Hedges' latest volley in his ongoing attempt to kick a movement when it is down, available here at Alternet.org, is entitled "Christian Right's Fear of Pleasure is Our Greatest Threat to Choice". In the piece, he writes:
The Christian right fears pleasure, especially sexual pleasure, which it sees as degrading, corrupting and tainted. For many, their own experiences with sex -- coupled with their descent into addictions and often sexual and domestic abuse before they found Christ -- have led them to build a movement that creates an external rigidity to cope with the chaos of human existence, a chaos that overwhelmed them. They do not trust their own urges, their capacity for self-restraint or judgment. The Christian right permits its followers to project evil outward, a convenient escape for people unable to face the darkness and the psychological torments within them.
The leaders of this movement understand that the only emotion that cannot be subsumed into communal life, which they seek to dominate and control, is love. They fear the power of love, especially when magnified and expressed through tender, sexual relationships, which remove couples from their control. Sex, when not a utilitarian form of procreation, is dangerous.
They seek to fashion a world where good and evil are clearly defined and upheld by the nation's judicial system. The battle against abortion is a battle to build a society where pleasure and freedom, where the capacity of the individual and especially women to make choices, and indeed even love itself, are banished. And this is why pro-life groups oppose contraception -- even for those who are married. The fight against abortion is the facade for a wider fight against the right of an individual in a democracy.
In order to be clear why I disagree so strongly with Hedges, we shall take each paragraph in its turn. By doing so, I think we shall also find that Hedges has not so much constructed an argument, as made certain assertions with no basis in evidence provided, that are not even remotely connected to one another.
First, as to the first paragraph:
The Christian right fears pleasure, especially sexual pleasure, which it sees as degrading, corrupting and tainted. For many, their own experiences with sex -- coupled with their descent into addictions and often sexual and domestic abuse before they found Christ -- have led them to build a movement that creates an external rigidity to cope with the chaos of human existence, a chaos that overwhelmed them. They do not trust their own urges, their capacity for self-restraint or judgment. The Christian right permits its followers to project evil outward, a convenient escape for people unable to face the darkness and the psychological torments within them.
This kind of armchair psychologizing, based on a skimming of a survey textbook for college freshmen, including certain unsourced and unverifiable assertions concerning the experiences and attitudes of others, is just horrid. How can Hedges possibly understand the drives and motives behind the actions of hundreds of thousands of people? I daresay that, from my own experience with this kind of thing, I can safely say that Hedges would be hard-pressed to give a coherent explanation of the psychology behind his own political viewpoints. To claim, as he does, that what is really behind the anti-abortion movement is result of massive fear and loathing due to bad sexual experiences, and his insulting idea that they so act because they are "unable to face the darkness and the psychological torments within them" is just plain awful. There are many things that are wrong the the pro-life movement; to reduce the entire thing to such nonsensical, pseudo-psychological mumbo-jumbo does nothing but make us liberals feel superior because we, apparently, can cope with the vicissitudes of life as it relates to our own awful and painful sexual histories.
Notice, by the way, that he provides no examples, offers no accounts, cites no psychological or other sources for the assertions he makes here. He just says, in effect, all these people have been hurt and are too afraid to cope with it, so rather than deal in a psychologically healthy fashion with their pain, they just call all sex evil. Because they are weak.
To the second paragraph:
The leaders of this movement understand that the only emotion that cannot be subsumed into communal life, which they seek to dominate and control, is love. They fear the power of love, especially when magnified and expressed through tender, sexual relationships, which remove couples from their control. Sex, when not a utilitarian form of procreation, is dangerous.
First of all, in the opening sentence he conflates, by implication, love and sex. The two are not the same. Second, societies draw all sorts of limits, limits that by definition "dominate and control", on what is and is not acceptable sexual behavior. The unstated implication is that such domination is, prima facie, wrong. The not-so-subtle shift from talking about "love" to talking about "sex", and making the claim that one is outside the ability of others to control, and the other is dangerous, creates a mishmash that makes no sense whatsoever. If love/sex can't be controlled, and if the leaders of the anti-choice movement recognize this, what in the world are they doing, and why is Hedges so worried about it? If the whole anti-pleasure thing is about control, why are those seeking such control attempting to control that which they understand is beyond social constraint?
Finally, the third paragraph:
They seek to fashion a world where good and evil are clearly defined and upheld by the nation's judicial system. The battle against abortion is a battle to build a society where pleasure and freedom, where the capacity of the individual and especially women to make choices, and indeed even love itself, are banished. And this is why pro-life groups oppose contraception -- even for those who are married. The fight against abortion is the facade for a wider fight against the right of an individual in a democracy.
Please note there is no relationship between the opening sentence, which I was always told was known as the "topic sentence" of a paragraph, and what follows. Again, it is mere assertion without any relationship with what follows. As another general comment, I find it a trifle unsettling that the intentions of an entire group are reduced to the ineffable, the psychological, and the unseen. Is it not enough that much of the anti-choice crowd provide ample evidence in public testimony and activity to criticize? Apparently, these folks are so awful, and transparent, that we can discern all sorts of nefarious things without batting an eyelid. At least Hedges can . . . Hedges moves close to the reality when he says this issue is "the capacity of . . . women to make choices". The issue has been, as should be clear from all the statements of those involved for decades, about women's rights. This is about women, not individuals in some abstract sense. Also, to reduce the anti-choice movement to a "facade" is to call in question the motives and intentions of millions of people, with whom I happen to disagree, reducing it all to psychological motives and anti-democratic power-plays. Isn't the anti-choice movement bad enough without seeing all sorts of things in it others don't or can't see? Isn't it enough that we take on issues in the public sphere that are public, and leave the undergraduate psychologizing for dorm-room bull-sessions?
Finally, there is absolutely nothing in the entire piece that warrants the notion that those on the right fear "pleasure". Besides that, such a claim is the kind of idiotic caricature I would think we were beyond. Apparently, Hedges is not. Again, he is wrong. He is wrong in his analysis. He is wrong in imputing motives and intentions without evidence. He is wrong in his inability to construct an argument. He is wrong in his ability to construct a paragraph. Writing the kind of thing Hedges writes here may make him, and those who nod their heads in agreement, superior to their more benighted fellow citizens, but it fails the test of serious analysis. We would do better to stick to the public record than try to see how scared and psychologically hamstrung are those on the opposite side of the political fence.
