Progressives/liberals are a different story. I consider myself one of them. As Rachael Maddow pointed out, that means that I largely agree with the Republican party platform during the Eisenhower years. Until Phyllis Schlalfly came along, they supported the Equal Rights amendment, and the Democratic Party was the real racist party of the time.
It is because I am progressive that it bothers me when progressives screw the pooch. I am well aware that this is a tiny minority position. Most people seem not only to overlook the fatuities and idiocies of "their own" but even become outraged and call "traitors" people who point them out. I do not sympathize with this behavior, but I have to acknowledge that it is dominant.
The reason that I do not think the same way, I think, is the same as the reason that I do not sympathize. I have a mindset, a Weltanschauung, and a (small) set of metaphysics that are different from the majority. Even when we come to the same overall political conclusions, the reasons may be very different. These world-views affect not only particular opinions but also cause very different basic perceptions of the same phenomena.
This is extremely important to understand and can provide significant improvements to arguments, if it were possible to persuade anybody to try. More on that later, perhaps in another entry.
The examples I pick come mostly from Facebook and the like. I make no apologies for this. Public political discourse from candidates and the like is, to me, is so far abstracted from what ordinary walking-around type people think that it is entirely useless as a barometer of opinion.
It also helps that I personally know and count as friends most of the people (mostly women) who are engaging in such vapidities. These are not abstract, unknown crazies in the public eye. They are people whom I like, respect, and sometimes admire, and they are of generally high intelligence except for the following.
The Republican War on Women
Most progressive stupidity that I've seen lately is around the current Presidential race between Obama and Romney with auxiliary bits around various Republican congressmen. This is sometimes called "The Republican War on Women." I'm calling it that not because I agree with it as a designation (in fact I strongly disagree), but that's what people know as a code.
According to this story, women (all of them) are huddled, constantly oppressed by The Patriarchy™which manifests as Straight White Men, or, Republicans. These men, of course, just want to go around raping and killing and controlling women for their own vanity. (Why men would particularly want to do this is left unexplained, but in the modern era it is probably some sort of gender essentialism, no doubt genetic.) All is not lost, however. The women have the potential to rise up Amazon-like and throw off the shackles imposed unilaterally by men. I'll call this The Story.
This is a fantastic story. It's straight out of Hollywood. You have the Zoroastran forces of Good and Evil doing battle, setting up an opportunity for the defeat of Evil. I can see why people like it. Hey, I enjoy movies like this, too.
It's really, really fun to see all sorts of sex- class- and race-based conspiracies in the world. As the Scissor Sisters say, I'm willing to admit that it feels good to be a victim sometimes. It gives me personal mythological satisfaction according to my life as the eternal outsider. Sometimes I even pick a more conventional approach with me as the Jew, but that's not quite as much fun, even if it allows some cheaper and easier rhetoric.
The only problem is that, when applied to reality, it is just so much pablum down the bib.
The Abortion Question
I'm going to focus primarily on abortion. That's because it's probably the sharpest issue, and the one on which one would expect to see the most polarized exchanges. I don't think it's quite as easy to get worked up over pap smears or mammograms or any of the other elements of what is called "women's sexual health issues."
Public attitudes toward abortion rights have been extremely well studied. There are many well done polls and studies. The following graphic is from The Society Pages at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2008/10/22/public-opinion-on-abortion-by-party-and-gender/
I've been doing research on abortion since the middle 1970s, when in High School Forensics, I did a pro-legality oratory. (My chief accidental opponent was a girl from a Catholic school. Oh, the dirty looks she gave me!) This graphic is not only quite clear but very accurate. The numbers correspond well with the studies. The same basic pattern exists in every poll I've seen back to the 1970s, which is as far as I went
There is, of course, the expected result that Democrats are more likely to be in favor of legality than Republicans, by a substantial amount. It also shows that there is no significant difference between men and women. A few points, all within the errors of polling. Sometimes you see a slight difference in favor of women; sometimes (as in the 1980s) a slight one in favor of men. The differences, however, are always pretty small.
One can see the same thing from looking at individuals. The aforementioned Phyllis Schlafly is probably the one person most responsible for pushing an anti-legality position on abortion over the past 50 years. While I have no personal knowledge and would rebel at what I would have to do to find out, I think it is safe to assume that she is female, just as it is safe to assume that Alan Alda, her primary public opponent at the time, is male.
This has been true for decades. It hasn't been hidden. It's been plastered all over the place. There is absolutely no excuse short of pithing or organic brain damage to be unaware of it. Yet millions of progressives, in service to The Story, insist that it cannot be true. I have even heard claims, by otherwise sane and intelligent people, that nearly all opponents of legal abortion are men.
Note that it is not necessary to come up with an ideology or story to explain why this is. It's just a plain fact. Pure empiricism works just fine here. Just go look.
This is not quantum physics. This is talking to people and counting them. The polls have carefully worded, unloaded questions. One has to work extremely hard to be oblivious to what is obvious. Inevitably, though, The Story always wins.
As the late Christopher Hitchens once said, our adrenal glands are too large, and our neocortices are too small. The Story is powerful. When it makes the adrenaline squirt, it can turn a reasonably intelligent person into a sub-moron in nothing flat.
Why Don't They Speak?
There is one observed variable that is well supported. Though men are about as likely as women to favor the legality of abortion, you don't see many men at high levels saying this.
Apart from extremely obnoxious men like me, and the aforementioned Alan Alda (who always seemed to me more than a bit hypocritical anyway), one does occasionally see men talking at progressive meetings and rallies. I've seen a few, and I've seen transcripts of more.
When they do, their talks are always about The Story. If anything, they argue for it more strongly than women do. Perhaps they just like it, or perhaps only men who show that ability get allowed to talk at such rallies. In any event, the apparent irony that they are men is usually dealt with by one of two tactics:
One is that they are gay. This doesn't make much realistic sense: I've met oodles of very gay, very conservative, very anti-legality men. The Story, however, is not about reality. It is about mythology and stereotypy. Being gay, well, you might be male and even white, but at least you aren't straight, so you might not be as evil. For some reason.
The other is that they are Macho Men. They are of the aggressive, loud, threatening, "protect the wimminfolk" types who enjoy putting down other men anyway, possibly always at the back of their mind with the goal of attracting groupies. I find it eye-wateringly embarrassing when people fall for this one.
Whatever the cover, this behavior could be construed as creating a hostile environment for men. To do so, however, would be to fall prey to hand-waving about social conditioning, which happens far too often and seems a bit weak to me. Fortunately (or unfortunately) there is a clearer, more obvious, better supported answer.
Progressive Women Tell Them To Shut Up
The following little info-graphic has been making the rounds lately:
I have seen this posted by many. For the most part, these are women who are friends (even dear ones) who have never said anything bad about me as a man. They aren't really militant, insane, or even too radical (except in ironic ways).
It's just one graphic, but it represents an attitude that I have seen all my life. Men should just shut up.
It is a fantastic solution to a problem that conservatives haven't made a dent in. Remember that the majority of men support legal abortion. This hasn't changed, even through the fundamentalism epidemic, the Reagan years, or the hard right the country took after 9/11. Consistent support for legal abortion is just something that isn't being affected significantly by rhetoric. Maybe a little, but not enough.
However, you can shame and harass them into shutting up. For some reason, women just love to do this, and the Macho Men will gladly help in order to distinguish themselves from other men. It works great. You don't have to convince men to stop being in favor of legal abortion. You just have to harass and shame them until they don't care. They will be as much in favor of legal abortion as always, probably, but you can convince them to become ineffectual.
It works on liberal and progressive men, because they are the ones listening to women. Conservative men and women are more likely to take their marching orders from their beliefs about God, so they aren't likely to listen.
You start out with four groups:
1) Pro-legality men
2) Pro-legality women
3) Anti-legality men
4) Anti-legality women
Without intervening, groups 1 and 2 together outnumber 3 and 4, and abortion is legal. You can change the odds by shaming 1, thus taking them out of the equation. For a hat trick, you can enrage 4 by pretending they don't exist or by telling them they are traitors to their sex. That will make them more likely to speak out.
It's a wonderful trick, and it's probably the only way to kill abortion rights in any big way in the US. Without that help, conservatives can only nibble away at them. What makes it truly excellent, what make it worthy of Machiavelli and Stalin and McCarthy, is that you can always give the impression that you are working for legality rather than against it, especially if you tell The Story.
Greg Egan once suggested that modern progressivism was a CIA plot. Feminism was working, racism was getting resolved, and things were getting better. This could not be tolerated. So a group of government employees, cunning linguists all, devised progressivism, including postmodernism and criticism. It was seeded into universities, where it was taken up gladly by the left, and the rest is history.
Now, this is getting more and more over-the-top. No, the CIA probably wasn't involved in any big way. However, that shaming men is stupid is so incredibly obvious that it calls for an explanation.
Why Do They Do It?
The simplest, most obvious possible explanation is that progressives are stupid. That is, pace Terry Pratchett, their hearts are in the right place, but their brains are somewhere with a lot of dust and spiders that doesn't get much light. It's not out of bounds, as I've seen progressives call conservatives stupid many times. One can easily gather evidence in favor. William of Ockham would have loved it.
Still, I balk at the idea. Maybe I'm being stupid, too. Feminists have been trying to convince me that women are stupid and do not deserve respect for decades, leveling charges more severe than any conservative. Conservatives may occasionally tell me that women are flighty creatures, but none has ever told me that logic and reason themselves are male traps, as Mary Daly and Robin Morgan tried to do.
I know that skeptics will mock my use of anecdotal evidence, but I just have too much personal experience that women, progressives, and progressive women are smart. Plus, as I pointed out, I am extremely obnoxious, and when so many people tell me something, I'm inclined to think they are wrong. It is possible I am overly optimistic, but still I think another explanation is called for.
I cannot take credit for it. I heard it from Alan Dershowitz. It's extremely bizarre, but it feels like the kind of bizarre that I have learned is often right.
The idea is as follows. Roe v. Wade took the question of abortion out of the legislative/executive arena and into the judicial one. The constitutional argument is solid enough that it is reasonably secure. Once such an argument is made, it is not really part of the democratic process any more, so it doesn't matter what most people think.
This enabled the recrudescence of the American right. Most people did want abortion to be available, at least as a last resort, perhaps even more than would be willing to come out and say so. So they had a tendency to vote for the Eisenhower and Goldwater kinds of Republicans who were not really that big on moralistic ranting.
Tucking it away in the judiciary made it possible for conservatives to rant and rail as much as they want to make Baby Jesus happy, secure in the knowledge that whatever they do would not have much of an effect. (However, stacking the Supreme Court to one that could overturn it has become a risk, albeit rather slowly).
Similarly (though Dershowitz did not suggest it), progressives may feel secure in having all the fun they like with The Story, chest-beating, foot-shooting, and shaming their supporters into shutting up, knowing that it won't affect what the Supreme Court justices think.
That is, it just doesn't matter. The Supreme Court will protect our rights, even as they become overrun with conservative Catholics (which will accelerate under Romney/Rand). They were responsible for Bush v. Gore which, according to Dershowitz again, may have been motivated by a desire to let Sandra Day O'Connor retire and ensure a conservative replacement. But they also did Lawrence v. Texas, an opinion that was far more progressive than they strictly needed to have to overturn the sodomy laws, so there may be hope.
In the mean time, while the rights exist and are being protected, it's safe to rant, vent, have drama, be outraged and incensed, and generally dance around like a bunch of monkeys, which is a really good time. I say this without any irony at all.
I just hope they are right.
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