Why You Lost
This is a message to all liberals in America, and to whomever else feels
this open letter applies to them. I think we need to talk. I know you're
distraught from what has just happened. I see confusion, anger, despair,
lashing out, and talks of drastic action. And I think that there are some
good reasons for you to feel that way. But before you do, I'd like to ask
for your attention for just a few minutes. I wouldn't normally be so
presumptuous as to think such a thing, but I believe I understand exactly
why it is that you lost, and what you can do about it.
First we need to establish some premises, and I'm going to need you
to accept them if this is going to go anywhere. First: you lost. The
numbers go beyond any denial that fraud determined the winner. And you lost
huge: though the presidency was decided by a moderate percentage, the
breadth of Republican victories across the nation was historic.
Second, you need to accept that this is true for a reason. This
wasn't some very unlucky roll of the cosmic dice. This was the freely
chosen collective expression of more than 115,000,000 people. These people
lived in a time which witnessed the greatest availability of information
ever known to man. This was no media trick, no brainwashing and no lack of
sufficient consideration. Your message wasn't not heard: it was heard, and
it was conclusively and decisively rejected.
Those are both brutal, unmerciful truths. And that leads to the
last premise which is this: you need to trust that I go to such extremes
because it is the only way to fix things, to make this all work. I know
that all things considered that's a lot to ask, and I know that right now
such openness might be the last thing on a lot of your minds. But I ask you
to look at the wreckage your energies have brought to you, and whether or
not you have the leeway at this point to just ignore someone who is
suggesting a solution for you. Basically if this instruction is going to
have any good effect whatsoever for you, then you have to trust that I want
it to, and that I have good reasons for thinking it will.
While doing so, please remember at all times that this is addressed to a
very large set of people. By its nature it's not going to apply equally to
everyone, and so if you see me say something that doesn't apply to you,
please understand that my descriptions cover phenomena that while not being
universal or prolific enough to bring us to a critical point. It's very
important you keep this in mind: making false accusations is a high crime
in my worldview.
Now if you cannot accept all of those premises, then you
should stop here, and I'm sorry for wasting your time. But, if you can let
go enough to accept all of that then I have an opposite message for you:
that the disaster you are witnessing is an illusion. It is not a
catastrophe nor a sign of man's failure. It is, in fact, an opening for
redemption, the necessary setup for an opportunity that we may never get
again. I am claiming that this needed to happen, and that if we can
understand enough why it needed to happen, then we can reach a level of
human development that we have possibly never even thought to know.
OK, I know these are some pretty lofty goals, so let me list my
qualifications. I don't claim to be any wiser or more knowledgeable than
anyone else. What I do claim to be is someone who has spent his life with
one foot firmly planted on each side of the societal chasm we've created. I
live near enough to both of your factions to have direct experiences with
them, but I'm neither moderate nor am I left or right. I'm left and right.
Why this is important is that the ideals that you espouse are ones
that I have considered, and in many cases have incorporated into my life. I
have shared experiences with you, I have shared ideas with you, I have
shared loves with you and I have shared lives with you. I have been to your
festivals, your marches, your protests, your raves and your drum circles. I
have listened to the eclectic, subversive and expansive music that you have
made. I have watched your movies, read your books, participated in your
conversations and, to not be too blunt, expanded my mental horizons more
than a few times in more than a few ways.
In other words, I understand or at least believe I understand your
point. I comprehend your meaning. I grok.
And it's because I do that I can say that I think that your
message is beautiful, and that's not sarcasm. You have seen the beauty in
man and in life, and you have reflected this recognition back out in ways
that have overwhelmed my being time and again. There is no way that I could
have the very happy life that I do now if I hadn't made parts of these
teachings parts of my own.
Specifically you have highlighted the uniqueness and integrity of
every man. You "celebrate diversity" (to use a worn but still apt phrase)
and recognize that the physical and spiritual fingerprints that we each
leave are what come together to weave the reality of human creation, an
interconnectedness of our individual beings that even you atheists have
come to recognize.
This is all great, and it's an expression in some ways of my
utopia. It's the kind of thing that I'm the one often trying to tell the
world. Yet it's clear that somewhere between contemplation and
actualization something went wrong. Well, if we know that the premises are
correct, and I'm stating it as self-evident that they are, that life is
beautiful, then that means that something went badly wrong in
implementation. And I believe I might know what it is.
Think for a moment about your best, most positive, holistic
response to someone who doesn't seem to understand this. Conjure your gay
rights instincts, your defense of every skin color on the human rainbow,
think for a moment about the most persuasive, embracing argument you can
possibly make about the true, pristine beauty of every single member of the
human race, and the respect that comes with such a classification.
Now, once you have gotten a clear picture in your mind of what you
would say and encourage others to see in one another, find a political
conversation of yours: a web posting, an email thread, a poster you drew
up, maybe just some talk you remember having with someone. Now take your
holistic human arguments of how we should see others and compare it with
your descriptions of conservatives. Of Christians. Of SUV drivers. Of Rush
Limbaugh. Of George Bush. Now, how well does the model match up with the
reality?
This problem goes beyond the name-calling. We make society in our
image of what works best for man's development. So if we recognize the
importance of human diversity then we correspondingly structure society to
protect this principle. Again, all good. But again we see that the way it has
been implemented has fallen woefully short of the model.
To create this society requires understanding that our individual
needs from said society are as diverse as our skin colors. In turn this
requires that when an individual of such a society states that his needs
are not being fulfilled that this be discussed so we can work it out:
civic participation, in so many words. Again, visualize your ideal
manifestation of this phenomenon.
And now compare that visualization to the real world. A member of
your society is telling you that their taxes are too high. "Selfish
bastard" you say as you ignore them. A member of your society is telling
you that they need a firearm in order to feel safe defending themselves and
their family. "Trigger-happy lunatic" comes the brush-off. A member of your
society is telling you that they want their children raised with their
values, not those of some bureaucrat who has never met them. "Bigot" comes
the knee-jerk reply. And on and on.
It is when we cannot work things out among ourselves that we go to
the state to handle our disputes. While this sounds like I'm talking about
lawsuits, I'm actually more referring to the law itself. Law is an arbiter
for when we cannot come to our own compromises. When we cannot agree, we
turn to the state to set the standards by which we interact. Elections are
one tool used to affect this.
This means that if you unduly refuse the very same individual
respect that you otherwise claim to be so vital, then that individual will
appeal to the law with their grievances. And if you have in fact unduly
rejected their individuality then their appeal will tend to be successful
as their arguments resonate across the electorate. In other words, if you
deny someone their individual respect, they will appeal to someone who
won't, and more often than not, they'll succeed.
But in the process the law that you intended for them will now
likely be used against you. For a fantastic object lesson in this take the
recent gay marriage initiatives. I have been arguing for years that the
answer to this is to get the state out of the marriage business entirely. I
have exhaustedly tried to convince supporters of state-sanctioned gay
marriages that if you give the government the power to legitimize these
unions then you also give them the power to restrict them. When
Massachusetts started marrying gay couples I sounded like a party pooper
for not joining in my friends' jubilations.
And where are we now? Right where I said we would be. There were
fellow citizens of yours that had concerns that you didn't listen to as you
plowed through your plans and over all objectors. So they appealed to the
commons for a verdict, and the verdict was handed down against you on
Election Day, eleven times over. The weapons of the state you used to try
to enforce your Eden have now fallen into their hands, and are pointing at
you.
Once this cycle starts the breakdown only accelerates. The law you
desire soon becomes the end instead of the means, and your neighbor now
becomes the people you try to lobby for votes instead of the person whom
you are voting to help improve. This in turn only turns people more off to
you. They start not answering the phone, not signing petitions, and most
importantly, not voting for your candidates.
You turn your back on them more and elect people regardless of what
they think. And they react again in kind by electing someone that they've
cared about, also with no respect for your wishes. Finally you get into a
situation like we have, where in response to the worst dictator you can
imagine you scream at the top of your lungs, spend every waking moment of
your time in the most intense, passionate activism against them, pull every
last trick out of the book you can, legal or otherwise, and show no regards
for anything or anyone else as you devote every last drop of your energy
into defeating this man.
And you still lose. And now you're trapped.
Every mechanism that you've created to deal with the conflict that
you didn't otherwise resolve now has someone else's name on it. Every law
that you made to insure your freedom despite the protests of others' saying
it infringed on theirs has been turned to infringe on yours. Every
authority, every department, every branch and level of government you are
now barred from. The walls you made to keep others out are now keeping you
out.
And you scream. You curse your adversaries. You exhaust your
vocabulary searching for the worst condemnation of their being you are
capable of expressing. You become devoted, obsessed with their destruction.
You hate them.
This is where you are right now, liberal America. And this is where
I step in. This is where I walk up to you, and hold a mirror to you to show
you what you've become, what you've done. This is where you see exactly
where the problem lies:
You have betrayed your own message. And in doing so, you have
betrayed yourselves. There is no higher crime than that.
You have abandoned the very same principles that you once tried to
get others to listen to. You have forgotten that conservatives are your
brethren. They are your families. They are your friends, your teachers,
your coworkers, your mentors, your lovers, your loves. They are the people
who bleed the same color you do, who breathe the same air you do, who love
and hurt just as you do, and who ultimately want the same things you do.
You interact with them every single day no different than how you interact
with anyone else. They are all around you, and yet you've made them
invisible (as evidenced by all of the people who say that no one they knew
voted for Bush). And what's worst about this is that once upon a time,
these are the very same words you would have used for whatever marginalized
group you were defending.
Now you are the ones doing the marginalizing. You treat anyone who
doesn't reside in the same enlightened space as you as a leper. You have
callously turned your back on half of your human family in the name of
universal oneness. You have raged against one war by creating another, one
far colder than the one you hold signs to protest.
This is why you lost in such a historic fashion. It's not because
of the media, or the 527s or the money in politics or election officials or
whatever else you want to focus your denial on. And it's not because of
George Bush.
You lost because you failed to offer anything better. You rejected
the appealing wonder that once characterized your movement in favor of a
bullying snobbery. You fancied yourself America's saviors only to have
America tell you that it's you they want to be saved from. In both your
candidate and in your message you failed to give your fellow man a single
good reason to choose your vision: you only gave reasons not to choose the
alternative, and that is not the same. Your disregard of whomever is not a
star-bellied sneech came home and received its reckoning. A jury of
115,000,000 heard all of your evidence, all of your opponent's evidence,
and decided that they did not want to live in the world that you were
offering.
And by extension they did not want the person you chose as a
representative; that selection alone should be a sign that there is more wrong with
what you are doing than you realize. You have spent the last four years in
a wild frenzy about the incalculable danger to the human species Bush and
his administration represents. You marched in record-setting numbers, you
flooded the internet, you bought more bumper stickers than we thought we
had plastic to make. You had all of Hollywood and half the music industry
combine to create a human rights entertainment event for the history books.
You made it clear that as far as you were concerned this was mankind's
greatest threat, and nothing short of pure, unrivaled, uplifting heroism
was necessary to defeat this scourge. This was the time for humanity's
greatest representative to save the day.
And what did you get as a result of this unprecedented job search?
Someone so uninspiring, so empty, so nearly identical to this supposed
menace that one of the most popular web sites endorsing him was called
"JohnKerryIsADouchebagButImVotingForHimAnyway.com." Four years of
unparalleled soul-searching, and that's who you found to epitomize your
movement. The best you could do was John Kerry.
It wasn't always like that. Once upon a time you had Martin Luther
King, Jr. You had John Lennon. You had Timothy Leary. You had Robert
Heinlein. You had Jerry Garcia. You had Gandhi.
And now who do you have? Who now that you follow is celebrating the
beauty of creation? What you have is a generation of pundits and
philosophers whose entire schtick is based upon more deliriously vilifying
their opponents than the last guy. And you reward them for it. "They're not
afraid to tell it like it is!", "They're not backing down!", you cry. You
preach righteous about George Bush being a liar and then as your antidote
watch documentaries by another one. With who you have lifted up as your
heroes you have created and gladly immersed yourself in a philosophy of
hatred. You've fallen as far as you can fall.
Some of you will protest with a nihilistic sneer that I've got you
all wrong, that you've always hated humanity. Hey if that's true, knock
yourself out. But here's the problem: I really think that most of humanity
ultimately doesn't subscribe to that point of view, momentary frustrations
with others notwithstanding. I know I don't. So if you are holding your
contempt up as a source of pride then have fun with it, but don't pretend
that others being unwilling to fall into your pit is a sign of injustice.
Some may also retort that they don't hate everyone, just "stupid
people". Well I tell you, it's funny. I keep hearing this phrase over and
over again, and so for years I've been keeping my eye out for them. I have
to tell you that my search so far has been fruitless: I haven't met a
single person claiming to be a part of this group. It somehow is always the
other guy. It's never you.
This goes right back to how society works. Everyone has objections
to it. No one is without complaints. When they come you can listen to those
objections or you call them stupid and ignore them. If you do the latter,
the objectors will eventually go over your head, just like I said above.
Your own rejection of others' ideas results directly in their rejection of
your political status. You think of them as your subjects, they make you
theirs.
I don't think I can stress enough how strong this cause-and-effect
is, how unyielding karma is, especially since from the looks of it most of
you still aren't getting it. Unbelievably there were protests the day after
the election, as if that was somehow what was missing to change the minds
of the voters. Cries of "We're not playing nice anymore!" or some such
fist-shaking defiance echoed throughout the land. It boggles the mind that
someone can look at the last 4 years of anti-Bush hysteria and come to the
conclusion that the mistake is that you weren't loud enough.
"I'm watching the New York protests."
"Oh that's nice, honey. What do you think?"
"I don't know. I mean, they've only got 1000 people holding up
signs saying Bush is Hitler. I need at least 2000 before I'll consider
voting for their guy."
And that's what you don't see. Every time you put a picture of Bush
next to a chimp you lost one more vote. Every "Friends don't let friends
vote Republican" bumper sticker you display causes another person to
register as one. The further you devolved into an angry mob the more you
sealed your fate of being treated like one. You presented yourself as the
embodiment of social incivility and as a result trumped every last valid
complaint that you had about the state of the world. Even if the voters'
recognition of this existed only on a subconscious level, it existed, and
it won. The stupid people scored a perfect victory over the superior minds.
Again.
So now tell me: how funny do your jokes seem now? For that matter,
tell me how funny will they seem next time when four more years of the same
intellectually bankrupt activism results in President Cheney. Or President
Santorum.
Or President Ashcroft.
Really, guys: I want this about as much as you do. I'm writing
because you are screwing up to such unbelievable levels that if this
doesn't stop then that's exactly what we'll all get. And deserve. You've
already earned yourself 4 more years of punishment. Is that not enough?
There is one other objection. Some might look and this and respond
that they do understand and that they aren't trying to disrespect anyone's
opinion or person, even the president's, but that they just do not agree
that this administration is in our best interests. This I can accept, and
this is one that hurts. I see honest pain coming from such sentiments. The
world I want is not far at all from the one that you want. But we will not
get there until you understand the key to getting there:
It can never be forced.
You've tried that repeatedly, and every time you have, you've
failed. It can never be forced. It must be chosen freely. You start off
with such beautiful visions, and then you corrupt them the moment you lose
patience with someone else who doesn't share it and try to use the iron
fist of the state to take a shortcut around your fellow man's free will.
Every attempt to do so then simply boomerangs right back at you. One only
needs to look at the continued insurgency in Iraq against the most powerful
army man has ever seen for proof.
Be clear then that this disrespect that I talk of is not merely
reflected in words but also in policy, inadvertently perhaps. Every time
you treat your neighbor as a tax generating machine and not a creator, you
drive them further away. Every law that you pass about what size oranges
someone is allowed to sell or what kind of car someone is allowed to drive
or what type of speech they are forced to fund you are interfering with
their individual destinies, no matter how lovingly and respectfully you
might honestly be doing it. You know that line you use in the abortion
debate, "Don't force your morality on me!"? Yeah, it cuts both ways, and in
both cases it doesn't work.
But there is something that does work. If you really mean what you
say, if you really want a tomorrow that is free from this grip of fear of
each other that this country is now caught in, then there is a way out. It
goes like this.
Put down your sign. Take off your buttons. Log out from the
bulletin boards and email lists and journals you're on where everyone is
preaching to the choir. Get out of the bubble you've made of people who
think you just like you.
Then seek out the people who don't. Every one of you has at least
someone in your life who you are friends with but who you don't politics
with because you know you two don't see eye-to-eye. Guess what: it's time
to start. Talk to them. Invite them over for dinner, buy them a drink,
watch a movie with them, listen to some music.
But talk to them. Some of you will reflexively assume that they
aren't willing, that they're minds are made up and they want nothing to do
with you. A few of them probably are. But if the majority of them are
anything like me, the problem is that they've just been waiting for you to
ask. So ask. Explain to them that you want to understand where they are
coming from. Ask them how they really feel about the issues that are
important to you. Do they really want to bash you because you are gay? Do
they really want to force you back into the kitchen barefoot and pregnant?
Do they really consider you three-fifths of a person? I can't predict
others' answers but I have a hunch a lot of them will surprise you.
And what do they want for themselves? What freedoms do they want
that they feel are being taken from them, maybe in their mind by you or the
people you support. Now don't feel the need to just capitulate on whatever
they say: they're human too. But don't come to it defensively either.
Consider the possibility that their concerns are reasonable. Listen to them
and make it clear that it's safe for them to speak their mind with you.
Their wants are half of the equation.
Expect that in a lot of cases tensions will take a while to
disappear and so these talks won't always be as constructive as they could
be. That'll happen; we've got a social divide that goes back way longer
than most people think about. This wasn't created overnight and it's not
going to get fixed overnight. But fixed it can be. This divide was not the
result of an earthquake or tidal wave, and it wasn't imposed on us by some
higher power or public leader. We created it. We did so by walking away
from each other.
And so only we can uncreate it, and it's time to do so. We do that
not through some legislation or agency but right here, person-to-person,
re-establishing the same personal relationships that ultimately are not
worth the price we've paid to abandon them. There is nothing to keep you
from starting this right this moment.
Now if you've held out this long then here is where the opportunity
lies. When you're talking to your friend, and he's telling you what he
wants and you're telling him what you want, instead of trying to figure out
how you can convince him to move from his position to yours or wondering
whether you should move from your position to his, ask yourself this
question: is it possible that there is some way we haven't been thinking of
that will allow us to both get what we want?
We've got this concept called "democracy". It's such a renowned
code word for all that is right in politics that even our presidents use it
despite the fact that the United States of America is not a democracy but a
democratically elected republic. Our Founding Fathers abhorred democracy.
And given what they were worried about happening, maybe it's time for us to
consider doing the same.
We stare at the bright side of democracy, the side that says that
everyone gets an equal say. Even if we accept that this is how it works in
practice (a dubious claim at best) there is a dark side to it commonly
known as "the
tyranny of the majority". This result guarantees that a minority, often a
very large one, is forced to live under rules that they would not and did
not pick for themselves. It ensures unsatisfied customers. We've grown
so accustomed to this that we now simply assume that it's an unavoidable
part of human society.
I think it's time to revisit that assumption. I think we can do better
than that. Stop for a moment and
consider this ideal. Imagine a world in which not a single person was
living under any rules that he or she did not completely accept. Not one.
We've lived so long under a different paradigm that I think most of us have
scarcely ever considered this possibility.
I'll tell you, I don't know how to do it. I have ideas, but more
important than any of the specifics is the fact that right now, it isn't
even on the table. We have put the possibility completely out of mind and
so have cut ourselves off from the incredible era of human advancement we
would experience if we could find a way to pull it off. We've been selling
ourselves short for so long, assuming that there are always going to be
losers. We've stopped questioning the insanity of giving a single man of
any party power over almost 300,000,000 people, regardless of how diluted
his powers are.
I claim there's another way. I don't know exactly what it is, but I
know it exists. I know we can break out of this cycle, and I think it's
time to figure out how. America was founded by men willing to try a way of
living that no one else had tried before. We can do that again. Right now
we fight more viciously every 4 years over who gets to wear the ring not
seeing what it's turning us into. There is another way. I say it's time to
burn that ring. It's time to retire the old worn-out systems. It's time,
my fellow man, to evolve.
I admit that I speak of extremely lofty goals here. Sorry, it's
what I do. But while you question whether or not this is possible look at
what you are facing now. The greatest advancements do come from the
greatest trials. If that is what you think we are up against, then maybe
that's proof that it's time to look past the easy answers. I submit that it
is.
So please, if you could, pass this on to whomever you think might
benefit from it. Then consider going through with the advice. I mean,
that's the great thing about this. If we really can find a new way then it
doesn't take legalistic prose or petitions or group outings or any
particular knowledge or ability. All you have to do is go to that friend
you didn't think you could understand and say "Hey, come hang out for a
while".
Not a very high price to pay to avoid "President
Ashcroft", I think. But I can't make that
determination for you. You need to take a moment now that you have read
this to ask yourself which way this all goes. You have as much control over
this story as anyone else. It's time now for you to write the ending.
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