As predominately a Liberal, Im as guilty some of the time as are some (many?) purported Liberals for demagoguery, for knee-jerk, inductive (extrapolating from the singular to the whole - even though not all inductive reason is necessarily always illogical [!]) reasoning. There is a Conservative website I like, not because I like the sum total of its contents (by any stretch) but because it helps me understand how many on the Right might be thinking/feeling. It is the blog Mustard Seeds, and I post a particular part of this extensive website here for your thoughtful consideration. Now, within this website you will find the commentator falling into the same behavior that he accuses those on the Left of doing, but I HAVE TO INDULGE HIM HIM, READ HIM, HEAR HIS CRITICISM* (or her - I havent bothered, yet, to look for the owner of this commentary to determine the gender) - that is, using sweeping generalization about Liberals (i.e., using Inductive Logic - indicting ALL purported (as he claims - since many Liberals, he contends, are not Liberals at all, but for some core sentiments they share) Liberals for the demagoguery of those politicians, pundits, commentators, et.al. -she(he) cites in his multiple examples to support his(ditto) arguments on a wide range of subjects. And, when I sift through the many examples extensively cataloged within, I have no doubt that there are many truths, or kernels, at least, of truth, to the many examples therein. And those truths I DO find, I, for one, concede. because --- We (for the moment I will concede to that part of me that claims to be physically of this species) Humans are one imperfect, messy lot, yes?! We are primarily an emotional, reactive race, ever on the alert for danger of every sort, QUICK to point out OTHER-NESS as it relates to ourselves. I do it all the time, because, in great part, that OTHER-ness confirms and reaffirms what makes ME unique in contradistinction to them. Of course, this seeking what sets us apart from others is fraught with many perils. May I use race and racism as an example? (This may be a long post!): Today I read a couple of posts that, on the face of it, smacked of racism, and they arose from one who is primarily, at least, a Liberal, and it spoke to me of how cut-and-dried we are not, how ideologically impure many, MANY, of us are, regardless what we hold within ourselves as true. Indeed, MOST of us are, at our core, as ideologically inconsistent as we are of pure ethnic origin but, rather, gravitate toward that school of thought, that ideology - be it religious, or political, or whatever - that GENERALLY speaks to our core values or even HABIT, be they arrived at by a function of birth, environment, family history, or well-considered thought. So, I thought about racism as I prepared my Watermelon Salsa. I thought about my (now dead) dad, how I have an old videotape of him using the word jigaboo, generally considered a (funny-sounding) slur of people of darker descent (usually of African extraction, but not necessarily). He was born of a Plumber and housewife (in Hood River) back in the day when this was used commonly, never made in beyond High School, stayed in the local area for the most part (outside of a stint as a Baggage Handler for United in Portland, his stint in the Army before that in Korea) as a Heavy Equipment Operator. Although we never discussed race to the best of my recollection to me, he didnt as far as I know have a racist bone in his body. Indeed, he voted pretty straight Democratic Party his whole life, even though I suspect he would have fit in just fine as an Eisenhower Republican. Anyhoo, on that videotape, when he uses that word (Im in my 30s then) I challenge him by asking him if he is racist, and his eyebrows go up, a suprised expression and look of befuddlement comes over his face, as he says, No! Not at all! Thats just what theyve always been called! You have to understand that my dad was not a worldly, or sophisticated man. He read his Argosy, his True, his Time, his Popular Mechanics magazines, and did turn off whatever TV programs we might be watching to watch the News each evening - which he had us all watch with him - but he wasnt much of a thinker so much as a Doer - learning how to build repair, plumb, wire from How-To_do Time-Life books. In later years, I learned that his mother had used the word jigaboo affectionately toward his dad, as in My little jigaboo. I learned after that, when my brother Tim spent some dollars for his own DNA testing, that we had some African within our bloodline, and Tim said, some research he did showed that someone on dads side of the family had probably had some relations with, it was surmised, a slave back when, and that Grandma Rice knew of this, thus her term of endearment. Now, about me, briefly. I never thought of myself as a racist here in the almost-all-White The Dalles, Oregon growing up. I called Brazil nuts, Niggertoes (we always pronounced it as one word) because thats what I thought they were called, with nary a thought to the first part of the word, and only learned in my early teens that to call them that wasnt such a good idea. I knew every word of the story Little Black Sambo and would recite it verbatim when I was 5, (only when soaking in the bathtub) my mom told me in later years. I didnt get into politics, and thinking about racism, until the Mỹ Lai Massacre in March of 1968 when, as a Wahtonka High School freshman, I began to think about how much Human Beings would have to completely de-Humanize an Other, so demonize an Other, as to kill a whole village of innocents as some of our troops did in Vietnam.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre. I worked on our school newspaper and conducted a poll to asking the students to vote Yes or No as to whether or not Second Lieutenant William Calley and his superior Captain Ernest Medina were justified to do what they had done, and, to my disgust, most of the respondents sided with the action, voting Yes for the innocence of these military officers, with some using words like gooks in their replies, all of which I printed in a follow-up piece. It was then I began to think about how we, the Public, are indoctrinated, and to begin, as I said, to think about racism, about how rotely we follow what is fed to us, about Us-vs-Other. And it was then that I began to realize what a bubble, what an illusion, I lived in, not just about that, but about everything I had always taken as true. (This is with one exception - I began to challenge the logic of many tenets of Roman Catholicism earlier, when I was about 12, but thats another story). When I arrived in the Very Otherworldly environment of Mt. Angel College, a small Very Liberal college then operational in Mt. Angel, Oregon in 1971, my education about gender politics, racism, Americas aspiration for Empire-building, began in earnest! But THAT is also another story for another time. Now, back to this website. it is an interesting place to tease out the fact from the fiction, to examine ones conscience. If Liberals have an open mind like we are supposed to have (as an IDEAL, at the least!), then DO try to ferret out from it the truths you find, NOT merely react. It is GOOD to try to walk a mile in the Others shoes, yes??!
Posted on: Mon, 07 Jul 2014 00:56:41 +0000
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