Contempt and Politics, a Noodle
Mar. 19th, 2019 01:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydyThis is not a well-formed essay because I don't have all the pieces, yet. But I want to put down what I do have, because I think it's important, and I think it might be important for other people, too. Or, you know, not. Do tell me in the comments.
I've been thinking of the role of contempt in politics. As a personal project, I've been trying to eliminate contempt in my own political discourse. This is, you should understand, a work in progress. I first noticed my own issues with contempt when I started following @NeolithicSheep on Twitter. She is a small, sustainable farmer in Virginia, a Democratic Socialist, and extremely acerbic about city folk, especially Northern city folk, being condescending and judgmental about the rural South. She makes a couple of really striking points. When we talk about being progressive, we talk about caring about the poor and working class. There is no definition of poor and working class that doesn't include the rural south. More striking, the rural south has a lot of people of color in it. When Northerners talk about writing off the South, we are basically saying that people who live in generational poverty because of the racist white ruling class are unimportant. She says, often, "We don't leave anyone behind." When Northerners think about the South negatively, we think about the white people. Worse, we allow the white people who either identify with slave holders, some of whom are descendants of slave holders and inherited wealth generated by slavery, to define the narrative. And it is to their benefit for Northerners to only see them, only see their issues and struggles. All those sympathetic "Trump supporter" profiles continue to give voice and power to that narrative, and ignore the descendants of enslaved people, ignore the very vibrant and active progressives in the South. Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum took Northerners by surprise, but they came to prominence because there is an extremely vibrant and active progressive alliance in the South which built organizations, and mobilized. It is an alliance which is regularly ignored or shit on by Northerners, except when they feel that they can use those people for their own ends. Lord love a duck, how we adore the white savior narrative. But the Civil Rights Movement, that wasn't born in the North amongst white people, though the stories we like to tell tend to be skew that direction.
Contempt is a way of discarding people. A way of walking away from problems. When we say, "Should have let the South secede," what we are really saying is that the problem is too hard for us, and that we don't really care about the people who live there. We are accepting the white supremacist narrative of the South. I grew up in a Fundamentalist church. My father was a minister, and I was fascinated by theology as a child. I think that Fundamentalism is profoundly dangerous, and often evil. But I am so very, very tired of people saying that Fundamentalists are stupid. They aren't. My father was very smart, my mother is extremely bright. They held virulently horrible opinions about the world. There are stupid Fundamentalists, but you don't have to be stupid to believe in Creationism. That belief system serves some very specific needs and desires, and very smart people do some very interesting intellectual gymnastics to believe in it. They do it because they need something it offers, not because they are stupid. Bigots and racists are not stupid, they are evil. They are making choices that damage the body politic. But shrugging and saying, "Well, what do you expect from a bunch of hicks," does nothing except make you feel good about yourself.
Contempt is a way of refusing to engage. Refusing to look at the what's and the why's. Which is going to sound like I think that you should debate Nazis instead of punching them. No, no I don't think that. I would argue that debating Nazis is often a form of contempt, not respect. Ask me how I know. I used to go out onto Usenet (yes, I am that old) when I was bored, looking for people with bad opinions to argue with and condescend to. It was fun. It changed pretty much no ones mind, but it was entertaining to troll the trolls. I held them, and their beliefs, in contempt, and I enjoyed demonstrating that on the Internet. I was not engaging with them, I was mocking them. They had nothing to say that I valued. Dear friends, nothing a Nazi says is worth engaging in. Nothing a racist says about race is worth engaging in. Bigotry and hatred is not something to debate. It is something to hate, something to excoriate. My humanity is not up for discussion, and no one else's should be, either.
I think that many of those Trump voter profiles were actually rooted in contempt, masked as empathy. I think that there was a sense that these people were so pitiably stupid that they had nothing to say, nothing of value, and that profiling them would make that clear. And, yeah, no. If someone you respect says something gobsmackingly wrong, you try to correct them. Ideally without humiliating them. I do come from a sub-culture where correcting people is considered polite, so I am biased in that direction. The profile of Richard Spencer, which spent a lot of time talking about how natty he was, and not about how hateful his views and goals were, is contemptuous to the point of malfeasance. The only reason that Richard Spencer matters is because he is getting political traction for Nazi talking points, and a profile more concerned with his polish than his politics is contemptuous of both Spencer and the reader. If you have nothing useful to say about the reason Spencer's views are dangerous, if you can't write a piece which constructive engages with his hateful bigotry (and I will grant you that writing such a piece may not be possible) then why are you profiling him in the first place?
I find that when I try to remove condescension from my political discourse, I have more room for both compassion and anger. I am more willing to hold people to account for their own actions, and more willing to consider the context in which they have taken those actions. I am more aware of what people do, and less judgmental of who they are.
Here endeth the noodle.
I've been thinking of the role of contempt in politics. As a personal project, I've been trying to eliminate contempt in my own political discourse. This is, you should understand, a work in progress. I first noticed my own issues with contempt when I started following @NeolithicSheep on Twitter. She is a small, sustainable farmer in Virginia, a Democratic Socialist, and extremely acerbic about city folk, especially Northern city folk, being condescending and judgmental about the rural South. She makes a couple of really striking points. When we talk about being progressive, we talk about caring about the poor and working class. There is no definition of poor and working class that doesn't include the rural south. More striking, the rural south has a lot of people of color in it. When Northerners talk about writing off the South, we are basically saying that people who live in generational poverty because of the racist white ruling class are unimportant. She says, often, "We don't leave anyone behind." When Northerners think about the South negatively, we think about the white people. Worse, we allow the white people who either identify with slave holders, some of whom are descendants of slave holders and inherited wealth generated by slavery, to define the narrative. And it is to their benefit for Northerners to only see them, only see their issues and struggles. All those sympathetic "Trump supporter" profiles continue to give voice and power to that narrative, and ignore the descendants of enslaved people, ignore the very vibrant and active progressives in the South. Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum took Northerners by surprise, but they came to prominence because there is an extremely vibrant and active progressive alliance in the South which built organizations, and mobilized. It is an alliance which is regularly ignored or shit on by Northerners, except when they feel that they can use those people for their own ends. Lord love a duck, how we adore the white savior narrative. But the Civil Rights Movement, that wasn't born in the North amongst white people, though the stories we like to tell tend to be skew that direction.
Contempt is a way of discarding people. A way of walking away from problems. When we say, "Should have let the South secede," what we are really saying is that the problem is too hard for us, and that we don't really care about the people who live there. We are accepting the white supremacist narrative of the South. I grew up in a Fundamentalist church. My father was a minister, and I was fascinated by theology as a child. I think that Fundamentalism is profoundly dangerous, and often evil. But I am so very, very tired of people saying that Fundamentalists are stupid. They aren't. My father was very smart, my mother is extremely bright. They held virulently horrible opinions about the world. There are stupid Fundamentalists, but you don't have to be stupid to believe in Creationism. That belief system serves some very specific needs and desires, and very smart people do some very interesting intellectual gymnastics to believe in it. They do it because they need something it offers, not because they are stupid. Bigots and racists are not stupid, they are evil. They are making choices that damage the body politic. But shrugging and saying, "Well, what do you expect from a bunch of hicks," does nothing except make you feel good about yourself.
Contempt is a way of refusing to engage. Refusing to look at the what's and the why's. Which is going to sound like I think that you should debate Nazis instead of punching them. No, no I don't think that. I would argue that debating Nazis is often a form of contempt, not respect. Ask me how I know. I used to go out onto Usenet (yes, I am that old) when I was bored, looking for people with bad opinions to argue with and condescend to. It was fun. It changed pretty much no ones mind, but it was entertaining to troll the trolls. I held them, and their beliefs, in contempt, and I enjoyed demonstrating that on the Internet. I was not engaging with them, I was mocking them. They had nothing to say that I valued. Dear friends, nothing a Nazi says is worth engaging in. Nothing a racist says about race is worth engaging in. Bigotry and hatred is not something to debate. It is something to hate, something to excoriate. My humanity is not up for discussion, and no one else's should be, either.
I think that many of those Trump voter profiles were actually rooted in contempt, masked as empathy. I think that there was a sense that these people were so pitiably stupid that they had nothing to say, nothing of value, and that profiling them would make that clear. And, yeah, no. If someone you respect says something gobsmackingly wrong, you try to correct them. Ideally without humiliating them. I do come from a sub-culture where correcting people is considered polite, so I am biased in that direction. The profile of Richard Spencer, which spent a lot of time talking about how natty he was, and not about how hateful his views and goals were, is contemptuous to the point of malfeasance. The only reason that Richard Spencer matters is because he is getting political traction for Nazi talking points, and a profile more concerned with his polish than his politics is contemptuous of both Spencer and the reader. If you have nothing useful to say about the reason Spencer's views are dangerous, if you can't write a piece which constructive engages with his hateful bigotry (and I will grant you that writing such a piece may not be possible) then why are you profiling him in the first place?
I find that when I try to remove condescension from my political discourse, I have more room for both compassion and anger. I am more willing to hold people to account for their own actions, and more willing to consider the context in which they have taken those actions. I am more aware of what people do, and less judgmental of who they are.
Here endeth the noodle.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-19 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-19 08:42 pm (UTC)I have always been baffled and offended by the way Midwesterners seem to think about Southerners. While I consider myself to be mostly a New Englander, my earliest memories are from Brevard, NC, where I lived from age 1-5. I love most of the Southern accents (which includes the soft drawl of Austin, Texas, where many of my relatives live or have lived). When I think of people from the south I think of my kind and gentlemanly former boss from South Carolina, or the charming older folks on that bike trip I took in Mississippi. I think of some formative experiences that I had in the beautiful city of New Orleans.
Ironically, Upper Midwesterners seem to view Southerners pretty much the way the coastal elites view Midwesterners. It's icky.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-19 08:52 pm (UTC)It took me much too long to learn to respond to "You're not easily offended, are you?" with "Yes, yes I am."
no subject
Date: 2019-03-19 09:54 pm (UTC)I had a discussion about an edge case, but then I read your reply below, and you already covered it and eloquently answered my supposed counterexamples, so really, I think I'm right there with you.
Some of it comes down to 'when people show you who they are, believe them', doesn't it? When someone espouses white supremacy, don't contemptuously assume they are stupid or ill-informed and that they can be swayed. Confront their evil with a respect for its danger and venom.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-25 03:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-26 12:57 am (UTC)Because yeah.
Useful noodle is useful.