To Jon Stewart and Nancy Pelosi, much less the liberal-on-the-street, the anti-healthcare reform folks seem only ridiculous. And who can fault this conclusion. Stewart's most charitable descriptor is "hyperbolic," and I applaud this restraint, however fleeting. After all, it can seem that the Left's ridiculing reaction to the Right is at least a part of our problem. Who can even be certain of what's going on in the midst of a flurry of ridicule and counter-ridicule? And the possibility of actually influencing the other side is shot to hell in this acidic atmosphere.

 

Of course, ridicule is fun and relieving, and it's deeply ingrained in us as a reasonable reaction to transparently ridiculous rhetoric. But again, it's likely that, in lapsing into ridicule, we're only inflaming each other, further polarizing a frighteningly polarized citizenry. There's no easy-to-find path through this set of bramble of influences.

 

As a psychotherapist, it's tempting to preach psychotherapy principles, but that can seem only a more subtle form of ridicule. If I were to say, "We should try to be more tolerant (kinder, sensitive, nicer, etc.)," Stewart would have a withering joke at the ready. And I'd laugh with him.

 

Perhaps what we need is accurate understanding--not simply the kind of understanding that sounds only like being nicer, kinder, etc. I'm speaking of the kind of understanding that actually enables most people to conclude, "Ahh, so that's why he's agreeing with Palin that Obama wants Death Panels."

 

Palin is a political animal, so it's difficult to separate her political posturing from her actual beliefs, even though it's likely that she does believe that Death Panels are waiting in the wings. After all, her background seems similar to the backgrounds of many of the protestors that are lining up to rail against the pro-health reform candidates and to many of the folks who are registering their opposition in polls. In any case, what about the true believers, the folks who genuinely believe that Obama wants the Panels?

 

Why do they distort the provision to provide end-of-life counseling into an establishment of Death Panels? To answer that question, translate that question into the terms and conditions of your own life.

 

That kind of distortion is little different than the kind of distortion that occurs in an ordinary couple fight, or a verbal fight with any other family member, friend, or acquaintance. People ordinarily distort the facts when they're desperate to defend themselves against ridicule, blame, or any other kind of threat to their sense of well being. For instance, my father, now departed, and my mother, gone too, during their occasional fights would descend into invective. My sister and I always recall how father dear used to call my mother "fat" if she gained only five pounds. Later, he would apologize and explain that he was upset about something else and that she was beautiful to him. My mother once threw his razor on the floor, angrily saying, "Why don't you put it away? you must not care about me." Later, she would calm down and admit that she was upset because he was, at the age of 70, becoming forgetful and that she was scared he might get Alzheimer's.

 

These ordinary distortions are similar in kind to the distortions on both sides of the health care struggle. And they usually happen because of the desperation that comes from believing that the other side cares not a whit about one's ideas and welfare. A long tradition of ridicule entrenches that belief. We can blame Fox news and unscrupulous lobbyists and politicians for whipping up people, but we also need to dig a little deeper into our own contribution to the problem.

 

The point is not to blame ourselves for ridiculing others, but to realize that we're caught in a climate of ridicule and that there is precious little genuine understanding of our plight and the plight of the people we're ridiculing. Perhaps from that position, we can cool down and really listen to and actually be interested in the positions of our non-political opponents and in the non-political, genuine feelings even of our politicians. Let the empathy Obama championed find a home in us.

(I goofed, thinking that the "Save" button did not post my blog and that I'd be able to edit the piece. Here is the remainder of my blog.)

Take for instance ex-GOP operative, Allen Raymond. He thought little of jamming the phone lines on behalf of Steve Forbes so that the opposition couldn't get out the vote. He's a sleaze ball, right? Actually, he's a mixed bag. He felt okay about jamming the phone lines, but when he was asked to lie about it, his conscience kicked in. He explained that he had been trying to teach his kids to be honest and that he just couldn't bring himself to set a bad example for them. So he bit the bullet and was convicted and went to jail.

Okay, so he's not pure case. (He doesn't fit the stereotype. Uhh, nobody does.) What about a guy I know who beat up people on the street "for fun." He liked seeing them suffer. He seems obviously to be a pure case of a sociopath. Not really. For one thing, after he recovered from a life of crime, he started having flashbacks to a time when he completely pulverized a stranger. The victim's bloody face kept haunting him; he was filled with horrific, ghoulish remorse.

When I told this story to a man who helped many parolees, he said, "That guy is just, well, evil; he's beyond anything I've ever seen." I argued, "But he was brutalized." This experienced man argued back, "I don't believe he could've been that tortured."

I related the sociopath's story. From age 7 through 15, his older brother would periodically hogtie (tie his arms to his ankles behind his back) him, pick him up like a package, and throw him against the wall. So it makes sense to say that he was not inherently evil. He was doing what was done to him. Or, put in more precise empathic terms, he was "acting out" rage at his brother, at anyone who had the slightest resemblence to his brother. He was an out of control person, not a determined purveyor of destruction. He didn't choose to be bad. He was in the grip of torment that he nothing about and, therefore, could not possibly have control over.

I know that it's more difficiult to imagine that a well-heeled, educated person like Karl Rove, the King of Sleaze, can be empathically understood. For one thing, the degree of damage he's done is beyond anything that we can imagine, just as the damage done by other bald-faced liars and mongers of sleaze, Bush, Cheney, et al was immense. What possibly in their backgrounds could account for the destruction they've done?

We know something of Bush's background. In Bush On the Couch, a psychiatrist helps us begin to glimpse how Bush is more like the violent bully captured above than different than him. To begin with, his grandfather, Prescott, used to unmercifully beat Bush's father. The effects of that devastating abuse were never addressed and so remained in force during our current president's childhood.

When Bush was a toddler, the most beloved person in his life was his older sister. She contracted a terminal illness, but his parents didn't tell him. When she died in a distant city, Barbara and her husband spent the rest of the day playing golf. They didn't tell Bush for a while. This gross inhumanity had to help make Bush into a deeply troubled person who could only act out his pain and suffering on others. You can reasonably extrapolate from this incident to a climate of inhumanity throughout his formative years. His well-documented alcoholism, lying and manipulativeness are widely recognized signs of gross abuse. Moreover, in his adult years, the unholy pressure on him in his family of origin and in their wing of the Republican party was immense. Imagine a deeply troubled, confused man being pressured on threat of total humiliation to do the things that Bush has done in office.

Why create empathic pictures of people we can't stand? The point is that we're locked in a culture war with some radical folks who are amazingly destructive. It seems that the degradating ways we characterize them must at the very least only add to their destructiveness. On a much less intense note, think about how the degradation heaped on the Right by the Left helps account for the fury and depth of commitment with which the Right has attacked and tried to marginalize the Left. The point is that if we really want to affect these people, we have to understand them accurately. There's no solving our culture war if we don't.

Obama's all about bringing people together to solve our problems. He wants to solve our most influential conflicts. So far, his most profoundly empathic statement came in his speech on race in Philadelphia. He allowed that blue collar folks who have been marginalized and put down during the rise of race consciousness are understandable. Their anger (their prejudicial statements) are only human reactions to difficult circumstances. He can go much further down this empathic road as he assumes the Presidency and tries to create broader coalitions.

He can help us to reach for deeper, more profound understanding and constructive dealings with the people who threaten to undermine us. His temptation is to pursue legal action, which may be the only means to get them to face what they are doing long enough to tap into their caring and remorse, as the Republican operative, the phone jammer, did. But he should use his world-wide pulpit to ply the power of empathy.  

He can say things like, "For understandable reasons, some campaginers have made desperate choices. Their desperation is understandable. I feel it too. There's just so much pressure we all feel to take responsibility for the terrible, threatening problems that confront us. We each think that we know the way, and we're afraid that, if we don't go the right way, all hell will break loose. We believe so strongly in our methods that we do desperate things, things we later regret. The least we can do is to try to understand this predicament that all of us are in rather than put each other down for doing desperate things that hurt people. Experience shows that understanding and compassion are more powerful than any threats." 

A widespread view of campaigners who make false, grossly degrading comments about the opposition is that they're just plain sleazy. They're liars, and they're shameless. They don't care about democracy or any other ideas. They just care about getting power or spewing hatred or beating up on people. Some of them are insane zealots; they believe that any means is justified, because their cause is supreme--their oracle told them so. Many of them are racists, and some of them are corrupt and even criminal.

To progressives, these characterizations just seems true, the truth about this kind of campaigner. We tend to take these characterizations for granted as valid. But what if these descriptions actually are only deeply engrained prejudices rather than accurate. What if calling a person racist is, in form and logic, no different than calling a person "nigger?"

In my work with and writing about the limit case of sleaze, a sociopath," that's just what I've shown. And I'm not alone. Their are many other professionals, including award winning psychiatrists, who say much the same thing about people diagnosed Antisocial Personality Disorder.

In truth, a sociopath does care, feels remorse--even soul murdering intensities of remorse--no less than any other person. The difference between the average person and a sociopath really has only to do with how repressed is their caring and remorse, not how caring and remorseful they truly are. That's what many of us are disclosing about these kinds of people. And thousands of empathic prison guards, corrections social workers, parole agents, and treatment professionals already know up close and personal. Within ten years, I believe, this cutting edge view of sociopaths will be widely accepted.

My point in bringing up this limit case of a sleazy kind of person is that, if even sociopaths don't fit the stereotype, then nobody does. Take for example 

 

But these characterizations are themselves grossly degrading and infuriating. It can be argued that the 1960s progressives incited Republican sleaze by means of incendiary language and tactics.  

Just read a spate of conservative blogs and media pieces linking Obama to Ayers. One of them, "Debunking Obama's 'Fact Sheet" by Guy Benson, seems the best of the lot. At least he brings into the discussion some little known facts about their association, facts that people vulnerable to the Guilt-By-Association (GBA) tactic find compelling.

Perhaps the most enlightening thing about Benson's and others' GBA attacks is that they never alledge any misdeeds other than the association. Ironically, in his second paragraph, Benson even asserts that "Obama is not a terrorist." In the same vein, notice also that the most space by far in any of these articles is devoted to showing what creeps are the terrorists, racists, and otherwise deranged folks. No space is devoted to showing that Obama has ever done or said anything that could be construed as anti-American.

Of course, GBA attacks succeeds only because their purveyors imply that their targets might soon be revealed to be closet terrorists, racists, and so on. These writers create the impression that, although there is no proof against the defendents in this public trial, Obama and "his kind" probably in their hearts of hearts and in their most private moments are foursquare against mainstream Americans.

This is hucksterism or flim flam, and Benson is earnest and thoughtful enough to know it. But he doesn't. Why?

He's stuck in a fallacy that, because of the added impetus of ideological zeal, eludes him. He's like the legions of visitors to Las Vegas who believe that, because a coin comes up heads eight times in a row, it's almost surely going to come up tails the next time it's tossed. Math teachers tell us that this is a fallacy, that, on each toss, there is just as much likleyhood that the face of the coin staring up at us will be heads as tails. Life is peppered by these kinds of logic problems that we can't quite see through.

That's why, if I were in Obama's camp, I'd respond to the Right's GBA tactics by deconstructing them, by helping people understand how fallacious they are. Then I'd issue a challenge, such as, "You're trying to convince people  that I'm against them, that I'm a closet terrorist or racist. But in this country, unlike Nazi Germany or Saddam Hussein's Iraq, we demand proof. If I associate with someone who is anti-American, I'm no different than hundreds of thousands of people who believe that, to change these people who threatn us, we have to include them in our discussions. We have to treat them with dignity. We must model for them the qualities we want them to emulate. That's what I was doing on various boards and other venues in which I've related to people who have been anti-American.

Mr. Ayers is the anti-American flavor of the week for my opponents, McCain and Palin. They want to vilify him, to reject him and thereby terrorize him so much that he may be tempted in anger and desperation to become more radical than he every was.

I think my method of relating to anti-American people has a better track record for bringing people into the mainstream. Notice thar, while Mr. Ayers probably retains some of his youthful anti-American zeal, he also is an honored professor of education at one of our most respected universities, the University of Chicago. He has been shown respect by local people who see, that, despite his former terrorist leanings, he is a voice for hope and professional problem solving on behalf of American's students. We should be celebrating his mainstream achievements rather than dragging his troubling past through the mud. That's how many of us in professional life believe we can effectively engage people on the fringes. Of course, there are people who are unreachable by that means, but the record shows that, in this case, Mr. Ayers responded to the forces of good and righteousness in America partly because many of us saw what was good in him and encouraged it.

Frank Rich reports that

Rita Hauser, who was a Bush financial chairwoman in New York in 200 and served on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in the administrations's first term, joined other players in the G.O.P. establishment in forming Republicans for Obama last week. Why? The leadership qualities she admires in Obama--temperament, sustained judgment, the ability to play well with others--are missing in McCain.

This is the point some of us were making many months ago in response to Hillary's charge that Obama lacked experience and knowledge of the challenges he would face. We thought Hillary lacked the temperament and judgment so crucial to making the biggest of the big decisions, as in the case of the vote to give Bush the power to go to war. I think this distinction resonated well. The experience factor seemed so compelling, but it isn't in this case, because of the power of his positions on big issues.

I'm not gloating--at least that's not my main purpose here. Rather, I'm trying to drive home Rita Hauser's and other notable Republicans' point, because this provides a compelling way to organize and focus Obama's candidacy. The latest juice is all about the failure to regulate, which Obama was out in front on. There he was again, the inexperienced guy, displaying sound judgment relative to his opponent.

My bumper stickers now reads, "It's All About Obama's Judgment," and A "Thoughtful Temperament Makes for Sound Judgment."

Many on the Left agree that Colin Powell was duped, that he didn't sell out. He tried to stand up to the neocons and lost the battle and then got buffaloed by the CIA, as did Kerry and many others. To many, especially people on the right, he still is a man of integrity. We need him to take a stand against the neocons.

He's given hints that he's avoided being more straightforward and in the limelight because his wife is too vulnerable to tolerate the storm that would necessarily follow. But this passionate American ought to reconsider and make plans to protect her as he comes out against McCain-Palin.

Ideally, he would begin by saying that he was misled and that, like MacNamara, he made a grievous mistake by failing to thoroughly investigate the intelligence he reported at the UN. He can add that he did oppose the war and was overruled.  These  statements would help re-establish his credibility with some people on the Left, which probably isn't very important now but may be later. Moreover, they would help the swing voters to get the point that he is truly a man of integrity and, therefore, credible.

As suburban independent woman recently began to succumb to the "She's just like me" complex, I developed a deeper appreciation of Rovian tactics. He knows how to pull the levers of identity politics.The victims comply on cue.

Obama's only hope seems to be to hammer McCain-Palin for lying and hope that the media join in enough to seal the deal. I like his tactic, because there's such compelling proof that they're lying. I only wish  he would make a bit more pointed statement to the independents who are swinging to McCain-Palin. I have a modest proposal here.

I'd say, "I know that many people identify with Gov. Palin. She seems like the kind of person many people would  like to know and feel they could be friends with. She seems like the kind of person who knows many of you well enough that she can represent you. She seems to be as trustworthy as one of your good friends. But she only seems that way."

"Sarah Palin is not like you in extremely important respect. You're not bald faced liars determined to deceive people into liking you. She is. So is John McCain. She got up on one of the biggest world stages, The Republican National Convention, and told a huge lie. She tried to make you think that she is one of you, that she is a person who wants to put at end to wasteful spending. She presented herself as a reformer who's on your side concerning government spending. She tried to back up that claim by lying, by deceiving you in the grossest manner. She said that she was against the Bridge to Nowhere, the frivolous, absurd project to build a multi-million dollar bridge to an island with only ab out 50 inhabitants. The news media called her a liar, and it wasn't only the so-called liberal media. It was also the conservative Wall Street Journal. Now, a month later, she had to admit that she didn't tell lthe truth, because news journalist Charle Gibson confronted her with detailed facts about the bridge.

The politcal tactician who ran Bush's campaigns and is running this one is well-known for advising clients to lie, because he knows that, as Lincoln said, You can fool all of the people some of the time. We hunger for a politician we can trust, and it's very difficult to figure out whether a politician is trustworthy. So we often rely on our sense of the person, on whether they are like us enough to be on our side. That is a powerful idea that Bush, McCain, and Palin exploit. Don't let them do that to you. Don't let them fool you.

Lincoln also said, "You can't fool all of the people all of the time." No you can't, because most people eventually get burned enough by a powerful idea that they begin to question it. Americans have been burned to a crisp by George Bush, by his lies and manipulations of your sympathies, by his good old boy manner and his aw shucks personality.We're  lost huge amounts of money and lives on a war that he fooled us into. He even fooled Colin Powell. And he fooled us about cutting taxes on the rich down to nothing and about outsourcing jobs. He's been the flim flam artist, and now McCain and Palin are continuing his tactics. Don't let them fool you.

Take more time to look at their positions. They want to keep Bush's tax cuts on the rich. They want you to keep paying more than your share. They also want to keep outsourcing jobs and thereby making your lives more difficult. McCain thinks of the war in Iraq as a big success. He says we are victorious. General Patreaus disagrees. He was recently quoted as saying that he thinks there will never be victory in Iraq. Take more time to think about these big ticket items that directly affect your lives and the life of the nation. We absolutely cannot afford another four years of these policies and the lies that enabled Bush to get enough support to push them through.

I may not be the person you want to go to the mall or barbeque with, although most of the middle and lower class people I have one-on-one relationships disagree. They end up liking me and feeling that I'm on their side. And my stated polices that are supported by most democratic leaders are truly on your side. There's no disputing that. I'm giving you a tax break. I'm cutting back onoutsourcing. I'm ending the war and making America safer by going after Al-Queda in Pakistan and Afganistan. I'm on you side much more than you think than if you just think about my personalitly and my life story. Think about it.

As suburban independent woman recently began to succumb to the "She's just like me" complex, I developed a deeper appreciation of Rovian tactics. He knows how to pull the levers of identity politics.The victims comply on cue.

Obama's only hope seems to be to hammer McCain-Palin for lying and hope that the media join in enough to seal the deal. I like his tactic, because there's such compelling proof that they're lying. I only wish  he would make a bit more pointed statement to the independents who are swinging to McCain-Palin. I have a modest proposal here.

I'd say, "I know that many people identify with Gov. Palin. She seems like the kind of person many people would  like to know and feel they could be friends with. She seems like the kind of person who knows many of you well enough that she can represent you. She seems to be as trustworthy as one of your good friends. But she only seems that way."

"Sarah Palin is not like you in extremely important respect. You're not bald faced liars determined to deceive people into liking you. She is. So is John McCain. She got up on one of the biggest world stages, The Republican National Convention, and told a huge lie. She tried to make you think that she is one of you, that she is a person who wants to put at end to wasteful spending. She presented herself as a reformer who's on your side concerning government spending. She tried to back up that claim by lying, by deceiving you in the grossest manner. She said that she was against the Bridge to Nowhere, the frivolous, absurd project to build a multi-million dollar bridge to an island with only ab out 50 inhabitants. The news media called her a liar, and it wasn't only the so-called liberal media. It was also the conservative Wall Street Journal. Now, a month later, she had to admit that she didn't tell lthe truth, because news journalist Charle Gibson confronted her with detailed facts about the bridge.

The politcal tactician who ran Bush's campaigns and is running this one is well-known for advising clients to lie, because he knows that, as Lincoln said, You can fool all of the people some of the time. We hunger for a politician we can trust, and it's very difficult to figure out whether a politician is trustworthy. So we often rely on our sense of the person, on whether they are like us enough to be on our side. That is a powerful idea that Bush, McCain, and Palin exploit. Don't let them do that to you. Don't let them fool you.

Lincoln also said, "You can't fool all of the people all of the time." No you can't, because most people eventually get burned enough by a powerful idea that they begin to question it. Americans have been burned to a crisp by George Bush, by his lies and manipulations of your sympathies, by his good old boy manner and his aw shucks personality.We're  lost huge amounts of money and lives on a war that he fooled us into. He even fooled Colin Powell. And he fooled us about cutting taxes on the rich down to nothing and about outsourcing jobs. He's been the flim flam artist, and now McCain and Palin are continuing his tactics. Don't let them fool you.

Take more time to look at their positions. They want to keep Bush's tax cuts on the rich. They want you to keep paying more than your share. They also want to keep outsourcing jobs and thereby making your lives more difficult. McCain thinks of the war in Iraq as a big success. He says we are victorious. General Patreaus disagrees. He was recently quoted as saying that he thinks there will never be victory in Iraq. Take more time to think about these big ticket items that directly affect your lives and the life of the nation. We absolutely cannot afford another four years of these policies and the lies that enabled Bush to get enough support to push them through.

I may not be the person you want to go to the mall or barbeque with, although most of the middle and lower class people I have one-on-one relationships disagree. They end up liking me and feeling that I'm on their side. And my stated polices that are supported by most democratic leaders are truly on your side. There's no disputing that. I'm giving you a tax break. I'm cutting back onoutsourcing. I'm ending the war and making America safer by going after Al-Queda in Pakistan and Afganistan. I'm on you side much more than you think than if you just think about my personalitly and my life story. Think about it.

The Dems suffer criticism for not responding convincingly enough to the plethora of lies emanating from the McCain-Palin camp. Rightly so. They're understandably nervous about calling the Republican tactics what they are. The label, "Con Artist,  does seem too harsh for the independent voter and, perhaps, many reasonable journalists. And even if that term seemed entirely apt, it can seem suicidal for the Dems to use it. One can easily imagine the Republican countercharges winding up to hurrican proportions.

On the other, hand this direct calling-it-what-it is seems the very thing that the Right cannot defend. They can defend all the inuendos of lying, deceit, and corruptions, because they're launched piecemeal and sparsely, but they can't handle a direct hit. That's because the facts against them are too compelling.

The very least the Dems ought to do is to argue that Americans are being conned. This must be done in two forms, one as a general address with references to each of the gregious lies, deceits, and corrupt activities and a longer version with names, dates, etc.

I
 

Her'e a link to a post on dailykos that does much to reveal Obama's depth, judgment, and temperament.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/7/30/175948/927/778/559599

Most memorable are the comments alluding to his willingness to include disparate views. And he is portrayed as someone, unlike many law review editors, who enabled authors to better express their own arguments rather than pressure writers to bend to his opnions. This trait is evident in many reports throughout his career showing that he makes every attempt to examine opinions that conflict with his preconceptions and then revise his views.

The caricature on some TPM blogs of him as an empty suit or too naive don't seem to take these characteristics seriously as they have been manifested at every stage of his adult life. Most notably, these critics don't seem to take into account his demonstrated judgment during his Senate campaign regarding the war in Iraq. That position at that time cannot reasonably be portrayed as the presentation of a sort of insubstantial presidential candidate; he even accurately predicted the course of the war. Moreover, these kinds of critics don't see the depth of understanding and wisdom apparent in his speech on race, the general conduct of his campaigns, his coinage among so many politicians and political figures, his speech on Iraq, and his flawless, big picture presentations in his tour of Europe and the Middle East.

The experience factor has importance to be sure, as these critics persist in pointing out, but in his case, it pales in relation to his wisdom, temperament, and judgment, especially relative to McCain and Clinton. Noted historian, Gary Will, writing in the New York Review of Books, favorably compared Obama's speech on race to a similar kind of speech delivered by Lincoln. Will's opinion, along with the opinions of many other noted academics and political figures add to this writer's impression that Obama is worthy or deep respect and intense support.

Here's what she wrote that brought us to the brink of enlightenment.
<blockquote>Some time ago I heard some conservatives on TV say the reason they are attracted to Obama is that while he's a liberal he "doesn't seem to hate us" In their view, all most liberals do is turn their venom on conservatives and criticize, tear apart any proposal they make, just because it was made by a conservative. I was shocked!! Truly shocked. Because that description sums up very neatly the problem I've always seen with conservatives: angry, nasty and negative about anything that is not of their own creation.</blockquote>

This shock she experienced is the brink of the enilghtenment Lefties need to change the face of America. Obama already is enlightened, at least to a much greater degree than we've seen in any national campaigner. His byword is to "disagree without being disagreeable," because he knows that being agreeable is a foremost precondition of negotiation. We just can not realize our goals by degrading the other side.

It's difficult to get the import of his prescription unless you also get what E2 came very close to discovering: that the backlash against both the 1960s upheavel and the ensuing Politcally Correct Movement is much more against the hostility and disparagement from the Left than has been realized. The policy differences may be less important than the tone of the disagreement, the sheer character assasinating quality of much of what the Left, as well as the Right, say. But there's another prior step that needs to be taken before seriously considering this proposition.

The problem that at least seems reprersented in E2's above quoted statement is the Left's and the Right's inability to realize that they are grossly degrading each other. Now it's time for one of my psychotherapy analogies. What you learn in some realms of marriage counseling is that, in most couple fights, neither party thinks that he or she is fighting. Both sides think they're just stating facts, as in the current attack against Obama. It doesn't seem like ridicule, much less hyperbolic ridicule, from the point of view of an ardent critic when he says that Obama has "shredded" the Constitution or that Obama's just playing politics. But it is. Likewise, when we call a Righty a "racist," it just seems like a fact rather than a psychologically brutal assault on the person's character. So it's no wonder that E2 would be shocked to discover that people on the right feel trashed by the Left. It's just human nature to fail to notice that you're trapped in a degrading war of words, especially when your substantive postions seems so very humane and correct. The other guy must be stupid or insane or racist or something worse if he can't see how wrong he is.

The Right has the same problem. Leaving out of this analysis for the moment the corrupt and the zealous, the ordinary Rightward folks I know don't realize that we're all caught in our mutual blindness to the often euphemisitc degradation that is forever sparking all around and in us. They trash us for being bleeding heart liberals, not realizing that they are, in so doing, directly implying a gross character assasination. They're implying that we are "stupid," "weak," and worse. They don't see that they're throwing gas on the embers of substantive disagreement.

Dig a little deeper and you see a more important problem, the tendency of all human beings to think in moralistic categories, which are intrinisically degrading. For instance, since Obama promised to oppose telecom immunity and then voted for the recent FISA bill, he must be duplicitous--a liar and/or just weak, lacking courage. Those are the degrading categories prevailing morality gives us. We don't have less degrading understandings of troubling behavior. We're not extensively empathic.

The tap root issue here in prevailing morality is that these moralistic categories are based on a conception of what goes on in the mind that no longer fits the facts of detailed analysis. Prevailing morality's categories are hopelessly reductionistic and oversimple. For one thing, they totally exclude complex reasoning, as in Obama's defense of his vote on FISA. Many of my friends on the Left said that, "What matters is what you do, not how you explain yourself." This is a hoary moralistic principle that makes little sense; consider a decision to vote anti-abortion--it's a complicate issue that is too easily reduced to being based on stupidity or narrowness of mind. Here's another problem. Rigid versions of morality disallow even a breath of compromise of one's principles in the name of a greater good; an inch of compromise equals a mile of weakness. That's what I see in arched critiques of Obama's FISA vote. There's a very thick bramblebush here that would require a book-length treatise.

I think it's useful enough for all but hte most theoretically inclined academics at this point to just say along with E2's hint that the issue of mutual degradation is much more determinative than we might think. But there's hope.

What's striking in marriage counseling is that, when you with intellectual credibility capture each partner's position, what seemed like an intractable conflict suddenly evaporates. Accurate empathy dissolves the truly difficult part of conflicts. That's what Obama offers us as a method for moving America toward a more progressive position. A bumper-sticker version might be, If We Can Develop Respect For Each Other, We Can Change the World. He's done that in his blog on FISA, perhaps not accurately and thoroughly enough, but he tried mightily to wrtie to his critics and express his respect for them and explain his disagreement. More is needed from him on this vote, but the metacommunication--credibly based respect is our strength--is worth tuning in to.

Obama "shredded" the constitution by voting for the revised FISA bill. Yeah, it's in tatters; nobody has any rights any more, and there's zero protections of our privacy and no hope in the future for increasing protections. I call this the "slippery slope" hysteria.

He "caved" on FISA because he's into playing politics, a.ka., lying. Some play. He's drawn heavy flak from both sides. Critics say he blew it.  He says  he  sticking  to his  principles, to honestly deciding  what he thinks  is best for the country, making a close call and assuring us that he will fight against the negative consequences of this checkered bill. "Capitulation," I thought, was going over to the other side, as Hillary did when she voted for the war resolution. She didn't have protections, qualifications, showed no signs of realizing that Bush was a pathological liar. Obama sees through the bad things about the bill and thinks he can ameliorate them. If that's caving in to pressure, then he truly is an idiot, because the pressure came only after the vote.

Here's a big one. He's a "centrist."  Yeah, right.  That's why he's for supporting faith based institutions'  secular programs that are, in principle, supported by many positions taken by the ACLU. Oh, and his vote for stripping the telecom immunity from the FISA bill--all the dyed-in-the-wool centrists' who voted against it must have lost their stripes as he became one of the few true centrists for that moment.  What about his recent intensified support of Israel? That clearly violated his previously expressed sensitivity to the Palestinians. Now he cares not a whit about them. We know that, because we see the shifting and shaping going on, and, well, what else can we conclude? He's definitely a centrist, maybe even no different than Bush, as Choamsky suggests.  Then there's the  promise to  "refine" his Iraq policy. That's worrisome. He could easily turn out to be a closet neo-con. Many suspect that he is a closet radical. One of these views has to be correct. If we add them together, we get, you guessed it, a centrist. Hey, if he looks like a centrist for one month, then he must be one.

He isn't anything he said he was, honest, genuine, progressive. Never mind that his entire life up to this point was dedicated to these principles and that people who worked directly with him have certified that he was.

After all, as Mother Jones recently argued, even Paul Wellstone was swallowed up by the system. He had been a committed community organizer too and discovered that institutional influences were impossible to resist. Actully, Wellstone was unlike Obama in crucial respects. Most notably, Wellstone was given to being entirely disagreeable, which is why Wellstone suffered a power shortage. Obama's power is in his empathy. Still, if Wellstone went the way of all flesh, then Obama must too. The big bad powers that be reach into every politician's heart and put an artificial one in it's place. There's no resisting it. Not!

I just posted a much angrier piece on another site, arguing that what are now called "progressive independents" are, as their forebearers in earlier elections have been, brutal to ordinary people without realizing it. Their lukewarm support for and criticism of Obama--withholding contributions, giving the Right talking points, and such--can help enable the Right to continue its devastation in Iraq, much less continue the degradation of social programs, education, health care, and much more. 

I admit to a lack of scholarship and rigor on this point owing to a lack of time, but it has, since my baptism during the Humphrey-Nixon campaign, seemed that the progressives who withhold intense support on the grounds that there is no difference between the Democratic and Republican campaigns, do have devastating effects. Like some influential bloggers and pundits, Choamsky is now, once again, saying there is no difference regarding the current Democrat dominee. Note that Reagen was elected by only 26 percent of the electorate. The progressive independents comletely abandoned Carter. Perhaps it seems specious to argue that these same sort of folks, in sitting out the Bush-Gore election or voting for Nader, unintentionally paved the way for the horrific devastation in Iraq. But this proposition is at least worth discussing.
 
What really are the effects of what often seems a kind of scholarly, hyper-patriotic zealotry that has more in common in tone and purity with the Right than with America as a whole?

I think I sympathetically understand the hopes and aims of these Lefties, having carried, "Nixon Sucks," signs in Union Square in San Francisco and participated in many other such radical adventures during the 1960s. I believed as Alcoholics Anonymous devotees do that you have to hit bottom before you can make significant change. My hope was that, as the country slips into a truly unbearable condition, the masses will awaken. Ooops. Come the revolution, we've still got the same batch of average and right wing folks to deal with. Note also that contrary to popular opinion, AA-based treatment's success rates are no better than no treatment at all, as an award winning research psychiatrist from Dartmouth established. Their logic is facistic--it's brutally demanding. You have to stop drinking before you get help stopping drinking. To the millions of sufferers who fail at AA and die of alcohol poisoning and to the progressive independents, I say, Make the bed to fit the patient.

In this presidential race, the patient is the American people and the people of the world with whom we interact significantly. The emerging treatment for alcoholism is called "harm reduction," which is an unfortunately abstract term. It means that instead of demanding that people quit drinking, instead of demanding purity, the professionals go out under the bridges and into the bars and meet people where they are and help them on their terms. For Obama, it means compromising when the compromise enables him to sustain a relationship with enough of a majority to enable substantial change. He has to go where the majority are rather than jack them up, throw mud in their faces, and denounce them for being stupid.

This is a very difficiult thing to do. It requires immense intelligence and sensitivity, and no one I know of, including the true geniuses I sometimes work with, creates lasting change without making frequent mistakes. Indeed, most of the successful folks I know expect to make close calls that turn out to be mistakes, as in Obama's FISA vote. As I tell my son as he's practicing the trumpet, you have to expect mistakes while keeping in mind the big picture--that you're talent is already proven and that you just need to keep advancing.

Obama's talent is already proven. His heart and soul is already proven. Read his books and read the news reports of what the people in Harvard, Chicago, and the Illinios State Senate who worked with him say about him. He's been doing what he says he wants to do for many years; there's no mystery here--the guy is a proven prince. There's no candidate in memory who had more of what it takes to create change in this country than this man. Of course, he's not everything we want. I disgree with some of his positions and he goofs, but he's damn good enough to deserve intense support from everyone on the Left. We do desperately need him, especially in light of the alternative.

Of course, my plea doesn['t mean we can't disagree and even heavily criticize him. But withhold intense support? That seems grossly inhumane.

I believe that every so-called "centrist" position of Obama's is not centrist. Perhaps the most compelling argument I've seen that makes my case on one of these positions, the faith based initiative, was written by Malcolm P. Johnson, July 7, 2008 12:42 PM, TPM. He shows how a careful reading of the relevant pieces reveals that none other than ACLU, in principle, supports Obama's position. I highly recommend it for its depth.

The other "centrist" positions require equally deep inquiry and understanding. The pundits just aren't making that kind of inquiry. Take also for example Obama's agreement with Scalia regarding the death penalty for child rapists, what psychologists call "regressed" pedophiles. While I disagree with Obama, I can understand his position. Like me, he's seen up close and personal the kind of devastation that these kinds of people cause. I have seen victims live a psychologically dead life. They're very difficult to help. Of course, critics on the Left want to as, Herbert did, accuse Obama of pandering on this issue only because his position may reflect the majority and the Right. But it's just as likely that Obama is reacting out of his feeling for victims and their families, which is what the death penalty is all about. That's not pandering. That's not duplicity or expedience.  There just evidence that he's the kind of guy who truly believes that child rapists should die. That makes him a less the pure progreessive, not duplicitous. I think he's wrong regarding every aspect of the arguments for the death penalty, but there's only superficial evidence that this is pandering.

This is the kind of subtle analysis that is required to sustain the kind of judgment critics on the Left are making.

Take another example, the Wright flap. At first, Wright was only raving against white people. Obama hung with him on that, and he showed no signs of wavering. Then, Wright accused Obama of lying, of taking his position against black racism only for political gain, not because he truly was against black racism. Pundits should argue their implied point here, that anyone, whether political candidate or not, should remain committed to an associate who defames you in public. Argue against Obama's rationale for his break from Wright. Don't take the superficial road of noticing the disparity between his initial commitment and his subsequent decision and calling him expedient or duplicitous. That's superficial at best.

The critics on the Left commit the same fallacy when reporting the flap about his Grandmother. In his book, he said he cringed when she made racist remarks. At the same time in the same book, he expressed admiration and respect for her. The attack pundits quote makes it seem that he is duplicitous in his current ad that emphasizes her love. He's not being duplicitous. He's always expressed respect and love for her. The fact that he cringed when she made racist remarks doesn't change that. He was not calling her a rabid racist, someone he can't respect. He even empathized with much more intenese white racists in his speech on race. There's no disparity here, except when you take a superficial look at the evidence.

He does not support the immunity clause. He's been entirely consistant in being against it. He's only voted for the entire bill with heavy qualifications and for a narrowly defined reason--the need to keep data gathering tools in place. The critics don't even mention his heavy qualifications. Did his vote today affect anyone's view of this matter? He's being attacked by McCain for that vote.

The flag pin is a petty but divisive issue. The critics on this point wouldn't want to wave a German flag in the face of survivor of the Halocaust, which seems like an extreme analogy. But for many people on the Right it isn't. The flag pin would, for me, just be a matter of respect for the inflamed passions of people who really believe that the pin is important. Why antagonize them with preachy arguments about the illogic of their views. What's at stake in the argument? To me, wearing the pin is like me avoiding the use of the word, "fuck," around my grandparents.

In Ohio, Barack wasn't a populist opponent of NAFTA. He was for and against various parts of it. The flap in Canada has been thoroughly discredited. It's as though the pundits just aren't careful when they accuse him of being duplicitous on this issue, for, for instance, throwing under the bus the advisor accused of saying that Obama didn't really mean his criticisms of NAFTA. They're riding a theme that they haven't carefully thought through.

Consider his slight change in his views on withdrawing from Iraq. "Refine," a single word, has been taken as evidence that he's duplicitous, pandering, etc. But he refined "refine." He reiterated his commitment to staged, timed withdrawel. It's as though the critics just aren't paying attention.

"Gratuitously dissed his friends at MoveOn.org"??? That characterization is a strained attempt to fit this bit of evidence into the overall attack theme. There is no proof that his criticism of MoveOn was "gratuitous." His criticism of MoveOn is entirely consistent with his expectation to disagree without being disagreeable. He's perhaps insufficiently arguing that, if we want to bring people toward the Left, we simply can't disrespect them. That's no way to change the country. It can be argued that all of the gains Republicans made beginning the Contract With America were the result not of unresolvable policy differences but of hostility, gross disrespect, as in "fuck Nixon," and so on. There is gross animosity between Left and Right in this country. It's understandable, but it's horribly counterproductive.

Obama did not "cut the General's legs off." His surrogate said Obama disavosed Clark's attack. Obama said Clark needed no defending and need make no apology. This attack against Obama is just mistaken, based not on any facts.

What about his supposed abandonment of the Palestinians, his current insensitivity to their suffering. That's all about his most recent speech in which he sided with the Israelis. The deeper view of this speech is that, to resolve conflicts, you must side with both parties. This sounds stange, but consider the following analogy.

When I was adrift regarding psychotherapy theory, I happened on an article by Bernard Apfelbaum concerning a female sex therapist's case. Put oversimply, the prominent sex therapist argued that, because the female partner angrily refused to take advantage of her husband's morning erection--which is the only time he could have a reliable one--on the grounds that he hadn't brushed his teeth yet, the sex therapist said that this woman "had a deep seated hostility toward men" that would take years of therapy to resolve. Part of the therapist's evidence is that this woman was also generally demeaning toward her "too sensitive" husband. Apfelbaum saw through the superficial view of this woman, arguing that her problem was that she didn't really feel entitled to her complaints. Her bravado and self-assertion were just an appearance. This is a simple idea that most people lose their grip on when people are intensely irrational and demeaning; people say stupid things that they don't really mean when they're angry but have some kind of a valid point they're trying to get at.

To begin therapy, he had to initially side with her complaints as a means of engendering trust and enabling her to refine her complaints. Therapy became a process of helping her discover the reasonable complaints hidden in her gross judgments against her husband, for instance, that all the attention in therapy with the prominent sex therapist had been on the man's sensitivities and not at all on hers. She wasn't encouraged to develop her concerns, and Apfelbaum's siding with her enabled her to do that in a respectful manner, which then enabled the man to feel more confident.

By analogy, Obama is forced to side with the Israeli leaders. That's the beginning of the process. When he's talking to the Palestinians, he sides with them as thoroughly as he can without completely polarizing the other side. There's nothing duplicitous in this process if he has in mind helping both sides to refine their complaints and hear the other guy's reasonable concerns. This is exactly what Obama did on the South Side of Chicago. It's what countless community organizers, organizational developers, and international mediators try to do. Obama is no simpleton dummy like the kind of politicians so many on the Left are beginning to accuse him of being. He's a crafty and only superficially duplicitous guy.

There's much evidence that Obama is everything he says he is. It's just that his methods for achieving progressive ends are unfamiliar. Superficially, he appears duplicitous. So it's understandable that people are attacking him. But a thorough, deep view of his entire life and each of his positions, for the most part, reveal a consistent drive to humanize and lift up Americans.

I want to help people think about not only Obama's faith-based initiative but also about the more fundamental issue of his progressive <i>method</i>, which I think trumps his superficially centrist positions.

I was inspired by reading a post by TPM poster, Tankard. He wrote of Obama,

<blockquote>He is hardly what anyone would call liberal. In fact, he is a centrist only in terms of today's center-right American political milieu. If the American electorate had a more European and less Calvinistic attitude, Sen. Obama would be considered a conservative because of his positions on.... blockquote>He listed the now familiar litany of apparently centrist and even conservative positions.

I guess the rating of his votes as the most liberal in Congress counts for little. On a more substantive note, Tankard left out that Obama is against the measure in California that bans gay marriage. That alone ought to give this now widely agreed upon thesis a little jolt. However, as others have written, he's more difficult to peg than you seem to think. But the most substantive criticism I have of your thesis is that it leaves out the difference that makes all the difference--his method of negotiation.

His empathic, agree-to-disagree style is extremely rare at this high level of politics, perhaps unique. And that method is extraordinarily powerful. It's difficult to show that it is powerful, because this method is so unfamiliar at this level of politics and because empathy has a reputation as ephemeral and weak. We're used to power politics, and "empathic politics" sound like psychobabble.

As I've said perhaps too many times in other posts, James Blight, professor of international relations at Brown, is the foremost exponent of this emerging point of view, and he and other academics throughout the land argue that "realistic empathy" is fundamental to international relations. They would readily agree that this principle applies to any kind of relationship and that you can't reliably get people to change without it. Put most simply, if you're disrespecting people you want to influence, it's most often the case that no amount of power politics will get them to change. And if you don't understand them on their own terms aided by probing questions to help elaborate their views, you're at a tremendous disadvantage. That seems to be the record of the last 48 years. Too many times, people on the left have just alienated well-meaning people on the right and incited them to fight us. He wants to change that to the max by not only toning down the rhetoric but also actually seeing the best in the other guy's point of view or, at least, seeing how understandable it is that, for instance, white racists have the feelings they have.

This is an extraordinarily progressive method for achieving change, and his commitment to and skill in applying it mark him as the most progressive high-level politician in America. His commitment to this method undercuts many of the anti-Obama arguments concerning his positions. In his method, he first establishes a centrist--in the sense of equidistant between equal minority's views--position, and then begins pulling the right left with creative empathic strategies, like the one he's using now regarding faith-based programs. This is not centrism, as others have noted. He's not capitulating or betraying his principles or actually centrist. He's being practical about how you get the country to move in a progressive direction. He knows that you have to respect and accept people first before you can influence them.

Perhaps the best example of this process is the newly minted faith-based initiative. When I was in seminary in Dallas, I learned that Methodist Hospital had by far the lowest costs of service and served the broadest range of patients. And I was a non-denominational chaplain at that hospital and at Parkland Hospital, the place Kennedy was taken after the shooting. At Parkland, I was paid by taxpayers, and I functioned as a combination religious counselor and secular counselor, helping everyone in my path regardless of their affiliation. Atheists were no less welcome than anyone else, and I helped them on their terms without reference to religious terms and practices--zero proselytizing. When I ministered to a Christian or Jewish person, I incorporated their language and beliefs into my work, and I worked at translating secular into sectarian language and vice versa.

This is the kind of faith-based program Obama has in mind, along with his proviso that the program actually help people according to some measurable standards. While the Left may out of ignorance concerning this kind of program demean Obama for being "conservative," it makes more sense to say that he's only arguing that we need every hand we can enlist to solve our problems and that religious people have a contribution to make no less than non-religious people. Moreover, they are likely to be considerably cheaper than their secular counterparts in some cases.

Part of the proof that this is a progressive move is that the Right hates it, because they know that he's threatening them when he insists that the programs work and that they not engage in proselytizing.