Left, Right, and Wrong
Imagine, if you will, an environment in which everybody is working for a common cause. Because of the sort of cause it is, it attracts hard-left liberals, activists, people who think of themselves as peaceful insurgents in a corrupt society. Hippies, in short. Everyone in this scene, except for your corrospondent, is on some level a hippie. There’s often a troubling undercurrent in this kind of environment, one which is, I think, illustrated by the following conversation, which I overheard this afternoon:
PERSON A: Did you see this story about the Iran thing?
ME: About Mikulski saying she’d back it?*
PERSON A: Yeah.
PERSON B: Kind of a lot of people don’t like it.
PERSON A: Yeah, even Wyden. He’s usually so liberal.
PERSON B: That’s because Wyden . . . (long, long pause) . . . has a lot of ties to Israel.
During this conversation, the other two people are seated, and I’m standing, thinking. This is what I’m thinking: A Jew. That’s what you want to say. You want to say that Wyden’s a Jew and that’s why he’s heterodox on this issue that you have a doctrinaire opinion on. You want to say that he’s a Jew and Israel is evil and you will never really be able to trust him because of that. Say it! Just have the bravery to declare your prejudices. We all know what you’re thinking.
* See here for context.
This is a common problem among a certain kind of doctrinaire leftist, the sort who demand adherence to a certain orthodoxy with the same moral fervor that any hard-right Christian does. Look, I have problems with Israel, myself, and I think Bibi Netanyahu is a vicious, dangerous force on the world stage. But this kind of thing really, really gets to me. The place at which this scene occured has in its mission statement that equality and acceptance of difference are at its heart. It prides itself on promoting the voices of black people, LGBTQ people (emphasis on the T), the homeless, the mentally ill. This is great. I love this stuff. It’s important, especially in a place like Portland, where a lot of people opt for easy, lifestyle liberalism that mostly consists of having the gay couple next door over for dinner sometimes.
It also has a poster on the wall of its newsroom that features a cherubic picture of Rachel Corrie, a blonde whitegirl from Olympia who was killed by an IDF bulldozer as she tried to prevent it from knocking over Palestinian houses in the Gaza Strip. I can’t remember the legend that’s on it, but it’s written in huge, accusatory type, and it says something like ISRAEL ADMIT TO YOUR CRIMES. Now, look — what happened to Rachel Corrie was a goddamned travesty. But this is Missing White Girl Syndrome to the Nth degree, playing specifically on the political biases of people on the far left. This is a bunch of fucking goyische assholes whose perfectly legitimate objection to Israel is edging frighteningly close to anti-Semitism. And it’s not cool.
My mom used to tell me that, back when she was at U of O in the 70s, often the most judgemental and problematic people around the campus were the hippies, the people who claimed to be fighting against injustice and for acceptance. My experience does not always track with that. There are a lot of people who are just, to quote an old friend of mine, here to be weird, man. But this is the danger of stridency and orthodoxy: almost any ideology, enforced rigidly enough, fosters intolerance. I agree with these people on a lot of stuff. But an inflexible fixation on Israel has led them to a place that I find intolerable.
But then, you know what? I didn’t say anything. I should have said something. But I didn’t. Because I’m a chickenshit. Well, that, and it’s important to me that these people not hate me. I’m still thinking about it hours later, though. I can’t help but feel like I should say something. Someday. They probably won’t listen.