August 30, 2010 6:35 AM

America the mediocre, hateful, and self-absorbed

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.

  • Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sometimes I take a look around me, and I wish this was a gardening blog. I really wish I could deflect the lunacy, the fear-mongering, and the silliness and focus on something more…enjoyable. The problem is that I find it difficult to not care…because I do care…though I recognize that I’m but one person pissing into a very stiff breeze.

it can really suck to be an idealist. To look around and see so much that could, and should, be different and better is frustrating. We could do this, but we choose not to. To know that there are Americans actively working to make sure that we AREN’T different and better is maddening. To realize that there are those in those country who care for nothing that doesn’t impact them directly is a degree of arrogance and self-absorption I can’t even begin to understand. This country was not founded on the ideal of “I got mine. You can damn well get your own.”…but there you have it. We could be so much better…but when so many care for nothing outside their own self-interest, it’s difficult to see the vast potential of America realized.

I understand that there are many out there who don’t think as I do, who view the American experience through a different lens…and that’s OK. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me, nor do I look down on those who think differently and can logical defend their point of view. What disturbs me is the overwhelming tide of fear, ignorance, and anti-intellectual, knee-jerk rage that powers so much of our public discourse today. It’s as if we’ve become the set from Idiocracy, where the ability to think critically and argue logically is nowhere to be found. In an era when soundbites rule, reasoned, rational debate has become virtually extinct, and the simple act of believing something makes it an incontrovertible fact. No matter what side of the ideological fence you happen to find yourself on, we’re all poorer for having lost the willingness and the ability to think critically and talk without shouting.

Let’s turn the floor over to Rush Limbaugh: “Imam Hussein Obama,” he recently declared, is “probably the best anti-American president we’ve ever had.”

To get a sense of how much it matters when people like Mr. Limbaugh talk like this, bear in mind that he’s an utterly mainstream figure within the Republican Party; bear in mind, too, that unless something changes the political dynamics, Republicans will soon control at least one house of Congress. This is going to be very, very ugly.

America has always been a fractious and unruly country. Healthy democracies are noisy, messy, unkempt affairs. Over the past 40-50 years, though, America has taken on an attitude of intellectual laziness, a sense of laissez faire combined with noblesse oblige that has left American intellectually bereft. We’ve lost our ability and willingness to reason. What’s replaced it is anger, divisiveness, and a truly disturbing anti-intellectualism most noticeable on the right side of the political and ideological spectrum. It’s why you hear Conservatives denigrate Liberals as something less than human and less worthy of equal consideration and respect. It’s become much easier to despise those on the left side of the spectrum than to interact with them and regard them as worthy, legitimate human beings who just happen to think differently. No, in their eyes, we’re evil, subhuman, anti-American freaks deserving only of marginalization and elimination.

Part of today’s disturbing reality can be laid to the social upheavals of the ’60s and ’70s. Part of it is due to the advent of the Internet age and the dawning of the 24/7/365 news cycle. With so much happening so quickly, there’s often little (or no) time for reflection and evaluation. Reaction, anger, and fear-mongering can be dispensed quickly and processed at a moment’s notice, with no time or effort required for the slow, inconvenient slog of discussion and reasoned interaction.

Today’s America has been suffused with a patina of Nixonian distaste for reason, consideration, and reflection. In their place has risen a national predilection for reaction, anger, and fear-mongering. How else can the ever-growing mob mentality approach to issues be explained? Richard Nixon and his merry band of thugs and criminals developed and perfected the means and techniques for manipulating the American Sheeple into repeatedly voting against their own interests. In conjuction with Fox Noise Channel and other Right-wing “news” organizations, propaganda and fear-mongering have gone mainstream. Scapegoating and witch hunts have become the coin of the realm for the GOP. It’s reprehensible, it’s anti-democratic, and it’s unspeakably evil…but it works. Fomenting fear and reaction, as well as stoking the fires of scapegoating and demonization are time-honored and effective propaganda tools. Sadly, the Left has yet to develop any means to effectively counter the forces of Darkness and Evil…and so we sink ever deeper into the morass of hatred, fear, and rage. The soft hum of truth is easily lost in the backwash of Sturm und Drang of rage and recrimination.

We live in a era in which discussion and reflection have been replaced by reaction and rage. Ignorance, innuendo, and the Big Lie have supplanted reality and truth as marketable commodities in the public marketplace of ideas. Of course, it’s easier to react than reflect, and far more satisfying to traffic in ignorance than inspiration. People who scream about “Sharia” or “Socialism” more often than not can define neither. Buzz words infused with nasty connotations have become effective tools for those who hate without bothering to pause and reflect what they hate and why they hate it.

We’ve become a nation of empty intellectual vessels, waiting to be filled with the latest, most vile and vicious propaganda. We’ve become conditioned to being told who to hate and fear, even when logic and reason dictate otherwise. We’ve lost our ability to think, to reason, and to reflect. Unfortunately, what’s rushed into the fill the void is a hyper-developed ability to react and to engage in Two-Minute Hates against the bogeyman of the moment.

I’d say that we deserve better, but the reality is that we have exactly what we deserve. Those who do not question Evil are destined to be ultimately consumed by Evil…and so here we are.

I just wish that I didn’t care….

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on August 30, 2010 6:35 AM.

Glenn Beck is to reason as lobotomy is to intellectual discourse was the previous entry in this blog.

I don't know about the yolk of oppression. How about the rich, creamy nougat of oppression?? is the next entry in this blog.

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