oselle: (Prince Nurse)
oselle ([personal profile] oselle) wrote2008-09-23 07:56 pm
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Newsflash: Old Dog (me) Learns New Trick



A co-worker, let's call him Bob, whom I know is an avowed conservative, came into my office and "happened" to see an old issue of Adweek magazine on my bookshelf. The issue had a Keith Olbermann coverwrap, touting his ratings success.

"Oh, I hate that guy!" he exclaimed. I didn't take the bait. He kept dangling it. "Number One in ratings? What? When? Against Bill O'Reilly?" I continued to ignore him. "When was this?"

"It's an old issue," I muttered and proceeded to start typing furiously until he left.

I know Bob was trying to draw me into a conversation about politics and I wasn't having it. Just a few years ago, maybe even a few months ago, I would have dived right in. But I've come to realize that having a conversation with a die-hard conservative is like trying to have one with an untreated schizophrenic. You will never get the madman to believe that those voices he hears and things he sees are not real. And you will never get a conservative to believe that the Republican/conservative agenda is not good, even great, for America.

I know Bob. I know that he gets his news from Fox and his opinions from Bill O'Reilly. He has admitted as much to me, and expounded on how much "sense" O'Reilly makes, how truly "balanced" Fox News is compared to the rest of the media. He is hearing voices and seeing things, and there is no convincing him that they are not real. The whole real world -- you know, the one where we've been in a hopeless war for more than five years, the one where a city drowned in its own sewage, the one that's sinking into the worst financial catastrophe since the Great Depression -- is perceived through a filter of conservative fantasy. It's such deeply rooted magical thinking that it cannot be dislodged, not even the littlest bit.

In some ways, I envy Bob. I would like to believe, as he does, that our leaders care about us and are doing all they can to protect us. That the war in Iraq has made the world a safer place. That a taxpayer-funded $700 billion bailout of Wall Street fatcats will ultimately benefit people like me. I would like to believe that I will always have access to the best healthcare, that global warming is nothing but Chicken Little science fiction, and that all our energy problems can be solved just by sinking a few oil rigs off the coastline. Believing these things must give Bob great comfort, comfort that I don't have.

But Bob has his own fears too, and the fact that they are as fictitious as the madman's hallucinations does not make them any less real, or any less terrifying, to him. He fears the crippling tax increase that Democrats would impose on the middle class. He fears the immigrant horde pouring over our borders. He fears the shiftless poor who buy houses they can't afford. He fears the lazy unemployed who want him to pay for their prescriptions. He fears the unchallenged bias of a powerful liberal media. Perhaps he also fears the War on Christmas although at least he's Jewish so he might be spared that particular terror -- but then again, Bill O'Reilly has told him to worry about it, so maybe he does. These imaginary, invented bogeys are the things that keep Bob up at night.

I feel like I've met two types of conservatives in my life -- I mean, real-folks conservatives, not politicians or pundits or lobbyists. The first type is just an out-and-out asshole. Kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out! More war, less taxes! America, love it or leave it!

The second type is like Bob -- someone who, on a personal level, is basically a nice guy, a good guy to know, even a good friend. But he is just as dangerously insane as the first type. Not vicious and cruel like the first but so completely fogged in by magical thinking that he has lost all ability to perceive reality. Real threats are inventions of some "liberal media." Trivial or wholly fictitious threats are matters of heart-stopping urgency.

Bob is a nostalgist. He sits in his office and plays lounge music from the Fifties and early Sixties. He talks wistfully about the good old days, growing up in Brooklyn in some idyllic doo-woppy era when he knew everyone on the block and the world made sense to him. I think he embraces conservatism because it seems to put that "sense" back into his world. I think that's why a lot of ordinary people embrace it, even when it's clearly against their own interests. It's magical thinking. We all do it to some extent. The real world can be such a hard thing to face. But conservatives like Bob embrace magical thinking until they go mad. There is no talking to them. There is no reasoning. There is no debating.

That is what this old dog has finally learned.

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