So, two days after the deluge, the pundits conclude that the Kerry campaign – and the Democratic party – were sunk by bad assumptions about rural/exurban voters; the success of the Swift Boat veterans in discrediting Kerry as a war hero; and the intensity of opposition to gay marriage.
In other words, they couldn’t pull it off with the standard formula for success: a well-funded campaign and a decorated war hero/former prosecutor as the standard-bearer – not to mention the fact that the opposition’s candidate for Vice President has a gay daughter who wears a wedding ring.
Having “blown” yet another election that was theirs to lose, the Dems are already being quoted in the press about yet another exercise in self-flagellation: a Hillary Clinton candidacy in 2008.
They say it was “morals” that brought victory to Bush via his sweep of the middle half of the country. But “morality” seems to have acquired a very limited definition these days.
For example, I don’t recall any platform position or political speech about pornography or excessive sex and violence in the media, as we’ve seen in the past (remember Tipper Gore?)
Rather, this time around, “morals” seemed to focus entirely on abortion, embryonic stem cell research and gay marriage.
In other words, on regulating what other people do, rather than on behaviors that directly impact our own quality of life.
I was listening to Rush Limbaugh’s radio show yesterday, and was struck, once again, by his rage about being a “picked on” outcast, a day after a Republican President and a Republican/conservative Congress were elected by the largest number of votes in US history.
Huh?
I’ve heard the same defensiveness from Evangelicals who, with their indoor plumbing, hot running water, and easy access to shopping malls, nonetheless think of themselves as persecuted and oppressed for being “Christians”.
That attitude is especially ironic in this, the year that Mel Gibson’s moving but horrific “Passion of the Christ” achieved the highest gross of any foreign language film, ever.
So, it seems that the new “Moral Majority” picks and chooses its “moral” issues: the porn industry and its evil spawns, rape and child molestration, aren’t important, but defining marriage is.
Further, the MM fuels itself less by a sense of community solidarity and more by imagined slights from people not like them, i.e., those who live near oceans, city-dwellers, Democrats, gay couples and anti-war veterans.
This all sounds SO familiar, and I’m having difficulty putting my finger on it, this undifferentiated angst, this projection of terrorist bogeymen and “evil” Liberal Senators from Massachusetts with foreign-born, outspoken wives.
My brain, reduced by exhaustion to random limbic system neural firings, keeps spinning phrases like “nattering nabob”, “Weimar Republic”, “McCarthy hearings”, “Salem witchcraft trials”, that scene from the original Star Trek when Kirk is confronted by the question, “Are you of the body?”
A substantial part of the US, which is so lucky in material wealth and freedom of expression, still wants to believe that as long as people different from itself exist, those who are different pose a danger. Nothing less than assimilation will do.
Another Star Trek quote comes to mind: Resistance is futile. It seems that in parts of the US, you MUST be a registered Republican, a gun owner, a churchgoing Southern Baptist, married to someone of the opposite gender, to be trusted in the community, in business, in politics.
But why? Seriously, why? Litmus tests of any kind make about as much sense as they did on the other end of the spectrum in the 60’s: then, you had to have long hair, smoke pot and (in some cases) be promiscuous to be “of the body”.
In some circles, it helped to be from Boston or New York and to be Jewish, Unitarian being an acceptable substitute.
No kidding, it was THAT STUPID.
It must be human nature to want to expand your tribe, or at least to identify its members, by quick and easy criteria, as if differentiating your troops from your enemy in the heat of battle.
Like snubbing a stranger when they walk into a synagogue unless they have dark hair and dark eyes.
Like in my high school days, when you HAD to be a cute Irish Catholic girl who wore white lipstick for the gym teacher to pick you as a cheerleader.
Like refusing to serve someone a tuna sandwich because they reach for their hard-earned green cash with a non-pink hand.
I’ve got to stop this now, it’s making me a little crazy.