Beliefs and Belonging

It can be quite maddening to observe the health care debate going on in this country. Twisted, false notions seem to have lives of their own, resisting clearly expressed debunking. You're going to lose your insurance, the government will tell you what doctor to go to, you will have to wait for months to see a doctor, this is socialized medicine, and (worst) the government is going to kill grandma (using death panels) in order to save money. I'd like to focus on the last-mentioned falsehood.

Over and over again, people in the media (not just liberals, but mainstream journalists as well) have laid to rest this rumor (or so I would have thought) by revealing its source: a provision in the proposed legislation that provides government reimbursement of physicians who give end-of-life counseling to their clients (including giving information about living wills, almost universally endorsed and promoted in the past by politicians of both major parties). Now we have Glenn Beck continuing to rant about this false rumor as if it were still true, while politicians like Sarah Palin and Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley tweet and speak about death panels and "killing grandma" when they obviously know better. And ordinary (I resist using the designation "normal") citizens continue to shout at politicians in town hall meetings with this ridiculous accusation. What's going on?

There is a doughnut shop across the street from the Starbucks I'm currently sitting at. Many of the times that I go in there, I see several generally elderly people, mostly men, sitting around and loudly discussing politics. Only what they might call "discussing politics" is, to me, just verbally regurgitating what right-wing "information" they heard from their idols on TV and radio. As a matter of fact, one common lead-in to a statement is "I heard Rush say the other day..." These folks obviously relish each other's company and enjoy the ritual of going down there, swilling the java, chomping on the rings, and spewing out the dogma. One of the unwritten rules there though, is that contradictory input from anyone of a different political viewpoint is not welcome. So if you want to play with them (i.e. be liked and socially accepted by them), you need to either express agreement with whatever outlandish opinions they express, find SOMETHING they say to agree with, or keep your mouth shut!

I know what I'm talking about when I say that many people view expressing a belief (or a disbelief) as a matter of belonging and being accepted within a social group much more than as a matter of expressing an honest, personally-arrived-at assessment. I think a lot of this originates from the fact that most people come from religious backgrounds and most of them still practice a form of organized religion. Within just about any religion I can think of, there are certain propositions that, on the surface, are preposterous, but which the religion's adherents still openly express belief in. If you have lived your whole life from childhood expressing preposterous viewpoints that you personally find yourself intellectually rebelling against but still are expressing because you feel compelled to do so in order to be accepted in that religious group, then it will probably carry over into other areas of your life. Including politics.

Folks like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity offer to many people a cozy, easy access to our political system and the news, with ready-to-go analysis that appeals to them and provides a sense of belonging within a political movement. The term "dittohead" (referring to the commonly-found Limbaugh fan who always agrees with him) applies here. For although even I myself occasionally "ditto" some things that ol' Rush says, I still take each thing he says and filter it through my perception of what is reasonable or not. A "dittohead", on the other hand, uses a different process. (S)he first decides to belong to Rush's "family" and THEN absorbs everything he says as gospel truth. Just as the member of a religion would sit there and absorb everything their clergy would say to them as truth. Beck and Hannity fans commonly do this as well. (To be fair, I think quite a few liberals do this sort of thing with MSNBC's Ed Schultz, Keith Olberman, and Rachel Maddow, too.)

So hearing someone expressing a belief about something is a little more complicated than simply attributing it to their actual feelings. For many, expressing certain opinions, even if they are patently false, is a vital part of a social compact that they have made in a personal desire to belong to and be accepted by a particular group, be it religious, political, or just social. To this betrayal of people's rational thought processes, I say pass the doughnuts and shut your mouth!