Tackle's diary sums up how many liberals feel about Bushco apostate Matthew Dowd and the 11th hour moral awakening that has led him to conclude that Bush's policies and behavior are harmful, and that Bush himself is "not the person I thought.” It’s particularly galling to us how Dowd had his awakening only after enduring significant personal misfortune, including having his son deployed to Iraq.
As Digby pointed out in January, one of the hallmarks of modern conservativism is an empathy deficit. He wrote:
So Dan "Scumbag" Burton broke with his party and voted for the Democratic bill calling for the government to be able to negotiate drug prices for people on Medicare. Very compassionate of him.
He did this because his wife died of breast cancer a few years ago after a long illness and he was personally exposed to the way the medical system works for average people when he would sit with his wife at the cancer center and listen to what the cancer patients said. Because his family was going through a medical crisis he understood why it was so stressful for people to be unable to afford prescriptions under such circumstances.
This is a big problem with Republicans. They reflexively object to any government program until they are confronted personally with a situation that requires such intervention. They have no empathy for people in the abstract, always assuming that whomever is saying they are in need is a whining malcontent who could be just as healthy and self-sufficient as they are if they truly tried.
Until something happens to them or someone they love, that is, at which point they are converted.
I think this is one of the defining aspects of conservatism. They have a stunted sense of empathy and an undeveloped ability to understand abstract concepts. It makes them unable to fashion any solutions to common problems, which they blame on "poor character" because they cannot visualize themselves ever being in a vulnerable or unlucky position through no fault of their own. Until it happens to them or someone they know, in which case they never question their philosophy as a whole but merely apply a special exemption to whichever particular problem or risk to which they have personally been exposed."
Whether it's Dowd, or Burton, or Nancy "Marie Antoinette" Reagan's support for stem cell research in the wake of her husband's Alzheimer's Disease, or even Lila Lipscomb, the "conservative Democrat" featured in Fahrenheit 911 who "always hated the [antiwar] protesters" and only turned antiwar herself after her soldier-son's death in Iraq...a "stunted sense of empathy" does seem to sum up the conservative mindset.
It has been noted by George Lakoff and others that conservatism is an ideology grounded in fear, and that conservative regimes such as Bush's must promulgate that fear to take, and remain in, power. Fear causes conservatives to do many things that are harmful to both themselves and to society, like self-segregate into isolated suburbs, adopt prejudicial and selfish attitudes, vote for leaders who project a facade of strength and certainty, and think uncritically about politics and life in general. Many conservatives are wonderful people who have been victimized in their own way by our shallow, commercialized culture, and the correct response to them is, as I write in The Lifelong Activist, compassion and empathy - not just because compassion and empathy are core progressive values, but also because they are your main tools for influencing someone's views.
Regardless of his past actions, Matthew Dowd's public disavowal of Bush is unquestionably heroic. It takes guts at any time to take a public stand against your tribe - especially a tribe as savage and immoral as the modern Republicans. He knows he's in for a bad time - knows full well what his former friends and colleagues are capable of doing to him - but has chosen, probably at great economic and other risk, to take a public and principled stand when he could have simply gone on to a quiet and lucrative retirement as a lobbyist or other Beltway hanger-on. For that, he deserves respect and support.
Moreover, he is now in a position to do tremendous good. To see how, look at the example of David Brock, who spent the 80s and 90s working as a well-paid pseudojournalistic attack dog for the Far Right. (He was one of Anita Hill's and the Clintons' main persecutors.) A few years ago, he had an awakening of conscience perhaps similar to Dowd's and in 2002 wrote Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative, a mea culpa that names the names of the guilty and lays bare, more than any other work I’ve seen, the pathological and depraved soul of modern American conservatism. (I recommend that all progressives read it to more fully comprehend the nature of the opposition.) He then founded MediaMatters for America, which does a phenomenal job of exposing and combating right-wing bias and right-wing hate in the media.
There is nothing more threatening to a totalitarian regime than an apostate, which is probably why the Right continues to vilify Brock with extreme venom. My guess, however, is that he sleeps better now than he ever did as a member of the inner circle. And while Matthew Dowd is no doubt in for his own hard times, he is also in a position to do great good (and already has) and will no doubt also one day sleep better. In his New York Times interview, he says, “I do feel a calling of trying to re-establish a level of gentleness in the world.” Let's all do what we can to support him.
Crossposted at www.lifelongactivist.com. SusanG's review of The Lifelong Activist can be found here.