A Mighty 'Amen'

Give credit to John Perry Barlow. He's trying to reach out across the red-blue chasm and understand those of us who his peers dismiss as simply in need of more education and less religion:

At the very least, I need to take the other side seriously. Dismissing them as a bunch of homophobic, racist, Bible-waving, know-nothing troglodytes, however true that may be of a few, only authorizes them to return the favor. I don't want somebody calling me a dope-smoking, fag-loving, one-worlder weirdo, however true that might be. We are all masks that God wears, whatever God that is. We might try to treat one another with according reverence. At least we might try to listen as though the other side might have a point.I truly think we all owe one another an apology.

Of course he manages to run through the litany of stereotypes, several times, in the process of trying to work himself up to moving beyond them. At the end, I'm not sure he's moved more than one step in his intended direction, if it really was his intent.

And of course Michael Moore makes a star turn. And in the comments section. It's something I'm seeing a lot: "If only they'd all seen 'Fahrenheit 9/11'! Nobody who has seen it could possibly vote for Bush."

News flash: "Fahrenheit 9/11" made it very difficult for me to even think of voting for John Kerry.

Today, Dean Esmay responds to Barlow. He manages to re-create the tone of the original: humorous at times, passionate in places, communication without compromise. And there are whole passages of it that I'd initial with a "ditto." Such as:

Am I a conservative, a "right winger?" Sure, I guess so, if you count someone who's pro-choice on abortion, is flabbergasted at the nastiness and selfishness and mean-spiritedness of anyone who would put someone in jail for smoking pot, favors gay marriage, supports human rights organizations, and would love to see a world united in democratic governments a "conservative right-winger."

I think what bemused me most when reading your missive, Mr. Barlow, was your description of the young man who was probably popular and on the football team and supported Bush, while you the nerdy outsider supported Kerry, and you saw the whole thing through some sort of 50s-vs.-60s lens. Nothing could show me just how insular so many on the left have become than that. Few of the war supporters I know fit such stereotypes at all. "Think for yourself, question authority" is something a lot of us sucked in with our mothers' milk--and by the way, you know we kids who were born in the 1960s are now in our 30s and 40s and parents ourselves, right? A lot of us grew up being told to question authority, and a lot of that authority we now question is the left-wing orthodoxy of your generation, an orthodoxy many of us bought into as it was taught to us in school, in the books we read, and especially in the universities, not to mention in a lot of what we see out of Hollywood today.

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It reached a point for a lot of us that on election day, we were doing more than just saying "We want to re-elect George Bush." When we pulled that lever for Bush, we were also just plain saying "FUCK YOU!"

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Meanwhile we were, many of us, talking to the boys and girls doing their work over there, and while some had their doubts most were proud of the war effort and cared about the Iraqi people and made friends with them. (You do know that Bush got more than 70% of the vote from the National Guadsmen who are supposedly trapped in Bush's "back door draft," don't you? But did you know that most of the soldiers interviewed in Michael Moore's movie hate his guts for the way he twisted their words and quoted them out of context? Did you know about the families he abused just to tell his story?)

Hellfire, a year and a half ago I played a role in helping to found an organization to ship toys and medical supplies for soldiers to distribute to kids over in Iraq. (You can donate to it right here by the way). Do you know how many lefties we were able to get to help us with that? Almost none. You guys were too busy shrieking about the evil BushCo-McRove Machine to actually do something to help those soldiers and those Iraqis you guys claim to care so much about.

That, to a lot of us, is the greatest irony you know. All the war supporters I know--all of them--read and listen to the anti-Bush and anti-war invective. We're most bemused when we hear your plaintive wails that we are closed-minded and fearful and zombified and that if only you'd try harder and be more passionate maybe we'd finally understand you. Meantime we're listening and we're watching and we're reading and we're thinking, "Yeah we understand you perfectly. We just think you're wrong. Why aren't you listening to what we're saying?"

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Do you disagree? Okay. That's fine. That's your right as a human being. But you guys did more than disagree. A lot of you were just plain assholes about it. You could have talked to us but instead you wanted to tell us that Chimpy McSmirk was the new Hitler and a big fat liar just because you didn't agree with him. It offended the shit out of us, because we did agree with him and we didn't think he lied (and most of us still don't). We saw a good, decent, moderate man in Bush who decided to take a big gamble and do the right thing for both America and Iraq and finally, finally, finally bring down the monster Saddam. Which should have been done a long damned time ago if we'd had any decency as a country.

You don't agree. Fine. You don't have to. But don't think that acting like an asshole about it gets you my vote. You guys may have whipped a bunch of dumbass kids into a rage by feeding them Michael Moore style hate-propaganda, but you equally pissed off a bunch of other folks in the process who showed up to vote just to spite you guys for being such mean-spirited, reactionary, paint-by-numbers, bigoted, closed-minded jerks.

Sorry man, but it's exactly what you looked like here. We saw your disappointment when good economic news came out and your almost desperate desire to deny it. It was written on so many of your faces. We saw your irritation when good news came out of Iraq. It was obvious in your tone and your attitude about it. We aren't stupid you know. You wanted America to fail just so you could take down Shrubbie McHitler the Death Merchant.