Politics and Religion, Sigh

Two recent editorials in the L.A. Times provide support and advocacy to positions I've espoused in my blog, and are worth mentioning here, though their slants and substance provide no great dispute. The first, which appeared today, describes an Emory University study that measured cerebral activity of individual men reacting to a political discussion. It found that brain areas devoted to the emotional response were highly engaged, while the lobe that is the seat of rational response was hardly stimulated at all. Ergo, the unsurprising conclusion that in political discourse and persuasion it is not the logical mind that is aroused, but the emotional needs of the listener.

This finding helps explain a lot, including why Eisenhower beat Stevenson and Bush "edged" Gore. Also, why some otherwise intelligent friends and relatives of mine, representing both extremes of the political spectrum, espouse ludicrous, intellectually indefensible positions ranging from "All people who oppose Bush hate America" to "Republicans are primed to impeach Bush because I want them to." It's as frustrating to engage such illogical passions as it is to argue about which baseball team or actor or fast-food chain is the most despicable. Emotions are the residue and descendents of our reptilian, ancestral fight-or-flight survival mechanisms, powerful and overwhelming. The savvy politician understands this and cynically exploits human weakness to his or her end.

Religion is, of course, the first cousin to politics, and they connive together, like members of a Mafia family, to reach their goals through manipulation of fear and hate among the insecure and gullible. Hatred in particular is a powerful motivator, especially when yoked to ignorance. This leads me to the second persuasive editorial, from two weeks ago, pertaining to the human disgrace of anti-Semitism. Of course I'm preaching to the choir here, since most of my seven readers are either Jewish or Jew-friendly (oh that there needs to be a phrase like "Jew friendly.") I wrote recently that of all the prejudices in the world, anti-Semitism was perhaps the most vile. It's not that racism or homophobia are less repugnant. But anti-semitism represents every wrong-headed instinct that impedes and undermines civilization.--the tendency to scapegoat rather than accept personal responsibility; the need, out of envy, to marginalize a subculture whose intellectual achievements far outweigh their numbers, and whose moral insights have provided the spiritual foundations for three billion persons.

A few names, just for the sake of argument: Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, Elijah, Jesus, all the Apostles and Everyone who wrote the Bible, Maimonides, Freud, Disraeli, Marx, Gershwin, Modigliani, the Rothschilds, Mendelsohn, Sondheim, Bellow, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Salk and Sabin, Leonard Bernstein, Laguardia, Arthur Miller, Pinter, Mailer, Oppenheimer, Kafka, Bob Dylan, Irving Berlin, Ted Koppel, Barbara Walters and Alan Greenspan. Not to mention baseball's first DH, Ron Blomberg, and me. And the anti-Semites might want to check out Jewwho.com for a more elaborate list. I need not make a further point, but that does not stop the amazing durability of anti-Semitic mythology that billions of people still espouse, from the fictional "Protocol of the Elders of Zion" to Holocaust deniers to those who blame Neew York Jews for 9/11.

The editorial made an interesting historical connection of anti-Semitism to the most heinous regimes of history, including the Nazis, of course; the Czarists; the Inquisitions; and modern-day Iran and the scheming leftist dictators in South America. In the words of the author, Andrew Klavan, "All bigotry is wrong, but there's something about this particular form of prejudice that is weirdly reliable as a sign of deeper wickedness. Perhaps it's because the Jews contributed so much to humanity's moral code that to hate them as a race is to despise the restraints of morality itself....True, virulent anti-Semitism is such a good indicator of the presence of evil that I'm tempted to believe that when God made the Jews his chosen people, this is what he chose them for: to be a sort of Villainy Early Detection system for everyone else."

Whether or not God is the agent worth crediting for anything, the fundamental point Klavan makes is defensible in a rational, historic perspective. But what is truth and reason in the face of emotional susceptibility and institutionally established ignorance? In this "modern," regrettable era, the reptiles seems to be in ascendance again, and the owls in tactical retreat.