Yahoos de France

Welcome friends!

Did you read about that big rally against gay marriage and adoption rights that took place in Paris a couple of weeks ago?  Paris, Texas?  No, I don’t think so, but let me just check to make sure.  No, not Texas.  France.  You know, The City of Light, The City of Love, capital of France, etc.  Yeah, that Paris.  Well, anyway, it got me thinking about how Americans (and especially liberal Americans) tend to view France and how we really ought to view France if we knew what the heck we were talking about and actually cared about such things.  And believe me that thought doesn’t cross my mind every day, so I suppose I might as well say a few words about it.

First a quick recap of the story.  In case you don’t know, France’s current Socialist government is planning to change the law to allow gay marriage and adoption, so good for them, but ... wait for it ... (I know, what could it be?  Oh, the suspense!) ... the Catholic Church and the right wing opposition including the Le Pen family’s infamous National Front are up in arms over the whole affair and held a big old protest march in Paris.  I’m not talking about a handful of wackos here.  French police put attendance at around 340,000.  Hardly a drop in the bucket.  And I’m not even talking about the other similar demonstrations in Lyon, Toulouse, and Marseille.  So what was the thinking behind all this rallying and marching, you ask?  Well, according to French conservatives gay marriage would “undermine an essential building block of society.”  Whoa, I haven’t heard that one before!  Just kidding.  American conservatives have been making that argument for years, unsuccessfully in the eyes of most people.  The theory is that if we allow gay marriage then straight marriages will be undermined because of ... something something ... and society will inevitably crumble to pieces because of ... something something.  OK, I’ve never really understood how it all hangs together but anyway that’s the argument.  Nothing new there.  I’ve already written about it a couple of times (May 27, 2011 and June 24, 2011).

Fittingly enough the Paris demonstrations were apparently led by some sort of comedian named Frigide Barjot (yes, very funny; but not as funny as the fact one can never find a good Freudian psychoanalyst when one needs one) who told French TV gay marriage “didn’t make sense” because “a child should be born to a man and a woman.”  I’m not entirely sure if she was being serious or doing a bit but it seems popular opinion has tended toward the former interpretation so let’s go with that.  (By the way, I think the pronoun she is correct, although the pictures I saw of the person in question were somewhat ambiguous, so please excuse me if I’ve gotten it wrong.  Yes, I admit it.  I don’t really keep up with French popular culture.)  I sure hope she wasn’t doing a bit; it’s so difficult to delve into foreign humor.  Reminds me of the time I tried to watch a Japanese comedy movie on TV one day.  There did seem to be an awful lot of hilarity onscreen, but why, oh why?

Anyway, if Ms. Barjot was indeed being serious then I think she may need a few remedial logic lessons.  Descartes must be turning over in his grave.  First of all, gay marriage is not some sort of logic problem, so I don’t think it’s literally a matter of whether it makes sense or not.  Assuming she meant to say that she feels gay marriage is inappropriate I’d just like to say I think a fairly common feeling nowadays is that allowing gay marriage is appropriate if one considers that some people are indeed gay (and not just straight people acting out to annoy other people) and one is interested in being fair to those people.  And, of course, allowing gay adoption is clearly a different issue from whether a child should be born to a man and a woman.  (On the latter issue: I know we’ve made a lot of scientific advances and so on but as far as I know a child cannot currently be born to two women or two men; I’m quite sure you still need an egg and a sperm from somewhere.  But whenever we overcome that little issue we can talk about whether kids should be born to a man and a woman as opposed to some other configuration of people and genders, although it’s not immediately clear to me why we would consider it a significant issue under those conditions.  In the meantime I think we’re essentially talking about adoption of one type or another, even if we’re talking about adopting a fetus in a womb.)  Setting aside the birth issue and as far as the real moral issues involved with gay adoption, I think they’ve found that kids raised by gay parents do just as well as other kids, but please do let me know if you find out otherwise because then we might actually have something to talk about.  But never mind.  I don’t intend to go back over issues I’ve already discussed just because some Gallic nitwits have started banging the drum.  Right now I’m just talking about the fact of this rally having taken place in Paris, France.  Well, and I guess it never hurts to talk about the funny bits.  Speaking of which, the funniest bit for me by far was the organizers’ contention that their movement was non-political, non-religious, and in no way directed against homosexuals.  If they were playing American baseball they would have struck out on consecutive pitches because their movement seems rather obviously political, religious, and directed against homosexuals.  (You’re telling me the National Front isn’t political?  The Catholic Church isn’t religious?  Trying to prevent someone from obtaining equal rights isn’t acting against them?  Oh get real.)  Which all sounds eerily familiar to American ears.  I wonder if they called some American conservatives for advice.  French conservatives: The Catholic Church wants to hook up with some right wing political parties, again, and this time make a big show of opposing equal rights for gay people, do you have any advice?  American conservatives: Have you tried lying and fear mongering?  French conservatives: C’est magnifique!

Well that’s the story from the papers, so I guess I can finally get to the actual point of this post, which is that reading about this whole affair made me think about how American liberals tend to have an unrealistically positive image of France.  I know that many people imagine if Americans are predisposed toward any European country at all then it would have to be the UK or Britain or Great Britain or the British Isles or England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, or whatever constellation of the preceding one may care to discuss.  (Let’s just go with the UK for now.)  And I suppose there’s probably something to that because of the obvious ties of language, culture, and to a lesser extent, history.  But I think one can easily overstate the case for a special relationship between the UK and the imagination of your average American.  Well, I suppose some Americans do indeed have a soft spot for a certain image of the UK one finds in old BBC programs: mature, polite people sitting about stately homes sipping tea from fine china and making gently witty conversation.  But these days that image is balanced out by another more modern and unfortunately probably much more accurate image of the UK that one can find in BBC programs of more recent vintage: that would be the UK of mean, snarky people; social classes; posh twits; binge drinking lager louts; hooligans; street punks; poverty; violent crime; one-eyed Muslim street preachers; and so on.  So I think it’s a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to how Americans think about the UK these days.

Now France, on the other hand, I think must be in a whole other league when it comes to your average American.  For most Americans, and of course especially for most liberal Americans, France is first and foremost the birthplace of the Enlightenment and hence of the better part of our own philosophical and cultural heritage.  And I suppose it doesn’t hurt that back when we were battling Great Britain for our independence France managed to throw in its two cents worth at a rather convenient moment and has remained an ally of one sort or another ever since.  Of course, I realize French involvement in the American Revolution had more to do with Louis XVI wanting to poke George III in the eye than with any prescient appreciation of the American experiment on the part of the French ruling class, but nonetheless, there we were, side by side.  We also have a long tradition in American film and literature of portraying France as a center for most of what one might find beautiful and enjoyable in life: art, music, fashion, food, wine, cinema, literature, philosophy, and let’s not forget about love.  And I don’t just mean in serious works but also in all those popular entertainments of the type in which one moves to Provence or wherever, starts up a garlic farm, renovates an old farm house, falls in love with a down to earth local, is rejuvenated, and just in general has a heck of a lot better time than one had dodging bullets and freezing one’s backside off in Detroit.  Wait, am I talking about Italy?  Well, Italy, France, whatever.  I guess we have that same trope with other countries but certainly France must be one of the main ones.  And above the image of France in general is the image of the city of Paris, surely the European city most Americans would still most like to visit if ever they got around to going to Europe at all, which is a pretty big if.  And the ultimate expression of all this generalized Francophilia for American liberals?  That would be the presumption that France will naturally take the lead on any liberal social issues flowing from our shared Enlightenment values, which we assume will emanate from the City of Light like so many rays of sunshine to penetrate all the backward villages, rustic provinces, and rough and tumble ports of the land.

Of course, there are a few smudges on this otherwise glowing mental picture to be sure.  I think most Americans are vaguely aware that the French went a little crazy with the head chopping during their own revolution and then eventually settled on Napoleon Bonaparte, who I suppose wan’t all bad but certainly generated some issues of his own, and then waffled big time and brought back the nobility for another go, and then went this way and that for much of the nineteenth century.  Hardly a straight shot in terms of a commitment to democracy.  And later they got up to their share of colonial shenanigans in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East and had a great deal of trouble giving up power in Vietnam as well as in Algeria and other random bits of Africa.  (I guess from recent news reports La Francafrique lives on, which I suppose isn’t necessarily a bad thing given the alternatives, but I think they gave up some bits anyway.)  And they clearly weren’t what anyone would call diplomatic geniuses when it came to winding down WWI on a satisfactory basis and instead probably helped set the stage for round two, a political failing compounded by the fact that either by design or just plain old incompetence their military contributions to round two weren’t exactly what one might term outstanding.  And of course it later became rather obvious quite a few French were actually pretty soft on fascism themselves or at least couldn’t wait to jump into bed with the fascists both figuratively and literally, even to the extent of helping the Nazis round up little French kids to ship off to their murder factories.  Then more recently they seem to have developed some rather severe social and economic problems of the sort that have led to rioting in the streets and of course the reactionary call to get some pressure hoses in there to clean out all those damned slums.  (Sarko l’Americain?  Yeah, sure buddy, whatever.  But the guy was President of France, not President of America.  I’m just saying.)  And of course they’ve had a number of notably corrupt political administrations over the years.  And I suppose they haven’t been entirely helpful in any number of contemporary political and military situations where we really could have used a little help.  But I’m just rambling now.  You know, Americans understand these things happen.  We’re not all that ourselves sometimes, so no hard feelings.  No, I think for most Americans these sorts of issues just don’t have the psychic force to overcome the generally positive image of France we’ve always had in this country and that one can find in such delightful popular entertainments as Ratatouille or The Devil Wears Prada.

But you know what might really finally put a damper on American enthusiasm for all things French?  A few more stories about mobs of French yahoos parading around the streets of Paris in support of conservative causes, that’s what.  I mean, holy cow, what a colossal let down.  What sort of world would be living in if the US with its entrenched and powerful conservative elite had to take the lead on social issues like equality for gay people?  Of course, I understand there’s no fundamental reason things should be any different abroad.  International conservatism is just as alive and well in Europe as it is in the US, maybe more so in certain respects.  But what a cold blast of harsh reality on such a beautiful dream.  It almost brings tears to my eyes.  Vive La France!  (Of our collective imagination, that is!)

References

Mass Paris rally against gay marriage in France.  January 13, 2012.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21004322.

French protests against gay marriage bill.  November 12, 2012.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20382699.

Saul Alinsky

Welcome friends!

Do you ever read the public comments on online newspaper articles?  Sometimes I do but I have to say I don’t really expect too much.  Here in the US the usual scenario is that some conservative Republican will do or say something outrageously idiotic, someone will write a newspaper article about it, liberals will comment upon it, and conservatives will respond in various moronic and insulting ways along the lines of “the loony left must have its knickers in a twist.”  It’s actually a pretty funny pattern because one tends to see the same conservative comments time and time again no matter what the article in question happens to be about.  Indeed, I sometimes suspect the conservative contributions to these forums are not written by actual people at all but come from some sort of random comment generator.  If anyone says anything one pushes a button and it churns out an asinine retort or insult to serve as one’s response.  On the other hand, who knows?  Maybe it’s real people after all.  I have found when some people talk it can sound pretty random sometimes.  Anyway, one of the conservative comments I tend to see with some regularity is “at least X (whichever conservative Republican managed to do or say something idiotic that week) is not Saul Alinsky.”  The first few times I read this comment I assumed it must involve one of those inscrutable secret codes conservatives use to communicate with one another and thought no more about it.  You know, they often seem to have these little side conversations with themselves in which they ramble hither and yon and end up in the funniest places.  However, after a while I have to admit I became a little curious.  I mean, who is this Saul Alinsky conservatives keep talking about anyway?  Is he a real person?  Why do conservatives hate the guy so much and why does no one else have any idea who he actually is?  Is he a mass murderer who only targeted conservatives?  Is he a historical figure from the Russian Revolution, maybe a particularly overzealous Bolshevik hellraiser?  Is he a character from an Ayn Rand novel?  Maybe someone whose ostensible concern for others led him to commit all manner of atrocities?  And how and when did conservatives start talking about him anyway?  Did they always talk about him?  Lots of questions.  So that’s my topic for this post: the mysterious conservative fascination with Saul Alinsky... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website.  All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee.  Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right?  If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then.  Thank you my friends!

Ideas And People

Welcome friends!

I see it’s the start of a brand new year.  Always a nice feeling, isn’t it?  Yeah!  Go 2013!  It’s going to be the best year ever!  Hey, might as well show a little enthusiasm.  Attitudes matter, don’t they?  Anyway, I thought I’d start out by taking a quick glance back at my list of irritating things from the recent past to make sure I haven’t missed anything I found particularly offensive and, sure enough, I see I managed to not write anything at all about that ultra-conservative nut job who gunned down all those innocent young kids at that summer camp in Norway a couple of years ago.  Did you happen to notice at the time he was apparently quite the fan of certain conservative American bloggers and political pundits?  No big surprise there.  Well, I suppose it was a bit of a surprise this particular murder spree went down in Norway rather than Texas or Kansas or wherever.  I’m not sure, but I suppose there must be a heck of a lot more guns in Texas than in Norway and probably a lot more ultra-conservative nut jobs as well.  But it wasn’t surprising there would be connections between the conservative fringe in the two countries.  After all, it’s pretty much the same story everywhere, isn’t it?  But no, what I wanted to write about was something I read in one of the responses to this tragedy from the generally liberal side of the aisle, which would be my side of the aisle in case you’re keeping track.  How’s that for being non-partisan?  The particular response that caught my eye was a piece by Roger Cohen in the New York Times about the people who ostensibly enable this type of violence by creating the climate in which these types of events take place.  It sounded fairly reasonable to me in general.  Apparently some of our European brothers and sisters have been spouting off about Muslims and immigrants and Muslim immigrants and so on.  You know the type of thing.  Look out, they’re taking over the place, etc.  Sort of like what we had in this country when the old timers were wringing their hands about all the Catholic immigrants coming over from Italy and Ireland.  Hey, do you know how many kids they have?  Soon the country will be run by an army of wine and whiskey swilling Papists taking orders from Rome!  Well, actually I suppose you don’t have to go back quite that far.  We’re having a somewhat similar conversation right now about Hispanic immigrants.  Soon we’ll all need to learn Spanish!  Uno hamburger, por favor.  Egads!  So, I think I get the general point Mr. Cohen was trying to make.  When people start spinning paranoid fantasies about invading hordes of whoever the crazies start coming out of the woodwork.  However, he included one example that really had me scratching my head.  And you know that can only mean one thing.  Yes, another basically good natured but thought provoking blog post!

So the bit in Mr. Cohen’s article that really jumped out at me was that in his list of ostensible enablers he included the Dutch politician Geert Wilders.  Hmm, maybe that’s not that interesting but wait, there’s more.  The interesting bit is why Mr. Cohen included Mr. Wilders, which is that Mr. Wilders had at one point supposedly compared the Koran to that classic of ultra-conservative paranoid nut literature: Herr Hitler’s very own Mein Kampf.  Now maybe Mr. Wilders made this comment and maybe he didn’t and maybe he’s an enabler of anti-Muslim violence in Europe and maybe he isn’t.  That’s not really my point.  Sorry, but I don’t follow European politics closely enough to comment on those issues.  Hey, give me a break.  There’s a little something called the Atlantic Ocean that tends to get in the way, OK?  But I did have an issue with this idea that if Mr. Wilder did indeed compare one book (the Koran) to another book (Mein Kampf) then he was enabling mass murderers.  As my readers probably know by this time, this actually gets to one of my pet peeves: a failure to clearly differentiate ideas from people holding ideas.

As I’ve said many times before and will probably be led to say many times again, I think that under the liberal tradition it’s absolutely crucial we maintain the ability to discuss and debate ideas including those expressed in religions, creeds, belief systems, and what have you.  Indeed, the entire project of a democratic society is based on the idea that people are out there discussing these things and working them out.  So if you ask me, if you don’t like something in Islam or any other religion, creed, belief system, or whatever, then you should feel free to express and explain your reservations in any terms you find appropriate.  To me, that simply cannot qualify as enabling hate mongers.

From my perspective, hating and enabling only legitimately come into the picture when one stops talking about books and ideas and theories and instead starts talking about people.  That’s because there’s a big difference between talking about ideas and talking about people.  For one thing, with ideas you can sit down and establish what you’re talking about.  If you can’t find a reference you can just say, look I’m talking about belief X.  Here it is: X.  With people you’re in an entirely different situation because you can’t really read the minds of other people.  Sure, people sometimes express ideas but maybe they don’t say them correctly, or maybe they don’t really believe what they say, or maybe they believe a lot of things that are only vaguely consistent with one another, or maybe they draw incorrect conclusions from what they say, etc.  Even clarifying you’re talking about person Y right now only gets you so far because you don’t really have access to Y’s brain.  You can’t say look, here it is: person Y.  I mean, yeah, you might see the person standing there but you don’t really know what he or she is thinking, do you?

Then the other thing is the appropriate response to ideas is inevitably different from the appropriate response to people holding ideas.  In the case of ideas it’s pretty obvious what one should do if one meets an unwelcome idea.  Call it out.  Let everyone know why you think it’s a load of BS.  Nothing too difficult about that.  It’s not like you’re going to hurt the idea’s feelings or whatever.  But when you’re talking about people who may or may not hold particular ideas then you’re in an entirely different situation.  I guess you could try calling them out as well but it’s hardly the same situation.  First of all, since as I just pointed out you don’t have access to their brains you may very well mischaracterize their beliefs and end up with egg on your face.  Second, even if you do manage to correctly characterize their beliefs it’s just not necessarily the most productive course to call someone out like that.  Maybe you have a lot in common except for the one particular idea you find objectionable.  Maybe it’s better to just talk things over in a friendly chat and try to straighten things out.

That’s why to me saying the Koran is like Mein Kampf is not the same thing at all as saying Muslims are like Nazis.  One is a statement about ideas.  It’s interesting.  Maybe there are certain parallels between the Koran and Mein Kampf.  I have no idea, but we can read the Koran and we can read Mein Kampf, so we could look into it and discuss it.  What’s wrong with that?  In contrast, the other is obviously rather similar to hate mongering because it’s about people and imputing certain beliefs to people.

Now I know what you’re thinking.  Am I not talking about people every time I talk about “conservatives,” which I tend to do rather frequently?  So is this a case of the kettle calling the pot black?  Well, no, I don’t think so.  I’m not saying we should never discuss people or discuss ideas in the context of the people who we think hold those ideas.  What I’m saying is if someone goes the extra step and clarifies he or she is discussing a particular idea then he or she should at least get credit for it and get a free pass on the enabling the haters charge.  Someone who sticks to discussing things like ideas and books is doing exactly what he or she should be doing, so good for them.  Now I guess if we had a lot of anti-conservative violence going on in this country and Mr. Cohen claimed I was enabling the people engaging in that type of behavior because I’m always bad talking conservatives then I suppose I would have to say he might have a point there and I would need to start watching my language a lot more carefully, but fortunately we’re not in that situation.  Look, we both know I’m being intellectually sloppy whenever I talk about “conservatives,” right?  Of course, in my defense I do try to stick to things at least some conservatives have said themselves or acknowledge supporting in some way, so I’m not just making things up.  And you may have noticed I often try to clarify when I’m talking about things I think all, most, or only some conservatives believe.  But the bottom line is people can call themselves whatever they like and no matter what statement I might make about what “conservatives” believe or do you can be sure there will be some person somewhere who can stand up and say, well, I consider myself a conservative and I don’t believe or do that.

So why do I do it?  Why not just confine myself to talking about ideas?  Well, I suppose in the end it’s just my nod to popular culture here in the US.  The fact is many people in this country seem a lot more comfortable thinking about things in a rather combative us versus them context than in the rarified atmosphere of mature intellectual debate about ideas.  Conservatives have been making up outrageous straw man liberals and attacking them for years while liberals have sat around patiently trying to discuss ideas and what has happened?  Have liberals gotten credit for taking the high road?  Hardly.  No, what has happened is that many average men and women have come to see liberals as namby pamby eggheads and have flocked to the ignorant conservative blowhards and bully boys who are now so ubiquitous on radio and TV.  So I’m sorry, but if we liberals are going to participate effectively in our democratic system then we don’t really have the luxury of discussing things like we’re at some college symposium.  That’s just the way it is.  So follow along with me: it’s a case of us versus them.  Got it?

But seriously, I don’t really know where this style of thinking comes from or why it’s so popular in this country.  I suspect it may be related to some type of underlying social conflict between intellectuals (by which I mean people who are comfortable discussing ideas, not necessarily people who are smart or knowledgeable about anything in particular) and anti-intellectuals (that is, people who consider any criticism of their ideas a form of gratuitous psychological violence or aggression).  I suppose it may seem a bit comical to many people I would suggest a columnist for a publication of the intellectual stature of the New York Times is being influenced by anti-intellectual sentiment but I’m not so sure.  Here in the US despite our generally rather respectable educational system and our commitment to liberal and democratic values I think our prevailing cultural climate remains rather anti-intellectual.  That is to say, it seems to me many Americans just don’t really enjoy talking about ideas very much.  I have the impression they find it a little annoying and complicated and they just have a lot of other things they would rather be doing.  I think these people are a lot more comfortable talking about people rather than ideas, especially in the context of other people being up to something or trying to do something to someone.  And that goes double for conservatives.  You think I’m being too harsh?  Well, let’s take a look at our popular culture as expressed in our cinema for example.  I don’t think one could fairly say it’s excessively focused on ideas, could one?  I mean, you rarely see anyone in an American film solving a problem by sitting down with someone else, discussing it, and coming up with a solution.  You don’t typically have people holding some combination of good and bad ideas and getting together to hash it all out and eliminate the bad ideas.  No, you have good guys and bad guys.  Period.  Maybe they sometimes have ideas but in that case the good guys have good ideas and the bad guys have bad ideas.  And the good guy solves the problem of the day by punching the bad guy on the nose.  No words necessary.  And I hate to say it but I think that type of scenario sets the tone for much of our public conversation.

So to sum things up, I think I understand the general point Mr. Cohen was trying to make.  We can and probably should cool the pervasive us versus them political rhetoric.  In fact, I’d much prefer it if we did.  But I’m sorry, I think we have to hold the line when it comes to discussing ideas.  I just don’t think we can adopt the view that if one says one doesn’t like a certain religion or one thinks some holy book or other has some similarities to Mein Kampf then one is enabling terrorists and so on.  I don’t know, maybe some crazy people might transform the offending statement into something along the lines of certain people are like Nazis.  But I think in that case we should place the blame on crazy people who can’t distinguish ideas from people, not on the people discussing the ideas.  The answer to that problem is better treatment for crazy people, not a gag order on sane people.  The alternative just isn’t realistic to me.  We simply can’t afford to stop calling out what we see as bad ideas in the off chance some crazy person with a gun might get the wrong end of the stick.  So could we please make another list of enablers but confine the new list to people who actually say rude things about other people and leave the people who clearly want to discuss ideas out of it?  Thanks a bunch.  Now hurry up and get the wagons in a circle because the conservative horde might attack us at any moment!

References

Breivik and His Enablers.  Roger Cohen.  The New York Times.  July 25, 2011.  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/opinion/26iht-edcohen26.html?_r=1&ref=global.