Advancing the better ideas

If the 2016 US presidential election taught us only one thing, it ought to be that almost nothing is as it seems in American politics. There are hidden agendas, secret motives, and fake players literally everywhere, and on all sides of the ideological spectrum—and non-ideological interference from hostile foreign governments, too. We need to be smart, and suspicious, whenever we see literally anything in the news, and this week provided a perfect example.

This past week, “protesters” showed up at campaign event for Mayor Pete Buttigieg in Iowa. The protesters were dresses as “Satan”, “Jesus”, and one who was supposed to be Mayor Pete, apparently “whipping” the actor playing “Jesus” as the one playing “Satan” looked on and laughed. Street political theatre, and—on the surface—there are some things that make it seem legitimate.

Iowa has always had a politically active extremist “Christian” element, and anti-LGBT+ bigotry has been one of their mainstays. This has been true for probably a couple decades at least. Also, the night before, two “protesters” shouted at Mayor Pete, also in Iowa, about “Sodom and Gomorrah”, which biblical legend says were destroyed due to their inhospitality to strangers, but which “Christian” extremists persist in declaring were actually supposedly destroyed because of homosexuality (despite the fact that those biblical stories make absolutely clear that it was the sin of inhospitality).

Given all that, it’s understandable why some people might think the “protests” were both real and an expression of “Christian” extremism. But there’s plenty of reason to doubt that’s the case, and that’s why normal people must be careful to not overreact. As I said yesterday in a post on the AmeriNZ Facebook Page:

[The political street theatre shows a] brilliant, though evil, strategy: The “protestors” are anti-gay bigots, sure, but what they REALLY want is for normal people to over-react and come across as condemning Christianity so that the religious extremists can then use that as “proof” that those “evil libruls” and “homosekshuls” are “anti-Christian”. There will be more of these provocations, and they’ll become quite offensive to normal people, all in the hope it goads normal people into the overreaction the extremists are trying to get.

This isn’t new behaviour for the far right in the USA: They often take deliberate action to incite overreaction from mainstream Americans, or the Left specifically, so that they can use those overreactions as “proof” that they’re “victims”. I’ve talked about this very effective strategy many times on this blog.

I warned in that Facebook post:

Don’t fall into their trap! They’re victims of bad ideas, and that’s the only thing we know for sure. In real life, they might be good to their mothers and kind to animals, so treating them as if they’re evil isn’t rational or a good strategy. Stick only to calmly criticising their bad ideas, not them (maybe a critique of their acting technique is fair game, though?).

When dealing with religious extremists of any stripe, it’s tempting to retaliate against them personally, which only feeds their need to pretend to be “victims” of those mean Leftists. The people are not the actual problem—it’s their bad ideas, and this is where others come in:

Normal, rational people don’t behave like the extremists. Most conservative Christians wouldn’t behave so awfully, nor would mainstream Christians. Moderate and Progressive Christians have a special duty to counter the extremists’ bad theology, lack of any understanding about what the Gospels actually say, and their false narrative about homosexuality in particular, because this is really a family fight among Christians, one in which beating up gay people (so far, only rhetorically…) is a political tool, a provocation to get an overreaction so the extremists can advance their politically-motivated culture wars.

This isn’t turning the other cheek, it’s taking them on appropriately—countering their bad ideas, which takes away their power. Overreacting and lashing out at them is exactly what they want.

And that, in a nutshell, is what will be needed: It’s not about retaliating, it’s not even really about attacking their bad ideas, it’s about presenting better ideas. Instead of calling them and their ideas “stupid” (or worse), we need to point out why they’re wrong, sure, but more importantly, what the better ideas are. We won’t ever defeat those bad ideas by attacking the carriers of those ideas, not when our goal is really the same as the extremists: To win over bystanders watching the show and saying nothing. We need to present the truth and to show through example that better ideas should defeat bad ideas.

The implication of this is that when people DO scream against the “Christian” extremists, and they will, we’ll need to be prepared to call them out, too, because the goal here is to defeat the ideas. However, that’s not entirely the case. Those screaming insults at the “Christian” extremists have a use, though they’ll probably hate that fact: They make a more moderate response seem so much more reasonable and relatable by comparison.

I saw this play out many times when I was a LGBT+ activist in the 1980s and 1990s. The street radicals, people like Act-Up and Queer Nation, etc., were protesting in the streets, being confrontational and, yes, sometimes offensive. But because they were doing that, we “respectable” activists got access to elected officials to present our case—making the exact same demands we always had, and the same demands, in fact, as the street radicals, but we did it politely and in business attire, and we got results. This wasn’t because we were so utterly brilliant (although I was, obviously…), but because we seemed so “calm” and “reasonable” by comparison. In other words, the reason we were listened to and the reason we were as successful as we were came as a result of the pressure from the “unreasonable” activists on our own side.

None of that works, however, if there aren’t calm and moderate voices on the side of reason. And, it’s because this fight is really over different versions of Christian theology leaking into the political sphere that we need Moderate and Progressive Christians to lift their game to counter the “Christian” extremists.

The majority of us are probably best to stay out of the fight. While we may or may not be equipped to personally engage on theology, many of us will be dismissed out of hand because we’re not religious (or religious enough), because we’re Centrists or to the Left of Centre, or because we’re LGBT+. There’s one more reason to not engage, and it’s how I ended that Facebook post: “Besides, forgive your enemies—nothing pisses them off more!”

Politics, electoral politics in particular, is in part a great big public dance, and who ultimately wins is whoever calls the music. We must present the sweet music of reason, and counter the dissonance of the extremists with better music.

Let’s get warmed up. It’s going to be a long dance.