James Dobson, rightwing founder of the rightwing ministry Focus On The Family, is writing fiction. He’s writing a trilogy about a dystopian America torn by culture wars, parents criticized for having too many children, wars on parenthood and marriage and families and religion, old people encouraged to commit suicide, too many women rejecting marriage, a rejection against raising children, etc etc. The books are “Fatherless”, “Childless”, and “Godless”.
And he is positive that his nightmare
vision is on its way to becoming true. He thinks that the real America is
already “enemy-occupied territory”, and he insists that his vision is destined
to happen in the real world because of unavoidable demographics. He claims he
is researching his vision to make sure it’s all perfectly accurate.
And of course he has pinpointed the
villains in his tale of horror. He has been screeching that electing Obama and
the liberals would lead to losing our freedoms, the destruction of marriage,
banning all guns, mandatory homosexual indoctrination, porn on prime-time TV,
bonuses for gay soldiers, terror attacks in the U.S. and Israel, Russia’s
reconquest of Eastern Europe, stopping health care for everyone over 80,
economic depression, and infanticide. He predicted that the Democrats would
shut down the Boy Scouts and home schooling and Christian schools and Rush
Limbaugh. Amazingly, his predictions were off-target.
Essentially his theme is that if people
don’t live the way he approves, America will turn into some sort of apocalyptic
nightmare.
But the obvious punch line is that if
America were to live Dobson’s way, we would descend into a deeper nightmare
than Big Bad Obama could ever inflict upon us.
Dobson thinks America reached its peak
during the era of Bush – rightwing extremists in charge of every part of
government, messianic insanity in foreign policy, the systemic economic
destruction of the middle class, illegal wiretaps and detention and torture, an
endless series of crimes and follies – but he wants to go even further.
In Dobson’ utopia, women would stay
home with the kids because the Bible says so; there would be no abortion or
divorce.
In Dobson’s world, homosexuality is a
dangerous form of predatory insanity that threatens our health and our
children, a greater threat than terrorism. Dobson sees code words for evil when
he hears “tolerance” and “diversity” and even “Spongebob”. In his utopia gays
would never have full rights, never marry, never raise children.
In Dobson’s world, children would be
forced to submit to authority at all times and be submitted to corporal
punishment when they don’t, and to be “required” to stop crying. Our schools
would be religious with prayer groups but no sex ed or scary ideas like evolution
(or, God forbid, global warming).
In Dobson’s world, policy would be
driven by the Bible, on everything from abortion to gays to stem-cell research
to education to science to evolution to book banning to contraception. In
Dobson’s world, the current GOP isn’t extreme enough, and judges who oppose his
views are committing “tyranny”. In his world there would be no porn, no
gambling, no sex before marriage. And he is adept at getting what he wants:
Dobson helped Bush to cheat his way into winning Florida in 2000 and Ohio in
2004.
Dobson’s world would embrace everything
that was wrong with America a century ago: blacks could be killed for fun,
women were property, Mexicans were invisible, gays were criminals, the air and
water and food were unsafe, workers were half-slaves in dangerous workplaces,
and the rich could turn the world upside down with an economic panic with no
warning.
Dobson is, of course, not the only
rightwing loon to try to enrich our lives with their nightmarish fictional
views of the world. Ayn Rand wrote novels proclaiming the evils of charity and
the glories of capitalism so unrestrained that it bordered on anarchy,
worshipping rich industrialists above all.
The editorial brains of the Washington
Times wrote fiction in which America’s liberals were working hand in glove with
America’s enemies. The Turner Diaries describe a utopia in which the white
folks rise up, take over the government (as though they weren’t running it
already) and kill all the undesirables, with an emphasis on Jews, gays, and
anyone with brown skin (Timothy McVeigh was a fan of the Diaries). Glenn Beck
wrote a laughably bad novel about evil liberal conspirators who leave America
vulnerable to attack. Of course the wingnuts also write vast amount of
“non-fiction” diatribes, Beck and Anne Coulter publishing 22 books between
them. Occasionally conservative “art” is realized onscreen: in addition to the
faux documentaries like “2016: Obama’s America”, your cineplexes will sometimes
see “OMG they’re coming to take your guns!” in “Red Dawn” and “OMG abortions
everywhere!” in “Listen To Me”.
But there are sound reasons why
conservatives can’t cut it in the world of art. They are resistant to many of
the foundations of creativity: imagination, contemplation, original thought,
the facts that underlie real-world problems, and the logic that must underpin
plot construction. And empathy for the human spirit, and sympathy for the
outsiders and anti-heroes who drive most stories, and sheer brainpower. It’s no
accident that conservatives are few and far between in the world of art. The
conservative movement mostly consists of people are (a) profoundly ignorant, or
(b) frighten the profoundly ignorant with lies for profit or political gain, or
(c) just make art for the paycheck. This is not the stuff of which great art is
made. Historically the only time conservatives have helped art is by (a)
writing checks to artists and then getting out of their way, which in itself
can be limiting to artists (there is a good reason why a lot of the paintings
by the Dutch masters depict bankers and businessmen), or (b) doing things so
appalling and evil that they inspire artists to incite rebellion and tell tales
of hope, or (c) telling tales of hate and fear, which ceases to be effective
when their warnings of the terror to come…never come true.
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