When I insulted them in the nastiest ways I could imagine. When I smeared them in the vilest language I could find that didn't run afoul of the laws of good taste. When I called them every rotten thing I could think of – just the other day it was "wackdoodles." (Coming next: wingbats.) When I did all these things, and worse, in the otherwise august columns of this distinguished newspaper, it never occurred to me that it was because of anything but me bringing my judgment as a rational human being to bear on their views and their actions. It never occurred to me it might be biological.
While the Ontario Human Rights Code forbids abusing anybody because of race, ancestry, place or origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, creed, sex, sexual orientation, age, marital status, family status or disability – and while I honour this with every fibre of my being – it says nothing about ideological leanings. So as far as I was concerned it was open season on right wingers all year around. And if I couldn't shoot them in the front, the back was every bit as good. Both barrels, every chance I got.
It never once crossed my mind that I couldn't help thinking these things. That it was in my DNA.
And it certainly never crossed my mind that they couldn't help thinking the things they thought, or believing the things they believed, or behaving the way they behaved either, the horses' asses.
Until I read, "Born that way," a report in New Scientist magazine that explained why all kinds of researchers in all kinds of fields are concluding that "political positions are substantially determined by biology and can be stubbornly resistant to reason." Put another way: Arguing won't turn a gun nut into a pacifist or a pro-lifer into a pro-choicer. These views are based on personality traits that are inherited. Mike Harris ran Ontario according to the dictates of his DNA.
Of course, when it comes to the words I use when I write about conservatives, I'm just joking. Unless I'm engaging in about the only form of bigotry – loon-bashing – that is any longer acceptable in civil discourse. One or the other.
Except I guess that even if I'm joking, it's still bigotry.
And very sneaky, too. It's one of the few ways I can slip flat-out cement-headed bigotry into the conversation without appearing to be a flat-out, cement-headed bigot.
Even sneakier, prejudice this raw is not the sort of thing we expect to hear from a liberal such as me, your ever-loving, brown-eyed correspondent. Sneakier still, it plays absolutely perfectly to the stereotype of the bigoted conservative liberals hold so dear.
But kindly remember that this has nothing to do with anything but me venting (and maybe getting a couple of laughs), and makes about as much genuine sense as dumping on Stephen Hawking because he can't dance.
When it comes to the one form of prejudice that all kinds of people are prepared to spew in public, though – the NIMBY antagonism toward housing for the mentally ill, in a day and age when no one of any political hue would stand in front of their neighbours and denounce Jews or blacks – neither liberals nor conservatives have the slightest hesitation about saying the most utterly despicable things imaginable.
For some reason or other they believe they're perfectly entitled to do it.
Have a beautiful Tuesday.
No comments:
Post a Comment