The Impossible Dream

I was going to write about Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed this morning. But I'm not, or, at least, I'm only going to use his candidacy as a jumping off point towards something else. 

My original intent was to use quotes of his from his past (where else might they be found?) as fodder for why he doesn't deserve my vote. But we all know what would happen next. I would either be ignored, which is nearly the preferred response (though my comments would serve no purpose then), or countered vehemently. "He's retracted that statement!" "He's distanced himself from that!" Yadda yadda. Exactly like every other politician not named Donald Trump would try to do if he/she/they/it felt threatened. Har-umph.

As an aside, one of the things I actually like about Trump is that he bulls forward no matter what, almost as though saying, "Yeah? So what? It's out there, deal with it." I prefer that to dancing around legitimate issues and legitimate questions. 

But I digress.

I'm appalled at the idea of again falling into wormholes. It's tiresome. I shouldn't even bother to point out the self-serving and shallow hypocrisy inherent in such things, but I will. What my guy says goes for all times and all places and he's forever an infidel, yet your guy gets a pass. Both sides do it, at least to a degree. It cheapens each.

And it does not help anyone's identification, understanding, or appreciation of the real problems we face. We're all quite adept at seeing the splinter in the other guy's eye yet looking beyond the plank in ours.

Heavy sigh. We need better, but that's the impossible dream, isn't it?

Angelic David

Shawn on Amazon says this about my novel David Gideon:

The book is a fun romp where the politics are much more civil than reality. This would be a fun world to live in and if there could be an angelic being like David with a great wife like Diane life would be good for everyone.
Enjoy the story and forget about the reality of our politics and you’ll get a double win.

I must admit that I'm not completely sure how to take this assessment. It almost sounds tongue in cheek. But as he did also give the book four stars out of five, I think it was well meant. 

The fact is that I purposely downplayed the politics in David Gideon. I did this for several reasons. One is that politics as politics is either boring or maddening, and typically both. Another is that, while I do not back away from David's core beliefs, if you get too political you automatically turn off half of your potential audience. As such, I feared that if I became too in depth on the politics it would distract from the real story, which is ultimately about a man and a woman's life together. Diane Gideon is the real hero, you know, and political nonsense, except where it would enhance the story, would take away from that.

When our friend Shawn advises to forget political reality and enjoy the story you get a double win, it's precisely what I wanted as an author. If you've been kind enough to read it, I hope you agree.

Just Say No

I know that most readers prefer that I don't talk about politics, and I get it. Politics are something of a disease, quite frankly, and we make the game far more important than it ought to be. Still, I'll talk politics today, but I'll be brief.

As I hammer this out, Kevin McCarthy has lost a seventh straight vote in trying to become Speaker of the House. This means that House of Representatives can't organize itself. Many folks bemoan the disarray. Me? I welcome it.

Government ought to be inefficient. It ought to be difficult for the government to get things done. The entire reason we have the great Constitution we do is to diffuse power, precisely to keep things from happening too quickly. When things happen too quickly, well, COVID.

It might be better if this never gets resolved. If the new House can't be formed, Washington can't do anything. That might just be a dramatic improvement over how Congress typically acts: so very adept at forcing bad ideas and disastrous spending upon us. Not only our grandchildren but our great grandchildren (and their children) will yet be quite literally paying the price of 2023 government because of that.

So don't elect a Speaker. Don't organize government. I could live with that.

Tolerance of diversity

We have pointed out many times the number of empty words, words often used without real meaning such as peace, freedom, and education. There are also words used with very definite intentions even though they appear to be innocuous. Perhaps first and foremost among them are 'diversity' and tolerance'.

We are told that we ought to embrace diversity and that we ought to be tolerant. Interestingly enough, the very first problem with these terms is no different than testing the use of calls for education or peace or freedom. When someone asks us to accept diversity and become tolerant, we must ask: tolerate what? Tolerate it why? Accept what diversity by what reason? All of it, or only parts of it? For of course all that diversity really means is that A is different from B, and all tolerance means is allowing something to happen or be. It is only through the answers to these question that we can really know what the person is talking about or what they want us to do.

To actually understand what the preachers of tolerance and diversity want we find ourselves in the same boat as our friends who preach freedom and all: once we begin the discussion in detail, we aren't talking about toleration or diversity. We're talking about, at the least, acceptable personal and social behavior, and, at the most, good old right and wrong. For surely in asking those necessary questions we aim to draw conclusions about propriety or morals. Indeed, even the person asking for tolerance must mean that they want you to accept what they support as right and true. If your compliance didn't matter to them, they wouldn't make any demands upon you. They don't want tolerance from you: they want you to accept their view. That's not necessarily bad. But it is also not tolerance as such.

Another and better question to ask is, if all it's really about is accepting people as they are (which, you may notice, in itself only begs the same questions as the other descriptive words and phrases I mention do) then why don't you tolerate me? I'm diverse. All right, so maybe I am intolerant of your creed. Well, then. Put that in your pipe and smoke it too, if it's all about tolerance.

But, again, it isn't about tolerance and diversity. It's about making the more conservative among us accept what we cannot. The fact of the matter is they surely do not appreciate our diverse opinions; they most certainly do not wish to tolerate us. And why? Simply because we disagree with them, and have the audacity to say so.

That leaves us with one final question. Who between us is truly audacious?

Politics cause division; really?

We read with interest a recent article which laments the effect of political parties on classes of people. Basically, it concluded that more people vilify the opposition party (and it doesn't matter which party is the opposition) by larger numbers than in about 1960. You can read the details here: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-09-22/partyism-now-trumps-racism?utm_content=buffer16c12&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer if you like.

Have you read them yet? It's fine if you have, and fine if you have not, because we're not sure that the findings are all that important, unusual, or unexpected. Political feelings like many other feelings will ebb and flow over time, so it should not be a surprise that the depths of emotion for political parties would vary over generations as well. Neither ought we be surprised that feelings run deep when significant changes have affected the culture. Abortion for example was not an issue in 1960 because both major American parties, the Democrats and the GOP, accepted it as wrong and as such were not attempting to expand nor contract the availability of it. Now it is an option, and it may be the one great issue upon comprise simply is impossible. Stripped of the supposed nuances, you're either for it or against it. Period. This means that you're either a Republican or a Democrat on the question and that you will see the opposition as completely and obviously wrongheaded. Such a wedge must only make politics more divisive, even under a veil of general cooperation as a nation.

But we've almost always had such wedges, haven't we? In the United States, there were the loyalists and rebels during the revolution, the Federalists and the Anti-federalists (quickly becoming Jefferson's Democratic Republicans) during the first few decades of our Republic, then the Republicans and the Democrats before, during, and after the Civil War. Even during the Great Depression and into the 1960s, the stigma of being Republican was great. We suspect that similar attitudes can be found throughout the histories of other essentially democratic nations as well. In short, the idea that there may be deep fissures between major political and social groups today in America can't be terribly significant news.

Add to that one of the basic premises of democracy, namely, that it forces compromise, and we ought to expect a divided electorate. No one ever gets everything they want through compromise, and often it only leaves everyone unsatisfied. Compromise may be a bit of a devil in that sense; it makes better people concede things to lesser folks merely for the sake of moving on (not necessarily forward). We simply ought not be shocked with the results of such a system. It's almost bound to leave everyone with a bad taste in their mouths, a taste they try to rid themselves of through the mask of politics and elections.

This isn't to justify any blanket condemnation of whomever the political opponent may be. We just find ourselves after reading such studies scratching our heads and asking plainly, "What did you expect?"