It’s Official–I Don’t Have to Like Any Republicans

Tags

conservative, GOP, ideology, liberal, teabaggers

I’m a big fan of UP, formerly with Chris Hayes and now Steve Kornacki. Given that it starts at 6:00 a.m. here in New Mexico, that tells ya just how much.

They usually have an interesting and varied panel of folks who dissect whatever interesting topics of the day seem appropriate.

Well, live and learn as they say. I came, I saw, I learned. And now I am no longer ashamed of disliking Republicans pretty much to a person.

You see, the Contrarian likes to think of himself as somewhat more centrist than me.

me<————->Contrarian<—————->Crazy Right

Mostly he’s just as liberal as I am, but it makes him feel better to think he’s not.

Me? I’m almost off the page. I’m an anarchist with the foresight to know that politics belongs to those who realize that you gotta give up something to get something. So I am willing to swallow a  bit of bitter for the sweet. I recognize that the only people who get exactly all of what they want are dictators and they usually don’t last too long. Facts is facts.

Any the how. One of the things said Contrarian likes to dig me with, is shit like “if George W. Bush discovered a cure for cancer, you would find something wrong with it” and other bitter ilk of that sort, all designed to make me look unreasonable in general and downright wrong in any given specific instance in which he decides for the fun of it to argue with me. Basically he claims that “you don’t like any of ’em”, ’em being Republicans.

So I always argued that such was not the case, and cited an instance or two, of people who were not downright by birth pathological liars, cheats, and shills for big business, and had just maybe one bone in their wretched bodies that hummed like a tuning fork when hit as to the poor and you know, the brothers and sisters out there barely gettin’ by. Am I my brother’s keeper keeps echoing in my head, though it seems to have not had the same effect upon most Christianist Republicans I have known.

I defended that position to every challenge.

Until.

I saw this graph on UP. I can’t find the graph on UP today, but I recall it generally. Congress is made up of 535 seats all told. Back in the 60’s or so, on a liberal/conservative continuum, 355 members were overlapping between the two parties. That means that while there were some Democrats all alone on the far left and some Republicans alone on the far right, there was a vast middle where they scored about evenly.

Given that for some 40 years, the Democrats had owned both Houses of Congress, it became incumbent on the part of Republicans to cooperate and find common ground on some things if they wished to participate in governing. There were a lot of Northern liberal Republicans and lots of Southern conservative Democrats, but there were enough in the middle that compromises were worked out and legislation passed. No faction was large enough to overcome the vast middle.

Then 1994 happened, and Newt Gingrich orchestrated a majority win for the GOP. This happened for a variety of reasons not the least of which was the loss of the South to Democrats following the Civil Rights acts of the 1960’s. Democrats in the South left the party in droves, or certainly were prepared to vote Republican if only given a good reason. Newt gave them that reason in his Contract with America, touching on sensitive issues of “welfare” and budget deficits.

He also started something new and unique in Congress, the 4-day work week. Members were encouraged (especially in the House) to return to their districts each weekend and spend time with constituents. This gave the average voter the illusion at least that his congress person cared about his or her opinion. The downside to all this was that the sense of collegiality that had been the grease in the machine of Congress was now gone. Weekend parties, and various other gatherings for dinner and drinks were no more. Members didn’t get to know one another as they formerly did. Many Republican wives or husbands stayed in the home district, missing the other opportunity for camaraderie.

With Gingrich and Tom Delay, more emphasis was placed on sticking with the team no matter what. Voting as a cohesive unit was prized to control a larger agenda that was dreamed up in the offices of the Speaker and his upper echelon elites.

It all went down hill from there.

Denny Hastert gave us the Hastert rule: thou shall not bring to the floor any bill that does not have the majority blessing of your own party–it is irrelevant if enough members of one’s own party plus enough members of the other party would ensure victory.

Today we reap the results of a Congress that is entirely partisan. Today that same graph indicates that of 535 members only 11 overlap. Yes you read that right. Only ELEVEN senate or house members from the two parties are rated at the same point on the liberal/conservative spectrum. All the rest, 524 lie to the left (Democrat) or to the right (Republican). There are essentially no moderate Republicans to embrace. There are no fiscally conservative, socially liberal GOP members. They have been purged or threatened so fiercely that they deny the emperor has no clothes.

There is simply no Republican left for me to “like”.

And so I don’t.

So sue me.

That’s the way I see it. If you don’t well, there is a comment box.

What Do We Owe and Why

Tags

conservative, democracy, liberal, political ideology, political theory

Howard L. Rosenthal, David J. Rothman, Editors

Conservatives and Liberals alike would agree that every citizen should be afforded the right to pursue their own dreams and go as far as their desire and talents can take them. What we don’t agree upon is how to secure that vision.

Conservatives think it is accomplished by keeping regulations and taxes at a minimum so that entrepreneurs are unhampered in their pursuit of growing their business. Presumably they believe that low taxes at least allow the non-business individual to put his or her money in appropriate educational or training endeavors to secure their vision of happiness. For Conservatives, government needs to get out of the way, allowing the free market to determine who succeeds and who fails.

It’s unclear how this benefits all the non-business world, but they seem to assume that such business people, so happy at their ability to operate unfettered, will gladly pay their workers a good wage, and maintain good working conditions, and of course all this supports a superior product.

As we have seen, this has not been the our history when such practices have been allowed to govern. Business has become a game of the very rich and open warfare for control of the industry has been the norm, with little or no thought to the worker or his well-being being given.

Both sides would theoretically believe in a level playing field. Conservatives look to existing laws and would make all evenly available to all. Liberals see the field as uneven by historical behaviors and that the field must be made level by offering those who have been inhibited a leg up for some period of time.

If the playing field can be level, then Liberals would argue that these things must be true:

1. All citizens must have sufficient nutritious food each day. Children who arrive at school hungry don’t learn as well as those who do. Workers who are ill-fed don’t perform as well on the job. Inner city groceries are often replete with soda, snacks, and prepackaged foods and bereft of fresh fruits and vegetables. Obesity is an epidemic. We cannot achieve our best when we eat only high-fat, highly processed foods.
2. All citizens are entitled to decent housing. Nothing is truer than the statement, a person’s home is their castle. It is the place where we are safe and our haven of relaxation. It is where we can be ourselves, dropping the facades that we carry about in our public lives. It is where we rejuvenate our bodies and spirits. Everyone should have some place to call home and feel at ease.
3. All citizens are entitled to a good education. Not “an” education, but a good one. To the degree that our cities cannot support such places, then government must step in and fill the void. Children arrive at school in very different conditions. Those from wealthy homes come with vastly more assets than those who do not. Those who come from financially secure homes have less things to inhibit their learning than those who are constantly aware that their very existence is under threat. Universities cannot be the place where remedial work is done. And of course no child should be unable to pursue their dreams because they cannot afford the education and training required. The government must assure this. No one can pursue happiness who cannot afford tuition.
4. All citizens are entitled to medical care. No one should die because they cannot afford the treatment required to maintain or cure their health concern. The toll of the individual who is unable to secure insurance is devastating. It devastates their savings, and their families emotionally. No one who is threatened by disease can be the best parent, spouse or worker when their minds are locked in a fight for survival. Care must include that which helps people to learn how to maintain their health–this lowers the cost for everyone in the end.
5. All citizens are entitled to jobs at decent wages. Workers have no incentive to do their jobs well when they are basically being paid slave wages. They cannot get ahead, cannot dream of a better life for themselves or their families. People need to feel useful and valued. Decent wages provide this. No entrepreneur has anything without the work force to actually build her product. They must be paid accordingly.
6. All citizens are entitled to have sufficient leisure time during the work week. Our bodies, minds and souls need replenishing. We need the time to have real hobbies that engage the mind and the spirit. We need time to play with our children, teaching them how to bake pies and change the oil, and fly fish, and prune the apple tree. Vital family relationships are nourished in this time and children learn how to be adults.
7. All citizens have the right to experience clean air and clean water, untainted foods and safe products. Government must ensure that business and all citizens protect and promote our environment for future generations. Global warming is a fact. We need to address it now.
8. All citizens have the right to engage in whatever faith practices they desire, or none. Our government is based on protection of minorities in some real aspects and this is one of them. Those who do not agree with faith or with yours have a right to be free from your public-government sponsored displays. Government should be out of the business of religion in any respect. Our laws should reflect  “provision for the common welfare” not some false and gimmicky “Judeo-Christian” standard that was NEVER intended.
9. All citizens are entitled to equal protection of the laws. Race, sex, orientation, religion have no place in determinations of who gets what. We must have a serious and dispassionate discussion of when  a life is a “person” for purposes of rights.

These seem to me to be basic.

Why do we owe them?

Because we are human, and we can contemplate the question. The question answers itself. If we can conceive the discussion, we have already explained why we must do these things. If we do not, then we are simply not the species we think we are.

Will there be those who abuse this? Of course. In the same way that Earls and Counts abuse the system of monarchy, and countless party officials abuse the system of Communism. There are always those who seek the shortcut to unwarranted riches. This will be no different, but I hazard in the long run, the human desire to create, to be recognized, to feel worthwhile and valuable will tame that tendency. In any case, I feel it worth it.

What do you think?

 

Let’s Talk About It

Tags

conservative, Fox News, liberal, morality, Politics, right wing extremism, wacko media

We are all walking pretences. Relatively speaking of course. Some of us more than others.

Politicians most of all? Yes, most would agree.

A retired military man speaking on Morning Joe, suggested that when you get a couple of Democrats and a couple of Republicans in a room together, you can have a pretty reasonable conversation. When you open the door, and the red light comes on, each will spew a very different version of the talk.

Jonathan Haidt, working at U of Virginia, and a psychologist, is exploring morality and politics. You can go there and sign up and help out by taking a number of their quizzes. I referenced him a few days ago regarding his book about the differences between conservatives and liberals. His work suggests that we are quite different from what we think of ourselves.

We create personas, and to a greater or lesser degree, we become them. We may be cynical about it, knowing exactly what we are doing, or we may be largely oblivious to it. In some ways, I’d prefer the cynic to the one who has no clue he is not who he thinks he is. I can confront the first type and, given the right incentives, I can cause a change. The person who buys his own rhetoric? I’m at a loss to change.

While I am quick to point out the relative racist/homophobic/Amerocentricism of a lot of folks, especially those of, shall we say, lesser educational attainment, I am fascinated by them as well. I have come to see that they have incorporated a finely wrought (not by them of course) set of principles that alleviate their guilt, and reassure them of their moral rectitude in the ugly tenets they adhere to.  

My real anger is at those who actually know better, and are nothing more than grifters on a small or large scale, using the opportunity presented to make money, corporate or personal, off the stupidity and ineptitude of people who can’t or won’t think for themselves. My enemies are Fox Noise, Hannity, Limbaugh, Malkin, Beck, and a host of politicians too numerous to list. Most of them, if not all, play to and present a rationale to the great masses that means coin in their coffers or votes or both.

The other day, I linked to Fox regarding a hateful spew of comments regarding the death of  Whitney Houston. When I went there, I found no comment section, found no way to “sign up”, and relied on a couple of websites who printed out parts of the comment section. I’ve since learned that nobody can now see the comments–they have been taken down, apparently without comment. This would be Fox’s way of course–never point out that they were appalled at what they read, but rather simply being appalled that they were “found out” and trying to hide the facts.

Fox is but one of course. The Fifth Column points out in her post, there are plenty more to choose from.

It’s easy to avoid this bilge. And I understand why people, given limited time, would rather spend time with “uplifting” fare, and material that is in agreement with what one naturally thinks. I’m not urging you to abandon me for goodness sakes. I’m just saying one needs to familiarize oneself not so much with the poor souls that listen to the sewage, but those who manufacture the sewage. We ignore it at our peril.

It is one thing to make fun of crazy people who are poised to put on the tricorner hat, tinfoil though it may be, grab the musket and go looking to join the regiment to “get back our freedoms”,  but unfortunately the musket is really a high-powered rifle, and the ammo is suited to kill. These people can be triggered, at least some of them can, and now and then, one of them goes off all by themselves, given their underlying psychosis. They cause a lot of pain. As a group they can cause a lot more.

So do pay attention. And do inform yourselves about what Fox and others of their ilk are saying. Do respond. Do set the record straight. Do speak truth. Something about what happens when “good men do nothing” seems appropriate here. Oh and good women too.

End of rant.  

Related articles

• Speaking of conservatives (snohomishobserver.com)
• Why Conservatives and Liberals see the world differently (dangerousminds.net)
• Why Religion Gets Emotional (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)

Defining Moments

Tags

conservative, DADT, economy, empathy, GOP, immigration, liberal, political psychology, Politics, progressive, Republican platform, teabaggers

Just the usual housekeeping before we get to the news:

I’m having difficulty with some blogs these days regarding comments. They seem to be all Blogger platforms and the ones that include a comment box on the initial page. They are not taking my WordPress address nor an open-ID, and when I finally clear through Google, then I have to copy the silly word, and then another window, and well, I’m not getting through and it’s taking me forever. Dusty, Dr. McGrath and Ahab, I’ve had difficulty on all your blogs. Sorry. It’s my dial-up no doubt.

Oh and by the by, the book at right? I’m not endorsing. Just said what I wanted to say.

Speaking of which, we spend a lot of time defining the Right, the neo-cons, the cons, the teabaggers, the wacko religious right, etc. Well they define us too. Frankly, I’m not at all sure what I am. I am wayyyyyyy liberal. Does that make me liberal, left, progressive, socialistic,  anarchistic, or what?

Dissent Magazine has a good article that helps define what the progressive movement entails today. Do stop by and read. A thoroughly excellent essay.

We know who the TeaBaggers are: white, middle-class and older. We know what they want: stay out of my pocket at all costs. What do they think about foreign policy? World Affairs Journal, suggests it’s still pretty much any body’s guess. A series of interviews with “average teabaggers and the candidates that seek to woo them.

The Contract with America has morphed into the Pledge to America but nothing much has changed. The GOP is still about returning America to the glory years of tax cuts for the rich, and rugged individualism that leaves the have-nots still having not while the haves roll in luxury. Steven Benen from Washington Monthly has a good review with plenty of opinions from all the relevant pundits.

If there is anything that touches the progressive heart, it’s inequality. AlterNet provides an excellent essay with plenty of links, including one to a series at Slate, about immigration and the fallacy that undocumented workers have wreaked havoc on the American economy. Quite the opposite is true, and those TeaBaggers who claim that immigrants are draining their pockets are just plain wrong and ill-informed. Nothing new there is there?

Most of us, all of us who are rational compassionate people that is, were really pissed at the usual GOP stonewall of DADT yesterday in filibustering the Senate Appropriations bill. The usual excuses for “just say no” were given by the usual suspects. Rachel Maddow dismantles them all with actual FACTS. Read it, and contact a stonewalling GOPer near you and vent your displeasure.

If you ever wanted to take a test about critical reading, having I got the test for you! Take a gander at the National Review‘s “scientific” analysis of empathy and then at the amazing conclusions they come to. A number of key things to tease out here:

• sympathy is a relative term — yes and it’s the entire basis of your conclusions
• note that the differences in absolutes is extremely small between “liberals and conservatives”
• note the use of “some” of these “could” serve. . .
• similarly, one “might” and they “might”
• use of a Pew poll to suggest that conservatives are more patriotic than liberals. The question was “do you feel more patriotic than the average American?” That is not at all the same thing. This poll measured arrogance of belief, not actual patriotic feeling.
• “one whose sympathies. . . . is “probably” more likely. . . .
• “while such causality is hard to establish. . .  .” and then they go ahead and establish it.
• “some part of differences. . . might explain.”

What we have here, is just a hodgepodge of interesting data and someone sitting down and seeing what they “might” argue from the evidence. Beware!

Curbing the Rhetoric?

Tags

bigotry, business, conservative, duelism, liberal, political labeling, Politics, religions

It seems that as never before, at least since the Civil War, has this country been so ideologically divided. The fractures appear to be between what are known as liberal/conservative labels, but in truth, there are several dozen cracks–small groups who have their own personal issues.

Some are interested in health care reform, others in gay rights, others in abortion denial, tax reform, regulators or not, first amendment issues, church/state, and on and on. We artificially call people liberals, socialists, fascists, communists, conservatives, neo-cons, right-wing evangelicals, wackos, reactionaries, anarchists, you name it. Some of us fit one category and some of us fit partially in several. We are all at each other’s collective and individual throats on any given day.

People have solutions or not. Obama urges that we sit down and bypass the rhetoric and get down to details–look for common ground issues and build on them. Others want utter purity within their ranks and will give in on nothing. The GOP increasingly becomes branded as the party of “NO!” Tea Party adherents in more than a dozen organizations emphasis different core issues. Plenty of people are more than happy to give lip service to any group to gain their vote.

Fran, who is a great blogger and posts often on Facebook, decries this labeling. Many others do as well. Some decry the fact that those in powerful positions cause much of our dismay, by “modeling” bad behavior and making it “okay” for others to come forth with their favorite brand of bigotry. Those who feel put upon decry their martyrdom, and those who are accused of the outrages point to their own martyrdom imposed from the other side. We talk past each other.

We are the product of a lousy inadequate public education system that leaves us ill-prepared to evaluate the problems of our day. We are victimized by a co-opted media that no longer has much of  a clue as to what journalism is supposed to do.  We are the recipients of too much wealth and “stuff” and have developed the attention span of gnats. We are lazy and want others to do our thinking and research for us. We are susceptible to the “snappy retort” the glib “sounds good” bite.

We, all of us, are mired in way too much rah rah flag waving exceptionalism. If we are “best” then somehow, others must be less. If Episcopalians are best, then Baptists must not be. If Toyota is best then Kia can’t be. We are dualistic to an extreme. If there is left, there must be right, and if there is right there must be wrong. We like tidy columns like that, even when it leads us to “sides” that are separated by an increasingly uncrossable chasm.

Our churches, those valuable places where so much good could be done, are often times just exactly the opposite in that they claim exclusive ownership of the “interpretation” of God. Mainstream churches have lost their way, sliding into secular happy religion, while the Evangelicals are trapped in a rigid sense-deprived world that demands pure faith against physical realities.

Wherever we look, we are asked to choose. It is the battle cry of big business. Our car/computer/kitchen cleanser/potato chips are better than theirs. Pick us! Buy us! Taste test  us and them–See! We are better. They suck. Polls are run now, not days later, when we have had time to digest, reflect and work through new information, but now, as it’s happening. We have the clicker in our hand, dial it up for “like that” and dial it down when you don’t.

The immediately generated “public opinion” is pulled from the copier and sent off with a click to all those that need to know, and adjustments are made on the fly. A little less emphasis on “green” power Senator, the voters are projected to not favor that so much today. We can perhaps mold, manipulate that opinion later on, if you truly care that much about it. The election is the thing today. Stick to the script of what works.

We are caught, you and I with having nobody out there that we can rely on for truth much any more. Everyone has an axe to grind it seems. Everyone is lying or cheating, or somehow disguising who they really are for whatever they think is some greater good, for the moment. I may be a philanderer, an abuser of the public funds, but hey, guys, you need me! I’m convinced only I can save you from yourselves. So I tell myself, and will tell you if you catch me in all my naked wrongness.

I have not a clue how to get beyond this. I can only, it seems try to carve out my little corner of sanity in an insane world. I’m a offender. You come here to read my “witty” repartee, my sarcasm dripping with some truth and a lot of anger. Occasionally, I write uplifting stuff, but truly, you come for the ball-busting screech at the other side. That makes you chuckle and nod, or it makes you angry enough to write comments dripping with your own sarcasm and lauding my lacking mental faculties.

I am part of the problem, yet I have no clue what would work. They are wrong, and I want to state that very clearly. And so I do. You right wing wacko! Get a brain, get a life! And then I confess my sins and promise to do better. But you see I don’t.

As the snow starts and we face another long week of being locked within, I’ll give it some thought. But I don’t think I’ll come up with an answer. After all, I am right, right?

Name Your Impulse

Tags

abortion, conservative, environment, Health care, liberal, moral impulse, philosophy, psychology, sociology

Okay, we’ve been through this before. What in the world makes a conservative, well conservative, and a liberal, liberal.

We try to converse with each other, end up yelling, throwing down our respective hats, and screaming bloody murder. “What is wrong with you. It’s obvious to anybody with a brain!”

Yet, we fail, and we are wont, on both sides, it seems, to declare the other side simple-minded, irrational, self-indulgent, and any such collection of pejorative adjectives that come to mind.

Noted psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, author of  “The Happiness Hypothesis,” has more to tell us on that score. Haidt, professor at the University of Virginia is also widely known for his essay entitled “Why People Vote Republican.” He will be getting out a new book in the fall of 2010.

His basic theory is that we are victims of rather different moral philosophies, gained as much from our peers than from our parents. We value different moral precepts and this makes it inevitable that we will fall on opposite sides of some very big issues.

The five moral impulses he discovered at work were these:

• Harm/care. It is wrong to hurt people; it is good to relieve suffering.

• Fairness/reciprocity. Justice and fairness are good; people have certain rights that need to be upheld in social interactions.

• In-group loyalty. People should be true to their group and be wary of threats from the outside. Allegiance, loyalty and patriotism are virtues; betrayal is bad.

• Authority/respect. People should respect social hierarchy; social order is necessary for human life.

• Purity/sanctity. The body and certain aspects of life are sacred. Cleanliness and health, as well as their derivatives of chastity and piety, are all good. Pollution, contamination and the associated character traits of lust and greed are all bad.

And of course, you guessed it. The first two are terribly important to liberals and the last two terribly important to conservatives. The middle one is vastly more important to conservatives than liberals as well. It takes little imagination to figure out where you fall, and as you examine the discussions you’ve had with conservatives, you can easily see the echoes of their moral priorities as well.

This of course translates rather excellently into religious liberal/conservative divisions as well. If one is religiously conservative, you can almost bet they are conservative as to all the various political issues they are concerned about. When you say, “how can you not care that millions of your fellow citizens don’t have basic health care?” they retort, “What is that up against the millions of babies we kill through abortion?”

Perhaps, just perhaps, neither side is being purposefully obtuse in refusing to see the point of the other side, their moral impulse just screams that something else is desperately more important before your issue comes to the fore.

What Haidt and others would argue, is that neither side would be good at being the sole group in control. Either would drive society in general into a hole. Liberals would end up with chaos and conservatives would install a sterile grey world of rules, killing creativity in the process.

That this is so is clear when you examine either party after serious losses. They devolve into a mess, kind of like the GOP is doing to itself today. It wasn’t all that long ago that the Democrats did the same thing, which of course led to the Bush fiasco, which in turn led to the latest Republican downfall.

By the way, you can determine your own particulars on this subject by going to http://www.yourmorals.org/.

Given that we are living in a more and more global world, we are going to continue to be faced with people who have radically different takes on this moral impulse ground. It becomes imperative that we learn this fact well, and work to appeal in our statements to as broad a range of the five as possible when framing our arguments.

One area as an example is that of the environment. Liberals support action because of their broad care for people and keeping them from harm. But evangelicals are being drawn toward action by appeals to authority–namely that God expects us to take care of what he has given us.

There is much to argue, for and against Haidt’s argument, no doubt. It is in its beginning stages of development and there will be plenty of critics. If you want to see some of them, then by all means look at the comments to the piece, which is linked up top. They are thoughtful and reasoned.

Yet, it seems Haidt is on to something here, and we desperately need an answer to this polarizing situation we find ourselves in. We cannot continue to address the severe and huge problems facing this country and globe without learning somehow to work together. That we have widely divergent ideologies is clear, but we have much at stake that is the same–our children for a start.

Its a beginning, and one well worth your time to read and consider I believe.

Unhappy but Still Right!

Tags

conservative, liberal, Sunday Editorial

I ran into an old poll by Pew yesterday. It was about the issue of happiness. It was done in 2006, but they tell me that these indicators have existed long before and presumably still apply. The headline is that Republicans are happier than Democrats, or more precisely, conservatives are happier than liberals.

I was puzzled, as you might guess, and well, it got me to thinking. Of course a whole lot of things were measured in that poll, and you can’t read too much into the results as they make perfectly clear. It turns out that health is by far the best indicator of happiness, followed by wealth and then we get to marriage and Republicanism. You see the pattern? Wealth means better health care and thus better health. Republicans are more wealthy than liberals. Marriage seems benign here. Oh and another indicator is church attendance; those that adhere more rigidly to faithful church going, are happier. That fits as well, conservative religious do attend more church.

But the problem remains that when all factors are held even, Republicans still are happier than liberals. Overall Republicans are 46% happy and liberals only 28%. So what gives?

Well it seems to me, that when other factors are eliminated, then the only rational place to look is at world views, those beliefs that make one either conservative or liberal in the first place. Now conservatives no doubt are jumping for glee, saying, “you see, I knew it, Republican values lead to happiness!” And in a sense I suspect they are right, but only in a sense. (You surely don’t think I’m giving in to a Republican notion do you?)

And I want to say right off, that what follows is not purely the result of my own thoughts. I read a number of comments off a posting about this and something struck me in one response as “right” on. It is part of conservative culture that success is mostly a result of self-sufficiency, the guts to gut it out, go it alone, work hard, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and other such claptrap. It’s social Darwinism at its best. The fittest survive in life. And the fittest are those willing to work hard, harder than anybody else. It’s a prideful stance to be sure.

Conservatives thus don’t have a lot of “feeling” for most people beneath them. They see them as people who got as far as they were “willing” to go. They assume they are satisfied, or should be, since if they were not they have only to sacrifice sufficiently to get further along.

Since they feel this way, they concentrate of making  their “own opportunities” and protecting and securing the well being of their own families. This is what it means to be human they think. They are suspicious of government which they see as a restraint of their ability to secure their own welfare. Government steals their money and gives it over to people who are unwilling to do as they have done. Happiness derives from a personal “job well done.”

Liberals on the other hand see a world that is wildly unequal. While some millions live in near luxury, others through no fault of their own, live in utter squalor and face literal starvation. Liberals see government as an establishment of the people to provide for all the people an adequate life. Problems of inequality in any area are too large to be addressed individually. They are not natural and have been imposed for millennia by haves. How is one to be happy, no matter one’s place in the economic boat, when others so clearly are dying from lack?

Now you may find this all a bit too trite, and undoubtedly it is. But I think it does contain a kernel of truth. I spend some time each week arguing with ultra conservatives of a religious take. I have been soundly shocked again  and again at how coldly they respond to many issues of social justice. The self-proclaimed “serious” Catholics (one’s who follow the Church dogma down to the last tiddle AS THEY INTERPRET IT), are mighty quick to condemn the homeless, immigrants, welfare moms, and a whole host of less fortunate as essentially lazy folks. They find that charity alone is more than sufficient to take care of the relatively small numbers of people who actually need assistance. It’s all in the way you define things it seems.

They ignore the statistics and first hand accounts of doctors and emergency care workers that most of the people they see who are unable to pay for health care are not people who have no health care, but instead are those who are working poor. They have it, but it covers so little that they are essentially uninsured. They ignore the numbers that suggest that a valid percentage of executions occur in this country against people later found out to be not guilty. 

What it suggests to me is that a number of things are reinforcing this cold rejection of objective truth. First of all, a rigid religious world view means that whatever the real world looks like, the Church has been doing the right things, so if it looks wrong, it can’t be the Church’s fault. A tidy little theology is required for a tidy little mind. Nothing can upset the cart, because that would be well, untidy, and we can’t have that.

If i feel then that I have worked really hard and have amassed some small wealth, a nice retirement, full health care, dental, and all the rest, then I become suspicious when they ask me for some of what I worked so hard for. After all, I tell myself, i worked hard, I’m nobody special, anybody else could do the same. They don’t want to, Don’t take my STUFF!!!!!!

You see, it seems to me, that there is nothing magical in either Church attendance or Republican doctrine that makes you happy. You, I suggest, have a propensity to viewing the world a certain way. You found a religion that falls in with that world view, AS YOU INTERPRET IT, and you find a political party that does the same, again, AS YOU INTERPRET IT.

Democrats/liberals do no differently. We bring the world view to the town square and find a better match in Democratic notions of fair play, even playing field, basic human rights, and a government meant to serve the people and not the manifestations of the people, namely corporations.

Speaking for myself, I realize that some folks are not emotionally or psychologically able to compete in the big bad world. Others do so but at great price. That does not mean they are lazy or unfit for living good lives. I don’t begrudge them a share of my largess in order to live with respect.

I’m not sure what happiness is. I’m a master at delayed gratification I know that. And I know that in being that way, to an extreme, I’ve undoubtedly sacrificed a lot of happiness. If you put off enough things until the right moment, you can ultimately miss a lot in life. I have done so. I try not to do it so much any more. I tend to see that the now is very important. Now is the only guarantee I have. But I still can’t sit down and read a book when there is a house that needs cleaning. And I probably never will.

As a card carrying member of liberality–yeah way out there for the most part–I don’t know if I’m happy or not. After another two inches of rain, probably not so much today. But I resonate with a lot of new thought teaching which encourages me to seize the moment. Buddhism says that happiness is the absence of suffering. And in part at least suffering is our constant whining about what might have been or what should be. It is not being able to be comfortable in the moment. It’s not accepting the isness of now. It’s always depending on delayed gratification and missing the small wonders of this very moment and all that that entails.

So I hate that conservatives “don’t care” but I think they may be closer to living in their moment than I in mine. I’m always stuck in the “as soon as this problem is solved or over, then, I can get on with my life.” Trouble is another one just pops up to replace the old one anyhow. So perhaps I don’t spend enough time on the wonder of today, and the blessings I actually have. And then again, that gets me to thinking. . . .