Sorry: I normally try to keep Random Observations more of a news-channel-like format. But lately, I'm going to be putting a little more of myself out there. Forgive me, and feel free to move on if this offends...

I'm trying to understand liberals. Some, I feel do understand -- they're like me not so long ago: earnest yet ignorant of some critical information. I was never quite a card-carrying Democrat, but I was raised by one, so had a lot of those ideas floating around. For example, I supported the idea of a minimum wage until just this year.

So I can understand supporting wrong-headed policies. In my case, I didn't realize how strong the evidence was that the minimum wage caused unemployment. Once I was exposed to that, I changed my mind: After all, my goal is to make sure people who want jobs can get them. I used to think we could just make society better by raising the minimum wage, but then I realized you'd have to pay for that by taking away jobs from many other poor people, and decided the tradeoff wasn't worth it.

But then there are some people who just blow my mind. Their mental processes are totally alien. It is these people I most want to understand: to get why they tick, to stand in their shoes for a second (though not commit their crimes).

For example, I posted a piece about Tim Robbins' play, "Embedded". The article explained that Tim's play portrays our soliders as theives and deliberate killers of innocent women and children, and implies reporters were (and still are) part of a giant conspiracy to lie and distort what happened to the American public.

The article also quotes a number of reporters who say no such thing ever happened, and points out the absurdity of the allegation.

By my way of thinking, if I agreed with Tim Robbins' point of view, after reading such an article, I'd have two options: (1) Change my mind, or (2) Maintain I was still right, but try to find a problem with the evidence in the article, or produce some more evidence to support my position.

So it just blew my mind when the first comment was from some lady who posted:

Hurrah Tim Robbins for having the guts to do this play!! I can hardly wait to see it!!

Truth? Unimportant. Evidence? Pay no attention to that.

I assume either she knows some really good evidence that I'm wrong, and isn't going to bother to share it with me, or she's just ... just a person who doesn't actually care what's real or not, and thinks living in reality is somewhat secondary to partisan political considerations.

Now let's talk about the hating.

I'm fixated on the hating, I know.

It's cause I feel like I'm living in the third reich, or the racist south. I saw bigotry on the face of a friend of mine when I was growing up (it shocked me), and I see that same thing animate certain friends when they talk about George Bush, and "right-wingers" in general. It's a dangerous, dangerous disease. And damnably hard to cure.

So what's with the hating?

I've already rejected the notion it's based on any kind of political principle. There's numerous evidence for that here and elsewhere, so I think we can move on from that idea.

I'm playing with a couple of ideas. One is that people are indeed religious animals, and when we reject a religion, like Christianity, we need to find something else to fit that place.

For example, in a speech before the Commonwealth Club, Michael Crichton observed, about environmentalism:

I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can't be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people---the best people, the most enlightened people---do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.

There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.

Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know.

In particular, I think we need a way to deal with the problem of evil. Christianity believes (a) every person has a tendancy towards evil, and (b) there is a "devil", also, who originates much of the needless suffering in the world.

As secular human beings, we reject those two ideas. For one, we know we aren't really evil -- we're good! But there's still a lot of evil in the world, so where's it coming from? Lacking a supernatural devil, and knowing we certainly aren't the source of evil, we must localize it in another set of people: them. In the political realm, this means conservatives. And, in particular, their leader, the "arch-" conservative. The empitome of all that is evil. The diabolical hub.

So in talking about these people, we treat them like Christians view the devil: Cunning, deceitful, the source of all that is foul in the world. A puller of strings behind the scenes. If something goes wrong, it's the devil's fault!* Did we lose an election? It can't be our fault, the devil must have engineered it! Is there disease somewhere? It's the devil's fault! Do people in the world hate us? Blame the devil -- George Bush! Is there poverty in the world? Blame the devil! (Capitalism and capitalists)

Christianity preaches that all have sinned, and there's nothing any can do to become righteous, except accept God's forgiveness, though Jesus' death, via faith. "Salvation by faith." Rejecting this idea, we believe in "salvation by works" -- by saying or doing the right things, we can be one of the "good guys" and bring about "heaven". And of course, those "good works" consist of actions to improve society. Or -- being lazy or busy -- at least supporting policies which will improve society.

The Democratic party line, usually.

The other idea I've been toying with (it may be the same idea, for all I know) is that hatred helps us feel righteous when we're insecure our own position. We we hate a person, we judge, morally. We're sitting in the judge's seat, passing the verdict.

And man, does it feel righteous to wear those robes and bang that gavel! When we pass the verdict: "They're GUILTY!!" We're also saying: "We are RIGHTEOUS!" It's that old trick of putting another down, just to show how up we really are, in comparison.

Perhaps this explains why liberals often caricature conservatives as being judgemental. I've been playing with this idea of projection lately, that we think other people are like we are. When a conservative stands up and says this or that behavior is wrong or harmful it is -- or certainly should be! -- with sympathy, since we're all "sinners", and, to quote another theological saying, "there but for the grace of God go I." We ought to emphathize with weakness and "sin" in others, those of us who have confronted it within ourselves.

But perhaps the reason some liberals feel judged is that they themselves cannot picture leveling a similarly important charge without being judgemental to the soul inside. After all, look at the terms in which they speak of their arch-nemises: Rove, Bush, Regean, Gingrich. So they assume that conservatives must hate or look down on them with the same vigor they do conversely.

And sometimes, undoubtedly, they're right.

To our shame.