Mainstream

When I hear the term "mainstream" the image that comes to mind is something like the Mississippi -- big, brown, wide -- a great flow of water moving as a mass downstream. I don't imagine it to be something with rapids, like the mouth of the Columbia, or falls, like Niagara, or stunning canyons, like the Colorado. I mostly picture something big and massive and undifferentiated. If I have any awareness of the shoreline in this image, it's of a sort of muddy grassiness, without much in the way of other landscape features. The size and homogeneity of it -- and the power that comes with that -- are mostly what I envision.

I've never really thought of myself as a creature of the mainstream, even though certainly I partake of some of its waters -- reality tv, car ownership, a preoccupation with money and looks on not rare occasions, etc. I'm more used to the idea that my values, interests, attitudes, even appearance, are more appreciated by smaller, odder groups than the great human herd. If I had to envision the cultural stream I inhabit, it would be a smaller sidestream of the mainstream, either paralleling it or perhaps acting as a tributary. It would be a stream with clear waters and shady pools and rills over hidden stones, and of leaves swirling over the heads of trout and crayfish, and frequented by leaping frogs and gliding waterbugs. It would feed from the waters of the mainstream, and would give to them as well.

Of late, though, it feels like my shaded, rippling stream has been under siege. The most benign likelihood is that it will become an oxbow or bayou, a relict piece of the larger cultural waters, growing quiet and stagnant. That would be sad and frustrating, but even those still bodies of water have life. What I fear is the rightward drift of the mainstream such that my sidestream is not merely cut off, but dried out. There's a strong greedy current in the mainstream these days, one that forms a riptide tugging relentlessly at the tributaries, sucking them dry or devouring them whole.

The thing is, though, that this is not the work of the slow and subtle processes of cultural shift, of the ebb and flow between side eddies and main channel, of the redirection through floods of new ideas and periods of drought. It seems to me to be more akin to what happens when an upstream user decides to build a dam or irrigation system with little regard to what happens to those downstream. The water is directed out of its channels to benefit a few, and is returned (if returned at all) tainted with filth and poisons and effluvia. Those who protest are told to get out of the way of progress -- as if progress were something so mean and so selfish -- and are accused of the exact sort of selfishness the original offender displayed, for daring to demand that they be treated equally.

I'm a Westerner, and in the history of the West, the meanest, most vicious battles were those fought over water. Men died for water, and for lack of water, and because of the misuse of water. Dreams were built on selfish visions and turned to dust when greed ruined the possibilities for everyone. It's hard for me not to see parallels in the metaphoric waterways I've described. The mainstream is being polluted, diverted, stolen -- and those who protest find their voices drowned by the fetid waters and their hopes hung out to dry. All of us drink from those waters -- deep channel swimmers and sidestream splashers both -- and this spreading taint harms all of us. Even worse, those who most suffer as a result this corruption are the ones blamed for it, as if they were the source of the pollution rather than the victims of it.

The thing is, the surest way to turn moderates into radicals is to act as if they were. If you're going to be pilloried for simply raising questions, brutally punished for the crime of wanting to drink clean water and watch the frogs splashing in the sidestreams, as if those things were moral equivalents of ruining the whole system for everyone -- why not, then, do more? If the penalty for sitting quietly in a side eddy, and that for blowing up the dam and the outflow pipe are the same, is there a reason to sit quietly by, as if relying on protective camouflage still worked?

Much as frogs are the indicator species in a number of environments, living litmus tests of environmental health, so now are those of us who live in the sidestreams. Our cultural health is an indication of the health of the larger body politic; in defending our right to live in clear cultural waters, we not only protect ourselves but also the larger riverine community. The only questions now are how long it will take for that awareness to filter out into those mainstream waters, and what we can do to improve the rate of flow.

As the water flows rightward, and grows more and more filthy as it does, there is little profit in trying to play nice with the parties responsible. They have deemed everyone who disagrees with their agenda to be enemies, even if "disagreement" means simply daring to claim a right to exist. Perhaps it is time to show them what "enemies" and "disagreement" really look like. In fact, it's beyond that time. Let us hope that it is not yet too late.

Comments

[Chris Clarke]

It's funny. I've spent the last couple days in the desert thinking about you - more than usual, I mean - and wondering why.

Now I know. Brilliant.

[Rana]

Thanks.

And how amusing is it that you were in the desert while I was writing about water?

[kathy a]

excellent post. i've been turning over that lovely paragraph chris quoted since i lurked by earlier today. it captures so well one of the most disturbing things that has happened to political life.

[Charles]

From where I sit, I can look out the window and see the Mississippi, or on my computer to read the blog of the head of a seminary here in Minnesota who writes that it's "probably" not okay to firebomb houses. I drive my car to work, watch sports on TV, do other "mainstream" things -- and every day I, too, feel less connected.

[Janeen]

Came via Chris, and so glad I did. What a fabulous post. Thanks.

[Rana]

Thanks for the compliments, y'all.

Disturbing is indeed a good word for it -- both in the actual sense, and in the metaphoric -- the political ecosystems are definitely becoming "disturbed ground" and so I guess it's not surprising that it's an environment in which weeds flourish and biodiversity is diminished.

It's an atmosphere that seems to breed both apathy and extremism -- which isn't healthy for any of us.

[eRobin]

They have deemed everyone who disagrees with their agenda to be enemies, even if "disagreement" means simply daring to claim a right to exist.

I had the misfortune to witness Tucker Carlson infecting the public consciousness with that very argument this week.

[kathy a]

connie schultz, a columnist in cleveland, won a pulitzer last year for commentary. her piece yesterday is about the hijacking of public discourse on abortion, which struck me as related to your thoughts:
http://www.cleveland.com/schultz/index.ssf?/base/living/1138873394253690.xml&coll=2

[Rana]

Ew! Tucker Carlson!

Thanks, both of you, for the links. I probably won't be doing any follow-up on the abortion issue (though the article is a good one), because at this point there's little point in engaging with people on the other side of the issue (and I'm not moved enough about the topic to talk about it with people who do agree just to talk about it - or at least not here). I start at a moral disadvantage, from their perspective, and they have no interest in listening to what people like me might have to say, because they have no intention of changing their minds. When only one side is willing to listen and learn and compromise, and the other is "my way or the highway," there's really no point in trying to have a conversation. That this state of affairs is spreading out into wider discourse is horrible, and bodes ill for the health of our society if it's allowed to continue.

[kathy a]

rana, the "my way or highway" mode of discourse is indeed horrible. i cannot believe you are at a moral disadvantage -- but that does not the current infestation of rabid thought any easier, dammit.

[Phantom Scribbler]

Beautiful, and chilling, Rana.

You'd damn well better get into that writing program. Not because you need any instruction, but so that you can garner some fans for your writing under your own name. I'm getting impatient for you to get the recognition you deserve!

[Rana]

kathy a - I don't think I'm at a moral disadvantage either, in absolute terms, but when you're talking with someone who thinks your position is in essence immoral, there's no way to engage with them. Both parties have to be willing to employ the benefit of the doubt -- which includes a willingness to question one's own moral absolutes -- and the benefit of the doubt is antithetical to that side of the debate. *sigh*

Aw, Phantom, thanks. I appreciate that, especially from someone who turns out those amazingly thoughtful and beautiful meditations on domestic life. :)