Time to retire the ‘N’ word

It’s past time to stop using the “N” word.

No, not that one. That one has been pretty thoroughly scrubbed out of our public discourse — and even from the youth version of Huckleberry Finn.

I’m talking about the other insidious “N” word, the one that gets thrown around in politics all the time, by left and right. You know the one: Bush is a Nazi; Obama is a Nazi, blah, blah, blah. It’s become nothing more than a playground insult, unconnected to any real understanding of who the Nazis really were, what National Socialism actually was.

That’s an insult to the memory of the millions of victims of National Socialism. It also obscures any serious inquiry into the nature of its evil. Like the boy who cried wolf, the constant playing of the Nazi card ultimately dulls our sensibilities when actual totalitarian impulses might be identified.

Early in the Iraq war, I listened to an interview the the great World War II historian John Lukacs (“Five Days in London, May 1940;” “The Last European War, September 1939-December 1941”). A caller made a comparison between Saddam Hussein and Hitler and between George Bush and Winston Churchill. In his very gentlemanly way, Lukacs pointed out that Saddam, while an evil tyrant, was no Hitler, and the threat of his fourth-rate military could not be compared to that of the Wehrmacht, c. 1940. Nor could the position of the United States — as the most powerful military force in the history of the world — be compared to that of a beleaguered Britain.

This was clearly lost on the caller, who just wanted his simplistic morality play.

Even serious analysis is tainted by the desire to score contemporary political points.

Lew Rockwell, Jr.’s 2004 essay “Red State Fascism” was widely touted during the Bush years, often by the left, even though Rockwell is a libertarian. (The “F” word should be held suspect, too). Rockwell’s essay pointed out all the signs of creeping fascism on the right, turning from the libertarian principles of the antigovernment electoral uprising of 1994 toward an authoritarian statism in the Bush era. He wasn’t wrong; there was that kind of shift. But the Tea Party is evidence of a swing of the pendulum back toward cranky libertarianism — so how does that fit the model?

Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism” (self-explanatory, right?) is beloved on the right and excoriated on the left. It’s actually a pretty interesting book, despite its polarizing title, cover and hype. But Goldberg has to hedge on his own thesis. See the following from a Salon.com interview:

What I thought was interesting about your definition of fascism was that nationalism seemed to be missing ... Stanley Payne, whom you quote and say is "considered by many to be the leading living scholar of fascism," in his definition of fascism, the first thing he says is that it's "a form of revolutionary ultra-nationalism." How does that fit with contemporary liberalism, which is often derided as being unpatriotic, anti-American?

That's a perfectly legitimate question. I think classical fascism, the fascism that we all think of when we hear the word "fascism" -- Italy, Germany and to a certain extent Spain, they were ultra-nationalistic, I don't dispute that, I think that is absolutely the case. I just would want to emphasize that that ultra-nationalism comes with an economic program of socialism. There's no such thing as a society undergoing a bout of ultra-nationalism that remains a liberal free-market economy. The two things go together.

I don't say that contemporary liberalism is the direct heir of Nazism or Italian fascism. I say it's informed by it. It's like its grandniece. It's related, they're in the same family, they share a lot of genetic traits, but they're not the same thing.

OK. It’s got four legs, a tail and a nose. Is it an elephant or a Chihuahua?

An arm’s length list of “yeah, but...” qualifications doesn’t make for good sound bytes. So by the time interesting but limited ideas like Rockwell’s and Goldberg’s hit the mainstream, we end up with labels and fatuous comparisons that create heat but no light.

Maybe by dropping the easy buzzwords, we'll have to come up with more accurate and useful ways of making our arguments. Voluntarily of course. Forcing people to stop using words would be fascist.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Monkey man don’t do 'civil discourse'

Sisters Mayor Lon Kellstrom read a proclamation Thursday night reaffirming the city council’s commitment to civil discourse. The proclamation was in response to the Tucson shootings and the (tenuous) connection with the overheated rhetorical climate in America.

It’s always a good idea to remind ourselves that, as our president is fond of saying, “we can disagree without being disagreeable.” But how realistic is that? In a free society, with a lot of convenient megaphones that amplify our sometimes strident voices, people’s feelings are going to get hurt. And they’re going to get mad. And at a certain point, they’re going to get so mad they can’t think straight.

When our political ideologies are tangled up with our identity, civil discourse is really difficult, maybe impossible.

One of my favorite bloggers is a corrections officer/writer/martial artist/philosopher named Sgt. Rory Miller. One of his recent blog entries hits on a phenomenon that I believe explains the tenor of a lot of our national — and even local — political and social discourse.

...Two conversations today, talks where intelligent people lied and math (not fake philosophical math but simple "2x4 is less than 2x8, you realize that, right?" ) was dismissed, and historical documents didn't count. But the most important thing is realizing, whether in criminals or martial artists or debate, that there is an identifier. When the other side gets labeled. When the person says "You are a _________" or "You sound just like___________" Right there the tribal mind is engaged. You are no longer reasoning with a human but trying to reason with a monkey...
With patience and by pretending to not notice dominance games or accepting a label as 'other' I have sometimes given people the space and time to let the monkey brain die down and get back to tangible problems. But rarely, if ever, when the problem was tied directly to their identity.

We’re in a phase where, for many people, politics is tied directly to their identity. People choose sides, and lash their identity to their party, their movement, their tribe. They label those who disagree and perceive them as “other.”

This is by no means a new phenomenon in our history. In fact, I’d argue that it’s more common than periods of broad consensus and “civility.”

No proclamation, no matter how heartfelt, is going to change the climate. Unless... it causes us in that critical moment to pause, to question whether our identity is really under threat, to ask ourselves, “am I a monkey or a man?”

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Sisters should elect its mayor

This is no way to start a new year and a new city council.

The first act that brand-new city councilor David Asson will take Thursday night will be divisive. It’s not his fault; he’s the presumptive swing vote in a choice between Lon Kellstrom and Sharlene Weed for the mayor’s seat on the council. Asson has already indicated that he will not support Weed in for position, but any way he votes puts him crosswise with somebody right off the bat, despite best intentions to be a unifying force.

By charter, the city council selects the mayor after each election. The idea is that the mayor is merely “first among equals” rather than a separately elected chief. That’s fine for a small city with little politics. But that’s not what Sisters is anymore.

Like it or not, Sisters has politics — strongly held diverging positions on issues ranging from economic development to the manner in which the city should conduct its business. That means the old way of selecting the mayor is outmoded.

Council selection of the mayor sets the body up for infighting and gamesmanship which erodes the body’s ability to work together. Direct election eliminates one divisive element.

The citizens should decide who they want to be the face of the city and a four-year term will give the position built-in continuity. Direct election makes the will of the citizenry clear and gives the mayor a mandate. It also makes the mayor more accountable for the manner and style of his or her conduct of the city’s affairs.

It would take a charter amendment to change the method of the mayor’s election — something that many in the City of Bend are also advocating for the same reasons. It’s an idea whose time has come.

Jim Cornelius, Editor