Political Dissonance

Recently I’ve been visiting the blog of a soldier stationed in Iraq. I find his view on things over there very interesting, and he's a very good writer. Not to mention how helpful I find the descriptions, slang, and other real-world bits and pieces he offers up in a context I personally will never have the opportunity to experience (and for that, I thank him since I don’t believe I’d want to experience such a thing as war). Mil blogs are a great resource to those of us writing mil roms.

Yesterday, however, I was very much turned off by his rant against basically anyone who wasn’t like him or didn’t agree with his personal political world view. He’s staunchly hard-right conservative, with all the George Bush worshipping, anti-liberal-hippy-do-gooder bashing and media conspiracy theory pushing it involves. I found his post offensive not so much because of his beliefs – I’m a firm believer that everyone is entitled to believe as he or she chooses – but more of his overall attitude towards those who disagree with him. He claims to be a hard-core American, but I guess I find such intolerance and outspoken hatred of fellow Americans who are using their own freedom of speech to disagree with him more than a little hypocritical. Not to mention his convenient forgetting of American history in which the French had a big hand in helping the colonials out back in that first Revolutionary War, resulting in a United States of America in the first place and thus making any reminders of how the U.S. saved France’s butt from the Nazis during WWII kind of...well, not only arrogant but completely tasteless and ignorant. Regardless of what France is doing now, the past is in the past, and all debts have been paid.

All of this is not to air my disgust with this guy and his views (although, hey, it’s my blog and where else can I do it if not here?) but rather how what he thinks and believes and how he chose to express it really got to me. Long after I turned off the computer having determined maybe I wouldn’t be haunting his blog so much after all, I lay in bed fuming. And wondering how this country manages to keep going when so many of us seem to be so completely divided on such key issues. And what could this guy’s life have been like to have him end up where he is, while I’m so different.

Which led me to realize that, as a writer, I think it would be completely impossible for me to depict a character who held viewpoints so fundamentally different from my own. Never in my wildest dreams could I imagine writing a character who sounds like this blogger. While I can understand some of what he’s saying – and even agree with bits of it – I don’t really like him very much. I would never be able to spend an entire book-writing’s worth of time in his company, listening to his rhetoric all the while wanting nothing more than to tell him to shut the hell up already.

I do think I have the ability to deviate from my own point of view to a certain degree. I have no problem writing characters whose religions differ from my own. I’m okay with people who are more conservative than I am or people who are more liberal than I am. I don’t get reality TV, the WWF, or jazz, but I can understand there are people out there who do. But when the needle hits the extremes, I balk. I simply don’t know how to put my own mind in a place where I can understand such attitudes. In fact, when I do go there, these characters tend to take on a more villain like-role in my mind and in the story. These people become cartoons, someone I can’t take seriously or who I use as an example of how not to be. They are never, ever the heroes or heroines in my story.

Is this the way it is with most writers or do I have a serious design flaw? Do most writers revolve a pre-determined circumference away from their own moral center, unable to reach beyond into the dark corners where their own understanding comes up empty? And if they are able to break free and write real people who think 180 degrees away from their own beliefs, how do they pull it off?

The only chance I have of working against my own belief system is when I build a character from the ground up. Rather than starting with a “Republican, pro-life, NRA card carrying member, homophobic middle-aged man”, I have to start with a child who had experiences in his life that made him turn towards a certain state of mind. I have to avoid the labels on the back end that make me want to back away slowly, my hands raised to ward off danger. I end up with something along the lines of yes, my hero is a member of the NRA, but that’s because his father was killed by a gun-toting maniac while the hero looked on helplessly, and the hero vowed he’d never be that defenseless again. There have to be concrete experiences for the reasons my characters turned out as they did rather than simply that they born into that sort of family and that’s what they were taught to believe.

No matter how I get there, I have to like the person I end up with. No matter what my characters believe – even if it does differ from my own beliefs – I can’t dislike them fundamentally. I can’t view them as boorish louts who insist on hoisting their own opinions on everyone they come in contact with and then vilifying those who don’t agree with them. I don’t have the ability to write ugly Americans unless it’s to make fun of them, and if that makes me a bad writer, then I suppose the title fits.

In the end, for me anyway, it’s not so much the beliefs a person holds but rather how that person chooses to express them. Like I said above, I do think that everyone is entitled to believe what he or she chooses. I do not, however, believe that those people have a right to inflict their beliefs on the greater public, nor to I think that hatred and intolerance towards those who are inclined otherwise is acceptable. You get a lot further with me when you respect my viewpoints while making valid, non-judgmental points to support your own cause. Calling me pro-abortion (and implying that I think abortions are to be carried out willy-nilly and just because some goofball forgot to wear a condom but no big deal) just because I support a woman’s right to choose doesn’t do much to make me want to listen to why you feel abortion is wrong.

Telling me I’m anti-American just because I question some of the decisions my government has made sure doesn’t make me want to consider the possibly valid reasons why you disagree with my viewpoint.

It’s all in the delivery. It’s why they say you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Them old wives, they knew a few things.