Nevertheless: People! Get a grip!

ProjectUSA-bashers continue to send us messages bashing ProjectUSA in response to our Sept 6 ezine and our Sept 12 ezine. Many request they be unsubscribed.

The ProjectUSA bashers bash me and ProjectUSA because, they claim, I bash President Bush by arguing, if there is to be a political bashing of President Bush for the federal response to the bashing Hurricane Katrina delivered on New Orleans, then the bashing should be about something bashworthy, like public corruption, rather than something unbashworthy, like guitar-playing while hurricanes rage.

At the risk of bashing an innocent word, the word "basher," in my view, has more than exceeded the maximum frequency with which it should occur in normal English-language conversation. It's real (informal) meaning, someone who engages in harsh, accusatory, or threatening criticism, has been replaced with "a person who makes any observation to which, for whatever reason, the listener objects regardless of its accuracy ."

For example, a week ago today, I received an email from Dan Stein, the president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, with the subject line: FW: FAIR Bashing Email from Craig Nelson. The subject line referred to a memo I'd written (which wasn't meant to go public, but has, so here) that was a factual account of some activity engaged in by Dan and another FAIR employee. The memo is, to the best of my knowledge, absolutely accurate, yet in the subject line, I ("NelsEn") am "bashing" the entire organization.

Taking valid criticism, or facing the truth, can be difficult for all humans, of course, but it is especially difficult for Americans because of our social condition. For many Americans, any criticism is "harsh," and, therefore, unless you do nothing but utter inanities and niceties, you're a basher.

One reason Americans have such difficulty with criticism is because we live in an egalitarian country. We pride ourselves on the equal opportunity we offer all citizens, and, in fact, we make prodigious efforts to ensure such equality. We all agree this is a Good Thing.

But there is an unpleasant and subtle consequence of this that is almost always overlooked.

When it is commonly believed in a society that any member of that society can "grow up to be president," members of the society become susceptible to the idea of the perfectibility of man. Since our horizons are limitless, in other words, from the point of view of our imaginations, there is no obstacle or natural barrier standing between us and, well, perfection—however we conceive that state.

In an aristocracy, or tyranny, on the other hand, in which all are circumscribed by the conditions of birth or place, the opportunity to achieve anything of which we can conceive is largely or completely absent.

We all agree that the absence of opportunity is a Bad Thing, but, it does take some of the pressure off, if you know what I mean. Without the impossible standard of perfection with which to compete, lives-of-quiet-desperation are suddenly relieved of a very big reason to feel desperate.

The result of living in a society suffused with the idea of the perfectibility of man, in which YOU know that everyone—your parents, your spouse, your children, your high school friends, your colleagues, even you—could be measuring you against an impossible standard, is that criticism becomes much bigger than a mere observation to be judged and accepted or rejected on its merits. It becomes a devastating accusation of failure; whether the criticism is accurate is secondary.

Let me give an example of how this works in real life. Everyone, I suppose, lies at times (except George W. Bush, let me hasten to add). I suppose even my mother, who is the most honest person alive (while extremely adept at sparing the feelings of others), has lied, though I can't imagine it.

Yet, in spite of lying being universal, how often have you been engaged in an argument with someone who responds to an accusation that something he's said is untrue, with the line, "Are you calling me a liar?" Maddening, isn't it? He transforms your claim that a single statement of his is untrue into a grand universal condemnation of his very worth as a human being.

If you have someone like this in your life, you know how damaging such unhealthy universalizing can be to the relationship—how impossible it is to communicate about important matters with such a person.

This is why it is so important to remember that the only consideration concerning criticism that matters, assuming the motives are honest, is: Is it accurate?

If we are to have healthy human relationships, whether within our families, our country, our political parties, our movement, or our friendships and business dealings, we must be able to criticize openly and honestly—even harshly bash—without being automatically bashed as a basher.

To all you Republicans who are so incensed at the thought of someone damaging your party, who are filling my inbox with profanity and vitriol, who've been demanding we remove your email address until we get back to the immigration issue, who believe, apparently, that it's the critic who hurts, and not the actions of the critic's target, read this lovely piece from the Latin America section of Bloomberg News, and then write me and explain to me how it's ProjectUSA who is hurting the GOP, not Ed Gillespie, a frequent subject of our bashing, or the loathesome Dick Armey, who deserves to be.

When I first got to Washington, I was attending a weekly lunch, all Republicans, but was politely asked not to continue attending because of my criticisms of certain Republicans. When I objected that it was unhealthy for a party, and an obstacle to productive debate, to place certain people above criticism, the response was, well, but that's how Washington works.

How sad and cowardly and weak we are if that is how our capital city works!

My paternal grandfather used to tell me, if you're going to tell a lie, make it so big everyone knows it's a lie. In other words, tell lies like the one I told about my experiences in Non-profit School in the first paragraph of this ezine.

What would my grandfather think about his country if he were alive today? What would he think of a country in which the truth is punished explicitly?

What would he think of a country in which the legal profession, the guardian of our sovereignty, has become an industry in which the stars are those who can most cleverly violate the spirit of the law while remaining within the letter of it?

What would he think of a country in which politicians (Chris Cannon and John McCain, both Republicans, have been doing it for years) can lie with impunity: I do not support amnesty for illegal aliens. And, for years, not a single American newspaper will call them on their lies?

What would my grandfather think of a country in which a little non-profit can turn over hard evidence of the corruption of a U.S. Congressman to federal law enforcement authorities and be told that, because he's a sitting Congressman, there would be no action unless the newspapers started to run with it; and then be told by the newspapers that there is no story unless there's an indictment by federal authorities, because, you know, that's just the way Washington works!

What would he think of all that, I wonder?