So, I'm listening to some podcasts, catching up from the week, Peter B Collins had Jeff Cohen and Norm Solomon (spelling?) and they were talking about how we say that Democrats start left and move toward the center, while what really happens is that people view an evershifting center that is actually moving away from their interests.  So the Democrats start progressive and start moving corporatist, while there are any number of people that have already bought in to the idea that what the corporations do is in their best interest.  The reality is that the corporations are moving against their own interests.

I have participated for the last 10 years online, and been called an obviously “self-loathing” gay man over and over because when the bigots start spewing their idiocy, I swing back.  Hey, maybe it's the Marine in me, but I don't take kindly to people insulting me.  Maybe it's the teacher in me, but nothing drives me crazier than deliberately ignorant buttheads telling me that they're better than me because they're straight, regardless of their lack of other values, including Christian charity (despite claiming the Christian mantle for themselves). 

So the “self-loathing” thing comes out, again and again, whenever the lackwits try to stand up to the “intellectual elite” who shouldn't be letting them know that they're idiots, or something, I guess.  I think now that there can be an answer–who is more self-loathing?  The person who is gay and insists that they should have civil rights or the person who is going to vote for the people that have their own interests over the public's in mind?  Who is more self-loathing?  The person that thinks that they, as The People, through themselves, as The Government, should insist that everyone is treated fairly or the person, as The Corporation, that insists on taking advantage of others and then hides behind caveat emptor?

This is the center-ground of the culture war, as I see it.  Do we get to question other people's self-loathing and self-destructive beliefs?  Who is self-loathing?  The people that insist that they should control other people or the people that are yearning to be free and are willing to fight off the shackles that attempt to bind them to where they are?

I think I'm going to be thinking a bit more about this over the next couple months as we continue through the electoral process.