Everything is Hitler, but MLK Will Save Us!

Look out! Everything is Hitler!

Congress and Obama want to team up and look at Health Care Reform... Hitler! Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly spout nonsensical crap on tv, and some people agree with them... Hitler! Michael Moore... Hitler!Remember how George Bush went and bombed two countries when well over the basic majority of us wanted it to happen, because we were generally scared and grossly uninformed about U.S. foreign policy...? Hitler! The vast Right Wing conspiracy won't let gay people get married... Hitler! The vast Left Wing conspiracy wants to force children to be educated about gay people... Hitler! The Left wants to expand government... Hitler! The Right wants to turn the government into a shadowy cabal... Hitler! The Ten Commandments are in the court houses... Hitler! They won't let me say the word "God" in the pledge of allegiance... Hitler!

Al Franken is a fucking Congressman... Hitler!

Or is it Hitler? Is it just me, or is framing every relatively benign domestic political disagreement in the context of a life or death struggle against a homicidal autocrat from the early twentieth century a bit extreme? Perhaps I am suffering from an advanced case of acute mental facility; but comparing the current institutional processing of mainstream political issues to combating the unfathomable actions of a man responsible for transforming the Wiemar Republic into a maniacally efficient, anti-semitic-meat-grinder seems, well, just a little off base. Perhaps I'm not getting it, but there seems to be a slight difference between cutting a bit from medicare to subsidize the potential for a national health care system and throwing people into an oven because their last name is Goldstein. Such decisions (Medicare cuts that is) are certainly tough and worthy of passionate debate, but is it true that all difficult decisions are analogous to preventing the Holocaust?

Is Uncle Sam really trying to pull the plug on Grandma? On all Grandmas? All at once? As a Final Solution?

Perhaps so, but there is hope. Apparently, MLK will save us!

I can't cite too many examples from mass media (I don't own a tv), but amongst the liberal intelligentsia, the LGBT community, and San Franciscans in general, the Civil Rights movement comparisons seem to pop up like Mellisa Rivers at a red carpet event -- often, awkwardly, and as a token gesture which underscores the moment's genuine lack of intrinsic relevance.

I'm sorry, perhaps I don't get it, but there seems to be a slight difference between leading people from the shackles of institutional slavery and attempting to gain the legal right to enter the shackles of marriage. I voted against Prop 8 and all, but it appears to me that attempting a quickie legal normalization when you are in fact not normal, in any sense of the word, differs slightly from the enterprises of an oratory genius who, with enough will and intelligence, was able to guide masses of people from the fears of lynching and false incarceration. Is it just me, or is there a slight problem with trying to invoke the spirit of such people when your "struggle" has nothing to do with them in scope, intensity, or proximity?

While there are many nut jobs on either side of the political spectrum hocking poorly conceived ideas (ideas which, if carried out to their extremes, would cause a lot of problems), are these problems ever going to materialize unless we ask them to? Is voting in favor of gay marriage the same as asking for your neighbor's son to get molested by an ostensibly straight priest? Is condoning the presence or non-presence of some religious artifact in a court house the same as asking the Federal Government to create internment camps for it's current political scapegoat, whether they be Christian, Atheist -- or whatever the hell else people do/don't believe in these days?

Violence against gays certainly is a real problem. But, while there are many gay people who are physically abused, harassed, even killed year in and year out, are there not also people who endure the same treatment from violent, ignorant thugs for a host of ridiculous reasons -- and are these events combined anywhere close to the scale and scope of the problems Dr. King and his comrades addressed?

Is this not the fundamental problem with mainstream politics: That we pretend to fight the struggle of our lives against every single issue when the vast majority of actual day to day governance involves things so boring that I can barely begin to think of describing them without falling asleep?

Is this not the fundamental problem with the gay rights movement: That people are willing to invoke MLK and the 1960's as the spirit of their struggle while they leave the fruits of Harvey Milk and the fate of the present to the providence of Mickey Mouse?

The gist of all this, among many potential tangents: Frame your "struggle" appropriately people.

Not only does the above mentioned hyperbole damage your cause by confusing the hell out of people and whipping up a froth, it prevents you from accurately addressing the actual issues at hand. Don't glorify your fight by pretending to battle Hitler. Don't glorify your struggle by asking "What would MLK do?" or in any way comparing your "struggle" to his. You're opposition isn't Hitler. You're leader isn't MLK -- or even Harvey Milk. You're struggle evokes nothing remotely analogous to what Hitler posed or what MLK solved in light of the human soul. The more you speak as if it does, the more you convince me that you're "struggle" is as imagined as your attachment to these notably powerful, notably dead people.



I will publish the second part of last week's post on Negativity later on this week... stay tuned.

Thanks for reading.