The falcon cannot hear the falconer
Nov. 4th, 2004 12:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusThe response to yesterday's entry, Exit this Roman shell, was overwhelming. Over a hundred comments, many poems, people talking movingly about big existential choices, their future, their disgust and despair at the way things have turned out.
Some disagreed with my 'just walk away' message, saying that in difficult times the thing to do is stay and fight. Others were looking seriously into their exile options. Well, Harper's magazine has just published Electing To Leave, a sombre and sobering guide to the real options Americans considering exile have. It's worth a read. As is this article about Canada's attitude to political refugees from south of the border. But don't let these reality checks put you off. They mostly focus on red tape and money. What Harper's doesn't point out is that you can leave in a much more sly, Shweikian way, leave with a foot in the door, leave for a while, using tourist visas or study programs. Living abroad, forever, according to the rules, is complicated, troublesome and expensive. But if you don't mind living abroad for a while, in a twilit hinterland of legal ambiguities, protected by a cat's cradle of stretched rules, keeping your options open, you can get away with it much more easily. And it may cost you less to live abroad than it does to stay at home.
Some people said that walking away from a problem is not the way to solve it. My response to that is, why should someone else's problem be my problem? We all have the right to choose the 'dialectical backdrop' of our lives. To choose what thesis to be the antithesis to. That's why it's important not to let other people's problems set your agenda. You've got to find your own. The danger today is that quite a small group of religious, resentful, educationally-deprived rural people, the 53 million who voted for Bush, seek to set the intellectual agenda for the whole world. They want their problems to become ours. And their problems, as far as they see it, are mostly cultural ones. They have problems with things like abortion, irreligion, homosexuality and liberalism. The more they suffer poverty, the more these people vote for governments which enrich the already-rich. The more they follow religion, the more they put themselves in the firing line of other religions, while ignoring religious tenets such as 'thou shalt not kill' and 'turn the other cheek'.
In today's Guardian, Jonathan Friedland puts it like this:
'Many Bush voters admitted their unhappiness on Iraq and confessed to great economic hardship - two issues which ordinarily would be enough to defeat an incumbent. But these voters backed Mr Bush, because he reflected something they regarded as even more important: their values. Those values can be boiled down to issues - abortion, guns, gays - but they represent a larger, cultural difference. One Republican analyst asks people four questions. Do you have a friend or relative serving in the military? Do you have any personal ties to rural America? Do you attend religious services on a weekly basis? Do you own a gun? Answer yes to most or all of those, and you are "a cultural conservative" and most likely vote Republican. Answer no, and the chances are you live on the east or west coast and vote Democrat. In 2000 this cultural split was dead-even: 50-50 America. This time it was 51-49 America, with the conservatives in the majority. Put plainly, the US is moving steadily and solidly to the right. That poses a problem for Democrats, who have to learn to speak to the people of those red states if they are ever to hold power again. But it also poses a problem for America, which has somehow to house two radically diverging cultures in one nation. And it may even pose a problem for the rest of the world's peoples, as they watch the sole superpower, the indispensable nation, chart a course they fear - and barely understand.'
Can blue America dialogue with red America? Sure they speak the same language, but will people with such different cultural values listen to each other? Can the stupid listen to the smart without smarting? Can the urban listen to the rural without sneering? What if the red staters already feel the 'urban elites' have lectured them too much? What if they feel they have power, through their self-proclaimed representative in the White House, and therefore don't need to listen to the 'liberals' ever again? The boot is on the other foot now, the donkey rides the man.
'A military giant yoked uncomfortably to a political dwarf', is how Mark Danner describes Bush's America. The political domination of the advanced blue states by the backward red ones now amounts to an extreme case of 'taxation without representation'. The insecure outsiders who complain about 'metrosexuals' and the 'left-leaning media' are firmly established as a new -- and moronic -- sort of elite themselves. But the whole thing is dangerously unbalanced. Because the fact is that education not only tends to lead to liberalism, it also leads to wealth creation. The economy does better under Democrats. It's liberals who generate the lion's share of the ideas, the products, the services, and the wealth that gives Bush's America its world status. Cut off from its blue coasts and its Democratic-voting big cities, America would rank somewhere behind South Korea in the league table of world nations.
That's why I think exile -- if only temporary -- is now the best option for liberal Americans. Travelling the world is a splendid thing to do, and a mass exodus of intelligent life from the US would quickly show the red staters who makes the money that pays for their president's wars. Depressingly, whereas the choice for America on Tuesday was Bush or Kerry, the choice for America now may be between two forms of bankruptcy: the kind Bin Laden described in last week's video, when he said he wanted to provoke Bush into calamitously expensive wars to undermine the US as he'd undermined the USSR in Afghanistan, or the bankruptcy that follows a mass evacuation of disenchanted liberals who feel that their way of living and thinking has become unfeasible in a country swinging ever-further towards moronic and murderous right-wing populism.
Some disagreed with my 'just walk away' message, saying that in difficult times the thing to do is stay and fight. Others were looking seriously into their exile options. Well, Harper's magazine has just published Electing To Leave, a sombre and sobering guide to the real options Americans considering exile have. It's worth a read. As is this article about Canada's attitude to political refugees from south of the border. But don't let these reality checks put you off. They mostly focus on red tape and money. What Harper's doesn't point out is that you can leave in a much more sly, Shweikian way, leave with a foot in the door, leave for a while, using tourist visas or study programs. Living abroad, forever, according to the rules, is complicated, troublesome and expensive. But if you don't mind living abroad for a while, in a twilit hinterland of legal ambiguities, protected by a cat's cradle of stretched rules, keeping your options open, you can get away with it much more easily. And it may cost you less to live abroad than it does to stay at home.
Some people said that walking away from a problem is not the way to solve it. My response to that is, why should someone else's problem be my problem? We all have the right to choose the 'dialectical backdrop' of our lives. To choose what thesis to be the antithesis to. That's why it's important not to let other people's problems set your agenda. You've got to find your own. The danger today is that quite a small group of religious, resentful, educationally-deprived rural people, the 53 million who voted for Bush, seek to set the intellectual agenda for the whole world. They want their problems to become ours. And their problems, as far as they see it, are mostly cultural ones. They have problems with things like abortion, irreligion, homosexuality and liberalism. The more they suffer poverty, the more these people vote for governments which enrich the already-rich. The more they follow religion, the more they put themselves in the firing line of other religions, while ignoring religious tenets such as 'thou shalt not kill' and 'turn the other cheek'.
In today's Guardian, Jonathan Friedland puts it like this:
'Many Bush voters admitted their unhappiness on Iraq and confessed to great economic hardship - two issues which ordinarily would be enough to defeat an incumbent. But these voters backed Mr Bush, because he reflected something they regarded as even more important: their values. Those values can be boiled down to issues - abortion, guns, gays - but they represent a larger, cultural difference. One Republican analyst asks people four questions. Do you have a friend or relative serving in the military? Do you have any personal ties to rural America? Do you attend religious services on a weekly basis? Do you own a gun? Answer yes to most or all of those, and you are "a cultural conservative" and most likely vote Republican. Answer no, and the chances are you live on the east or west coast and vote Democrat. In 2000 this cultural split was dead-even: 50-50 America. This time it was 51-49 America, with the conservatives in the majority. Put plainly, the US is moving steadily and solidly to the right. That poses a problem for Democrats, who have to learn to speak to the people of those red states if they are ever to hold power again. But it also poses a problem for America, which has somehow to house two radically diverging cultures in one nation. And it may even pose a problem for the rest of the world's peoples, as they watch the sole superpower, the indispensable nation, chart a course they fear - and barely understand.'
Can blue America dialogue with red America? Sure they speak the same language, but will people with such different cultural values listen to each other? Can the stupid listen to the smart without smarting? Can the urban listen to the rural without sneering? What if the red staters already feel the 'urban elites' have lectured them too much? What if they feel they have power, through their self-proclaimed representative in the White House, and therefore don't need to listen to the 'liberals' ever again? The boot is on the other foot now, the donkey rides the man.
'A military giant yoked uncomfortably to a political dwarf', is how Mark Danner describes Bush's America. The political domination of the advanced blue states by the backward red ones now amounts to an extreme case of 'taxation without representation'. The insecure outsiders who complain about 'metrosexuals' and the 'left-leaning media' are firmly established as a new -- and moronic -- sort of elite themselves. But the whole thing is dangerously unbalanced. Because the fact is that education not only tends to lead to liberalism, it also leads to wealth creation. The economy does better under Democrats. It's liberals who generate the lion's share of the ideas, the products, the services, and the wealth that gives Bush's America its world status. Cut off from its blue coasts and its Democratic-voting big cities, America would rank somewhere behind South Korea in the league table of world nations.
That's why I think exile -- if only temporary -- is now the best option for liberal Americans. Travelling the world is a splendid thing to do, and a mass exodus of intelligent life from the US would quickly show the red staters who makes the money that pays for their president's wars. Depressingly, whereas the choice for America on Tuesday was Bush or Kerry, the choice for America now may be between two forms of bankruptcy: the kind Bin Laden described in last week's video, when he said he wanted to provoke Bush into calamitously expensive wars to undermine the US as he'd undermined the USSR in Afghanistan, or the bankruptcy that follows a mass evacuation of disenchanted liberals who feel that their way of living and thinking has become unfeasible in a country swinging ever-further towards moronic and murderous right-wing populism.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-04 03:38 am (UTC)word of advice to anyone seriously considering this:- the dollar is low and about to go one helluva lot lower. If you have savings and investments you could find yourself in my sister in law's position of watching them dwindle before your eyes.
Having said that, many a talented Continental European made their fortune moving to first Britain and later America, there's no reason to suppose America will continue to attract the World's most talented elite. Savvy Indians and Chinese started seeing which way the wind is blowing over three years ago.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-04 03:43 am (UTC)I totally agree
But the kind of mass exile that's necessary for that to happen is surely...imposible isn't it?some are ready to leave, but many more aren't
isn't there another way for a country to divide like a microscopic cell?
Another option: redraw the map ...
Date: 2004-11-04 04:01 am (UTC)Re: Another option: redraw the map ...
Date: 2004-11-04 04:19 am (UTC)Re: Another option: redraw the map ...
Date: 2004-11-04 07:15 am (UTC)Neil
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-04 04:17 am (UTC)i think one of the reasons that the people in the blue states get so mad at the people in the red states is because we think that, if we could only just make them listen, if they would just stand still for a second and actually hear what we're saying, theyd come and stand with us - like theyre simply walking around in some sort of trance, waiting for us to snap our fingers and say the magic word. and in fact we cant imagine how any educated person could possibly, upon hearing what we have to say, fail to agree with us. what this leads to is this enormous disconnect, this blinding rage. and suddenly, its not just that they disagree with us; instead they are simply incapable of holding their own nuanced views. theyre suddenly like savages in the new world, standing naked and dumb before the vanguard of christendom: if they wont get religion, then thats their problem. suddenly we're dealing with enlightenment versus simple idiocy, pearls before swine, right? wrong. while i suspect that conservative base is made of a lot of very stupid people, i could say the same for the liberal base - theyre just stupid people who, by chance, are on our side. the breakdown of any real dialog between the two sides in this country owes its existence, im sure, to factors mroe complicated than i can really understand, but to break it down to stupid versus smart is a tempting though dangerous gloss.
now, maybe im only saying this to play devils advocate, because im surely just as frustrated as everyone else at yesterdays turn of events. and the only explanation i could come up with was the fact that half this country is literally retarded. but i really dont think thats the case. theyre just operating from a different ethical standpoint, and until more people can appreciate that standpoint as an actual nuanced, legitimate belief system (despite itself) we're going to remain half red, and half blue. (the idea of this "permanent shift" towards conservatism, by the way, is a little exaggerated, i think. going from 50-50 to 51-49 is hardly a sea change, especially when the candidate who represented that change, who was responsible for selling it to the other side, was an ineffectual lump, almost pathalogically incapable of convincing anyone of anything; a man with a record incapable of inspiring faith in the progressive left, and totally, laughably, incongruous with the repeated claims of de-facto conservatism foisted on the right).
again, three million more people, out of about three-hundred million, chose to vote for george bush. the place is hardly going up in flames. if the progressive left simply abandons ship right now, then there might never be a better chance for change in the future. this country is drifting apart, yes, but the two sides are still quite close, still just 51-49. leave and come back years from now when its 60-40 and youll regret it, i think.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-04 04:39 am (UTC)Isn't the point that four years is an awful long time to erode international relations, to destablise what peace remains around the world, to hack holes in civil rights, to lose more jobs, to raise even more national debt and to whip people into xenophobic hysteria? It's not just a temporary inconveniece. It's a mandate to destroy. Despite the evidence against Bush's self-interest and personal business agenda, more people still voted for him.
worry and <i>do something about it</i>
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From:(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-04 06:43 am (UTC)I'm not saying this is always the case, but I do find that a lot of people (for example, all the undecided voters I knew) are too damn lazy about their roles as citizens - they don't understand that it is important to do some research, and, at the very least, to question their candidate's words against his or her deeds, and see how they match - the Bush campaign spent a lot of time accusing of Kerry of saying one thing and doing another, when Bush did it on a far more insidious level (appearing to be spiritual, rather than merely playing politics like his opponent).
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Date: 2004-11-04 07:36 am (UTC)It's very true that conservatives in the red states are not necessarily stupid or uneducated -- it's just that they are not thinking in the way or were not taught along the lines that we wish them to be thinking. That doesn't make them bad, just different. Pull a lefty out of their blue urban paradise and stick them in the fields of Kansas to live for the next four years, and if they manage to survive they might very well find themselves more concerned about the morals their three year old children are being taught and the subsidies their neighboring farmers are getting, etc. Different areas require different kinds of living and education in order to survive, so it should come as no surprise that a different mindset is likely to follow.
Left America doesn't insult the religious farmers of other countries, so why do we insult our own neighbors? The more shit thrown, the less likely they will ever think our way, which is, after all, the way most of us want them to think. Just as sure as Bush and his followers often consider their way to be the 'right way' and the 'only way,' much of the left is guilty of approaching our own views in the same manner. Liberal dictators are no better than conservative ones.
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From:"What's the Matter with Kansas?"
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2004-11-05 07:24 am (UTC) - ExpandRe: "What's the Matter with Kansas?"
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Date: 2004-11-04 07:45 am (UTC)There has to be someone to speak up and argue with them; the world's superpower can't just be left alone to follow its awful agenda.
This this news on California providing funding for stem cell research (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3977347.stm) was a small but welcome ray of hope. The right wingers and pro-lifers have been peddling lies about such research, saying that embryos will be produced and harvested specifically for the research, when in fact the tissue comes from living donors, or existing embryos (abortions and necessarily discarded IVF embryos). They peddle lies about the cloning issue as well, obstructing good resaerch based on some horror story about mad scientists creating babies then cutting them up.
Someone needs to be around to argue and fight them, not just ignore them.
I do say this from the relative safety of the Uk though. Ahem. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-04 08:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2004-11-04 08:13 am (UTC)Because many of us have families and friends who will continue to live here, thus their problems will continue to be our problems no matter where we live. In a sense, your call to leave the problems that have beset my country for more friendly locales is an easy one to state considering you yourself do not have the same ties we likely have with it. I may decide to leave, but I know my mother and my sister will not. I know my gay friends will not. I know my most of my fellow Americans will not. To just leave for my own personal well-being seems like a selfish decision...one that fulfills all the accusations charged against those amongst the liberals.
Perhaps you should feel some hope and empathy that despite the cards stacked against us, there are many of us who are now driven with purpose. Or perhaps I might have to also consider you think you're watching lambs to the slaughter. Hopefully we can have your support and confidence, no matter where you call home.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-04 09:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-04 10:04 am (UTC)I'll keep that in mind when my autistic nephew's programs get cut.
W
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Date: 2004-11-04 10:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
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From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2004-11-04 11:36 pm (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
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Date: 2004-11-04 10:53 am (UTC)That said, I don't necessarily believe Bush actually got more votes. The electronic voting machines used for the first time this year offered no paper receipts and no way to audit or recount their results. We pushed buttons on a touchscreen and had faith in Diebold (one of Bush's largest campaign contributors, whose CEO promised to "deliver Ohio in 2004") would honor our choices.
I don't think we can ever know what happened in this election. Or probably any election from now on.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-04 11:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-04 11:17 am (UTC)While we're calling spades spades, I was amused by an analysis in today's Liberation (http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=251453) (Paris):
'The Democrats have taken a hard blow. [une sacrée claque]. How will they climb back up the slope?
The Democrats have lost contact with the peasants and the workers and the supreme talent of the Republicans has been to get them to vote for them in the name of moral values. The Democrats have to keep contact with the other America... But above all the Democrats mustn't abandon their own values by adopting those of their enemy. Instead they must revive some faith in the values of the centre left.'
But what if the 'peasants' scorn the values of the centre left? And what if, given the choice between two devout gay-bashing ass-kicking parties, the 'peasants' will always choose the more convincing of the two, the one which got to that far right ground first?
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Date: 2004-11-04 11:49 am (UTC)Anyway, a thought-provoking read as always, sir.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-04 09:02 pm (UTC)I am lucky enough to be a dual citizen of both Canada and the United States, so I have the choice of living and working in either nation in accordance to my whims. I was born in Vancouver, but I grew up in New York City and, while it is not exactly representative of the majority of the US, I'm extremely faithful to my adopted home. I don't necessarily believe that deciding to leave makes one unpatriotic or apathetic to the future of America, but I personally plan to continue to hold out, to fight, to attend protest rallies, to distribute literature about third party tickets, etc. It seems to me that this race has pushed the two parties to polar opposite ends of the liberal/conservative spectrum. The United States could not be any less United. Having seen drastic change in one direction in recent years, I hope to see drastic change in the opposite direction in the near future. And I hope to be a part of that change.
At it's core...
Date: 2004-11-04 09:39 pm (UTC)Now I don't want to bash the mid-west. In fact, I truly respect that others subscribe to beliefs that diverge from my own. While the urban liberals may specialize in certain things, the rural conservatives probably excel in others.
To be honest, Nick, you taught me that there is no primacy or authority to any body of knowledge - authenticity is not set.
But the Christian right has internalized this notion of conversion. Their idea of harmony is for every human to agree with them and to follow their rules for living.
And this is where I'm conflicted.
On the one hand tolerance is virtuous, but at some point we must draw the line. The motto that I've adopted from game theory is "altruism unless attacked."
But how do I define an attack?
Yours,
Sean T.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-04 09:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-04 10:05 pm (UTC)I do think disenfranchised liberals should leave the US for their own personal development and peace of mind, and I very much believe in this 'world citizen' idea. But I accept that no matter how abused they are by both the neocons and the terrorists, New Yorkers and others like them won't leave in big enough numbers to make any dent in the economy. But Bush can be trusted to ruin the economy all on his own.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-04 10:41 pm (UTC)On one hand, I very much agree with you. I certainly believe that anyone who does not believe in their country or who feels more at home elsewhere should be able to move on. Until the past couple of years, I very much wanted to live my life as a wanderer and expatriate. However, I have now decided to stay precisely because I see this country in peril. And I still think there is time to fight to protect its core values. I want to make someone else's problem my problem. I cannot escape just to make things more palatable for myself. I feel a responsibility to do what I can for the poor, the minorities, the gays, the women, the children, and the environment of the United States.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-05 01:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-05 07:39 am (UTC)aw,
Date: 2004-11-05 03:23 am (UTC)small point
Date: 2004-11-05 04:02 am (UTC)Re: small point
Date: 2004-11-05 07:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-05 09:51 am (UTC)http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=251289&AG
H.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-05 10:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2004-11-06 11:51 am (UTC)All Americans are descendents of runaways. Perhaps that is the origin of their inherent cowardice and need to look big on the outside. The only war in which they fought bravely was the War of Independence against the British. At that time, however, they were still British themselves. Since then they have either come in late to take on a weakened opponent or picked a fight with a thrid-world countries - none of which they succeeded in beating!
Running away from a problem
Date: 2004-11-06 12:00 pm (UTC)