Afraid of Phobias?

The accusation was like many others: "You’ve quoted an Islamophobic author." Another matching accusation: "You’ve cited a homophobic theologian." And: "So you fear immigrants too?"

If there is a national disease for our time it is certainly the epidemic of phobias. Although that isn’t quite correct. It is the epidemic of accusations of phobia. Most of the time the accusation is simply a form of intellectual laziness or its flip side, arrogance. It allows dismissal of any argument by waving it away as a neurosis, an emotion; a phobia.

It is the modern equivalent of accusing women of “hysteria," but this game is open to all sexes, and is usually followed by the academic or ecclesial equivalent of “mansplaining” available to professors and pastors of any gender.

The accusation that a person or group is “phobic” comes from the work of Sigmund Freud, who brought the word into common usage. It is an accusation based on a faux-Freudian diagnosis of emotional impetus based on a few observable actions but minus years of conversation and analysis. What we've done is take Freud further into the realm of instant psychological analysis of inner feelings from outward words. As if every movement of the tongue is actually a "Freudian slip."

Does someone oppose LGBTQ marriage? Must be homophobic. Does a governor call for action against Muslim terrorists? Must be Islamophobic. Does a senator want to keep people from crossing US borders illegally? Must be afraid of immigrants. Reject a progressive agenda? Must be afraid of change. Dislike conservatism? Must have a fear of tradition.

It is yet another convenient way of dividing the world into rational people (like me and my tribe) and irrational people who I don’t have to pay attention to.

There are different words used to do the same thing as well. The language of phobias comes pretty naturally to academics like myself. We have almost all read Marx, Freud, and Foucault. We instinctively believe that we can diagnose motive from action but without going through the serious social and psychological studies carried out by sociologists and psychologists. Once the phobia has a name we just mine the internet for behavior we can attach to it.

In the Wall Street Journal, the doppelgänger of the liberal academy, the preferred term is “sentiment.” All those who can’t see the hard logic of capitalist economics are simply sentimentalists pursuing their pipe dreams of equality. The sentimentalist accusation is also favored by various neo-conservatives who believe if you aren’t blowing people up you’ve clearly gotten soft on terrorism. "Snowflake" is another term that attaches behavior to sentimentality, and the WSJ opinion pages regularly mine the same digital media as academics for examples.

In such Jewish circles as I read this tendency is manifest in the lists of “facts” about Israel and the Palestinian Territories that are issued by organizations like AIPAC, the AJC, and Israel's political leaders. This “factual” approach is contrasted to “hysterics” of Palestinians and their allies who swept away by anti-Semitism, idealism, or Arab emotionalism.

Among progressive Protestants the factual approach is found in the endless parade of statistics on teen suicide, sexual assault, homelessness, and poverty intended in part to fend off the accusation of sentimentality from conservatives but mostly to prove that if you aren't part of the progressive political agenda you must be stewing in phobias rather than responding to the harsh reality of human suffering.

I realize I’ll fallen into this tendency myself, and I repent. Useful (lets not call it rational) dialogue begins when we cease diagnosing phobias and assigning motives to people we barely know, or don’t know at all. Instead we need to cease the electronically mediated psycho-analysis based on soundbites and news clips and actually talk to each other face to face. That, and ONLY THAT, provides a reasonable basis for understanding another person's emotional states. And that, and ONLY THAT will result in useful cooperation to make our world a better place.