Yet More Thoughts

I should stop this, I know -- this business of thinking.  Especially since the things I've been thinking today are making me even more depressed.  In my first flush of anger and disappointment and terror at the idea of four more years (and its many decades of aftermath), I have been indulging in the pleasures of outraged self-righteousness.  My complaints won't do any good in the long run, but in the short run, it was rather cathartic to sit here and have a good fit of judgmental carping and blame-laying.

But now I've gotten some things out of my system, I have to face the ideas that are left.   And they are the ones that really depress me, because it all seems a lot more hopeless now than it did while I was ranting.  At least while I was venting, I could cast all the Bush voters as either evil or stupid and hold myself up against them as smarter and more tolerant, etc.  So, yeah, the US might be going to hell, but at least I could feel sort of good about myself.  But the truth is, nothing is that simple. 

Of course it would be comforting and easier to think that everyone who disagrees with me has gone over to the Dark Side, but life is a lot messier than that.  Most of the people who voted for Bush are decent and honest, even kind.  They want a good world, and they genuinely see me and people like me (liberals, I mean, not just lesbians) as threats to everything they believe in.  They are as scared of me and my ilk as we are of them.  We see them as narrow and sanctimonious and intolerant--and dangerous; they see us as godless and profligate and immoral--and dangerous.  For most people, there really isn't much middle ground.

So where do we go from here?  That's what worries me most.  Not Bush, bad as he is.  He's a simplistic demagogue and seriously un-bright, and I'm confident the eventual harsh judgments of history will take care of him.  But how are we going to cross this cultural divide? The Republicans and the religious right aren't going to convince me; I'm not going to convince them.  I'm not going to stop fighting and voting for the things I believe are right; neither are they.  I'm not going to stop thinking that they are just plain wrong.  And they will continue to think the same of me.

So now what?  Part of me would like to think that I'm just over-reacting, that I'm indulging in melodrama again, this time by creating a too-strict binary of us versus them.  Maybe this whole "cultural divide" thing is just another media-fueled bit of extremist hype.  I know a lot of religious and conservative people (like, um, half my family), and they are well-meaning and thoughtful.  They aren't knee-jerk Moral Majority zealots.  When we talk, we find a lot of middle ground, a lot of mutual understanding.

But then again. . .I also know a lot of people (on both sides) who are infuriatingly bigoted and rigid and not interested in even hearing a different point of view.  Or are so geared to their own comfort and financial self-interest that they don't give a damn about anything else (a particular businessman in-law of mine comes to mind.)  And the "divide" thing can't be a total media fabrication:  just look at the almost-even vote split; just look at that red-and-blue US map. 

In the end, it doesn't matter that most people on both sides are well-meaning.  A hell of a lot of harm can be (and has been) wrought by the well-meaning.  I'm no relativist; I'm not trying to suggest that the cultural divide is just a matter of different, equally-acceptable opinions.  It's true that everyone is entitled to hir opinion, but it's not true that every opinion is therefore valid.  I think the liberal cultural view is more objectively supportable than the conservative one.  I believe that many of the policies and goals of the Right are dangerously misguided (to put it mildly.)  But that brings me right back to where I started:  the Right thinks the same of Lefties like me.  This problem is far bigger than just a single election. 

That's why I'm so dissatisfied with a lot of the post-mortem analysis I'm reading on-line and in magazines.  Most of it has focused on "how can the Dems get elected in 2008?"  That's a good question, but it's not the most important one right now.  (And as far as answering that question goes, the solution is not, as some commentators have appallingly suggested, for the Democrats to become more religious and more "mainstream."  I want an America that has room for the non-religious and the non-mainstream.  Anyway,  it's hard to imagine how the Dems could move much father right than they already are, unless they just want to throw in the towel and call themselves Republicans.  I mean, if the Kerry campaign represents a "too-far-left" viewpoint [as I read in one column today] then we might as well start calling Reagan a leftist.  Maybe it's true that if the Dems did move farther right, they could get elected.  But what would be the point of electing a Democratic president who is indistinguishable from a Republican one?  Kerry was practically already there as it was.)

The most important question, to me, is to find out how we can start genuinely communicating with each other again.  I can hardly believe I'm writing this -- me, a loud-mouthed, totally opinionated cynic, calling for "communication."  If this were a movie, here's where the camera would switch to a soft-focus shot of multi-colored children playing in a meadow, with disembodied voices humming "Kumbaya" in the background. 

But what else can we do except try to talk, to find workable meeting points that don't compromise basic American principles?  Should we keep demonizing each other?  Get  the Northeast and West Coast to secede from the Union?  (Hey. . .there's an idea.)  What should we do?  Tell me.  I want answers, people!