Anomalous Data - Demanding Ideological Orthodoxy = Shooting yourself in the foot.

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Demanding Ideological Orthodoxy = Shooting yourself in the foot.

This, discovered via Oliver Willis, is why I believe that the extreme right will not continue to dominate the political landscape for long…because everyone has their “enough point” for bullshit…even bullshit they have been carefully primed to buy…and even bullshit they desperately want to believe.

One day, you just find that you’ve had to tie yourself in one too many knots to answer one too many questions and though you might agree with the ruling political ideology on a few points…or even a large number of them, you find that you just don’t belong anymore.

And that is disillusioning.

Which is what I think drove a lot of people to the right in the first place. I know I swung somewhat to the right during my college years because I was put off by the far left’s obsession with political correctness (which seems good at first, I mean who doesn’t like a little guidance in how to be sensitive to people and world views you don’t understand?) and it’s constantly evolving demands that people adhere to a tighter and tighter ideological doctrine. (Penn and Teller said it best when they describe PC adherents as “the politeness police”).

I really felt that many of the “issues” near and dear to the heart of the most vocal elements of the radical left were not issues that mattered to the majority of Americans who were traditionally left-leaning. It seemed that working to ban Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer from school libraries was higher on their priority than raising the national minimum wage, or guaranteeing a healthy social safety net, or national health coverage…or making sure polluters pay fines for the cleanup of their messes.

The early success of people like Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh is that they would say the most repugnant stuff on the radio, and it made people feel good to smirk and scoff at the “wounded puppy” noises made by the PC crowd.

Political conclusion: Self-righteous sanctimoniousness, and its accompanying demand for complete compliance to an ideological orthodoxy will always backfire eventually.

Tuesday, June 07, 2005 8:40:56 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00) | Comments [3] | Political

Saturday, June 11, 2005 9:56:12 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)

Keeping Huck Finn and George Orwell on the school library shelves IS as important as those other thigns in it's own way. Not because of the obvious importance of it, but because of the more subtle effect the reactionary right wants to instill in our school age kids by removing anything that would influence them to think for themselves. And if the idea of letting the extreme right decide what makes up the basis of our nations educatonal future isn't alarming, I don't know what I can say that would make anyone realize how important it is - because if you (that's a generic 'you' btw) don't see the importance, chances are you're already one of them.

Sure, fighting to increase minimum wages is important, but none of the wage increases that have been fought over since about 19780 have really been all that meanigful - just dfferent shades of way too poor. And the best thing we've come to be able to hope to get out of the Left on the social safety net is that they are interested in cutting it a little bit less than the rightists.

Maybe what I'm trying to say is that doing the obvious, big things is important, but we can't save the house if we ignore the termites chewing away the foundation.

The Evil Cub

Sunday, June 12, 2005 9:12:11 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)

Cub,

Although it was actually a lot of lefties in the 90's that were into banning books for political incorrectness or whatever. Tipper Gore and her crowd were all about taking out things like the Great Gatspy that had "pornographic" content...and Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn for "racist" content.

There have been periods in history when th extremes of both wings were vocal enough and powerful enough to push through some pretty repressive issues and actions.

Extremeist feminists were as vocal about repressing things they saw as objectifying women as the righties were about expunging pornography because it makes the baby Jesus cry.

Not that it even compares to now. I've never seen a political ideology in such ascendance in my lifetime.

Trees

kemaris

Sunday, June 12, 2005 2:59:22 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)

You're right, I suppose. But dosen't it just go to show that the extremists on both sides are closer to each other than they are to the moderates of their own ideological groups?

Should we ignore the carpenter ants because of the termits? Certainly not, as both of them will make the whole place fall in on your head if you aren't careful.

The Evil Cub

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