I’m a patriot when it comes to America, but a cynic when it comes to American politics. I think the United States Constitution is the greatest document to ever contribute to human society, but I think our modern government is a royal mess (with intentional use of the word royal). I think Capitalism is the only economic system that has a snowball’s chance of working but that the free market in this country has, for all useful purposes, disappeared. And I often think that the divide between political parties in the U.S. is unbridgeable, so vastly different are the principles that drive us. But sometimes I am wrong.
I am the first one to become disillusioned with people my age. Mom is constantly telling me that my generation is still young and we will figure some things out by and by and not be such grave idiots. But I mostly find I can’t believe her. People my age are so saturated with over-worked, feel-good clichés about war and peace, entitlement and fairness, diversity and racism, that we practically sweat irrational decision-making skills. We are more closed-minded than anyone – and particularly any young person – ought to be. And often, we are just plain dumb. In this day and age – and at our age – there is no excuse for being just plain dumb; at this point, it’s a choice.
We have been handfed absurd notions about “culture” and “diversity” under the guise of open-minded progressivism. Instead of teaching us how to become empowered using whatever assets we have, we have been taught that all minorities are entitled to something. Instead of teaching us that we are each different in inexplicit, intricate, and beautiful ways, we have been taught that everyone should remain true only to the stereotyped culture of their skin or native tongue, unless they are white, in which case they have no culture at all. In efforts to support diversity and equality, we have coined terms like “reverse-racism,” “tolerance,” and “color-blindness” without actually paying attention to the fact (or maybe all too aware of the fact) that these concepts achieve exactly the opposite effect. And now that we have come of age and have no excuse for merely parroting our elders’ opinions, we go right on believing these dangerous misrepresentations, with a little bit of bleeding-heart youthfulness thrown in. We know sociology and psychology and poetry like the backs of our hands, but possess absolutely no skill at using them creatively, realistically, or resourcefully.
My “critical thinking” class in college was so obscenely biased in one direction that the professor actually used fallacies to teach us fallacies. To him, critical thinking meant thinking what he did and fallacious argument meant any argument against him. Students jumped on board. Of course I’m the first to admit that a good rant-fest with people whose political beliefs are similar to mine is what I call a really good barbeque; I’m not above a good joke at the expense of the liberals; and sarcasm, well, let’s face it, I use it too much. But I think none of those things are particularly in place in a classroom setting that is supposed to be nurturing the skills of logical reasoning and strong persuasive argument, where objectivism should at least be considered and different opinions encouraged. Which is why I suspect that the title of the class was only a ruse for someone’s ulterior agenda, much like laws we pass to squelch small business, or reduce individual and state’s rights, or create a welfare system. The same thing happened with feminists in my Milton class (Lord help me, that was by far the worst!), and Muslims in my cultural studies class. Worse yet, this sort of thing doesn’t merely begin in college where we (hopefully) have more independent thinking skills. It begins much earlier in grade school when our teachers are still our idols and our opinions still so malleable as to be affected by The Little Mermaid.
But here’s what I, in my frustration, forget: that people in a classroom setting are much more influenced by the people around them than any of us would like to believe. It’s easy to think that because nobody calls bluff on the handful of people with the same and loudest opinions that they consequently agree with them. But it’s not true. Often the smartest and most logical people (on either side of an argument) don’t bother speaking up simply because they don’t feel it’s worth the effort or important enough in that particular setting. And it’s much easier to have principles than to fight about these principles with other people, just like it is much easier to keep talking once your bandwagon has filled up than it is to be the lone hand in the air admitting that you fundamentally disagree.
Welcome to the real world. Because I feel like this picture of the college classroom is a microcosm of the political environment that we, the citizens of the United States, face right now on a scale so much larger that it’s like navigating a dinghy out of Alamitos Bay to board a clipper bound for Cape Horn. Politicians are the professors and the people with the loudest voices in class. We are the students who come to learn and to think and to argue ideas, rationally, and for our own good and the good of those things we believe in. And I, perhaps more than any other type of person in America, am quick to become furious at the professors without ever turning to the guy sitting next to me and asking what he actually thinks. But I don’t buy it anymore – that the loudest and most powerful ones represent the way most of us feel.
In about the first fifteen minutes of watching the Republican debate in New Hampshire a couple weeks ago I had eliminated all but one of the candidates from my “list-of-people-I-might-actually-want-to-be-president.” I didn’t eliminate them for a slight disagreement either. Mild disagreements are inevitable and probably healthy. I eliminated them based on fundamental principles that are the core of my political beliefs. Principles that I could tell they either do not have or will not represent. The one guy I didn’t eliminate by the end of the debate I still know so little about that I would be unwilling to let him plan my day, let alone my country’s next four years. And these are the conservatives! Who are these people? I keep asking myself. At best they come off as immature, condescending, petty, and tiresome; at worst, unyielding, irrational, unprincipled, and vicious. And I become disillusioned. Not about our government so much as about my fellow Americans. I begin to believe that these Republicans and these Democrats represent my neighbors. And let me tell you, it makes me think none too fondly of my neighbors. It’s enough to make me wonder if they’re trying to pit us against each other. But if conservatives in Washington are not adequately representing the values that I hold, then why am I so quick to assume that conservative and liberal politicians are adequate portrayals of the conservatives and liberals around me? Indeed, why are we all so eager to vote in people who are inadequate portrayals of who we want in office merely because they claim that they are more like us than the next guy? Which is why I’m beginning to believe that they definitely are not.
If I had to guess I would say I am more like the liberals I know here on earth than the conservatives orbiting around their self-made lunacy up in Washington D.C. Politicians know as little about being a human in a human world as celebrities do, and, like celebrities, they masquerade as common Everymen with a bout of good luck and more money (and an apparently irrepressible need to sleep with people other than the ones to which they are married). They are not. Like all of us, they are stuck in their own delusions, but unlike the rest of us, their delusions are directly affecting and altering our own ways of life. Which is why they have a responsibility to resist those delusions that affect their constituents. That is what it means to take public office. That is why no ordinary, sane human being wants to do it. Imagine stripping yourself of your greatest delusions in order to represent the delusions of others. How naked and lonely and confused you would feel. With few exceptions, politicians do not do this. But in their valiant Everyman attire, they try to convince us that their purely self-centered actions are indeed in support of us.* We’ve made it very easy. Call yourself a Republican and I’ll probably believe you more than the guy standing next to you with a donkey on his lapel. Say “Healthcare is a right,” or “Tea Party” or “No on prop 8” and I’ll know what to think of you.
But there is something more important than the fact that politicians’ views do not encompass those of the citizens. What is more important is that the citizens recognize this. I say this because it’s true of myself. I judge liberals as a group much more harshly than I judge the liberals that I know personally. Certainly, we have fundamental disagreements and sometimes these disagreements are founded on belief systems and principles that inevitably separate us because we each want to be in the company of people who are good and righteous, however we define those two terms. But too often, I suspect, we merely let other people (namely the ones who show their big fat faces on TV) steer us where they will. Washington says: “Do you want money spent on defense or on education? and “We can bail out big business or let the economy (and all your jobs) tank.” and “We must either create a “Security Act” (to be read as “illusion of safety”) or be completely open to another terrorist attack.” We constantly take what we’re fed and debate it within Washington’s black and white terms: defense or education; debt or poverty; security or death; Republican or Democrat. But those aren’t the only terms. Washington is all about false dichotomy. But we don’t have to be. While we’re getting caught up in left and right, other options are being neglected. We have a flagrant tendency to compromise with the lesser of two evils, but why do we not fight harder for what we believe is not evil at all? It’s not easy to do, the way our system works right now. Not, I don’t think, because the system is innately flawed, but because of what we have let it become. I will punch the ballet on November 6 for whichever Republican is on the ticket, even if it ends up being one of those five from the New Hampshire debate that I have already eliminated in my head. But I am not now and never have been a Republican. I am merely closer to being a Republican than I am to being a Democrat. And I’ll feel like I’ve done my best. But have I?
Voting is a big deal, I’m the first to shout this from the rooftops even though I live in a state that will never, ever go red, even if I punch that darn ballet until my face is. But voting is a part of the system – the good part of the system, the foundation of the system, if you will, and it does make a difference, even if sometimes in more subtle ways than we hope. I speak from experience when I say that yelling at the television screen can also be productive, like a cool breeze after a hot day of mosquitos buzzing in your ears. But I think the step this country most needs right now is smaller. I think the step we need right now is to talk to each other. Not on big platforms where mob mentality or those irritating people who feel like they have to be leading everything all the time or talking loudest or admiring themselves in the mirror shadow other people and make us believe that everyone agrees with them and that we are the odd birds out. Small scale. To each other. As friends. And neighbors. And generally decent people. And maybe stop talking about Bush or Obama or the Queen of England and what we are so convinced they have done right or wrong, and talk instead about what we actually want our country to look like. Maybe we will find that we have a more similar vision than we think. We will have disagreements about how to get there, of course, but perhaps we will not have so many disagreements about the types of people we want leading us there.
If conservatives want to prove to liberals that they are not heartless, they must explain – and show – how benevolence can be achieved using conservative principles. If liberals want to prove to conservatives that they are not irrational, they must explain – and show – how their ideals can be translated into an achievable reality. And certainly no politicians are going to be able to prove these things (being as they are, after all, preoccupied with photographing their own crotches). It takes individuals to make these connections. Individuals who are receptive to each other and to actually making positive changes, instead of trying to scam each other. Not trying to “win” but rather trying to reach common ground. Then, if the jokers in D.C. really are just using us in their own game of cards, we can all recognize it. This is not the time for catch phrases or the same old fall-back crutches we use against each other, but rather a time for patriotism, citizens coming together for a common cause, which is a country they love and want to improve, in a world that they also love and want to improve.
I say this now, after a brief political discussion with a friend, and a couple other small incidents that gave me inspiration and renewed faith in the people around me. We’re not so bad, I think most of us would agree. Tomorrow I’ll be blogging anew about how frustrating I find every last person on earth and how we deserve everything we’ve got coming. I’ll probably be hard-headed and unyielding and scathing and I’ll sound like a hypocrite. But I still think it’s worth the effort, this business of turning off the tube and talking to the people with whom we actually share the space we occupy. We won’t reach agreement – indeed in a progressing society, agreement should never be achieved – because we each base our thoughts on society and politics on different philosophies. But agreement is not the same thing as solidarity. I care more about my neighbor’s best-interest than my senator’s. And I care more about my friend’s cause than anyone abusing their power back east. And maybe, if I let discussions with these actual people guide my understanding, we could find genuine solidarity.
-R.E.A.
*In the Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce defines politics as: “A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.”
