Everything I Need to Know About the Regressive Right I Learned In Junior High
Regressive conservatives aren’t really so hard to figure out. You just need to know the key.
It’s junior high.
Remember those delightful years of comity and enlightenment, comradeship, maturity and social inclusiveness?
Yeah, me neither.
For most folks, those junior high years might as well have been a Wes Craven movie, full of Freddies and Jasons and metaphorical (not to mention the occasional actual) chain-saw murderers. And why wouldn’t they be? Throw a bunch of incredibly immature kids together into a big building, pump them up full of raging hormones and self-centered, consumer-driven, amped-up, self-absorbed me-ism, and see what happens. No need to even light a match.
I suspect that for most of us, these were the nightmare years of awkwardness, emotional pinball, and deep wounds over small slights. Oh, and zits, too - just in case you were somehow feeling too good about yourself on any given day.
But for those of you who have for some reason been wishing that you could return to those golden years, I’ve got news for you: You already have! That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. Courtesy of the regressive right and its Grand Old Party (and isn’t it just grand?), we’re reliving all those many joys again and again.
But here’s the good news: Once you understand this, there’s no longer any mystery to figuring out these clowns.
That’s ‘cause everything you need to know about the regressive right you already learned in junior high.
For instance:
- Elitism Is For Elites! What’s wrong with some people having all the goodies and most everybody else having little or none? That whole egalitarianism critique is for tenth-graders, man! When you’re in junior high, though, it all just makes perfect sense. Certain golden children were born to rule, and the rest were born to have it lauded over us, when we weren’t being laughed at, that is! You can certainly see that today in regressive policies on war and taxes, to name just two. Rich people paying taxes or Republicans going to Vietnam? Pshaw! Why do you think they keep us hoi polloi around, anyhow, other than to fight their wars and pay their tax bills?!?!
- Personal Destruction Is Cool! Have you ever looked at guy like Karl Rove or Tom DeLay and wondered how any human could be capable of such incredible meanness, such personal savagery? The answer is simple: Only somebody who is permanently stuck in junior high mode could do such things. Remember how they called us traitors - even those of us who had given up three of our four limbs in Vietnam - because we opposed their war of lies? Remember how they made up vicious lies about even their own people in order to win elections? Does that ring any bells from your own experience? If there’s anything meaner than a junior high kid, I don’t know what it is. Screw the Manhattan Project. Heck, we already had the world’s nastiest weapons of mass destruction at our disposal!
- It’s A Really Scary World Out There. When you’re in junior high, things happen to you, not the other way around. You aren’t exactly very much in control of your own life, other than by being willing to play the one card you’ve got: non-cooperative self-destruction. It isn’t exactly a moment replete with high quantities of personal agency. But I’m struck by how many regressives seem stuck in that crouch of reactionary fear and militant defensiveness, well beyond their adolescence. Sure, we’re all still subjected to the whims of nature and the exigencies of other people’s actions to a considerable extent. But, as adults, we also get the option of controlling our own destiny to an equally considerable extent. There’s no longer any reason to continually feel like frightened, mistrusting, targeted, cornered victims anymore, nor to act selfishly and aggressively in every situation because of those fears. Humans can mature and learn to cooperate. That’s one of the key lessons you’re supposed to learn as you move toward adulthood.
- Lying, Cheating, Secretiveness and Hypocrisy Will Get You What You Want. Junior high kids aren’t exactly the paragons of virtue. Not that anyone who even occasionally reads the news these days could continue to suffer under the illusion that even paragons of virtue are paragons of virtue. Can you say ‘Catholic Church’? ‘Closeted Republicans’? ‘Major League Baseball’? ‘Bush administration’? But I digress. The point is just this. We expect a certain degree of moral impropriety from adolescents, don’t we? That’s their job, and ours is to set them straight so that they’ll be good citizens and cooperative campers for the rest of their lives. Take a look at Dick Cheney, though. Here’s a guy who figures that he should be able to do and say anything he wants to, anytime he wants to, and get away with it. Including even having a few stiff belts then blasting you in the face with a shotgun! Or dropping the American military into your neighborhood to deliver some white phosphorous. And there’s just a whole bunch of folks like that running around these days, I regret to say. They’re called the Republican Party.
- Tantrums Will Get You What You Want. Did you know that the GOP minority in the Senate has already filibustered to death more legislation in less than half a term than the hapless Democrats did during the entire previous term? Not that it particularly matters. Even if the Congress chosen by the people was actually allowed to do its job by the likes of Mitch McConnell, Young Bushenstein in the White House has already threatened to veto anything they might do, not that any of it is even remotely progressive, anyhow. There was a telling article in the New York Times last week about how when the Republicans were in the majority they war-gamed out all the tactics the Dems might have used in order to block the GOP from accomplishing their legislative agenda. Turns out almost none of them got used. Till now, that is. Now that they are in the minority, the GOP is wielding every trick in the book. As far as I’m concerned, you could stop right there and you’d know just about everything there is to know about both parties. One never forgot everything they could get from adults by throwing the occasional strategically placed obstructionist tantrum. The other maybe got a bit ‘too mature’ and definitely too polite, and can’t figure out how to win any fights, even if people’s lives depended on them. Which they do.
- Thinking For Yourself Is Highly Frowned Upon. Junior high is nothing if not a giant trend machine. Heck, entire multi-billion dollar fashion, music and gadget industries depend on this fact. Woe be upon anyone who makes the mistake of showing up in some kind of unhip frock or listening to the wrong music selection! The humiliation! The ostracization! Hey, does any of this sound familiar? Have you ever noticed how few regressives allow themselves to think the unthinkable, perhaps muttering out loud, “Gee, it does seem perhaps as though the president might have been just a tad dishonest about the Iraq war”? Have you noticed what happens to them on the rare occasion that this occurs? But now that we’re adults, now that we’re no longer in junior high, shouldn’t we stop acting like a bunch of Stepford Wives, doing what we’re told to do, believing what we’re supposed to believe just because Rush told us “He’s a bad man!”, or our preacher said, “He’s a good man!”? Or, “She’s a feminazi and she’ll bring socialized medicine to America!”? Don’t grown-ups think for themselves? Isn’t that one of the key ways in which they’re different from junior high kids?
- Girls Are Really, Really Scary. Any honest and probing assessment of right-wing politics today leads inexorably back to the unavoidable observation that regressives are obsessed with sexuality and everything even remotely related to it, right down to blastocysts and stem-cells. What’s up with that? What’s up with that is a deeply-held constellation of fears and insecurities that men have concerning women, and a resulting desire to control them - and especially their sexuality - in order to compensate for those feelings. Frankly, that alone explains a lot about conservative politics in America these days. You can stop right there and get maybe eighty percent of the picture. And if it reminds you of the same mentality that would wrap women in burkas, or make them the property of men, or burn them alive if their husbands die before they do, or subject them to a 200-lash whipping for the crime of being gang-raped, well then, so it does, and so it should. I’m not sure where these attitudes come from. Maybe Maureen Dowd or some anthropologist somewhere can explain them according to some Darwinian logic. What I do know, however, is that healthy males are supposed to out-grow such feelings, along with tantrums and bad taste in music, as they mature. And what I know for sure is that all these right-wings monsters who are continually trying to control everyone else’s sexuality while secretly wrestling rather unsuccessfully with their own twisted tendencies are the last people who should ever be given a license to legislate.
- It’s All About Me! And, really, after all - isn’t it? At least if you’re a conservative, it is. Didn’t you get the memo? I mean, what’s the whole point of even having a planet if it can’t be there to serve your every whim and cater to your every need? Why even bother having other people around if they can’t be your personal human resources department to exploit? Get it? Now you’re ready to sign-up for the GOP! Women, minorities and definitely everyone who lives outside America belong to the servant class, and their job is to make sure you get your out-sized portion of the pie. Yes, even if that means exploitive labor practices so that you can get grossly expensive fashion brands at a price that guarantees massive profits for the manufacturer. Yes, even if that means killing a million Iraqis (who probably deserve it, anyhow, since they were stupid enough to pitch their tents on top of our oil). Yeah, even if it means blocking any serious efforts to mitigate the global warming crisis, while we five percent of the world’s population continue to manufacture twenty-five percent of the entire planet’s heat-inducing pollutants. Hell, why not go one further and even deny that global warming exists. Science? Screw that. We’re partying! Get it, now? Heck, these days good regressives have gotten so selfish they’re even screwing their own children by leaving them massive debt borrowed to finance our party and our tax cuts. The kids are being forced to pick up the bill, now at nine trillion dollars and rising. Are you having fun yet? Well, I don’t really care, because it’s all about me, not you! And you’re definitely some sort of communist if you ever thought otherwise!
I don’t know about you, but I thought once around through junior high was enough for this lifetime. I’ve never been particularly anxious to relive the experience. Imagine my consternation, therefore, when the George Bushes and Dick Cheneys of the world arrived on the scene to subject us all once again to the nightmare of junior high - this time on steroids, and irradiated like a giant tomato.
It’s bad enough when you’re twelve, and likely to get whacked by a spit-ball, or smacked down by some devastating verbal cut. If you can imagine taking angry, aggressive kids like that and giving them napalm instead of spit-balls, or John Bolton foaming and snapping at the UN in place of schoolyard taunts, you’ve got the picture.
Unfortunately, no act of imagination is any longer required. We’ve been living it.
Hey, we don’t even allow freaked-out, immature, mood-swinging, devil-incarnate, little junior high brats to get behind the wheel of a car, let alone drive a country. And for good reason. You know?
So who the hell handed these terminal adolescents keys to the ship of state?
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers’ reactions to his articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net
How scary and how to the point. I have an 11 y/o who is due to hit middle school soon enough, and I have my own horrid memories of Middle School, too. In short… BULLIES… are everywhere.
Middle School is the bully society, where ‘adults’ are the biggest bullies, and the kids copy them. In our government the Middle School kids and bullying administrative ‘adults’ are one and the same people. And they intend to both bully the world and any American people who don’t go along with their bullying campaign.
After 9 11 someone told me that the Us attitude towards other countries is like a kid in elementary school approaching the new kid and saying: “be my friend or I will stab you with this pencil.”
This is the absolutely best I have ever read from David Michael Green and that’s saying something because he is a fine and funny writer. Has there ever been a better metaphor for the “hooray for me and to hell with everybody else” mentality on display since Ronald Reagan than the dysfunction of Junior High school? I think not.
Since Ronnie uttered from his dementia challenged mind his famous maxim, “government is not the solutiohn, government is the problem”, every successive adminstration that has followed has in the height of sarcastic irony proven the maxim by the way they have governed.
We the people not only handed them the keys, we built the infrastructure being used to destroy the country. Someone said a long time ago that a country gets the kind of government that it deserves. I used to believe that, but I don’t anymore. The American people don’t deserve what their government is doing to them. Their government only responds to the needs of Corporate America. Their elected officials are more concerned with what is politically safe for their career, than responding to the voice of the people. And to stoop so low and use religion to justify their behavior has become standard political practice. America, sadly in their time of greatest need, doesn’t have a Statesman to start to stop the process.
Hoa binh
The only problem with this essay is the fact that he seems to think that Republicans are the problem. Wow, that’s like pointing at the jocks only (to continue the Junior High metaphor) while completely ignoring the fact that not many kids are jocks, in fact the MAJORITY aren’t, but the non-jocks go right on along with the same mindset. Yeah, it’s usually a jock who comes up with the new insulting nickname but the snobby elites (the Dem leadership) come up with their share too.
I know, the snobs spend a small amount of time pretending to be your friend (if they have a selfish reason to do so, of course) but when it comes down to brass tacks, they take their OWN (not their team, their own personal self) side every single time. No matter how trivial their gain to your massive loss, they’ll choose to personally benefit.
If and when these two groups are allowed to govern the social system (as they do in both Jr High and ‘grown up’ government) the selfishly indifferent masses, who DO (normally) have some empathy for one another, begin to follow the pack alphas. The alphas show how much fun it is to attack the masses (perceived as individuals by the ‘mass’ of the masses, perceived as just another one of ‘them’ by the ruling groups) and poof, you start removing the empathy and replacing it with prejudice and dismissal.
Yeah, I think the author was spot on but failed to see the full implications and analogous relationships present in his thought experiment.
We choose the wrong people to call ‘leaders’. We choose the wrong example to follow. I was guilty of it then (but to a lesser degree, being an object of some ridicule myself, thus never completely losing the empathy, even with those I ridiculed myself) but no longer. I will not put people who are less capable than even uneducated ole’ me in a position of authority above me. I will not be connived into believing that putting these morally contemptable individuals in power is ‘expedient’ or ‘practical’ or ‘wise’ in any way shape or form, to do so is to empower those who destroy for personal gain.
Stand up to the bullies instead of propping them up and we MIGHT JUST stand a chance. Don’t let anyone convince you to vote for destruction out of ‘political expedience’, vote for the PERSON, not the PARTY.
Let me add my wows for the article.
I was perceived as one of the “haves” at school. Never got good grades but had my own magazine, was in plays, in team and individual sports .
I realized people’s perception about me as someone who did not listen and could not be negotiated with.
I did an about face in college. Now it seems like no one is listnening to me.
Great Response by Neomunk, by the way.
Neomunk also has a point.
Those who can do.
Remember that Paul Revere got the attention of people. There were others before him who shouted that the British Were Coming, but he got people’s attention.
tryibg to fleshing it out… regressive conservatives, perhaps also a regressive nation?
Political regression or psychological (developmental) regression -or is there interdependency? What are key stressors?
When a stressor takes precedence, can an entir e country of “individuals” collectively have the same experience and then behave in a synchronized way? 911 is used as a benchmark for our country’s “development”. “Everything changed after 911” A common phrase. “Never Forget”., ?
I was moved by the events of 9-11, but could I also regress? Am I personally in control of my facilities? Am I susceptible to a national identity? If so, could the identity be programed? Is there a conspiracy keeping us all in a regressive state of existence where we individually feel responsible, accountable, or connected even if we are 2000 miles apart?
Identity politics and nationalism are both intoxicating extensions of the self? Are we capable of transcending beyond the concept of national identity?
Can a people be convinced, perhaps manipulated, into operating at the first order of political identity? Thus, our political partnership is reduced to what a national political arm(y) campaigns?ˇˇ
Once Bush came into office, all the bullies in the country felt validated. Bullying seemed to become acceptable behavior, or at least more openly employed behavior.
Bullies do not flourish in an environment that ‘frowns’ on their behavior.
I guess Bush misunderstood the meaning of ‘the bully pulpit’!
I’ve long thought that people never really get over high school, especially those most wounded by it; they just keep replaying that adolescent politics well into–”adulthood”, for lack of a better term. People don’t really grow up, they just get older.
So if you look at the neo-cons, their agenda amounts to a sort of “revenge of the nerds” that has had tragic results for much of the world.
Maybe David Michael Green should consider teaching sociology along with political science. The two disciplines often intermingle.
Very good, David Green!!! You have covered most of the reasons that our nation is tottering on the edge of the cliff. I also think neomunk has a point, that many of the people in any group are not basically mean or evil, but are just following the so-called leaders. It does not seem to me that average people are as aware of what is really going on and how it affects our country as previous generations were. This may be partly due to the problem of too much of almost anything these days. We are overcome with entertainment, sports, information, television and computer use, financial worries, fads, gadgets, music, and on and on. In simpler times, it was customary to visit about political and governmental matters at every opportunity because people were not frantically trying to keep up and do all the right things. Children are important and need to be given a great start in life, but possibly not occupying center stage while their parents devote every extra minute to their desires. I do not think these are an excuse for putting people such as Bush and Cheney in office twice, but could account for some of how it could happen. One hates to think that conditions have to get impossible to maintain before average people will begin to think for themselves and stop letting others do it for them.
This points to the true failure, and that is the regressive way we educate our children. The lack of imagination we display is astounding. Our children at that age are primed to learn life long behaviors and ways of thinking. Surely we can create schools where we teach ethics and conflict resolution using role playing. It seems to me that we could bring out the best in our children, and let them teach us in the process. They often have powerfully creative ideas at that age, and we need an educational model that gives them a chance to access those ideas and implement them. We also need to have a way for them to experience being of service to the community as part of their education. And to have a safe structure for using their bodies in physical activity. Unless this is addressed, we can hope and wish that the bullies who learned their ways at the crazy factory we call junior high will “grow out of it” all we want. Hasn’t it been amply demonstrated that that is not going to happen?
I wonder if I can recommend “Broken Government” by John W. Dean (Yes, of Nixon/Watergate saga). I haven’t yet read it all, but the last two paragraphs of the main text are relevant to the current discussion. They contain the words attributed to a lifelong republican as follows “People should not vote for _any_ Republican, because they’re dangerous, dishonest and self-serving.”
That would also explain the right-wing habit of calling anyone they don’t like gay.
I haven’t just become older without growing up. At 54 I’m more creative now than at any previous point in my life. I haven’t had any contact whatsoever with anyone from my high school since the day I graduated. None. I moved to a different state two weeks after graduation and never looked back. Where you have real problems is in so-called “conservative” areas of the country, small towns, where most of the people graduate from high school and just stay there. The former football stars become the cops and the former science nerds become the doctors and the former student council president becomes the mayor and the former cheerleaders become the high society hostesses and the former band members become the band parents and the former children of lawyers become the lawyers and the former children of business owners become the Chamber of Commerce members and the former children of the impoverished become the soldiers and the former children of the high school guidance councilor become the convicted felons.
Yes - it is all about bullying. My kids’ school (Montessori) is determined to stamp this out. The children learn what bullying behavior is and the kind of harm it does to all involved — the bully, the victim, and the bystanders. They are taught that it is never okay to do nothing when observing someone being bullied. They know it is their duty to stand together and confront the bully (in a non-violent way of course) and let him or her know in no uncertain terms that their actions/words are not acceptable. As parents, we are to take this sort of behavior very seriously and not “excuse it” away (boys will be boys, blah blah).
As a nation, we are experiencing the whole mixed bag of emotions that go with observing bullying behavior — semi-feeling superior for not being the target, helplessness, guilt from acquiescence, fear that we might be next, etc. We could all use a little training in this area…
Humans are fucked! What can you do? It is a violent human culture.
I really enjoyed reading this article. I never thought to long and hard on it before but he is right. We have a bunch of Junior High Juvenile delinquents running our country. I remember all to well some 50 odd years later the horrors of Junior High. Because even then I wasn’t part of the ‘in crowd’! It explains the mess in the Bush Administration perfectly. These people have a regressive gene that dominates their thinking and behavior. No wonder we are stuck in the ‘Twilight Zone’!
“Real life” is just an extension of high school with a larger allowance. Yunz have too high expectations of grown-up life. Dumb down so that you can accept it without stressing out.
The leaders may act like like Junior High School, but when the time comes they’ll be tried as adults.
[The] GOP minority in the Senate has already filibustered to death more legislation in less than half a term than the hapless Democrats did during the entire previous term?
That is more a sad indictment of the invertebrate Democrats.
Interesting that I am the first to elaborate on Greene’s insight as per the degree to which this group demonizes females, and more importantly, feminine sentience and power. The net loss of half the population’s contribution over the centuries, to the political/academic/religious forum, and I am not speaking of playing the role of maid/clean-up squad, or “nun/none,” is a loss we NOW are seeing the fruit of. The emphasis on male as boss, as father as authority, as government as ruler all emerge from a spiritually bankrupt paradigm that is based on unequal access to life’s goodies, as well as necessities. Those in favor of this pyramid of privilege, generally because their race/economic/gender credentials lend them privilege are enemies to true democracy and a planet that thrives because it welcomes the contribution of diverse members of its myriad tribes. This is exactly in contrast with the one size fits all program that in the image and likeness of Republicanism/rabid capitalism/and/or Christian theocracy has been taking over our nation, and due to its access to “leaders” and capital, acting like a cancer devouring the world, asset by asset, people by people.
We were born from a circle. We live on a planet that’s been lent its orb by the great clockmaker so that it, too, circles. And until as a humanity we recognize what belonging to a circle means, we will do what the US has led the world in doing, endeavor to kill one another and then after the bloodfest, appoint philosophical or religious ideals to the carnage. The paradigm is broken! Including women, the indigenous, people of color, all of the disenfranchised groups who have been denied access to the power bastions is a good place to start. The wisdom implicit to the elemental forces of the natural world recognize this, and therefore as the climate further destabilizes, it will be those who have lived closer to nature over the centuries whose expertise will be called upon by those with an interest in living.
SIOUX ROSE — Excellent posting.
Wake up the woman in your lives (if not already so) and set them free!
Namaste … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … … … … … … … … … …
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NSPIRE: Thank you for being one of my Christmas presents. Every time a male realizes this fundamental flaw in the way we’ve all been taught to think, live, line up and march (to Mars rules drum beat, the presumed ONLY reality), my angels sing (and I’d venture to say, so do others, higher beings!). Gracias, amigo… healing our world requires LOVE which means becoming helpmates to one another, and this requires a fundamental realization of equality, the poetic kind laced with elemental differences, that represents differences that complement. The net sum = potentials for Grace.
SIOUX ROSE — de nada.
Woman (our mothers) deserve the knowledge that appreciation that
OK, only the good things … … … and fascist cold-blooded reptiles (dinosaur brained DC wonks) don’t have no Mom (they hatched in the mud, and/or were bottle fed).
Unfortunately I think the left can also be guilty of some of those things Mr. Green talks about.
As far as junior high goes (they call it middle-school ’round here), that was a cakewalk for me compared to my adult life. Especially in the workplace. I’ve seen and experienced those things far more in adulthood than I ever have during childhood.
Also, am I wrong for finding this article a little ageist? I remember a similar thread from earlier this year that recalls this article. The author tried to equate those right-wingers currently in power with adolescents. And as I stated in that thread, I can honestly say that I have never known any child, even those I clashed with during my own childhood, to be crueller than a Cheney, a Bush, a Rumsfeld, or even a cheerleader like a Limbaugh, Savage, Hannity, or Honsberger.
Maybe it’s just that my experience was different? I can’t say I got tormented much by other kids or was ostracized. In cases where I was, I stood up for myself, and haven’t been to my knowledge traumatized by it.
However, the worst people I’ve ever known in my life were adults I encountered during my adulthood.
I also think that to compare The Right to a class of 8th graders is dangerous. These are experienced people who know what they are doing. They just use bend their knowledge towards…well, I will say it. Evil.
What else is it?
They’re burning and poisoning the planet.
They’re pitting us all against one another by exploiting our differences.
They’re allowing people to suffer and starve.
They’re taking away all of our rights.
They’re killing.
They aren’t neanderthals. They’re demons
They know better. Children more often than not, don’t.
Or am I missing something?
For the past seven-plus years I’ve been moderating an email-based progressive political discussion group. Although generally more articulate than people on the right and in greater command of facts and more homest analysis, most group members, over the years, have been like Jr High kids battling each other for control over the discussion. Like a bunch of spit ball throwers. Some have even demonstrated their willingness to active attempt to destroy the discussion forum because the moderator prohibited them from dominating, or controlling it. Most have acted as though they figured out all of the progressive analysis all by themselves, with perhaps only minor assistance from Noam Chomsky and a few others, because they generally consider themselves to be superior in every way, including intellectually and morally. But in fact, many, if not most, have been extremely intolerant of the opinions of others and have not even considered actually listening to other group members in an effort to expand their consciousness. Instead they’ve been too busy rattling off their own personal agenda, which of course is far more important than anyone elses’ agenda, or even more important than the overall health of the group.
Sorry to have had to say this.
iWARRIOR, and MIFTIN — Both of your posts are correct.
The mythology expert Joseph Campbell said that our teen’s uncontrolled energies could easily tear down a civilization, which has been contained for millennium through rights of passage that forge and channel that energy into directions that sustain the civilization.
It is the constraints of becoming a householder (per Hindu view of 4 stages) or family wage earner that also dulls this edge destined otherwise to destroy everything around them (if left alone as gangs of street thugs preying upon the weak and vulnerable to survive).
I see that this mass-miss-oriented (propagandized) youth are just part of the ultra-rich’s plan to manipulate the working class, and create “good” killing machines for the continuous WAR machine. Any oddities that don’t filter out into the proper channels, end up in our growing prison populations, only to exist as a greater force of evil and threat to civil society, creating more fear and terror - mandating more control and violence.
This snooty bunch of superiority infatuated elitist power crazies, now look much as our current FCC chairman, and have little if no morality as that is what the expectation is for them. Once they get too cocky, and try to push their masters aside, to gain control of it all, they will be put back in their places to await their own times.
Without the stabilizing forces of: altruism, social interaction, giving back to society, respect for woman, caring for less fortunate, and compassion for anyone else - they become much as rabid dogs do - the alpha and omega of status and power (but always fighting/backstabbing to become the next alpha).
No wonder we have constant war!
Btw, I didn’t mean to spray all conservatives with napalm. I think most of the ordinary people who identify themselves as conservatives and vote accordingly just know not what they do. They aren’t the evil ones. They’re being duped, thinking that they’re voting for their best interests when they aren’t. And I think the left at least to an extent pushes these people away and fails to reach out and engage them.
nspire-But can’t that chaotic teen energy also be channeled into something good also? It can help tear down society, but keep in mind, that optimism and innovation thrives among the young. RJD said “Gather all around the young ones…They will make us strong.” It’s where a society finds its vitality. Teens are born to refuse, to resist as a certain South American band once wrote.
I don’t think you actually read my post. I was talking about progressives; people who read CD and Chomsky and Zinn and counterpunch and think their opinion is absolutely the most enlightened gem in the universe and were perfectly willing to destroy a progressive political discussion group rather than submitting themselves to the decisions of the moderator once in a while.
iWARRIOR — Your response to mine, mentioned: “But can’t that chaotic teen energy also be channeled into something good also?”
Yes, that’s why I mentioned Campbell with his ideas about the mythology that used to contain and channel the youth’s energy. We now have the army instead, and as he said (something like) ‘we need a new mythology, or risk ruin’.
The illusion of the need for a perpetual “war on terror” is growing thin, even for those tightly programmed. Hopefully more and more are actually realizing that the wars to create the terror in order to justify more wars, not solve anything.
These opportunities to be killed while fighting illegal and immoral wars aren’t working, and it is no wonder so many commit suicide when they return. Those that do so may be the ones that finally got it that they’ve been had, for profits never intended to reach their pockets.
MIFTIN — I read it, and agree that the hubris of wrecking a otherwise progressive environment is youthful unconstrained arrogance, that needs somehow to be channeled (other than sending them to war).
They obviously didn’t buy into Star Trek’s idea “the needs of the many outweigh those of the one”, likely because that is antithetical to “me 1st, you last” scarcity paradigm of repulsivelicans (which goes as the only mythology available to youth).
“He who has the most toys when he dies wins” means that they were likely just trolling your web pages to pick up trophy points for acting “greenish”, having no regard for making any difference (other than their soiled egos).
Namaste … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … … … … … … … … … …
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Redjeff, that’s true — Karl Rove and his ilk were, back in the early ’70s, the Young Republicans on college campuses, in their rep ties and sport coats, ridiculed and derided by most of the other students for supporting Nixon and pro-war ideas. Neoconservatism is, indeed, their revenge, and it was just lucky for the sneaky and ruthless Rove, schooled in Nixonian dirty political tricks, that he found a malleable empty vessel devoid of conscience with a famous name, George W. Bush — a family black sheep who was ready to be manipulated to ‘get back’ at his successful father. It’s a Greek tragedy sadly not confined to the stage.
Good point, Siouxrose — most Republican males these days treat women as either high school cheerleaders, pat them on the head as ‘good girls’ or denigrate them as a word that rhymes with ‘witches,’ but never truly take them seriously as peers. And, of course, Republicans seem both deathly afraid of and obsessively fascinated by the sexual habits of others to the point of dementia.
Reagan should have more accurately said, “Republican-run government in not the solution, Republican-run government is the problem.” People who hate government earning their living from shutting government down is the height of modern hypocrisy, apparently a virtue within the GOP, right up there with lying to the people and making sure the rich pay fewer taxes.
Kemel and Heart_thinker, one of the things we’ve lost among younger people is the ability to read for comprehension, rather than just information. Speaking of junior high, school teachers have told me it’s not that kids are illiterate — they have to know how to read to operate their cell phones and other electronic gizmos — it’s that they don’t think logically about what they read, and the schools aren’t making that a priority. “Logic — they’ll get that in college,” is the prevailing atttitude. Another problem is that they are being inundated by unrelated images — pictures without content — often just displayed for a sudden emotional jolt or a quick laugh which doesn’t lend itself to rational thinking or logical evaluation. For more on this phemomenon, read Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death
miftin sez…”I don’t think you actually read my post. I was talking about progressives; people who read CD and Chomsky and Zinn and counterpunch and think their opinion is absolutely the most enlightened gem in the universe and were perfectly willing to destroy a progressive political discussion group rather than submitting themselves to the decisions of the moderator once in a while.”
I did read it. I’ve talked about my problems with the left as well and how they shoot themselves in the foot a lot of the time and have been called names by progressives on this very site for disagreeing with them. The self-righteousness and selfishness can be deafening. The energy of youth can by all means mutate into reckeless zealotry. Your post just caused me to reflect on my past dealings with people of differing political views.
I’ve been guilty of pure mudslinging too folks.
This is totally unfair to teenagers. Like all of the rest of us in this culture, they are occupied territory. How they cope with that depends so much on the support they have, or lack thereof. Most of them I know — I am a teacher — are just trying to survive as something like who they thought they were at age 12, when they knew themselves better. They know three times as much about the process as I did at their age, and they have 30 times as much crap to deal with. One of their biggest problems is writing and thinking like that in this article, which not only overgeneralizes, but which also encourages stereotypes. Just what they need. Try actually looking them in the eye on the street, recognizing them as fellow beings.
Republicans are fellow humans also — hard to accept, but true; if we ever want to change things in a meaningful way, we’ll try to deal with them face-to-face too. Invite them somewhere. Find some common cause — Habitat, or the food bank. If grass-roots Republicans are ever going to see their leaders for the hypocrites they really are, we’re all going to have to learn to speak the same language — the language of values betrayal.
Everyone in America knows this language, but seems like we’d rather sit in the dark behind a screen reassuring ourselves than practice speaking it.
This works well in understanding your average HOA board and Management companies (of the CAI ilk). BUllies and high-chair tyrants all.
Very thoughtful although this piece dredged up lots of suppressed and painful memories.
The thing I remember most, and this certainly applies to Green’s thesis, was the name-calling. Social elites in junior high society can call anyone anything, and from there a hierarchy of name-calling formed a pecking order all the way down to the most lowly whose life must have be pure misery. The RRight is quite quick to resort to name calling.
One can imagine that Ann Coulter must have been a doozey in junior high, but I figure Carl Rove was a chubby kid who got picked on quite a bit, and now he’s getting even.
“It’s the Immaturity, Stupid!”
In a nutshell, Dr. Green - yet again!
Jean Houston suggests that the sheer intensity of our times is causing the human species to turn a corner, and that the “convergence of complexity with crisis” is creating a whole new mindset in terms of how we know, and deal with our reality.
Houston believes this transition, by definition, will involve a new mythology based on global and cross-cultural learning of what it means to be human. Having arrived at this crossroads, says Houston, also means that, as a species, we must face the task of challenging our political imagination, which to date has been organized around stratified/hierarchical organizations and bureaucracies.
The answers to the problem of human survival, she maintains, can no longer be those of discovering new economic or political solutions. They may be found, however, through the cultivation of specifically human qualities:
“We need the full complement of known and unknown human capacities if we are to respond to the problems and complexities of our time and it is only in the tapestry of cultures that we begin to gain any notion of the range and variety of these capacities…the threads of the new tapestry will be woven upon the loom of a renewed and deepened partnership between men and women…”
Houston’s emphasis is clear: “The coming to the fore in our time of the genius and dimensionality of female sensibility is critical to the issue of human survival.” She goes on to predict that: “linear sequential. problem-solving methodologies will yield to the knowing that comes from seeing things in whole gestalts - in constellations, rather than as discrete facts.”
She invites us to notice that: “the feminine principle expresses itself as an unfolding of levels of existence, not as a conquest of facts; [our vision becomes] not systematic, but systemic.” Houston maintains that the Goddess archetype is in the process of returning to human society at a time when “the breakdown of the old story” leaves us desperate for love, security, wisdom, and meaning.
“[This period] finds us yearning for a nurturing and cultivation of our whole being, that we might be adequate stewards of the planetary culture….[Through] a sharing of culture and a depth of awareness never before possible, we are on the brink of opportunities for human and cultural development hitherto unknown.”
The embracing of a “planetary perspective,” she argues, is part of an entirely new modality of knowing and being than that to which we are accustomed; it is a “way of being” which calls for a willingness to “learn from the genius of other cultures.”
SOME HOPEFUL THOUGHTS ON A POSSIBLE FUTURE:
(without any assertion that the road ahead will be easy…)
[And, assuming that through Grace and Self-Effort humanity avoids the “Armageddon Bypass”]
Jean Houston also comments that:
“…this change toward world culture parallels a change that seems also on the point of taking place within the human personality: a change in the direction of wholeness and balance…The relations between world culture and the unified self are reciprocal.
“The very possibility of achieving a world order by other means than totalitarian enslavement and automatism rests on the plentiful creation of unified personalities, at home with every part of themselves, and so equally at home with the whole family of man, in all its magnificent diversity…
“To be on friendly terms with every part of mankind one must be on equally friendly terms with every part of oneself …In brief one cannot create a unified world with partial, fragmentary, arrested selves which by their very nature must either produce aggressive conflict or regressive withdrawal.
“Nothing less than a concept of the whole man - and of man achieving a consciousness of the whole - is capable of doing justice to every type of personality…and cultural-potential. At this point a further human transformation, so far not approached by any historic culture, may very well take place.”
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Houston’s words echo those of Lewis Mumford, who, as early as 1956, envisoned that:
“…if mankind abstains from self-extermination and actually begins to move toward the fabrication of a world culture, the separate contributions to this process, many already in existence, will carry with them an air of quiet inevitability…it is the formal details…that are so difficult to imagine in advance.
“At the moment of ripeness, the unseen will be visible, the unthinkable thought, the unactable enacted; and by the same token, obstacles that seem insurmountable will crumble away…
“This experience has many parallels in human history. Suddenly, at what seems the peak of their efficiency and power, dominant institutions lose their hold on their most devout supporters or their most favored beneficiaries… while at the same time millions of people who seemingly conformed with docility to these institutions throw them off like a dirty garment.
“In such a situation ideas that were hardly more than shadows a moment before, become solid landmarks on a well-paved road…
“The next transformation will involve a leap from one plane to another. Because One World civilization will be a true emergent, its most characteristic features will probably escape forecast…The one thing that can be predicted of any true emergence is that its results cannot be predicted.”
To be in position to make such a leap, and to be able to do so on a world-wide basis, Mumford contends, will not be possible until it is widely recognized that, “personal creativity is more significant than mere industrial productivity.”