Another note in a series on Is the American Dream Killing You? by Paul Stiles.
Chapter Eight, “The Modern Gd”
One thing that distinguishes exceptionalists that pay lip service to pluralism from actual pluralists is that the exceptionalists are eager to tell you what other people believe, and how it’s the same as what they believe, so that’s all right. They not only emphasize similarity but create it by dictating what the other view is really like. A good pluralist tries to find out what other people actually do believe, and because he is aware that it’s easier to see similarities than differences, he probably overemphasizes differences by way of compensation. Besides, the good pluralist likes differences, as a matter of temperament; variety is the spice of his life. Of course, one of the other things that appeals to me about pluralism is that even in its laziest live-and-let-live form, it’s always incomplete. It’s an attempt. I know I’m never really going to understand, oh, Sikhism, not the way the Sikhs do, but a dim understanding is better than none, and is certainly better than thinking I have a complete understanding.
Speaking of Sikhism, how is it that all these charts about how all religions at heart are really the same don’t include a Golden Rule for the Sikhs? I mean, the annoying chart on page 210 isn’t the Golden Rule, but it’s the same kind of thing, about how all religions share the same point of view, which is coincidentally the point of view of the author. No Sikhs, though. I mean, there’s two of them for each Member of the Tribe, but the Jews always get on those lists. Perhaps it’s part of the conspiracy... Hell, there are two Voudouisants for every Jew in the world, and there’s no Vodoun entry on the chart. You know, perhaps Mr. Stiles didn’t really make an effort to be universal, after all. Maybe he’s talking through his ass. What do you think?
The interesting thing about this chapter is that he (correctly) identifies that it is the conservatives who are really running the Market War. Or, rather, he names as unindicted co-conspirators the Chicago School of economists, Jeff Jacoby, and pretty much anybody who has ever quoted Adam Smith. But then, you see, he posits that politics and socio-political viewpoints are not one-dimensional. Gasp! Whatever can he mean? You see, on the left, there are Market Liberals and there are Moral Liberals, and on the Right there are Market Conservatives and there are Moral Conservatives. No, really. He has a little chart and everything, right on page 228. The moral liberal “pursues moral progress, spawning such vitally important movements as environmentalism, human rights, corporate responsibility and civil rights.” Market liberalism (more “virulent”, by the way) is the bad kind: “Attacks on religion, the nuclear family, and America itself all spring form here.” These are moral relativists, secularists, “the Market’s stormtrooper.” On the other hand, The moral conservatives is, like the moral liberal, an essential element of democracy, safeguarding its institutions, traditions and values, political, religious and familial.” Or what YHB calls ISRVs. But Market conservatives are also bad: “Lacking any moral vision, they push the idea that the free market is “what we are about.” So, you see, he’s identified the enemy: Gdless Market Liberals and Gdless Market Conservatives. Yes?
Except for the Market Conservatives, who drop out of the book entirely. So do the Moral Liberals, in fact. No, if you want to know who is imposing Market Values on this country (and the world), who wants to let the unregulated free market destroy our values and our very selves, who is in fact leading the charge for faceless, immoral corporations in their inhuman and inhumane quest for ever-increasing productivity, it’s the Democrats. Hi! Over here! Yep! Surprise; I bet you thought we were anti-business. No, Mr. Stiles has seen through that. “The election results of both 2000 and 2004 support this polarized reading.” (p. 231) Oh, and “Ominously, the distribution of home-video porn movies eerily mirrors this same duality, with Blue states filling up on porn and Red states more likely to abstain.” No, he doesn’t give statistics on abortion, or divorce, or murder, or poverty. But the Flin-Flarn-Filth is all footnoted and stuff.
Anyway, none of us who voted for John Kerry, for instance, thought that we were voting for an ex-hippie crusader against corporate crime who cared so much about the sacrament that he kept going to Mass even when it was hurting him politically. Nor did we think that we were voting against an oilman and corporate stooge who consistently promoted corporate property rights against individual (and particularly union) liberties. Nor were we concerned about Our Only President surrounding himself with crooks and incompetents, or about his disinclination to do anything about corporate corruption. No, we were the Market’s stormtroopers. And we hate America. Glad that’s sorted out.
You know, with charts and all.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.