JOHN THE OBSCURE ™

By John Ruch

Empathy for the Devil: Where the Right Is Right

Good golly, have I been politically disputatious lately. Inflammation can be a sign of infection, and my recent ranting has indeed been partly provoked by internal irritants. The identity of these stressors is, of course, none of your business. Look at me instead as the tip, and professional attack dogs as the iceberg. There is undoubtedly something seriously and perpetually wrong inside many of those talking heads.

That’s no dig. It doesn’t mean they’re inherently not right. Lord knows I’m 1,000 percent right. It’s just that politics is always a fight, and fights always feel dirty and nasty no matter how right you are, and the reasons for getting into a fight are always the same way.

It’s a dirty job, and no has to do it, but here we are anyhow.

Probably the worst part of political flamewars to me is that they make me paint myself into some partisan corner. Politics is always some stupid pro wrestling mask. Because I believe change is the patent constant in life; that society is responsible for its monsters; that dichotomy is a bad magic trick; and that the number one law of the universe is “leave me the fuck alone,” I usually get stuck as the “lefty” or “liberal.” I’ve always violently bucked such riders. I didn’t learn at the knee of some arch-hippie. I was tutored by Reagan-empowered hicks, weekend warriors, comb-over coaches and corporal-punishment-savoring child molesters. And they were mostly negative examples of what not to be when I grew up. Every political view I have was hand-forged in my own fire. Every political hero I have is someone who amplified those views, not invented them for me.

Those views would be better described as “weirdly idiosyncratic” than “liberal.” I have a philosophy, not an ideology, and I loathe such labels that are designed solely to benefit somebody else and make us all fight each other. Ditto for the usual political spare-tire terms like capital-I Independents or that horrible Trekker-like realm of “libertarians.” (I do love my Massachusetts ballot option of “Undeclared.” I am “un” all the way.)

Indeed, while I would gladly employ black magic to make G.W. fall madly in love with a blue-ringed octopus, I certainly hold some views that could be considered right-wing. Probably not enough to not get circle-stomped by a gang of skinheads, but still.

In fact, I knew some Nazi punk skinheads in high school. One in particular I argued with now and then. But I defended him when he wanted to hand out some bullshit pamphlets in school and was barred. He thought I was wrong about most things; I knew he was wrong about most things; but we had an understanding. As far apart as we were, we still had way more in common with each other than we did with any of the real-life thugs who ran that place. We both took a lot of shit; we just said “no” in different ways. And to the tie-wearing baboon of a vice principal who kept a collection of billy clubs in his office, we both looked exactly the same.

I was reminded of this when, during my recent political ranting, I found myself defending a gang of Republican journalists. A student-run right-wing “journal” at Tufts University was recently sanctioned financially and editorially by a censorship board for running a racist Christmas carol parody of affirmative action admission policies. I can think of several good arguments against the style and substance of the parody; apparently, an entire university of brainiacs cannot, so they simply seek to cut out their enemy’s tongue like medieval torturers. The head of the censorship board is a professor whose Web page cites a love of Molière—you know, the guy extensively banned for vitriolic parody. She probably knows a fancy literary term for that sort of irony.

My initial motivation was simple enough: I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the quickie blog your right to say it.

But then I remembered how familiar this felt, how troublemakers of any political stripe get mauled the same way by the wood-chipper of conformity. It reminded me how I’ve long thought that the left and the right, for all their difference, have way more in common with each other than they do with the center—that our supposed political spectrum is actually a ring. I’m not saying the political views are equivalent or equally valid. But I believe we are seeing an era in which moderation is the real extremism, politeness is the new fascism and ideology is the real enemy.

We hear all this talk about how we’re red states and blue states in a new civil war. But what I see is the rise of a single ideology of placidity, a burgeoning suburban middle class that just wants to watch something inoffensive on TV, and that will defend to the death its twin principles: we can buy whatever we want cheap, and anybody who makes us uncomfortable has to be silenced. The right’s the right and the left’s the left, but both tend to think society needs changing somewhere.

Here’s a concrete example from a bogeyman of both wings: the FBI. This ever-more-villainous agency just reported to Congress on an “anti-terrorist” strategy called “Countering Radicalization.” It defines “radicalization” as people “taking their faith or political beliefs to the extremes of plotting acts of violence and destruction.”¹

To which the only sane reply is, you mean like G.W. now and the Founding Fathers then? And that’s a reply you can get from both the left and the right.

“Radical” instantly equated with “violence and destruction”—that’s the big, dopey, let-me-go-back-to-sleep center at work. And make no mistake—it will send you to jail before it lets you nudge it. In fact, the greatest violence and destruction of our time—the war in Iraq—happened only because of moderate Democrats and centrist constituents who demand cheap gasoline and cheaper patriotic thrills.

I reject in principle the idea that you can even define terms like “liberal” and “conservative,” and I find them increasingly meaningless in practice. A glance at the current presidential candidates shows me that regarding the Iraq war, I agree far more with a Republican congressman than I do with a Democratic senator.

But these terms of (somebody else’s) convenience are nonetheless thrust between us, and become increasingly real as their victims accept the labels as true. So fine, I will accept them for convenience as well.

But I accept them only insofar as I have started to feel some empathy for the devil. We should agree as loudly as we disagree. So here are some places where, from my point of view, the right is right:

Gun rights. Anybody who thinks the Second Amendment guarantees private gun ownership must be illiterate. But I would have no problem with passing a Constitutional amendment or other law that does guarantee such ownership along with reasonable licensing and restrictions (including limits on the number of guns owned). It may be depressing that we have created such perfect tools solely for killing each other; but they’re not going to be un-invented, and they certainly are equalizers—particularly of interest, I would think, to women against rapists and the like. Self-defense is the highest law, and liberal self-martyrdom helps no one. There should be a very strong right to own an effective home-defense weapon—i.e., a shotgun. Rifles I see virtually no legitimate personal use for. Handguns are trickier. They’re certainly useful. But they also arguably cause more danger than they protect against; the culture that lauds them for supposedly keeping crime rates low and everybody saying “mister” is based on small towns that have low crime rates anyhow for socioeconomic reasons. Typically, handguns are employed to solve problems that either don’t exist or cannot be solved by handguns. But more rapists should be shot in the face. Perhaps handgun control is best left up to individual municipalities. In any case, too much of this debate is mired in grand social policy and utilitarian myths. Right-wing culture is far better at stating an obvious but often overlooked truth: shooting guns is fun as hell, at least for some people. And yes, that’s a legitimate reason to own one. I recently came across a business called Machine Gun Safari, met its owner under a highway sign off some lonely exit ramp, and went and fired full-auto machine guns into a dirt embankment out in the woods. And yes, it was fun. (Firing the Most Powerful Handgun In The World, a .50-caliber revolver, on another trip left me with a split finger and was not as much fun, but you get the idea.) Meanwhile, if you wanna ban guns totally, fine—as long as the Army and the cops go first.
Legitimization of anger. The right has basically made a cult of anger. The left does the same with guilt. Both, in my mind, are employed for evil ends. But there’s nothing inherently wrong with either. Anger is as valid as any other human emotion. It’s the only sane response to many outrages, yet liberals often repress and suppress it. A little more raw anger, and the 2000 election and the Iraq War would’ve turned out a lot differently. The right is in touch with its anger, and in that way it’s more human, more true and more rebellious. This is not just political but aesthetic. E.g., the right has always more fully embraced the completely kick-ass musical genres of heavy metal and outlaw country.²
Opposition to hate crime legislation. “Hate crime” is an Orwellian term for “thought crime.” Granted, most right-wingers oppose this because they are racists. And liberal supporters can argue from the perspective that racism, sexism and homophobia are factually incorrect. But this has nothing to do with particular crimes—which are already illegal. This is an attempt at social engineering—and just another form of censorship, of attempting to instill a mental chilling effect instead of convincing people of their errors. They have no place in a free society or in a rational law system. Is killing someone because you hate black people worse than killing someone because you hate cops or hate children? Is an extortion-motivated firebombing better than a racially-motivated firebombing? These are questions that can and should be answered during sentencing in specific cases, not prejudged by some phony, censorious and ridiculous hairsplitting in categories of crime. (Virtually any crime of pure power/rage is a “hate” crime; attempts to categorize them more fully on the front end creates diminishing returns and endlessly irrationalities. For example, all rape and serial killing is, by any definition except that of the law, hate crime.) The real motivation for many of these laws came from frustration with conservative prosecutors and police who wouldn’t enforce existing laws in cases involving minority victims. So get new prosecutors and police, not new laws.
Rejection of censorship. Republicans presidents, at least, show less favor for media censorship than their Democratic counterparts. This is typically for sheer laissez-faire economic reasons. But we should take freedom of thought where we can get it. The urge to silence an expression is the urge to blot out the speaker. Censorship is murder writ small. Of course, in the political arena, right-wingers are increasingly the targets of college campus censorship, and everyone of all political stripes loves to censor each other, as politics is fundamentally murderous war with a nicey-nice face. I’m certainly conservative when it comes to the First Amendment.³
Fuck (99 percent of) bicyclists. I know a lot of bicyclists. They’re all nice people—much more so than average. So when the SUV-driving, planet-destroying, oil-war-demanding heartland sitting in its smoldering rush hour makes fun of bicyclists as part of a sweeping denunciation of any alternative form of transportation, my kneejerk reaction is to stick a banana seat up their butts. But hard experience (with bikes in general; I’ve seen few of my biking associates actually riding) has taught me that bicyclists are a destructive lot themselves, combining the worst of reckless driving and jaywalking into virtually every action. Last week, while thinking about this column, I watched a bicyclist run a stop sign and a crosswalk with a pedestrian in it to turn the wrong way up a one-way street and hop up onto the sidewalk. That’s about par for the course. Anybody driving a car these days is basically a sociopath. But watch a bicyclist for a minute and you’ll see enough traffic violations to get a car driver’s license pulled for year committed with impunity. Bicycling has become a cult founded on the dangerously unstable twin principles of overentitlement and self-righteous chaos: “I have even more right to the road as you, and none of the responsibilities.” Total obliviousness plays an enormous role as well. This goes for literally 99 percent of bicyclists, but good luck getting bike advocates to admit it. A good number of bicyclists are also anarchists, who demonstrate the worst outcome of their philosophy with each pedal pump. Even accounting for the principle that breaking traffic laws is sometimes safer than obeying them, bikes are out of control; and instead of just admitting that bicyclists drive like idiots because there’s no enforcement and they can, advocates dream up all sorts of political rationales. I use no private vehicle at all, so I’m more righteous than any of you (where do you think the oil on your gears came from?), and I find bicyclists to be a significantly greater personal danger to me than cars, despite their far lower numbers on the road. In lieu of traffic tickets, they deserve all the mockery they get from the armored interiors of Escalades and Hummers. Meanwhile, if you want to know someone’s true politics, just watch how they drive/bike/walk.⁴
Meaningfulness. In a culture increasingly constipated with fake irony and fake parody, the quest for meaning leads to strange alliances. Conservatives are often quite obsessed with meaning and significance (typically from a Christian perspective), and have turned out to be the era’s best media critics. Back in my movie-reviewing days, some of my most copacetic conversations were with conservative Christians.
Embrace of hypocrisy. Liberals are great at holding their noses. (See Bill Clinton.) But the right-wing culture of forgiveness truly embraces hypocrites, especially disgraced preachers. And that’s a good thing. Somebody who engages in a practice they legislate against or demonize in a bigoted fashion is pretty much evil. But when it comes to general criticisms, why is it deemed a liability to know what you’re talking about? The right has surged ahead by dropping the illusion of purity. Reality is rewarding them.
Engaging in political flamewars. The right, of course, does not have a monopoly on this, and the honeymoon’s over. See ya at Gettysburg, you hick brownshirts!

¹ At http://www.fbi.gov/page2/may07/radicalization051007.htm.

² As Iggy did with the Stooges, I would gladly start a band with a couple of redneck dudes who would leave the ideologies to me and have my back 100 percent in any degree of insanity required. The band would be called Identification with the Oppressor.

³ A fine example of conservative anti-censorship is the eccentric right-wing actor Michael Moriarty. An original cast member of the landmark TV hit “Law & Order,” he claims he quit after the producers met with then-Attorney General Janet Reno as she attempted to strong-arm the show into being less violent as part of the Clinton administration’s vast media censorship campaign. The producers have claimed there were many other reasons for Moriarty leaving, but that’s always the case, isn’t it? Moriarty isn’t lying and is a straight-up man of principle, unlike Reno’s fellow liberals, who were willing to sell their souls rather than risk a nickel. Moriarty expressed the viewpoint that media censorship is essentially socialist or communist totalitarianism, and he’s right—as far as that species goes. While always sold with a certain ideology, censorship actually knows none; it is merely a tactic of power. But Moriarty, as its very real victim, knows it well. The Michael Moriarty Unofficial, Unauthorized, Unsanctioned Home Page fan site (www.mmuuuhp.com/censor.htm) preserves some great thoughts from him on the topic: “[A]ll the people who’ve ever called for censorship in the world have ended up exposed as villains or clowns.”

This brings up a larger issue that also is common to troublemakers of any political stripe: virtual unemployability. Moriarty has said his “Law & Order” stand and his general politics (which, I might add, appear to be standard if flamboyantly expressed individualism/religiosity, not some virulent Mel Gibson-esque horror show) left him ostracized by large segments of his industry. No doubt. I empathize utterly; indeed, I’ve found in my own career that center-right organizations have been much more eager to employ me than liberal ones. Moriarty is right to complain about his particular situation, but I think he lacks the larger view. This happens to people of all political stripes; and these days, usually the only ideological test involved is how slavish one’s devotion is to corporatism. Upsetting people is the greatest sin, because it might mean disruptions in the laziest forms of cashflow. That is also why political right and political left are not the biggest victims of such ostracization; intellectualism is. Moriarty’s biggest sin isn’t being right-wing; it’s being smart and articulate about it. As for my situation—gee, what do you think?

⁴ The day after I published this column, I thought maybe “99 percent” was too churlish. So I decided to keep a tally of all the bicyclists I saw today, as well as bad car drivers. Here’s what I encountered bike-wise, in order of appearance:

1) Riding on wrong side of street, veering directly at me as I walked in a crosswalk and passing within inches so he could ride up onto the sidewalk.

2) Riding on the sidewalk at about 20 mph, passing within inches of me.

3) Riding on the sidewalk.

4) Walking on sidewalk, pushing a bike. A model citizen.

5) Running a red light and a crosswalk.

6) Riding normally in the street.

7) Walking on sidewalk and in crosswalk, pushing bike.

8) Running a red light and a crosswalk as I walked in it.

9) Running a red light and a crosswalk.

So to rephrase, fuck at least 66 percent of bicyclists. Of those I saw today who were actually riding as opposed to walking, 86 percent were breaking the law in an egregiously dangerous manner.

By comparison, I saw at least 100 cars today, of which 7 (i.e., no more than 7 percent) committed egregious traffic violations. (For the record: a Sam Adams truck running a red light/crosswalk; a car with dealer plates driving up onto a sidewalk; a Postal Service truck parked in the middle of the road; a pickup truck parked in the middle of the road; a cleaning van parked on a sidewalk; an SUV running a red light/crosswalk; a minivan doing a three-point turn in the middle of the road in front of oncoming traffic.) Unlike the bikes, none of them came anywhere near me.

Of course, these are all outrageously high rates for one person to see in a couple of hours on one day, proving that virtually everyone in America should be kept under house arrest for my own good. If you handed out ninja masks and pirate swords to everyone over 16 years old, you would not get this much selfish, antisocial behavior.

As for myself, I technically jaywalked at least five times; all, I would argue, at places where it safer to cross than at an intersection, though I’m sure that’s an argument many bicyclists would make as well. But I am quite sure I never had the slightest chance of knocking anyone down and leaving tire tracks on their face.

May 2008: Just had to get this one out of my system: In Cambridge, Mass., home of the liberal bike-coddling, I today heard the sound of a bicyclist nearly running down a woman at a crosswalk—so close she cried out, “Bastard!” Bike boy responded loudly, “Whatever.” Clearly, many bicyclists display the psychopathology of abuse victims: endangered by cars, they get their revenge by in turn abusing even more vulnerable people on the streets. This breed of fuckhead is a cultist as dangerous as your average jihadist and nothing more than a bully with a getaway vehicle.

Next two bicyclists I saw that day: riding on the sidewalk, and walking into traffic against a light.

A kill-with-impunity law would solve these problems. Or maybe a license/registration/insurance requirement for bicyclists/bikers, who pretend they want to be treated just like car drivers but would probably bitch their rolled-up pantlegs off about that. I prefer the former option.

Posted May 20, 2007. Updated May 21 and June 29, 2007 and Jan. 24 and May 11, 2008.

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