LILEKS (James) Screeeeeeedblog

From Ken Schram we have the baseline for a self-satisfied hermetically-sealed intellect content to regard the dreaded OTHER as a strange nasty offshoot of humanity that lacks the requisite glands for empathy and compassion.

Okay. Now I get it.

And because I do, I now have a better understanding for the likes of President Bush, Pat Robertson - even John Carlson.

They can't help themselves.

According to a new study published in the American Political Science Review, being politically conservative is, in part, a matter or genetics.

I've long wondered how an otherwise seemingly rational person could adhere so strictly to stilted ideologies; how they could be so consistently willing to smother a sense of social well-being.

Yes, I’ve long wondered how reasonable people could disagree with me. It just doesn’t seem possible. I’ve entertained the possibility that they’ve examined the evidence, considered the things I regard as crucial to extending freedom and prosperity to as many as possible on this benighted globe, but then GIANT BEES SWARMED THROUGH THE WINDOW and they were so busy fighting them off they forgot everything they’d been thinking right up to Zero Hour Bee. Thus angered, thus confused, they became glowering lust-maddened Othellos pushing the pillow over Desdemona’s face, depriving her of life and social well-being. I mean, there’s no other rational reason why people might have opinions that conflict with my own. They’re either stupid or evil.

I get mail. Someone of it sounds frustrated and irritated: How can someone like you, who obviously isn’t completely devoid of a few functioning neurons, not believe what I believe? I’m often accused of intellectual rigidity and slavish devotion to a monolithic bloc of ideas because I believe B, D and T, and those ideas are also shared by those who chant A through Z every day on their sites. There’s also a certain assumption that if you like A, F, M and X about pop culture and art, you must therefore share certain ideas about optimal tax rates and relations with international organizations.

I would post more about things on the right with which I don’t agree – and there are many – but they don’t irritate me as much as stubborn obtuseness about the nature of the Threat. And besides, you don’t get any credit for them in the long or short run. I could write weekly about my support for various forms of gay rights, but I suspect that one cautious post about my reservations re gay marriage – which have nothing to do with homosexuality, believe it or not – would put me in the God Hates Fags camp for some people. For some, there are two schools: the Proper Way to Think, and the Evil Smelly Anthracite-Hearted Budgie-Crushing Christer Kill-the-Ayrabs Yokel Confederacy, aka the Bad Guys. Schrams to the left of me, Savages on the right, here I am: stuck in the middle.

With Jews. I think the most angry mail I ever got had to do with my writing on the Intifada 2, which struck me as another front in a war against Islamofascism. (To use a term that also makes some see red. ) I preferred to support a liberal democracy over a thuggish and wholly cynical gangster clique. If you slog through the ten billion words I’ve disgorged since 9/11 I don’t think you’ll get the impression that I think that the left are motivated by a deep desire to see America crushed beneath the mullah’s boots so they can finally put to use their Arabic lessons. “The polish of your boots is delicious. The polish of your boots was delicious. The polish of your boots will be delicious.” I disagree with some of their premises, and fear the result of their policies. But I'll grant that they came to their opinions honestly - not because a series of atoms in their brain made them genetically predisposed to side with anyone who calls himself a Freedom Fighter. I mean, that would be stupid of me, and insulting towards them. Unless, of course, they're the sort of person who hasn't reexamined an idea or preconception since they were a college student putting up the Che poster with thumbtacks.

In any case, you’re free to think that people who believe B, G and T also must believe A through Z, and both sorts are equally malevolent - just as you’re free to believe that the Mossad and the CIA brought down the Twin Towers, the Pentagon was actually hit by a magically vanishing giant banana, and Roswell aliens gave us the technology to remotely pilot the planes. I can only imagine your fury and disaffection from the world as it is generally assumed to be, and you have my sympathy.

What generally spurs me to essay some humid blather here isn’t DISSENT, but the meretricious quality of the remarks, and what I see as its, ah, unhelpful qualities. We continue with Mr. Schram:

It's merely a matter of having been dumped in the shallow end of the gene pool.
They're sorta like the puppy who piddles in the middle of the floor: They just don't know any better.

Okay, and people who want higher marginal tax rates are like babies who like to defecate in their diapers because it gives them a nice warm feeling. There you go! Argument settled, opponents infantilized, everyone go home. Drive safe.

To be sure, the study says that how someone is raised may determine their political party affiliation, but it's genetics that appears to set one on a philosophically conservative course.

To me, that helps explain why PBS threatens their intellect, or why they are so at peace with going to war.

“Why PBS threatens their intellect.” Whoa! You nailed me there; I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve switched the channel ‘cause I cain’t tell what that dang Miss Marple’s saying. (And why’s she a miss, huh? She wunna dem lesbeens?) It’s possible that one could oppose public funding of PBS because it could survive on its own by appealing to the rich yeasty demographic slice that likes it; it’s possible one could argue that the very idea of state-funded TV is more like, oh, the Soviet Union, the Nazis and Pol Pot’s regime, but I wouldn’t do that. It’s possible that one might wonder if PBS would be beloved by Mr. Schram if it pumped out the O’Reilly Factor 24/7, with occasional station breaks for Marine Band concerts. In that case, one suspects that state-funded TV with mandatory citizen contributions would be a sign of creeping fascism. And one might also note that cable TV has offerings that delight the PBS-inclined viewer, 24/7, and rather than fight for dimes and pennies for PBS, Congress might well use its regulatory power to break up the tier system that keeps people from subscribing only to the smarter channels on cable. These things are possible.

But not damn likely! Because we’re dealing with people who are so at peace with going to war. That’s a telling line, the sort of thing you can only get away with in an editorial. If you actually say it to someone, you might get this response:

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you’re comfortable with war.”

“Not at all. I find it highly uncomfortable, and wish it would not have come to this. Good Lord, who wants war? But sometimes war is what you have, and often times you’ve had it long before you realized it was upon you. In which case you can either retreat to the illusions that bore you through the phony peace, or seek to conclude the strife that was brought to your door. Just because you’re deaf doesn’t mean the sirens don’t blare, my friend. Don’t mistake resolve for pleasure.”

At this point the handshake between Rumsfeld and Saddam would be brought up, and you’d be off on that. Again.

It's not that conservatives mean to favor the rich over the poor and middle class. And it's not that they'd rather drill for oil than preserve the environment. Because it's not really their fault. They're just born that way.

Uh huh. Yep. Because you can either drill in skeeter-choked ANWAR or preserve the “environment,” presumably defined here as the entire biosphere of the planet. No in-between. It’s not your fault. Blame your genes.

So we can also assume that Mr. Schram is genetically predisposed to support racial preferences that fixate on skin color, has some interior code that makes him whoop and hollah hurray whenever he learns a partial-birth abortion has scrambled the limbs of an eight-month old fetus, and is hardwired to oppose limits on punitive damages for med-mal lawsuits. I have to assume this, because our diffence of opinion means he is an evil parody of everyone one centimeter to the right of Me, and everyone is a monkey dancing to the square-dance call of our genes.