Jen's Green Journal

Last night I attended one of the monthly Freedom Forums that is sponsored by Mayor Rocky Anderson. This month's discussion was on the "Freedom to Criticize Government" and it more specifically referred to our Mayor's criticism of George W. Bush when he visited Salt Lake City August 22, 2005 when he spoke at the Veterans of Foreign Wars conference. Deanna of Dee's 'Dotes was also there and she has a good overall report of the forum on her blog.

The panelists were diverse, some supportive of the right of Mayor Anderson to criticize Bush, some very much against it.

The interesting part of the evening began when the forum was opened up to audience participation.

One of the panelists, a conservative citizen blogger, responding to a question took it off topic (to be fair, he wasn't the only one who went off topic) and began to talk about how we didn't start the Iraq war, it was brought to us even before 9/11. He then went off on a tangent on Islamic fundamentalism, and that if the terrorists won, how every woman in that audience would be required to wear a burka.

An audience participant, a war veteran, later in the program talked about how no one that has ever participated in war wants to see it again, how everyone wants peace BUT, those who protest war give "aid and comfort" to the "enemy". He felt that if it hadn't been for the anti-war protests during the  Viet Nam War, that many of the 57,000 that died would not have (he didn't explain how this would have worked). He then went on to say that it's better to fight a war on the enemy's soil than on ours. He then, in a very somber tone, evoked many fearful images of terrorists attacking us in our cities, our neighborhoods.

It struck me, listening to these two men, how sincerely they believed what they were saying. It was also very evident that their judgment is completely clouded by fear. I suspect that there are many U.S.citizens that are driven by this same emotion, and I'm pretty sure that there are some in the Bush Administration that count on that being the case. It's obvious what an effective tool fear can be.

Those two men last night demonstrated to me that fear can cloud up the facts; they confuse Iraq with the terrorists of 9/11. No Iraqi was involved in 9/11, and Iraq pre-war was officially a securlar state, not a fundamentalist one as it is now becoming since the war began. The Bush Administration made a brilliant move when it tied Iraq (a country that they had planned to deal with long before 9/11, according to the Project for a New American Century) to 9/11, it brings up people's fear when they remember the twin towers crumbling.

They showed that fear can cloud empathy. It's us against the "other". We "other" people to make what we do to them okay. If they were able to get in touch with their empathy for the Iraqi people, they might be able to feel the pain that many Iraqis are feeling over losing loved ones to our bombs, losing limbs, homes, livelihood in this war.

A good exercise in empathy is to recall how we felt about the attacks on 9/11, where many of us didn't lose anyone we knew personally. Remember how we wanted revenge, we wanted to (as one person put it) "bomb Afganistan back to the stone age"? And many of us hadn't even lost anyone close to us in those attacks. A few months ago in the Lancet, it was estimated that 100,000 Iraqis have lost their lives due to this war, and Iraq's population to begin with is much smaller than ours. Chances are that almost everyone in Iraq knows someone who has been killed, lost body parts, homes or more. Their rage is bound to top the rage that Americans felt after 9/11. If we as a country responded by broad support for revenge, think how much stronger the desire for revenge might now be for many Iraqis. The logical conclusion from this is that we have likely created more potential terrorists by going to war in Iraq.

I learned last night that fear can cloud logic. I'm not sure what kind of logic is used to determine that protesting a war "aids and comforts" the enemy. It's almost as if there is the belief that if all Americans shut up and unite behind a war, that the "enemy" will just roll over and play dead, let the U.S. take over with a minimum of fuss. That one goes back to "othering". What would we do if we were attacked, many people we knew killed, our infrastructure destroyed? Some of us might surrender, but I think there would be many of us that would fight and continue to fight. They don't fight back because they see or hear of Americans protesting the war, they're fighting for their country and their beliefs. And yes, sometimes they are fighting for revenge. They are human beings, capable of the same emotions as we have.

It's also fuzzy logic that believes that people will attack us for our freedoms, or for having a thriving economy, a couple of other points brought up by the veteran audience member.

Most of us progressives are aware that what is motivating our political and corporate rulers is greed, but I think that we need to address the tool of fear they are using to pursue their goals. We need to understand why there are so many Americans willing to support bad policies in order to feel safe. We need to learn how to help our fellow citizens find the courage in themselves to move past their fears, or at least help them find the courage to do the right thing, even if it doesn't make us feel any safer.

The book I've been reading lately when I have a spare moment from care-taking of my toddler is called, "Lies My Teacher Told Me -- Everything your American History Textbook Got Wrong" by James Loewen.

I read an idea in this book last night, "cognitive dissonance", which according to social psychologist Leon Festinger is the process by which people modify their "opinions to bring them into line with one's actions or planned actions" . This idea was introduced in the book in the chapter that deals with the horror brought on to the American Natives by Columbus and those he brought with him. "No one likes to think of himself or herself as a bad person," the book goes on to say.

I was glad to get a title to this behavior, as I've been seeing so much of it lately. I like being able to call it something, rather than trying to think through what it is over and over.

I've seen this in a big way by the more ardent Bush supporters. No matter how much is revealed of the cruelties that are suffered due to Bush's policies, the die-hards insist that he does no wrong.

I see it happening in other ways as well. Many military personnel and their families are extremely supportive of the War on Iraq and angry at those that oppose it. Trying to put myself in their shoes, it can be tempting to believe that what is being done is noble and good. One can hardly blame them when the alternative is to admit to themselves that what they or a loved one are doing is being placed in danger, to hurt and kill a lot of people in a foreign country so that a few people over here can get richer and our military can have a few more bases in strategic places. It's no wonder that many were not paying attention as Bush's reasons for invading Iraq changed from week to week -- as long as those reasons were "noble" taht was all they needed to know.

It takes a special kind of courage to admit that your country is in the wrong, that you may die or lose child for really stupid or greedy reasons, or that a president you may have supported is horribly corrupt. Easier by far to make it someone else's fault, or make it a noble and righteous thing that is being done.

Thinking about this idea on a smaller scale, I think of both sides of the split here in the GPUT and some of the stories I've read about Green Party in-fighting. Recently Peter Camejo wrote an essay on his vision of the future of the Green Party in which he characterizes those that thought that GDI's proposals were a bad idea as "opponents" and that we all "capitulate to those who have chosen to belong to a party of war, oppression, discrimination, anti-labor and anti-our planet. "  This seems like a kind of cognitive dissonance as well. I, and many I know, did not view the choice we made for the ballot line as "capitulating" to the Democrats. It paints a very complex situation and decision as black and white, when there were many nuanced shades. It's characterizing people in such a way as to make them the enemy, while they are the ones that have been victimized.

Being on the other side of many of those who have joined the GDI group, I have to wonder if I'm using cognitive dissonance as well. I've spent a little time on and off today trying to be objective and to see if I'm completely honest to myself about my feelings about some of the GDI folks. The only thing I've come up with so far is that the way I currently think of some of the more outspoken of these people is as somewhat delusional and hysterical. I'm not sure if I've gotten that impression from the language of various writings or articles by GDIers, or if I've read into it what my psyche needs in order to feel justified in the position I've taken.

In any case, the idea of "cognitive dissonance" is giving me a lot of food for thought for the next few days.

(please excuse the horrible grammatical blunders in this post . . . it's getting late and I'm beat)