Carpe Datum

Evolution of a Conservative

David Neiwert at Orcinus has an excellent discussion of his changing opinions about conservatism over the past ten years. It's quite long (20-30 minute read) and quite good.

I think the most interesting part he talks about is how politics has become personal and why. I had a bad experience exchanging emails with my Mom a few years ago during the Bush/Gore campaign, and Neiwert's description of his disappointment at the way some conservatives believe and behave mirrors my own. Anyway, some highlights:

What became especially clear was that -- even though I had always believed, and still do, that upper-class and urban liberals are prone to a phony compassion that only extended to various victim classes, rather like a parlor game, often rationalized with a tortuous intellectualism -- conservatives likewise were fond of wrapping themselves in my old-fashioned, working-class values (along with the American flag, of course) while utterly undermining the ability of ordinary, working-class people to make a decent living and obtain equal opportunity.

Conservatism, especially in the past 20 years, has come less to represent those old-fashioned values, and instead has become a watchword for rampant, unfettered corporatism. Republicans in Idaho particularly were fond of gutting my state's heritage -- letting "free enterprise" pollute our streams, wipe out fish runs and wildlife habitat, destroy the forests in which I used to hunt and fish -- while proclaiming they were doing so in the name of "liberty." They weren't the party of the little people, despite their pose, which so many people I knew bought into. They were the party of the fat cats who bellied up to the public trough, trashed our lands, and walked away fatter and fancy free. [...]

Over the past 10 years or more, I've become much more concerned about conservatism, largely because it has itself morphed from a style of thought, like liberalism, into a decidedly ideological movement. One never hears of a "liberal movement," while the "conservative movement" proudly announces its presence at every turn. Conservatism has become highly dogmatic and rigid in its thinking, allowing hardly anything in the way of dissent -- indeed, it is nowadays practically Stalinist itself, especially in the way it punishes anyone who strays from the official "conservative" line.

This became abundantly clear over the years, on a personal level, as I became increasingly accused of being a "liberal" merely for questioning conservative dogma. Of course, my truly liberal friends always suspected me of latent conservatism (probably true), but in the past decade especially, I've had to finally accept the "liberal" label simply because it has come to be plastered on anyone who is simply "not conservative." [...]

There were two crucial turning points: December 12, 2000, and September 11, 2001. When the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Bush v. Gore, (which I will discuss in more detail sometime this week), it became clear to me that not only had the conservative movement grown into a dogmatic ideology, it had metastacized into a power-hungry, devouring claque of ideologues for whom winning was all that mattered. [...]

What I observed over time was that none of my conservative friends would seriously defend Bush v. Gore but would switch subjects or revert to a "get over it" kind of response. None would acknowledge that there were perfectly good, perhaps even patriotic, reasons not to get over it. None would acknowledge that, were the shoe on the other foot, they too would be seriously outraged -- and I mean long-term outrage. [...]

What seems to have really ripped things apart, though, was the aftermath of September 11. And this came down not so much to my feelings, but to theirs. [...]

[Painting dissent as treason] has become the worldview of mainstream conservatives in all walks of life. It's manifested itself not just in nationally prominent scenarios like the attacks on the Dixie Chicks and other entertainment folk, but in other smaller and lesser-known ways, too, like the way conservative officers are driving liberal soldiers out of the military. The clear message in these cases: Dissent is disloyalty. [...]

One of the important things I learned as a cops-and-courts reporter lo these many years ago was something about crime victims: That they often make themselves vulnerable to violent crimes because they are not prepared to deal with people who are sociopathic, or who exhibit antisocial or narcissistic personality disorders, or in some cases outright psychoses. That they project their own normalcy onto these other people -- they really cannot believe that someone else would act in a way substantially different from their own decent, sane base of operations.

In a way, I think this is a large part of what is happening to our national body politic: People in key positions of media and conservative ideological prominence (Coulter, Limbaugh, even Bill O'Reilly) exhibit multiple symptoms of being pathological sociopaths, either antisocial or narcissistic, or a combination of both. And not only their fellow participants in the conservative movement, but mainstream centrists and even liberals are unable to figure out that there is something seriously wrong with these people because they are projecting their own normalcy onto them. They cannot perceive because they cannot believe -- that, above all, these people are not operating within a framework guided by the boundaries of basic decency that restrain most of us. [...]

How is any kind of normative political discourse possible in this environment? How is it possible to be civil to people who constantly are placing you under assault? How can there be dialogue when the normative rules of give and take and fair play have not only been flushed down the drain, but chopped into bits and swept out with the tide? Do the advocates of civility place any onus on the nonstop verbal abuse, and absolutely ruthless, win-at-all-costs politics emanating from the conservative quadrant? And do they really expect liberals to refuse to defend themselves, when even doing so gets them accused of further incivility?

I don't mean to pick on my highly valued and respectable commenter (who is sort of conservative), but this last paragraph is a big recent frustration. I wrote an entry praising Bush's trip to Baghdad (at a time when many liberals were bashing him relentlessly ... see the articles I linked in comments to that post) and putting it into the broader context of my overall disappointment and frustration over the war. In response, my commenter accused me of calling everything Bush does "evil". As Neiwert said, "How is any kind of normative political discourse possible in this environment?"

I admit I come from a subjective worldview that disagrees with many current conservative philosophies, but I am also open-minded, as any person interested in the truth should be. I should be allowed to point out flaws (even using course humor, like "the Boy King" or "Bushco") without being accused of frothing at the mouth. I'm angry, but just because I'm angry doesn't mean I'm irrational. I think the points I raise deserve to be addressed, and I also believe that the mainstream so-called liberal media has thrown up its hands and said, "Not our job!" for some reason. So it gets kicked around in blogs and the vast majority of Moron Americans remain blissfully unaware of the big picture because they don't have the time or the interest, because they aren't willing and able to look through the smokescreen being put up by this administration and its compliant press corps.

Back during the 2000 campaign, as I said, I had a big political disagreement with my Mom. I don't remember who brought it up, but Mom and I began debating politics over email. But it was frustrating because she wouldn't respond to points I was making about, say, Bush's record in Texas or the real story about Gore and the Internet or what have you. I would explain to her why I thought a repeal of the estate tax was a bad idea, for example, and she would respond with "What do you think of this?" and it was a link to an article from some wingnut saying Al Gore committed actual treason by secretly negotiating away too much to the Russians during some obscure peace conference in 1994 or something.

It went on like that. I would debunk some silly conservative story that she got forwarded from the fore-runner to sites like the Drudge Report or InstaPundit or whatever. She wouldn't even comment. She would instead send another (what I thought was) silly story. I would get mad at her, and she would say, "Hey, I'm only forwarding this to see what you think. I didn't say I believed it." But I feared that deep in her heart she did believe these things at some level, and worse, she was selectively digesting facts that fit with her worldview (the whole of which was a big surprise to me, because I had always thought she had more liberal tendencies). What little debate we did have had her repeating stuff verbatim from Rush Limbaugh (stuff that is definitively disproven by a variety of sources) and me trying without much luck to talk about issues I thought mattered (I'm sure she thought I was being pretty pig-headed, too, of course).

Eventually, I got really mad and said some things I deeply regret. She got mad, too. We patched it up, but our relationship has never been quite the same since. I don't dare bring up politics with her, even now when I think about it so much, because I don't want to fight any more with her. I value our relationship too much to risk it. Politics has really become personal, and I think Neiwert has hit the nail on the head as to why, and his frustrations are my own. It's a good piece he's written there, and I hope you'll read the whole thing.

Posted by Observer at December 5, 2003 06:44 AM