Are Seven

A friend of mine posted a link on Facebook about the 2 million exaggeration of Beck & Malkin et al of the 9/12 protesters on the Mall. There was a pretty good discussion, but there was a part of it that bothered me: most of the commenters seem to attribute the size of Beck’s followers to stupidity; that they’re vulnerable to his message because they’re dumb.

This is a big mistake. The fact that they follow Beck (using Beck here only as a four-letter stand-in for any one of the thoughtless conservative leaders) has nothing to do with intelligence. He’s not convincing unbelievers: he’s preaching to the choir. Every one of the millions of his followers isn’t looking for answers, but for justification. They feel that their way of living and thinking is the right way to be, they want to believe that everyone else is completely wrong, and so they look to the people who will tell them exactly that: your way, your kind and your people are right, and everyone else is wrong and standing in your way.

Likewise, I don’t think that racism is guiding the thought or opinions. Of course, racism is as much of a part of American “conservativism” as it always has been, but that’s not the decider. Those furious people on the Mall and in town halls are bitter. They consider themselves conservatives and Republicans, and voted Republican and a Democrat was elected and Democrats made gains in congress. They’re going to find something wrong with everything that Obama does and says. This anger isn’t based on policy at all; it’s simply contrariness.

Blaming things on stupidity is too easy. Stupidity is the inability to grasp a clear truth or path after considering all options. That’s not (usually) what’s at play here, and attributing it to stupidity is an impediment to debate, and God knows we don’t need any more of those.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.