The Beauty of Gray
During my semester break, I read Glenn Beck's Arguing with Idiots, and found large parts of it to be very enlightening. This column draws inspiration from both Beck and one of my grad school professors... who I'm sure is VERY flattered to be mentioned in the same sentence as Glenn Beck...
A common theme running through this particular professor's class was that when things are set up as a binary, one side vs. another, it's never a good thing. Up/down, black/white, right/wrong, Leno/Conan, "you're with us or you're with the terrorists", and ESPECIALLY conservative/liberal or right/left. Binary dualism means there is no middle ground. It's one thing or the other, and in today's politics, it is too easy to be classified into one of the two boxes with no room to maneuver or for escape. There are only two ways to see something, and if you're not on our side then we will attack you with everything we've got. Just give us an opening and we'll let you have it.
Even when the response is deserved, it still makes you scratch your head and wonder why we do these things. Take for example the recent stupid remarks made by the leader of the Republican Party about Haiti. Everything is politicized now, and for both sides, it's all about scoring political points (or accusing the other side of trying to score political points... so you can score political points). Like I've said before, with regard to tactics, the Right and Left are exactly THE SAME. More proof lies in the Republican Party's strategy for 2010. I told you the Democrats' strategy (tie opponents to Bush... again), but the crux of that strategy back in 2006 was that they were nationalizing all the local races, which goes against everything politics should be. As offensive as it was to political philosophers of all stripes, it worked, which is why the Republicans have admitted their strategy for 2010... is to nationalize every race. And they have said their strategy will be 80% trashing Obama and 20% saying what they would do. When you're only doing that 20% of the time, you may as well not be doing it at all, which is precisely what Democrats will say. But then again, this "80/20" strategy is pretty much what the Dems did 4 years ago.
On ABC's "This Week", uber-leftie Katrina Vanden Heuvel from The Nation said we were in a time of unprecedented "rhetorical savagery", which was pretty funny considering that half of what she had said during the segment was a perfect example of rhetorical savagery. Which only underscores my point. She decries what Republicans are doing while trotting out that homosexual slur used to describe Tea Party activists several times and then stating that the main reason to pass health care is to repudiate all the evil that George W. Bush did to the middle class. In fact, I wonder if Ms. Vanden Heuvel would consider this missive from MSNBC's Ed Schultz to be rhetorical savagery.
The only difference between the two sides are the ideological positions into which they have entrenched themselves. And what does that have to do with you? Well, you're supposed to take a side, which means you have to march in lockstep with one side or the other and agree with them on anything. If you don't, you automatically become identified with the other side, the "enemy". If you're conservative on 90% of issues but differ on abortion or gay rights, you're a liberal. If you're liberal on 90% of issues but you disagree with single-payer health care, you're a right-winger. These two sides have become so much entwined with the two major political parties that conservative and Republican automatically go together, as do liberal and Democrat. And the party in power must get its way; bipartisanship, compromise, and pragmatism are out the window.
We'd like to think that we can have a viable third party in American politics, but the truth is they've never lasted for very long. American politics, love them or hate them, are a two-party world, and always have been, ever since the rest of the Founders disregarded George Washington's warnings not to get involved in a partisan system. At first, you had the Federalists (the party of Alexander Hamilton) and you had the Jeffersonian Democrats. The Federalists evolved into the Whigs, who evolved into today's Republican Party. The Jeffersonians evolved into Jacksonians and eventually evolved into today's Democratic Party. The Populists, Bull Moosers, Dixiecrats, and Reform Party types all had their 15 minutes and then their ideas got absorbed/co-opted by one of the two major parties. And so it would be if the Tea Party types split. If moderates formed a centrist party (which has never really happened), that might be the exception to the rule.
But it almost feels like those who have tossed aside party affiliation for being independents (most of whom are moderates) follow the teachings of Marx... not Karl, Groucho: "I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members." For most of these people, being stuck in a black vs. white situation is completely untenable. As Live sang, "This is not a black and white world." Most people see give-and-take as part of life, not something to be avoided at all costs. They see the world as having not just black, white, and gray areas, but having MANY different shades of gray.
I see myself less and less as a Republican and more of a libertarian. Which is where Beck comes in... he too seems to identify with being libertarian. In his book, he decried "nanny state" regulations of all stripes, including those put in by the supposed champions of small government, the Republicans, because the heavy influence of the Christian Right causes them to believe that government SHOULD tell you what to do when it comes to morality. For any Republican to say they are for less-intrusive government and then say that there should be government-enforced definitions of "marriage" and sin taxes and a War on Drugs is, quite simply, a HYPOCRITE.
If there is a binary to deal with in American politics today, it is between the libertarians and those who are only out for power. I can't really put a label on them. Some would call them "socialists", but that doesn't describe people on the political Right who lust for power; some would call them "fascists" but they're not really for authoritarian dictatorship, which is the dictionary definition of fascism (NOT mere alliance between corporations and government). So let's just say it's between libertarianism and lust for power. Yeah, it's not the easiest way to describe our political climate. Let's face it, when you were in Political Science 101 and your professor (if he was like mine) drew that line on the chalkboard to represent the political spectrum, and he/she said the left side is the liberal and the right side is the conservative, it was a pretty simple way to understand things. So left/right or liberal/conservative is pretty effective, but not completely accurate. Libertarians value personal freedom, liberty, freedom from government having power over them. Lust for power is pretty self-explanatory.
The problem is it rearranges the battlefield big time. This binary puts gay-rights activists and pro-choicers in the same camp as fiscal conservatives, it puts bible-thumpers on the same side as advocates of single-payer health care. Talk about politics making for strange bedfellows. But hey, that's just the way I see things, and if you think about it, you might see it that way too. And if you don't, that's cool too. That's all part of being a libertarian, live and let live.
A common theme running through this particular professor's class was that when things are set up as a binary, one side vs. another, it's never a good thing. Up/down, black/white, right/wrong, Leno/Conan, "you're with us or you're with the terrorists", and ESPECIALLY conservative/liberal or right/left. Binary dualism means there is no middle ground. It's one thing or the other, and in today's politics, it is too easy to be classified into one of the two boxes with no room to maneuver or for escape. There are only two ways to see something, and if you're not on our side then we will attack you with everything we've got. Just give us an opening and we'll let you have it.
Even when the response is deserved, it still makes you scratch your head and wonder why we do these things. Take for example the recent stupid remarks made by the leader of the Republican Party about Haiti. Everything is politicized now, and for both sides, it's all about scoring political points (or accusing the other side of trying to score political points... so you can score political points). Like I've said before, with regard to tactics, the Right and Left are exactly THE SAME. More proof lies in the Republican Party's strategy for 2010. I told you the Democrats' strategy (tie opponents to Bush... again), but the crux of that strategy back in 2006 was that they were nationalizing all the local races, which goes against everything politics should be. As offensive as it was to political philosophers of all stripes, it worked, which is why the Republicans have admitted their strategy for 2010... is to nationalize every race. And they have said their strategy will be 80% trashing Obama and 20% saying what they would do. When you're only doing that 20% of the time, you may as well not be doing it at all, which is precisely what Democrats will say. But then again, this "80/20" strategy is pretty much what the Dems did 4 years ago.
On ABC's "This Week", uber-leftie Katrina Vanden Heuvel from The Nation said we were in a time of unprecedented "rhetorical savagery", which was pretty funny considering that half of what she had said during the segment was a perfect example of rhetorical savagery. Which only underscores my point. She decries what Republicans are doing while trotting out that homosexual slur used to describe Tea Party activists several times and then stating that the main reason to pass health care is to repudiate all the evil that George W. Bush did to the middle class. In fact, I wonder if Ms. Vanden Heuvel would consider this missive from MSNBC's Ed Schultz to be rhetorical savagery.
The only difference between the two sides are the ideological positions into which they have entrenched themselves. And what does that have to do with you? Well, you're supposed to take a side, which means you have to march in lockstep with one side or the other and agree with them on anything. If you don't, you automatically become identified with the other side, the "enemy". If you're conservative on 90% of issues but differ on abortion or gay rights, you're a liberal. If you're liberal on 90% of issues but you disagree with single-payer health care, you're a right-winger. These two sides have become so much entwined with the two major political parties that conservative and Republican automatically go together, as do liberal and Democrat. And the party in power must get its way; bipartisanship, compromise, and pragmatism are out the window.
We'd like to think that we can have a viable third party in American politics, but the truth is they've never lasted for very long. American politics, love them or hate them, are a two-party world, and always have been, ever since the rest of the Founders disregarded George Washington's warnings not to get involved in a partisan system. At first, you had the Federalists (the party of Alexander Hamilton) and you had the Jeffersonian Democrats. The Federalists evolved into the Whigs, who evolved into today's Republican Party. The Jeffersonians evolved into Jacksonians and eventually evolved into today's Democratic Party. The Populists, Bull Moosers, Dixiecrats, and Reform Party types all had their 15 minutes and then their ideas got absorbed/co-opted by one of the two major parties. And so it would be if the Tea Party types split. If moderates formed a centrist party (which has never really happened), that might be the exception to the rule.
But it almost feels like those who have tossed aside party affiliation for being independents (most of whom are moderates) follow the teachings of Marx... not Karl, Groucho: "I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members." For most of these people, being stuck in a black vs. white situation is completely untenable. As Live sang, "This is not a black and white world." Most people see give-and-take as part of life, not something to be avoided at all costs. They see the world as having not just black, white, and gray areas, but having MANY different shades of gray.
I see myself less and less as a Republican and more of a libertarian. Which is where Beck comes in... he too seems to identify with being libertarian. In his book, he decried "nanny state" regulations of all stripes, including those put in by the supposed champions of small government, the Republicans, because the heavy influence of the Christian Right causes them to believe that government SHOULD tell you what to do when it comes to morality. For any Republican to say they are for less-intrusive government and then say that there should be government-enforced definitions of "marriage" and sin taxes and a War on Drugs is, quite simply, a HYPOCRITE.
If there is a binary to deal with in American politics today, it is between the libertarians and those who are only out for power. I can't really put a label on them. Some would call them "socialists", but that doesn't describe people on the political Right who lust for power; some would call them "fascists" but they're not really for authoritarian dictatorship, which is the dictionary definition of fascism (NOT mere alliance between corporations and government). So let's just say it's between libertarianism and lust for power. Yeah, it's not the easiest way to describe our political climate. Let's face it, when you were in Political Science 101 and your professor (if he was like mine) drew that line on the chalkboard to represent the political spectrum, and he/she said the left side is the liberal and the right side is the conservative, it was a pretty simple way to understand things. So left/right or liberal/conservative is pretty effective, but not completely accurate. Libertarians value personal freedom, liberty, freedom from government having power over them. Lust for power is pretty self-explanatory.
The problem is it rearranges the battlefield big time. This binary puts gay-rights activists and pro-choicers in the same camp as fiscal conservatives, it puts bible-thumpers on the same side as advocates of single-payer health care. Talk about politics making for strange bedfellows. But hey, that's just the way I see things, and if you think about it, you might see it that way too. And if you don't, that's cool too. That's all part of being a libertarian, live and let live.
Labels: politics
posted by Dave | 3:57 PM
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