I'm a middle American Anglo guy questioning everything I see and hear these days. I'm also a religious conservative with a strong taste for populist economics. When I look at the Democrats, both in the abstract and those I've known myself, I want to ask: why do you hate people like me so? Why would it be such a bad thing to make space for someone like me in your party? Why would you try and force me to bend the knee before Planned Parenthood? Why would you force me to compromise my conscience on what marriage is, and isn't? Why can't we disagree civilly, so that on the big picture items like trade, economics, foreign policy, domestic policy, there can be room for a populist Democrat of the old school, grounded in Christian faith (William Jennings Bryan? Al Smith? FDR?), to attempt to fight for what is right and just and best for the people of this country? Why has that become so verboten? Does the ordinary Democratic voter and low-level politician (I'm looking at you, Nick Hinrichsen of Pueblo, Colorado) realize how badly they are being played, and how they are made to compromise themselves and their beliefs, as well as their relations with friends, family, and neighbors, in the service of a political party and machine that demands compliance in almost Stalinesque terms?
This divide is really going to be the death knell of this country as a functioning, pluralistic, nation. We can't be this large, this diverse, this geographically vast, and be at the same time this polarized and easily separated and categorized by the holders of power, capital, and influence. Either the divides that force us into opposing camps are dissolved, so that there can be some real debate, agreement, and disagreement, or we go ahead and acquiesce to the installment of a permanent police state to hold the whole thing together. We need to choose, and I certainly don't choose and don't want the latter.
The impulse to demonize those who are not our ideological brethren may not be new, but the ferocity of the backlash seems new. Listening to our political opponents is not much in vogue. We'd rather shout over them. Call them names. Or shut them out altogether. Having spent decades squarely with the progressives, admitting my own (former) contempt for converatives hasn't been easy. Listening to those I disagreed with instead of shouting over them was the only way to develop empathy. Most of our faces are buried in our devices. We used to have platforms for healthy debate in schools and on TV. Learning to debate was considered essential education. Not anymore. We divide classrooms into oppressor and oppressed. The rules of debate have been tossed out as relics of the patriarchy. I am hoping this all this blows over, that we come to our senses, learn to empathize again with those we disagree with, become comfortable again with marriage, family, prayer and worship. When Americans and Europeans left the church, they did not do themselves any favors. The collective misery of disaffected hundreds of millions of self-loathing, childless-by-choice atheists is the primal scream heard round the Western world.
I'm a middle American Anglo guy questioning everything I see and hear these days. I'm also a religious conservative with a strong taste for populist economics. When I look at the Democrats, both in the abstract and those I've known myself, I want to ask: why do you hate people like me so? Why would it be such a bad thing to make space for someone like me in your party? Why would you try and force me to bend the knee before Planned Parenthood? Why would you force me to compromise my conscience on what marriage is, and isn't? Why can't we disagree civilly, so that on the big picture items like trade, economics, foreign policy, domestic policy, there can be room for a populist Democrat of the old school, grounded in Christian faith (William Jennings Bryan? Al Smith? FDR?), to attempt to fight for what is right and just and best for the people of this country? Why has that become so verboten? Does the ordinary Democratic voter and low-level politician (I'm looking at you, Nick Hinrichsen of Pueblo, Colorado) realize how badly they are being played, and how they are made to compromise themselves and their beliefs, as well as their relations with friends, family, and neighbors, in the service of a political party and machine that demands compliance in almost Stalinesque terms?
This divide is really going to be the death knell of this country as a functioning, pluralistic, nation. We can't be this large, this diverse, this geographically vast, and be at the same time this polarized and easily separated and categorized by the holders of power, capital, and influence. Either the divides that force us into opposing camps are dissolved, so that there can be some real debate, agreement, and disagreement, or we go ahead and acquiesce to the installment of a permanent police state to hold the whole thing together. We need to choose, and I certainly don't choose and don't want the latter.
The impulse to demonize those who are not our ideological brethren may not be new, but the ferocity of the backlash seems new. Listening to our political opponents is not much in vogue. We'd rather shout over them. Call them names. Or shut them out altogether. Having spent decades squarely with the progressives, admitting my own (former) contempt for converatives hasn't been easy. Listening to those I disagreed with instead of shouting over them was the only way to develop empathy. Most of our faces are buried in our devices. We used to have platforms for healthy debate in schools and on TV. Learning to debate was considered essential education. Not anymore. We divide classrooms into oppressor and oppressed. The rules of debate have been tossed out as relics of the patriarchy. I am hoping this all this blows over, that we come to our senses, learn to empathize again with those we disagree with, become comfortable again with marriage, family, prayer and worship. When Americans and Europeans left the church, they did not do themselves any favors. The collective misery of disaffected hundreds of millions of self-loathing, childless-by-choice atheists is the primal scream heard round the Western world.
go birds