THE TROUBLE WITH NICOLE

When I first sat down to write this essay, I thought it was going to be about Fascism in the Secular Movement, or something equally obscure and offputting--the kind of thing that a fan, coming to a mystery writer's web site, would look at once, recoil in horror, and abandon immediately for the news about when the last novel was going to come out in paperback.

This was all right, I thought, because the essays in this section were supposed to fulfill a purpose, and the purpose was to make it possible for me to write about some of the things that bothered me but that really could not be published in any other way. Somehow, I couldn't see St. Martin's Press being willing to issue a book of essays on the internecine battles of organized humanism--and I couldn't see Parents or Family Circle printing even one article on a topic that was not likely to be of interest to more than a couple of thousand people, none of whom habitually subscribed to women's magazines. Of course, I do write for political magazines quite often, but I'd suggested articles on atheism/freethought/humanism before, and found no interest. Corporate capitalism, pro and con? Sure. Abortion? Absolutely. The effect of a war in Iraq on education funding? Give it to us in three days. The way atheist/freethought/humanist organizations eat their young? Um. Er. Eh. Wouldn't you rather do a piece on John Rowland's bad haircut?

I spent a long, frustrating evening in front of Corel WordPerfect 7--okay, I never update my software--and then, just as I was trying to get my younger son to bed, I got a phone call from one of the women who volunteers with me at a neighborhood food bank. This was not a happy surprise. Do you have people in your life who can make you cringe just by opening their mouths? This was one of the two of mine. Hell, the woman doesn't just make me cringe, she makes me want to go back to smoking. Give her five minutes, and I'll begin to think fomenting a Communist revolution is the only sane way to live. Give her ten minutes, and I want to pass a Constitutional amendment outlawing the Methodist Church, the Bible in print, and any mention in public of Christian Charity. Give her half an hour, and I'm ready to sign on with Atilla the Hun.

And that, you see, is what stopped me dead, and turned this whole essay around.

This essay is not about the organized atheist/freethought/humanist movement.

It's not about politics.

It's not--except indirectly--about the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.

This essay is about Nicole, because we all know Nicole.

Religious or secular, conservative or liberal, capitalist or Communist, pro-life or pro-choice, N Sync or Backstreet Boys, crunchy or smooth--the Nicoles are out there, doing what they do, making matters worse just by existing. The Nicole of this title is a secular liberal. The Nicole of my food bank is a conservative Christian. It doesn't matter. They might as well have been separated at birth.

Trust me--you know a Nicole. If you're lucky, you know only one.

Now, to give Nicole what little credit she is due, it wasn't her idea to send the first of her messages to the list. That was the brainchild of a poster named Paul who rather likes to mix things up a bit, especially if he can do it while shielding himself from taking any flak. And, on top of that, at least two of us involved in that discussion had doubts about whether Nicole actually existed, in real life, as a person. Some of the things that went on were just too perfect, too bizarrely in character, too completely what you'd want Nicole to say so that she'd be a stereotype and nothing more. I've written too much fiction not to be suspicious when people are too much like what you'd expect them to be.

Paul sent Nicole's first message to the list because it was a message about homeschooling, and there was one woman on Sechum who had homeschooled her children and several other people--including me--who defended the rights of parents to homeschool without interference from government agencies. It was, in other words, the kind of discussion that would make most people's eyes glaze over.

Bear with me.

Paul posted part of Nicole's post to another list to Sechum, and I will quote part of it here. If you want to see the whole post, go to Yahoo's Sechum page and see post number 23677. And yes, it's difficult to read on site, and the difficulty gets worse as the thread progresses. Paul is the sort of e-mail list poster who complains endlessly about how other people should change their writing styles because he finds it hard to figure out who's saying what, while posting things it takes a map and a code book to figure out the attributions in.

But, here's Nicole, and what caused all the trouble:

>I can relate countless similar such cases of parents' attempting to-- and succeeding in-- controlling their child's reading; (just bear w/ me for one more, here). A mother and her home-taught son (aged 12 or so) visit my library almost every Tuesday and Thursday. He is obviously completely in her control and although he doesn't appear discontent, it is obvious his education has been completely confined to that which his mother permits him to learn. They check out only those books that she places in their library bag. However, every couple weeks, I observe the boy hopefully suggest some book (i.e. Lemony Snicket's Unpleasant Series [which we lately have on display]; fantasy books by Nix, Wrede, Yolen, etc.; Dinotopia chapter books; and so on). The woman will pass a cool cursory glance over the synopsis of the book and then respond, shortly, "No. Put it back." (BTW, she does allow him to read the kids' version of the 'Left Behind' series. ;-/

>So we've got censorship to the extreme, here. And who knows what she is feeding his confined brain. I shudder to think of what he is learning about the sciences, about history, etc.. It makes me sick. How are these children to become functional members of society if their education is being so censored? I often wonder if it is not a protected right, that these home-schooled children are being offered a complete education. John Ruskin, social philosopher and reformer, wrote that "It is the indisputable first duty of the state to see that every child [. . . is] well housed, clothed, fed, and educated . . ." >If that is true, why are there not some strict measures taken to implement a state statute establishing some level of criterion of instruction? As it is now, any mom can keep her children from being granted a secular, public education -- without even having obtained a high school diploma herself!-- and begin teaching him pretty much whatever she pleases.

Now, I would sincerely like to tell you that I got wise to myself right away, and understood that what upset me about the above passage was not the particular subject, but this woman's attitude not only to the subject, but to life in general. I would like to say I did that, but I can't. Like a lot of other people who participate in e-mail discussion lists, I got mad and then I went at it, demolishing this woman's arguments point by point, as if that would do anybody any good. And I wasn't the only one. The homeschooling mother on the list did the same, and so did a few other people.

Paul then proceeded to relay our arguments to Nicole on the other list, and Nicole responded (in part) with this:

> I really should not be devoting further effort to an argument that is
> obviously futile. This is a debate where there are personal, biased
> objections being raised to my argument rather than a logical, open-minded
> analysis of the whole picture I am addressing.

Forget about homeschooling.

Forget about secular humanism.

Forget about everything--except your own Nicole.

You know the one.

The one who knows how everybody else in the neighborhood should run their lives.

The one who thinks that anybody who disagrees with her must be, well, mentally ill.

The one who can be just oh, so condescending--there, there, dear, we understand you're too addled to think these things through--as long as you continue to pursue that illogical, irrational, and completely ridiculous point of view.

The one who is convinced that her view is the one most people agree with, and if you don't agree there must be something wrong with you.

When I started this essay, I thought I knew what I was going to say about Nicole.

She thinks she's Right and Has the Whole Truth and that everybody else is wrong.

Well, that's true enough--but it's just as true of most of the rest of us, including me. Consider my neighbor Dick, who lives at the end of my road, and has since long before I moved into this house. Dick is what I'd call a fundamentalist Catholic. When he isn't immersing himself in the troubles of one or another of his many grown daughters, he spends his time writing letters to our town's weekly newspaper. He writes about how the town should do something about abortion, which is destroying the country. He writes about how Halloween is a Satanic holiday and people shouldn't let their children trick or treat because when they do they invite the Devil into their homes. He writes about how public schools will always fail because everything the government does is going to be wrong.

Considering the differences between us--he's religious, I'm an atheist; he's conservative,. I'm a libertarian liberal; he sees ghosts and goblins and the Devil behind every hedge bush, I think all that stuff is just pretend--Dick and I ought to hate each other. He should certainly annoy me more than Nicole. After all, Nicole and I actually agree on a lot of things. Neither one of us is religious. Both of us seem to be more politically liberal than politically conservative. I even agree that her idea of a "complete" education is more valid than that of the Christian homeschoolers who so upset her in the first place.

So--what is it? Does Dick, unlike Nicole, think his ideas are "just his opinion" and no better than anybody's else's? No. Do I think that about my ideas? No.

What Dick and I share--what Nicole lacks--is a fundamental respect for each other that makes us feel obliged to listen. We feel obliged to listen because we see each other as fully human, and fully able to make our own decisions. We feel obliged to listen because we understand that two perfectly sane, rational, objective, and intellectually honest human begins can look at the same world at the same time and come to different conclusions.

Welcome to the American experiment--not a religious country or a secular one, not a liberal country or a conservative one, not family values country or a bohemian one, but a country full of people who have learned the really hard lessons: how to live and let live, how to mind your own business, how to agree to disagree, how to respect people whose ideas you do not respect at all.

I can get along with Dick because I know that if he brings up any of his pet subjects at Town Meeting, we'll discuss is. He'll hear what I have to say and respond. I'll hear what he has to say and respond.

I can't get along with Nicole because her mind is closed tight against anything she doesn't want to hear. So in that discussion she continued to refer to me as "June," a "homeschooling mother," no matter how often she was told (and not just by me) that my name was Jane and that I don't homeschool (quite frankly, I'd rather eat dog dung hot dogs than homeschool).

And when it came to hearing the arguments of the people who were responding to her message--forget it. She never did understand what those objections were. Well, how could she? She wasn't listening to them, since she didn't see any need to. We weren't human beings who disagreed with her. We were emotionally overwrought, irrational obsessives who just couldn't be reasoned with.

That's why Nicole can delude herself into thinking her view is the one everybody else agrees with. Since she doesn't actually listen to objections--and since she adamantly refuses to discuss issues with people who disagree with her (why bother? they're emotional and irrational)--in the closed, carefully screened little world of like-minded secularists and moderated discussion lists she's chosen to live in, it certainly seems to her that "everybody" is on her side.

Of course, she's doing in her own life just what she accuses fundamentalist parents of doing to their homeschooled children--but she can't see that either.

This is the bottom line: I am a secular liberal, but I'm not afraid of Dick the Fundamentalist Catholic. I'm not afraid of conservatives or libertarians or religious people. I'm not afraid of Republicans or Evangelicals or Baptists or the people who still think Ayn Rand is God. I'm not even afraid of George Bush.

I am afraid of Nicole, and of all the Nicoles out there, because they're dangerous. It doesn't matter if they want education to be secular or religious, abortion to be outlawed or available on demand, medical care to be free market or socialized. The issue isn't the content of their politics or the particular values they hold. The issue is the deep and abiding contempt they have for all of us out here who simply refuse to see that there is no other point of view but the one they hold.

Did I tell you that Nicole wants to get laws passed to make everybody out there do things her way? I probably didn't have to. Like the woman in your kid's preschool who thinks there should be laws against spanking children and the guy at your church who wants to put a tax on high fat foods and the woman at the PTA who wants the school to start sending kids home when they come to class in Pokemon t-shirts, the Nicoles of this world are convinced that since there's no other right way but theirs, it's just in your own good if they make you behave when you're irrational enough to think you don't want to.

After all, you're not really human--you're an overemotional, addled child who just doesn't understand the big picture.

Copyright © 2002 Jane Haddam. All rights reserved.

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