No, it's all real.

*screams*

It should be said at the outset that I’ve severe, chronic major depression for almost my entire life and for the last fifteen years have taken (eventually) large quantities of more than one antidepressant at a time to control this—and that for the last five months I’ve not been on those medications and, as a result, have been perpetually quite depressed and often very irritable. (The latter explains both how I’ve behaved online during this period and why my participation has been so radically reduced.) So, anyway, this is as much about my subjectivity than it is any objectivity.

But especially in the last week I’ve been reading the comments in some of the political blogs I regularly read and have been feeling as despondent and frustrated as I can recall feeling during my twenties. I tend to avoid the most partisan and angry blogs and instead favor those which focus heavily on policy and not ranting. But I’ve noticed that lately even on the most wonkish blogs—Steve Clemons’s Washington Note for example—the comments have been dominated by people ranting from very narrow contexts. The overall sense I get is that it’s never about actual policy for most people, it’s about social identification: identifying with our team, and the vilification of the bad guys.

This is a vice I’ve always associated with the conservatives I’ve opposed: it’s always dismayed me, but never really surprised me. But among my supposed allies I recall being more dismayed by this during my twenties than my thirties. But now again in my forties. It’s probably no accident that when it’s been bad my political party has been in the opposition. And I should make clear that my evaluation of this current Presidential administration is such that I feel more this way, am more willing to demonize all Republicans, than ever before in my life. So I have to admit that some of it is appropriate.

Yet it always seems a vice to me, in myself and others.

In fact, I think it’s the fundamental political vice, if not the fundamental human vice. I believe the majority of human evil flows from this tribalism that creates false realities.

And so I read these political blogs and the comments from readers and wonder if this new widespread political social interaction isn’t hurting as much as it’s helping.

Perhaps obscurely related to this is something completely different that I’ve been thinking about lately. In the last year I’ve been reading lot of fantasy books—no doubt driven from escapist desires—and I’ve been wondering about dramatic villainy. These relentlessly black-hearted villains inspire so much hatred and anger in the reader. What are their typical characteristics? I’d say that chief among them is a deep selfishness, a universal willingness to use other people to their disadvantage to further self-interest. Mendacity in this cause seems universal, too. And their self-interests are usually hedonistic—they are rarely fighting for an impersonal cause. Villains which are fighting for a cause are usually either embodiment of abstract evil themselves and their cause is, simply, the dominance of evil. Or they are lackeys of such—but in those cases the truly villainous use that cause of evil only as a means to the end of their own more personal and hedonistic interests. We rarely hate the uber-villains who embody evil—that’s why they are rarely depicted in detail. They are a concept, not people. And my point here is that we only really seem to be able to hate people. Indeed, there’s almost a certain nobility to those who are truly fighting for the cause of evil. They’re never really offered as the objects of our hatred.

In the sense that ideals are “large”, then private self-interest is “small”. The villains of narrative are always depicted in some way as “small men”, either literally or figuratively. There’s a reason we say that someone that is truly evil will “steal candy from a baby”.

And while this sort of caricaturizing is taken to its extreme in genre fantasy, it’s dominant in all narrative, I think.
[cont]

[cont]
How does this relate to my earlier thoughts? Well, think about the ways in which we vilify other people in real life. A good example is how Americans eventually characterized the 9/11 terrorists: they were not allowed any legitimate grievances that might have motivated them, instead, for example, they were said to be pursuing their lusts in the form of the reward of virgins in the afterlife. They, and all others opposing the US, are often said to be “envious” of what America has. To the degree to which it’s ever acknowledged that they may be acting selflessly in a larger cause, the cause is completely de-rationalized and its followers said to be insane.

About how Rumsfeld and Coulter and others characterize their leftist opponents, not much needs to be said. But since I’m one of them, and I think of they as my opponents, then let’s look at how my side characterizes them.

You’ll notice that we’re not really comfortable at all with the idea that they are actually motivated by a true sense of right and wrong and protecting American interests (just as they are sure that this isn’t the case for us). Those we most strongly vilify we find in them characteristics and motivation the same as we demand in our narrative villains. They must be lying and manipulating and even killing other people for only the most base self-interests. Money, usually, but also celebrity, the wielding of power, and other things.

A defense of the position that this really is true of these people needs to somehow deal with the problem that this claim always seems to be made about all who are supposedly villainous. More particularly, it’s made about us. If we are to defend ourselves from similar claims of villainy, then we have no choice to but allow that the claim is not only made when it is true, it’s often made when false.

And though I continue to believe that at least some of the people I oppose really are villains in this classical sense—both those I mentioned, for example—I think the possibility that I may be wrong, coupled with the simple truth that even if I am wrong, that doesn’t make opposing them for their actions any less correct, leads to the conclusion that maybe it’s not a good idea to concern myself so much with vilifying them. Especially when I know that their vilifying of me and my allies is false and hurtful. When you put it all together, it seems obvious that vilification is more hurtful than helpful and almost never really necessary.

Based upon their actual stated positions on social policy, on their records as politicians and managers, there’s more than enough evidence to indicate that opposing them in their policies and actions is warranted. We don’t need to vilify them except to satisfy a personal emotional need. A personal emotional need, I might point out, that itself seems to be petty and more akin to villainy than nobility.

Narrative fiction, particularly novels, almost define a large portion of my life. I started reading books at a very young age. The first time I attempted to “run away” from home as a small child of four years of age (after a mild scolding from my mother), the only thing I packed into my little suitcase was books. But one of the wisest things ever said to me was from a past love—a woman who I think is the least romantic and most pragmatic person I’ve ever met—was when she told me that one of my biggest problems is that I think that life is like a novel. It’s not at all like a novel, she said.

And it isn’t. People aren’t at all like characters in stories, either.

Yet the way in which most of us engage in real-life matters of social importance, particularly politics, is as if it were a fantasy novel of great forces locked in the struggle of good against evil, with grand, noble heroes and petty, sneering villains where only ourselves and our intimate associates having complex inner lives and motivations while everyone else are no more than complex puppets.

In this context, it occurs to me that romanticism may be profoundly anti-humanistic. Suddenly Plato’s diatribes against the poets and rhetoricians for their “lies” which damage the integrity of public discourse becomes more compelling. Joyce becomes more attractive, an antidote of sorts.

I guess the answer to the question “what to do about this” deeply depends upon what one thinks about the malleability of human nature. The real question is whether or not people are capable of being engaged in larger social matters without the crutch of simplifying matters using the narrative tropes of virtue and villainy. If we are, then we must wean ourselves from them. If we aren’t, then I suppose they are necessary evils that we must learn to better control. Or perhaps we cannot change these things at all and the best we can do is to create and nurture practical institutions which resist the distortions produced.

But I don’t see any of these possibly solutions in of the burgeoning new media political discourse. I see only an encouragement of politics as traditional melodramatic storytelling. On the other hand, non-political fora for social interation in new media, like MetaChat, seems to perhaps act against this, individualizing diverse and far-away people into the complexities we know ourselves to be. Yet we still cluster along political lines—or at least MetaChat is an example of this. Hooray, then, for the easy inclusion of bunnyfire here where she’s one of us, as opposed to MetaFilter where, too often, she’s “one of them”.

TLTRAW.

But don't forget the other people (myself included) who don't read the Blue.

it’s about social identification: identifying with our team, and the vilification of the bad guys.

OK, wow, I confess I can't read all these ruminations right now. But I wanted to highlight this comment because I think it's very true. It's something I pondered on a lot during the '04 election, in which I was deeply involved.

I attributed the increase in partisanship and vilification of the Other Side(s), in large part, to breakdowns in localism. Even 20 years ago, people were necessarily more engaged and impacted by events in their local communities than they were by national-level events. By sitting on school boards, working in town meeting/council, volunteering in fire departments, just knowing your neighbors, you were forced into contact with people whose ideologies were different. When that happens, you grudgingly have to admit that even though Mr. Whooseiwhat's views on national politics are antithetical to yours, he was still really nice to organize that eyeglasses drive, or come put out the fire in your house, or whatever. Which meant that you knew your enemy as a more complex human being, and were challenged to take his views a little more seriously, not dismiss them as the ravings of an evil mind.

Participation in civic and social associations and local politics and public service have dropped off dramatically in the last 20 years (read Bowling Alone for more, and plenty of stats). This is partially due to the explosion of opportunities for communication and pastime that the digital age has brought us. It may be easier and more comfortable for people of my ilk to hang out online and associate with liberals or listen to Air America than for me to sit in town meeting and hash out my views with other people who are real. That gets messy. So I think largely because of breakdown in localism and access to electronic media, people have increasingly been pulled to the poles of the like-minded, and reinforced and amplified political views in a small feedback loop.

For me, the solution to the stress I felt over this is just to be more local. I can have a huge impact on local politics and culture, where on the national stage I'm just another ranting nobody. Also, make use of your personal connections (as you're doing here). Discussing views, even on websites, in places where there is some diversity of opinion can also create change, one individual at a time. Nothing's more powerful at mind-changing than a thoughtful, respectful argument from someone you know and like. The power of that on an individual is worth a thousand Limbaughs or Hannitys.

I'm having to skim all this as well, but I know what you mean about the "us vs. them" mentality, kmellis, and it makes me crazy (I'm not immune to it, but I have always tried to keep it in check).

matildaben made a couple of interesting comments when she was down at Bunnystock in NC, and then hanging out with me here in Atlanta afterwards. She was asking what it's like to live in a place where your beliefs are not the majority. I've always found it to be a good thing, for two reasons: 1) you can be more of an influence when you're not preaching to the choir, and 2) it does force you to see the humanity of those people around you, instead of thinking of them as people "out there" who think "like that."

Miko said it more eloquently, already, but that's my take on that issue. As for the evil and villians, I'll have to chew on that part awhile.

I still haven't figured out what your initialism, TLTRAW, means, TrishaLynn. But, yeah, of course not all metachatters are mefites. Even so, I think the character of mecha has been strongly determined by its genesis as an offshoot of Metafilter.

Miko, I think you make a very good point and it's something I hadn't considered. Partly it's because while I've been active, occasionally, in a few local issues (like rape crisis activism, for example), for the most part I don't engage that way. I've always been ambivalent about this because on the one hand I think it's a virtue to do so, on the other hand I am inclined to a sort of taoist acceptance of the diversity of human personality and particularly so given the context that I came to this belief partly as a defense of my own idiosyncratic personality. It can't be that there's only one way to be usefully politically engaged given the extreme diversity of personality involved that are deeply relevant to methods of engagement.

BoringPostcards, I, too, have almost always lived where my politics was the minority. The only two places I've lived where this wasn't the case were Santa Fe and Austin, and in both those cases it still was true if you only widened the scope slightly. Because of this, I've always been aware that the people with opposing ideological affiliation are, nevertheless, people like myself. This includes the majority of my immediate and extended family. Sometimes I wonder about the people who most relentlessly demonize conservatives: do they not have family with these views? If so, do they truly think them evil and berate them so at every opportunity?

Because of this I find myself so often defending these people. It seems like I'm endlessly defending them from the attacks by my allies and friends. This is never rewarding, of course, because my friends and allies resent it and, for the most part, those I'm defending have no idea that I've done it. I think some people do this sort of thing out of a self-satisfying need to be contrary and to feel that by distinguishing themselves from their peers they're reinforcing their own sense of self-worth insofar as that self-worth is tied to a sense of virtue in being independently minded. I know, as difficult as it is to admit it, that this plays at the very least a small role in why I do it. Even so, I know it doesn't play a large role because, simply put, I never enjoy it. It makes me sadder than self-satisfied. In fact, to the degree to which doing so is triggered by my sense that being critically minded is a virtue, I usually find myself critiquing my own motives for doing so and undercut that rationale.

Yet I still do it. And I know that I do it because so great a portion of the experience of my life has been to stand and listen to someone villify people I know are not villains. So many times I've listened and wondered to myself "how can they belive these things, do they not think the people with whom they disagree could possibly be well-meaning like themselves? But I know they are, I know those people". So when I hear my allies speaking exactly in the same way, it triggers something powerful in me. I hate, hate, hate it when my allies sound exactly like my enemies. And I never understand it when those allies and others seem deaf to those echoes. In fact, that deafness is one of the biggest things I cannot understand about some other people. I try and try, and I can't get my head around it.

Even so, I know it doesn't play a large role because, simply put, I never enjoy it. It makes me sadder than self-satisfied.

I'm not sure that comes across.

I still haven't figured out what your initialism, TLTRAW, means, TrishaLynn.

My guess was "Too Long To Read At Work." :)

I'm not sure that comes across.

I know it doesn't. But this takes us to the difficult problem of whether or not people should be expected to prove their own good-faith. I have to admit that I've been inconsistently self-serving about this—recently with you I assumed bad-faith, implicitly demanding that you should have demonstrated good-faith, while in doing so felt no need to demonstrate that my criticism was in good-faith.

I think I'll lose any argument where I would try to defend my inconsistency. So I'll concede that I should try to demonstrate my good-faith when I so criticize. And I'll try to start doing so immediately.

At any rate, yes, I don't enjoy it. It'd be convenient for me if I did. But I don't and this is exactly why I've participated less online in the last few months and not more. Being pissed-off and critical of other people is not rewarding to me. It makes me sad and tired. When I'm on meds, I'm not irritable and I'm much more forgiving and I think that when I am critical—and I still am—it's much more tactful. The night before last when I was arguing with taz in the Kinkade thread I kept thinking to myself "why do I have to defend that I'm pissed-off at what I'm sure is bad behavior on the part of other people? Why do I have to sugar-coat it?" But of course I should have sugar-coated it because in some simple yet deep sense it's nothing more than a way of treating other people decently to do so. It's also more practical as the flies/honey/vinegar cliche says. But the practicality shouldn't be paramount: treating other people decently should. But it's hard, sometimes, to remember that.

It's also more practical as the flies/honey/vinegar cliche says. But the practicality shouldn't be paramount: treating other people decently should.

Practicality is important too, though. I know very few people that take criticism well, I think it's human nature to get defensive. And being defensive kind of precludes good debate on topics. So it's also practical to sugar-coat to a degree.

Also, wrt the thread topic. I think Miko has a very good point. And I have a whole rant at hand on local-body involvement and career politicians and how the two factors make politicians, policy makers, them, seem so much more remote and easier to vilify, but y'all have laid it out much better n I ever could. So I'll just say: word.

i have found a deep spiritual salve which eases my mind and soul, keith. it can do the same for you. now, i know you are reading this and recoiling as from a flame, but contempt prior to investigation cannot help but keep a man ignorant. oh sure, people will call you names behind your back, but at the end of our physical existence, what will it matter? shed your intellectual pride and find true happiness! what is the source of my new found peace?

I JUST LIKE TO SAY SMOCK.

come, try it with me:

SMOCK SMOCK SMOCK!


SMOCK SMOCK SMOCK SMOCK SMOCK SMOCK SMOCK SMOCK SMOCK SMOCK SMOCK SMOCK
SMOCK SMOCK SMOCK SMOCK SMOCK SMOCK!

SMOCK

...hmmm.

SMOCKITY SMOCK SMOCK!!!

I am so going to reply to this, as the whole good/evil small/big (in scope) thing I think about very often. However I've been drinking and it's late and I'll compose a reply tomorrow.
In short, I think you're ok. Anyone who thinks about this in depth and checks and double-checks what they're thinking is conscientious enought to really give a shit about the world around them, and that's not a bad thing.
Just to save me 2 (possible) paragraphs of writing the backstory, are you familiar with Alan Moore's "Watchmen" and "Miracleman" ("Marvelman" in the UK) books? [should i include it anyways for anyone following this thread?]
Also - have you ever read Douglas Coupland's "Life After God"? I'm guessing you grew up in the eighties as I did. The book really reaffirmed my outlook in that "there are other people who went through the same thing as me, and we're all (pretty much) ok. Well, as 'ok' as one can be."

Zack_Replica: Are you my twin?

Hmmm. I'm guessing you know where I'm going to go with part of what I'm writing, huh? :) Twin? Possibly. I've only got one brother, and he's a complete pillock, so I'm sure there are other familial people out there.

Preface: I had more I was going to write, but I thought that I'd just end up rambling and spending all night typing like a crazed person. Still, here's 4 paragraphs on my views as they are now. They are subject to change in the future, and I may end up contradicting myself, but that comes with change. To quote Walt Whitman, "Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)"

Ok. Here goes.

Good and evil. Those who wear the black hats, and those who wear the white. Right and wrong. The two opposing teams. The red states and the blue states. Us and them.
Isn’t it annoying, this absolute distinction between the two? It is very rare, in any situation that there is an absolute demarcation between one thing and another. It’s what has always bothered me with the way politics, television, movies and some books portray opposing factions. Sitting up here in Canada watching the US news about how there’s the Liberals and the Democrats and who’s right and who’s wrong, and completely ignoring the other parties that could be in the running. Well, it’s easier that way, isn’t it? When one doesn’t have to think about those annoying grey areas in life, the moral quandaries that threaten the plot. I’d mentioned Alan Moore’s “The Watchmen” because that is what the main thrust of the plot is about. There are costumed crimefighters who battle the bad guys, and that’s all great as it makes everything easy. When one of the characters, the “smartest man on the planet”, sits back and takes a look at the larger picture he sees a world that is on a free-fall to destruction, and one that is almost willfully ignorant of that. He comes up with a totally outlandish plan to stop the imminent nulear war, and in stopping the destruction of billions of people, he has to kill half of the population of New York, which he does. Is he evil in doing this? Was he wrong? When he explains to his friends who’ve tried to stop him that he’s just averted the death of everyone on the globe, is he good or evil? Needless to say this isn’t going to be anything that’ll get shown on general TV, as there is no good guy arresting the bad guy, because he may not be bad. It’s all very grey and could be debated for ages, and it also breaks people’s expectation for what passes for a climax these days. I suppose you could say that at least in some horror movies there’s the dénouement of the bad guy living or carrying on in some form to terrorise people in the sequel, but usually “good” wins. In “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer” There really isn’t a good guy, and the two main characters are (very) bad guys and at the end, evil doesn’t get punished. There is no happy ending, not even in the form of the writing that some films have, just before the end credits. It’s one of the reasons that I like it as it’s a lot like life that way. We’re not in a movie, and sometimes there is no happy ending. Hell, most times there is no “closure”, no matter how much it’d help you out. Gee sorry, your sense of self got hurt. There are a lot of people that don’t get to be hero and his girl hugging in the sunrise. They just have to keep on going.

Villains. Notice that no one ever asks the villain who wants to kill these people/take over this part of the galaxy/fire the death ray ‘why’? As a means to what end? Ok, so Darth Vader goes and slays all the Jedi, conquers everything worth conquering in the galaxy (assuming he never ran into the inevitable ‘larger fish’). Great. It’s all yours. Why? And now what?? Dude, WTF’s the point?!? You don’t need money, you can have any girl you want and you’ve got the coolest toys! Poke him a couple of times and you see he’s made of rice paper and there’s nothing to him. It’s the problem with most of the major villains who have such grandiose plans, is that they’re so *big* that they’re stupid. They can’t be depicted in detail and they have to be shown as an undefined, almost archetypically evil because they’ll hold up for about 20 seconds under close scrutiny. That’s why the little, petty (in comparison to the “taking over the galaxy” boys) can be painted in greater detail. All they want is enough money to live like a king, and usually because their Moms didn’t hug them enough as children. Or perhaps they want what they feel is rightfully theirs, or what has been told to them over and over should be theirs.
So you’ve got this group “A” who believes this thing. The big issue is that there’s a major block to this, as group “B” has got an equally righteous claim to the thing. And there are others who have also got issues. Then what happens. Some tough little kid with a big stick starts playing devil’s advocate and poking thing with the stick and is all of a sudden totally pissed that the opposing groups punch him in the mouth. “What the hell? Can’t you see that these guys are nuts and evil and should be stopped? It’s all black and white! Look!”
Oh, damn. Well, now things are getting too big, and there’s shades of grey creeping in here, and our people hate that – quick! Find someone to demonize! They hurt us first, so that means they’re the evil guys!

[cont.]

Evil. Total, and complete evil. No one wants to see that because it’s too much – as Jung said, “it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil.” How do you show that on film, or in a medium that is accessible to the public? I’ve only ever seen it done once, Alan Moore again, and his Miracleman series. Basically it’s a British takeoff on the Captain Marvel (Shazam) family. They are super-strong, fast, smarter, and near invulnerable. What Moore does is posit the question if you have these beings of godlike power that are unstoppable by any human means, what happens when they decide to take matters into their own hands? And, most importantly, what happens when one of them goes insane? Imagine a mass murderer at their most psychotic, and then give them the power of a god. Miracleman and the rest of his alien buddies only realize that something is terribly wrong when they see London on fire from orbit. Arriving on earth, they find millions dead, the Thames piled with corpses, people on pikes, a woman with her arms burnt off running with her children who have had their eyes burnt out. Mountains of bodies, and all the bad guy says is, “I *wondered* how long it’d take you to notice.” Turning that page and seeing that – the sheer scope of the carnage – I’m pretty sure that my jaw dropped open. Nearly no-one does that because the impact is too great, and few want to deal with the fallout from writing something that is so absolute and irreversible: basically it is looking into the abyss, and the abyss gazes also. I’ve watched the documentary/interview “Shake Hands with the Devil”, and Roméo Dallaire said that he believed he has looked into the face of absolute evil and that there’s nothing remotely human there. Portraying that in any sort of media, fictional or no, is near-impossible to do. One can’t empathise with it as it’s too much to take in, and it ends up destroying a part of you every time you see it.

God, what a ramble. Politics again. It’s difficult, in talking to people who’ve got everything set in their heads about the good guys and the bad guys, to try to get an alternate (grey) point of view across. I think I’m fortunate that a lot of the people I talk to want to understand all sides of the issues and in conversation are able to look at other factors, rather than just focus on, say, “they gassed X amount of people, they’re all bad.” It’s always why are they doing this? What are their reasons? Their politics and social structure and belief systems are very very different to ours, so what aren’t we seeing here? A friend of mine and I ware talking about a book he’d read about the Middle East, and how the author feels that they’re going through what the Christian Church went through – an upheaval of old beliefs and religion – that end up adapting itself to what society was becoming, because a lot of things change, and change is hard. It is quite possible that the only thing to do is let them change, and also suffer through the violence that comes with that. Though I’m uncomfortable with that, as seeing people die regularly because of conflicting beliefs is, I feel, inherently wrong. …he said sitting from a point of privilege in a culture that’s been through that already. Hmmm. Damn these conflicts anyways! Both the ones in the world and the ones in my head!
For people who can’t see the grey areas, well, I try to pick my battles. If I start slowly slipping in some grey areas into their reality, will they see it? Are they capable of seeing it? There are some battles that are a waste of time and energy, and are better off not being fought. I’ll try though, for myself, so at least I know that I cared enough to make the attempt. Miko is dead on with her comments. There is a vast machinery operating that is impossible to stop, and while tilting at windmills makes for a good novel, it makes for a waste of energy and an unfulfilled life. As one of Jenny Holzer’s aphorisms states, “GRASS ROOTS AGITATION IS THE ONLY HOPE". Start in small ways helping those that need it, and perhaps by you moving a few grains of sand, and others doing the same, you can cause a beneficial landslide. If nothing else, reaching out and helping is a small but necessary gesture in the grand scheme of things, but looking at the big picture for too long eliminates the details – the parts that make up the sum.