Party Of Inclusion

By Rod Dreher • September 11, 2012, 6:21 AM

Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c

Hope and Change 2 – The Party of Inclusion

www.thedailyshow.com

Yesterday here, some of y’all were wondering why on earth somebody like me would feel more culturally at home in the Republican Party, despite having serious disagreements with some of the policies the party’s leaders advocate, and despite having changed my registration to Independnet. This great Daily Show clip (thanks, Noah G., for sending it) goes a long way toward explaining why. I know, I know, it’s a humor clip from a satirical program, and not all Democrats feel the way these jerks do. Still, there’s more than a little truth in it.

Posted in Democrats. Tagged Democrats, inclusion.

35 Responses to Party Of Inclusion

Don Quijote says:

September 11, 2012 at 7:36 am

You obviously haven’t been listening to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Michael Reagan, Neal Boortz, Laura ingraham, etc… These fine people have spent the last thirty years explaining exactly what they think of liberals & Democrats and what they would love to do to them and that runs anywhere from taking their votes away and making them second class citizens to outright extermination…

And before you tell us that it’s just a handful of right-wing assholes, let me point out all the right-wing sites and their commentariat, it’s pretty clear that they don’t think all that differently from the Right wing Talking heads on the radio…

So I am sure you’ll understand why many, if not most of them, just don’t want you around….
tofudog says:

September 11, 2012 at 7:58 am

Absolutely there are big city liberals who do not understand rural life and the people in it. It’s more politically acceptable to mock them. Conservatives are aware that mocking gays or minorities is politically incorrect so they do so quietly. Ultimately the one thing everyone is universally guilty of is demonizing “the other”.
reflectionephemeral says:

September 11, 2012 at 8:04 am

Wow, you mean you can get some people at the Democratic convention say mean things about Republicans? That changes everything!

I guess cutting taxes really does increase revenues, and climate change isn’t real, and the Ryan budget’s numbers really do add up, and invading Iraq was actually a great idea!

I’m of the view that we care about government because it implements policies that affect people’s lives. You’re apparently of the view that politics is about finding a sense of emotional belongingness to a large group.
Jack Ross says:

September 11, 2012 at 8:25 am

This takes me back to one of the pivotal moments in my political evolution – at all of 15, when I went to the barricades for the Dems in the 2000 recount dueling protests, and though I’m still sure I was on the right side on that one I knew there was something very, very wrong with the company on my side.

It still doesn’t necessarily follow for me that you should necessarily find the Republicans any less unseemly company. But maybe I only say that because I’m a Jewish kid from Montgomery County and both my parents are flaming liberals.

Perhaps more relevant is how I gave up a lot of my youthful radical dreams when it looked like the Democrats actually were learning their lesson in 2006 and largely still through 2008, and then once Obama became President all the worst habits and tendencies on display above came roaring back. I’m still not fully recovered from that disillusioning experience.

Finally, after watching this, I now have no doubt whatsoever that more people were booing God than Jerusalem.
icarusr says:

September 11, 2012 at 9:01 am

On that basis, Mr Dreher, you prefer to be in the party of people who throw nuts at Black camera women?

Oh, they were not representative of the Party as a whole, you say?
MH - Secular Misanthropist says:

September 11, 2012 at 9:31 am

If you talk to a lot of people and ask them a set of questions, you’ll get a range of answers from reasonable to crazy. The trick is don’t show a representative sample of the answers, instead filter the results down to a subset that portrays the image you desire.

I honestly don’t know why anyone answers those sorts of questions. If you give a reasonable response they’ll cut you from the segment. If you give a crazy response they’ll include you and make you look like an idiot.

tl;dr Sampling bias is a powerful too, and the crazy don’t know they’re idiots you plan to make fun of.
M_Young says:

September 11, 2012 at 10:02 am

Democratic delegate said she would like to kill Romney. (Have to listen hard, because she’s had only 40 years in the US to practice her English).

Just imagine the media response if a Republican delegate …oh, never mind.
Bob says:

September 11, 2012 at 10:26 am

Satire is most effective when it is based on enough truth to seem real.
Lord Karth says:

September 11, 2012 at 10:32 am

Mr. Dreher writes:

“I know, I know, it’s a humor clip from a satirical program, and not all Democrats feel the way these jerks do.

Sure, not all Democrats feel the same way these jerks do, Mr. Dreher. But these people are the provincial and local elected officials, the organizational leadership. These are the people who actually run the Democratic Party and control its policies.

They’re just the ones who count.

Your servant,

Lord Karth
Brian says:

September 11, 2012 at 11:19 am

This is more than a bit rich, considering that I stopped watching the Daily Show in about 1999 since their go-to “joke” for their pseudo-scripted pre-recorded nightly bit was “Look at this person from the country! Aren’t they stupid! Laugh at them, everyone!”

It IS pretty amusing in the comments above to hear resident liberals sniffing that the Daily Show isn’t really being fair, is cherry-picking comments, and really shouldn’t be taken seriously, after all.
Don Quijote says:

September 11, 2012 at 11:31 am

But these people are the provincial and local elected officials, the organizational leadership. These are the people who actually run the Democratic Party and control its policies.

And here is the leadership of the Republican party:

Republican Attendees Threw Nuts At Black CNN Camerawoman, Called Her An ‘Animal’

Two attendees at the Republican National Convention were thrown out of the convention center in Tampa on Tuesday after throwing nuts at a black CNN camerawoman and saying, “this is how we feed the animals.”

CNN reported that multiple witnesses saw it happen, and police immediately removed the two people from the premises. Former MSNBC and Current host David Shuster, who is attending the convention, tweeted about the incident earlier on Tuesday:

And then you wonder why Republicans can’t get any African-American votes…
Leinad says:

September 11, 2012 at 11:50 am

Even though I tend to disagree with you on some cultural issues, Rod, you strike me as a sharp guy. This is why I always find myself a little baffled when you write posts like this. If you put the clip up without comment, I would think nothing of it. It is funny, and it actually makes an important point about the backwardness of some members of the Democratic Party. As others have pointed out though, it takes about 2 seconds to find equally disgusting clips of Republicans. Is there “more than a little truth” about the RNC in Todd Akin’s complete disconnect from scientific fact and common decency? Is there “more than a little truth about the RNC” in the fact that so many people apparently take that charlatan Dinesh D’Souza seriously? And then there is the portion of conservatives that think Obama was born on Jupiter, and that he worships Satan. Is the RNC any less a broken cultural home than the DNC?
Rod Dreher says:

September 11, 2012 at 12:18 pm

Is there “more than a little truth” about the RNC in Todd Akin’s complete disconnect from scientific fact and common decency? Is there “more than a little truth about the RNC” in the fact that so many people apparently take that charlatan Dinesh D’Souza seriously?

Yes, absolutely! Satire wouldn’t work if it didn’t have the ring of truth.
EB says:

September 11, 2012 at 12:19 pm

I too can find groups of Republicans with whom I feel more comfortable than I do with some groups of Democrats (and I’m a life long Democrat). But that’s more about the specific group, and the context. My very favorites are the Democrats who are blue collar, highly religious, thoughtful, very generous but aware that individual philanthropy is no longer a viable strategy for saving people from hunger and homelessness, who hate abortion but realize that a fertilized egg cannot make the same demands on us that a third-trimester fetus can, and are horrified at the way the Republican leadership seems wholly-owned by the rapacious financial services industry.
M_Young says:

September 11, 2012 at 12:35 pm

@Don Quijote

Notice that the headline and stories all say ‘attendees’, not delegates. They could have been anyone, even plants (certain factions of contemporary liberalism are not about race-based hoaxes)
TTT says:

September 11, 2012 at 12:36 pm

Personally I find it refreshing to see people willing to point to the naked emperor on the elephant in the room and say that the Tea Party represents ignorance, emotionalism, appeals to violence, and economic hostage-taking. Our punditocracy – overwhelmingly middle-aged, wealthy, and white – is desperate to find a shred of seriousness that must “balance” their coverage of the TP. Very refreshing to hear someone, anyone, willing to take them down a peg.

The economic downgrade was 100% the fault of the Tea Party. A few mocking “pew, pew!” jokes are better than they deserve.
EngineerScotty says:

September 11, 2012 at 12:40 pm

There’s lots of jerks in both political parties. From the obviously-biased POV of this liberal, it seems that the GOP’s jerks are a bit more front-and-center; I can’t remember any recent Democrat on a national ticket that was anywhere near as offensive as Sarah Palin was during the 2008 campaign. (To their credit, Romney and Ryan have avoided the “real America” demagoguery that Palin reveled in).

But certainly, there are jerks on the left, and yes, many of them have uncharitable attitudes towards rural America. But complaining about rednecks and complaining about “liberal elites” (which seems to happen a lot in this blog) are essentially opposite sides of the same coin.

And yes, we could use a lot less of this in our politics.
M_Young says:

September 11, 2012 at 12:48 pm

“The economic downgrade was 100% the fault of the Tea Party. ”

And DeMint cause the recession!
Michael Perrone says:

September 11, 2012 at 1:08 pm

Rod,

I can relate to what you mean by posting this video. I am not a Republican but I could never be a Democrat. Too many Democrats and too many of their stances are just at complete odds with the most important parts of my world view (namely religion). I have met way too many “tolerant” and “accepting” liberals too ever think they would accept my religious perspective.
Chris says:

September 11, 2012 at 1:54 pm

The cultural question is about shared bias. And not surprisingly people tend to see other people’s bias perfectly, our own not so clearly at all. Or we see the bias of our friends as “quirks” while we see the bias of those who are not our friends as “judgement.”

These considerations are divorced from policy, but essentially, Rod, you’re agreeing with Thomas Frank’s “What’s The Matter With Kansas?”
Roger II says:

September 11, 2012 at 2:14 pm

Of course, this appeared on The Daily Show. I’m pretty sure Jon Stewart is considered to be fairly liberal (at least by most movement conservatives). Have there been any similar segments poking fun at Republicans on Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity? That said, Stewart makes a very fair point. As other commenters have said, though, I don’t choose my party or candidate based on a the statements of a selective sample of their members or supporters. That would pretty much preclude participation in politics.
Turmarion says:

September 11, 2012 at 2:27 pm

Of course Jon Stewart and his writers are themselves liberal, and they have no trouble skewering their own side. I can’t really think of any analogous conservatives in media who would likewise hold their own side up to satire like this.

It still sounds like tribalism to me. I have no emotional connection to the Democratic or Republican Party, any more than I have an emotional connection to the brand of soap I use. That’s about how I’ve come to view the main parties–worthy of my vote on the (increasingly rare) occasions on which their product matches what I’m looking for; but worthy of no more emotional investment than the bar of soap on my sink.

Your argument seems to me to boil down to “Democrats are snotty towards country people, church-goers, and gun owners–and those are my people–and so it’s the same as dissing me.” I mean, once more, I don’t put a lot of emotional investment in group affiliation. To me this type of view is just rampant emotionalism and tribalism. And of course, the GOP is plenty snotty towards plenty of groups. Then again, as I said, to me it’s a waste of time to invest emotion in any political party.

I think there’s more than a bit of truth to what Church Lady said on the “Flashpass” post:

Obviously, Rod has a chip on his shoulder on this issue, and any attempt to knock it off will unleash reams of self-justification we can safely ignore. He just hates liberal elites, we get it. Conservative elites, he seems not to have the same visceral response to. God knows why. Literally.

The thing is, it’s self-defeating. Does Rod literally think the GOP or the conservative movement is the path by which we can bring those two Americas back together, and end the fast-pass route to a separate America for the upper 1%? No, of course not. Does he really think there’s no difference between the social agenda of the GOP and Democratic parties? No again. He isn’t stupid. e just can’t stand the sight of liberals who think they’re better and smarter and more deserving than he is. Or who he imagines might think that way. And so he, like a lot of social conservatives well down there below the upper 1%, is perfectly willing to cut off his own nose to spite his face. The resentment runs that deep. It’s a powerful emotion, and ambitious politicians know how to exploit it, even among smart and thoughtful characters like Rod. It’s what keeps the machine going. The elites use resentment of their own status, and the powerful drive to acquire it, to divide the competition. Works every time.

Maybe not totally right, maybe off base completely; but it rings more than a little true. My philosophy is that I refuse to let either political side manipulate me. A pox on them all–I have better things to do with my life than worry about how GOP or Democratic members view me or anyone else.
Opinion Pole says:

September 11, 2012 at 2:37 pm

Record unemployment, an economy on the verge of collapse, unending war, a complete lack of accountability and all we can think to do is snipe at stereotypes of each other! This is a Democratic president who has not prosecuted even ONE person who drove the world economy into meltdown, yet since everyone “knows” it is the Republicans who are “owned by Wall Street” we don’t talk about it. Our government, as in both parties, have been quietly taken over by Wall Street, War Street, Pharma Street, Insurance Street and a host of other pigs at the trough, yet we think the enemy is an aging Liberal hipster, or a Conservative truck-driving gun owner. Pitiful.

I give the Daily Show some credit for exposing some of the “inclusiveness” hypocrisy, and to Rod for pointing it out. Yet it all seems so beside the point, a part of this Empire’s “bread and circuses”.
Noah G. says:

September 11, 2012 at 3:04 pm

Is it the case that, as a commenter suggested, the Republican jerks are more “front and center”, or is it that there are possibly a lot more Democratic jerks than it would seem on the surface? And/or that a lot of those front and center Democrats possibly have major hostilities that they don’t feel (as) comfortable displaying most of the time, for a number of reasons.

Maybe conservatives, Republicans, etc. have less reservations when it comes to expressing their hostilities in public, in part due to their having nothing (or not as much) invested in the constant maintenance of an *image* of tolerance. ?

It is, of course, a tiny sample of opinion in the video, and it is satire, but it strikes a chord with me personally because it’s something I already knew to be true to some extent. I have more than a few (seemingly) peaceful/tolerant friends and family who, in private, practically foam at the mouth when they’re prompted to express their views of conservatives. (And on another even more intimate level, I myself used to be one of these people.)

It’s impossible to quantify which side is “worse”, of course…at the very least this video drives a point a little further home for me, in an entertaining way: that Democrats are *far* from innocent. And/or that they absolutely do not have a monopoly on compassion.
Church Lady says:

September 11, 2012 at 4:45 pm

I’m a Democrat, but I admit there are plenty of Democrats who are jerks. I also know lots of Republicans who are great folks. I’m not a Democrat because I think all Democrats are great people, and all Republicans are jerks. It’s not a tribal affiliation, it’s a quesiton of general political philosophy and agenda, and general social attitude. There’s millions of exceptions to this, however.

I’ve voted for Republicans before, when I’ve seen bad Democratic candidates and at least decent Republican ones. O voted for Reagan over Carter, because I thought the Dems had gotten lazy and corrupt. I voted for Pete Wilson for Governer of California when he ran against Kathleen Brown, who just rubbed me the wrong way, for reasons Rod would probably agree with. I even voted for Schwartzeneggar the second time around.

My sense is that Rod is such a tribalist in all matters, that he simply can’t see himself voting for anyone from that “other” group. Obama, for example, has virtually nothing in common with the attitude displayed by these folks in the Daily Show clip. Even so, just because these folks belong to the same party, Rod can’t vote for Obama. Or other Democrats who don’t have this attitude. This is the problem with tribalistic thinking. It’s all based on primitive social cues and identity politics. It doesn’t see people as individuals. It doesn’t even allow one to see oneself as an individual. One is defined by the group one belongs to, or in this case, just votes for.

I would tend to expect better from someone as smart as Rod, but one has to remember that smart people are actually more likely to belong to a cult than dumb people, contrary to the popular notion. Smart people are just better at coming up with rationalizaitons for their ongoing membership in the tribal cult. And tribal political identity is, let’s face it, a species of cultism. At the core of the argument for belonging is a need to be with people like oneself, who can mirror one’s own insecurities and emotional needs. That need overwhelms the intellect, and we end up with various forms of cognitive dissonance.

And it’s cognitive dissonance which allows Rod to point to videos like this to justify his continuing attachment to the GOP, and at the same time to ignore the more obvious and egregious exclusiveness and elitism of the GOP’s hierarchy, concluding that he can’t belong to, or even vote for, a party with people like that in it. Seriously? Of course not.

Even so, these kinds of odd posts that Rod has been writing recently seem to be signs that he’s actually not that comfortable anymore with his old views and affiliations. The cognitive dissonance is getting a bit too obvious. He may be ready to crack. What then? Around what new tribal grouping will he align himself? Or, is it possible that he might actually be ready to genuinely go it alone, without identifying with any particular party or movement? It will be interesting to see how this breaks down.
Dod says:

September 11, 2012 at 6:26 pm

Church Lady: “Around what new tribal group will (Rod) align himself?”

The salient mark of the liberal cult/tribe is that you have seen through the all the illusions and “can go it alone” and benignly (or angrily) wait for benighted tribalists to get with it and, in the immortal words of the warden in Cool Hand Luke, “get (their) minds right.” Become enlightened. Think like all the rest of the enlightened independent spirits. Checked your own cognitive dissonance meter lately?
EngineerScotty says:

September 11, 2012 at 7:01 pm

Speaking of tribalism and nasty politics, Frum wins (or ought to win, if Sullivan’s paying attention) an Yglesias Award:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/10/opinion/frum-sandra-fluke-slurs/
Church Lady says:

September 11, 2012 at 8:48 pm

“Think like all the rest of the enlightened independent spirits.”

Love your cynicism, but enlightened, independent spirits don’t all think alike, even though some liberals imagine they do. I don’t. I am sure that there are many independent spirits who really do think as conservatives, Republicans, libertarians, etc., and not as liberals do. It doesn’t mean one doesn’t belong to a tribe, either, or follow those customs and patterns of life, even traditional ones. It does mean that one accepts these for what they are, rather than building mythologies around them and trying to get everyone else to see the world that way. I’m all in favor of a truly diverse world, not merely a bunch of liberals of many stripes.

It would be great, for example, if Rod voted for Republicans because he actually believed in their agenda, rather than because he has these tribal loyalties and resentments. It would be great if the Republican party as a whole were less of a cult built on reams of BS. The cognitive dissonance required to vote for them is considerably greater than that of Democrats.

But you do have something of an unintentional point, in that independent thinkers probably do have a better home under the Democratic/Liberal tent. It’s just that theirs isn’t the only way to be independent. We liberals miss having an opposition party we can at least respect.
Turmarion says:

September 11, 2012 at 9:16 pm

Dod, how about a zetetic approach? Doubt everything, including even doubt. Assume everyone, including oneself, has cognitive dissonance at times, including when one thinks oneself to be clearing out the cognitive dissonance. Don’t rest too easily in any view, including the view of not resting easily in any view. How’s that?
Monterey says:

September 12, 2012 at 1:23 am

lol, that video is spot on. We see that kind of behavior/mindset around here in the Northwest all the time.

Ssshhhhhh….don’t tell these democrats on the video that the two evangelical christian adults in this house have all their teeth, both have college degrees, with one of us even having a graduate professional degree in the area of….A SCIENCE-RELATED field. (facepalms!)!! And he has a “Doctor” title. aaaaaagghhhh! And we DO read the Bible, too. Oh, the humanity!
Monterey says:

September 12, 2012 at 1:35 am

Well after all—Obama did say that those small-town types only want to ‘cling to their guns and religion’.

I didn’t know it wasn’t okay to cling to my ‘religion’, but thank you Obama for setting me straight.
JonF says:

September 12, 2012 at 6:22 am

Re: This is a Democratic president who has not prosecuted even ONE person who drove the world economy into meltdown

If we are going to start prosecuting people over the real estate bubble and bust we have to lock up somewhere north of a million people. It’s fun to pretend that only a handful of Wall Street CEOs have any responsibility there, but in fact the cast of the guilty is enormous, beginning with people who fecklessly used their house as an ATM and others who bought five houses to flip and lied about their income and intentions to do so.
Dod says:

September 12, 2012 at 11:16 am

Tumarion: “zenetic” How’s that? Good.

I suspect the sound of one hand clapping is something the faithful can hear when we quiet down and try to, “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.” Emphasis on the humble. Which is what, in my better moments, I believe the Church Lady wants to preach. Preaching’s easy; practice demands and brings humility. Might even put unavoidable tribal affiliations in chastened perspective.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

September 14, 2012 at 8:46 pm

Ah, you can see why those people were NOT the keynote speakers. And that older woman in the final scene… I think she was starting to get it.

I have been prevented from watching this video by bandwidth problems with my building’s WiFi, but not I’ve finally seen it. This is why I am not a member of the Democratic Party.

I don’t presently own a gun, but it means a lot to me that I can anytime I choose to. About one quarter of my ancestors were hill-billies, including all the Revolutionary War veterans in my family tree, and the only Civil War veteran (11th Tennessee Cavalry, United States Army). Some of the rest were coal miners. Others were Jews. Also, I’m really indifferent to the LGBT “community.” I just don’t much care. I’m fine with Lawrence v. Texas, but the rest of us don’t have to line up to admire then for whatever it is that makes them distinctive.

Don Quijote is correct about Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Michael Reagan, Neal Boortz, Laura Ingraham, etc. What I object to is all the delegates interviewed seem ready to consign a whole lot of hard-working American families to the tender mercies of these cretins. I object, for the same reason I object to consigning one billion Muslims to the tender mercies of al Qaeda. Eugene Debs had a lot of gun-toting hillbillies voting Red, and I don’t mean Republican.

Why do I end up voting for Democrats? Because the Republicans are psychopathic, the Democrats merely show really poor taste. With the exception of Rep. Thomas Petri, R-WI, who championed cutting off the cash flow from taxpayers to banks in student loans, since the banks were accepting no risks and taking all the profits, all the people who do show some sense are Democrats.

Not enough, unfortunately.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

September 14, 2012 at 8:49 pm

(That’s NOW I’ve finally seen it. I’m getting early onset speller’s Alzheimer’s.)

And Mitchell… DeMint did prolong, sustain, and deepen the recession, because he would rather block anything that might have been done about it, for fear President Obama might get some credit for any improvements.