Why people don't get it.

This is another comment I wrote to someone else's blog, wherein he asked why people assume that because he's a liberal he hates God, is pro-abortion and supports terrorism. Someone wrote me with the suggestion that I post it on its own blog so, sheep that I am, I've complied:



I shouldn't say anything. It's only going to trigger a fight. So I shouldn't say anything.

::sigh::

It's a convention. Once a convention is imprinted on peoples' minds, people accept it as truth, and start to make their decisions to fit it. Entire political parties are constructed from semirandom components due to this phenomenon. One day when I'm suitably drunk and inspired (if I ever get drunk again, maybe when the kids are 15 and have their own apartments), I'm going to work out a formula for attraction and cohesion.

Once the convention attains critical mass, it becomes self-perpetuating. The conservative Christians arm themselves against their polar opposite, the godless secularists.

To make matters more interesting, history has already created a Godless Secularist faction -- Communists (stay with me on this).

Now, this does not mean, in and of itself, that Godless Secularists are Communists (example; Ayn Rand). But this has already become a convention, due to the fact that Communist governments have generally encouraged atheism/materialism (also, communists are better at organized political movements than are objectivists). Since Communism is generally considered to be Ultraviolet of the left end of the political spectrum (yeah, it should be "infrared", but this aesthetic works for me), all "left" oriented politics is considered to be a degree of Communism.

(Note: NONE of this need be consciously considered by the parties involved! It is all part of the mass consciousness of Western society. Possibly Eastern society, too, but that doesn't return my emails, so I wouldn't know. Also, it did not literally start with the conservative Christians; this is just an illustration. It's a whoooooooole lot more complicated and dynamic than that, as is just aout everything. It never starts at the beginning.)

Throw in Monsterboy's Principle of Autoinimidefinition, which states that when level of spite exceeds sense of identity, an entity or group will tend to adopt an exaggerated or otherwise modified version of the defining qualities attributed to it by its opposition*. You now have both sides altering themselves further along the extreme, just to (a) be as little like the other as they can possibly be and (b) show them! [emphasis theirs]

At this point, were these two groups of a dozen nuts yelling at one another across a city street, you could with either watch with amusement hoping a fight breaks out or call the cops to break it up. But we're talking about tens of thousands of nuts on each side, yelling at one another from halfway across the country (more or less from the middle to each coast). When that many people talk, other people, unfortunately, listen. So you end up with the extremist nuts defining themselves as the edges of the spectrum that includes everyone, and the rest of us are left trying to determine where along the spectrum we lie.

(A few decide to opt out of the spectrum altogether. I, personally, think it would be nice to be a sound instead. Or maybe a rosebush.)

So, you come along and call yourself a liberal. The world (which is now, cognizant or not, fully in league with the nuts) attempts to hand you your Liberal Kit: AIDS ribbon, Roe v Wade bumper sticker, "No Blood For Oil" sign, directory of organic foods markets, and condom to throw at St. Patrick's Cathedral), whether you asked for these things or not.

You have been Value Mealed. Over 300 million served.

*This leads to Gun-Toting Bible-Thumpers, Thug Life and much of the drag seen at Mardi Gras, among many, many other things. It is, arguably**, the single greatest force for sociopolitical change.

**I can say it, and others can argue about it

P.S.: I wrote a blog related to this. I don't normally like to refer to my own blogs, but hell, here it is.