I was going to do a whole thing
about Rick Santorum. I was going to write about Biblical literalism, with
specific reference to the bit about the entire town stoning the adulterous
daughters to death. Oh, I was on a roll, in my mind, at that point. I was going
to do moral relativism, moral absolutism, Leviticus, separation of Church and
State, the finer points of Catholicism.
Since Santorum’s views on
abortion are so strict, and he has stated categorically that he would have
doctors arrested and imprisoned for performing the procedure, I was going to go
into a whole existential exploration of personhood.
The definition of personhood
(horrible word, but the one that is used in this context, I’m afraid) is
absolutely fascinating, once you get to thinking about it for more than five
minutes. It can’t be thought or language or even self-consciousness, since
babies have none of those things; nor do some very mentally disabled people, or
those who suffer traumatic brain injury or are in the end states of Alzheimer’s
disease.
I sat down at my desk, fingers
itching to get to the bottom of the Santorum madness. I watched a couple of his
interviews and found some very, very strange quotes. I began to write. Two
sentences. Then the will to live drained from me. I could not do it. It was too
depressing.
I know I am supposed to be a
fearless examiner of the human condition. Oh, look at me, shining a light into
the darkest corners, without favour or fear. I don’t believe in pablum or
whitewash or glossing over the nasty parts. There must be the truth, or
nothing. I have always been faintly disturbed by those people who refuse to
read the news, because it is too demoralising, although occasionally I have a
faint envy for them. My own idiot construction is that one must face the news,
in order to be a concerned citizen. How earnest and po-faced I sometimes am.
But today, faced with the full strangeness and sadness of a Rick Santorum, I
could not do it.
Oh, said the tired part of my
brain, please can we think about puppies or penguins instead? Tell them about
the pig with her wiggly, piggly tail, eating the carrots and grinning all over
her sweet porcine face. Come on, said the pre-Christmas exhaustion, you really
don’t have to go into battle against every piece of egregious reasoning that
you encounter. And, said the low realist, are you really going to change
anyone’s mind? Is that even your job? You are, I tell myself firmly, not Lord
Bragg, King of the Reithian imperative.
This last thought is rather a
relief. Although of course, it then sets up a new dilemma: where is the fine
line between practical reality, and copping out? One should fight for
something, after all. Yet it is fabulously dull to be lecturing people all the
time. There is something very tiring about that finger-wagging conviction of
one’s own rightness. On the other hand, without conviction one is just a straw
in the wind. So that is the new conundrum that I shall be pondering for the
rest of the night.
Monina
