What’s to Cheer About?
The Cost of “Hooray for My Side” Politics
Okay Dudes and Dudettes, we need to talk a bit here about politics. But not about Democrats and Republicans. Well, sort of, but not really. The question I have is how do we find political structure through incessant “hooray for my side-ism?” The Republicans are pretty blatant about their side but then so are the Democrats. MAGAs are trying to own the libs. Liberals are trying to save humanity from itself. Conservatives are trying to force everyone to have the luck of being born well-off. Boomers are trying to claim they either did or did not live through flower-power days as they try to remember what any of that means, and Gen Z’ers are trying to find what the Boomers forgot. Believe it or not, there are no sides in any of this.
The lowest common denominator is “Me and my side are right which means you and your side are wrong.” Why? Because me and my side are righteous, and you and your side are evil. Take a look at this hullabaloo about abortion. The so-called pro-life team proclaims ever-so-righteously that they are righteous because they know how God thinks about life. The pro-choice team proclaims ever-so-righteously that they know how God thinks about life. Neither team has even so much as paused to consider that neither one of them are righteous or right. I don’t mind their careless thought processes because it seems doubtful that there’s room in those thought processes to consider another alternative, which also can describe the reality of the issue. If a lady did not get pregnant she would not have to choose. The flaw with that argument is that lady can try as she might, but like the gossipy lady said, there ain’t no Safeway.
So what is it that either “side” knows about how God thinks? So for all you pro-lifers, does God think that you are the designated one in the universe to enforce his desires? Can you annunciate His desires? Me either. Neither can the pro-choicers. What’s actually real is that both “sides” are making up excuses to justify their past action or desired future action. God doesn’t have anything to do with either argument. Last I heard, God was not amused with anyone making shit up to justify an action especially when He got the blame for what they made up.
There are any number of goofy justifications for an even greater number of goofy behaviors and so-called beliefs. We tend to lump all those goofy concepts into the conspiracy theory syndrome, but what do you call lawmakers who offer thoughts and prayers for children, murdered by a theorist in their classroom? Do those lawmakers offer meaningful laws to prevent further carnage? Oh, hell no. The folks on the “give guns to idiots” team are righteous in their ginned up fear of the others. Those gun toting goofies deem others are not on their team, and therefore evil. Anyone who is on the team of common sense when it comes to gun regulation is just as righteous as the gun toting teams. Does right even come into this discussion? I don’t see how. I think this is simply a matter of common sense. There are people who should not have a sharp object let alone a weapon which inflicts maximum damage to a human being. Is there a side to that?
When I consider this whole social malady I’m calling “hooray for our side-ism” as it applies to serious considerations such as the debt limit, or racial justice, or voting rights. It requires me to think about a number of things in order to grasp the context of the problem. On one side, we have what seems to be an ever-so-practical solution to government spending and I’ll designate that team as Republicans. They are red blooded Americans, everyone. They think that in this land of opportunity people should make their own luck and grow their fame and fortune of their own volition. That is an ultra-practical solution, but may not reflect reality. We don’t know because it has never worked. Well, the Amish have a system which works so well that they are exempt from certain taxes that support their health and well-being. It could be that the Amish are an exception to the rule in a cultural sense.
It could also be that they are the proof that demonstrates a kind of hypocrisy found in many liberal concepts. For example, the Amish example does not require mountains of paperwork and therefore does not employ people in shuffling paperwork or even computer work. The question that this raises for me is if you’re going to give people a helping hand, why do you have to make sure it helps them where you want them to be helped, not where they think they should be helped? Take the folks who license doctors. Here in the US, there are lots of jurisdictions which require lots of people to police who can even qualify or maybe pay for the privilege of being a doctor. In England, there is one small office for the entire country. No policing. There are no sides in this idea. All that exists is alternative methods of accomplishing something. Some ways are amazingly expensive and some are not. So what are the Republicans and the Democrats fighting about when it comes to social programs and fiscal expenditures? Whose side is righteous and therefore right? Really?
Some of the “hooray for our side-isms” are just insane to the point of hilarity. Take the brouhaha over people coming up across the border from Mexico. I get it. People who live on the Texan border with Mexico have a parade of people crossing their backyard pretty damned regularly. They have reason to be upset. It is not okay for that to take place. Mexico has immigration laws and so does Canada. But neither Mexico or Canada use immigration as a political football.
Here’s what I don’t get. Immigrants have always and probably will always be a source of labor. Inexpensive labor. Inexpensive labor fuels business expansion. Those immigrants are put to work to increase corporate profit. Corporations tend to fund politicians. So why make it hard for that labor force to go to work for the corporations who pay them? Both political parties benefit from the influx of inexpensive labor, but one party wants everyone to be treated the same. The other party wants people to earn their way by working their way up the economic ladder from where they arrived here to where they can manage, to where they can realize the American Dream. So who exactly is against that? Which side loses in this political drama? A drama about nothing in particular other than to manufacture a “monster under the border” which we use to scare the goofy people so they will vote for one party or the other? How do you keep score on such a silly game? Hell, there aren’t even rules that make sense. How in the name of Sam Hill is this something that my side can hooray about? What are you celebrating? Your side is more goofy than the other side? Might be worthwhile to take a moment to consider what you want to communicate, don’t you reckon?
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