The Fascism of Limited Ideas

Fascist, racist, xenophobe, homophobe, communist, misogynist, transgendered phobic—I’ve lost track of the endless labels being thrown around in this election cycle.  I am getting really tired of the disrespect shown by everyone to almost everyone else.

To put this more succinctly, I am very frustrated with people who insist that anyone with a different opinion is evil.  Or stupid.  Or—and this is more likely—both:  stupidly evil.  We, as a nation, seem to be more polarized than ever before in our history.   Almost daily, you can read a newspaper editorial bemoaning the lack of bipartisan cooperation in Congress, ironically ignoring that within the same edition there is usually an article belittling a politician for having political views that differ from those of the publisher.  No one, of any political stripe, can truly love America while hating almost half the people in it.

We have become a nation of victims and unless I share your perennial outrage, somehow, I am partly responsible for not being more inclusive. 

Differences of opinion are no longer tolerated.  That my background, experiences, education, and personal beliefs might bring me to have a different political view than someone else, is now absolute proof that I am evil.  And as evil, it is perfectly okay to discriminate against me in every way possible.

This form of censorship seems to have become the norm in academic circles.  I remember well the faculty meeting I suffered through in which the department was trying to rewrite, for the umpteenth time, the departmental mission statement.  For some reason, it was decided to include the goal of being ‘diverse’, despite the fact that a simple glance around the room would reveal that this group was about as diverse as a herd of Hereford dairy cows. 

The problem, of course, was how to define diversity.  For about a half hour, various descriptors were suggested and agreed upon—none of which I will include here, but rest assured, we were being politically correct.  But, when I suggested that political beliefs be added to the list, the idea was firmly rejected.   A difference of political opinion could only be the result of stupidity, not diversity.  Which is probably why the department hasn’t hired anyone with different views in decades.  Hell, it has been over half a century since they hired a veteran, for example.

Which was why one member of the department chose to hide their political beliefs.  Privately, this person had years earlier revealed to me that “he” had long since decided that it would be best for “his” career if such opinions were kept secret.  In effect, the department had established a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.  More accurately, it was a “We’ll Ask, You Better Lie” policy.

I remember well when a colleague schooled me about Godwin’s Law—that any reference to Nazi Germany immediately invalidated an argument.  (First, that is not what Mike Godwin actually said, and second, my original remark was not about Nazi Germany, but a comparison to the economic policies of the Weimar Republic.)

That same professor, later on the same day, posted twice on Facebook.  Her first post was that Republicans who disagreed with Obama were racist “brown shirts”.  Five hours later, she posted about having to lecture students about the need for “respectful discourse”.

I blame this lack of congeniality on the current state of journalism—particularly television journalism.  Regardless of your political beliefs, there is a news channel that caters to your preferred diet, carefully flavoring its reportage to reinforce your current beliefs.  Most egregious are the shows that pretend to be balanced by having a panel on which one person out of three or four has an “opposing” viewpoint.  The job of the devil’s advocate is to argue valiantly, then lose.  That kind of positive reinforcement is as addictive as heroin.

Progress is never made by people who agree with the masses.  New ideas, different ways of doing things, inventions in general….Innovations come from people who are different, people who don’t get along with the status quo.  At the risk of being lectured by that same colleague about Godwin’s Law, Hitler lost the war because—among a host of other reasons—he chased a handful of Jewish physicists out of Europe. 

My wife and I have similar, but not identical, political views.  That we usually agree is understandable since we have shared 46 years together.  The events of the last half century together have been shared, so that the effect upon our views being similar is only natural—and not the result of my telling her what her views are.  But, just as naturally, since your past is different from mine, your views should be different from mine.  Not right, nor wrong, but different.

Most importantly, do you really want to live in a world where everyone agrees with you?  I know that my opinions are the nut point of view, and have no desire to be surrounded with any more nuts than I already am.