Culture

It is truly amazing to me that some people who call themselves “liberal,” “progressive,” and “tolerant,” are so irrationally afraid and intolerant of anyone who holds a differing viewpoint to the degree that they feel the need to lash out, discredit and attempt to purge them from the intellectual discussion of ideas. Recently, I was shocked to discover that such people were trying to accomplish this by employing methods I thought hadn’t survived beyond the Nuremberg trials.

I saw this spectacle when Keith Olbermann interviewed Janeane Garofalo on April 16th in which they discussed the phenomenon of the modern tea party protests. She received plenty of backlash from her statements that the gatherings were really about “hating a black man in the White House,” and from calling attendees “nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks.”

But not nearly enough attention was paid to her comment about the the motivation of right-wingers/republicans/conservatives (a.k.a. anyone not sharing her philosophy).

“You can tell these type of right wingers anything and they’ll believe it. You tell them the truth and they become — it’s like showing Frankenstein’s monster fire. They become confused, and angry and highly volatile. That guy, causing them feelings they don’t know, because their limbic brain, we’ve discussed this before, the limbic brain inside a right-winger or Republican or conservative or your average white power activist, the limbic brain is much larger in their head space than in a reasonable person, and it’s pushing against the frontal lobe. So their synapses are misfiring.”

It’s ironic that in the same breath she accuses the tea party-goers of being intolerant of the president’s policies because of the color of his skin, she can claim that the only reason someone would disagree with her and the other enlightened Obama disciples is due to a physical defect in their brains.

As a self-proclaimed progressive feminist it is absolutely shocking that she would recognize that she is using almost the exact same logic as anti-suffragists who claimed women shouldn’t be allowed to vote because of the physical differences between men and women. According to a prominant anti-suffragist back in 1911:

“The difference is fundamental owing to physiological reasons which no training can obliterate. Women are more easily swayed by sentiment, less open to reason, less logical.” To modern people that type of thinking is not only dismissed as ridiculous science but also as insulting and prejudiced.”

Perhaps soon Ms. Garofalo will demand that government rescind the right to vote for any registered republicans. Or worse, she might ask that anyone who isn’t a full-blodded, liberal, progressive feminist be rounded up and sent to reservation somewhere. That certainly would make the public debate a lot easier for her and other intolerant progressives who are unable to make a convincing intellectual case for their ideas.

For those of you who aren’t racist or brain damaged and yet still manage to find a reason to be angry and fed up with the direction America is heading, you’re welcome to come to the July 4th Tea Party in Washington, DC or a local tea party where, as Keith Olbermann’s suggested we won’t be offering franks n’beans.  But we will be serving a heaping helping of liberty.

Full disclosure [While I am not a liberal, I am not now nor have I ever been right-wing, republican, or conservative]