> I am Speaking for Eryk Salvaggio
So am I!
My current ongoing political artwork is called "Cold Calling For Democracy."
Working on a campaign really gives a crystal clear understanding of what the
state of politics is in this country. I've done three days worth of calling
democrats and unregistered voters (for the Howard Dean Campaign, for the
time being) calling essentially random people and talking to them about
their ideas for this country and thoughts on the political process. I mean
it's one thing to sit around and say, "America needs ______" or "America
wants _______" but it's another thing altogether to actually interrupt
America while it's eating dinner, and ask them. In only three days, my idea
of "what America needs" has had a drastic shift; to a degree, it's
liberating and to a degree it's frightening; things are better and worse
than I thought, simultaneously.
1. May I Ask Your Husband About Your Political Views, Ma'am?
I called this woman who was unregistered- meaning, basically, that they
haven't ever voted in a primary before, or chose to remain independent for
whatever reason, to vote for whatever primary. She says, "Let me ask my
husband." Her husband comes on with, "Let me tell you, I am a Republican,
and I am certainly not going to vote for Howard Dean; after his gross
incompetence in Vermont, he should not be president of this country." The
guy hung up before I could ask him what exactly Deans "incompetence" was in
Vermont. I don't care what the guy thought of Deans incompetence in Vermont-
where like, everyone on Earth basically says he single handedly saved the
state from fiscal disaster. What I am interested in is the number of people
who gave me their opinion and immediately hung up the phone afterwards with
no chance to actually discuss anything. That makes me really nervous. It's
at the heart and soul of what's rotten about politics.
2. Score: 6. (Hostile to Dean / Voting Bush)
"Let me tell you something, I don't believe in gay rights and all that shit
so don't call me anymore." (click)
3. Stats
Then on the other hand you have totally amazing people who you find. I mean,
seriously, the atrocities shine brightest here, but 3 out of 5 people who
answered the phone were great, and only 1 out of 5 seemed really rude.
4. Kings of New England
One woman wanted a triumvirate- and she was serious. She had read up on it,
thought about it, wanted to talk to me about it. I said: "I'm speechless. I
have nothing to say to that!" and she said "I know you don't!" She explained
that she's lived all over the country, that there was no way that any one
candidate could represent all the people, and that we should split the
country into three regions- the west, the northeast, and the south east.
Then have the three people work as a Council of Presidents. She also said
Dean couldn't win in the south, but should be able to represent the people
he represents- the northeast. I like this idea, especially because it means
California and New England will basically run the country and Louisiana and
Arkansas will be forced to reckon with its liberal tidal waves in off the
coasts.
5. What Is Said To The People, Say It Through The Phones.
"Hello, my name is Eryk and I hope this isn't a bad time? But I am a
volunteer here at Governor Howard Dean's Presidential campaign, and we're
just trying to get in touch with voters and see what people are thinking
about here at the start of the political season."
Then pause. If they say nothing, I say, "Have you considered who you're
going to support in the upcoming election?"
The original script is totally telemarketing. "I am (name) and I am working
for Governor Howard Deans Presidential Campaign. How are you today? (Pause)
We know it's early in the primary season, but…" then we ask about who they
want to support.
I decided to take be "authentic" about it and it works. I got through more
pages than anyone else and I also got a lot of positive responses. The kid
next to me was really bad at it. Anyone who just reads the script at people
is doomed to failure. One key thing I did was emphasize the word "volunteer"
with an "Aw, shucks!" sort of emphasis. "Aw geez, I dunno what I'm doin,
maybe you can help a poor fellow out, who just wants to hear what you have
to say?" Poof! People with crying kids in the background are talking to me,
or asking me to "call back later, but really I mean it, call back." I was
told I should go into a career as a telemarketer.
6. A Good Man.
I like how older people said, "Howard Dean, I know he's a good man, but
that's about all I can tell you right now." I would say "well thank you,
that's very kind of you, how about I send you some mail on Howard Dean's
ideas?" and they say "sure!" But they said it like that a lot, "Howard Dean,
he's a good man." It makes me want to vote for the guy. We need commercials
of old ladies saying that. "Howard Deans? I don't know much about him, but I
know he's a good man." Just like that, with the name wrong and everything.
7. A Short Conversation With Roger, In Which The Tables Are Turned Upon Me
Me: Hi Roger! I'm a volunteer for Governor Howard Dean's Presidential
campaign, and I really hope it's not a bad time for you, but we're trying to
see what voters are thinking about this time of year and see what issues are
important to them.
Roger: Sure! I have the time.
Me: Great! Thanks. So, who are you leaning towards in the-
Roger: I have the time, but this is my time. Thank you! (hangs up phone)
8. Barroom and Billiard Hall Politics
After we made phone calls, a bunch of the campaign staff were going to the
nearby bar to catch the Democratic debate on the tv there. And here I
realized that the problem with politics in this country is the voters.
While we're sitting down watching the tv in the corner, some of us are in
Dean shirts, (not me, but I got a free sticker that I was still wearing).
"I hate Howard Dean. What does Howard Dean think about supporting the
troops?" I hear from the corner.
"Well, Howard Dean supports better retirement benefits that George Bush took
away from them while sending people over-"
"Yeah yeah yeah, whatever." says Barstool Guy. "What does he think about
______?"
"Well, Howard Dean has come out to say-"
"Yeah yeah yeah." Then he said something I couldn't hear, and Campaign Guy
turned around, really annoyed looking. Barstool Guy yelled something else-
he said "All you assholes know how to do up there in Vermont is make
cheese." Campaign Guy turned around and had this expression of total
bewilderment. Barstool Guy keeps yelling these anti-Vermont slogans.
"None of us are from Vermont." says Campaign Guy, "We're not getting
offended by the things you are saying about Vermont"
"Yeah yeah yeah." says Barstool guy.
9. And The Problem Is…
I got a voter, Unregistered, 26 years old, and I called her up. She was on
the phone, talking to me, and I say, "What issues are important to you this
year?" She says, "No issues are important to me." I was shocked, on the
phone. I had to repeat it back:
"No issue is important to you." I wrote it down, just like that, on the
piece of paper where we list comments on the caller.
There's two wars in two countries; people are out of work, 1 in 10 people in
our society are at the mercy of the supreme court just to be able to see
someone they love who is dying in the hospital. I looked at the TV, tonight,
when I came home, and there's this commercial of this guy walking through a
hotel with a blindfold on. He navigates the hotel perfectly. I think to
myself, "That's the most important issue, to some people- to be able to
navigate through as much space as we can with a blindfold on." Really-
sincerely- I understand that position, and I think, to a certain degree,
people have a right to have that position.
10. Barroom and Billiard Hall Politics, Volume II
We were watching the debate when two people behind us got up to talk to the
waitress and tell her that they were leaving because their dinner was ruined
by having the debate on in the back of the room.
11. Can't Even Hit A Home Run
I have to say, whenever I see Howard Dean, I want him to hit a home run. I
want to see a Jed Bartlett moment. I mean, I know; the debates on the West
Wing are scripted, that no candidate can ever hit as many home runs as that.
But just once, I want to see Dean in an interview and just hit it out of the
park. To just say something so perfectly that there's nothing else to say,
that stands up for what's right in a way that makes it seem like it's right,
and not "liberal" or "weak" or "foolish" or "idealistic" but just that it's
the best thing to do because it's the right thing to do.
Today, I spent three hours calling people on the telephone, and every number
I called I was terrified of getting a phone slammed in my face, or finding
sleeper cell Republicans. When I watched the Democratic primaries and Dean
did not hit a home run, he bunted runs but he hit no home runs. He got
attacked by Lieberman; (whose name, after 4 years on the public psyche, I've
only just now realized means "loverman"). Dean defended himself well, but
not as well as he could have. I hate Joe Lieberman- his smugness, his
GW-Lite Politics, his offensive conservative centrism. If Lieberman gets the
nomination, I might not even bother voting.
I also really like Kucinich and Carol Mosely-Braun; I like that they support
each other because they both know they are too liberal to win; I like Braun
because you can tell she secretly loves Howard Dean, and I like Kucinich
because you can tell he actually, truly hates Howard Dean.
Clinton knew the secret to achieving actual humane leadership for
progressive causes was simple. The people who care about human rights
because they think it's a moral obligation are already going to support
something that improves the lot of desperate people; it's the people who
want to improve their own lots first that need to be convinced. Dean knows
this too, I think, and though it seems cynical- filter humanism through
economic benefits- That, I think, is the essence of politics. Even within my
own streaks of political idealism and radical leftist politics, it really,
really really comes down to a war for every centimeter that adds up to
moving this country an inch.
But how do we convince the people who hang up in our faces, who can't hear a
word we say? That's what I want to know. The nation's political beliefs are
a behemoth, and the nation is not moved easily; I don't know if art can do a
damn thing in bringing around people who don't give a damn about art. How do
you talk to the people who say, in a genuine statement, that there are no
issues that affect them? Or people who state thier cases into a phone,
hanging up before I can even ask if they want to be taken off the list.
People who are angry at the people who ask them questions about what they
believe. How do we ask them- how do we ask ourselves, really- to listen to
the other side of what we're all thinking?
Art is a ventilation device for the frustration of desperate or angry
individuals, or else it is a career ladder, or best of all, it is an opening
and a pathway towards a new realm of thinking and a new way of being- not a
new realm of thinking that, say, "Ashcroft sucks", or that Bush is the Anti
Christ- those are old ways of thinking that rely on a duality, a closed
mind, and a binary opposition thought process. The new way of thinking is
something like funneling explosions into spontaneous movements within the
infrastructure; giving people a vision of a world without fear and without
the hostility that our nation is slowly growing so accustomed to that it
can't move. I don't know how to do that with art, I don't know how to do
that in a conversation, I don't know how to do that in my own day to day
life. I see it sometimes in the speaking style of certain people- Howard
Dean, before he became the front runner and started hedging his bets; and
I've seen it lately in the language that General Wesley Clark uses. I don't
see it in most of the political art nights at coffee houses; where people
dwell on apocalypse and keep the fear alive; I don't see it in a lot of
political net.art or in the language of radicals; and I think that's a sad
thing, because standing up for the opening of possibilities is the most
radical political notion that can be.
-e.
Cold Calling For Democracy
-
Type: discussion
Comments
eryk wrote:
But how do we convince the people who hang up in our faces, who can't hear a
word we say? That's what I want to know. The nation's political beliefs are
a behemoth, and the nation is not moved easily; I don't know if art can do a
damn thing in bringing around people who don't give a damn about art. How do
you talk to the people who say, in a genuine statement, that there are no
issues that affect them? Or people who state thier cases into a phone,
hanging up before I can even ask if they want to be taken off the list.
People who are angry at the people who ask them questions about what they
believe. How do we ask them- how do we ask ourselves, really- to listen to
the other side of what we're all thinking?
Hi Eryk,
I think you convince them by getting to know them and loving them and
serving them, whether they ever come to agree with you or not. You
probably don't convince them by cold calling them on the phone. In
Christian evangelical circles, it's the difference between
programatic evangelism (door to door, passing out tracts, treating
everybody as a knotch on your belt) and friendship/servant evangelism
(Jesus taking time out of his last meal to wash the feet of his known
betrayer). A sappy truism from years of teaching middle school kids
– they won't care how much you know until they know how much you
care.
Either way, you have to have some actual love and joy and peace and
hope in your own life to offer. There has to be a modicum of evident
desirability to your life (not as you posit yourself online or on
stage; but day-to-day, on the job, in your home, etc.). Otherwise,
why will anybody even want to engage you in the dialectic?
I observe the revolution happening one soul at a time, often at great
personal cost to those involved, and almost exclusively off-camera.
Occasionally, it even involves art and politics.
peace,
curt
Eryk:
Thanks a lot for a very thoughtful post. I've never participated in politics in such a sustained way as to volunteer for a campaign, but I've thought about issues of tactics and conversion quite a bit. And I think one thing to keep in mind is that for any given opinion you're going to have a lot of people you just can't convince. It's not a good idea to worry about this people. The swing in the middle is often where the gains are to be made, and often the trick is not to convince them that you're right, but to convince them it's worth having an opinion at all.
Possibly the most direct political things I've ever done involved bike activism, years ago when I was in Minneapolis, commuting by bike in a car-centric city. (My roommate and good friend was working as a messenger at a time, which obviously informed my sensibilities as well.) We'd go to a lot of Critical Masses–mass urban bike rides, for those who don't know–but often people's methods of proselytizing seemed ineffective, and more than a little embarrassing. Pedestrians would mostly smile when they saw us, but then somebody would shout out "One less car!" in a strident tone of voice, which is a difficult slogan to get behind because in Mpls your life is pretty difficult if you boycott them altogether. Or they'd shout "Join us!", which comes across as odd, maybe even cult-ish, and besides, most people can't just drop what they're doing and follow a mass bike ride for the next hour.
I figured the biggest problem was that people simply didn't know what the Mass was, and what sorts of issues were involved, so I wrote a flyer to hand out, and it was this non-aggressive, non-anarchist little tract. It was important to me to connect with people not in terms of grand ideologies but in terms of common human experience. So basically what I wrote was "when you were a kid, biking to your friend's house was really nice and a good way to be connected with your neighborhood. It sure sucks that we can't do that as adults without worrying about getting run over."
Before the mass started I handed them out to a lot of riders, and I got to see a lot of peds reading what I'd read. You like to think that the next time 'round some of those peds will hear about the Mass and get the bike out of the basement to ride along. You don't really know, of course. There's no way to track this sort of thing.
It's a matter of faith, and actually I think politics involves a lot of faith. The best political stories to me read like religious stories – whether you're talking about "V for Vendetta" or choice episodes of "The West Wing" or even "The Contender". And last spring when I was going to anti-war protests even though Bush & Co were hell-bent on bombing Iraq no matter what anybody said, I thought of little girls in Birmingham, Alabama, holding hands, seeing firehoses and police dogs and singing "We Shall Overcome" and trying their best not to be terrified. How did they know that their experience would lead to any progress? How did they know that it would matter?
This is the biggest challenge. It's easy to sit at home and watch Bush (or Dean or Lieberman or anyone else) on TV and say "What an asshole." It's hard to actually get out of your chair and join a protest or volunteer for a campaign or even vote. Because if change doesn't happen right away, aren't you going to feel duped?
And cynicism is the easy route, it's the path of least resistance. It's advocated implicitly by the stores at the mall that sell you junk you don't need, an economy that tells you your happiness matters less than your paycheck, psychiatric overmedication, news media that talks about the next presidential campaign as if it were a horse race. Don't make a peep. Keep your head down, work hard, don't complain, distract yourself with celebrity gossip and blockbuster movies, and maybe if you're lucky you'll find somebody to fall in love with and you'll be able to afford a nice house and you'll be able to retire at the age of 65. Your whole life will have passed by you without any undue strain or exertion.
Maybe this is where art comes into the picture. Shouldn't art do more than simply please us? Shouldn't it transform us? Shouldn't it give us courage, to believe that we can have some control over our own happiness, and about the happiness of those in our families, among our friends, on our streets, and around this earth?
For this to work, though, I think you need to have politics motivated by love, not by hatred, and this is a problem for the left. We've been in the oppositional role for so long that all we know how to do is be reflexive, and that's part of the reason I've stayed away a little. I made a vow to myself fairly early on that I'm never going to end up like up one of those old hippies ranting in the anarchist bookstore at some organizing meeting. You see these people in activist circles, people who have stared so long at the things they hate that they've almost forgotten what it is they love.
So what is it that you love? What is it that you personally care about that's being threatened? Can you express that in net-art or music or a film or a poem? Can you make people believe that it's worth fighting for?
F.
Curt;
The thing is, I'm not cold calling to convince anyone. I am cold calling to
ask them what they think. Realistically, if we are calling people randomly
on the phone to ask them what they think, it is not that much different than
starting up a conversation with a stranger on a bus. I don't see it as
evangelism, because it wasn't. We're asking people what issues are important
to them so we can tell a presidential candidate that those issues are
important to them. We're inviting a conversation. Not once did I get the
feeling that people were angry over being cold called- which is shocking to
me. But when I said I was with Gov. Howard Dean and we had some questions, I
would pause and give them ample opportunity to decline- and no one did. (I
estimate at this point I have called 2400 people- maybe 16 have hung up in
my face.) If anything, they waited for my question- what issues are
important to you, who are you leaning towards for the NH primary. Then they
either responded favorably (if you are wondering, the majority of people
I've spoken to are very favorable to Dean) or they launched an oppositional
tirade and then hung up the phone.
I don't get to talk about the cost of the war, I don't get to talk about the
fact that homeland security is no better now than since 9/11, I don't get to
talk to them about how Bush is supporting troops with the elimination of
benefits, how he threatened overtime accessibility, how we have the worst
federal deficit in the history of America, etc. People simply support Bush,
are angry at the people who don't, and that's the end of the conversation.
People want to tell me either a) they hate homosexuals or b) Dean screwed up
Vermont's economy (patently untrue).
The question I have is, what makes those people- the people who launch a
tirade and then hang up- so angry? The answer has to be something in the
American Socio-Political bloodstream. I don't know if it is simply fear. And
whatever the answer, do we really think that showing them a piece of art is
going to get them to calm down? There is a fast dissolving center here now;
most Americans are running full speed towards an insulated political life.
The end of debate is a weakening of ideas, and a democracy with weak ideas
is a weak democracy.
-e.
—– Original Message —–
From: "Curt Cloninger" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, September 15, 2003 1:57 PM
Subject: RHIZOME_RAW: Re: Cold Calling For Democracy
> eryk wrote:
> But how do we convince the people who hang up in our faces, who can't hear
a
> word we say? That's what I want to know. The nation's political beliefs
are
> a behemoth, and the nation is not moved easily; I don't know if art can do
a
> damn thing in bringing around people who don't give a damn about art. How
do
> you talk to the people who say, in a genuine statement, that there are no
> issues that affect them? Or people who state thier cases into a phone,
> hanging up before I can even ask if they want to be taken off the list.
> People who are angry at the people who ask them questions about what they
> believe. How do we ask them- how do we ask ourselves, really- to listen to
> the other side of what we're all thinking?
>
>
> Hi Eryk,
>
> I think you convince them by getting to know them and loving them and
> serving them, whether they ever come to agree with you or not. You
> probably don't convince them by cold calling them on the phone. In
> Christian evangelical circles, it's the difference between
> programatic evangelism (door to door, passing out tracts, treating
> everybody as a knotch on your belt) and friendship/servant evangelism
> (Jesus taking time out of his last meal to wash the feet of his known
> betrayer). A sappy truism from years of teaching middle school kids
> – they won't care how much you know until they know how much you
> care.
>
> Either way, you have to have some actual love and joy and peace and
> hope in your own life to offer. There has to be a modicum of evident
> desirability to your life (not as you posit yourself online or on
> stage; but day-to-day, on the job, in your home, etc.). Otherwise,
> why will anybody even want to engage you in the dialectic?
>
> I observe the revolution happening one soul at a time, often at great
> personal cost to those involved, and almost exclusively off-camera.
> Occasionally, it even involves art and politics.
>
> peace,
> curt
> + ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gniht ym tup
> -> post: [email protected]
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> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>
At 11:59 AM -0400 9/16/03, Eryk Salvaggio wrote
:
>The thing is, I'm not cold calling to convince anyone. I am cold calling to
>ask them what they think.
I understand that. But later in your email, you asked how you might
convince folks to change or at least get them to dialogue with you.
I was responding to that open question.
>The question I have is, what makes those people- the people who launch a
>tirade and then hang up- so angry?
I propose that if you met them in another context and spent some time
listening to their needs, or even meeting their needs, if you
developed a relationship with them, they would probably respond to
you differently and you would understand them better.
> The answer has to be something in the
>American Socio-Political bloodstream.
That's a convenient marxist analysis, but maybe one of the people you
called has a chronic toothache. Maybe another one has a husband who
doesn't support her. Do you see what I'm saying? You're getting
close to the solution by calling individual human beings one-by-one
rather than merely watching CNN (or the Guerilla News Network, for
that matter). The next step is getting to know people in your
immediate sphere of influence, and beginning to serve them. Maybe
you're already doing this. Your post didn't say.
> I don't know if it is simply fear. And
>whatever the answer, do we really think that showing them a piece of art is
>going to get them to calm down?
The art I value and enjoy tweaks people on a more primal, less
didactic level. Tactical art created specifically to achieve some
measurable political end appeals to me like a wet paper towel. Maybe
my art is just me celebrating existence in public. The sparks fly
upward.
>There is a fast dissolving center here now;
>most Americans are running full speed towards an insulated political life.
>The end of debate is a weakening of ideas, and a democracy with weak ideas
>is a weak democracy.
My hope for mankind is in something other than political debate.
peace,
curt
—– Original Message —–
From: "curt" <[email protected]>
> I propose that if you met them in another context and spent some time
> listening to their needs, or even meeting their needs, if you
> developed a relationship with them, they would probably respond to
> you differently and you would understand them better.
Yes, that's what has to be done- that's the point of my post. But the
question of "how" can't be answered that way, I don't think. I don't believe
it is a partisan issue, I am complicit- I can't make "friends" with someone
who holds those beliefs ("I don't care about gay rights and all that shit").
I am much more conditioned to consider them an enemy, or, realistically, I
am more conditioned to just dismiss them as another case of ignorant white
trash. Yes, it's fine and good to say "Love Thy Neighbor" but that addresses
nothing of the actual issue of how; and to make it worse, I am implicit,
since I would not, in a million years, honestly pay attention to anything
that guy said, on any subject.
>
> > The answer has to be something in the
> >American Socio-Political bloodstream.
>
> That's a convenient marxist analysis, but maybe one of the people you
> called has a chronic toothache. Maybe another one has a husband who
> doesn't support her. Do you see what I'm saying? You're getting
> close to the solution by calling individual human beings one-by-one
> rather than merely watching CNN (or the Guerilla News Network, for
> that matter). The next step is getting to know people in your
> immediate sphere of influence, and beginning to serve them. Maybe
> you're already doing this. Your post didn't say.
None of that it is in my post, no. But what you're saying is actually very
pomo, Curt- that there is no linear narrative? It doesn't mean anything that
people are slamming the phone in my face after dishing out right wing
political diatribes- perhaps they *did* have a toothache. But I think it is
safe to say that there is a percentage of people who do not listen to anyone
else right now. I think this is a major issue within American Politics,
something to do with winning and losing, something to do with defensiveness
on behalf of Bush supporters. I wonder if we are not, ("we" being me) doing
a disservice to the level of discourse in our country by intimidating Bush
supporters (who aren't implicitly in line with the propaganda arm of the
regime) the same way the regime intimidates us. (Me).
> The art I value and enjoy tweaks people on a more primal, less
> didactic level. Tactical art created specifically to achieve some
> measurable political end appeals to me like a wet paper towel. Maybe
> my art is just me celebrating existence in public. The sparks fly
> upward.
That's kind of what I have been getting at. Art, if it is alive, can send
the leaves scattering, and to that end, you've got some people looking at
leaves and thinking about being alive and what the short term goals are for
our short term lives. This can obviously have political repercussions. But
political art seems like a rather blunt weapon.
> My hope for mankind is in something other than political debate.
But that's like saying religion is useless and corrupt. Politics is being
abused in the same way. When Religion gets divisive, it's an abuse of
religion, the same occurs with politics. While there should be some natural
element of debate within any democracy, the notion that we must be divided
between factions, parties, and ideologies is discouraging. At the end of the
world, government will have done its best at the times it realized its main
priority is a vague something known only as "the greater good." Politics is
the process of defining that; debate is the method with which that process
is carried out, and government is the processing center for that process.
You know, as well as I, that when people dismiss religion they are mostly
dismissing the abuse of religion- unfortunately, compacting religion with
its abuse is a type of cynical shorthand and makes it nearly impossible to
deconstruct, blurs the line between the holiness and the destructive
capacities of religion. The same can be true of collapsing politics with
partisan power plays. Government can be idealistic- it should be expected
that it be idealistic; it ought to be expected that government can work
towards the "common good" and define that common good with the help of its
citizens. America is the process of defining the persuit of happiness,
America is the experiment of whether human beings can be trusted with that
search. It may sound ridiculous, but, as you say- perhaps, for the past 227
years, all of our political leaders have merely had a toothache?
>
> peace,
> curt
>
>
c:
> > I propose that if you met them in another context and spent some time
> > listening to their needs, or even meeting their needs, if you
> > developed a relationship with them, they would probably respond to
> you differently and you would understand them better.
e:
>Yes, that's what has to be done- that's the point of my post. But the
>question of "how" can't be answered that way, I don't think. I don't believe
>it is a partisan issue, I am complicit- I can't make "friends" with someone
>who holds those beliefs ("I don't care about gay rights and all that shit").
>I am much more conditioned to consider them an enemy, or, realistically, I
>am more conditioned to just dismiss them as another case of ignorant white
>trash. Yes, it's fine and good to say "Love Thy Neighbor" but that addresses
>nothing of the actual issue of how; and to make it worse, I am implicit,
>since I would not, in a million years, honestly pay attention to anything
>that guy said, on any subject.
c:
i appreciate your honesty. The solution is to love, serve, honor,
and value that guy. If he is indeed an idiot living a fearful and
largely unconsidered life, how can we reasonably expect the change to
start with him? In my experience, it takes a supernatural miracle to
cause me to love people I hate. I literally pray, "Jesus, give me
your heart of love for _" until it happens. The most powerful
sociological change agent is the power to love and serve unlovable
people, and I simply can't do this in my own strength.
"It starts with greed and then goes all wrong /
And that's why we can't all just get along."
- beastie boys
Most liberals think they have everybody's best interest at heart.
They know what we all need, and if we would just wise up and agree
with their particular understanding of what we need, the world would
be a better place. This is just selfishness cloaked as benevolence.
Regardless of how "the problem" manifests itself (partisanism, fear,
war, terror), the root of the problem is my inability to love and
serve the people I hate.
[By way of concession, I do agree that politics have some use and
that there are measurable sociological trends.]
peace,
curt