Issue Number 1018 | Think You're Smarter than McCain-Palin? Prove It? | Advocate.com Think You're Smarter than McCain-Palin? Prove It.  |  | Advocate.com

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Think You're Smarter than McCain-Palin? Prove It.
In an age when posting an SNL skit on your Facebook page can be passed off as political activism, writer Michael Joseph Gross decides that it’s high time to stop complaining about the GOP and start campaigning -- with a good old-fashioned bus caravan into the heartland.
From The Advocate  November 4, 2008
Think You're Smarter than McCain-Palin? Prove It.

At Invesco Field in Denver, before Barack Obama delivered his speech accepting the Democratic nomination for the presidency, I, like every other person in the crowd, was given a small American flag. During his speech, I waved it; and when I did, I felt more pride in my country than I have felt for most of my adult life. The emotion surprised me. I hadn’t realized how much I missed feeling this kind of patriotism. I hadn’t fully realized how toxic it has been to spend years feeling angry at President Bush for his abuse of power, watching truth all but disappear from public discourse, resigning myself to the fact that my leaders lie.

My enthusiasm was tempered with fear, though, because during the convention I’d heard many Democratic leaders express troubling contempt for their opponents. I heard a congressman crow about how much “better” Democrats are than Republicans. A member of Obama’s inner circle bragged, with awe, that the candidate is “fucking smart.” The shock of that phrase was not the f word. It was the s word, the meritocracy’s favorite, self-satisfied term of endearment (it takes one to know one), and the tribute was echoed in comments by dozens more delegates and lower-level advisers. I heard, more times than I can count, expressions of bafflement at the mere fact of McCain’s candidacy: How could anybody vote for him? It’s a question with a syllogism built in: Obama is smart, John McCain isn’t, and anyone who’d even consider a vote for that old guy must be stupid—and by implication, inferior.

I can’t pretend that any of this was new to me. I’d heard such high-handed claims of enlightenment before, mostly from my own mouth.

In months prior to the convention, conversations with my friends (even with the “smart”-est ones) tended to follow a pattern. We posited Republicans’ inanity, then retreated to comforting assertions of our own superior judgment. Many of us seemed to think that, simply by giving some money and expressing our opinions to the like-minded, we’d done something to make a difference, to effect political change.

During the Democratic convention I realized that the consequences of such contempt on the coming election, if uncorrected, could be decisive. Nothing could be more alienating to undecided voters. Moreover, no emotion is more undemocratic than contempt, because contempt denies the dignity of its human object. In 1776 our nation was founded on an unqualified assertion of the dignity of the individual person—All men are created equal—and our citizens have struggled ever since, though rarely as hard as we’re able, to live up to that declaration.

Contempt has been the defining quality of the Bush presidency: contempt for the Constitution, contempt for international law, contempt for all values but those that strengthen rich people’s power. On the receiving end, Bush’s contempt has taken an awful toll. When you have been treated as if your values are meaningless, as Democrats have been treated for most of these past eight years, rhetorical revenge is sorely tempting. How could anybody vote for them? We’re fucking smart!

Yet when we think and say this sort of thing, we sink to the moral level of our opponents. Worse, we undermine our fight against them, because contempt breeds complacency.

This had become clear in Denver’s meetings of the LGBT caucus, which heard inspiring remarks from a procession of star speakers. Michelle Obama, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean, and many others came courting. (To Dean, one caucus leader said, “Thank you for coming.” Dean replied, “I couldn’t not come.”) Yet the meetings unintentionally distilled the problem with national gay politics: We are chasing glamour when we should be pounding pavement. What little description of the work we still needed to do was crammed into a PowerPoint presentation during the last 15 minutes of the two-day caucus meeting, when the room was almost empty, and nobody paid much attention.

One purpose of a convention is to celebrate the party’s strength, and when the caucus got humid with self-congratulation, I reminded myself of that. Gay voters have much to celebrate. The high-profile speakers at the LGBT caucus meetings testified to our unprecedented power, which has been strengthened by the fight for marriage equality. There is no longer any question on this point: We are important.

And we have to get over it. If we content ourselves with status, if we tell ourselves that we are smarter and better than Republicans, we are telling ourselves that the battle is won—and ignoring the practical challenge before us. We have to win. In Denver I realized, for the first time, that we could lose. 

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Reader Comments

These comments are reproduced as written by visitors to this Web site. They have not been edited for content, grammar, or spelling. The viewpoints appearing here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or views of advocate.com, The Advocate, or its affiliates.

  • Name: Cecil young
    Date posted: 2008-10-20 3:13 PM
    Hometown: Canton, Michigan

    Comment:

    This article made me feel a little uncomfortable - but that was the point, right?! Going out door to door and campaigning is not easy work, and I'll admit to not just passing thoughts of 'how could anyone (glbtqi) support McCain Palin.


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