As the Far Right Gets Edgier, Should Not We? A Post-Election Reflection

Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be praise, think of these things. Philippians 4:8, American Standard Version

“Edgy” might be the word to apply to Glenn Beck’s promotion of the writings and ideas of a man named W. Cleon Skousen, an avowed John Bircher who “was too extreme even for the conservative activists of the Goldwater era,” according to a piece I read on Salon.com. I see it as a natural enough effort to connect with a tradition that justifies and supports the scoundrel’s impulse to hunt witches. In another liberal journal’s account of Beck’s reinvigoration of Skousen’s ideas, Skousen was referred to as a “nut job.” So apparently we can be plainspoken about how we think of edginess at the extreme right of the political spectrum.

How, I wonder, do we perceive edginess at the other, so-called “progressive” end of the spectrum? What does a progressive have to say to be labeled so decisively a “nut job” by the mainstream press? As Glenn Beck reaches for a fringe tradition that can rally the folks on the Right, is not there another “fringe” tradition that could work for those who can’t get worked up about the Communists or gay people or whether or not Obama is a Muslim? Hey! I’ve got it! What if people began putting out there some concrete ideas about forming a just, compassionate, peace-loving and earth-respecting society? There’s plenty of tradition behind those ideas, including the Judeo-Christian one!

First of all, it must be said that someone is already doing this on the national level – Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun magazine, in his call to Democrats for a “bottom line of compassion” as a basis for an economy and a political order in our nation, and a “Marshall Plan” of generosity towards other less affluent countries, has been developing and putting forth these “fringy,” edgy ideas for many years. And what is it that keeps such excellent ideas on the fringe, seemingly as outlandish to the mainstream as the extremism of the John Birch Society?

While Republican voters going into the recent election were enjoined to help take our government back, return to smaller government and lower taxes, while maintaining a “robust and unapologetic national defense,” no Democrat did or will ever put forth an agenda based upon the quest for peace, for planetary health, or for justice for all people. That is because ideas based in simple human values, of peace, well-being, harmony with the earth and between peoples is off the table. In effect, they do not exist, except as wacko-fringy ideas of left wing nut jobs.

On a recent Saturday, a man came into the Café, bought his cup of coffee, sat down with it in the upper back room and proceeded to work at his laptop. In the brief exchange I overheard Orin having with him I learned he was from northern Vermont and, despite his fair, youthful looks, was in town for parents’ weekend at Hamilton College. At a table near to the coffee bar, a few customers were talking over the morning’s headlines about the man arrested at former President Bill Clinton’s talk at the Stanley the previous evening. The man was arrested for shouting at Bill, calling him a “war criminal.” Although the locals seemed not to be deeply offended at the man’s effrontery, the consensus at the table betrayed no awareness of any justifiable reasons for the protester’s position for which he had been willing to risk arrest. From behind the coffee counter, Orin added helpfully, “Every President since Truman could be called a war criminal.” Whereupon, the man from Vermont, who had been silently working upstairs, stood up to interject that every President for the last 100 years could justifiably be called a war criminal!

What was significant for me in this vignette was not whether or not the Vermonter knew his facts, but that he brought his opinion into a local (Utica) discussion of the type which in my experience usually (trust me) extends all the way from point A to point B. Such a “radical” claim, even Orin’s slightly less outlandish claim, (though it’s a fact I read recently that our government has bombed more civilians – other than its own citizens – than all other nations combined) can be disputed of course. That is what we have discussion for – to hear different perspectives, ideas and claims and talk them through. But if we do not hear ideas C through Z, if they are not put forth for public discussion, then they cannot be talked through. Right now we can hear edgy, Z-range ideas from the right wing, if we tune into Glenn Beck et al. But who is speaking and where do we go to hear the edgy ideas, not so much from the “left wing,” (or from Comedy Central) as from the compassionate heart of our society? What is the heart’s tradition, and who is attempting to win hearts and minds with reference to it?

Just recently I have been saying to my husband and to some of our board members that I felt The Other Side needed to be “edgier.” Funny I would be saying that in a season when we have brought to our space the leading proponent of ending mass public (government) schooling, John Taylor Gatto (9/22), and the beatnik poetry and out-there jazz of longtime pot decriminalization advocate John Sinclair (10/23). Plus, this summer, The Other Side (and Café Domenico) co-sponsored Ralph Nader’s appearance at MVCC. Still, though, I am greedy and I want more. I want documentary films bringing us perspectives from the “fringe” not represented in the mainstream, I want Alternative Radio bringing us the voices of Raj Patel, Noam Chomsky, the late Howard Zinn, Vandana Shiva and many others. I would love to host edgier theater productions, and informed guest speakers who could challenge the passionless status quo. I would love to be able to step out any night of the week and run into energized conversations about movies, books, politics, religion, that were engaging and meaningful, like the ones I fantasize wistfully the man from Vermont engaging in back home.

This passion for conversation is, in fact, what led me to establish The Other Side in the first place. A long time ago, I decided that the conversation held between people face-to-face, engendered by topics (as in salons), or the art or the lecture or the event, was as important as the art or the event itself. My faith in the power of conversation and ideas remains as strong as ever, even when I see the overwhelming preference of the majority of people for those substitutes for face-to-face conversation and relationships: cell phones, iPods and the Internet; evenings at home cuddled in front of Netflix; participation in mass, commodified politics, or socializing, often with the aid of alcohol, that contains little real conversation – that is, no C-Z of perspectives - at all.

The revolutionary space is the space between people in the same room. It is in these spaces where the great latent power of people in democratic society resides. Insert a TV into that space, a cell phone, an Internet, a rigidified schooling structure, and the human need for connection is displaced, and replaced with a medium. At the interpersonal level many of us have become tongue-tied, reluctant to speak our truths, anxious to keep conversations within “respectable” (translation: boring) bounds. Or we seek out little pockets of subversion where we can yelp out our unorthodox opinions, where they’ll be accepted, but where, in the absence of an “application” strategy, the ideas lose their energy to change anything. The ideas must be risked with an audience that might disagree, might be hurt or offended, or they amount to nothing more than private mumblings. For many reasons, but primarily because we are so uncertain of the solidity of our connectedness, these are risks we are less and less willing to take. But paradoxically, as we become more reluctant to risk our expression for fear of losing connection, the bonds of community weaken.


The crisis our planet is in tells us this: the future for human beings and the planet has now to be imagined; we have reached the end of the old paradigm; it is passing away. It is a time like no other for being awake. It is a time for paring down to essentials, like those expressed by St. Paul in his letter to the Philippians, or by our own outlandish American prophet, Henry David Thoreau. The Other Side, as a call to immediacy and to presence, asks me to resist the manifest temptations to enter the proto-cyborgian existence - before we have (re) learned to be fully human. I’m unsure that good can come of increasingly allowing the spaces between people, as well as those within, to be filled and replaced by media input when we have not yet made up our minds whether or not human beings, and human community, are worth saving.

Referring back to that quest for a tradition, there’s no older one than the tradition of community, and all the customs and rituals, cooperation and communication, art and industry, roles and relationships that make it up. Seems like a good time to risk being edgy in the very old-fashioned way I am suggesting: by returning to the people, the place, the most necessary activities and conversations close at hand, and in so doing, be able to put forth our own fringy nut job ideas with conviction.