Let me tell you a few
things about rich, or even moderately well-to-do, white boys and men raised in
the United States. Typically between the ages of 14 and 30. Some of whom will
even read this. They are among the worst people you could ever
meet.
It’s a unique subset
of Americana – part of a class of people who get every advantage life can
possibly offer them; health insurance, travel, a good education and guaranteed
college, upwardly mobile career paths and expectations, fraternities and secret
societies… it leads to a sense of entitlement that translates in many many cases
to inexcusable boorishness. So many of this class of people become leaders in
finance, law and politics that it’s nearly an unspoken part of the up-and-coming
lifer’s resume.
Having grown up as a
white male just outside of this subset (okay, substantially outside of this
subset – we was poor) but growing up along-side them (getting into college,
etc.) I was often astonished at how much all of these young men expected
everything to go their way. That no matter how awful a thing they might have
done, that they knew not only that they could get away with it but that they
were supposed to.
They drank alcohol to
excess because they were supposed to. They had (biblically had) women at parties
because they were supposed to. They travelled and did the same things because
they were supposed to. They committed acts of silly and stupid vandalism – often
while drunk. They all believe in this. They brag about it in a bizarre display
of comparative dominance, like wild animals. Sometimes they believe this because
it’s what they’re taught. Sometimes it’s because they teach themselves. But one
thing they all have in common is that this is a phase of life – something they
do and then move on from. They look at the terrible things they’ve done to
themselves and other people with pride, but behind them. In their eyes
it’s unfair to expect anything else.
Judge Kavanaugh is
most certainly one of these people. His classmates were – to this day they brag
about it. They brag about him bragging about it. They are most likely all decent
citizens and people NOW. They got through that phase. Even though that
experience digs into the brain and influences them for the remainder of their
days – displayed as simple misogyny to inappropriate behavior to sex crimes all
the way to people who wish for the days of The Handmaid’s Tale. But they are
also the people they used to be.
We are living in a
time where the political party in power, from its lowest woman (and yes, the
lowest people in the party are women – or black – look at how they’ve been used
as pawns during this whole Kavanaugh process) to the most raw version of all
this at the very top are people who believe in this. Who respect it. They will
defend to the death those who have experienced it with them. Many experienced it
themselves, including the man at the top.
It should come as no
shock that Kavanaugh is this kind of man – I expected it of anyone that would
get nominated. The people in power right now have coddled and brought forward
men like this. Men who have had these experiences. MANLY MEN. There are tens,
hundreds of thousands of men just like him out there, and if my some miracle we
keep Kavanaugh off the bench the next one up will be just as bad. A believer
that this is right. His right.
It’s sad, really, but
we’ve done this to ourselves. This is a result of the further widening of the
wealth in this country since the Reagan error, plus a near psychopathic coddling
of people so far to the right in their Christianity that they believe that 51%
of the electorate should be second class citizens. You do this for 4 decades and
pretty soon everyone who considers themselves young (or young at heart) simply
can’t remember a time when it wasn’t like this.
Now there are
exceptions. Hell, I know a few. But people like Kavanaugh, the Comics-gate
idiots, etcetera etcetera flat out believe that their entitlement outweighs
anything else and will lie, steal and cheat to preserve it , all the
while claiming that it is unfair to even point it out. Because what
they’ve done and what they believe is how it’s supposed to
be.
We are long overdue a
new revolution. People without power with pitchforks and placards far outnumber
this subset of Americana. People like to hide behind the idea of a new
revolution just to justify their own ideology as right but this isn’t about my
ideology, or yours. It’s about changing their sense of entitlement into
something they should be ashamed of. Not their wealth and position, but what
they did with it at the expense of others. It’s not about ideology, it’s about
that golden rule that they constantly throw in our faces while breaking it with
every step.
We need to
revolutionize how we treat each other, top to bottom and starting at the top.
Starting at the bottom. Starting in the middle. Start SOMEWHERE goddamnit!
Because I know all
these things I find it very easy to believe and support Kavanaugh’s multiple
accusers. Now you know all these things. I just taught them to you
— although you already knew it all. How easy is it for
you to support them?
You should. We have
to start fixing this somewhere.
It’s
been a while, hasn’t it? Don’t worry, I’m still the same old crank I always was.
I just got too addicted to social media, an addiction I’m trying to break.
Here’s hoping it takes with a return to old school
blogging.
I got
involved in a social media thread yesterday where a person wanted to claim that
racism in the south springs from the Democratic Party of today. That the racism
switch from Democratic to Republican never happened. I suppose when your
political party is headed by such an overt racist you have the desire to deflect
and I understand that, but this unbelievable, willful ignorance still makes me
furious. It is so easy to disprove with just a few minutes of effort on the
internet (which I’ll save you from – the switch happened in 1948 when Truman
kicked the Dixiecrats out of the Democratic Party, just after he defeated
Dewey).
But
it got me thinking. Why has willful ignorance become such a treasured commodity
in our social discourse? How did it become such a strong currency in our
political discussions? Why is willful ignorance seen as a Political
POSITIVE by so many people?
There’s
some knowledge I have thanks to being descended from my father that I’m not
going to get into, but I think it really starts with the expulsion of the
Dixiecrats from the Democratic Party in 1948.
Understand
that Harry Truman HATED the Dixiecrats. They nearly cost him the presidential
election of 1948. Sure, when you look at the popular vote (Dixiecrats – 2.4%)
and the electoral college (Dixiecrats – 39 votes out of a possible 531) it
doesn’t seem possible, but the reason many newspapers called the election for
Dewey is because of the belief that Strom Thurmond (the Dixiecrat candidate) had
successfully split the vote. They were laughably wrong, but polling backed them
up right up to election day.
After
the election Truman consolidated power and kicked the Dixiecrats out, who were
democrats until Truman adopted a civil rights platform, and because the
Republican Party had been shifting rightwards for some time they were welcomed
in. Most Dixiecrats became Republicans (for example, Strom Thurmond and Herman
Talmadge) but a few came back by agreeing to a party loyalty pledge in
1952.
I
could go on and on about that, but that’s not my point today. My point is that
the Dixies wanted the South to remain Segregated. They wanted enforceable racism
to stay. They were willfully wrong and they were welcomed into the Republican
Party with open arms – because they were badly beaten in 1948 and needed new
blood. The Republican party slowly became the party that would welcome anyone to
get votes. I’ll get to that in a moment.
After
Truman we got Eisenhower, who was an incredibly popular man. Recruited by both
Democrats and Republicans he declined to state his preference for a very long
time (including refusing to run in 1948) but finally came down on the Republican
side, running for President in 1952 and winning handily. He called himself a
Progressive Republican, willing to fight the right wing of his party, but he
accommodated them as well, welcoming corporate executives into his cabinet (a
first) and eventually issuing Executive Order 10450, which barred members of the
LGBTQA community from federal service – resulting in the firing of over 5,000
people (this order wasn’t rescinded until 1995). His administration started
veering more and more to the right and Eisenhower actually railed against it. He
only grudgingly supported “Operation Wetback” because he wanted to curb illegal
immigration, and at the end of his presidency warned against the Military
Industrial Complex, that was growing and building with heavy Republican
support.
Then
came Nixon. Woo boy, then came Nixon. Although he lost against Kennedy he didn’t
lose by all that much. Had Pennsylvania gone the other way we’d have never had
Kennedy. The gap between the two in the popular vote was only 0.18%. It was
close. Kennedy got most of his southern votes thanks to having Lyndon Johnson as
his running mate. And there were controversies about ballot-box stuffing in
Illinois. Nixon had been a rabid anti-communist, and he very nearly rode the
coattails of the Eisenhower Presidency into the White
House.
In
1968, with LBJ flailing and the once-promising Camelot years falling into the
ruins of Vietnam and the social revolutions going on, Nixon developed a new
idea: The Southern Strategy. The idea would be to appeal directly to all of the
Dixiecrats and former Dixiecrats who had remained loyal to the Democratic Party
by using race as a position point. One of his men, Lee Atwater, came up with
buzz words and phrases like “forced busing”, “state’s rights”, “welfare state”
and so on that it became possible to be an open racist without using actual
racist slurs. And between the Democratic disarray and Nixon pulling everyone he
could into the Republican Party it worked.
Twice.
Once
1976 came around the Republicans were hurting, thanks to the fact that Nixon’s
law-breaking finally caught up with him. Ford was tainted by his pardon of Nixon
so the nation wanted ANYONE else and the Democratic Party gave us Jimmy Carter,
who was doing fine until Iran exploded. Believe it or not, Carter actually
brought the hostages home before he left office but Reagan gets the credit
because it finally happened after he was elected. Never mind the months of
negotiations that went before. Reagan was a conservative Republican and he
wanted to tap a potential new base: the Religious Right.
Up to
this point the Religious Right was treated with widespread scorn. They said
crazy shit. Several leaders of this group would tell their followers that they
could reroute hurricanes and tornadoes. A couple built theme parks. One built a
huge church out of glass and crystal. There were faith healers. One of them
actually fund-raised that if he didn’t get enough money God would “call him
home”. I’ve lost count of the number of “last days” that we have passed by.
Nutcases, but nutcases with followings and many of them were simply non-voters,
because God wasn’t in Government. Reagan cultivated their leaders, and their
leaders preached the Gospel according to St. Ronnie. When Regan secured the
Republican Nomination he force the party to accept them, and to accommodate
them.
The
Republican Party found themselves in the position of having to accommodate the
crazy. And the crazy takes the Bible as gospel – that every word is true. At
least, every word that they cherry-picked that supports their own bigotry.
Against LGBTQA rights. Against Abortion. Some were even against any evidence
that the earth is more than 6,000 years old. If Science or evidence contradicted
their beliefs, then their beliefs were right no matter what. Willful Ignorance,
for religious purposes. I kind of understand that. Freedom of religion is cool.
It’s part of being US.
But
then Reagan had a couple of rules changed about television broadcasting: He had
the Fairness Doctrine repealed, and he got the FCC to stay mute about the idea
of regulating cable. Once cable took off Roger Ailes began to work on the
framework for what would become Fox News. He worked with Reagan on media, and
then George Bush I after that, and then just prior to the start of Bill
Clinton’s second term launched Fox News. Paula Zahn, Bill O’Reilly, Neil Cavuto,
and Sean Hannity all had shows from the first week and their agenda was a simple
one. Repeat Republican talking points and belittle anything said by a
non-Republican, no matter what that was. Follow Reagan’s 11th
commandment – say no evil of a fellow Republican. By the time the 2000 election
took place, This Republican Propaganda Channel was available in 56 Million
homes. As there is no such thing as a Democratic Propaganda channel everything
they said went unchallenged. The Religious Right had their own channels too.
Yes, that’s a plural – at one time there were several.
And
oh boy, some of the crazy shit they said. Do a few Google searches and see what
you get.
While
this was all happening, the internet basically exploded. Web pages. Blogs.
Livejournal. Facebook. Twitter. Snapchat! Universities putting their archives
online. The Cloud. So many resources for information became available.
Newspapers put their archives online. You can research your ancestry. Look up
quotes. Look up pictures. Find people. Research the history of nearly
anything.
But
at the same time, opinions came online as well and EVERYONE’s got an asshole,
er, opinion. Some places encouraged and cultivated some pretty dark and
dangerous stuff (everyone, just stay off 4-chan). Some places tried to be
friendly. Some act as cultural centers for such a diverse group of interests
that it’s impossible to comment on even 1% of them. And The Republican Party
invited many of THEM in, and the people who responded are much like the people
previously brought in, so swayed by the two decade effort of the Republican
Propaganda channel that they tend to believe what they get from there as a
source then they got in actual SCHOOL.
And
those numbers grew and grew. And now they’re online. And they’ll argue with you.
Most of them have never even HEARD of Reagan’s 11th
Commandment.
And
then John McCain made the biggest mistake of his life and put Sarah Palin on the
ticket. She was one of the nutcases. She was a Dominionist. She was loud,
vacuous and narcicistic. She never checked anything she said, had any depth to
anything she said, and often contradicted something she had said only 10 minutes
previously. Her lack of actual knowledge about ANYTHING was staggering, and her
Willful Ignorance was world class. She had never heard of Reagan’s
11th commandment either and suddenly a party full of people who
respected it had to refer to her in reverence and awe. And a LOT of the country
bought it. 45.7% of the people who voted bought it. It wasn’t enough, but this
was on the table now.
The
Republican party tried to go back to its tax cut and corporate roots but that
didn’t work either and more people like Sarah Palin were in office now. So it’s
only natural that someone like Sarah Palin, but only more so, would rise to the
crop. Many tried to be that person, but most couldn’t pull it off. They needed a
natural.
So
the people who value Willful Ignorance finally elected a leader who embodies
their own ability to not see the world as it is.
I’ve
simplified this greatly, of course, but I’ve had many an argument online with
people taking positions that are easily disprovable if you’re willing to use the
internet for what it was built for – a research tool. The internet is a GREAT
research tool, but most of the internet (about 75%) is devoted to various social
media sites, or pay homage to them in some way. So of course people only use the
internet for this one thing, and never bother to actually verify if what they
are saying is actually TRUE. They instead use what they already believe, and
that outweighs anything anyone else could say. Willful Ignorance – even though
the resource to verify or rebut their belief/opinion is right at their
fingertips.
It
appears that all those cuts in education that started in 1970s have really taken
hold.
It
used to be that your opinion would NEVER outweigh facts. That calculus has
changed and it’s all social media and its satellites. And like many of you, I’m
sick of it. But I’m addicted to it too. Same as you.
I
cannot stand for Willful Ignorance. Not when reality is in opposition with it.
Not when the truth is easily available to people at the exact same keyboards
where they spout their ignorance. So maybe Social Media just isn’t for me – but
that said, it’s become the best way to get a message out, and as someone who
produces and consumes public art that matters to me.
So
I’m looking for a solution. No clue what it is but I think we need one. Making
Fox News reportable to the FCC? Making any website that generates over $1B in
revenue reportable? I have no idea.
But
I’m tired of your Willful Ignorance. And I’m tired of it being a political
virtue. It has to stop, or we’re all fucked.
It’s
worth pointing out that while Ted
Cruz is criticizing him for swearing, Beto O’Rourke does actually “show the
fuck up”. Keep in mind that Cruz has a voting absenteeism rate in the senate 10
times his colleagues.
Y’all
are surprised that the pot-smoking, founding member of Farm Aid who powers his
tour bus with biodiesel and lives in a compound powered by solar panels would support
the progressive? Really?
Apparently
History class shouldn’t teach about a 2-time Presidential Candidate and Secretary
of State.
