In an early episode of The Simpsons titled The Way We Was, Artie Ziff and Homer debate the merits of reducing the speed limit to 50 miles per hour. Before Homer can get to the crux of his argument, which is literally “NO WAY”, he interrupts Artie with a realization:
“Wait a minute. That word you keep calling me—”
“Ignoramus?”
“It means I’m stupid, doesn’t it?!”
“There’s a difference between ignorance and stupidity.”
“Not to ME there isn’t!”
Not to beat the humor out of it, but I love this joke because by his incredulity Homer proves himself to be both. Of course at the end of the day, Homer is still our guy. His delightful simplicity is his charm. He’s us at our worst and we forgive both him and ourselves by loving him. But Homer is the exception. In real life the stakes are too high for that mixture of confident ignorance to be so endearing.
Over the last year I’ve heard a few residents confidently throw around the word “ideological” as though it were some sort of thought-terminating epithet. Typically, someone who is “listening to everyone”—in labeling someone as “ideological”—gives themself permission not to engage with an argument, but to dismiss it outright while still posing as neutral. So what does it really mean to be “ideological” in Culver City?
Someone who is described as ideological is coded to be unreasonable or unserious because their beliefs are based, not in the easily discernible reality that we all live in, but in a fantasy world where something different might be possible. The telling implication is that by identifying ideology, you can transcend it. This is funny to me. What’s arrogantly wielded as a clever “gotcha” reveals, much like our sweet Homer, that the accusations are not only themselves deeply ideological but predictably oblivious.
I don’t know who told it first but I know David Foster Wallace told it once, of two fish swimming along when a passerby asks “How’s the water?” and after swimming for some time the two fish turn to each other and ask “What the hell is water?” The point being that sometimes we’re so immersed in the apparent nature of things that without conscious effort, we can’t conceive beyond our experience. In their 1988 book, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky define the function of liberalism in US corporate media. Contrary to other openly authoritarian societies, in order to succeed under capitalism as a talking head, a beltway editor or perhaps a member of the US Press Corp, you must be internally incapable of questioning what water is. Journalists function without coercion as self-filtering, apolitical, “non-ideological” stenographers of the state, in effect reinforcing the current dominant ideological perspective. Those of us who consume this type of corporate funded news tend to identify as educated and liberal and therefore exist naturally within its confines. There are exceptions of course but forgive me for summarizing 400-some pages in three sentences.
This is not to say there is no value in identifying ideology. If a person is some brand of religious fundamentalist, you can safely assume certain topics won’t be productive. Though they may well be entertaining. The task is not to escape ideology, which according to Zizek is impossible, but to clearly articulate and defend it. What do you believe and why? This is really the task of any thinking person.
When I was in my early twenties I stumbled onto Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. This was the first time anyone encouraged me to ask myself what water was. At the time I had grown up in Florida in a conservative Christian environment and in the context of 9/11 and the War in Iraq. I was very confident and very naive. But at least I was curious! Ever since then I have been constantly reevaluating my beliefs and testing them against experience, data and my ideals. I trust in my beliefs and opinions now insofar as they’re based on academic analysis, evaluated against the opposition and grounded in my sincere desire to help those who have the least. Always, of course, willing to change based on new information. So, if my preference for protecting renters’ rights over landlords’ profits, my desire to build housing in Culver City to help solve homelessness, my excitement to re-imagine transportation in order to stave off climate change and protect our health, my unwillingness to spend even more of the city budget for more police gadgets when we have 25 minute headways between buses, if that makes me “ideological” then you can see why I view the opposition as functionally conservative. When you benefit blindly from the status quo, the limits of your tolerance, even as a self-identified liberal, will have zero impact on the economic forces that drive inequality.
Here we find the split in the modern Democratic party, both nationally and locally. Club President Jeff Schwartz has already eloquently described this process in his July message. Locally, we have the newly formed Culver City Democrats United, a group which states “CCDU rejects the politics of faction and exclusion that would seek control of the Democratic “brand” for a limited clique or constrained ideological orthodoxy.” An unsubtle dig and admission of their animosity towards our club members. Again, I find this funny because the reality is the exact opposite of their interpretation. These “United Democrats” are simply a group of disgruntled landlords, corporate lawyers and other well-off residents who want to constrain the ideological limits of Culver City within their personal preferences. They use their wealth and resources to cry and shriek until they get their way, as they always have. No one is excluded from The Culver City Democratic Club. Rent control and other issues this club supports are broadly popular, but the group who defected failed to persuade the majority of our members with their views on these issues, embarrassingly I must say, and so they sulked off and now hide their fundamentally conservative neoliberal ideology under the guise of unity. It’s true they are united in a sense. United among themselves against the interests of the poor and working people of Culver City. That’s their prerogative, but it doesn’t come from any place of enlightenment.
Obfuscation abounds in our local elections with council candidates spouting platitudes, vacuous rhetoric and what I call vibes-based political messaging. Calling progressive candidates names like “ideological” is just a part of this strategy. But the differences between candidates and clubs come down to actual policy and a vision for the future. That’s where the lines are drawn. I’m grateful to be in the club that sided with ending slavery in California and that supports housing and protecting the most vulnerable in our community. I’m proud of the club’s support for improvements to dignity in State prisons and our opposition to attempts to repeal rent control. Every month we come together meaningfully with great programs and guests to talk about how we can make Culver City a better place for EVERYONE to live, not just the rich and powerful. Say what you want, but that’s my ideology.