Thoughts on this Labor Day: It's not about Left and Right. It's about Right and Wrong.

[Lyric]

I deeply dislike the left/center/right framing of our politics. Why? Because it's damaging as hell to the political fabric of our nation. It implies that all three positions are legitimate, that conflicts are largely subjective and ideological, and it provides cover for people to make terrible, selfish, destructive political choices.

Politics is not about choosing your favorite color. Red, purple, and blue all have the same intrinsic value as colors. Even if one group of people happens to despise blue, that doesn't mean that blue is a "bad" color. It doesn't mean that blue is harmful or poisonous. It's a simple, subjective choice and nothing more.

This is how the left/center/right spectrum frames politics as well, and it's not only wrong--it's dangerous. That false framework says that embracing liberal policies is fine, but that conservative policies have equal intrinsic value. It says that there is no true moral difference between the options and reduces them to a simple matter of preference--as if we were choosing our favorite color, or sports team, or some other petty little preference.

But this is a false idea. There is an ENORMOUS value difference between liberalism and right-wing conservatism. When you take into consideration the founding values of this nation--a nation OF the people, BY the people, and FOR the people--then policies that HARM the people are not just wrong, but immoral and unpatriotic. Policies that hurt multitudes of vulnerable people in order to help a handful of privileged people are the absolute anathema to everything this nation was meant to stand for.

Right-wingers realized this early on, so they decided to strategically indulge religious zealotry and social bigotry in an attempt to add pseudo-value to their side of the argument. They claim that their position has merit because, no matter how much destruction and suffering they force upon the people of this nation, they believe in "God" and "family values". They trick people into believing that since their ideas about "God's Will" and "God's Law" are "moral" (based on an indulgent, bigoted, and selfish definition of "moral"), then the rest of their positions must be "moral" too. It doesn't matter that their ideas would hurt FAR more people than they'd help. They tell voters that the only people who'll be hurt are people who DESERVE to be hurt, and that all tactics are fair game when you're waging a Holy War. It is the logic of the crusader, and it's destroying America a little more every year that progressive leaders refuse to step up, take a risk, and CALL them on it.

Even worse--there are people on the left who SABOTAGE the few progressive voices who ARE trying to challenge these abusive right-wing tactics. They call us "fringe" and "radicals" and they proceed to hack away at the credibility of the progressive left. They do it out of legitimate fear--the fear that if we don't smother the left, we can't win the middle--but what they're doing is a horror and a tragedy, and it's killing the effort to reclaim the nation from the corporate elite. If we've learned anything from history, it's that appeasement NEVER works. If you give a penny to a bully, you'll be giving a mint before long.

The "centrist independents" don't get a free pass, either. We consistently appease this nebulous group of voters, catering to their selfish and narrow-minded anxieties at the expense of actual social and economic progress. We pander to a group of people who feel NO loyalty to us in return. It doesn't matter how sweetly we woo these people--they are never going to be Democrats until we pull back the curtain and show them what the hell is really going on. We don't prevail by coddling the middle. We prevail by INSPIRING people to get angry, to get motivated, and to act. Inspiration is what changes minds, not indulgence. The reality is that the vast, vast majority of the right-wing and centrist policies that we've been cuddling up to are dead-wrong, and everybody knows it. They just don't have the motivation to do something about it--at least not until we stop gutting our own visionaries and GIVE these people a reason to act.

Screwing with Social Security and Medicare is flat-out wrong. Stripping away the social safety net programs like welfare, Food Stamps, and Medicaid is selfish and cruel. Gutting public labor unions and indulging corporate excess at the expense of working people is reprehensible and dangerous. Committing enormous IRS resources to pursuing the handful of people who got $2000 in fraudulent EITC money, while ignoring BILLIONS in corporate tax fraud, is abominable policy and behavior. Letting robber barons and banksters go unconvicted and unpunished, while cracking down hard on people who shoplift food and write a bad check for the rent, is plain fucking evil. Our national moral compass is GONE.

When Katrina flooded New Orleans, looters were being shot for stealing valuable things that they could sell or trade for food, shelter, and necessities. But when Wall Street looted the entire fucking nation, what happened? They got BAILOUTS. We begrudged those poor storm victims their scant debit cards' worth of relief cash and their toxic trailers, but we forked money over just as fast as we could when the banksters needed it. It's SICKENING.

I'm tired of pretending that politics is a value-neutral game in which all of the players have equal intrinsic worth. It's not value-neutral, and it damned well isn't a game. It's not subjective, like picking your favorite color. There are clear boundaries between right and wrong, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see them. We need to stop indulging bad behavior and turning a blind eye away whenever our elected leaders embrace policies that hurt the very people that they were elected to serve. We need to scour the corruption out of Congress and stop making excuses for the mistakes that our leaders make--especially the ones that hurt the most vulnerable people in this nation.

It's time to stop doing the safe, easy thing and start doing the RIGHT thing. It's not ABOUT left and right. It's not a fucking football game. Peoples' lives are at stake.

[Gormy Cuss]

1. +1

:kick:

[BOG PERSON]

2. reading this takes me back to the bush years

long ago, and oh so far away...