I'd Rather Be Your Enemy

I hate to keep going on about this. It's only appropriate response is total snark; regardless of what Nick says about engaging the opposition in debate, in this case (as in so many others) the whackjobs don't want any real debate; they want soundbites, they want to push emotional buttons.

However, A transcript of Sam Seder talking about Fox's War! On ! Christmas! was, I thought, rather telling.While Seder was sarcastically talking about the links between Santa and Saddam, and torturing elves, Bob Knight of the Culture And Family Institute was having none of it:

KNIGHT: These businesses are taking millions and millions of dollars in from Christians, in particular, and others who celebrate Christmas, giving gifts in the name of the Christmas season, and yet they're so worried about offending people like my opponent here that they don't want to mention the word Christmas. People are sick and tired.

SEDER: Bob, it's the holiday time, I'm not your opponent.

KNIGHT: Yes, you are. Yes, you are.

SEDER: I do agree with Bob. I think what should happen is companies should calculate how much money they're getting from people who are celebrating Christmas and provide exactly that much amount of Merry Christmas, because that is exactly how I would want any type of religious holiday to be celebrated.

While Seder treats the issue mainly sarcastically, and gives it the attention it deserves, note that comment from Knight up there: he insists that Sam Seder is his opponent, regardless of what Sam says. Or maybe the only way that he would relent on that statement is with total capitulation and agreement.

Regardless of the subject, this is endemic of so much of what gets pushed into the public discourse, mainly through fringe talk shows like Rush Limbaugh and Charlie Sykes or media spigots like Drudge: simplistic, us vs. them emotional tangles where the enemy must be defeated. I won't say that non of this comes from the Left, but I would be hard pressed to be able to identify media sources fostering this kind of black/white debate from the left.

Disregarding the political value of fostering this kind of debate and its ability to distract (look! Something Shiny!), I see a personality that has been taught to fear, to need fear, to need the 'other' - an Enemy- through the years of the Cold War. All those years of hating and fearing the Commies, whistled away in the wind when Russia fell apart, leaving no one to fill the void. And this whole cottage industry based on creating and demonizing someone -anyone- has sprung up to fill the void. Invisible hand of the marketplace, indeed.

Gays, Blacks, Liberals, Democrats, Feminists, Muslims, and now...what? Anti-Christmastonians? Santa-holics?

None of this argument has much of anything to do with the idea of keeping religion, and Religion™ separated from Government; nearly completely separate argument.

As Michael Moore pointed out in Bowling For Columbine, it has much more to do with the culture of fear that has developed in America. Barry Glassner has also written about this. Perhaps gestated during the Cold War, it has been fed and strengthened by the crisis oriented news programming, making Americans feel that our country is much more dangerous than ever before; this fear seeks an outlet creating enemies for this fear is what I see going on here.

Basically, there is a subset of people around, (and I doubt that it's limited to America, but I would say they are most well nurtured here) that need an enemy, that have a desperate desire to have someone they can hate.

Of course, being a liberal, I have compassion for someone so empty, so lost, that their life is incomplete without someone to hate. But the real irony, the jagged contrast that brings it all into stark relief, is that this virulent War On Christmas bile is being thrust into the limelight during what is ostensibly the season of love and forgiveness; further, that it is being savagely argued by self-identified Christians, a religion whose highest ideals are love, tolerance, forgiveness, and peace.