Part of the reason that it is easy for a mild-mannered, reasonably intelligent conservative-minded guy like me to get a little depressed about things is that, by all appearances, the rest of the country is in complete disagreement with me and my personal views. Everywhere I look, there are bumper stickers and yard signs snidely deriding my beliefs, proclaiming the deity of Barack Obama, and trumpeting snarky, self righteous one-liners about how horrible people like me are. Some of them are pretty funny ("Republicans for Voldemort '08") and some of them are so sappy they rot your teeth ("one day schools will have enough money and the navy will have to hold a bake sell to buy a..." yadda yadda, I think I'm gonna puke, 'scuse me, I feel so dirty for even quoting this), but all of them amount to the same things I mentioned yesterday: Republicans are evil, mean, war-mongering, intolerant, gun-toting, over-religious bitter clingers-- with absolutely no exceptions-- and you should all be dreadfully ashamed of yourselves, hit with plastic bags of feces, sued, impeached and shot.
Besides the bumper stickers and yard signs, just watch any television, movie, or listen to any popular music. It is absolutely undeniable-- I mean, come on, even the most liberal-minded of you can't deny this and keep even the slightest shred of respectability-- it is absolutely undeniable that the vast and nearly unanimous majority of our entertainers (including the broadcast news media, with the single exception of most talk radio) are passionate adherents to democratic political philosophy. It is an axiom. If you are an artist, actor, singer, writer, or entertainer in any way, two things are true about you: Your job is to be heard and seen by the general public, AND you are a liberal-minded democrat. The result: nearly every message we hear in our media-saturated culture, either directly or indirectly, mirrors the messages of the bumper stickers and yard signs.
It is no surprise, really, that the entertainment community as a whole is liberal democrat. If it is true (and it is) that Democratic beliefs are rooted in emotion, then it makes perfect sense that it'd appeal strongly to a demographic whose very livelihood is based on the conjuring and commerse of emotion. Artists of all stripe work in the world of manufacturing emotion, first in themselves, to create the product (drama, music, art, news*, etc) and then in the general public, through the sale of that product. Emotion is their single currency. It's all they understand. I know this, because I am an artist, and I know a lot of other artists. Of course they are not all ruled exclusively by emotion, but I know from personal experience that it takes an effort of will for an artist not to be. Thus, again, it makes perfect sense that a political idealogy based on feel-good intentions and lofty motivations (regardless of actual result) would appeal to the great majority of artists.
It's no surprise, either, that young people are also almost entirely democratic. Young people are all ruled by emotions. It's the very nature of being young. We who are no longer particularly young remember it well. We all made stupid decisions and said moronic things and got into sticky situations because our emotions made it seem like "a good idea at the time." If you don't agree, I'm sorry, you were never a teenager. Also, let us not forget that the single most important thing to any young adult is being as attractive and cool as humanly possible. There is NO way that a young person can be attractive and cool AND be known as a Republican. (I recall the episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" in which the main character is so disgusted by the fact that his gorgeous romantic partner is a Republican that he loses all desire for her; 'nuff said). On the other hand, there is no quicker and surer way to proclaim your coolness than to mock Republicans, mindlessly parrot democratic talking points, and march for global warming/world peace/save the polar bears/protect abortion-on-demand rallies.
Face it: young people, while pretending to be the most free-minded and individually unique of us all, are the most lock-step lemmings imaginable. "You can be cool believing anything you want! Er, as long as it's the same thing me and George Clooney and Moby believe."
At the end of all this, the result is that we are absolutely inundated with the message that democrats are the vast majority, that they alone are cool and well-adjusted and socially conscious, that democratic beliefs are the only responsible choice, and that Republicans are evil, uncool, hate-filled neanderthals with rebel flags tatooed on their very fat butts. Thus, for a guy like me, looking around at our culture, it is easy to get depressed. It looks as if everyone is aligned against me and my beliefs.
But I've begun to suspect something. You wanna know what it is? I don't care, I'm gonna tell you anyway.
They're ALL bumper sticker people. What I mean is that it only seems like the rest of the country is aligned against conservative beliefs because democrats are the LOUD ones. They're the ones whose political beliefs are rooted in emotion, thus they are passionate and angry, and this makes them militant and vocal. From the news anchors to the guy currently waving the "impeach Cheney" sign on the courthouse lawn across the street from this very coffee shop, they are believers in the spectacle as argument. They are big ones for rallies and marches, shouted chants, chaotic disruptions of speeches, throwing fake blood and real feces, spray-painted epithets and, yes, bumper-sticker plastered cars.
I have fairly strong political convictions. I quite like to debate them, because I am very keen on honing my own convictions via sharpening them against smart people who might disagree with them (even though-- and I'm not joking here -- smart people who disagree with me are getting harder and harder to come by). But I don't have any bumper stickers on my car. I never have. I don't put up yard signs or chant slogans. And I definitely don't believe in the persuasive power of spitting on old ladies as they try to enter conventions.
In short, I'm not one of the loud ones. And here's the part that gives me hope: I don't think the majority of the country are, either. I think most of us are doing our jobs, raising our kids, thinking through our political and moral convictions, and voicing them only in the quiet but earth-shaping act of voting. We look with dismay at the militant, spittle-flying diatribes of our angry democratic neighbors, and with disgust at the snide, belittling attitudes of the entertainment media, and we just go on silently anyway, unswayed in our convictions because we are not the sort to be persuaded by emotion alone (even if it would make us a little cooler to Keith Olberman and Tim Robbins).
We're the ones that really move the country, and this is why the loud ones are so very, very loud. They hate that we, the quiet ones, are, in actuality, driving the nation. We, who work too hard to attend protest rallies, who respect people too much to shout them down at their speeches, who believe in logical thinking too much to reduce our convictions to snarky one-liners, we are the mighty unseen who carry this country and make it work. And yes, this gives me hope.
Even if it means Al Franken thinks I'm a big fat idiot.
*And if you think news is not interested, first and foremost, in conjuring emotion, consider that most famous news axiom of all, "if it bleeds, it leads."
ADDENDUM TO YESTERDAY'S POST: The Polar Bear Debacle
My general advice to any political minded person, republican or democrat, is the advice I try to follow: 1) verify the rumors before you make them the foundation of your convictions. 2) Check and know your sources before you try to use them in an argument. And 3) Use your brain just a little teensy bit more than you use your heart. With this in mind, I did some research on the Sarah Palin Polar Bear debacle my friend "Ruth" was so exercised about.
I discovered a lot of things, but the only one that really matters is this: the entire controversy is based on the numbers of polar bears. Are they increasing or decreasing? As with all such things, it depends on who you read. I found this article about it, from a site dedicated to debunking the opponents of man-made global warming and proving that we humans are the vilest creatures to ever leave a trail of slime on this poor, abused planet. Here's the quote that was meant to prove that polar bears are in dire doom:
"Yet recently there have been claims that polar bear populations are increasing... While polar bear numbers are increasing in two of these [various polar bear] populations, two others are definitely in decline. We don't really know how the rest of the populations are faring, so the truth is that no one can say for sure how overall numbers are changing."
Let's turn off our emotions for a moment and look at this together: the article states that two populations are increasing, two are declining, and two are unknown. At best, mathematically, does this not mean that polar bear numbers are, in fact, generally the same as always, with some variation in specific populations? I thought the numbers were supposed to be plummeting? This is the whole reason they were supposed to be endangered, yes? The best the self-proclaimed defenders of the poor polar bear can do is claim that the numbers of polar bears are unchanging? Forgive me if, like Sarah Palin, I don't find this incredibly moving.
In fact, if two of the populations ARE, in fact, increasing, as the article states, how can we be certain that any changes made for the good of the declining types of bears would not harm the numbers of the type that are increasing? I guess, like any good democratic philosophy, it's noble and just that the bears who are benefiting be punished in favor of the bears that are less-well-off.
Despite what the polar bear blogs say("Oil and gas extraction can be very damaging to arctic ecosystems including the polar bears."), even Alaska's Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, who "rejected every point" Palin made about the polar bears, admitted that the threat to polar bears did not come from the petroleum industry (it comes from your SUV, you stupid Republican war-monger). So. What does this leave us with? Turn your emotions back on. That rankled, itchy, hot feeling in your chest? It's justified annoyance at being hoodwinked.
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