Opposite Poles

 

            The balance in politics is fascinating – almost too impossible to be real.  Being one who believes that a linear political spectrum of left and right is a lazy falsehood, I would nonetheless argue that we are lucky that such a bipolarization exists.

            I’ve always said that a controversy becomes a controversy if there are good, solid arguments on both sides.  I find it hard to take a stand on an issue that many feel strongly about, and I get all wishy-washy and say “yeah, but…” quite a bit.  I try to analyze an issue from all sides and get into a schizoid pattern of thinking that solves little and leaves the same questions in place.

            On a greater scale, this is what happens in American politics.  With so much division on controversial viewpoints, there exists a constant power struggle that keeps the issues in check.  And with our two-party system, I say we’re lucky to have the balance, because if neither side is truly right about everything, then I don’t really want either one to have too much power.  In the absence of political extremism as the norm, we are left with a collection of politicians who do not wish to anger the other side too much.  Can you imagine a world where extremist Republicans ran roughshod on social issues and banned homosexuality?  You don’t have to.  Go to Saudi Arabia.  Can you imagine a world where extremist Democrats took 70% of your paycheck for social programs?  You don’t have to.  Go to Denmark.

Isn’t it odd, though, that Republicans and Democrats were at almost a perfect lock in the 2000 election?  I invoke the 2000 election, because I believe that was America in its natural habitat, pre-9/11, and because it was a showcase of the true sentiments of the American public, thanks to the uninspiring, vanilla major party candidates that were running at the time.  What causes this near-perfect split?  Is it the inherent duality of mankind?  Is it natural, with about three hundred million unique brains moving about this nation, that we only have two powerful political parties that are locked in this virtual stalemate?

Perhaps it is because people feel they need to be a part of the larger coalition in order to be competitive, and so small ones are locked out.  Republicans and Democrats differ in that Republicans can organize so much better than the fractured, battered Democrats, who might show up at an Iraq war protest and become an unwilling de facto supporter of Mumia Abu-Jamal.  That’s my biggest problem with the great schism of the political parties; people who believe themselves to be Democrats, who are a patchwork quilt of issues, have to lump themselves into a big pile of political oatmeal just to throw up the wall against the mad Republican drive of the last 15 years.

 But what really sucks is how every burning issue in American life seems to fall on one side of the fence or the other.  Legal abortion is considered a liberal cause, tax cuts are considered conservative.  Gay rights are considered liberal, gun control and school vouchers are considered conservative.  Because of this, hard-line party folk can dismiss a person based on their beliefs about one issue as a person who is a member of the other end of the spectrum and thus completely on the wrong side of history. 

I am personally conservative on some issues and liberal on others.  I believe I might be a Republican if they weren’t so dead wrong on many moral issues, and so it pisses me off if someone brands me a liberal across the board just because I support gay rights.

How people can believe, with so many thousands upon thousands of professions in this world, that politics needs to be a one-on-one street fight, a battle of the forces of good and evil, is disheartening.  An “us vs. them” mentality is never healthy.  But radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity almost have a claim that they have the liberal mind mapped completely, and make connections between fiscal liberals, moral liberals, and raving hippie freaks that for the most part just aren’t there.  Senator Hillary Clinton seems to take a fembot anti-Republican stance on just about everything she can get her hands on.  They unfairly dismiss alternate viewpoints as “rhetoric” and adopt their own firmly seated party line viewpoints without shame.

Diversity exists everywhere, diversity within diversity.  Groups exist that struggle to be a part of both ends of what is traditionally referred to as the political spectrum.   The Log Cabin Republicans, for instance, are an organization of gay and lesbian Republicans that battle the far right elements of the party on gay issues.  Libertarians offer a fresh perspective on the very nature of politics, advocating smaller government and a less interventionist foreign policy.

We would do well to follow the example of such brave political deviants, to find our own stances on all issues and not fall into lockstep with what major parties expect us to believe.  Hopefully, campaign finance reform will allow us to add another couple of dimensions to this predictable, constrictive spectrum of ours so that we can begin to inject true diversity and honesty on the issues into American politics.  We’ll get rid of all the gridlock and minutia, and we won’t need this balance anymore to keep things from shifting too far one way or the other.  We’ll be able to make politics a cornucopia of thought.

 

Don’t have many links – this was just kind of a rant.

Log Cabin Republicans http://www.lcr.org/

Libertarian Party http://www.lp.org/