Why Are We So Divided?
Every now and then I get a little fired up over politics, as I was last night when I wrote my last blog "Failed right wing policies and whiny liberals". This morning I'm still feeling a little bit of that fire in my gut, so I'm going to extinguish it (but I'm sure it will be back in a week or so) by making one more point about politics....
Everybody is aware these days of the expanding gulf between liberals and conservatives. It seems that everything that any politician says or does is either coming from the far left or the far right. There is little cooperation from either side of the isles, George Bush has not been a uniter, lines are always being drawn in the sand, the country seems more divided all of the time. So....who ya gonna blame?
Not only has George Bush failed to unite, he has gone out of his way to divide with his "my way or the highway" approach to congress as well as his own generals and cabinet members. After more than seven years of bad policies by the Bush administration, the toll is starting to show. The combination of the cost of the war, tax breaks to the rich, trickle down economics, and corporate deregulation have left us on the brink of recession. And yet the vast majority of right wing followers still defend these policies!
It's really hard when you see this happening and then have to listen to ignorant conservatives blame our financial woes on less costly things like social programs for the needy. There are problems and abuses in many of these programs to say the least, but comparing them to the bigger problems that have been perpetrated by right wing interests is like having a mouse and a hungry alligator loose in a room full of people and the republicans only want to talk about the mouse while ignoring the alligator. And they are good at doing this because of the right wing spin machine (Rush Limbaugh, right wing news outlets, and most republican politicians) who take advantage of and exploit our deepest fears and emotions which are usually connected to trivial bullshit like gay marriage or terrorist's who want to kill your family, thus diverting our attention from the real issues. And so they end up blaming our problems on gays, anti gun folks, teachers who believe in teaching science over scripture, global warming advocates, the ACLU, Mexican laborers (they took our jobs!) , and (this is my favorite one because nobody has a clue what it means)....activist judges!
So what's not right about this picture? Why are we so divided? Do you really have to ask? How are the folks from the left supposed to resolve this when they see it happening and are powerless to do anything about it except become "whiny liberals"? Yes, we are becoming more divided all of the time. We are also (some, but not all) getting dumber all the time. And it's going to continue until we learn to distinguish the real problems from the manufactured ones. We cannot deal with an alligator in the room as long as we are focused on the mouse.