the effect that it is all we need is more people packing; that not a day goes by that I do not see 'road rage" here in Norman (110,000 population) or Oklahoma City (500,000). Give these hot heads a forty-five and no one's life is safe. I said we should make it harder to get a permit for conceal and carry.
I never thought much about my comment until I received a phone call from a Daily Okla. reporter who asked if I had read the comments on my comment. I told him no I had not. He said I took a brutal beating from almost every commenter. I said I did not care. He asked me why I wrote what I wrote. I made the mistake of trying to tell him why in a hurry. I am Southern Baptist pastor and was headed out the door to do funeral for a seventeen year old beautiful girl who died in my arms at the ICU on bad Meth.
Next week I get a phone call from an irate citizen in the City about the Sunday article about my position and what lousy liberal excuse I was for a Baptist Minister. I never knew there was an article.
The reporter called me back a couple days later to talk to me about letters to the editor about the article in the paper. He said there were dozens and all seem to attack me or my position. I told him what a whimp he was to write an article about me without letting me know, and that his call call was really a low down way to incite the natives to sell his one hundred and eightieth rated paper in the nation when only one hundred and eighty were evaluated by Columbia University.
I hung up on him and do not know to this day if he wrote another article and really do not care.
by
pratliff94 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 969 comments)
on Monday, March 19, 2007 at 10:05:19 PM
Reverend, I admire your position in the episode you have told and I think, you were quite right. Also, I have to say that gun- toting is madness and Mr. Cheney who boasted among other things to kill 400 birds in his lavish time belongs to the asylum.
But here I have several encounters of my own:
1. I have a person ( a male) I know whom I meet every day who, no matter what is the conversation about always turns it into the diatribe against abortions. I can start talking about dogs with him and he still will turn it to abortions. I think, this person is mad. But otherwise from that he seems pretty reasonable.
2. I have another person, a woman which, again turns every conversation ( no matter what topic is) into the paroxism of hate against Arabs and Black people. Yes, once her son was attacked by the gang of the black teenagers. Yes, she is Jewish. Still, she hysterically wants all the Arabs killed and that she says while serving tea or food. I think,she is mad. BTW, she does not love Bush very much. Thinks he is too lenient. Hates Obama, though. Thinks he is an Arab. Does not care what he wants.
3. I meet frequently a person on the job who loves Bush unconditionally and so profoundly that she ( a woman again) will not jog with anyone who does not openly praise him. She really asks that question! Now, she also hates Cindy Sheehan ( never saw Cindy, obviously). I think she is mad too.
4. There is an Israeli family visiting us soon. Haven't seen them for 18 years. They are so full of hate that when they talk with us on the phone(!)
at least part of the conversation (on their side) is dedicated to the hatemongering against all other people living there. They just rant, waisting time. Again, no matter what we were talking about initially. BTW, they were not even born in Israel and certainly do not represent any 'salt of the Universe'- just simple, average people, no biggie. And, of course, they do not believe in any God, no matter how many Temples they visit. I think they have a mental problem.
Now, having said all of that there could be a conclusion- any excessive, hysterical behavior towards things that clearly have no immediate meaning in the life of the current individual is a psychological masturbation- the self- inflicted madness. There is a lot of people in this world who are so limited in their psychological experiences that they will readily and willingly become obscessed and hooked on the primitive hate and masturbate and masturbate just for the sake of the illusionary orgasm, similar to the ones Howard Stern provided for the unstable bimbos on the phone. That's who those people are- the unstable bimbos.
by
Mark Sashine (53 articles, 19 quicklinks, 250 diaries, 3574 comments)
on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 at 12:02:42 PM
I've worked for a small weekly paper and a daily paper in Arkansas and those type of setiments run rampant throughout the South. The first mistake I made writing a column was to denouce hunting as a true sport if the hunters used semi- or fully-automatic rifles with teflon-coated ammo. Got my first death threat for that one. Since then, I've learned to be subtle with my jabs. Now, I cover sports and sometimes wen I write a sports column I drop a number of parallels between the sports world and politics that often fly over the head of the casual reader. We just have to outsmart them. We're never going to change their mind, but we can't give up granting hope to those that feel their voices are between drowned out by the Republican noise machine.
by
George "Clay" (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 10 comments)
on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 at 11:44:07 AM
6 comments
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