SoundAndFury

Trying to explain to Rami this morning why I think Arianna Huffington is a pretentious boob was an illuminating experience.  "She was a conservative loon and then a lightning bolt struck her on the head and suddenly she was a liberal loon ranting and raving about SUV's!"  This pretty much sums her up as far as I'm concerned.  Rami, exasperated, shot back, "But what does liberal and conservative even mean anymore?!?"  I was, for once, a bit speechless.  One of my pet issues on this blog is to point out the inconsistencies, hypocrisies and absurdities of the two political parties in this country, so I'm well-versed in the contradictions that render any serious attempt to pigeonhole people ideologically rather meaningless.  Pat Buchanan sounds like an anti-war Nazi, the Bush administration is busy insuring that we will see unprecedented tax hikes in the near future, and FoxNews is printing columns that speculate that liberals are poised to become the new federalists.  Is political rhetoric so fluid and nonsensical and opportunistic that there is no such thing as real ideology in America anymore? 

I'm no poli-sci geek, so I don't have a nimble grasp on the historical evolution of the political parties in this country to drag up solid examples that put this kind of thing into perspective.  But it seems to me that the only constant in American politics is change.  As demographics and social norms morph and mutate in this young melting pot, the ideological underpinnings of the two parties shift like quicksand beneath the highly adaptive face of American politics. 

This is a frustrating process for ideological idealists, like me, who actually believe in a form of somewhat pure conservatism and relatively pure liberalism.  I sincerely believe in small government, the power of federalism to effect change in this country in a meaningful way, fiscal responsibility (for everyone except myself, that is) and loosely regulated free markets.  I also happen to believe in the dignity of every human being, the civil rights of the downtrodden and similar mushy liberal notions.  I just disagree about how to improve the lot of as many Americans as possible without sacrificing long-term economic stability.  But I'm also a die-hard foreign policy hawk who approves of much of the intent, if not the execution, of Bush's bold new vision of our role in the world. 

Yet this conflation of political ideas in the public realm is the process by which strange ideological hybrids like me actually obtain a voice in the process.  Perhaps it is important to divorce the definitional realm of politics from the practical party system that ebbs and flows with little regard for theoretical consistency?

So can we still use words like "conservative" and "liberal" without becoming like a blindfolded child whacking away at nothing looking for the pinata?  Maybe not.  I should be more careful about how I describe people.  Perhaps a better way to describe Arianna would be to say she was a "self-professed conservative" who became a "self-professed liberal."  But Americans recoil from such long-winded subtleties.  It is in the playful contradictions of simple words and concepts that we dwell most easily. 

Far from the idiots that many long-winded and "complex" European types view us as, Americans can say a lot with as little unnecessary elaboration as possible.  A knowing look, a cheeky inflection in the voice as we use the blunt terms in our pop cultural lexicon is all we need to grasp the subtleties of our malapropisms.  And so it is that I chuckle with a knowing nod as I receive the constant insult of "neo-con Bush-lover" from my pansy-ass liberal friends.  The actual differences in our worldviews are not along the coarse fault lines implicated by those labels, but there are differences nonetheless, and we instinctively understand each other in a way that belies the crudeness of our adjectives.  And so it goes in the rest of this great nation, with our culture wars and our theocons and our anti-war commies and our dweeby policy wonks and our Zionist neo-cons and on and on and on....but in the end we're not so very different from one another after all.  It's a profoundly American approach to the complexities of the world, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Comments

[david0]

The Sierra Club definitely should have sent a bicycle rikshaw to pick up Arianna and her luggage at the airport.

Really, there ARE legitimate uses of large capacity vehicles. And if there is any organization that uses them wisely, it's the nation's number one outdoor activity organization - the Sierra Club. They use their large vehicles to take people hiking, rafting, etc. They fill the vehicles with people and gear when they do it. The Suburban they picked Arianna in may well have been the Sierra Club's designated airport vehicle - with features for handicapped (something the Sierra Club is known for) and airpor parking sticker. It's amazing the hunger for fresh liberal blood. You suck, neocon scum, but you'll have to take your fangs elsewhere. The Sierra Club has their ass pretty well coveredon this one. But just like the Swiftboat Vets smear. By the time the undamming truth comes out, you won't be interested in hearing. Heck, someone thinks they just saw Sean Penn practicing archery somewhere so he has dashed his credibility as a pacifist.

[Aatom]

I feel as if you may be missing the central point of this post, David, which has absolutely nothing to do with the Sierra Club.