Subtitle: Never underestimate the power of rationalization and denial.
Perhaps the biggest casualty of the last 12 years or so of aggressive partisan politics started and perfected by the Republicans (for lack of actual ideas or the ability to govern) has been what was once referred to as an open mind. The ability to look at the facts or hear a persuasive argument and have the strength of character and intellectual honesty to change ones mind.
Well the biggest casualty besides the dead of Katrina, Iraq, Afghanistan, the secret torture prisons, the middle class, and the Constitution, anyway.
And of course the sub-casualty, the idea that there are actual facts at all. Facts that can’t be spun or facts that can’t be discounted because of who is presenting those facts, facts that can’t be smeared out of existence in the course of killing the messenger bearing them.
The effect of partisan warfare (and the assault and discrediting of science and the scientific method) has been the snapping shut of minds all across the political spectrum.
Now, what you believe in your gut is more important than facts or reasoned argument.
For example, that it was wrong for Bush to kill Afghan children, but it is ok for Obama to kill Afghan children.
The fact is that the fact of both facts is essentially the same. Both Presidents have taken direct action and given direct orders that have resulted in ….as war always does….the killing of children.
But one fact is excused, where the other fact was condemned.
Not because of circumstances, but because of closed minds. Minds to which the fact of WHO is ordering children to be killed….as they always are in wars, which is why wars are bad and to be avoided, not escalated…is more important than the the fact that children are being killed.
In the current political environment, not only are facts not important, but the actual phenomena are not important.
It doesn’t matter what actually happened, it matters how what happened is, or can be, perceived or spun. If you are a partisan, it is ok if your guy kills children. You can find a way to rationalize or justify it.
You can find a way to rationalize or justify the killing of children.
That pretty much says it all.
You can find a way to rationalize or justify the killing of children, torture (or not prosecuting torturers) and war, and economic equality, and the lack of equal rights….if it is your guy that is doing ‘it.’ You can even justify not doing much of anything to save the entire human race from Climate Crisis….if you squint really hard at the facts and remember that it is your guy who is in charge.
And if your priority is protecting your guy. (And your own personal/ego identification.) In this environment, unfortunately, that is what many folks are reduced to doing.
A stunning compliment and/or insult to the flexibility of the human mind indeed. And one that the Human Race has had to deal with throughout its history. No leader is evil or bad…..to his partisan supporters. Absolutely anything (as was starkly illustrated during the Bush years) is excusable/
And these minds, these locked down, highly motivated, flexible and adaptive. and well trained and well practiced in excusing, rationalizing and justifying minds …..are the ones we are tasked with changing.
Minds that saw, perhaps grew up seeing and so it is all they know, the horrors of the Bush years. Minds whose response to those horrors has not been to dig deeper and work harder to understand and directly address the causes and facts behind those horrors….
….but to instead seize upon a more convenient and far simpler and thus easy for the mind to digest, solution….that one man (if he is allowed to do it all on his own without criticism or pressure) can simply fix it all.
And seize upon it they have.
To the point that they have closed their minds to any other possibility.
To the point where any other solution is not just wrong…..but horrifying on a deep primal level….the level of fear.
Fear that if we do not Leave Obama Alone….
The Bush years will return.
Fear, leading to rationalization NOT BASED ON ANY DISCERNIBLE FACT, that criticism or pressure from The Left will be the cause of the Bush years returning.
Not the actions of the Obama Administration, those will not bring a return of Republicanism, because their guy has “got this.”
No. The irrational fear is that pointing out, criticizing and trying to correct the actions of the Obama Administration is what will cause a return to the Bush years.
Or any other random horror their irrational minds wish to assign as the consequence for the Left politically pressuring the Obama Administration to do the right thing, or to stop doing the wrong thing.
And these are the minds that we are tasked with changing.
Minds that only use facts and reason as as tools to support their pre-decided, pre-compromised and prejudged….feelings. People, mostly good people, who have surrendered their reason and objectivity. to a greater or lesser degree, to their fear that if what (or who) they believe in is challenged in any way, questioned in any way, or pressured in any way…..something terrible will happen.
Even though they have no proof or supporting evidence that this is so.
Can these minds be persuaded? Can they be opened? Can they be changed?
Probably not. And certainly not by those that they perceive to be their partisan enemies.
But there are minds out there that can be. And even minds that want to be.
I humbly suggest that we give up the fools quest to change or open the minds of the proven partisans. And concentrate instead on those minds that use their flexibility not to rationalize and justify the actions of their guy, but to try to understand and apprehend the world as it is. In all of it’s glorious complexity. Instead of reducing it to “it is ok if my guy does it and I will shout you down if you say otherwise.”
Those folks, as annoying as they are and as tempting as it is to try to penetrate the bubble they have surrounded themselves in, should just be ignored. Reality will pass them by, eventually.
We have to many things of critical import to accomplish to waste time on partisans who, no matter what the facts are, insist on seeing the world only through the lens of stubborn and closed minded partisanship.
It does not matter who is doing something wrong.
What matters is doing what we can to right those wrongs, or to prevent those wrongs in the first place.
In other words, to state it yet again….it is the ISSUES that matter, not the person or persons involved in those issues. And certainly NOT the feelings of close minded partisan attack dogs.
If feelings were important after all, wouldn’t the feelings of the parents of the dead children be more important than the feelings of those who are willing to defend the escalation of the war that killed them?
Wouldn’t the feelings of the torture victims be more important than the feelings of those who will not demand the prosecution of the torturers?
Only, I suppose, if you are able to look beyond your own partisan feelings for a single man. Only if you were NOT able to rationalize away the feelings of others, to maintain your own beliefs.
No, there are some minds that cannot be changed, no matter what. Let’s start ignoring them as the waste of time that they are, and concentrate on those who can be changed.
Now the only question is….how do we do that?
While not falling into the baiting and traps of the partisans.
THAT, not the interminable seesaw of argument with the closed minded, is how we will change the world.
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… or a rather old (but needed) way of thinking.
We have been saddled with a framework where everything is the work of individuals. Or individuals writ large, i.e., parties. Particulars. Good or bad, correct identification of villains, or that they are all villains. All individual players as villains. Individual. Individual.
You’re breaking out! A new thinking is emerging. Pundits can say with a straight face, “The system is broken.” And then go back to the same thinking over and over again.
But “the system is broken” has ramifications for everything we do, everything we think. The obvious question on the table with “the system is broken” is whether it can be repaired or has to be replaced, or at least transformed.
The insanity is reflected in those progressives who say the system is broken, so let’s go after the worst individuals as though that would fix anything. The ActBlue targeting approach epitomizes this.
Ending the filibuster is the fix. Yes. Then it would have been much easier to pass a healthcare reform bill that is totally fucked up from top to bottom.
And how pathetic is it that I myself use the healthcare debacle as my first example when the entire world economic order is being shattered.
On the left we get responses like let’s have a 3rd party. Let’s have a general strike. I personally consider these ideas underdeveloped at best. You can’t seriously talk 3rd party without discussing what the conditions for a 3rd party are. You can’t talk general strike without talking about its preconditions — by implication a systemic crisis that puts revolution on the table.
But I applaud both. I don’t know if their advocates have absorbed the implications of their own statements. Doesn’t matter. That such radical notions are thrown out so casually says something about our state of affairs.
Back when, we used to talk about “da system,” rather easily. When we were protesting the war in Vietnam, we didn’t say, “gee, the Democratic Party is fucked up.” When we were protesting segregation in the south, we didn’t say, “darn those Democrats!” It was the system. Obviously.
Now the wreckage of a broken system lay strewn out before us, but the framework of seeing in terms of individual or party prevents us from saying it out loud, “the system is broken” and ACTING like the system is broken. Buhdydharma, you’ve nailed it.
To put a new spin on an old saw, “If it IS BROKE, don’t fix it!”
back later
Don’t they have to leave first?
I’m not saying that I’m blessed with such a condition, but what it?
The flight from reason has already happened. Reason is no longer part of the cultural heritage of the this country at least — it may still be hanging in elsewhere but not by much.
Also, there’s nothing we can do about it. Reason and rationality is a function of both literacy and discipline. We have abandoned both at least as a culture.
Whatever we do has to contend with this reality namely that the vast majority of people in this semi-Democracy actually are incapable of digesting reality or facts — in fact consciously avoid it. They (we?) all move towards fantasy and “magic” because, in my view, magic is what keeps the current oligarchs in power (the man behind the curtain).
The only thing we can do is make a good show out of reason and make it entertaining and cool. If we can’t do that then there can be no change and we’ll continue as we have living in a world of thicker and thicker illusions.
voluntarily vacating one’s place on the moral high ground?
Latin for Bread and Circuses.
So whats changed? The masses are still swayed by self interest (food and fun) some may have enlightened self interests but most don’t. As long as my life is all warm and fuzzy things are good, your point of view be damned. Hmmm