Thursday, August 10, 2006
Fighting Chance
The first step to learning, I always tell my students, is to stop listening to corporate media. The second is to locate unmediated discussion that meets academic standards.
With all due respect to celebrity pundits like President Nixon's former counsel and other born-again ex-cons, the right-wing milieu or anti-democratic movement in the US has been examined thoroughly by such noted writers as Chip Berlet, Paul de Armond, and Jerome Himmelstein.
Their less-titillating exposure of the methods of right-wing acquisition of power and influence suggests they primarily consist of violence financed by crime. Positioning themselves to take advantage of the opportunities crime and violence present, though, required considerable and continuous long-term investments in ideas, something progressives do not do, thus handing conservatism victory after victory by default.
As enemies of democracy, it is the misbehavior and criminal enterprise of the Far Right with which we should primarily concern ourselves, not so much with what sociopaths may or may not believe. A general understanding of the views of authoritarians damaged by various forms of physical and psychological abuse should suffice to illustrate that their dreams are our nightmares, and that negotiation is an inappropriate response to people who are determined to destroy nearly everything we value.
The challenge before us is to engage intelligently in the present war of ideas before it can become an armed conflict. What little is left of our civil society might still have a fighting chance.
With all due respect to celebrity pundits like President Nixon's former counsel and other born-again ex-cons, the right-wing milieu or anti-democratic movement in the US has been examined thoroughly by such noted writers as Chip Berlet, Paul de Armond, and Jerome Himmelstein.
Their less-titillating exposure of the methods of right-wing acquisition of power and influence suggests they primarily consist of violence financed by crime. Positioning themselves to take advantage of the opportunities crime and violence present, though, required considerable and continuous long-term investments in ideas, something progressives do not do, thus handing conservatism victory after victory by default.
As enemies of democracy, it is the misbehavior and criminal enterprise of the Far Right with which we should primarily concern ourselves, not so much with what sociopaths may or may not believe. A general understanding of the views of authoritarians damaged by various forms of physical and psychological abuse should suffice to illustrate that their dreams are our nightmares, and that negotiation is an inappropriate response to people who are determined to destroy nearly everything we value.
The challenge before us is to engage intelligently in the present war of ideas before it can become an armed conflict. What little is left of our civil society might still have a fighting chance.
