Questions Unanswered

[billroper]

I spend very little time actually on Facebook, because I find that I am unlikely to actually learn anything that I really wanted to know there, including what my friends are doing. But I happened to be browsing there yesterday and ran across a question from a friend of mine which I will paraphrase here and attempt to answer from my point of view, since no actual answer seemed to be forthcoming there.

Preface: the last time that I took a questionnaire on my politics, it was a two-axis result that showed that I was about the smallest possible gradation to the right of center and about halfway toward the libertarian end on the authoritarian/libertarian axis, so it is probably fair to classify me as a moderate small-l libertarian, which means that I don't want to eliminate government, but I am often deeply skeptical of how it operates in practice.

The paraphrased question: Why are all these conservative SF/fantasy people having conniptions lately?

Well, that's a darned fine question that deserves a more serious answer than "They're all crazy," which is pretty much the sort of answer that I saw on Facebook. So let me take a run at it.

Back in 2004, a liberal friend of mine asked me how I put up with the general snark that fandom, which -- on average -- skews pretty liberal, frequently directs toward non-liberals. And I sort of shrugged and said, "You get used to it."

Of course, it doesn't mean that you enjoy it. :)

Lately, however, fandom seems to be working at excommunicating the heretical. And I think that, more than anything else, is motivating the aforementioned "crazy".

My brother-in-law, jeff_duntemann, posts fairly frequently on the dangers of tribalism. And I think that in this case, we are seeing the results of the demonization of the political "other".

I have mused to myself lately that variant politics should as a matter of custom and law receive the same level of respect that variant religion does, recognizing that religion is enshrined in the Bill of Rights and that politics is not. But both of these things are based on various levels of unprovable belief and it doesn't strike me that it is particularly easier for someone to change their politics than it is for them to change their religion -- assuming, of course, that the given individual actually has any particular level of belief as opposed to either opportunism or the tendency to go along with the group. Those who are sufficiently motivated are invited to perform the experiment: what would it take for you to abandon your religious beliefs and adopt some other? And what about your political beliefs? I'll be here when you get back... :)

Now, contemplate that we have vast machines in this country -- and probably in other countries too, but let me stick with the U.S. here -- that are dedicated to the demonization of the political other. The core objective of MSNBC and Fox News -- and, I believe, to a lesser extent every extant news organization -- is to get you good and riled up about something. And they are really good at it and actual facts don't need to have anything to do with it.

And we are losing our collective minds as a result. (So going back to the "They're all crazy" comment that I started from, I assert that "We are all crazy", pretty much irrespective of what our politics are.)

One of the people who works on Windycon with me advised me that I should not invite someone as a guest who is socially liberal and fiscally conservative, because he would be "divisive". And rest assured that it was not the socially liberal part that he was objecting to. So you can be a vocal proponent of gay marriage, but if you think that the government is spending too much money, you're anathematized. What are we coming to?

Another friend of mine recently worried on-line that her husband could lose his job if the local folks knew what her religion was. Let me introduce her (and the rest of you) to Sarah Hoyt, SF author, Portuguese emigre, and political conservative. And do you know what?

She worries about just the same sort of thing that you do. Except in her case, she spent a great deal of time worrying about her ability to sell anything she wrote if the publishers knew what her politics were. She eventually found a happy home at Baen, where authors with politics as disparate as Hoyt and Eric Flint seem to be able to coexist on the publisher's list.

(I have no idea how good a fiction writer Hoyt is, as all I've read is her blog. My reading time is pretty limited due to little girls. The last book I read was Seanan's Discount Armageddon; immediately before that was Krauthammer's Things That Matter. I am eclectic. :) )

I happened to bounce over to Larry Correia's blog as I followed a link about one of the recent kerfluffles. (Aside: a friend whose opinion I trust is working through the trilogy of novels that Correia wrote, one of which is nominated for the Hugo, and says it's pretty good.) And do you want to know something interesting?

It read exactly like the Facebook thread that prompted this post. Only the good guys and the bad guys were interchanged. So X was tripe and Y was genius, or maybe it was the other way around.

To paraphrase S.J. Tucker, "We're all mad here, and it is not ok."

My lovely bride, Gretchen, occasionally remarks that "Just because something is not to your taste, it doesn't mean that it's bad." And that is true of fiction, and music, and politics, and religion, and all manner of things.

It is very possible for decent human beings to disagree about things and continue to be decent human beings on both sides of the disagreement.

What you think is funny may be offensive (or possibly just unfunny) to the next person and vice versa. Rush Limbaugh is equally as much a comedian as Jon Stewart. And they're both trying to rile you up.

Don't let them. We are way too riled up already.

The people who want to rile you up want you to be their tool.

Don't be a tool.

Be the shaper and maker of good things instead.

Comments

[madfilkentist]

Yes, I've noticed it too.

Maybe the dynamics of the Internet are part of it. We once thought that the Internet would bring people together are promote greater mutual understanding, and sometimes it really does that. But it also allows people to gather in self-selected, mutually reinforcing clusters, so that they hear nothing but opinions that agree with their own, and it becomes easier for them to think that no sane, good person could hold anything but those opinions. Caricatures of the opposition become easier to believe as realistic portraits. Skepticism on any point becomes heresy.

Sometimes I come down on one side of a controversy in some respects and the other side in other respects. To give a real example, one person said something stupid, and another threatened to sue everyone who retweeted it. I noted both the stupidity of the remark and the worse stupidity of threatening a shotgun lawsuit. In that case, I think I confused people more than I antagonized anyone, since I wasn't following anyone's script properly.

I try to deal with it the best I can. Often I lose patience. I need to get better at patience.

[catalana.livejournal.com]

I think part of the problem is that the fringes of the Republican party are very loud right now, which makes people react. And it's true - I *don't* have much respect for people who think that other people don't deserve basic rights because they are different in skin color/sexuality/religion/whatever. That flavor of social conservative and I aren't going to get on.

Unfortunately, there is currently nowhere for the socially liberal and fiscally conservative to go. And that's a group of people who, if they are choosing to go Republican, are tending to get tarred with the same brush as the extreme Christian right who think atheists, gay people, communists, and probably academics are all equally evil.

Personally, I've made a choice mostly to vote Democratic right now because I can't endorse candidates that deny the equality of other people. But I recognize that I'm making a compromise on certain pragmatic fiscal values I have too.

That's one reason why I try hard not to get too much into these debates; I actually have friends I respect on pretty much all possible sides, as I don't tend to have friends who hate gay people/non-white/whatever. I think our political system is just very broken right now and everyone is pretty much being encouraged to hate the opposition- which is very not useful. Sigh.

[patoadam]

EDIT: I have edited this comment to replace the calender year data I previously used with fiscal year data.

I was a registered Republican for many years, mainly because I was represented by a Republican Congressman (Pete McCloskey) who was honest, ethical, and dedicated to serving the public interest.

I share much of your concern about structural budget deficits. I don't see that as a reason to prefer Republicans because I don't see any evidence that Republicans are fiscally responsible.

As you know, Clinton balanced the budget, and then GWB spent it all on an unfunded expansion of Medicare, two unfunded wars, and two tax cuts that mainly benefited the wealthy. GWB's last budget, for the federal fiscal year 2009 beginning in October 2008, had a deficit of 9.8% of GDP. Obama has reduced the deficit to 4% of GDP.

Here is a graph of federal fiscal year budget deficits from the end of World War II through 2016. Deficits for 2014 through 2016 are estimated. The blue bars represent budgets passed under Democratic administrations. Every Republican President since Eisenhower has increased the budget deficit as a share of GDP, and every Democratic President since Kennedy has decreased it. The data comes from the Office of Management and Budget, Table 1.3.

EDIT: Thank you for your insightful comment, without which I would not have looked this stuff up.


"Ignore everything they say and only pay attention to what they do." -- Randy Pausch

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I am sorry to report that variant religion does not actually get all that much respect.

For the rest, I will think about what you have said.

[billroper]

I'll agree that variant religion doesn't get as much respect as it should, but it seems to get a lot more than variant politics does.

Good luck!

[madfilkentist]

It depends a lot on geography, and you're in one of the less respectful parts of the US.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Of *both* my religion *and* my politics, yes.

Whereas the two or three weekends a year I spend in fandom are one of the few places my religious views get as much--or nearly--respect as any other, if not as much as Christianity gets where I live.

And my handful of weekends in fandom is the place where my politics get almost as much respect as conservative politics get where I live.

What a shame (for me, anyway) that I can only live in fandom a few weekends a year.

[mia-mcdavid.livejournal.com]

Bless you, yes. Speaking as a liberal who still remembers that liberals and conservatives used to work together, and that the tension between the two points of view used to be constructive, I agree with all my heart. It needs to be about the public good, not about sticking it to the other side.

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

"Why are all these conservative SF/fantasy people having conniptions lately"

I really need to get my eye to brain linkage fixed. My first read had "conventions" where you had "conniptions", and I was wondering why I hadn't heard about this new set of cons.

That said, I've been very off-put by the level of thought-crime policing we have lately. Not saying anything about it because to mention it is to be found guilty by the thought-crime police.

Yeah, that makes me part of the problem.

[madfilkentist]

Incidentally, I looked over jeff_duntemann's LJ as a result of your mention, found he writes interesting stuff, and have added him to my flist.

[purpleranger.livejournal.com]

You only read one book at a time?

[filkermanque.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of political persuasion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."