Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [66]
If this explanation is correct, would it mean that all conservatives are closet racists? Not at all. Most conservatives aren’t paranoid, and not all paranoia is driven by repressed feelings of intolerance, let alone racial intolerance. Persecution politics is a particular kind of social paranoia and the proposed explanation applies only to this specific case. That is, when someone espouses preposterous theories that a minority group is ruthlessly oppressing his own dominant group, it may be an attempt to rationalize his animosity toward the minority.
Of course, one need not be a member of a dominant social or ethnic group to play persecution games. In one sad twist of right-wing persecution politics, Georgia Right to Life posted billboard ads in 2010 that declared, “Black children are an endangered species.” You can also go to their website, toomanyaborted.com, to find out how in the 1960s “the open racists went underground, joining forces with the eugenicists. Abortion is the tool they use to stealthily target blacks for extermination.” 9 Georgia Right to Life calls such tactics “minority outreach.”bg Just as in the case of white persecution politics, these tactics exploit racial animosity, but in this instance, the animus belongs to the minority rather than the majority.
“Sweet Crack-Pipe of Moral Indignation”
The myth of persecution also offers psychological benefits beyond rationalizing away cognitive dissonance. Victim status confers a certain moral legitimacy. The victim attracts sympathy, his offenses are downplayed, and his grievances are elevated. A comedian named John Rogers eloquently described this phenomenon in a blog about evangelical attempts to remove Christian children from public schools:
One of the great secrets of human nature is that the one thing people want more than love, security, sex, chocolate or big-screen TVs is to feel hard done by. Because being hard done by is the shit. Feeling hard done by is the sweetest of drugs. If you’re being persecuted—it must mean you’re doing the right thing, right? You get the mellow buzz of the moral high ground, but without arrogantly claiming it as your own. You get an instant, supportive community in a big dark scary world of such scope it may well literally be beyond rational human processing. When you are hard done by, you get purpose in a life where otherwise, you’d have to find your own. And when you ride that high, then no amount of logic, no pointing out that in actuality you and your beliefs are at a high point of popularity and influence for the last hundred years—is going to pry that sweet crack-pipe of moral indignation from your hands.10
Of course, long before the blogosphere came into being, long before the printing press was invented, sages used to deliver their wisdom personally from elevated positions in public spaces. One such sage reportedly proclaimed to a large crowd that had gathered on a hillside to hear him speak:
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matt. 5:10, English Standard Version Bible)
Presumably, the blessing of the sage has added to his followers’ pleasure in imagining that they are being hard done by.
A Society of Archie Bunkers
Yet there are pieces missing from the simple proposition that being hard done by is the shit. It tells us why the feeling of persecution is intrinsically appealing to people, but it does not tell us how persecution politics became a national movement or why it bloomed in the second half of the twentieth century.
According to the conventional story, as told by Jerry Falwell and other culture warriors and accepted without challenge by the media and even by most liberal analysts, cultural conservatism emerged in the 1970s as a backlash against liberal reforms like the legalization of abortion,