A Defense of Faith

The recent tussle over Barbara's guest post on Unclaimed Territory defending liberal religion has gotten me thinking. Given the extent to which the current political climate is split along religious lines, it is unsurprising that defense of an institution so closely identified with the worst of our opponent's excesses provoked such a vehement reaction. Personally, I hate the way religion is used by the right-wing, but I remain unconvinced that religion as a whole must be thrown out. The most vocal advocate of the "baby-too" school of thought is Pharyngula, who responded to Barbara's post with this no-holds-barred assault on religion.

The problem is faith.

Faith is a hole in your brain. Faith stops critical thinking. Faith is a failure point inculcated into people's minds, an unguarded weak point that allows all kinds of nasty, maggoty, wretched ideas to crawl into their heads and take up occupancy.

Here is where the anti-religion folks leave me behind. I am, I must say, a die-hard fan of faith. I think that faith is, really, quite a positive force in the world. Like, for example, I have faith that people can create a government that is fairer, kinder, and more efficient than any that exist today. I don't really have any reason for believing that this is so, and there is much evidence to the contrary, but I do anyway. I also variously believe in the power of love, the value of forgiveness, the capacity of science to better the human condition, and many other fluffy feel-good bits of utter nonsense for which I have no proof. I do not, by the way, believe in any form of higher divinity.

I am hard-pressed to imagine a world worth living in, devoid of faith. I would also be willing to wager that PZ Myers can't either. Faith gives everything meaning--without it, life is nothing but inhaling and exhaling, and then a stop.

Now, I am willing to bet also that at this point, PZ Myers would step in and tell me that this isn't what faith is, that this sort of faith isn't what he was talking about at all. He would of course be right. But why is that? Why is it that we can have entire arguments about this subject, and not even be able to agree on what our terms mean?

In every argument I have ever had about religion (and there have been many!), that is the turn the debate has taken. PZ's was no exception. He posted a follow up commenting on that very thing. He called it a "bothersome strategy," identifying it as "an attempt to defocus religious belief." I would dispute this: it was not an attempt to "defocus," it was an attempt to refocus. The problems PZ identifies and attacks are problems no reasonable person would deny are real and threatening. But calling them "religion," as though these odious tendencies are the single defining aspect of religiosity, is to grossly oversimplify.

PZ:

The other effect of this strategy is to turn religion into a completely empty word. When someone can say they don't believe in any deities, the supernatural, or any kind of afterlife, but that they are "religious", then religion is meaningless.

The problem isn't that the word "religion" is empty of meaning--the problem is that it is overfilled with meaning. The word "religion" is wildly overdetermined--it has hundreds of different and contradictory meanings; no one can agree on which is "right." This was the problem that PZ was facing, and was unable to deal with: when he calls religion a foul and corrupting thing, he is right. When others call it an uplifting and crucial aspect of life, they are right too. He looks in from the outside and sees blank-eyed robots marching in lock-step; others look from the inside and feel a holy joy.

To summarize: If you are making an argument about religion that presumes that religion is primarily a mechanism for social manipulation, and the person you are arguing with assumes that religion is primarily a method for personal spiritual growth, you are going to get exactly nowhere, and you are going to get there real fast.

Is PZ right that this makes religion a word worthless for arguments? Yes. But that is the way it is. PZ is right: words mean nothing but what we think they mean, and we don't always agree.

Practical Advice For Shrill and Uppity Democrats

(crossposted at dailykos)

In the comments following my post on how Republicans use typical patriarchal rhetoric to shut down Democratic challenges, user high5 mentioned a post of eirs in which eir had made the same realization while listening to an interview with a Norwegian social psychologist, Berit Ås. Ås had developed a typology of these masculine domination techniques, and how to counter them. Intrepid reader Halcyon found a copy of a speech in which she outlined these techniques, and tossed it to me with the suggestion that I diary it. Thanks, Halcyon! Anyway, sucker that I am, here is my attempt to apply these hard-won feminist lessons to the current political debate. This post is a bit long, please bear with me.

The first thing I noticed while reading this is, damn, was I right. No really--nearly every technique for shutting up opponents has an obvious parallel in the way Republicans and the media treat Democrats. It's astonishing. Of course, Ås is careful to note that these techniques aren't necessarily gendered. "Both men and women use them. The strong use them against the weaker." Just going to show that feminist perspectives aren't limited to use on women's issues.

Berit Ås highlights three areas where learning to recognize these techniques will help: First, it will help you realize that it isn't you who has the problem, it is them--and since these techniques work by convincing you you aren't worth listening to, simply realizing what is going on is very important. Second, it will (hopefully) aid you in combating the use of the techniques. Lastly, she emphasizes the importance of getting a dialogue going. The more these techniques are recognized for what they are, the less power they will have.

The five techniques she mentions are these:

1. Making invisible.
   
2. Ridiculing.
   
3. Withholding of information.
   
4. Double punishment.
   
5. Heaping blame and putting to shame.

1) Making invisible. The first is in many ways the most obvious. "Making someone invisible means that a person chooses to treat an individual or a group as if the person or group were not there," says Ås. If this doesn't immediately remind you of the strange absence of Democrats and liberals in the media as documented exhaustively by Media Matters, then hey, that's a nice rock you've got. Nice and comfy under there? It also reflects the utter railroading that had been going on in the House and the Senate under Republican control--Democratic amendments are simply ignored, and Democratic bills simply go nowhere.

"This really should be a bipartisan amendment," he says, as Linder[R] crosses his arms and frowns. "This gives powers to the secretary of defense to rewrite the rules governing civil service at the Department of Defense at any time!" Linder's eyes dart impatiently around the room. "It does threaten to undermine the credibility of our civil service as a nonpartisan body," Van Hollen[D] continues--but to little avail. Linder's thoughts are clearly someplace else, someplace where there are no annoying Democrats like Van Hollen. If Linder has listened to a word, there's no sign of it.

From Ås:

"Making someone invisible can sometimes be difficult to discern because it often happens “without words”. It is expressed through body language, for instance gestures or the lack of them. Notice how some people read papers when women are speaking, chat quietly to each other, yawn, roll their eyes at each other, wander around the room, collect something to drink, in fact do everything but listen."

This has gone so far it is almost ridiculous. Somedays it seems like the media interviews a far-right-wing nut, and then interviews a republican for balance. The number of "centrist" gutless wonders who are called upon to give the left's perspective are countless: Joe Klein and Thomas Friedman are just the most egregiously stupid of them.

Berit Ås on how to deal with this strategy:

By learning to recognise this domination technique, a woman can avoid the feeling of insignificance. She can make the world conscious of what is going on and demand with a good conscience that people listen when she speaks.

I think the blogosphere has figured this one out. Now only to pound it into the politicians' heads. Onward!

2) Ridiculing. Berit Ås:

Ridiculing occurs when a woman’s efforts are scorned, made fun of, or likened to
animals (e.g. chickens), when women are presented as being especially emotional or sexual, or when women are rejected as cold or manipulative.

Ridiculing Democrats has become a cottage industry on the right, so popular that even some Democrats join in. From the unrelenting attack on "politically correct"--a stalking horse for the right-wing from the very beginning--to the derision heaped on any Democrat foolish enough to back silly, utopian ideas like "universal healthcare," a laugh and a sneer has become an easy alternative to genuine engagement. Ås' critique can be seen just in the example of the Clintons: Bill is too sexual and uncontrolled, while Hillary is practically the dictionary definition of frigid--if you believe what you hear of the news, of course.

Every Democrat learns to fear the quote marks "heaped" "liberally" around any "positive" mention of a "Democratic" "politician." They are the mark of derision and contempt. From the patronizing "analysis" of Hillary Clinton's iPod playlist, to the "flip-flopping" dorks in dolphin suits during Kerry's campaign, to the media obsession with Bill's penis, the press is willing to examine everything Democratic at excruciating length--except their politics. The narrative suggests that Democrats may be good for some gossip-column-style entertainment, but are entirely unfit to run the country.

3) Withholding of information. The Republican party apparatus is a system built to exclude Democrats in every way possible. From the K Street Project, to lying about WMD, to keeping Democrats in the dark about warrantless wiretapping and who knows what else, to the mysterious Fellowship, GOP control is maintained by a careful curtailing of the spread of information and power. Ask yourself if this sounds familiar:

Withholding information occurs when men automatically take up matters only with
other men. This way, they deny women access to information about important issues at work or in politics. Particularly in political spheres we know that information is exchanged, opinions formed and decisions taken in restricted circles, like for example, when the boys go for a beer/drink after a meeting, are out for a “business dinner”, play football or quite frankly, pass information to one another before meetings. Women are not invited into these restricted circles or, purely and simply; women just do not have the same opportunities to join in.

The Fellowship, the fundamentalist Christian group to which a large number of influential Republican politicians belong to, is the best example of the good ol' boys club. Through the connections of the Fellowship, all sorts of political alliances are formed.

Seventy years ago, an evangelist named Abraham Vereide founded a network of "God-led" cells comprising senators and generals, corporate executives and preachers. Vereide believed that the cells -- God's chosen, appointed to power -- could construct a Kingdom of God on earth with Washington as its capital. They would do so "behind the scenes," lest they be accused of pride or a hunger for power, and "beyond the din of vox populi," which is to say, outside the bounds of democracy. To insiders, the cells were known as the Family, or the Fellowship....The group was all male and all Republican....Deals emerge not from a smoke-filled room but from a prayer-filled room. "Typically," says Brownback, "one person grows desirous of pursuing an action" -- a piece of legislation, a diplomatic strategy -- "and the others pull in behind."

Are you scared yet? You should be.

4) Double Punishment. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Whatever you do, it's wrong. Double punishment occurs when it’s wrong if a woman does something – and wrong if she doesn’t. This domination technique is used against the victims of prejudices and stereotypes.

There are several stereotypes that the Republicans use to put the Democrats in a double bind. Race is one--if the Democrats say anything negative about a black Republican, they are accused of racism. If they protest the Republican's racist statements, they are accused of playing the race-card. However, the biggest double-bind the Democrats find themselves in is regarding the military, and military service in particular. We all thought that Kerry's sterling war record would be an advantage for him--certainly the Democratic Party did, the way they played it up at his nomination. But in the Republican's hands, it became a weapon against him. If the Democrats protest pumping billions into the Defense Department, they are a bunch of hippies. If they support the military, they are just pale imitations of the Republicans. It's lose-lose.

5) Heaping of Shame and Putting to Blame. "It's those damn liberals that are making us lose in Iraq, by not supporting the troops enough!" "It's the media's fault, always reporting the BAD news from Iraq, damn their liberal bias!" Sound familiar? Of course it does; the only refrain that one hears more often is--oh wait, there isn't one. This is it. Anonymous Liberal at Unclaimed Territory caught a great example of this rhetoric at its most transparently ludicrous. Berit Ås explains how the other domination techniques are used to inflict guilt:

Blame and shame are inflicted through ridicule and double punishment. It occurs when women are told that they are not good enough - even if the reason for not being “not good enough” may be: (1) that they think they behave differently from men and in novel ways, or (2) that they haven’t had access to the information that men have controlled.

Liberals sure do "behave differently" from neo-cons, and "in novel ways." They critically examine their assumptions and the world around them, and when in doubt, they amend their assumptions, not the world. Pretty novel! As for (2), think of all the politicians who are still unable to admit that they shouldn't have voted for the war, even though they were lied to. They were denied the information they were needed, and despite that, the admission that they were wrong is still seen as too weakening to mention. And in all honesty, they are right, in part: any Democrat who says so will be jumped by the GOP noise machine, who will paint them as a flip-flopper and coward, using all the tricks of the Republican narrative of domination.

Those are the five domination techniques that Berit Ås identifies, and how they are used against Democrats to keep them safely corraled. Remember, the most effective technique in fighting this is to talk about it--bring all these subtexts to the surface, where they can be analyzed intellectually and discarded for the cheap parlor tricks that they are.

How Republicans Discipline Uppity Democrats

It's funny, how I just now realized this. When Republicans slap down Democrats who stand up for themselves? They use the rhetoric of patriarchy to do it. They discipline Democrats with the same words and attitudes that are used to teach them damn uppity women their place. It's the same words, over and over: hysterical, frenzied, shrieking, Bush(=man)-hating, and my personal favorite: shrill. Shrill is such a dead give-away too...how did I miss it? What is that word ever used for besides to describe a woman, overexcited about some silly thing or another, busy shrieking at some poor, brow-beaten man? Besides liberals, of course.

And it goes so well with their other meta-narratives, too. The Democrats are a bunch of pansies, a pack of limp-wristed metrosexuals one frou-frou girlie drink away from belting out Barbara Streisand tunes. If they aren't, you know, actual girls. It plays to their audience, who wish they had the opportunity to impose their masculine views on the women around them, if it weren't for that whole "sexual revolution" bullshit, and now you gotta pretend to respect them as people, pay attention to them, and buy them flowers, and what is up with that shit anyway? It is a perfect accompaniment to their militaristic macho psuedo-heroic posturing--God, why didn't I see it before? The same rhetoric that exists to perpetuate the repression of women is being used to discipline the Democrats, to keep them in their well-delineated and worthless place.

On the bright side, it does mean that we have countering rhetoric waiting for us, already made: feminists have decades of material tearing apart patriarchal assumptions, some of it ought to be applicable. It means we can multi-task, if we have the guts--we can tear down patriarchal assumptions at the same time we rejuvenate liberal rhetoric. I already thought that the Democratic party ought to adopt a feminine character in order to counter the Republican's patronizing paternalism. Given that they have already established the frame, it would be an astounding act of political jujitsu.

Liberal Hollywood

Conservatives and their neo-con progeny are so very fond of accusing Hollywood of liberal bias. This often strikes us on the left as just a mite bit ridiculous—how does the mix of violence and sex that Hollywood sells have a liberal bias? What freaks me out is that when I think about it, I realize that, strangely, inexplicably, conservatives are right. Hollywood IS liberal, and does advocate liberal positions. They notice more than we do, because when they see it, it jars their delicate sensibilities. For us, it doesn't even register. The conservatives are right. Hollywood is liberal.

Not politically, of course. Hollywood as a whole cares about politics not at all. Hollywood is about profit, and, if you want to be generous, every once and a while it's about art too. But nine times out of ten, Hollywood is concerned only with making the most money it can. I’ll not argue the profit motive. They sure aren’t out to spread any ideology, unless there’s damn good money in it. And yet.

Wikipedia defines liberalism thusly: "Broadly speaking, liberalism seeks a society characterized by freedom of thought for individuals, limitations on the power of government and religion (and sometimes corporations), the rule of law, the free exchange of ideas, a market economy that supports private enterprise and a system of government that is transparent. This form of government favors liberal democracy with open and fair elections, where all citizens have equal rights by law, and an equal opportunity to succeed." The theme to focus on here is that of equality. Political liberalism "includes the extension of the right to vote to women, non-whites, and those who do not own property," and cultural liberalism "focuses on the rights of individuals pertaining to conscience and lifestyle, including such issues as sexual freedom, religious freedom, cognitive freedom, and protection from government intrusion into private life."

Liberalism is very much concerned with breaking down barriers. The liberal dynamic is the process of creating more freedoms, fewer restrictions, and more possibilities. Things like segregation, homophobia, and classism are all anathema to liberalism. They are all obstacles to be overcome.

So how does this have anything to do with Hollywood? Try this mind experiment: Try to think of any movie you have seen, ever, that did not have as one of its themes overcoming some social barrier, be it race, class, culture, sexuality, etc. Take your time, I’ll wait.

Persuasive, huh? I’ll not go out on the shaky limb of absolutism and say that there aren’t any movies that don’t have overcoming inequality as a theme, but even if they exist damn are they rare. Especially in romantic comedies, this undeniably liberal trope is nearly inescapable: racism, classism, cultural bigotry, homophobia, all are cast as obstacles to be overcome by our plucky hero and heroine. How often is the invasive government, the manipulative corporation, cast as the bad guy in thrillers? "liberalism seeks ... limitations on the power of government and religion (and sometimes corporations)." It is telling when you are watching a movie about the Crusades and your protagonist is an athiestic liberal humanist. It is uncanny, when you stop to look: Hollywood movies are built around what are essentialy liberal archetypes of overcoming inequality and fighting for freedom, even when those positions are anachronistic in the context of the story.

I have no idea why this is so stunningly pervasive a trend. I doubt that Hollywood is even aware that they are doing it. I could hardly believe it, when I first noticed it. And yet--there it is. Hollywood is advocating liberal values. Go figure.

Truth in Advertising

The simple fact is that being right and sounding right are two very different things, and the Democratic Party has too long thought that having good ideas is in and of itself a winning strategy. Unfortunately, you also need to convince the American public your ideas are good, and in this area Democrats are simply pitiful.

It is a matter of education versus persuasion. Republicans are very good at sounding right, at persuading with superficialities—but there's nothing to their positions other than kneejerk reaction. There is not depth to Republican positions, not anymore. Once upon a time, Republicans had policy too. No more. Whatever works, whatever gets the job done, whatever helps them win—that’s their only standard now. They have sold out their principles in favor of winning.

Democrats need to counter that by educating. The only way we can win, the only way we can win, is by making facts the issue. We need to make actually being right, as opposed to sounding right, matter. Republicans only win by keeping people from engaging critically with the issues. If we could get into even the same ballpark as them in terms of persuasive ability, we would wipe them off the mat.

This is where someone chimes in about egghead democrats trying to educate being the whole problem in the first place. To which I reply: there is a difference between education and condescension. There is a difference between lecturing at someone, and engaging with them. We have all had good teachers, and we have all had bad ones. We all know what a world of difference that makes—their knowledge is the same, but how they convey it is just as important, perhaps more. We need to teach effectively and persuasively, match our good policies with a persuasive conviction and enthusiasm.

Some will argue that in order to balance out the Republican’s disregard for truth, Democrats need to follow suit. They will say that educating the American people is a lost cause. Only for a short while, they say, just until the Repbulicans are defeated. Then we can go back to being principled. In considering whether it is possible to adopt a win-at-all-costs, opportunistic attitude without fundamentally and irrevocably damaging the Democratic party, this question keeps coming back to me:

Do you believe that every Republican is an amoral sociopath motivated purely by a desire to win, or do you think that, by and large, they are relatively principled individuals who have been convinced by a minority of amoral sociopaths that it is necessary to (temporarily, of course) set aside those principles in order to regain unfairly-lost power?

Personally, I think the latter. Remember, Republicans used to stand for something--a lot of the same Republicans who are still in power. Somewhere along the way they were convinced that winning, at least this once, was more important than preserving their principles. And they still haven't found their way back.

Are Democrats somehow less susceptible to the lust for power than Republicans? I think history suggests otherwise. Do you really think we would be able to put our amoral, successful tactics away once Bush was gone? I have my doubts.

"Port-gate"

My reactions go as follows:

-The deal doesn't actually pose any new security threat, beyond the administration's continued cavalier attitude towards port security.

-Bush is threatening a veto because a) one of his pals stands to make a lot of money off of this deal and/or b) he damn well feels like it. I'm going with "and."

-The huge media uproar about the whole mess is driven by the anti-Arab fear-mongering of the past five years, not any serious concern about foreign governments running U.S. ports. See: China, Britain. It's kind of poetic, seeing Bush's terror tactics biting him in the ass like this.

-There are legitimate security issues to be raised here concerning whether or not we should be out-sourcing national security to foreign nationals of any stripe. This is where I would like to see the Democratic response coming from--it would segue nicely into a more general discussion of Bush's utter failures re: actual Homeland Security.

-This is not, as some are suggesting, some intricate Rovian plot to give Congressional Republicans some media distance from an increasingly lame-duck president. That said, if they play their cards right, it could work like one. That is why the Democrats need to stake out some territory here right away, to keep the Republicans from recovering from this fumble.

Choosing the Terrain

Republican...personalities, for a lack of a better word, have gotten extremely good at setting the parameters of the debate before their opponents (i.e. us) even show up. By the time the debate begins, we are already at a huge disadvantage--we spend the whole time just trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

Unbeknownst to their opponents, they have decided to play a decidedly different game than the traditional form of debate that their opponents (i.e. us) think they are getting into. Instead of debating facts, they are debating opinion. Instead of constructing arguments out of logic, they construct them with emotion. Emotion, being more primal than logic, catchs their opponents (i.e. us) wide open and unprotected, cutting us off at the knees. It is the debate equivalent of bringing a baseball bat to a chess match.

Think about how the media has been reduced to a tawdry he said/she said pseudo-parity. Facts are no longer the focus of the story: what is important is how everyone feels about it. And if they are shouting their opinion louder than we are, they win. Nowadays liberal or conservative isn't about what your beliefs happen to be; all that matters is whether or not you like Bush. And if you don't like Bush, then any facts you may have don't matter, because facts only matter as a way to express and defend one's opinion. The very idea of opinions deduced from fact is anathema. Any attempts to break this narrative are met with the metaphorical baseball bat to the head.

And here's the REALLY shitty part: we can't bring to bear any baseball bat of our own. One of, perhaps THE fundamental tenet of our political beliefs is the importance and primacy of fact. Once we match dirty trick with dirty trick, we have already lost. Remember, we are the reality-based community. If we give that up, how are we different than them? We will have become Eastasia to their Oceania. This isn't a fair fight; and it wasn't designed to ever be one.

If we ever want to get America back, we need to disarm the right-wing. They can only wield that bat because the audience, AMerica, has been carefully conditioned to think that bats are okay in a chess game. It is a carefully maintained illusion, and we need to break it. Instead of sitting there and moving our chess pieces about as they smack us around, we need to call them on it. We need to start asking, "What the hell is a baseball bat doing in a chess game?" "What does my personal opinion of Dick Cheney have to do with the fact, the fact that he shot a man in the face?" Remember, the true battleground here is in the minds of the viewers: they can smack us around all they want, but if the American people stop thinking that that is fair, they will lose.

Testing Testing One Two Three

mic check hah

with this mic device I spit non-fiction
who got the power, that be my question
the mass or the few in this torn nation
the priest, the book, or the congregation?