Several countries in the middle east and northern Africa are undergoing social and political revolutions. There are a lot of things to say about these revolutions, but the most interesting by far to me has been our reaction as a country.
Not our official reactions as per Congress and the President, but the people who live here. I find it utterly hilarious that, especially during the Egyptian revolution, many Liberal spokespersons were anti-revolution. Basically anti-freedom, anti-womens rights, anti-the vast majority of things their party, the Democratic party, seems to stand for. While at the same time Conservative spokespersons were pro-revolution, basically a complete turnaround from the traditional stance of the Republican party, which was “Yeah the Dictator is a son of a bitch, but at least he’s our son of a bitch”. It was scary a little bit, because after having a few conversations with some more liberal friends of mine I realized they were all following the party line: the revolutions were bad because they destabilized the regions. And I myself found that I was on the side of freedom here, pro-revolution, which was my party’s current line.
It was a complete shift in the nature of the parties that happened so drastically with barely any comment. I’m not sure if you’ve ever read 1984, but there was a scene in the book during a war rally where a person stepped up on stage and announced that they were no longer at war with one enemy, that they were now at war with another enemy. The people didn’t bat an eye. They just tore down the old posters and then went back to the rally. I feel very much like that was what I was witnessing. The powers that be, on both sides of the fence, decided their stances, spoke it to the masses, and the masses fell in line. That to me is troubling. Because any person you ask, from both sides, will be able to give a perfectly logical reason why they chose the side they chose and few to none of them will even mention where they got their opinions from.
You know I had a rather long and drawn out facebook conversation about Socialism and Capitalism a little while ago, during which I asked the people on the side of the socialist concepts where they got their ideas from, like what books they had read, etc. I did this because I was called ignorant, and when I am called ignorant I want to know how to make myself not ignorant. One of the responses I received basically said that the individual just started from basic “cause the least suffering” thoughts and developed their socialist ideas on their own. I think people do this without thinking much. We take in so many sources of information that undoubtedly we tend to start believing that some of the ideas that are thrown at us are actually our own. Telling someone that you developed an economic system from basic precepts without sources is probably a lie, and not necessarily a lie meant to deceive, but a lie that comes from us assuming that we are masters of our own ideas.
I would say the traditional “Wake up America! Have your own ideas for a change!”, but that doesn’t work because most people think they already are having their own ideas. Not sure what to do about this problem, but I’m glad my eyes had been opened up to it recently.
I think you have have gotten a bad statistical sample there. I’m not a bleeding heart liberal but once I read into the facts I supported the revolutions and I didn’t meet any self described liberals or democrats who felt differently. I can it argue that there were white house officials towards the very beginning of the Egyptian revolution that held a political stance of “support our ally, Egypt” rather than look into the cause of the revolution but that line was quickly reversed. I am not sure there were ever party lines so much as there are “support the white house/president” line and support the opposition party.
As for people informing themselves, we are in an age when informtion is probably one of the most readily available resources ever. Not necessarily good or relevant information but still it is there. And yet we still have people who vote straight party tickets. Why? Because not all of us our leaders and even those of us who can be leaders don’t necessarily want to worry about foreign affairs, or interstate affairs, but instead focus on other parts of their life. There is an unfortunate trend, I think, for the people who would be most benefited by paying attention to politics to instead let themselves get distracted by making ends meat and scrounging for readily available entertainment, I.E. The lower middle class, but I am not sure it is a reasltiic goal to hold to the entire human race to be interested and passionate about all of the “important ” parts of life, if only for e subjectiveness of important and be aide man does that sound like a recipe for human extinction.
Imagine if everybody in the US came up with their own idea for healthcare. We would never be able to hammer it out and even those with fundamentally similar plafns would feel disenfranchisced by the other’s details.
One of the things I find most interesting about all of this is that this chain of events is pretty much exactly what George W. Bush said would happen after Iraq; see the following article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/28/AR2011012803144.html
Apparently, giving the folks over there that ousting their terrible dictators was even possible has made a big difference.