Many people suggest that people like Sarah Palin and Donald Trump are publicity hounds with little real substance, and they are correct. But I strongly disagree when they go on to aver that we who counter their stupid mouthings are actually fueling their rise in the public consciousness, and that we should stop talking about them such that eventually they go away.
There is a vast voting public that adores people like Palin and Trump. If those of us who find them deficient stop talking about them, that’s not going to change the minds of their supporters. They will keep watching Faux News, and its constant vomitous view that Trailing and Pimp, I mean Palin and Trump, are serious and highly electable candidates. Rather, I think it is our responsibility to keep on, over and over, countering their stupidities, challenging their bigotry, and displaying what laughingstocks they are – so slowly, bit by bit, we can get through to that mass of voters who think they are serious presidential timber.
In recent decades, the GOP has preferred presidential candidates who are seen as “electable” more than “capable of governing”. That has resulted in at least two presidents, Ronald and George W., in recent decades whose intellectual acumen was far below the standard set by Carter, Clinton, and Obama. Even if we assume that Donald and Sarah will never be presidential candidates, they are not going to “go away” if we liberals stop talking about her. Indeed, they will continue to be a force with a significant ability to shape the GOP agenda – because they will continue to be a beloved icon in the minds of millions of Americans who love Trump as a media figure (“You’re fired!”) and adore Palin for her folksiness, her perceived one-of-us nature, her supposed sincerity and commitment to the values that they hold dear.
Those of us who oppose these two people and the falsehoods and bigotry they spew must bear in mind that there are two very different sets of values and priorities here. What for us is are absolutes – equal treatment under the law, blindness to race, public assistance for those who cannot make it independently, and so on – are not high on the list of values and priorities held just as fervently by those who admire Donnie and Sarah Osmond.
These latter people rate higher strong borders, conservative Christian ideals such as heterosexual marriage only and anti-abortionism, and getting rid of a perceived inundation of Muslims and Latinos who threaten the public order and supposedly harm the economy by taking jobs away from white Americans or taking public assistance that white Americans pay for.
Yes, these ideals are not always based on facts. Yes, they ignore a lot of realities. But we must remember that, conservatives, from their perspective, are equally firmly convinced that our ideals are not always based on facts and ignore a lot of realities. And, to them, Faux News and Trailing and Pump are refreshingly straightforward with a clear presentation of what to conservatives is the truth.
We must remember Daniel Boorstin’s point in The Image, that most Americans prefer the believable, comforting lie to the complex, difficult-to-understand, and discomforting truth. Sarah and Donnie provide this public with exactly the kind of comforting, easily digested pablum that they want to hear.
We who oppose such conservatism must constantly remain careful not to fall into the trap of thinking we are the objective ones, we are the smart ones, we are the ones who get it, and the conservatives aren’t. The minute we think like that, any possibility of real dialogue with conservative folks, toward the goal of mutual understanding, let alone persuading them of their incorrect assumption of pseudofacts, is over. We have to remember that many conservative folks (I am not counting Ms. Palin in this number) are just as intelligent, just as caring, just as concerned, as we. To say we are the intelligent, caring, concerned ones is a kind of elitism - the very same elitism of which we often blithely accuse the conservatives. So we must be strong and eloquent in our views, but respectful of the views of conservatives, and of them as persons. If we “talk down” to them, they will be on the defensive and, as a defensive reaction, close their ears. Only if we communicate with them respectfully – denying their assumptions of false facts but respecting their right to believe them – will dialogue be possible.
Without dialogue, all we will have is a constantly intensifying environment in which two political perspectives each try to outscream the other and neither of them actually listens to the other. Of course I support the liberal agenda, but I believe that that agenda will only succeed through dialogue. And dialogue will only be successful if both sides are willing to respect the fact that the other side is not a bunch of stupid idiots who just refuse to get it, but rather reasonable people who sincerely hold opposing values and priorities.
Of course there are struggling poor and middle-class conservatives who also, just like us, often have to work two jobs or bicycle to work or cut back on expenses because of a mismatch between income and expenses. But they see their personal economic woes as rooted in hugely bloated public budgets (federal, state, local). And they put the responsibility for that bloat on tax-and-spend Democrats. They believe that Democcrats are providing costly foreign aid to countries that don’t deserve it, costly social services to people who haven’t worked to help pay for it, and are eroding core values such as marriage and the right of individuals to protect themselves from dangerous new populations in the United States.
We need to start by finding points of agreeement – for instance, that yes, government budgets are indeed bloated. But we need to point out that NPR and foreign aid are about one percent of the federal budget, and that public assistance costs far less in the long run than letting people sink into chronic illness, homelessness, and hunger and being driven to the inevitable consequences of widespread plagues and crime.
For those who are not on public assistance, or those who view the public assistance they receive as “earned” by their or their spouses’ years of employment (and therefore as theirs by entitlement), public assistance is not a right but an earned dividend. Again, we must remember that conservatives have a different priority system from us; they see people who in their view have never worked, which to them is equivalent to being lazy or stupid, getting public assistance to which in their view they are not entitled, and which is paid for in their view not by these lazy/stupid people, but they themselves (the working masses who hold this view). Of course I and my fellow liberals see this view as not rooted in facts. But to millions of Americans, most of whom are perfectly intelligent people, these are absolutes just as firmly believed as our absolutes. And we liberals need to get this through our heads, or our efforts to open up the minds of conservatives, and to stop the outrages of the teaparty rightwingnuts will be in vain.
We need to keep pointing out that a representative democracy such as ours is extremely vulnerable to corruption – that lobbyists, PACs, pollsters, legislative map drawers, etc., have more power over our elected representatives than we their constituents. And that our representatives vote at the beck and call of party bosses, not we their constituents - i.e., at the beck and call of people elected from other regions. We must emphasize the fact that political parties are not constitutional, unenshrined in the Constitution, that they are a political power grab. The Constitution was framed to enshrine the goal that individuals represent their constituents, not their party bosses or campaign funders. The United States adapted its Constitution from the Constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy, which of course continues to govern the Six Nations – but (except still occasionally in the New England Town Meeting motif) it has failed to be a true direct democracy in which the people, meeting together, discuss and argue the issues as equals and instruct their representatives to represent the consensus derived by discussion and compromise on the part of the people.
