The sheer genius of the Gingrich/Delay/Rove Republican party over the past 12 years in coming to and retaining their power has been an age old war strategy: divide and conquer. However, their weapon in the destruction of the masses has been the perversion of LABELS, also known as Spin the Democrat.
Americans have been carved up into millions of labels, for which I don’t entirely blame the Republicans, but some prominent Republicans are to blame for exploiting this phenomenon of human existence. For example, look at all the harm that Sarah Palin caused with her “radical” and “terrorist” stump speeches.
Perhaps the worst example of the season was the use of “Hussein” to incite fear and hatred with the label of Muslim. Colin Powell shined admirably in raising awareness of this label perversion by speaking eloquently of a fallen American soldier, who also happened to be Muslim.
Sadly, however, Democrats, liberals, progressives, and any other label indicating the opposite have embraced this exploitation (in much smaller fashion) by political cannibalism, that is, eating our own. For those of you around during primary wars, you know the pain of the fast and loose use of the powerful labels of “sexist” and/or “racist” when the label itself would rarely, IF EVER, apply. Those divide and conquer Republican strategists just eat that crap up, and I believe that Sarah Palin’s only purpose in this election cycle was a very lame attempt to divide and conquer Democrats and other would-be-voting Democrat people with the label wars.
I came to the Moose in late September after stumbling upon an article written by USArmyParatrooper. I noticed in all my lurking over blogs for the prior two weeks that the vast majority of bloggers use a pseudonym, one that is often a label and seeks to convey something about themselves. When Chris Blask invited me to join the Moose in a comment on USAP’s diary, I did so choosing a lovely labeled pseudonym for myself: NavyBlueWife.
It’s not too hard to pick out my labels–military, liberal, and married. But I am hardly those things alone, despite having dedicated myself to military family issues during this election cycle. But what do those labels convey?
Navy: Most people think that the Republicans have the military vote all wrapped up in a neat little package. But that was simply not the case. I absolutely loved turning that label on its head because it challenged lazy thinking on the part of so many people. Of course, I was called a traitor, unpatriotic, and un-American, but I can tolerate stupid labels from stupid people because it means that I got under their skin and challenged their preconceived notions.
Blue: The label blue is synonymous with several other labels, but I most frequently thought of liberal. Plus, it just sounded cool with Navy. The liberal label now seems to be the equivalent of “scary monster under the bed” according to the flailing Republican party. I’ve always embraced it willingly. After all, as Eleanor Roosevelt said:
The word liberal comes from the word free. We must cherish and honor the word free or it will cease to apply to us.
Wife: I embraced the label of wife because this label is for a woman, and believe it or not, I’ve always wrapped myself in the label feminist. I don’t, however, ascribe to a wave of feminism because this further classification is often used to eat our own rather than moving issues forward. A military wife is typically thought of as filling a more traditional role of homemaker and mother, certainly not very often as a feminist. I confess that I am really terrible at being a traditional homemaker, and my only kids are my furkids. My lack of filling this traditional role, yet accepting and embracing the label, was yet another opportunity to challenge lazy thinking and preconceived notions.
To clarify a bit, I take issue with the act of forming a preconceived notion, of engaging in lazy thinking and creating labels haphazardly, particularly if that label creation is to divide and conquer. I do not often take issue with the actual realities, say of being a homemaker or Republican (I would take issue with scary monster under the bed).
But pigeonholing someone based on a quick label is pure idiocy in my not so humble opinion. One major defense to that idiocy is to embrace the label as your own, letting your little light shine in the darkness of ignorance. Another defense is to refuse the label itself with decisive, intelligent responses, such as reframing the debate. After all, it’s okay to be smart!
In recent days, I have been suffering from Election Exhaustion and fully expect a new diagnosis to be formed in the DSM IV. But what I have seen among some of our own is certainly not progressive to say the least and has caused me to hide away for a bit of recovery.
We need to work together to help Barack unite our country. AND, that doesn’t mean that we have to agree. It just means that we have to write with discipline while listening and reading with tolerance. We’re all on the same team, and THANK GOODNESS we are all different.
Barack Obama began his long, slow march to unite this country back in 2004 with words that bring tears to my eyes. Emphasis all mine.
For alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga, a belief that we are all connected as one people.
If there’s a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child.
If there’s a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for their prescription and having to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandparent.
If there’s an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.
It is that fundamental belief — it is that fundamental belief — I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sisters’ keeper — that makes this country work.
It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family: “E pluribus unum,” out of many, one.
Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes.
Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America.
There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.
The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states: red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.
We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the red states.
There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.
We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.
Think of labels truly as warning labels. But not in the traditional sense of a label warning us of harm, but a new kind of warning label–one that warns us against the label.
WARNING: Labels may be hazardous to your health.
I like to think of it as an expansion of another beautiful speech given by Martin Luther King, Jr., in which he said:
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
Race is a label that we progressives have taken back in the name of civil rights. I seek to examine the content of a person’s character rather than hastily labeling.
I can hardly ask of each of you to use caution with labels if I am not practicing what I preach. And while I vow to use caution when labeling, I will more willingly label in an affirmative defense in order to challenge lazy thinking and preconceived notions, thus stripping the label of any negativity (i.e., NavyBlueWife). But the first step for me is casting off my self-ascribed labels, inviting an examination of the content of my character rather than the labels of my blogosphere name. So here goes nothing…
Hi! My name is Michelle. It’s nice to meet all of you and to share in this privilege, dare I say, great responsibility, of creating and shaping a new dialogue, while reframing the old debates, in our steady and progressive march forward.
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