The Search for Heroes and Villains

[cali]

11. Just read the author's responses to comments: Nancy Letourneau is a piece of .... work

to be kind about it. More accurately, she's full of right wing talking points.

She conflates unions, schools and non-profits with corporations. She conflates Cornel West with Alex Jones. And more:

I'm skeptical of the comparison you're making here. When conservatives blame Muslims for the world's woes, they're making a culturally essentialist argument about Islam (and Muslims) to the effect that Islam is uniquely violent, uncivilized and generally hostile to anything not Islamic (which is not borne out by history, as you know). It's rooted in conservatives' view of a cultural and (sometimes) ethnic/racial hierarchy, and it's something that's more sinister than liberals' arguments about corporations, which are structural in nature. Liberals and other leftists are pointing out that certain institutions and social structures (and those who control them) acquire, concentrate, and exert power often to the detriment of those who are not similarly advantaged. To me, that's very different.
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Nancy LeTourneauMay 25, 2015 at 7:39 PM

You are right that they are very different kinds of villains. I purposefully didn't go there because I was trying to get to the underlying need we seem to have to identify a villain.
Nancy LeTourneauMay 25, 2015 at 8:14 PM

Thanks for this comment - it made me think.

What I'm thinking is that there are lots of different institutions that have power over a certain group of people. And some of them do evil things. We're learning a lot lately about how that happens in police departments. But it also happens in some churches, schools, unions, nonprofits, etc. [/


Context is so important here. We can accept that people and groups are complicated while at the same time, in a particular context, emphasize what a particular person or institution is doing. So when we say that wealthy people and corporations exert outsized influence on our political system and can rig the game, so to speak, in their favor, it's not demonizing. It's pointing out responsibility in the context of the conversation we're having about power in American society and how it is allocated.
Nancy LeTourneauMay 25, 2015 at 8:47 PM

So when we say that wealthy people and corporations exert outsized influence on our political system and can rig the game, so to speak, in their favor, it's not demonizing.

That's not what I'm talking about when I refer to demonizing. I actually don't think corporations "rig the game" to the extend that some folks do. But I'd totally agree with the idea that they exert outsized influence.

Perhaps I'd have to go back and pull some quotes from things I've read lately that demonstrate what I mean by demonizing. Here's one example:

Every president needs to deal with the permanent government of the country, and the permanent government of the country is Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats. The question becomes, what is the relationship between that president and Wall Street. - Cornell West

Bernie Sanders tweeted a poster of this. It stirred up quite a reaction on my timeline.
Nancy LeTourneauMay 25, 2015 at 8:55 PM

I know people don't like these kinds of comparisons, but I don't find all that much difference between Cornell West's statement and the conspiracy theories of people like Alex Jones. And yet an awful lot of liberals buy it. Why is it so appealing to have a villain to blame?