Muse – Random Political Gripes

Struggle Misconceptions

The misconception of what it means to fight annoys me. Just like most western peoples mistake the term Jihad for ‘holy war’, most misconstrue the term fight for ever involving guns and bombs.

However, just as jihad means ‘struggle’ in a general sense, fight means the same. When you fight something, you struggle against it. We can be certain that when a member of congress says he’ll fight for something, that it won’t involve strapping on an M-16. Both fight and jihad share the same problem. People, most often extremists, like to use them in ways they weren’t meant to be used primarily. Distorting their meaning to fit what they desire, rather than letting the words be the generalness that they are.

Fighting terrorism doesn’t necessarily mean head on battle, such as we have seen in Iraq. I think that is something many American conservatives need to realize, along with Jihad’s true generalness, as a first step toward opening the mind to different ways in which to confront and defeat terrorism.

Fixing the Made Mess

Another thing that peeves me is being asked, now, what I would do to fight terrorism rather than what is already being done. The annoying thing about that is that now, rather than just dealing with things as they were before, any new plans have to take into account the damage done to diplomatic and other non-violent means of dealing with the current problems in the Middle East. So now those who would try to solve things with a minimum of bloodshed have to deal with the problems created and strengthened by the current nearly two year spate of struggle and bloodshed that is the Iraq War and occupation.

A significant disadvantage? Surely it is, making it easier for those who parrot such confrontational one liners to smirk and sneer when it takes time to muse and figure a way that would not only solve the underlying problem, but clear away the new scar tissue. And allowing them to turn this to their advantage in that all or nothing, black and white, true and false way that some think, where there is their way, then the wrong way. I call it the Bush Factor of simplified and faulty logic.

Personally, I don’t know what will solve the whole of the problem, but I know where we should start. With the situation between Palestine and Israel. The area is ripe for potential fixing, greater than it has been before. Why is that the place to start? For whatever moves the US might make in the next few years, they need capital. Solving that issue would be the sort of political capital that would pay dividends in the future. It strengthens our hand after it’s weakening the last few years and would show that we can make a serious difference(Afghanistan isn’t a proof of that yet, it’s still lingering in a languid sort of limbo.. in my opinion, mind you).

Start there, then see what opens up. Dote upon those Arab nations that are what we would like the others to be. Give example and most of all assistance to those who want to make a change. Try and shed the hardnosed, confrontational rep that’s been building, those too could help.

Moral Values

I’m getting a little tired of hearing the term ‘moral values’. Not because I have anything against morals or values, but because the way people use it, it can mean just about anything. From the typical areas of abortion and gay marriage to matters dealing with Iraq. Once the definition blossomed out into an all encompassing buzzword, it’s meaning was officially(in my mind) diluted into worthlessness.

Political Niceties

The new, deeply divided nature of politics today is one of our problems in America. I listen to some older congressmen and others talk about the ‘old days’ of Tip O’Neil and others and wonder why our political figures can’t lead the same double life they do.

Back in the day, by many accounts, they fought hard on the floor of congress and in the general realm of politics, but behind the scenes they were not the deadly enemies, cloistered in their two camps exclusively.. not like they are today. They could quietly come together and hammer out a way to do things that perhaps didn’t make everyone perfectly happy, but progressed toward the goal.

We get that less these days, I think. Politics has always been a rough game.. will always be so, but I think a key element has been lost recently. The key recognition that we as Americans should be running this country together. Instead we’re inundated by the ‘with us or against us’ mentality. It must be all democrats or all republicans now in this newly minted political deathmatch scenario.

The pure purpose of strengthening and bettering this nation falls by the wayside when it comes to the best ways to cripple and further isolate the opposition. The other side is ignored and derided rather than listened to for potential good ideas. People are denounced merely on their political affiliation and the personal insults and intentional insulting jabs come with greater and greater frequency.

We miss the forest and find ourselves lost in the trees, our goals short term rather than long term. Our time and resources wasted on squabbling and insulting the other guy rather than advancing our people and providing the best example for those who look to us as a model for the way it ought to be.

Many of us need a new awakening. Many of us need to wake up to the fact that times they are changing and not for the better. We need a new political renaissance where it becomes ok for the conservative to listen honestly to the liberal, then respond with constructive criticism rather than snide insults and vice versa. The liberal needs to stop laying blanket claims and otherwise furthering the divide that keeps us weak and vice versa.

I know what we need. The question is, as it always has been, how do we get there?