Resisting a Universe of Pure Hatred
Do go read this post by Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings — it’s as clear a statement as I’ve ever seen about why it is objectionable when Erick Erickson vilifies all liberals, or Rush Limbaugh engages in ad hominem attacks against children, or Mark Levin screams that a caller’s spouse should kill himself.
She quotes C.S. Lewis:
Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything—God and our friends and ourselves included—as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.
Read the whole post.
No one — not liberals, not conservatives — should forget that their opponents are human beings.
I took that as a warning.
Anyway, it’s more helpful to think of your opponents as ‘being human’ — as are you, when you hate, or when you write treacly pap.
— Sargent · Jun 12, 02:28 PM · #
I would like to see hillzoy apply this level of charity to the pro-life movement.
If it turned out that Tiller was killed to settle a gambling debt, rather than because of his abortion practice, I suspect she would be disappointed.
— JohnMcG · Jun 12, 02:43 PM · #
Sargent:
“I took that as a warning.”
Compared to what alternative?
If your native tendency was to think of your opponents as angels, then yeah, you could call it a warning.
But if your tendency was to think of them as demons, monsters or brute beasts, then it’s something quite different.
It’s a reminder of your opponents’ innate personal dignity, of their capacity for reason and conscience, of their vocation to community.
Re-read the last sentence of the Lewis quotation (speaking of warnings) before going too black on the “humanity” that we all share — you, included.
— SDG · Jun 12, 02:48 PM · #
I don’t read Obsidian Wings very often, but has hilzoy written equivalent posts objecting to liberals fantasizing about Sarah Palin being gang-raped in New York, or professors describing the murdered husbands and fathers in the World Trade Center as “little Eichmanns,” or Kos saying “F—- ‘em” about American contractors being murdered in Iraq, or whatever? Most commentators of hilzoy’s persuasion appear to believe that the need for a Popular Front (“no enemies on the left”) to defeat the Bushitler regime outweigh any requirement for moral consistency.
— y81 · Jun 12, 02:58 PM · #
Y81,
I haven’t ready Obsidian Wings regularly for long enough to know the answer to your questions, but let’s imagine for a moment that Hilzoy herself is utterly inconsistent about holding her own side to account. Would that have any bearing on the point that she’s made — one that is either right or wrong, independent of Hilzoy’s own behavior?
I grow so tired of every blog argument devolving into a discussion of the author’s motives, or hypocrisy, or consistency. What’s the point?
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 12, 03:18 PM · #
Characterizing political movements by their pervading ideological reactions to events is no fault. It is a part of political discourse. Of course, not every left leaning person is going to react with the majority view, but that does not make the characterization of the majority any less true. Are you willing to argue that the left has not made a concerted effort to highlight the loss of life of US troops and Iraqi civilians as an attempt to buttress their political argument that the nation’s involvement with conflict in Iraq was ill considered and an abuse of power on the part of the President? Does the left have some other position I am not aware of on the topic? I can list a great many examples of the major media’s attempts to undermine the war and discourage the US population’s support of that effort. A major part of that effort was to highlight loss of life amongst the US military.
If we cannot make a general statement about a movement of millions because it is not correct in relation to each individual member, then we cannot discuss the movement at all.
Furthermore, this is not new ground covered for the first by Erick Erickson or Rush Limbaugh. We can both rattle off the left’s characterizations of the right as greedy, self serving, hard hearted, corrupt etc, etc. Hardly the even handed political discourse one might hope for, but this is the league that politics is played in, and it does little good to impugn one side for actions that are at least, if not more prevalent on the other.
CS Lewis is speaking in a general way about the sinful nature of man. I believe it is meant primarily as tool by which you might exam your own life, rather than the device by which you go about accusing others of evil.
We are all no strangers to evil, and Lewis understands this very well.
— nicholas · Jun 12, 03:23 PM · #
”I grow so tired of every blog argument devolving into a discussion of the author’s motives, or hypocrisy, or consistency. What’s the point?”
It is tiresome, to be sure. However, you have demonstrated yourself to
be quite capable in handling such questions, and consistently move your position forward. In my view, your response to such attempts to undermine your argument inevitably end up generating a clearer understanding of your point.
— nicholas · Jun 12, 03:33 PM · #
You don’t need C.S. Lewis to tell you this when you have Obi-Wan.
— Daniel · Jun 12, 04:24 PM · #
It is not pure hatred, but pure insanity.
“In doing so, he is attempting to solve the crisis in American identity by dealing all at once with the more concrete crises that he’s inherited. In doing so, he is reestablishing the American identity as a people who can solve the problems of their own making.
And so far, the country has followed him; an AP poll in late spring showed that, for the first time in a long while, more Americans believed the country was headed in the right direction than otherwise. This has had the effect of squeezing the opposition down to its craziest essentials until it now looks like a sharp, clear diamond of pure insanity. That’s where Commissioner Kilburn comes in, but he’s not alone. The Republican governor of Texas talked seriously about secession, which worked out so well for the country the last time. A Republican congresswoman from Minnesota proposed a constitutional amendment to keep the dollar as the official U. S. currency in perpetuity, because she thought an international cabal was trying to replace it with the euro, or the franc, or perhaps live chickens. Who could say? Other Republican politicians declined to comment without getting a “Mother, may I?” from Rush Limbaugh, and Fox News found a ratings bonanza in a raving lunatic named Glenn Beck, who is what the Peter Finch character in Network would have been had the movie been written by fourteen gibbering marmosets. Not only is there no serious opposition left to what Obama is doing, there isn’t even any effective opposition to it, a curious distinction that a number of Republicans made their careers on during the Clinton years. Obama has not only outpaced the serious ideological objections to what he has done; he’s also neutered the ridiculous ones, which often can do far more damage.”
They are all Anger Whiggas now.
And the vitriol directed at Palin was also an expression of resentment over powerlessness and fear. The left, (and the sane intelligentsia of the right btw) feared the hopelessly inadeguate Palin would ascend to office as the VP of a 72-year-old 4x melanoma survivor in a process they were powerless to prevent. So the left threw the kitchen sink at her. The demonization of Palin does and will continue though, even though the left has the power now.
As CS Lewis well knows, once you demonize someone you can’t walk it back. Palin has never recovered politically (at least not with the Obamas) from demonizing Obama during her campaign stump speeches. She reached out to him after the election and was soundly snubbed.
That is what the rightside has to consider now…..at least the rationals that are left. If you give in to the understandable human impulse to demonize the winners that have shut you out of power, you are cutting yourself off from all future treaties you might strike with them.
Like the immortal TMBG says—
Can’t shake the devils hand and say you’re only kidding.
— matoko_chan · Jun 12, 04:53 PM · #
TMBG= They Might Be Giants for the non-music-otaku among the commentariat.
— matoko_chan · Jun 12, 05:00 PM · #
“I can list a great many examples of the major media’s attempts to undermine the war and discourage the US population’s support of that effort. A major part of that effort was to highlight loss of life amongst the US military.”
Please give an example of the media “highlighting” the brave sacrifice of U.S. miltary members and what level of inattention you believe those deaths deserve.
Mike
— MBunge · Jun 12, 05:00 PM · #
“If it turned out that Tiller was killed to settle a gambling debt, rather than because of his abortion practice, I suspect she would be disappointed.”
“Suspecting” things like this about others is a pretty dangerous business. And not really honorable, in my opinion.
— just some guy with an opinion · Jun 12, 05:20 PM · #
Lewis’s point about poisoning your soul by hating is certainly right, but whether it would be wise to conform your conduct to hilzoy’s prescriptions would depend on whether she reciprocates. Generally, tit-for-tat is the appropriate strategy in contested activities.
It’s perfectly possible to engage in tit-for-tat rhetoric without poisoning your soul. As a lawyer, I argue passionately about issues (e.g., longer cure periods when I represent the borrower, shorter cure periods when I represent the lender) about which I have no genuine emotion whatsoever. I presume that for most political actors, politics is a game and/or a job, and that they are usually able to say quite venomous things about each other on one day (e.g., “they’re so far left, they’ve left America”), and work cordially the next, and depart this world with souls as unpoisoned as total depravity allows.
— y81 · Jun 12, 05:43 PM · #
Hmmm… no such thing as “the better man” in y81’s universe.
That’s probably a lousy place to live.
Fortunately, we don’t. Conor / Levin and Whelan / publius are some excellent recent examples.
— just some guy with an opinion · Jun 12, 05:52 PM · #
Well Conor,
Your quote sounds very much like all of the vilify Boooooosh! vitriol that the nation was put through over the last 8 years. Always wishing to believe the worst about their opponents, the Democrats and theor allies in the media played a steady drum-beat of doom and gloom stories about the economy, society at large, and the war on terror. And, many never missed an opportunity to either paint Boooosh! as a brain-dead doofus, mostly because of his accent (a problem that none seem to have with Cornell West), or a conniving eeeevil genius that intended to ruin everything about America and gleefully take us down the path to ruin.
What’s really amusing is how suddenly, everything has turned upbeat, the economy is looking better every day, and Olbermann doesn’t seem to mind the President playing golf while the soldiers are in the field, or enjoying an expensive evening on broadway during what is being characterised as the worse downturn since the great depression…
Issues of the left’s hypocrisy aside, you seem to feel like the right has the monopoly on hatred. I bid you just look at these few examples with intellectual honesty and you’ll see that no such exclusive franchise exists…
Best Wishes
http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2006/08/controversy_wat.html
http://michellemalkin.com/2008/03/19/assassination-chic-bush-the-only-dope-worth-shooting/
http://www.beloblog.com/WHAS_Blogs/PoliticalBlogger/2008/05/did-beshear-say-cheney-should.html
— Bob · Jun 12, 06:05 PM · #
Bob,
I seriously doubt that Connor actually believes that either end of the political spectrum is lacking in its quota of questionable personalities or viewpoints.
The point, as I understood it, is that whoever you are, making blanket assumptions about entire portions of the population based on the actions/statements of a few and letting yourself always think the worst of people who don’t see things exactly as you do is a bad way to go through life. Would you agree with that?
I am by any measure a pretty conventional Democrat, and I can tell you I certainly don’t “celebrate” when soliders die, even though I didn’t support the war. In fact, I’ve shed more than a few tears over our fallen troops. I didn’t like Bush, but I certainly didn’t want him to be killed, nor did I want him to “fail” like Rush does with Obama.
Put it this way…if being able to disagree without being entirely disagreeable (and without assuming that the person you’re disagreeing with is obviously evil/stupid/naive/misguided) isn’t going to be possible in this country, things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.
— Mike · Jun 12, 06:24 PM · #
Well, Conor does tend to post a lot about the excesses on the right, but doesn’t mention those on the left very often. It would be nice to see a bit more balance.
By the way, how about the hate-filled screeds of Andrew Sullivan? He certainly gets a lot of press around these parts, so he’s clearly on the TAS radar. He uses any epithet he can come up with against Bush and Cheney, does his best to make a public spectacle of Bristol Palin, tars a huge segment of the American electorate as “Christianist” (a term intended to associate them with the worst portions of contemporary Islam, since he sees both groups as afflicted by the same neuroses, with only a difference of degree), not to mention the endless school-yard name-calling… when I hear about the “sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible,” the first name that pops to mind is his.
Surely, there is no shortage of nasty, dehumanizing stuff said about Bush and conservatives generally.
Look, I’m conservative and it bugged the heck out of me when Limbaugh said that thing about Chelsea, and yes, the stuff said by Levin and Erickson (I don’t even know who he is) bothers me too. But angry excess and demonization of your opponents is has almost always been a feature of deliberative democracy. There’s no need for us conservatives to weaken our cause by making like we’re the only ones tainted by this vice.
— ed · Jun 12, 06:50 PM · #
Bob,
It’s nonsense to say that my statement “sounds like” the “vilify Bush” vitriol, since I neither vilify nor even mention Bush in my post. What exactly are you talking about?
And yes, there is obviously abhorrent rhetoric on the left, as I’ve noted before, and as Hilzoy herself notes. I am therefore extra disappointed that once again a commenter decides to avoid addressing the substance of the argument advanced, instead deciding to plug his ears, shout that the other side is just as bad or worse, and act as though they’ve made an actual relevant argument. Also, it was Bush’s malapropisms, inarticulateness, and inability to answer questions coherently on the fly that contributed to the inaccurate stereotype that he is stupid. You act as though it was commonplace for the mainstream left to call him an evil genius, but I think you’re wrong. Can you provide a link for any employee at the New York Times asserting that GW Bush is deliberately evil, and “gleefully” taking us “down the path to ruin?
Y81, Ill circle back to your comment at greater length soon, but for now, suffice it to say that if you think Erick Erickson is winning tit-for-tat rhetorical exchanges with the left by way of his extreme rhetoric, I think your assumptions are faulty — if anything, he is leading some on the right to delude themselves into thinking that all liberals are evil, and thereby rendering them incapable to understand what truly motivates the left — which is, after all, a useful thing to understand in an ideological contest.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 12, 07:02 PM · #
FYI The link doesn’t work.
I think a good rule is to mentally insert “a few”; “some”, “most” or “all” in front of generalizations, depending on how one feels that day. On a good day, with charity to all, you might say (a few) partisans overgeneralize; on a bad day, you might say (almost all) partisans overgeneralize.
— Bill Harshaw · Jun 12, 07:06 PM · #
Ed,
It’s true that I’ve lately posted more on the rhetorical excesses of the right than the left. There are a few reasons for that. The subsidiary reasons are that my reading has lately tended toward the right side of the blogosphere, and that while I do read center left blogs, I seldom read far left blogs, where I imagine you’d tend to find the most extreme rhetoric.
The main reason is that I’m engaged and invested in a conversation about the future of conservatism, and when I criticize illogical or hateful rhetoric on the right — especially when it is uttered by popular figures — I don’t see that as somehow advantaging liberals, I see it as strengthening conservatism. What weakens the right is a mindset that bad ideas should go unchallenged, and that rhetoric uttered by anyone on “your own side” is beyond criticism.
I am a believer in the notion that public discourse within the right has the power to act as a crucible, testing ideas and rhetoric, destroying the bad, and strengthening the good — and that our society’s public discourse is important, and suffers when some prominent figures in the ideological camp on the outs are spewing hateful nonsense on a daily basis.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 12, 07:24 PM · #
Very nicely said, Conor.
”In my view, your response to such attempts to undermine your argument inevitably end up generating a clearer understanding of your point”
I believe I was on the money.
— nicholas · Jun 12, 07:57 PM · #
“Of course, not every left leaning person is going to react with the majority view, but that does not make the characterization of the majority any less true.”
nicholas, if you seriously believe a majority of left-leaning Americans celebrate the deaths of American servicemen and servicewomen, you are as damaged as Erickson, regardless of how you choose to parse your insanity.
— Erik Siegrist · Jun 12, 08:03 PM · #
I don’t understand the inherent criticism, here. It’s because of the loss of life that the war was such a bad idea. You’re saying it’s illegitimate discourse to point that out.
How does that make any sense at all?
— Chet · Jun 12, 08:04 PM · #
What Chet said.
— Mike · Jun 12, 08:34 PM · #
Whenever US deaths in Iraq pass a round number, you can count on an almost immediate series of posts marking the “grim milestone.” There is a fine line between noting the number of deaths, and seeing more deaths as a positive development so it bolsters your argumnet, and I do think that line has been crossed in a non-negligible number of cases.
I think the same was true of Tiller’s murder. That Hillzoy responded to it with a legislative plan was a sign to me that she saw it as an opporunity to paint pro-lifers as hypocritical wingnuts and make some political hay than as a tragic event.
-
And I agree that the “but you, too!” stuff can tiresome, and perhaps we should have received the post with an open minded spirit. But it is difficult for me to take a lecture about avoiding hate from someone who was just last week drafting a legislative agenda designed to punish the entire pro-life movement for a terrible act committed by a lone man.
— JohnMcG · Jun 12, 09:21 PM · #
No there isn’t. There is an enormous line between the two. A line of profound moral, pragmatic, and ethical dimensions. It is not possible to cross it without first totally corrupting one’s humanity. It is quite obvious that Erickson really believes that ‘the left’ (a moving target that can mean anything from ‘Democrats’ to ‘liberals’ to ‘whoever I’m talking about at the moment’) is so corrupted, and this is because he is both blinded and energized by hatred. I don’t recommend you follow him.
— sidereal · Jun 12, 10:15 PM · #
JohnMcG,
I too disagreed with Hilzoy’s response to the killing of Dr. Tiller, and I think John Schwenkler among others demonstrated her wrong — but I think it’s a grave mistake to react by predisposing oneself to reject anything she subsequently argues.
After all, Hilzoy writes posts that are correct sometimes too. And if we glean her insights — even if she herself doesn’t always follow them consistently — then we’ll be rewarded with greater wisdom, a better understanding of how the world works, etc.
To say that you’ll never learn anything from anyone who ever engages in hypocrisy, or fatuous arguments, or utter wrongheadedness, is basically to say that you’ll never learn from a lot of people who are smart in many ways but flawed in some or at some times. It is to say that you’ll never learn a lot that is worth knowing.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 12, 10:29 PM · #
Personally speaking, I worry more about the wave of ignorant hatred that drove America’s most prominent man of science from his post.
— Steve Sailer · Jun 12, 11:18 PM · #
But that’s just retarded. You’re acting like Hilzoy had a legislative agenda just sitting around, maybe in a cabinet that said “break glass in case of right-wing terrorism” and the second she heard that Tiller had died, she said to herself “all right! grab the hammer, it’s go time!”
That’s insane. When tragic events happen, people can be inspired to take action. People can have their eyes opened to a threat they did not see before.
To say that you can never ever react to a tragedy or a crisis by taking action, or by promoting legislative action, is just absurd. And there’s something fundamentally broken about the conservatives who think that you can never respond to tragedy with action (unless, of course, Republicans are doing it.)
— Chet · Jun 12, 11:41 PM · #
Personally speaking, I worry more about the wave of ignorant hatred that drove America’s most prominent man of science from his post.
Sooo…..to counter that you sign on with the pitchforks and torches party? I’m sry Steve, but your cognitive dissonance is screaming so loud it hurrts my ears.
Oh! Oh! You meant Leon Kass, not Dr. Watson.
lol
— matoko_chan · Jun 13, 01:12 AM · #
Conor,
You’re right of course. I guess I’m more posting my personal reaction than mounting an argument. I’m not terriby familiar with hillzoy’s work — I have a vague memory of some fairly virulent pro-choice posts, then last week’s punish-the-pro-lifers agenda.
I think hillzoy’s post would have been more effective if she had examined how she or others on her side indulge in this same demonization, rather than just wagging her finger at the other side. This is particularly true since her second example is over a decade old.
—
Chet,
Of course you can take action. hillzoy’s action presumed the exact bad failth she was sermonizing against. To wit, that most pro-lifers approved of Tiller’s murder, and needed some punitive legislation to teach them that murder isn’t cool.
I suspect hillzoy would favor that entire agenda even if Tiller had not been murdered, and was not terribly disappointed to have a pretense to push it forward. This same is likely even more true for many of the anti-terrorism policies rolled out after 9/11.
Again, I get the sense hillzoy would have been disappointed if it turned out that Tiller’s murder was unrelated to his abortion business.
— JohnMcG · Jun 13, 02:28 AM · #
I don’t know about “most”, but it can’t be denied that a pretty significant number of them did approve. Indeed, their approval marked them as the only members of the pro-life movement who were actually pro-life in good faith, and not simply as a excuse to slut-shame and control female sexuality.
Oh, you “get the sense”? I had no idea I was talking to a Jedi. Speaking of arguing in bad faith, what possible evidence could I present that you would, under any circumstances, find more compelling than your “sense” that, under completely different circumstances, she would have been disappointed?
— Chet · Jun 13, 03:23 PM · #
OK, we can grant that Hilzoy is a dishonest harridan who will say anything for transient tactical advantage. (Google “failures of will” for an example, or see http://stonecity.blogspot.com/2005/11/will.html.) So Mr. Friedersdorf’s note might better have been prefaces with words to the effect that even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
That does not make him wrong.
— Sammler · Jun 15, 01:47 PM · #