Unambiguous Contradictions Redux

Uncertainty plagues us all. After writing yesterday's post (a prerequisite for what follows, I am sorry to say), I was left with wobbly legs, but not because I was hypoglycemic after some Herculean effort. I was merely unsure whether my ideas were sound, or if my conviction that liberal progressive-types indeed promote fear in nearly every declaration they make was at all tenable. In short, I worried that my thesis was silly.

I am worried no more. The confirmation ceremonies of US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito have passed, and yet liberal Democrats, left quivering in the Senate Judiciary Committee chambers, are certain that Alito has destroyed their certainty.

Read Charles Schumer's remarks regarding Alito:

"All the evidence supports the conclusion that he will turn the clock back on civil rights, privacy rights and workers' rights."

Vermont Senator and SJC co-chair Patrick Leahy was no less concerned:

"A vote for this nomination is a vote against maintaining the fundamental rights and liberties of ordinary Americans."

President Bush and his minions are oft-rebuked as damaging political discourse by their heartless practicing of the "politics of fear." Bush and Vice President Cheney are "fearmongers," preying off anxieties about death, loss, and insecurity. Bush's critics cite his constant "drumbeat" about war and terrorism, or about the insolvency of Social Security, as proof of his manipulation of the human heart.

But leave no doubt that Democrats are good at precisely the same thing, even more so. Be it race or immigration, tax cuts or education reform, abortion limitations or privatization of Social Security, the environment or even healthcare––Democrats sound their alarms in full voice and with great vigor. Iraq, as we know from Democrats, is not only a failure, it is a ringing success for recruiting more terrorists aiming weapons at America. Iraq, preemption, "unilateralism," and Bush's fumbling speech have all made America not only less safe, they have estranged America from its European allies and embarrassed it before the whole world. Not signing the Kyoto Protocol has created massive hurricanes in a dangerously warming atmosphere; drilling for oil in Alaska will destroy America's "last frontier."

In short, Democrats (especially the more progressive ones) want your vote by scaring the very hell out of you. Don't you know that Alito and Co. are going to ruin your life? Don't you see that the Patriot Act (Google, by the way, knows more about you than President Bush will ever know, and yet you are here) will destroy your freedoms? Don't you know that blah and blah and blah will happen if and if and if?

To the most liberally progressive minds out there, I ask, where is your love of uncertainty now? Where is your preference for ambiguity; where's the thrill of insecurity, of not having things guaranteed and defined by an organization like the Catholic Church, or the Democratic Party? Where's the love of iconoclasm as Bush dismantles (sort of) that icon which is the New Deal? Where is the celebration of chaos, or personal choice, as a man--ANY man as the Everyman--adjudicates against your preferences from his bench on the Supreme Court? Why–– when you've been enamored of pointing out that the religious are fools for claiming they are entitled to heaven's bounty if they just do X––why do you feel entitled to the bounteous blessings of the State merely for marking an X in a ballot box? Where's the adventure in demanding the very abolition of adventure in daily living, expecting the Great Safety Net to provide you with enough sanctuary so that you may fulfill yourself in craft, art or artifact? If, after all, life is ultimately without intrinsic meaning, why should we let the State pretend there is any meaning in any thing it does or provides? If only the truly free are the creative, then why are the creative so dependent on the static entitlements of the State; and why so anxious when laws prove elastic, temporal and malleable?

You get the picture, belabored as it may be. The artistic (which I meld with the progressive) temperament of the most strident liberals is all about tearing down facades; about getting at the raw, seething reality of life. A truly European moment in American film (though done too self-consciously) occurred in the opening scenes of David Lynch's "Blue Velvet" (amazing!), as the camera moved from the bucolic to the bestial, dipping from its survey of a perfect neighborhood and down into the manicured grass where beetles and spiders battle for survival. Such scenes rip our shallow sensibilities about life to shreds. Yet, all this frankness and honesty confronting reality (unedited or shaped by Church, creed or culture) flies out the window the moment a progressive's idol, like Marxist historicism or FDR Social Security, is shown to be a vulnerable illusion shaped by State and Academy. Take away one prop in a progressive's stage play, and the curtain falls on the world.

Who plays the politics of fear?

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

[Photo: Cape Cod scene, early morning, summer, low tide, near Campground Beach. The scene is recorded exactly as I found it.]