Battles there are aplenty these days – a continual and increasingly rancorous argument proceeds in our nation. Depending on one’s point of view, we have to get at the conservatives, the liberals, the progressives, the socialists, the TEA Partiers, the Republicans, the Democrats, the Islamists, RINOs, DINOs, racists, homophobes, Christians, fundamentalists, heretics…and on and on. Over at Zero Hedge a post by a gentleman named Mike Krieger brought this to my mind: whom do we fight?
Those who have read my stuff over the past couple of years will find some similarity between some of my views and some of Mr. Kriegers’s. But there will also be that clear demarcation – he’s one of those convinced that the two party system is one party and the whole thing, combined with banksters and bureaucrats, are leading us to ruin. Deliberately. Us vs Them in such theories comes down to “people who agree with me vs those who don’t”. If you don’t agree, you see, it means you’re just a willing or blind tool of “them”.
Now, to hold that the two-party system is corrupt and, often, results in the same sort of disaster no matter who is in charge has a long and honorable history – but it has also picked up some disreputable hangers-on from time to time. Chesterton and Belloc, representing the best of this theory, argued cogently from personal experience – they had fought a campaign against political corruption only to find both parties white washing the results – that there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between Britain’s Tories and Liberals. In a very real sense, this was (and is) correct – both parties are made up of people who want to be in power and will make all manner of intellectual and moral adjustments to do just that.
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a difference. It doesn’t mean that, for instance, had McCain won that we’d be in the same plight we are today. That we’d likely be in a bad way is almost certainly true – McCain had no more idea of what ails the US economy than Barack Obama – or George Bush. Or, for that matter, 999 out of 1,000 people in government. But things would be different.
For instance, we wouldn’t be heading for a massive tax increase in January. McCain would have worked out at least a partial extension of the cuts. We wouldn’t have ObamaCare metastasising through our government. We wouldn’t have a half-war, lets-not-lose-too-fast campaign in Afghanistan. Things would be different, even if not entirely better – and this in spite of the fact that, yes, McCain is firmly part of the socio-political elite who are often as alike as peas in a pod and who are joined together in, at least, an unwillingness to fundamentally change things.
On can read too much in to things. And by so doing, one can make far too many enemies and thus make victory impossible. At its worst, believing in such terms (ie, that the parties are the same and “they” are out to get us) can lead to bizarre conspiracy theories and easily fall in to racism or Jew-baiting or survivalism or some warped combination of these things (you’ll note that Jew-baiting is becoming common on the left…its not a matter of conservatives will fall for this and liberals will fall for that…anyone who starts to think too much in “us vs them” terms can fall for the same sorts of things, just from different angles).
The most important thing to keep in mind is that the people we battle are not working from a master plan. We are not dealing with a wicked, knowledgeable, global conspiracy against us. We’re mostly dealing with purblind idiots who simply don’t know what they’re doing – this wouldn’t be so entirely bad, except that they additionally hold positions of wealth and power. Being in such positions they – remember, they are idiots, mostly – have convinced themselves they are extra wise and good (how else could they have wound up with wealth and power, after all?) and thus cannot get it wrong and must retain power, lest un-wise and un-good people get in to power (and they are certain their opponents are bad because if they were good, they’d be just on the side of the current socio-political elite…a great deal of circular psuedo-reasoning is going on in there, boys and girls).
There is, though, the leavening of wickedness in there, as well. Stupid/wicked people combined on a 1 to 100 ratio with stupid/well meaning people. Think of it as 1 George Soros for every 100 Dennis Kucinich. What unites them is a lack of thinking – and that, ultimately, is what we’re really fighting against: people who don’t think. Stupid people, as it were.
And, yes, some of the stupid people hold the same party label as the rest of us. Some times, my dearest of friends, the stupidest person in the room holds the face we see in the mirror each morning. It isn’t enough for us to say “we’re going to fight them liberals” or “we’re gonna whack them RINOs” or (as some might put it) “we’re going to get those Republicrats”. Doing that abdicates thought, and once we do that we’ve become the enemy. Most of our enemies, most of the time, will conveniently congregate around the labels of “liberal” or “Democrat” as lack of thinking on a consistent basis leads to those points of view – but even among them, we must be prepared for those moments of thought when we can get them on the good side. Anyone who thinks is on our side, anyone who refuses to do so, is the enemy.
More often than not, I’m going to find someone who thinks under the label of “conservative” as opposed to under the label of “liberal”. More often than not, I’m going to find someone who thinks under the label of “Republican” as opposed to under the label of “Democrat”. To chuck the whole thing is to cease to think, altogether, and thus is the work of the enemy. I’m in this to win, not become a pure pillar or steel – and armored not just from head to toe, but from ear to ear. I battle against irrationality – my enemy is insanity; not the inability to think, but the unwillingness to do so.
I will think and I will come to a rational conclusion. It is after thinking things over that I am what I am. Our world is being wrecked by people who refuse to think – by people who really do just take things on absolute faith, when even the most faithful Christian will stand aside and say, “God gave you reason, Man; you are to use it”. I will use it – and by so doing, I’ll know who my friends and enemies are.
