FOCUS, or Lose 2004

[Jr_Samples]

We all know George W. Bush is stupid and full of shit. But there is one claim of his that I actually agree with: he's a uniter.

He's united half of the country against the other half.

Now, a little more than a year before our half's chance to make this clown a one-termer, we liberals find ourselves bickering over our favorite candidates. One is "too liberal." One is "too militaristic." Some are "too moderate." Etc.

The problem, as I see it, is that by virtue of our mindset our "half" of the equation is almost constantly disunited. You can see this natural internal disunity every day, in many places. Blogs, for instance, as seen on www.BartCop.com today (September 2); Bart admonishes Michael Moore's lambasting of Bill Clinton thus: Is Mike so left-wing that he believes bombs shouldn't be used to stop genocide?

We can't win the election by ascribing the debates to right and left wing ideals. Rhetoric like disband the entire US Military (just an example) is as narrow and illiberal as the repetitive talking points of today's neocons. And without the giant, corporate-sponsored propaganda machine behind it, messages like disband the entire US Military are doomed to turn off most voters.

We must embrace the conservatism-vs.-liberalism fight, and we must keep in mind that, in the presence of such a restricted and conservative platform as that the Bushies condone, many many things fall within our domain of (relative) liberalism. All this, while somehow maintaining a singular focus. Unfortunately, that means we have emulate one facet of conservatism - a sustained sense fear.

Consider these differences - as I see them, of course - between conservatism and liberalism:

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Conservatism is backwards & inwards-looking (not to be confused with introspective). As one of my favorite 21st Century thinkers said recently, fear focuses the mind, and as a fearful people conservatives excel at focusing on singular subjects around which they can get their little minds. ("Obsession" is the word, I believe, in many contexts.) History is their favorite subject because it requires no speculation, and when someone dares speculate on historical matters, conservatives reject the notion and call it revisionism. Simply by reading a set of stone-solid facts a person can get his or her mind around any episode in history. The conservative mind is capable of attempting speculation; however, usually these attempts fail in the long run.

Focusing is the act of getting your mind around a singular thing, and turning on that one-track mechanism in the process. This is why conservatives can't argue with veritable characterizations of liberals; they cannot get their minds around most liberals' arguments. Instead, conservatives find themselves propping up straw men so that they can focus in on their "victims."

Liberalism is progressive & outward-looking. Liberals excel at (and occasionally fall victim to) speculation - subjects which require an open-ended, viscuous mental approach. Liberals are artists, and excel at many, many intellectual disciplines, a couple of which science and news (news, BTW, is about reporting change; truly objective news reporting offends the conservative mind because it generates speculation).

Open-mindedness is, in a sense, the rejection of the human tendency to get one's mind around a singular thing. Ironically, the same, broad mind that is much more capable of wrapping itself around a subject it desires to examine rejects that tendency in favor of open-mindedness (and often becomes bored after much focusing, anyway). Liberals, therefore, appear to the narrow (read, conservative) mind as "wacko" or "out there."
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(Now, I'm writing this "on the fly" so if it seems incoherent, like my last one here did, please cut me some slack.)

I hope all the bickering I see in here will die out once we know who our candidate is. We're so much smarter than those other guys, but our great, big open minds and restless hearts may bore and lose the enthusiasm unless we cling onto the one thing that brings focus to anyone: fear.

Fear this administration. Fear four more years. And remain focused.

"Fear focuses the mind" - Bill Maher