Over the 30-odd years of consciousness I’ve had (which is to say, once I made it past the age of 25), some aspects of the United States have been encouraging, and some have been quite bewildering. In the latter category I can thrust many organizations and beliefs that, honestly, have seemed anti-rational. Some of these are a-political, such as quack medicines (homeopathy, apitherapy, acupuncture, anti-vaxxers), which can be understood, if not excused, on the theory that medicine and healing are hard subjects.
But others have found political alignments. I can think of gun rights, creation science, religious sects, movements for special religious rights, the “stewardship” just means environmental rape movement, End of Days folks, and perhaps a few which escape me at the moment, all of which have a general conservative alignment. Hell, let’s throw in the Newt Gingrich-inspired politics of No Compromise With The Liberals, because, while I can see the impetuous embracing it, I do not expect to see an entire political party being so foolish as to follow it.
Being an independent, I should, of course, have a list for the liberals, but oddly enough I don’t. I daresay some of the more daring theorists on the left do get things wrong – which I don’t fault if they’re willing to admit to it. The Antifa movement probably belongs on the liberal list of the anti-rational, although I haven’t dug into that particular movement deeply. Andrew Sullivan’s remarks concerning their University, anti-liberal declarations and actions do suggest they are anti-rational.
To return to my point, as a young person, you ambitiously think you should be able to understand these sorts of things, even if you don’t agree, but as you grow older you come around to the perspective that perhaps you’re just not bright enough to comprehend their conclusions, and you just have to accept that.
This conclusion may turn out to be wrong, though.
(What follows is premised on one data point, about which much is merely guessed at, and a huge amount of speculation. Take it with an open mind and perhaps a bit of liquor.)
There’s an implicit assumption in that position that these fellow Americans, however much I might find their position(s) to be incomprehensible, have at least reached them using honest processes and facts. But as we’ve learned during the Trump Administration, at least one of the sources of this inexplicable behavior, the NRA, has come under investigation by the FBI for possibly improper financial ties to Russia.
That’s my data point. Merely an investigation.
So let’s expand on it a trifle. Let’s stipulate, not at all unreasonably, that the Russians used their financial ties to influence the top leadership of the NRA, a group long extremist and long entrenched in that position. For example, Wayne LaPierre has been part of the NRA leadership since 1991, damn near 30 years now. And their agenda of unrestricted gun rights, the rise and fall of Dr. Lott, the use of simplistic logic concerning the arming of everyone in America, the misreading of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, and the dangers of liberals to “authentic America” has been an undoubtedly divisive approach to communicating with American society.
And who would benefit most from a divided, at each other’s throats America? Why, its greatest adversary: Russia.
It is a daunting thought to wonder just how much your fellow Americans have been influenced by a subtle, malignant national adversary, but it’s not hard to imagine. America is often a provincial place that barely believes there’s anywhere outside of its national borders, and the very thought that the whispers in our fellow Americans’ ears might be of some entity inimical to all they hold dear would and will strike them as nothing more than paranoia.
My evidence is circumstantial, without a doubt. I plead guilty to that. But I have to note that if we add in the idea of a national adversary, such as Russia, working to damage us subtly through division, then that explains many of the otherwise incredible conclusions my fellow Americans reach. For example, we clutch the results of science and technology to our very breasts, in so very many fields, and yet a substantial portion of the American citizenry is mortally offended at the very idea of biological evolutionary theory – despite the fact that both biology and medicine are premised on its very existence, and that many examples of evolution may be found in the paleontological record. Is it so hard to visualize a malignant Russia supplying financial and ideological aid to the Discover Institute, the prime supplier of the utterly ludicrous creation science position of Intelligent Design? No, it’s not. I’m not suggesting that they needed to create it, since opposition to evolutionary theory has existed for just as long as evolutionary theory has existed – but simply boosting what would otherwise be an obscure position populated by loonies is an easy enough thing to do, if you have national resources with which to do it.
One more example: the obduracy of the Republicans over the last twenty years. It is an aphorism that elections have consequences, and a tradition that the parties will cooperate in governing the nation. Furthermore, it’s compromise is good policy, as it permits us to link arms and dip our toes into what may be quicksand, rather than abhor the “enemy” and tumble headfirst into treacherous currents. The Republicans have demonstrated the foolishness of obduracy time over time since the 90s, between farming legislation that left egg on their faces, the passing of the ACA without any Republican support in the face of soaring health insurance rates which left even software engineers financially gasping, and a Republican hypocrisy towards Federal financial matters of a magnitude which left the serious observer breathless at its brazen dishonesty; and, no doubt, other examples.
Many, many attempts were made to explain these frankly crass and dishonorable Republican behaviors, but one that was hardly ever mentioned was the possibility that their behaviors were neither the result of inborn character defects nor simple corporate corruption, but the subtle influence, financial and cultural, of a national adversary who found the Republicans a good subject for manipulation. Not that the left has not been the subject of manipulation during the Cold War, for this has been well-documented.
But now it may be the Republicans’ turn.
OK, enough with the wide-eyed speculation, because, beyond the nugget of investigation of the NRA, there’s nothing definite, nothing to wrap around our hands around. But, if you stipulate it, then you have ask:
How do we fix it? How do you overcome conservative denial that their culture has been controlled by an enemy? By what icons do you draw their eyes from the prisms through which they view anything and demonstrate that they’ve been misled?
In some fields, it’s a simple case of logic. In others … the present generation, and perhaps the next, will simply have to die out. Some problems cannot be fixed.
But it’s something worth contemplating.
