Politics and Loathing
What I hate about the political season– particularly one as serious, intense and (it goes without saying) polarized as this one– is what attempting to be engaged reveals about me. To myself. I try to resist political discussion, engaging in only the most limited fashion during those times I feel compelled and unable to contain myself. But it’s enough. I don’t deny being pretty far to the Left as today’s political spectrum goes; a moderate centrist I am not. And like some others who fall heavily to one side or the other, I feel that our country is in crisis and heading in precisely the wrong direction. I honestly believe that electing the wrong candidates next week will be disastrous, as in a moment that our children’s children will look back on in disbelief wondering what we were thinking and how we could respond so wrong-headedly to what lay right before our eyes.
But the prospect of political and ultimately cultural and societal disaster isn’t even the worst part. Worse still is the way the whole thing makes me feel. I feel the politics of this election viscerally. Listening to the candidates from the other side speak makes me nauseous. Literally. I can’t fairly describe the emotion other than by parallel, because to do so would involve getting into the kind of political fight I don’t want right now. All I can do is ask you to consider (or imagine) your feelings about someone who completely repulses and sickens you. That’s how they make me feel.
But that revulsion isn’t even the worst part. The worst part is what the process of engaging in political discussion makes me feel about people like I respect, like– even love. The worst part is understanding how deeply flawed and intolerant and narrow an important part of me is. I want to be able to “agree to disagree,” but that’s a lot easier to do when discussing whether we should turn the temperature up or down than it is when trying to face a house on fire. Beyond a pretty small set of issues (which are the least important by definition) I don’t have a sophisticated enough psychological framework to write serious disagreements off as things about which “reasonable people might disagree” any more than I can pretend disagreement about whether my house is on fire or not.
When it comes out that someone I care about is on the opposite side of some of these important issues, I feel about them as I feel about strangers who feel the same way. Confused and disheartened. Bewilderment tinged with pity. I can’t figure out what to do with an irrationality that strikes me as no different than maintaining that the earth is flat. I can’t process the support of those whose hypocrisy is writ so large and obviously in the public record. I don’t know how to handle someone choosing alignment with a group that relies on divisiveness and hatred.
I don’t want to feel this way at all, much less about friends… but not wanting doesn’t make it so. I can’t deny what is right in front of my eyes, as in arguable for the most part as whether the person we are both looking at has two legs or four. Which makes me as intolerant and loathsome as some of those I most despise. I imagine what it might be like to be raised in racist environment and then go out into the world to discover that those feelings are wrong… wanting to disown them, recognizing the problem intellectually, but finding myself unable to control my emotional reaction. What do I do?
The only answer seems to be retreat. Let what happens happen. Is the right action really to leave everyone to their blunders, no matter how harmful? Is the right engagement to not be engaged?
November 1st, 2008 at 8:57 am
If I didn’t have kids to look after, I’d take as many benzodiazapene-enhanced naps as possible between now and election day, go vote, come home and go back to bed, and set my alarm for whenever all the polls would be closed. I’m wound way too fucking tight over this mess. These last eight years have been a crime against humanity. I want this over with yesterday.
So yeah, I feel a bit strongly about this too.
November 3rd, 2008 at 4:29 am
Chris,
I’ve felt much the same way recently and have used long walks to try to move past the dismay, the anger, the anxiousness. I am worried about what I might say to people to whom I am related, over the Thanksgiving table if the election goes badly.
But I feel even more strongly that one of the reasons we are in this mess in the first place is that we do not talk about politics or world affairs (or much of anything substantive beyond our immediate selves) openly in this country. The people of every other country I have lived in or spent more than a couple of months in seem to embrace open, active participation through heated, ongoing discussion about town, country, region, and world matters. We are polarized due, in some part, to willful ignorance. I refuse to withdraw. I say, let’s walk into those contact zones, repeatedly and try to empathize, not sympathize with other viewpoints. Let’s talk. And then work hard to change their minds. Even now. Especially now.
Of course, if McCain wins, I am out of this country altogether.
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:12 am
“Is the right engagement to not be engaged?”
I can say uncategorically “NO” that is not the “right” engagement. The easier one, sure, but not the “Right” one.
What can the tolerant not tolerate? (lots I believe, but you need to figure out what for your self.) How to act from love to those who don’t love you, indeed who seem to hate you?
“…consider your feelings about someone who completely repulses and sickens you” yes, consider. But consider being “unable to control my emotional reaction” too.
I am not trying to trivialize your feelings here. I think I really get this, and I live in a (slightly) less polarized country than your own; I imagine he challenge you face is even greater. But my experience is that, when I am in touch with my own feelings and able to encounter these others not in judgement but in “identification,” (I know you get the reference) most often what I end up seeing behind these positions is fear, confusion and powerlessness. And when I see them like this I feel much more able to empathize, and then educate and help. Trust me, I’m not saying I’m very good at this or can do it all the time; it’s way easier to turn on The Daily Show and laugh it away, or just avoid those with whom I differ. And at the end of the day, you can only do so much, people have to do this work for themselves, so do what you feel able to. No one’s asking for more.
November 3rd, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Alaska needs a good state level progressive blogging community — is there any chance the nausea would be reduced if you could channel it into something like that?
Sorry, I do have to ask. If you know someone interested in running a DKos like state community, I can put you in touch with all the right software and people…
That aside, I’d second what Scott said. People’s political beliefs are wrapped around vital organs, and sometimes operation is impossible. Intelligence only comes into play when the results of applying it don’t shatter someone’s vision of his or herself. With the smarter people you know that are still thinking McCain might work, respect that it’s not intelligence, that there’s a lot of accidents of personal history in there. Somehow smoking at one point seemed really integral to me being my rock and roll self, and I made progressively more absurd arguments to defend the habit, because it felt like if I let go of the smoking I’d cease to exist as myself. My flirtation with libertarianism was not dissimilar. And I’m sure there are some things currently with me that are motivated by similar concerns.
The best thing you can do with the people you respect is to let them know that it sucks they are not a Democrat, because we could really use good-hearted people like them, and because you believe that the party is much more core to what they believe.
Because that’s the truth — if you didn’t respect these people’s intellect or heart, there’d be no nausea, only anger. Arguing about issues is the wrong side of the stick to grab, and makes me nauseous as well.
November 17th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Chris sez: “Listening to the candidates from the other side speak makes me nauseous.”
Please don’t confuse the vocal output of Sarah, John, and Joe the Plumber with “speech”. They aren’t attempting to communicate through language but to evoke shared prejudice.
That “palling around with terrorists” has no basis in reality doesn’t matter. That calling the New York Times “liberal” is absurd doesn’t matter.
There are many utterances that evoke “communication” among the initiates, including much of “talk radio”. That it is incoherent in terms of its “faith-base”- vs. “reality-base”-ness is beside the point because they don’t even know what that means and they will endlessly argue about really ridiculous things like drilling for oil in the U.S. offshore shelves will have anything to do with reducing importing oil.
Love.