Crusade
12th November 2010, 07:17
And not in a good way. Anyone who watches or reads any kind of political news from the U.S. has heard talk about how polarized the country is and how we can't work together and get anything done. The reason for all of this, in my opinion, is that they're all behaving like socialists do. For this reason, I think we can all look at this car crash as not only a never ending supply of lulz, but also a reflection of what we are, and always have been.
Their first mistake was losing track of their common goals. This sounds cliche', but it has more depth than it seems like at first. For the most part, the common goals are just 1. making the country richer 2. keeping the citizens safe. The debate amongst politicians has typically been which approach can get 1 and 2 done best. There's obviously the part about filling their own pockets with large sums of corporate cash, but that's not really the point I'm making. Where did they lose sight of the main goal? By focusing so damn hard on ideological consistency. Instead of "lowering taxes will make the rich create more jobs" (:laugh:), it's "raising taxes is morally wrong because people should be able to keep their own money".
This is where the fish bowl gets cracked. Now you're basically arguing about the damn legitimacy of TAXES themselves. An obvious necessity of any government in a free market economy. Obviously a conservative supports the police and the military so the argument becomes "the government should only be there to protect "liberty". Then the liberals say "the government should protect its most vulnerable citizens". What happens then is conservatives believe they have a monopoly on freedom itself somehow and liberals think they have a monopoly on... humanity. This makes the arguments even more dramatic and every day political adversaries begin to look more and more like actual ENEMIES and not fellow citizens. If the narrative being painted is one side is for freedom and the other is for tyranny, how do you rationalize being civil if your side loses? How can you compromise or cooperate with something that's supposedly tyranny?
The "end game" I think we're witnessing now is when people are refusing to do anything at all unless their world matches their ideology perfectly. This isn't the same as wanting universal health care and getting a mandate to buy private insurance. That's called being fucked. That's not getting "most" of what you asked for. That's asking for one thing and getting something different. What happens at this stage is everyone thinks the road there is more important than the destination. They care more about the morality of your political methods than whether or not the country is richer and people are safer. Many "moderates" are labeled as pragmatic, but being a mixed bag doesn't mean you're the holy grail. Sometimes doing everything one side says does the job better than doing both, the point is to focus on the goals first and foremost.
I feel like we can look at the current political climate, not only as a mouthwatering opportunity to gain influence, but also to try to understand why we're so divided and disorganized. Where they're headed is where we've always been it seems like.
Their first mistake was losing track of their common goals. This sounds cliche', but it has more depth than it seems like at first. For the most part, the common goals are just 1. making the country richer 2. keeping the citizens safe. The debate amongst politicians has typically been which approach can get 1 and 2 done best. There's obviously the part about filling their own pockets with large sums of corporate cash, but that's not really the point I'm making. Where did they lose sight of the main goal? By focusing so damn hard on ideological consistency. Instead of "lowering taxes will make the rich create more jobs" (:laugh:), it's "raising taxes is morally wrong because people should be able to keep their own money".
This is where the fish bowl gets cracked. Now you're basically arguing about the damn legitimacy of TAXES themselves. An obvious necessity of any government in a free market economy. Obviously a conservative supports the police and the military so the argument becomes "the government should only be there to protect "liberty". Then the liberals say "the government should protect its most vulnerable citizens". What happens then is conservatives believe they have a monopoly on freedom itself somehow and liberals think they have a monopoly on... humanity. This makes the arguments even more dramatic and every day political adversaries begin to look more and more like actual ENEMIES and not fellow citizens. If the narrative being painted is one side is for freedom and the other is for tyranny, how do you rationalize being civil if your side loses? How can you compromise or cooperate with something that's supposedly tyranny?
The "end game" I think we're witnessing now is when people are refusing to do anything at all unless their world matches their ideology perfectly. This isn't the same as wanting universal health care and getting a mandate to buy private insurance. That's called being fucked. That's not getting "most" of what you asked for. That's asking for one thing and getting something different. What happens at this stage is everyone thinks the road there is more important than the destination. They care more about the morality of your political methods than whether or not the country is richer and people are safer. Many "moderates" are labeled as pragmatic, but being a mixed bag doesn't mean you're the holy grail. Sometimes doing everything one side says does the job better than doing both, the point is to focus on the goals first and foremost.
I feel like we can look at the current political climate, not only as a mouthwatering opportunity to gain influence, but also to try to understand why we're so divided and disorganized. Where they're headed is where we've always been it seems like.