A Requested and Must-Read Manifesto
by P.M. Carpenter
Many readers of this column have, over the months and years, written to ask me this favor: "Please explain how we’ve come to this sorry state of affairs; how a boob like George W. Bush could hold sway over so many."
I have resisted spelling it out, simply because the answer has always seemed so obvious: The United States is heavily populated by incurable idiots with voter registration cards.
That, at least, is the short answer -- one that should suffice, being so incredibly self-evident. If your child, for instance, kept poking himself in the eye with a short stick and couldn’t seem to comprehend that poking himself in the eye with a short stick would invariably hurt, you -- as a thinking adult -- and all your family and friends -- as thinking adults -- would conclude that he’s an idiot. Case closed. A little embarrassing, but still, case closed. You wouldn’t need an expert to tell you that your child is hopelessly stupid.
When it comes to explaining the hapless course of direction America is taking and the right-wing folks who are sponsoring it, however, thinking adults scream out for experts to do the job, such as Ph.D.s in American history. Why? I don’t know. That’s a question better suited for social scientists and psychiatrists and not a psychically disinterested Ph.D. in American history. But as an anti-supply sider I have read the demand for an explanation and am here to meet it.
The longer answer is this: Read Herbert Marcuse or Theodor Adorno or, since they came out of what is called the Frankfurt School of thought, virtually anybody else of prominence who came from it. I can tell you beforehand that professional academicians have butchered each of these men and their theories principally over methodology, which means their methods of investigation, which arrived at the right answer, didn’t live up to the standards maintained by reviewing academics who never wrote anything of originality. Remember in high school when you got the right answer to that algebra question but screwed up somewhere in your methodology and were thus marked down for somehow having the wrong answer? Well there you are. That’s the nut of a ton of academic criticism. So on to what’s important.
Theodor Adorno, to pluck a name from above, once collaborated in a work entitled The Authoritarian Personality (1950). It was full of strikingly obvious truths about what makes up the mentality of right wingers, such as: They are conformists, they love authority figures, they are intolerant, they are insecure, they find stereotypes reassuring, they despise real freedom because it’s scary and they’re infuriatingly stubborn in disprovable beliefs. Sound like your neighbor, the idiot with the Bush-Cheney sign in his front lawn? Well, again, there you are.
If you’d like to read something recent on how right-wing idiots came to be idiots, I’d suggest reading George Lakoff’s Moral Politics (1996). But remember, you’ll remain empty after reading it, which is to say, the right wingers will still be idiots despite your newfound comprehension. Because they’re infuriatingly stubborn in their disprovable beliefs you’ll be just as powerless to change things -- to change them.
So here’s the nut of it. Idiots love to breed with abandon and are therefore on an inexorable march to a solid electoral majority. Forget civics and reasonable persuasion. We’re doomed to an authoritarian society in due time and democracy is doomed, since authoritarian personalities love authoritarianism and hate enlightened democracy. They love clowns like Bush because he’s as dense as they are and because he represents the hope of denseness -- to be on top without really trying, to have all the answers to life comfortably scripted.
Now, do you feel any better about things with THE answer at hand? And doesn’t it make matters even worse to know that so many right wingers will read this and not understand a parody when they see it? Is that not depressing to the point of confirming the non-parody of it all? Aren’t you sorry you asked for this?
by P.M. Carpenter
Many readers of this column have, over the months and years, written to ask me this favor: "Please explain how we’ve come to this sorry state of affairs; how a boob like George W. Bush could hold sway over so many."
I have resisted spelling it out, simply because the answer has always seemed so obvious: The United States is heavily populated by incurable idiots with voter registration cards.
That, at least, is the short answer -- one that should suffice, being so incredibly self-evident. If your child, for instance, kept poking himself in the eye with a short stick and couldn’t seem to comprehend that poking himself in the eye with a short stick would invariably hurt, you -- as a thinking adult -- and all your family and friends -- as thinking adults -- would conclude that he’s an idiot. Case closed. A little embarrassing, but still, case closed. You wouldn’t need an expert to tell you that your child is hopelessly stupid.
When it comes to explaining the hapless course of direction America is taking and the right-wing folks who are sponsoring it, however, thinking adults scream out for experts to do the job, such as Ph.D.s in American history. Why? I don’t know. That’s a question better suited for social scientists and psychiatrists and not a psychically disinterested Ph.D. in American history. But as an anti-supply sider I have read the demand for an explanation and am here to meet it.
The longer answer is this: Read Herbert Marcuse or Theodor Adorno or, since they came out of what is called the Frankfurt School of thought, virtually anybody else of prominence who came from it. I can tell you beforehand that professional academicians have butchered each of these men and their theories principally over methodology, which means their methods of investigation, which arrived at the right answer, didn’t live up to the standards maintained by reviewing academics who never wrote anything of originality. Remember in high school when you got the right answer to that algebra question but screwed up somewhere in your methodology and were thus marked down for somehow having the wrong answer? Well there you are. That’s the nut of a ton of academic criticism. So on to what’s important.
Theodor Adorno, to pluck a name from above, once collaborated in a work entitled The Authoritarian Personality (1950). It was full of strikingly obvious truths about what makes up the mentality of right wingers, such as: They are conformists, they love authority figures, they are intolerant, they are insecure, they find stereotypes reassuring, they despise real freedom because it’s scary and they’re infuriatingly stubborn in disprovable beliefs. Sound like your neighbor, the idiot with the Bush-Cheney sign in his front lawn? Well, again, there you are.
If you’d like to read something recent on how right-wing idiots came to be idiots, I’d suggest reading George Lakoff’s Moral Politics (1996). But remember, you’ll remain empty after reading it, which is to say, the right wingers will still be idiots despite your newfound comprehension. Because they’re infuriatingly stubborn in their disprovable beliefs you’ll be just as powerless to change things -- to change them.
So here’s the nut of it. Idiots love to breed with abandon and are therefore on an inexorable march to a solid electoral majority. Forget civics and reasonable persuasion. We’re doomed to an authoritarian society in due time and democracy is doomed, since authoritarian personalities love authoritarianism and hate enlightened democracy. They love clowns like Bush because he’s as dense as they are and because he represents the hope of denseness -- to be on top without really trying, to have all the answers to life comfortably scripted.
Now, do you feel any better about things with THE answer at hand? And doesn’t it make matters even worse to know that so many right wingers will read this and not understand a parody when they see it? Is that not depressing to the point of confirming the non-parody of it all? Aren’t you sorry you asked for this?
posted by BLONDIE at 1:51 PM
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