I CANNOT FATHOM THIS NO MATTER HOW HARD I WRAP MY MIND AROUND IT.
― trigonalmayhem (trigonalmayhem), Friday, 5 November 2004 20:46 (twenty-one years ago)
because if you have no power in the form of money or knowledge, bigotry is all that's left. And it's easy.
― dave225 (Dave225), Friday, 5 November 2004 20:49 (twenty-one years ago)
Because it is better to be morally right now than to compromise it later (so the theory goes). What we see here, however, is an assumption that those who believe they are morally right are equivalent to Dietrich Bonhoeffer in a Nazi prison. This is a bit problematic.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 5 November 2004 20:50 (twenty-one years ago)
The security of America might be fucked. Schools might be fucked. The health care system might be fucked. The natural economical balance of America might be fucked. The planet itself might be fucked. But if there's one thing that
ain't gonna happen in
my America, it's that MY RECTUM is NOT gonna be fucked.
― nickalicious (nickalicious), Friday, 5 November 2004 20:52 (twenty-one years ago)
I'm not so sure. The religious right in America controls vast economic resources. Not to mention exclusive access to its own particular brand of "knowledge".
― briania (briania), Friday, 5 November 2004 21:09 (twenty-one years ago)
To slightly return to my point -- if you believe that YOU have been the victims of a horrible secular culture, however conceived and defined, and you are fighting back against that with a sense of moral rightness to make things back 'the way they were' (how much of all this is nostalgia and how much is actually a forward projection is an interesting question, actually -- I suspect the former more), then that's a heady mixture. There's the concomitant thrill of gaining power, the ultimate response against a perceived, conceptual bullying, to 'make things right.' Now this may sound ridiculous to the extreme to all of us here, but I'd say some variant of this plays into what we're seeing over time -- it's an internalized contradiction in many ways that is all too easy to be maintained.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 5 November 2004 21:13 (twenty-one years ago)
What Ned is saying in a non-confrontational and coolly dispassionate way is that the people who voted for Bush were not, in their own view, choosing to forsake the future in favour of bigotry, but rather were voting to protect, preserve and defend the future... of bigotry.
It is a tickish business. The people who want prayer in the schools and the Ten Commandments in the courthouse don't actually believe that your freedom is a direct threat to their person or their ability to worship. No one is blowing up Xtian churches to cow them into accepting second class citizenship.
Rather, they feel that the whole society they live in is increasingly out of step with their values and this is profoundly disturbing to them. They want to stop that process, even though it is happening because of the freedom of other people, acting in ways freely chosen, that doesn't do them any direct injury.
They genuinely don't accept that you and I may do things that make them uneasy and they justify their desire to curtail your freedom by saying it hurts their children to grow up around us, because they hear and see things that are contrary to the examples they would like them to hear and see.
But it all boils down to the idea that we have too much freedom and they want to reduce ours along with theirs, because they freely restrict their own freedom and won't feel its loss as a loss - so we shouldn't, either. It seems perfectly all right to them to restrict our freedom in this way, because they think it is right and our uses for our freedom are wrong, or trivial, or not in as deserving as their need to restrict us.
It is very difficult to pierce those selfish and self-serving arguments, because behind them is fear and an instinct of self-defense.
― Aimless (Aimless), Friday, 5 November 2004 21:59 (twenty-one years ago)
*nods* Thank you, sir. That's a logical extrapolation.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 5 November 2004 22:02 (twenty-one years ago)
Rather, they feel that the whole society they live in is increasingly out of step with their values and this is profoundly disturbing to them.I don't understand...we gave them the PAX channel, what more do they want?
― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Friday, 5 November 2004 22:11 (twenty-one years ago)
man.
I at least kind of understand it now
but it just makes me even angrier.
― trigonalmayhem (trigonalmayhem), Friday, 5 November 2004 22:20 (twenty-one years ago)