Political Self-fashioning
Rose Nunez recently blogged about the response to the 7/7 terror among some liberals, and she noted that -- I repeat, for some liberals, lest I be accused of painting with too broad a brush -- the desire to "understand root causes" was a kind of solipsistic attempt to maintain a particular self-image. Now, I understand that our political orientation is always, to some extent, bound up with how see ourselves, but there are extreme manifestations of this phenomenon. Sometimes a person will decide where she stands on a particular issue, not by first judging the arguments on their merits, nor by measuring the issue according to some guiding principles, but by considering how a sensitve, tolerant, enlightened, intelligent person (a person very much like herself) would be expected to respond to the issue.
I was recently reminded of this phenomenon and of Rose's post when a friend of mine mentioned a "brilliant" quotation she had read, by some writer (whose name she couldn't remember) to the effect that he (the writer) had lots of friends in the "creative community," and all of the brilliant, creative people he knew were liberals or Democrats. I replied that many of the artists of the '30's and '40's were Stalinists, and I asked her if -- by her logic -- that meant Stalinism was the correct political philosophy. But in a way my question was unfair, because I understood that my friend wasn't really defending, or even considering, the logic of such a statement, but was perhaps unwittingly confessing how much her political opinions were informed by her self-image.
Maybe it was ever thus . . . but sometimes that's no consolation.
I was recently reminded of this phenomenon and of Rose's post when a friend of mine mentioned a "brilliant" quotation she had read, by some writer (whose name she couldn't remember) to the effect that he (the writer) had lots of friends in the "creative community," and all of the brilliant, creative people he knew were liberals or Democrats. I replied that many of the artists of the '30's and '40's were Stalinists, and I asked her if -- by her logic -- that meant Stalinism was the correct political philosophy. But in a way my question was unfair, because I understood that my friend wasn't really defending, or even considering, the logic of such a statement, but was perhaps unwittingly confessing how much her political opinions were informed by her self-image.
Maybe it was ever thus . . . but sometimes that's no consolation.
posted by Kate Marie | 2:34 PM | Permalink
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4 comments
4 Comments:
Kate Marie,
One of the most intriguing cases of the phenomenon you describe is the movement to ban same-sex marriage. For some (I'll go ahead and grab the broad brush and say "many") anti-gay rights conservatives the desire to "understand the root causes" of homosexuality is a kind of solipsistic attempt to maintain a particular self-image.
Rose,
Two great points. Thanks!
Madman,
I think you're quite correct that many in the anti-gay-rights (as opposed to the anti-gay-marriage) camp are invested in a particular image of themselves. What does that have to do with my post, though?
Kate Marie and Rose,
I guess my conflation of "anti gay rights" and "anti gay marriage" is a matter of personal conviction, as I hold marriage to be a right that same-sex couples have and are being prevented from excercising. Rose's caution not to confuse sentiment against same-sex marriage with more pernicious forms of anti-gay bigotry is well taken, but I would still maintain that anyone who is strongly and actively opposed to *civil* same-sex marriage (I would never insist that this applies to the issue of marriage as a religious institution) is motivated at least in part by a perceived (or at least latently sensed) threat to self-image.
As for what this has to do with your post, Kate Marie, I found your description of this kind of folly on the left intriguing, and found it even more intriguing that it can be found in equal abudance on the right.
"As for what this has to do with your post, Kate Marie, I found your description of this kind of folly on the left intriguing, and found it even more intriguing that it can be found in equal abudance on the right."
-- Did I suggest it couldn't? My post led up to an example (taken from personal experience) of this phenomenon on the left. Your point is that people on the right do it as well. Okay, thanks for the heads up.
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