A week in the belly of "the Beast."

[Tyler Durden]

I’ve spent the last week in the "belly of the beast." People here who are familiar with me and what I write knows my views on my own profession, which is in the Automotive realm: I don’t think much of it, or of most of the people in it.

I got a little "wake up" yesterday. I’m marooned in a 6-sigma course, pursuant to a slight change in duties. Four weeks of training, interspersed with 3 week gaps, culminating in a completed "cost-save" project. This in and of itself is not particularly heinous: I’m working on materials versus firing people. The true weirdness of the situation emerges as a group of 30 men between 30 and 55 get together in one room, and eventually they get comfy enough to start letting barriers down.

Except for me, kids. As a closet Socialist in Capitalist Amerika, I don’t open my mouth as much as some of the rest of the guys on off-subject topics. With damned good reason, as I learned yesterday. Ouch.

One of the statistics examples was percentages of liberals/conservatives in male/female segments of the population. Of course, the data was fictitious and just as obviously written by Conservative Republicans. Conservatives and Libertarians outnumbered Liberals almost 4-1, and of course men were more conservative. The name "George Bush" came up from the instructor, as in "Anyone in here who voted for Bush?" The instructor has let it be known he’s not fond of George, and the room becomes strangely silent, EXCEPT for one guy: "I voted for Bush, and I’d vote for him again in a minute!"
This opened the floor for "True Confessions." The instructor started it off with "Well, he did the right thing after 9/11; no president could do otherwise." Nodding heads filled the room. Personally I was appalled. THESE ARE NOT STUPID people, the level of delusion is astounding. The "I voted for Bush…" guy is from the refrigeration industry, and during his presentation on leaking air conditioning valves, he worked in the comment, "…'alleged' depletion of ozone by refrigerants…"

Excuse me?

Global Warming be damned, this guy doesn’t even accept ozone depletion by fluorocarbons. This level of delusion borders on hallucination. These are supposed to be the "smart" people, yet another guy in battery production doesn’t accept Global Warming either.

So what did I do? Bonehead that I am, I started a discussion on national values with one of the US and one of the Canadians. After I get agreement that massive college loans, health care costs, and national debts are "bad things," they go right to "raise Defense Spending," and the increase in personal wealth as indicators of a strong economy and nation, two of the biggest Neocon talking points.

Pardon?

These were not unintelligent people. Stupid, but not unintelligent. And yet, we, as Progressives, are continuing to put forth the proposition that smart people will see things our way. This is, if I may suggest, POPPYCOCK.

Intelligent (but stupidly short-sighted people) ABOUND in the halls of government, industry, medicine, you name it. This portion of the intelligentsia are the voters; and they are not the friends of the
"little guy," and as the percentage of voting in this group is higher AND the money they dump into special interest groups and the Republican Party far outpaces the same factors in the general populace.

We are preaching to the wrong choir. How do we reach these people?

Frankly, I haven’t a clue; anything I’d say is pure guess.

[Warpy]

1. It's hard to reach people with blinders on

and while these men may be marvels of knowledge and competence within their professional fields, they're babes in the woods when it comes to anything outside those fields.

Just be aware that they've been told a pack of lies framed in maintaining some weird image of masculinity and they find it all very comforting in a world where they often have to compete against WOMEN. That's a real problem with a lot of these guys, and I'm afraid there is no real way to reach some of them.

I'd advise not doing more than sniping at some of the more egregious stupidity of this administration as it happens. You are not going to reach these guys with facrs. Their MASCULINITY is at stake.

Stupid's macho swagger is not having the effect it once had as his deficiencies become harder to ignore, though, so there is always hope. The iron grasp of the GOP on machismo is loosening as their icons all get exposed as venal men who are only in it for the money, men who puff themselves up and strut around but on close examination have nothing behind the facade but hot air and a script.

In any case, your colleagues are part of a steadily shrinking minority. Don't force them to become any more defensive than they are, because that will only increase their passionate devotion to the macho cult and their contributions to it.

Sometimes being passive aggressive is the best tactic.

[catmandu57]

2. I was wondering where you were

just this morning. Sometimes even intelligent people need smacked over the head to get them to wise up. Too many people are too smart to be dumb, all they understand is personal pain.
Hang in there it's still a good sign when only one person in a roomfull would seig heil for our fuhrer*.

[Tyler Durden]

4. I think the rest of them were embarassed to admit they'd voted for him.

Oh yeah. Terrible misogynists as well. I kicked myself daily for a coward, not saying anything about their rampant sexist.

[Orsino]

3. We can't shout down the mass media...

...but we can form and maintain real human relationships with these people, becoming more important to them than are the talking whores on TV. Dismantling media conglomerates must be a play in our book; it's an issue on which we shouldn't compromise.