In Which I Am Confused By The Liberal Elite Game Plan

 

The Liberal Elite don’t care for Trump. I get it. What I don’t get is their dislike –no, hatred –no, loathing – for his supporters. Despite the whole ‘do unto others’ bit, it doesn’t make any sense politically to alienate millions of people instead of trying to win them to your side.

According to the Talking Heads on MSNBC, anyone who votes for Trump is racist, sexist and/or fascist. They refuse to entertain the possibility that there may be any other reason to support the Orange Man. They won’t consider that a large segment of the country has had it with over-the-top political correctness. They dismiss fears of urban crime that appears to be linked to permissive courts. They label those who are concerned about the danger of allowing thousands of unknown people to cross our borders as xenophobes. They shrug off minorities who complain that newly arrived immigrants are going to the head of the line for public housing and are scooping up social service resources that should be going to America’s low income and homeless residents as the misinformed ranting of the uneducated.

There seems to be a pervasive feeling among Biden supporters that Trump supporters have been led astray by dangerous conspiracy theories and that the majority of them will benefit from government reeducation programs or stints in prison. They refuse to acknowledge those who point out the disparity in jail time for violent Antifa protestors and violent January 6 protestors and ridicule those who suggest that Trump is a victim of political lawfare. They shut down attempts to explain opposing views with shouts of ‘fascist’ and refuse to associate with those who stray from the party line by advocating moderation.

There seems to be a pervasive feeling among Trump supporters that Biden supporters are more interested in getting a person’s pronouns correct than in getting inflation down. Inflation is coming down, the Administration announces. It’s not a big deal, they explain, just one of those things that happen now and then. It’s clear those speakers have a savings account, a high-limit credit card and decent employment. Because the people I know – my clients who are struggling to buy food, rent and utility bills as prices rise faster than their social security cost-of-living increases—aren’t benefiting from the great economy that appears to exist only in the minds of the Liberal Elite.

I’m not a big fan of Bill Clinton, but his campaign staff did have one thing right –their “It’s the Economy, Stupid” slogan. No matter what the issue, no matter what the distraction, they kept focused on the economy. Now, as low-income people find it increasingly difficult to find affordable housing, as the working class find their concerns about competition for jobs dismissed as racist, as devout religious practitioners confused by modern mores are mocked as transphobic, the Liberal Elite seems determined to drive millions away from their party instead of at least feigning interest in their concerns.

Not sure that’s the best way to win an election, but I guess we’ll find out this November.

In Which I Begin My Search for a Bridge Across the Troubled Waters

I grew up in the 1960s, a child of the Cold War.  My father spoke often about the Communist Threat and was ever vigilant for signs that foreigners were attempting to interfere with American life. He didn’t allow movies starring Hanoi Jane into the house, he frowned on anti-war music and he even went so far as to forbid me to learn Russian in high school.  He frequently accused hippie protestors of being Soviet pawns and I was wise enough not to tell him about the protests I attended at college.

Perhaps as a reaction to the anti-commie fervor of the time, I had a burning desire to go to the Soviet Union myself.  Not, as my horrified father feared, to join the Revolution.  Instead, I wanted to meet the Russians, get to know them, and ask them why they sat up nights thinking of ways to bury us. I was sure, in my naïve do-gooder way, that if we knew why they didn’t like us we could talk it out and come to some kind of compromise.  Another naivete – I’ve always considered compromise to be a good thing and not a reason to hound a candidate out of a political race.

I’ve grown more jaded over the years, but I still feel compelled to meet with the ‘enemy’ and find out what makes them tick. I understand political differences. I don’t understand political hatred. In the midst of the growing social divide, I decided to do some local field research to see if I could discover why political animosity continues to grow with each election. 

My first stop was at a continuing education class designed for seniors. The marketing blip said that we’d be discussing current political issues and that ‘all voices are welcome.’ Trust me, they were not. The moderator made an early attempt to be non-partisan, but it soon became apparent that he was a Biden supporter. That wouldn’t necessarily make a non-partisan discussion moot, but he chose the topics and the articles that we would read and that made the prospect of a non-partisan discussion moot. It didn’t matter too much, however. As far as I could discern based on comments, there was only one beleaguered Republican in the class and he didn’t appear to be comfortable expressing his opposing views.

Frustrated, but still hopeful, I went to a public meeting about immigration. Again, the organizers declared that they were non-partisan, concerned only with offering a much-needed forum to discuss a current topic. The speakers did attempt to hide their prejudices, with varying success. Unfortunately, their liberal bent was obvious in the way they handled questions/comments from the audience. No one was allowed to speak during the session and those who forgot were sharply reprimanded. All questions had to be written down and handed to a moderator. I give her points for asking all questions, even those that she clearly found distasteful. I deduct points for her tone of voice and for the times she paraphrased a question, her entire manner broadcasting her disagreement with not only the question, but with the audience member who was so uneducated as to ask it.

No legitimate objections to mass migration were recognized during the meeting. When one of the presenters opined that ‘immigration was good for the economy,’ I considered mentioning my low-income clients, who were raised in public housing and educated in segregated schools in the 1950s and 1960s. They had worked for decades in factories, but now that those jobs had gone overseas, they were ill-equipped to compete with a sea of cheap labor.  My concern for them is genuine, but I ultimately decided it wasn’t worth the effort of writing my thoughts down. They’d only be edited by the moderator and summarily dismissed. All in all, the evening did nothing to broaden my view on the topic.

So my search to understand our divided country continues. My goal isn’t to get anyone to take my side of an issue. It’s to have a reasoned discussion about our differences and maybe –just maybe—come to some type of give-and-take consensus, acknowledging that complicated situations are unlikely to be solved by partisan thinkers.  I grow increasingly pessimistic that this will ever happen.

 

In Which I Discover That I Am Persona Non Grata on Social Media

Today I was inspired to post a quote from 1930s labor organizer Sol Alinsky on Facebook. In it, he advises the Baby Boomer student activists of 1971 not to ridicule, disparage or harass their parents’ generation because they would need them to vote for the change they wanted to see in Washington.

 “To reject them is to lose them by default,” Alinsky writes. “They will not shrivel and disappear. You can’t switch channels and get rid of them. This is what you have been doing in your radicalized dream world but they are here and will be. If we don’t win them Wallace or Nixon will.”  

 I’d hoped that advice from an old socialist might still be relevant in today’s divisive political world, especially to those once youthful hippies who are now on social security but still fighting for their candidate. My goal was to do what I could to calm the troubled waters and to inspire others to view those with different viewpoints as opponents rather than enemies. I certainly didn’t think anyone would find my rather tame comment objectionable. It never occurred to me that my call for moderation would be censored by Facebook.

But censored it was. I still don’t know why the Powers found me guilty of Thought Crime. I guess their reasons are on a need-to-know basis and I don’t need to know. I’m just an uninformed citizen who dared to stray from the proscribed path and my aberrant opinions needed to be quelched before the contagion could spread to another mind. I shouldn’t be so miffed about such a relatively small thing, but I am. I can’t stand to have anyone tell me what I can or cannot believe, say or write. Not while I continue to live in the so-called Land of the Free.

I suppose I shouldn’t be that surprised that Big Brother is keeping us under surveillance. Facebook may be using modern media to ensure right thinking, but censorship is nothing new. Back in the 1950s-- at the height of the Cold War -- writers who dared to voice their support of socialist policies or their disgust with capitalist excesses were blacklisted and were unable to have their books published or their scripts produced.  In the new century, writers who dare to create characters that are considered politically incorrect are finding it more difficult to market their books or scripts. And now that we’re in an election year, watch dogs from both sides are quick to point out unacceptable opinions.

 Today's social justice blacklisters feel that they’re taken a moral high-ground against racism, sexism and any other ‘ism’ that exists or can be invented, but they are no different than the commie-hunting blacklisters who participated in the McCarthy witch-hunts. As a moderate, I truly don’t care if it’s the Right telling me I can’t write about gays and Wiccans or the Left telling me I can’t write about sympathetic Trump supporters and heroes who aren’t dedicated to the Green Revolution. I dislike anyone infringing on my freedom to create any character I choose for my books or to post any quote I please on social media.   

Unfortunately it's not just random folks online who are quick to cancel those who they decide are out-of-bounds. The American Library Association –sponsors of Banned Book Week –removed Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name from a children’s literature award because she was deemed to be racist when writing about Native Americans. The Mystery Writers of America withdrew their Grand Master Edgar award from author Linda Fairstein because the Twitterverse complained that she had been a sex crimes prosecutor during the now infamous 1989 Central Park Jogger case. And eBay unilaterally decided to ban people from buying or selling ‘outdated’ Dr. Seuss books, lest they fall into the hands of innocent children.

 In Wilder’s case, the works of a woman from a previous era –one that included tension between natives and settlers –were cancelled for not predicting modern-day sensibilities. Fairstein was denied an award for her writing achievements because she was tangentially involved in an event that was condemned decades later. Dr. Seuss’ early books are apparently no longer safe for children because of objectionable drawings from an bygone era, so not even adults are allowed to collect them. If we continue in this vein, all writers’ works will have to be retired within a few decades of their creation to ensure that no one will be offended by their outdated views or by their author’s behavior in pre-politically correct times.  

I should mention that I do feel a twinge of repulsion when Hemingway’s characters ridicule gays, Fitzgerald’s characters complain about the ‘unwashed masses,’ and Twain’s characters talk about slaves. And I really have to bite my tongue on occasions when reading the male-female interactions created by many pre-1990s writers. But I try to read their books in context with their times and focus on their writing ability. When I find an older book too offensive by current standards to read, I do something which anyone who is offended by historical language and mores can do: I close the book and donate it to my local thrift shop. In one or two cases, I have tossed it into the trash. I have never recommended that a book that offends me –especially when it was written by someone living in an earlier time – be banned so that no one else can decide for themselves whether or not the book has any relevance to them.

 Sadly, this ‘live and let live’ philosophy is quickly becoming a thing of the past in the publishing world.  At a writer’s convention I attended, one of the speakers talked about the demands her publisher made regarding the need to be politically sensitive in her children’s books. I thought she was going to complain about such a restrictive system, but she spoke gratefully of the committees of diverse people that read each of her manuscripts and make suggestions for improvements before they are deemed appropriate for young readers.

 While she spoke, I flashed back to Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and George Orwell’s 1984. Truly, books and movies are increasingly becoming vehicles for educating the masses in the proper way to think and act. Bradbury prophesied that in the future a civilized society would burn books with incorrect views because they make people unhappy with their lives, jealous of their neighbors and –most importantly –at odds with their leaders. When authors begin to freely tailor their books to conform with the goals of government –however noble those goals may be –we are one day closer to government-approved books and blacklisted authors. 

In the meantime, beware of what you write on social media. Big Brother is definitely watching.