I get the same feeling.
War Weariness and MoveOn
Dean's World blog
By Dean
I've been on MoveOn.org's mailing list for some time now. Every time I get a new mailing from those folks, I get depressed. Especially when some wag forwards a copy of their latest mailing to me and suggests that there's stuff in there that "more people need to see" and urging me to share it with my readers. I usually don't have the heart to tell them that I've seen it already.
Here's something I've noticed about the so-called "left/right divide." Now maybe this is myopia on my part, but every single person I know who supports the liberation of Iraq, who favors the abandonment of the "status quo" policies of past administrations and acting openly to promote democracy and human rights by a carrot-and-stick approach, is abundantly familiar with the arguments and factoids that those on the other side bring forth. In the last year and a half there has been, literally, not a single thing that those on the other side have been able to tell me that I have not heard many times before. I've all but given up looking, although I keep looking ("Have they changed yet? No, guess not. [Heavy sigh.])
Last year one of them badgered me incessantly to see Fahrenheit 9/11 thinking, I suppose, there'd be something in there that I hadn't heard before (there wasn't) or that something about the "humor" of it would make me see it as anything other than fascist hate-propaganda. While in general it's not good practice to judge something before you've seen it, when enough honorable people from all parts of the political spectrum and from all walks of life condemn something and say all the same things, you know you don't have to see it. I don't have to read The Turner Diaries or The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion to know what they are, and I certainly didn't need to see that movie. But I finally let myself be badgered into it, and found not a single surprise except that it was even more mendacious and vicious than I'd expected.
Mind you, there are some on the other side who I can respect. Why? Because they've taken the time to grasp the issues and positions, understand where the other side is coming from, and have come to different conclusions. They have specific and exact things they want to see done differently, and they can tell you exactly what those would be. No pussyfooting, no armwaving, no generalizations: they can tell you "We're doing X, we should be doing Y instead." That I can respect and understand.
I just wish it were more common. It would lead to things like dialogue and fruitful discussions and maybe even shared strategies.
Yet for the majority on the other side, the assumption seems to be that if you disagree with their position, it must be that I just haven't heard or read the information. When I tell them I have, they just don't believe me, or they assume I'm lying.
Never once does it seem to occur to most of them to ask whether it is they who have not really heard or tried to understand the other side. Never once does it seem to occur to most of them that there may be something they don't know. It never seems to have occurred to them that someone could just plain disagree with them and not be "shills for the Bush administration."
Me? I have spent endless amounts of time reading and examining the arguments of those on the other side. I could, if challenged, write ten or fifteen lengthy essays on why America provoked the 9/11 attacks, about how the Bush administration is stupid and incompetent and evil and greedy and malicious, about why we're causing the world to be a more dangerous place, about how we're descending into right-wing extremism and madness, and so on.
I could write it, and write it well. Without even being sarcastic. I could probably have people cheering me on. It'd just require me to be, y'know, a completely shameless whore since I wouldn't believe a word of it.
Anyway, tonight I had yet another well-meaning person--one who obviously rarely looks at my weblog--forward me another mailing from the people at MoveOn.org. This time, it was the stupid petition about the absurd "Downing street memo." When I didn't react with enthusiasm, my erstwhile correspondent proceeded to tell me a dozen things I'd already heard about why I should take this absurd document and the paranoid fantasies it supports seriously.
So I was just polite and said we probably wouldn't agree much on politics and let it go. I'm certain my friend thought, "well those 'right wingers'sure are closed-minded." Whatever.
I just didn't have it in me to tell them that I'm not interested in helping to spread these people's stupid, paranoid, anti-humanist, anti-progressive, crypto-fascist bullcrap, or in helping them in their desperate, clawing attempt to find anything that remotely whifs of scandal so they can vindicate their hate-centered, Bush-obsessed worldview. |
