Anvil Heads & Fundos

I was talking recently with some friends, all classic New York liberal Democratic Party loyalists, when one of them brought up Mumia Abu-Jamal. Now there was a name I hadn't heard, even from classic New York liberals, in a long time. I guess I thought he'd either been freed or executed by now, or at any rate no longer a hot liberal cause.

My friend went on to say how Mumia had been shafted by the FBI, who obviously had it out for him, just like they had with Martin Luther King and the Black Panthers.

Well sure, I said. The feds come down heavy all the time on political and social movements the government sees as threats. Just look at Waco and Ruby Ridge.

Well, you could have heard a Yes We Can pin drop. They sat there blinking while I went on to expound my theory that the real issue isn't whether you, as a good liberal or staunch conservative, agree with the politics of the group in question. Whether they're left-wing or right, Panthers or neo-Nazis, to me the real point is the violent way the government reacts to these grassroots, fringe, up-from-the-bottom political expressions.

And that was the end of that discussion. We moved on to a safer topic.

My friends are smart, savvy sophisticates living and working in one of the world's great metropolises, but when it comes to politics they can be as knee-jerk, head-bobbing and closed-minded as those awful right-wing Christians they abhor. They are, in fact, just as fundamentalist in their world-views as any Bible-quoting Christian. They accept the word of liberal ideology as Absolute Truth and divine revelation, exactly the way fundamentalist Christians read the Bible.

For a while I dated a girl I called Anvil Head. Not to her face. Once Anvil Head made up her mind about anything, no contravening facts could dent it. You could bang on that mind with the Ballpeen of Truth until you dropped from exhaustion, it wouldn't make any difference. Anvil Head had a fundamentalist faith in her correctness that rendered all discussion moot.

Because we hear all the time about Christian and Muslim fundamentalism, we think of it as a religious phenomenon. It is in fact an intellectual, social and political one. Or to be more precise, an anti-intellectual, antisocial and political one.

The Christians are hardly the only fundamentalists in our society. Rigid, mindlocked, sanctimonious fundamentalist groupthink has spread to all areas of our society, including those liberal humanists who used to advocate open-minded free-thinking.

If you have turned your political positions or social views into matters of faith, you're a fundamentalist. If you accept what your pundits or your preachers or any kind of gurus or authority figures tell you as unassailable Absolute Truth, you're a fundamentalist. If you cite the New York Times or Bill O'Reilly or "the scientific community" or "expert consensus" the way Christians cite the Bible, you're a fundamentalist. If you're a head-bobbing, knee-jerking groupthinker who has closed ranks with any political or social or religious or identity group and stopped thinking or questioning or doubting or listening, you're a fundamentalist. If you demonize and viciously attack any individual or group with opinions or beliefs different from your group's, you're a fundamentalist.

When you think about fundamentalism that way, it's obvious how widely and deeply it's taken hold in America. This country is lousy with Anvil Heads who have crossed the line from having deeply held political opinions or well-thought-out positions on social issues to become True Believers for whom politics or social issues are belief systems, matters of unquestioned and unshakable faith.

They're everywhere. PETA people are, obviously, furndamentalists. Their incredibly self-righteous zealotry about "kindness to animals" gives them all sorts of license to be unkind to people. They've forgotten that people are animals, too.

There are Global Warming fundos, people who don't just believe that Global Warming is happening, they believe in Global Warming, the same way certain evangelical Christians believe in Armageddon and the Rapture. It's an apocalyptic, millenarian religion for them. They cite scientific consensus to defend their faith in exactly the way Christians cite the Book of Revelations to defend theirs. They shut out contrary scientific analysis the same way Creationists shut out evolution. They know the Truth, they've already had the Truth handed down to them, they can quote you the Truth chapter and verse.

There are fundamentalist Democrats and fundamentalist Republicans, people for whom party affiliation is a secular religion. They don't merely think the leaders and members of the opposing party are terminally wrong-headed, they truly believe they're evil. And they believe the flipside, that the leaders of their own party are, by definition, righteous and good, no matter what they do. You know the kind of people I'm talking about. You may be one of them. Republicans for whom Bill Clinton's blowjobs were evil, but who blithely shrugged off the death and destruction George W. Bush sowed in the world. Democrats for whom the Bush administration was evil incarnate, but who passionately defended Clinton's unconscionable narcissism, his lying to their faces and his breezy destruction of the career and reputation of a young female employee for the sake of those blowjobs.

Why have fundamentalist attitudes swept the land of the American Sissy? For one thing, they absolve you of the terrible responsibility of having an original, critical or independent thought. Ever. All your thinking has been done for you by your authority figures and handed down to you as the Word. All you have to do is bob your head and jerk your knee. You never have to think about that issue again. It's been pre-thought for you. The American Sissy loves being handed a free pass to the No Think Zone. Thinking is hard. Believing is easier. In a culture that does such a lousy job training people in math, science, reading comprehension and general problem-solving, it's no wonder that thinking is devalued while rigid belief and mindlocked faith are on the rise.

Fundamentalism also appeals to Sissies because it offers an easy and readily accessible high horse to climb on, all saddled up and mad for a gallop. Americans love climbing up on their high horses and riding them around. Much of what passes for public discussion and debate in this culture is really just opposing sides competing in a race to the moral high ground.

Fundamentalists of all stripes use a smug, self-righteous assumption of moral superiority not because they're so secure in the knowledge of their own righteousness, but because they're so insecure about it. Their smugness, their slanders, are tactics for heading off any actual debate or discussion before it can happen. They don't want to have to debate, because to debate you have to think. They're not thinkers. Not-thinking is one of the perks of being True Believers.

To me, if you're a closed-minded fundo you're a fundo, regardless of which side of the political line you toe. Those conservatives who crowded the town hall meetings this summer to shout down ideas and opinions they'd pre-decided they didn't want to hear learned that trick from college students on "progressive" campuses around the country, who've been doing that for years to conservative speakers they didn't want to hear. Explain to me the difference.

Blind faith is the enemy of the free intellect. A culture that chooses belief over thought is a corrupt, decadent and ultimately enslaved one. Ubi dubium ibi libertas. Where there's doubt, there's liberty.

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