When I was in college, I had a friend named Greg. He was a right-
winger, and while we could not agree on politics we got along well
regardless. There was one thing he said, however, that I now seek to
address. That was: "Sociology is bullsh*t, because it is based on an
ideology."

I did not think to ask him what was that ideology, but now I
understand. What he meant was that the prevailing idea in sociology is
that society is a real entity that needs to be studied, because what it
becomes at any point in time affects people's lives. Apparently he,
like most right-wingers, believe that everyone makes their own destiny.
Let's examine that belief.

Between 1939 and 1945, more than 50 million people in Europe alone died
in purges and wars. In the same length of time in later half of 1990s,
the number worldwide - in population more than six times what it was in
Europe in the 1940s - was easily under 6 million (with most casualties
in Africa due to malnutrition). Did people change so much - did the
human nature change so much - between early 1940s and late 1990s that
people willingly, on their own accord, stopped killing each other? Or
did something else happen?

In 1960s and 1970s, the loudest people in America wanted to become rock
stars or free spirits. In 1980s, the loudest people in America wanted
to become stock brokers. Did everyone independently change so utterly
on their own accord? Or did something else happen?

In 1960s and 1970s, people on the left bucked everything that moved.
1990s saw the kind of hysterical prudery from both the Left and the
Right that has been unknown in America for decades. Everyone suddenly
change their mind on their own accord? Or did something else happen?

See the ridiculous quality of the right-wing ideology? That it blinds
people to trends, to changes in society and the forces shaping
societies. Sociology bullsh*t based in an ideology? Or perhaps an
important and vital perspective that many on the Right do not want to
see?

The truly obnoxious quality of right wingers in this regard is that
they, perhaps more than anyone else, are involved in shaping the values
and climate of the society we all live in - and then tell everyone else
that they are in control of and should take responsibility for their
lives. Now if they demand of people responsibility, they must be
themselves subjected to responsibility they exercise over society: To
make them responsible for creating a livable, benign, beautiful,
caring civilization, and not one in which people are hassled,
frustrated, overworked, brutalized and oppressed.

I elaborate. That a Victor Frankl or an Elie Wiesel can survive
a Holocaust, does not excuse conducting a Holocaust. Yes, there are a
few great (or lucky) people who can survive extreme hardship; but to
use their example to subject others to hideous conditions is a
monstrosity. If you want people to take responsibility for their lives,
then you as a person involved in shaping society - in shaping its
values, beliefs and reward systems - must exercise complete
responsibility and knowledge and wisdom for your part in the process.
I say knowledge and wisdom, because without these things it is
impossible to know the full result of one's actions and, without
knowledge of the result of one's actions, one can't act in an informed
and responsible manner.

I repeat. Responsibility without wisdom and knowledge is a con, as is
morality without compassion and caring. And people who seek either of
the above, far from being ethical and responsible people, are conmen.

Which two sentences are all that one needs to refute the right-wingers
wherever they may be.

And the correct definition of fascist is not "someone who uses the
power of the government to control people," but rather "someone who
shoves down people's throats an oppressive belief system and claims to
represent morality without possessing himself any goodness, compassion,
caring or wisdom" - whether he uses the government to enforce this or
whether he instead for that purpose uses mechanisms in society, from
church and media to the academia and business.

The misuse of the concept of responsibility means two things. One, the
people who use responsibility as a code word for American dream do not
do anything remotely responsible or principled or valuable: They
achieve a society of ignorance, cruelty and self-perpetuating misery.
Essentially, they shove people into family life before they have seen
the world and acquired its knowledge - also before they have fulfilled
themselves. The result, is miserable, ignorant people who raise their
children ignorantly, without an understanding of the world, without
knowledge or wisdom, and shove their misery and ignorance down their
children's throats while preventing them from living lives worthy of
being lived. Furthermore, these people live their unfulfilled selves
through their children and destroy everything, good or bad, in their
children's character that they find it unsuitable to their goals and
their paranoid, uninformed, tunnel-vision worldview. And another thing
this means, is that the people who set the social climate do so in a
way that is utterly lacking in understanding, compassion or wisdom or
caring - in a way that destroys people and blames the destruction on
them - and, under the pretense of "responsibility," fail to stand to
the plate as social shapers and, blaming their basic meanness and
wickedness on the people who get destroyed in the process, create
hideous conditions in which everything good and beautiful is destroyed.

This is about as irresponsible and unethical an outcome as is possible;
and the cover - the idea that looking at social dynamics is due to an
ideology rather than understanding of facts of life - is part and
parcel of the actual con that the right-wingers pull on America. If
people can be convinced that an aspect of life does not exist, then
they will be blind to it and accept as given or common-sensical a state
of affairs that is in fact far from natural and is instead a result of
many influences, including and especially those of the right-wingers.
While claiming honesty and responsibility, they practice none of these
qualities and instead deceive everyone around them.

To make people believe that a study of an aspect of life is bullsh*t
while you are yourself contributing mightily to shaping that aspect of
life, is one of the worst cons that the people appealing to ignorance
have perpetrated against the people of America and the world.

Ilya Shambat.



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