Chuck asks:
> It would be interesting to look at any studies on
conversion factors. How are people converted or
radicalized? Is it mostly personal contact, movies, art,
or books?
I think the first factor is fear/terror. Since I first read it as a teenager I have remembered Hammett's story about Flitcraft in The Maltese Falcon. A beam falls one day nearly killing Flitcraft where he stood. On the spot he decided to change his life -- left his family and job and moved to a new town to start a radically different life.
Sam Spade is hired by his wife to find him. He does -- in a nearby town where he has settled down to an existence identical to the one he abandoned. As Hammett says: he adjuted to a life with beams falling, then just as quickly adjusted to a life where beams didn't fall.
In that period when a person feels as if beams are falling, he is open to radicalization -- through books, movies, personal contact, etc. As soon as a status quo is reached, however, and beams are no longer falling, the opportunity for radicalization passes.
The right is successful since it is able to convince people on a continual basis that beams are falling: gay marriage, abortion, terrorism, loss of income through higher taxation, loss of identity through immigration. No matter how successful rightists are, they are able to maintain an aura of falling beams. This keeps their base radicalized/energized.
For me, my beam falling was being queer. And it is still falling. That is why I get upset when Michael says that queers are doing as well as can be expected (where exactly is the table/chart that measures what can be expected?). Beams may not be falling in his world, but the reality is that they are falling in the lives of many (if not most) queers.
Brian Dauth Queer Buddhist Resister