"...when intellectuals abandon liberal principles, disengage from politics, and generally abdicate their role as "truth-tellers" for society at large, it is easy for demagogues to play upon human fears and lead a society over the brink to disaster. So I decided to forego a legal career and get a Ph.D. instead, hoping in some way to contribute to more reasonable discourse about issues of war, peace, and politics.
Whether I succeeded in that aspiration I leave for others to decide, but I've been thinking about that episode as I contemplate the current state of American political discourse. There's plenty of reasoned debate out there, of course, and one could argue that the rise of the Internet and the blogosphere may even have increased the amount of serious discussion by smart people across the political spectrum. But when I watch videos like this one, and I read the xenophobic bile spewed by hate-mongers like Islamophobe Pam Geller, then I can't help but hear echoes of the Weimar experience. The left has never been very influential in American politics, but disappointment with Obama is already reinforcing its disregard for existing U.S. institutions and may render it even less relevant going forward. Meanwhile, the supposedly "conservative" American right is getting nuttier by the minute. Instead of serious policy debate, it indulges in bizarre theories about Obama's religious beliefs, and his supposedly "socialist" (or "Muslim") agenda and takes its marching orders from entertainers like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck (who once admitted he's only in it for the money). "
spotted at 3quarksdaily.
Conservative American politicians are feasting on the working class i.e. the uneducated class. They're feeding them scare tactics from both a political stance and religious stance. I sometimes hear of this stupidity and I just wanna slap myself....for example today I was told this...
ReplyDeleteX: "Moe did you know what J (fake name) thinks of Hurricane Katrina??"
Me: "Can't be that bad??? It was a hurricane...a natural disaster..."
X: "Well be ready for this..."
Me: "okkkk...."
X: "Well, J thinks that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans because of all the voodoo shit that people do there and all the dark stuff they practice in the area..."
Me: "That has to be a joke...no way can someone honestly think that...he must has said it as a bad joke??"
X: "No, J was serious...dead serious...we thought he was joking, but he stated that he explicitly wasn't..."
Me: "wow"
J is a conservative white american with a strong religious belief and listens to Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh...
People like this exist. We live in a society with these people...
STAND (students taking action now: Darfur) was an organization I worked with in undergrad. While we were peacefully telling people about our upcoming meetings and generally informing them of the situation at the time, an evangelist started shouting on his mic that the reason that over 300,000 people had been killed was because they did not accept the word of Christ (ironically enough, a huge portion of that 300,000 were Christians). When we pointed that fact out to him, he simply rebutted-"well they didn't completely accept Christ's message in their heart."
ReplyDeleteSo, I can see how you feel when you heard that someone legitimately thinks one of the most historic cities in the US was obliterated cuz "if you dolled up I got the voodoo for you bitches"...
Are you serious?!? Wow. I'm stunned.
ReplyDeleteWow, I'm stunned too. That's incredible.
ReplyDeleteThe call Islam a "cult" /facepalm/
ReplyDelete