I don't know either, Cherrybomb. What I do in my classes, reaching my 70 privileged kids a term, or trying to, is to highlight the pleasure, the humor, the joy in seeing things in complex terms.
Part of what makes us liberal is the joy we get in encountering something or someone genuinely "other" from ourselves--some new way of being in the world, a new piece of art or a new kind of vision that we hadn't thought of, something not cliched. Something genuinely "new," in that old modernist "Make It New" sense of the word. That's where my joy is--figuring out that new thing, trying to see how it ticks, aware that I will never completely get it.
Since I'm a good liberal of course I'm distrustful of the kind of consumption paradigm that the economically "liberal" market economy takes--the "how can we make some serious cash off this 'new' thing? Let's see, last year we tried the whole Hindu deities on bikinis thing, which was sorta mixed... Maybe this year we can do something with that whole Kabbalah thing that Madonna's into?"
Part of why we get so angry with this "red state" culture is that it is old. It's familiar. Many of us here grew up in it. We know their fucking arguments. It's beyond cliched. It's bad art. We are "tolerant" because we know we can always learn from the "other" but this particular other rejects all otherness as sinful, and we had James Dobson's words drilled into our heads every time we got in the car and heard AM radio!
So of course we don't view that culture in the same way as a new, disturbing but thought provoking film, or the influx of a new immigrant culture.
But I take a little hope from two things. One: some of the christians are ALSO concerned about the commodification of everything, even if they wouldn't use that term and even though they may not even have words to address that concern--they're not hearing about it on Christian radio stations except in terms of the immorality of Hollywood. But they do usually know a little bit of the bible, and part of what attracts them, even if it IS just John 3:16: For God so LOVED the world that he gave his only begotten son . . . Love! Sacrifice! Not doing everything for "the Almighty Dollar" as I've heard from more than one conservative soul in my home town. They often DO get that--I know my sister does.
Second, this morning I had a another in a series of commiserating conversations with one of my best friends from college, Allison, who also lives in the red zone and feels like she's completely alienated from the people all around her. And she told me about one of her other friends, who I've heard about for years and who sang in Allison's wedding. Last I had heard, this friend of Allison's had had 5 kids by three fathers and had found Jesus. She was proselytizing and evangelizing and Allison was just rolling her eyes. Well, now, probably somewhere between 5-10 years later, this same friend is a Buddhist with a gay son and another son with serious drug problems, and a Kerry supporter. (Ok don't say "with friends like those . . ." Hear me out!)
America is a "just passing through" culture. There's a strong belief in the possibility of re-creating the self, of "conversion" into a new being, on all sides of the cultural divides. Academics can think of Ben Franklin, Malcolm X--or their own introduction to critical thinking, even. Pop culture people can look at Madonna's series of perhaps cynical but still fairly convincing re-creations of herself. Or the classic Oprah story of survival and change. And christians have the central narrative of conversion to christ; some even speak of a daily conversion--the idea of having to re-encounter the Christ each day, to not be arrogant about having "gotten" it once. They do exist, those folks.
Now, don't get me wrong, this part of US culture is both good and bad, obviously. The upside of it for us, and it's a small upside, is to remember that at least some of the evangelical support is like that woman with her 5 kids. It's soft. It's on the lookout for the next best thing, it's open to a goal of achieving a fuller realization of personal potential.
Unfortunately, people like that woman are probably not necessarily the ones you want to have organizing the get out the vote drive or setting up a phone bank, since God knows if they'll stick with anything once it ceases to be "new" in a kind of face-slapping way . . . (And, ok, I know that sounds a little condescending so I'll just acknowledge that this is a part of my own personality, too, and none of us find genuine commitment to be an "easy" task.) However, I suspect these "soft" evangelicals are there, all over that carpet of red, and they may be more open to hearing a message if we can communicate also the joy and freedom and love that we find here.
Sheeesh. That sounds horribly pollyannaish. Please bear in mind I'm just trying to figure out how to survive in Ohio in very dark times ... |
