Metacentricities

I’m just as blue as the next person. In fact, I’m so blue, I might even be indigo. (If you remember high school physics, and ROY G BIV - Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet - for the colors of the rainbow) I support the ACLU, NARAL, all of those lefty organizations that many on the right find troublesome. However, I’m beginning to find problematic some of the tactics of left wing organizations and activists.

Not so long ago, I talked about "means and ends" that the means are the ends. I got an email in my box from NARAL today, with a video which I found very troubling. It basically depicts various right wing people as monsters like godzilla, or swamp thing, etc. Why is it that we can’t just say that we disagree with them, and see things differently, than cast them as pre-historic swamp monsters? Do we appreciate being dehumanized by the likes of Ann Coulter? So why do we feel it is OK to dehumanize them in return? What does this actually, really do, besides either scare people enough enough that they’ll cough up money?

I’ve never liked using fear as a tactic. I don’t like the fact that the Bush administration uses fear as a tactic to make it more likely that people will bend over when they do things like tap phones and get phone records. I don’t like using fear of a theocratic takeover of the US as a tactic either. The truth is always far more complicated and nuanced, but complicated and nuanced feels like it doesn’t lead to either action, or to contributions. But the continued process of ignoring complicated and nuanced realities leads to more divisivenss, and more fragmentation - and these are the things that are, ultimately, the enemies of social change.

technorati tags:abortion, religousright, aclu

Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed