Empathy (part 4)

"What's the matter with Kansas?" Thomas Frank asks.

That's a good question, and a fair one. The majority of Kansans, after all, continually vote against their own economic self-interest. That's how Frank puts it, anyway.

I would put it somewhat differently: The majority of Kansans continually vote against the economic interests of the majority of Kansans. I don't really care whether or not you cast your vote in your own economic interest, but when your vote betrays the interests of most of your neighbors, well, that's a sin.

Solidarity is a moral duty. You vote against it at your own moral and mortal peril. These Kansans, in other words, have some splainin' to do. They had better have a very good reason to be voting with such disdain for the economic interests of so many of their fellow citizens.

As Frank shows, they think they do. To try to understand what that is, we're better off asking not, "What's the matter with Kansas?" but "What does Kansas think is the matter with us?" ("us" here meaning us liberals or us Democrats).

What sparked all this was a post at The Poor Man on a wholly different topic.

The Editors were responding to the claim that one could support a pro-torture administration without actually supporting torture oneself:

Right now, America tortures people. You live in a country where the president has declared an effectively permanent state of war, and can, and does, as a matter of policy, and on a global scale, engage in torture. Morally, practically, spiritually, profoundly: this is wrong. It is worth being upset about. It is worth overlooking the use of literary devices you don’t agree with. It is worth forgiving minor policy disagreements. It is even worth telling people you otherwise agree with that, when they defend, excuse or minimize the situation, they are wrong — morally, practically, spiritually, profoundly, even — and they, through deed or inaction, disgrace America. Because they do.

Yes. Yes, yes, yes. I agree completely. Torture is, indeed, "morally, practically, spiritually, profoundly" indefensible. This is a line that cannot, ought not, must not be crossed.

I hope you agree as well. If you don't, I'm afraid I'll regard you as suspect. It would make you one of those people I don't get, one of those people — like Fred Phelps — that I fear I'll never be able to view with empathy, never be able to understand. In short, I would no longer be able really to trust you, or to trust your moral judgment.

I haven't written nearly as much about torture as I should have. In part, this is because I can scarcely even believe this is something we need to say. Every time I look at this page and see that icon there on the right for the National Religious Campaign Against Torture I get this sinking feeling in my stomach. I can't believe we've sunk to this level as a nation, as a people. I can't believe that "torture is wrong" is a statement I now need to say out loud. I can't believe that torture — freaking torture — is an "issue" on which I am now forced to take sides. I can't believe we're even talking about this.

And I agree wholeheartedly with The Editors that torture is not something that can be defended, excused or minimized. When someone is pro-torture I cannot regard this as merely one of many political stances I should factor into the mix.

And let's be clear: this is not a hypothetical situation. President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales are all, emphatically and unambiguously, pro-torture. So are senators Wayne Allard, Kit Bond, Tom Coburn, Thad Cochran, John Cornyn, James Inhofe, Pat Roberts, Jeff Sessions and Ted Stevens.

These are bad men. Monstrous men. As The Editors wrote, they are wrong and they disgrace America. They do.

As it happens, I also disagree with almost every other political stance these men embrace. But even if that were not the case — if you could show me some issue-guide checklist that indicated that Kit Bond and I agreed on the other 99 out of 100 issues — I still could not overlook the fact that Bond is pro-torture. When you're in favor of sodomizing prisoners, I really don't care what your position is on ethanol subsidies or, well, anything else. When you're pro-torture, you will never get my vote.

But it's not just a matter of casting votes, not just a matter of whether Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, Allard, Bond, Coburn, Cochran, Cornyn, Inhofe, Roberts, Sessions and Stevens are allowed to remain in office. They ought to be voted out and tried for war crimes (not in the Hague, but here in America, to prove that the Constitution they regard with such contempt still matters). But this goes beyond these particular morally stunted politicians.

When I consider that America is now governed by an administration that excuses and practices and defends torture I fear for the future of our country.

Now let's go back to Kansas, home state of the despicable Sen. Roberts, and let's try to imagine the world from their perspective.

Let's try to exercise a bit of empathy and consider that question, "What does Kansas think is the matter with us?"

The answer, frankly, is that we're baby killers.

I'm not trying to play devil's advocate. I'm not trying to articulate or to engage their argument. I'm not concerned here with the merits or demerits of that argument, and I'm not concerned here with trying either to refute or defend it.

What I'm getting at here is that this is how we are perceived.

For American evangelicals and many Catholics, abortion is the trump card. Everything I have just said or quoted from The Editors about torture parallels exactly how these folks think — and, more importantly, feel — about abortion.

Again, please don't get distracted by thinking about responses to their argument(s), or by the statistics that show evangelicals and Catholics have pretty much the same abortion rates as everyone else. Those things aren't the issue here.

The issue here is that this is how we are perceived.

Re-read everything I've said above about pro-torture politicians. I distrust them. I view them as morally stunted, morally suspect. I believe they bring shame and disgrace to America. And I don't care what else they may say about any other issue.

This — precisely this — is how all supporters of abortion rights are perceived by those so-called "values voters."

Recognizing that means recognizing that lame euphemisms like "values voters" are misleading and confusing. It's not about generic "values," it's not even about religion — the whole liberals-and-spirituality sideshow is an irrelevant distraction. It's about abortion. Period.

Speaking at religious gatherings, or making a show of religiosity, or some half-assed Saletan-style triangulation to "moderate" (i.e., abandon by degrees) support for abortion rights does little to alter this perception. I have some thoughts on what might, but I will save those for another post. I don't want to get into a discussion here of how we can convince these folks that we are not monstrous because I don't want to distract from this main point:

They see us as monsters.

(Edited: Fixed Kit Bond's name. He's pro-torture, a disgrace to America and to the great state of Missouri, but that's no reason to get his name wrong.)

(BOLD added: Along with some repetition to highlight, again, that nothing in this post advocates any particular remedy for the situation it attempts to describe. That it is solely descriptive and not at all prescriptive. Not. At. All. Not explicitly. Not implicitly. Not even in the hidden between-the-lines gnostic code that only the Enlightened can read.)