Big Brother speaks at Buffalo, New York, Apr. 20, 2004
©2004, UrbisMedia
It is likely that you have a right-wing friend or associate (or that you are the right-wing friend or associate), since the country is now almost evenly divided ideologically (thanks to the man who ran on bringing ustogether ). But in this piece I am preaching more to my own choir: those of us trying to keep our right-wing friends in such a polarized political atmosphere (screw the associates).
If, like me, you feel there is there is more than a faint Orwellian feel to the country these days, then it is likely because there are two versions of the truth running about for primacy in the hearts and minds of the people. You will recall that Orwell, in his 1984 , coined the term newspeak , for the argot of his totalitarian overlords and controllers of Big Brother, for a rhetoric in which things meant the opposite of what was stated. So if you have right-wing friends or associates, you might have noticed their tendency to pick up the language of their “big brother”.
The problem with keeping our right wing friends (and maybe one should include some family members in this category), is that they are increasingly suffering from WMD, Willing Mass Delusion. And for this they are perhaps to be pitied, although not to the extent of being out-voted. They have been consistently lied to by their leaders, treated as “dittoheads,” distracted with conjured “values” issues, and jerked around morally by cheap revival tent hucksters of hate and bigotry. But they hold on to their delusions and are expected to walk drone-like into voting booths in November and screw themselves.
Yes, that’s what they are doing. Dean tried to tell them that in his clumsy attempted rapprochement with the South’s NASCAR dads; other’s have made the point since that the war, the economy, the phony drug plan that is really for Big Pharm not old mom, the rich-skewed tax cuts, the “Clear Skies Initiative” that is really a fog obscure that companies can use the atmosphere for a toilet, and many other of Bush’s policies, are counter to the interests of working class people in his “base.” But Republicans are going to dutifully punch the Bush chad and screw themselves. Bush tells them that economy is recovering , but not that the jobs being created are nowhere near in number those that have been lost under Bush, that many of them are Wal Mart-greeter jobs, or that bankruptcies are on the increase, and the right-wingers of WMD blithely accept the deception. One begins to wonder whether the division in America is not so much between the political parties, or the Left and the Right, but between the wise and the dummies.
But, of course, they don’t want to know. Facts are for liberals, and they have been taught to fear and scorn that word. And when the facts intrude the Bushies have two cranks: one cranks up the “values issues” to get the faithful riled about prayer in schools, the ten commandments in public buildings, and the destruction of the family because gays and lesbians would like the same rights as the rest of us. It doesn’t matter that there are no facts to support such contentions. It doesn’t matter that their rantings about Hollywood’s ruination of American morality contradicts right-wing adoration of the market place. Your right wing friends just blankly stare back and accept the connections that have been made for them. Duuuuhhhhhh!
The other crank left to the Busies is the terror crank. This one, of course, vaguely justifies the occupation of Iraq, after your right wing friends no longer have WMDs (“they just ain’t been found yet), Saddam al Qaeda connections (“but Cheney keeps saying there were”), and Abu Ghraib is “just an anomaly by a few messed up misfits from West Virginia.” Accepting the Bush rationale for the preemptive invasion of Iraq is tantamount to having a lobotomy with tire iron. So that zombie look in the eyes of your right wing friends isn’t from doing a lot of illegal substances (which they will tell you is what those Hollywood commie liberals do).
When they have nothing left they, after they have tried to convince you, as they have convinced themselves, that George Bush was in greater danger in Alabama licking envelopes for a political candidate than John Kerry was in fire fights in the Mekong Delta, your right wing friends will likely resort to their trump crank—the Clintons. Try to be forgiving; without this last one they really don’t have a life.
___________________________________
©2004, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 7.31.2004)