The sweeping sound bite right now is that if you are on the Left, and you are thinking about someone on the Right, if that person on the Right believes in God, then the person on the Left thinks the person on the Right is an idiot.

Such talk is a staple on the Radio Right and a common theme for Bill O'Reilly. There's direct, viewable evidence, too, including former Sen. Alan Simpson going off on Bill Maher for speaking with an implied sneer of dismissive stupidity when discussing the Christian Right. Maher was polite, apologetic and seemed genuinely stunned by Simpson's intensity.

If Maher and others of his ilk want lessons on how to cut through all this, I have a simple prescription -- meet my ex-wife.

By unfortunate circumstance, I hold a PhD in aggressive psychological defense mechanisms, and the current themes in the Republican stay-on-message machine eerily match my ex.

Here's the way it went.

-- It's not what I say, it's how I'm saying it.

-- It's not what we're fighting over, it's about the way I'm fighting.

-- I did not know what was expected, but I will know that I didn't do it.

-- And I can always expect a spirited reaction to a charge I never leveled.

These factors can happen in sequence or in combination, so the mental juggling works out it two ways ("manifests" in psychobabble):

-- Unusual levels of personal intensity to make everyone else walk on eggshells.

-- A level of discussion pushed two or three levels down and away from where it should be.

I hear these maneuvers all the time from the Republican talking heads on TV. Deflect the idea. It's not what you're talking about, it's the way you're talking about me.

The net result of this in the media sense ("manifestation" in psychobabble) is magnificent for Republicans. They get to promote a sweeping social agenda while asserting it's unfair to call them on it.

Now to folks on the Left, the whole notion seems kind of odd. There's millions of Jews running around but nobody ever worried that the Jews were going to force the U.S. to eat kosher. Why exactly have these people declared a culture war? What exactly are they so defensive about?

***

As I write this tonight, the Iraqi city of Fallujah is under assault by the U.S.-led occupation army. Now suppose for just a moment that a few days into this battle, when the maximum number of attackers are engaged, a nuclear explosion goes off in Fallujah. Enormous loss of life.

On one hand, folks would say it's an army blundering into a trap on the military history scale of some of the Romans generals who went up against Hannibal.

On the other hand, people would call it proof of weapons of mass destruction.

They'd be talking about the same facts, just seeing them in opposite ways.

So when it comes to liberals trying to discuss with folks the state of the Hard Right nowadays, I suggest that you first start with finding agreement on the facts at hand. At that point, proceed to finding shared values. Then, and only then, move on to the real issue.

Walk on eggshells. Start two polite layers away from what you really want to talk about.

Just like living my ex.

***

So let's get around the niceties and get to the nub of the national divide. I'd like to take credit for this term, but I just read it in Franklin Foer's fabulous book "How Soccer Explains The World."

The term is "exceptionalism." And it's explained this way.

There are a large number of Americans who believe their country is exceptional, in a charitable sense, in a power-for-good sense, and even in a blessed by God sense.

There's an especially large category who see America as an especially potent mix of democracy, Christianity and free enterprise, and see those factors as why the USA wound up far ahead of other countries blessed with similar natural resources (Brazil being a good example).

It's not too far-fetched to say that blue staters see Americans as part of the human race and that lots, though not all, of red-staters see Americans as some kind of a master race. It's a sort of fascism without the fascists, a vision of America as a super power for good. You hear this a lot from red staters; how America is unappreciated. Why are the Iraqis shooting at us? We're trying to do them a favor.

Easy to see why large parts of the world doesn't understand Americans.

We barely even understand ourselves.

****

Final point. I'm a firm believer that a lot of political interaction can be reduced to things you learn baby sitting. And if you have a child who is used to being treated as something special, that child will get petulant when he's reduced to just one of many.

Sounds a lot like the current crop of Right Wing talking heads. Exceptionalism meeting the rest of the world.

Except, of course, that instead of talking world views, Bill O'Reilly will be agitated that I just called Republicans a bunch of petulant children.

Damn, those Lefties just can't stop.

-30-

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