From: Arlo Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Thu Jul 07 2005 - 19:41:20 BST
Ham, MSH, All,
I haven't read Chomsky. In fact, I'm likely more familiar with his work on
linguistics (although from a critical perspective) than his social
commentary. So I am in no position to make any informed statement about the
man or his words.
However... on this much ballyhooed notion of "patriotism", I will chime in.
MSH cautions (correctly, I might add, with his words and using Chomsky)
that "true" patriotism requires always placing a vigilant, critical eye on
power. In modern American discourse,this has been revisioned to mean a
blind acceptance towards one's chosen political party.This is, as I see it,
a fundamental crisis of the two-party dichotomy constantly being iterated,
and used as a defining dichotomy between Good and Evil.
To restate: Since I am a "conservative" then everything Bush and the
republicans do must be unassailable Good, and everything the
liberals/democrats to must be unquestionable evil. You could also restate
this vice versa.
MSH had commented on how patriotism has deteriorated into blind obedience
to the US government, and he is correct to the point where one's political
party is in power. Thus "patriotic conservatives" have no trouble spending
years vilifying Clinton. "Patriotic liberals" have no trouble bashing Bush
and yet did not turn as critical an eye on Clinton (to focus on recent times).
Since patriotism is then nothing more than blind support of one political
party and the vilification of the other, one ceases to use any level of
critical examination on those one has charged with power. Informed
citizens, and thus critical discourse, must rise above this illusive
dichotomy and challenge power abuses no matter the origin. We must not
blindly think that "our" party is so much the embodiment of Good that we
have no need to think of it critically.
Platt demonstrated a bizarre twist to this when his critical analysis of
the Supreme Court decision "forced" him to blame liberals for what is, to
any willful gaze, a symptom of a system that caters to wealth. Since his
Good/Evil dichotomy leaves no room for any critical examination of
"republicans", he was left blaming "socialist liberals" for catering to big
business. Remember that these are the same people he abhors for using
spotted moth habitats to block development. So entrenched is this
dichotomy that any real examination of causes, symptoms and abuses by power
are absolutely shut out.
To be fair to Platt, there are many democrats who fall prey to the same
two-party illusion. Or, better said, there are many democrats who are so
blinded by the two-party system as to be uncritical of their party as well.
Another outcome of this blindness is the deceptive use of language, for
example through word pairings, that reify and amplify the "my party
Good/your partyEvil" nonsense.
When you, Ham, state "Like most liberals, Chomsky avoids stating his agenda
in so many words..." you are making the outright claim that such tactics
are never used by "conservative" politicians. You are reinforcing this "all
good/all evil" dichotomy. Platt, in a previous post said to me "Are you
really clueless how liberals bash conservative judges?". Which may be so,
but all along the way he ignore (or justifies) when conservatives "bash"
liberals. Another use of this distortive dichotomy would include Platt's
comment "Ah, the arrogance of you liberals never ceases to amaze".
Conservatives, are of course, not arrogant. In all of these cases, the
underlying dialogue is polarized (willfully so, or inadvertantly) into
absolutist categories of good and evil.
Platt had previously suggested that there is some validity to the labels,
and I won't begrudge him that. There are those in power that lean towards
what has been historically "left", and there are those that lean "right".
But those on the left are not communists, and those on the right are not
nazis. American "left" and "right" are far closer on the political spectrum
than not. And for many Americans (speaking from personal experience) these
categories are not mutually exclusive. However, the dialogue has made them
so. The polarizing uncriticality has forged these blind allegiences that
prevent real inquiry into the power that is running this country. Thus, we
don't care about the decision, it is made "right or wrong" by whether or
not it originated "in my party".
What MSH argues for, and any critical thinker should be supportive of, is
to rise above blind obedience to any one political party, to see that such
blind support and vilification of the "other" only detracts from real
dialogue that could, and SHOULD, address the problem at hand.
To demonstrate, two days ago Sean Hannity was interviewing the author of
"100 People Who Are Ruining America". The dialogue centered around how we
have become "tolerant" of all the wrong things. The author (I forget his
name) stated that he has "no problem with sex jokes, but they shouldn't be
on a public broadcast at eight o'clock in the evening". To the counter
argument to "just change the channel", he stated "what if there was a
channel that broadcast only racial slurs, would 'change the channel'
appease those who were offended?". This is, to me, not a "rightist/leftist"
argument. Indeed, pure capitalists would say "let the market decide".
Clearly both Hannity and the author were calling for "government planning"
to "solve the problem". At any rate, I agree with both Hannity and the
author on this topic. Our public airwaves have become overly indecent, and
whether it is sexual or racial, it must be rethought. The author's solution
(or part of) would be to make more strict regulations on public broadcasts
during hours when teens and young children may be watching, to move adult
programming back into the night hours... on public stations, mind you. I
have my own thoughts, which aren't important here.
But, clearly this is a topic worthwhile of critical dialogue. However it
quickly descended into "all this is the fault of the liberals". "Liberals
have no sense of decency" is an exact quote from the show. "Liberals have
become tolerant of even the most horrible behavior" is another. The
problem, as Hannity expressed it, was one completely addressed by placing
all the blame on "liberals". Rather than effect real critical inquiry, we
were left with demonization and blind obedience to one political party...
never mind the fundamental and obvious hypocrisy the dichotomy causes in
this instance.
There are many examples of this, running both ways, in the current dialogue
in this country. And it is precisely because the language has become so
manipulated by party obedience that a rethinking of "patriotism" away from
party obedience must be advanced. Personally, I'd prefer if people were
able to look beyond "nation-state" boundaries for the "patriotic" support
we offer, and looked instead to ideals (so when we say "all men are endowed
by their creator with certain unalienable rights", we don't really mean
just "all Americans"), but that appears to be something to heretical to
advance...
And yet, that's just what the MOQ allows us to do... isn't it??
Just my two cents...
Arlo
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