Liberals vs. conservatives

We are not the same. I equate Republicans’ political views with thoughtlessness, intolerance and narcissism. They’re neither kind nor empathetic. By Diana Wagman

I recently played poker with a bunch of Republicans. My husband and I, both bleeding-heart liberals, are part owners of a cabin in the Sierra outside Fresno, a very conservative area. The Camp Sierra Assn. president has an annual poker game, and this year we, the newcomers, were invited.

No one mentioned politics. We talked instead about our kids and Las Vegas and the odd warm weather. There was a lot of laughter and a lot of very good Scotch. I had fun even though I lost $4.

When the game was over, we walked home with our across-the-road neighbors and invited them in for a final nightcap.

Conservatives vs. liberals

They are the best neighbors in the world. Always ready with a tool, an ingredient or a jump-start for the car. Whatever you need, if they have it, they will give it. They are a lovely family: husband, wife and four smart, funny, polite children. I was sure they were Democrats.

As the husband sat down in our living room with his drink, he announced, “The tea party is not racist.” We just looked at him. “The tea party is not racist,” he continued, “because I am a member of the tea party.”

I laughed. I thought he was joking, but he quickly made it clear he was not. He is white and his wife is African American. And they belong to the tea party. They don’t care who becomes our next president as long as it isn’t Barack Obama. The conversation devolved from there until he was shouting, I was shouting, his wife was trying to calm him down, my husband was trying to calm me down, and our other friends — Democrats — were trying to keep everybody from breaking the furniture.

Conservative vs. Liberal: Gay marriage

We argued about healthcare and welfare, President Obama’s nationality and religion, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We did not agree on anything. But honestly, the issues were not important. What matters is how personal it quickly became, how vitriolic, how filled with hate. He said I was sucking the country dry with my support of food stamps and public education. He said I needed to get off my butt and take care of myself. I suggested he sign his kids up to die in Iran, the next place he thinks we should attack. He called me a spoiled idiot and worse. I called him selfish, shortsighted and worse. It was awful, and it went on until after 3 a.m.

The next morning, they knocked on our door and we apologized to each other and laughed sheepishly. All in good fun, the wife said. It was the Scotch talking, my husband replied. But my feelings about them are changed. I cannot respect them as I did before. And as they headed back across the street, I saw the look they gave each other: They don’t like us anymore either.

My mother had Republican friends. She was a lifelong Democrat, worked with the Adlai Stevenson for president campaign and was a precinct chairman for Hubert Humphrey. She was ashamed of Richard Nixon and thought Ronald Reagan was misguided. Still, she didn’t hate Republicans. She disagreed with their politics and they with hers, but she believed people, no matter how they vote, are basically all the same.

Conservative vs. Liberal: Healthcare

I don’t agree. I don’t want to be friends with someone who is a member of the tea party or is a Newt Gingrich Republican. We are not the same. I equate their political views with thoughtlessness, intolerance and narcissism. I think they are not kind or empathetic. And my neighbor made it clear that he does not respect my opinions or me.

“You’re what’s wrong with this country!” he shouted. “No, you are!” was my intelligent retort. In only one area could we agree: We each would prefer the other just didn’t exist. If only they would all go live in Gingrich’s moon colony. If only we would all move to Canada with the other socialists. My mother would have been horrified, but times have changed.

My neighbors want good jobs, nice houses and security for their four children. They want to be able to retire before they get too old so they can spend more time at their cabin. They love the Sierra Nevada and want it to remain pristine. I want those things too. I want it for their children as well as mine, and for all children everywhere. Of course I do. And that’s what I find so frustrating.

My views on all these things — gay marriage, abortion, the war in Iraq, healthcare, education, food stamps, even NPR and PBS funding — seem so logical to me. Of course we need to take care of those less fortunate; of course we want everybody to have the joy and legal benefits of a life partner; of course we want every baby to be wanted and every person to be safe, healthy, informed and looking forward to a better future.

These things are no-brainers to me, and it kills me that my neighbor disagrees. I wonder what would happen if he woke up one morning to find that his son had been killed in Iraq or that his 15-year-old daughter was pregnant or that his favorite sister was gay. What if he suddenly lost his job, his wife got cancer, there was no insurance and not much food? I’m not saying I want life to knock him around. But would he still feel that the government shouldn’t be helping anybody out?

Next time I drive to our cabin, I’m going to make sure I take everything I could possibly need. I don’t want to ask my neighbors for help. I hope it’s their weekend to stay home.

Diana Wagman is the author of the novels “Skin Deep,” “Spontaneous” and “Bump.”

Which President Grew Pot? 9 Shocking Things You Might Not Know About U.S. Presidents Lynn Parramore

From holding séances to playing Naked Cowboy in the White House, here’s a tribute to surprising presidential behavior.

It’s President’s Day and just like every year, lists ranking the legacy of the 44 U.S. presidents proliferate. But we thought it would be fun to show you the wild side of the White House.

1. Calvin Coolidge, Naked Cowboy. The former Republican governor of Massachusetts may win the award as the oddest man who ever inhabited the White House. Known for his laconic style, “Silent Cal” snoozed through much of his presidency and kept special pets around, including Rebecca the Raccoon. Coolidge was fond of playing cowboys and Indians, once having himself photographed dressed as a Sioux Indian chief. But his weirdest pastime was hopping on and off a mechanical horse in his underpants, sometimes donning a cowboy hat for kicks. Coolidge acquired the electrically operated horse in 1925, and kept it in his dressing room. He could pull a lever and increase the intensity of his ride. This was long before the film Urban Cowboy popularized the mechanical bull, so we give Coolidge points for being ahead of the trend curve. Yeehaw!

2. William Howard Taft, aka “Big Lub.” Nicknamed Big Lub by his college mates, President Taft, at 6’2” and weighing over 300 pounds, was quite a big boy. And he needed a big bathtub. According to a story that has never been definitely proven, he once got stuck in the White House bathtub because of his girth. We do know that he had to have a larger tub brought in for his use. Despite his size, he was said to bust a mean move on the dance floor.

3. Abraham Lincoln and the Spirit World. In the mid- to late-19th century, Spiritualism was huge in America, and many believed that contact with the spirit world was possible. Raised in backwoods Indiana, Lincoln had a strong mystical side and put a great deal of stock in dreams and omens. He once wrote to his friend Joshua Speed that he had always been the superstitious type, and is reported to have feared the number 13. A Spiritualist herself, Mary Todd Lincoln held séances right in the White House. Though she seems to have been the more ardent enthusiast, Lincoln is reported to have attended at least some of her séances. The president’s ghost is said to have haunted the White House since his death.

4. Thomas Jefferson’s Shopping Addiction. He wrote the Declaration of Independence and stoked the fires of revolution in France. But what you might not know about this American renaissance man is that Jefferson was perpetually in debt. The world-class shopaholic adored fine wine and pimping out his pad, the neoclassical mansion Monticello. He filled it with snazzy furniture, rare books, archaeological specimens, and expensive art, including 63 paintings and seven terracotta busts. He also liked to invite his friends — sometimes as many as 50 at a time – over to party. Wealthy friends often had to lend him money and he even received – and promptly pissed away — a cash infusion from Congress, which bought part of his book collection. Toward the end of his life, Jefferson developed a cockamamie plan to sell lottery tickets to save Monticello, which was a bust. He left his family battling a mountain of unpaid bills.

5. James Buchanan, Guilty Bachelor. Buchanan was America’s only bachelor president. But he almost tied the knot in 1819 to Anne Caroline Coleman, a beautiful and fabulously wealthy iron heiress from Philadelphia. Until something went horribly wrong. Coleman broke off the engagement and died a week later, probably by suicide. Buchanan refused to speak about what happened, but some think Coleman heard rumors that the young politician was spending time with another woman. Others thought she decided that Buchanan only wanted her for her money. In any case, she died at 23 and Buchanan swore off marriage for life.

6. William Henry Harrison and the Stupidest Presidential Death. The Democrats were absolutely brutal to Harrison while he was running for president, calling him “Granny Harrison, the petticoat general” (for quitting the army before the War of 1812) and accusing him of having too much enthusiasm for hard cider. After all that, he won the presidency, taking office on a cold, wet day and delivering the longest inaugural speech in U.S. history — a full two hours. Unfortunately he refused to wear a hat or overcoat, and consequently caught pneumonia. He died a month into his term.

7. The Straight Dope on George Washington. The father of the nation grew weed. That’s right. George Washington grew hemp at Mount Vernon as one of his three primary crops and promoted its growth. In the late-18th century, hemp was grown mainly for its industrial value and for soil stabilization. It was not yet popular for recreational use. No one really knows whether Washington indulged in this side of the herb. But he was certainly interested in recreational substances. He was a beer enthusiast and also young America’s leading brewer. A handwritten recipe for his favorite home brew survives.

8. Grover Cleveland, Draft Dodger. President Grover Cleveland was a draft dodger. That’s not unique among U.S. presidents, but Cleveland actually hired someone to enter the service in his place during the Civil War. He paid George Benninsky, a 32-year-old Polish immigrant, $150 to serve in his stead, a move that was perfectly legal at the time, if not quite heroic. James Blaine, his political opponent, seized on this fact to ridicule Cleveland, until it was revealed that Blaine had done precisely the same thing himself.

9. John Quincy Adams, Skinny Dipper. JQA was possibly bonkers and frequently depressed. But the sixth president took naked swims in the Potomac during the wee hours to give himself a boost. In addition, Adams’ detractors accused him of offering his childrens’ nanny as a royal mistress while serving as Minister to Russia. To be fair, that is probably not true. But this is: Adams kept an alligator at the White House.

A Conservative Explains Why Right-Wingers Have No Compassion By Mike Lofgren

Although Mitt Romney used the word “conservative” 19 times in a short speech at the February 10, 2012, Conservative Political Action Conference, the audience he used this word to appeal to was not conservative by any traditional definition. It was right wing. Despite the common American practice of using “conservative” and “right wing” interchangeably, right wing is not a synonym for conservative and not even a true variant of conservatism – although the right wing will opportunistically borrow conservative themes as required.

Right-wingers have occasioned much recent comment. Their behavior in the Republican debates has caused even jaded observers to react like an Oxford don stumbling upon a tribe of headhunting cannibals. In those debates where the moderators did not enforce decorum, these right-wingers, the Republican base, behaved with a single lack of dignity. For a group that displays its supposed pro-life credentials like a neon sign, the biggest applause lines resulted from their hearing about executions or the prospect of someone dying without health insurance.

Who are these people and what motivates them? To answer, one must leave the field of conventional political theory and enter the realm of psychopathology. Three books may serve as field guides to the farther shores of American politics and the netherworld of the true believer.

Most estimates calculate the percentage of Republican voters who are religious fundamentalists at around 40 percent; in some key political contests, such as the Iowa caucuses, the percentage is closer to 60. Because of their social cohesion, ease of political mobilization and high election turnout, fundamentalists have political weight even beyond their raw numbers. An understanding of their leaders, infrastructure and political goals is warranted. Max Blumenthal has done the work in his book “Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party.” Blumenthal investigates politicized fundamentalism and provides capsule bios of such movement luminaries as James Dobson, Tony Perkins, John Hagee and Ted Haggard. The reader will conclude that these authority figures and the flocks they command are driven by a binary, Manichean vision of life and a hunger for conflict. Their minds appear to have no more give and take than that of a terrier staring down a rat hole.

Blumenthal examines the childhoods of these religious-right celebrities and reveals a significant quotient of physical and mental abuse suffered at the hands of parents. His analysis of the obvious sadomasochistic element in Mel Gibson’s films – so lionized by the right wing – is enough to give one the creeps. But the book is by no means a uniformly depressing slog: the chapter titled “Satan in a Porsche,” about fundamentalist attempts to ban pornography, approaches slapstick.

According to the author, the inner life of fundamentalist true believers is the farthest thing from that of a stuffily proper Goody Two Shoes. They seem tormented by demons that those in the reality-based community scarcely experience. That may explain their extraordinary latitude in absolving their political and ecclesiastical heroes of their sins: while most of us might regard George W. Bush as a dry drunk resentful of his father, Newt Gingrich as a sociopathic serial adulterer and Ted Haggard as a pathetic specimen in terminal denial, their followers on the right apparently believe that the greater the sin, the more impressive the salvation – so long as the magic words are uttered and the penitent sinner is washed in the Blood of the Lamb. This explains why people like Gingrich can attend “values voter” forums and both he and the audience manage to keep straight faces. Far from being a purpose-driven life, the existence of many true believers is a crisis-driven life that seeks release, as Blumenthal asserts, in an “escape from freedom.”

An observer of the right-wing phenomenon must explain the paradox of followers who would escape from freedom even as they incessantly invoke the word freedom as if it were a mantra. But freedom so defined does not mean ordinary civil liberties like the prohibition of illegal government search and seizure, the right of due process, or the right not to be tortured. The hard right has never protested the de facto abrogation of much of the Bill of Rights during the last decade. In the right-wing id, freedom is the emotional release that a hostile and psychologically repressed person feels when he is finally able to lash out at the objects of his resentment. Freedom is his prerogative to rid himself of people who are different, or who unsettle him. Freedom is merging into a like-minded herd. Right-wing alchemy transforms freedom into authoritarianism.

Robert Altemeyer, a Canadian psychologist, has done extensive testing to isolate and describe the traits of the authoritarian personality. His results are distilled in his book “The Authoritarians.” He describes religious fundamentalists, the core of the right-wing Republican base, as follows:

They are highly submissive to established authority, aggressive in the name of that authority and conventional to the point of insisting everyone should behave as their authorities decide. They are fearful and self-righteous and have a lot of hostility in them that they readily direct toward various out-groups. They are easily incited, easily led, rather un-inclined to think for themselves, largely impervious to facts and reason and rely instead on social support to maintain their beliefs. They bring strong loyalty to their in-groups, have thick-walled, highly compartmentalized minds, use a lot of double standards in their judgments, are surprisingly unprincipled at times and are often hypocrites.

There are tens of millions of Americans who, although personally lacking the self-confidence, ambition and leadership qualities of authoritarian dominators like Gingrich or Sarah Palin, nevertheless empower the latter to achieve their goals while finding psychological fulfillment in subordination to a cause. Altemeyer describes these persons as authoritarian followers. They are socially rigid, highly conventional and strongly intolerant personalities, who, absent any self-directed goals, seek achievement and satisfaction by losing themselves in a movement greater than themselves. One finds them overrepresented in reactionary political movements, fundamentalist sects and leader cults like scientology. They are the people who responded on cue when Bush’s press secretary said after the 9/11 attacks that people had better “watch what they say;” or who approved of illegal surveillance because “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear;” or who, after months of news stories saying that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, nevertheless believed the weapons were found. Altemeyer said:

Probably about 20 to 25 percent of the adult American population is so right-wing authoritarian, so scared, so self-righteous, so ill-informed and so dogmatic that nothing you can say or do will change their minds. They would march America into a dictatorship and probably feel that things had improved as a result…. And they are so submissive to their leaders that they will believe and do virtually anything they are told. They are not going to let up and they are not going away.

Twenty to 25 percent is no majority, but enough to swing an election, especially since the authoritarian follower is more easily organized than the rest of the population. As for Altemeyer’s warning that such personality types “are not going away,” the rise of the Tea Party after 2008 showed that he was a better prognosticator than Max Blumenthal, who thought the radical takeover of the GOP during the Bush presidency had “shattered the party.”

Altemeyer cites clinical data to show us how certain people score high on psychological tests measuring authoritarian traits and that these high scores strongly correlate with right-wing political preferences. What Altemeyer is lacking is a satisfactory explanation as to why a significant percentage of human beings should develop these traits. We obtain some clues in Wilhelm Reich’s “The Mass Psychology of Fascism,” written in 1933 and unfortunately only obtainable in a stilted 1945 translation full of odd psychological jargon. One does not have to agree with Reich’s questionable later career path and personal eccentricities(1) to notice that his 1933 work is a perceptive analysis of the character of the authoritarian political movements that were rising in Europe. Anyone reading it then and taking it seriously could have predicted the new totalitarian regimes’ comprehensive repressiveness, extreme intolerance and, within a few years, nihilistic destructiveness.

Reich appears to see fascism as the political manifestation of an authoritarian psychology. Who are the authoritarians?

Fascist mentality is the mentality of the subjugated “little man” who craves authority and rebels against it at the same time. It is not by accident that all fascist dictators stem from the milieu of the little reactionary man. The captains of industry and the feudal militarist make use of this social fact for their own purposes. A mechanistic authoritarian civilization only reaps, in the form of fascism, from the little, suppressed man what for hundreds of years it has sown in the masses of little, suppressed individuals in the form of mysticism, top-sergeant mentality and automatism.

Here again we see the paradoxical nature of the authoritarian personality: rebelling against authority while hungering for it – exactly as the contemporary right wing fancies it is rebelling against big government while calling for intrusive social legislation and militarism. In the midst of dire economic circumstances, why do they expend inordinate energy brooding over contraception, abortion, abstinence education, gay marriage and so forth and attempt to transform their obsessions into law? Reich said:

The formation of the authoritarian structure takes place through the anchoring of sexual inhibition and sexual anxiety…. The result of this process is fear of freedom and a conservative, reactionary mentality. Sexual repression aids political reaction not only through this process which makes the mass individual passive and unpolitical but also by creating in his structure an interest in actively supporting the authoritarian order. The suppression of natural sexual gratification leads to various kinds of substitute gratifications. Natural aggression, for example, becomes brutal sadism which then is an essential mass-psychological factor in imperialistic wars.

According to Reich, a patriarchal, sexually repressive family life, reinforced by strict and punitive religious dogma, is the “factory” of a reactionary political order. Hence, the right wing’s ongoing attempts to erase the separation of church and state, its crusade against Planned Parenthood, its strange obsession with gays. Consider the following political platform, which sounds almost as if it were taken from a speech by Rick Santorum:

The preservation of the family with many children is a matter of biological concept and national feeling. The family with many children must be preserved … because it is a highly valuable, indispensable part of the … nation. Valuable and indispensable not only because it alone guarantees the maintenance of the population in the future but because it is the strongest basis of national morality and national culture … The preservation of this family form is a necessity of national and cultural politics … This concept is strictly at variance with the demands for an abolition of paragraph 218; it considers unborn life as sacrosanct. For the legalization of abortion is at variance with the function of the family, which is to produce children and would lead to the definite destruction of the family with many children.

So wrote the Völkischer Beobachter of October 14, 1931. As Altemeyer warns, they are not going away: certain psychological constructs and the political expressions they give rise to, persist over time and across cultures.