The Left’s Achilles’ Heel
7.6.08 · by Mandi Jones
Recently I attended a conference full of activists, politicians and organizers and it was there that I came to the disheartening realization about what was wrong with the left. While I visited with some of the brightest minds in the progressive and Democratic spectrum over food and drinks, I found that with any group of people who leans far to one side, the conversations were often bombarded with cynical analysis in the form of stereotypes. Oddly enough, for the first time I also noticed myself advocating more for people similar to my conservative parents than criticizing them.
On the drive back, I again began to ponder about the Achilles Heel of the left. While there are so many people who want to make the world better, there is a compulsive manner to plague the dialog with simplistic – and often damaging – assumptions about the very people who need help the most. While we were sitting in Pam’s Pub and Grub somewhere in Nebraska waiting for our lunch, my friend and co-pilot found it utterly fascinating that the local homemade newsletter at our table had a story about the government’s suppression of evidence that would assist the prisoners in Guantanamo to make their case they were tortured. I asked her why she thought it was so extraordinary that a community paper from a small Midwest town would mention it. Sensing my grievance caused by her assumption, she responded by saying that obviously she was miseducated by popular culture and the mainstream media’s representation of the concerns and awareness pertaining to those in America’s Heartland.
My first question to that accusation was how would it be the media’s fault when she never watched or listened to corporate media (we were returning from a media reform conference), so that excuse left me a little unsettled. It didn’t make sense to me nor did it show any personal accountability for embracing the stereotype of rural people as not only being indifferent towards the war and the human rights crises that have ensued, but that they actually support everything the Bush Administration has done without batting an eye. I was taken aback and then felt an overwhelming sense of sadness and shame, as I realized how harsh and judgmental I had been in the past towards the very community from where I came (as I, too, am a country bumpkin). I imagined apologizing to my parents for all the times I threw them into the fringes of speculation and belittlement at the hands of my own idealistic righteousness.
During the trip, I felt something begin to shift in the way that I view and try to understand people. Like I mentioned earlier, I have found myself advocating more for people like my parents who, in the past, I so harshly critiqued for their politics because I was not mature enough to see them in their entire person but rather as a representation of ephemeral attitudes and values that lacked any sense of humanity. I pointed the finger and condemned them for their voting records without taking any consideration for what drove them to make those decisions; what is ultimately worse, I allowed their political choices – which are never cast in stone – to be the concrete foundation from where I interpreted their entire identity and thus blinding me from recognizing the more substantial attributes such as character and lifestyle situations.
In Iowa, I was venting and sharing this realization with my friend. I came to the conclusion that progressives, Democrats, liberals – whatever many of the people I met chose to call themselves – could be no better than the staunchest conservatives for marginalizing entire groups of people they either do not agree with or understand. The only difference between the two lie in where their prejudices are targeted: on one hand there is the problem with racial, religious and sexual intolerance, but then on the other there is an ignorance perpetuated by intellectual and idealistic bigotry. I heard many assumptions throughout the weekend of the conference that people were too apathetic if they were not marching in the streets, lazy if they did not preach about all the ills surrounding them, and just simply dumb if they could not read between the lines. However, there was hardly any vocal contemplation about why people were apathetic, lazy or ignorant; my cohorts did not take into account that such things as independent media and the Internet are still luxuries and people can not learn something no one has taken the time to teach them. My friends also did not pause to regard that perhaps rather than people being lazy or submissive through their lack of activism, they may simply be consumed with more urgent matters to focus on such as figuring out how to feed their kids this week or covering their recent batch of chemotherapy without losing their home. There is a huge divide between the awareness of some of those who advocate better ways to live and those struggling to survive at all.
Our righteousness has enforced an idealistic apartheid that suppresses many minority, working-class, rural and young people through our assumption they are comfortable in their ignorance about the world and that we are to be their saviors who will bring them redemption if they only heed our good news. Yet, before we even consider relating to them, we have the prerequisite they must first reach our level of consciousness and pragmatism. There is little effort to go where the people are we do not agree with and try to understand their situation, as we are too impatient for change to work organically and establish its roots. So I ask, who are the lazy ones, the ignorant, the apathetic? Just because we have the ambition to do good things does not automatically place us above fulfilling them horribly.
I told my friend on the road that I realized every time we point out something that is wrong with other people, we lose a moment to celebrate that which is good. It is not just the left who wants things to get better in this country, for everywhere there are people who need healthcare, food security and living wages. Poverty does not know partisan lines, neither should its solutions. While we do continue to need agitators who demand attention and accountability for the issues we face today, we also need mediators who can bridge the gaps of understanding so people will begin to see the strength of their commonalities rather than the vulnerabilities of their differences. We need people who can facilitate the conversations that need to happen between academic intellectuals and rural farmwives, executive board members and inner-city youth, conservative religious leaders and gay-rights advocates, white-collar politicians and the homeless, war profiteers and veteran dissidents. We need people who can bring all the deviating pieces into a space where they may, together, produce a beautiful kaleidoscope of synergetic images that compliment and contribute to the overall essence of change.
© 2008 Feisty Aphrodite
