Millennium-Shock

[poliphilo]

I think of it as millennium-shock- the mindset that has propelled conservative governments and dictators and demagogues into power and influence all round the world. We're afraid of the future with its shinyness and its mind-and-body-warping technologies and its promise of an end to life as we know it, and we fall back on the defence of green-mouldy certainties from way back when. Thus the demand for sharia law throughout the Muslim world, thus the dominance of the religious right in the USA, thus a Pope who decries personal religion and demands that his young people submit to (his) authority. We're a race of scaredy-cats. We'd prefer to have the Middle Ages back rather than commit ourselves to the unknown.

I think in the end we'll get over this reactive fit. Science and invention will continue to motor away- and we like the goodies they provide too much to shut them down. And ideas are harder to censor than they used to be, now that we have the Net. Even so, these are hard times, and those of us who don't want a new Dark Ages to descend- and the world be run according to the lights of Bush and Khamenei and Pope Ratzinger- are going to have to make a fuss.

Comments

A view from the "right"...

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Just a comment from someone partially over there on The Dark Side.

I'm a fiscal conservative / social liberal. I know that many social services are now delivered by various governments because well-intentioned people want to see the beneficiaries receive those social services. I do, too. But I also observe a staggering amount of waste, inefficiency, political patronage, and corruption involved when the government here delivers social services. I'd like to see those services delivered by nonprofits.

Why? Because I can look at their tax returns (every nonprofit with more than $25,000 in income must file a Form 990 with our Internal Revenue Service -- and the 990s are online at http://www.guidestar.org/). If the delivery-to-donation ratio falls below acceptable limits, I can pull my funding -- deciding, perhaps, that Lutheran World Relief operates more effectively than The American Friends Service Committee (to pick some examples at random) and sending my social service dollars where I can be reasonably sure that the highest percentage will get to the hands of folks I actually want to help, instead of [Kofi Annan's son][Halliburton][pick your favorite corruption target and insert here]. I sure wish I could pull the xx% of my tax dollars that go to social services and bestow them where they'll be used more efficiently.

Now, if I (or someone like me) articulates this viewpoint, we're quickly branded unenlightened anti-social-services types, and much of our mainstream media will talk about us -- condescendingly -- as marginally tolerable subhumans who have somehow learned how to bathe, wear shoes, and not make messes in the house, and as uncaring folks who want to see their fellow Americans, especially children and the elderly, continue to struggle in poverty, disease, and ignorance. If we support school vouchers, we're somehow anti-education. If we think Social Security needs to be reformed, we're anti-elderly. Ditto if we sugest that the law of the land should be made by the legislature and not an activist judiciary responding to some sort of self-directed higher morality.

[hyperbole alert]That's also how the mainstream media has been talking about the religious right for years -- when it isn't labeling them as slavering, fanged, violent folks who should be locked up in the interest of public safety. A certain amount of what's happening here is a group of folks who are more laissez-faire than you might realize taking a long-overdue swipe back at the smarty-pants commentators who've been mocking them for years.[/hyperbole]

Seriously now, a lot of what's happening here at least is a desire on the part of a large number of middle-of-the-road people to make sure we don't go haring off one way or another without fully considering the implications of where we're going.

[Given the subject matter, I'm fairly confident Robert Heinlein wouldn't mind my borrowing his "marginally tolerable subhuman" line, as long as I give proper credit...]

Re: A view from the "right"...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm in favour of what we Brits call the welfare state, but I recognise that you fiscal conservatives have a case to make which is cogent and humane.

So you guys- who correspond very roughly I suppose to the position traditionally espoused by the British conservative party- are fine by me. The folks who worry me are the neo-cons and their theocratic allies.

Re: A view from the "right"...

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Frankly, I put the theocratic allies in the same category as moveon.org -- barking moonbats of the extremes. And reports of their omnipotence are greatly exaggerated. Or so it seems to me. As for neo-cons, a case could be made, I suppose, that I am one.

Re: A view from the "right"...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'd like to think the theocrats are as marginal as you say they are. They certainly make a lot of noise.

I use "neo-con" to describe the clique of ideologues and plutocrats around the Bush presidency. I think they're a scary bunch of people. I'm not that well-informed about their domestic agenda but I find their overseas policies dangerous and wrong-headed. I don't know your position on the Iraq war, but I think it has been (in almost every way) a huge mistake- not just because it is immoral and illegal but because it has been so badly thought through.