Five Before Chaos

Yet another awesome, sunny early spring day. Since we’ve had a crazy winter with lots of wind, the woods are a mess, lots of tree debris everywhere. So I spent last evening collecting and burning said debris, and drinking beer. My bro came over and we grilled and ate way too much meat: pork chops, a ‘zampet’ sausage from Ping’s Sausage Shop, and a London Broil. Mmm. Colon cancer.

I’d like to talk a bit today about rigid ideology. On our side. What prompted this is reading something over at Americablog yesterday. John Aravosis want to some black tie D.C. function, the Radio and Television Correspondents Association annual dinner. Typical DC hobnobing thing, all sorts of types there. Mr. ‘as-popular-as-explosive-diarrhea’ Dick Cheney was there. Anyways, John was doing what people do at these kinds of functions - schmoozing with all sorts of people. Then he made the fatal mistake of talking to Florida Bush-stooge, Senate candidate and election theft enabler Katherine Harris and getting a picture with her, recognizing the camp value (same reason I collect Nixon memorabilia). Then, he made the doubly fatal mistake of commenting that he was surprised how nice of a person she was on a personal level. This unleashed a bunch of negative, harsh comments from a small percentage of his readership, calling him a sellout, traitor, etc.
Now, I’ve been reading John for about a year. I think he’s a real activist. He got ranting homophobe Dr. Laura off of the air, he successfully put presssure on Ford to resist caving in to the wingnuts about advertising in gay-themed publications, brought the whole ‘your cell phone records are for sale’ thing to light, etc. He’s one of those on our side that’s actually accomplished something other than spout out bumper-sticker slogans . Admittedly, he is definitely more in the mainstream than I am. But that’s fine. My point is that he is anything but a sell-out. He really got upset about this, and I would think that he could use a bit of a thicker skin. But it prompted him to write a post about those on the left who fear money and power.
He makes some good points. There are those of us on our side, due to their rigid ideology, that cannot deal with the idea that someone who is working for us should be justly compensated for their work. It’s almost like there are some that feel because they’re able to live off the power grid in their wigwam, that we ALL need to live that way. It’s like some kind of hippie fascism. And, like the worst of the conservatives, they are unable to see things in anything but a dualistic black and white. Either you renounce capitalism and any modern comforts completely or you are evil and impure.
I live in Plainfield, Vermont, home of the progressive Goddard College, not your typical college. It’s definitely one of theose progressive alternative schools where they spell women with a ‘y’. Lots of great people have come through its doors over the years, many of which I am good friends with. The legendary jam-band Phish started out there. Until recently, right down the road, we had the Institute for Social Ecology, a kind of anarchist-type educational institution. So they’ve kind of helped make Plainfield what I call ‘ground zero for the granola belt’. There are lots of back-to-the-land types here, to varying degrees. Lots of fifty and sixty-something guys with huge beards. My own house was originally built with no running water, an outhouse, kerosene lamps, and a wood-fired kitchen stove. Needless to say, you have some of the leftiest of the left here.
I had my first firsthand experience with the idealistic ideology when involved with the Plainfield Co-op, our little food store that has been here since the early seventies. Jenni was on the Board of Directors. It has reached a point, due to various factors, that it is in serious finacial distress, and the BOD wanted to make some radical changes, such as hiring an experienced manager who actually had experience in retail grocery. The idea of moving it to a bigger, more suitable place was also proposed. Now, the PR campaign was kind of botched from the board from the start, lots of miscommunication and such. But some of the bullshit the diehards were spewing was UN-FRICKIN’-BELIEVABLE. The new manager wanted to do such radical things such as proper inventory management, better product placement, the end of paying all of our vendors in cash out of the register, and basically putting long-needed standard operating procedures that any responsible business should have, in place. Some of the bullshit responses to this:

“It’s corporate. We should question (above-stated) standard operating procedures.”
” We shouldn’t even be discussing making this store profitable. Profit is immoral.“
“We shouldn’t move the store because it will get more cars driving by. The age of the automobile is going to be coming to an end very soon.’
“We have to have non-heirarchical management.”

Non-heirarchical management can work great… if everybody on the team has the required skills necessary. Someone needs to know about profit margin. Inventory control. Marketing. Unfortunately, in the 30-plus years of non-heirarchical management, there was never a time where all of those skills were present, hence the problems. You’re only as effective as your least effective person.
When I mentioned to one of them how if we actually made a profit, we could afford to pay our employees a livable wage and healthcare (a favorite cause for the left), I heard, “Well, it’s not right that profit should have to pay for healthcare.” In other words, because we should have universal health care and don’t, that we shouldn’t try to do what is the current norm for paying for healthcare, until we do have universal healthcare. Sorry, hard-working employees. Tough shit, my ideology doesn’t allow this.
So basically, thanks to certain peoples’ fear of vague undefined notions, a complete lack of sense of what it takes to run a business, and a pervasive almost Marxist ideological rigidity, we’re in trouble.
Now, I don’t think that our extremists are evil. I can’t find an equivalent of the xenophobic, racist, intolerant right-winger on our side. But our extremists are just as fearful of change, and can’t seem to grasp that it is a complex world, with complex issues, and there is no ‘black and white’ to anything. Scientists who study adult development call it ‘dualistic’ thinking, which is the first stage of adult thinking. The first. It’s the kind that hopefully as a 30-50 year old person you should be well-past. And unfortunately we have a lot of well-educated people on our side that aren’t.
I’m not advocating that we go to the ‘mushy middle’ of things. We can be left, even far-left. But we need to avoid the rigid ideology, recognize nuance, and see the world as it really is, not just as how we think it should be. If we do that, we will be closer to getting it how it should be. If we don’t, we are no better than the other side.

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