Rant: Two Ring Circus

I just remembered I promised an entry about stupidity-as-in-politics.  I’m not sure it’s worth it, but oh well.

I have come to the conclusion that words like "liberal" and "conservative" are just labor-saving devices.  They prevent the user from having to think.  They give neat, knee-jerk reactions to every issue imaginable, and that’s what people want.  They don’t want to think, because thinking is hard and might mean change.

Terms like that also provide much the same pleasure of rooting for a sports team.  You know what side you’re on, and you know who to root for and who you can hate.  It doesn’t really MEAN anything when your team makes a goal, it just does to you because you have chosen for it too, so you can have something to feel good about.  Except in politics, the goal your side makes can ruin other people’s lives.  For real.

The terms also provide the delightful benefit of narrowing the field of options. (Less thinking, again.)  There is the "liberal" position on every issue, and there is the "conservative" position on every issue.  To someone who really buys into this stuff, there ARE no other positions.  You must be one or the other.  Left or right.  Red state or blue.  (What nonsense that "red state / blue state" stuff is, by the way!  So 51% of a particular state voted for one candidate over another in a particular election.  Suddenly it’s assigned a color, and the other 49% are ignored and "the nation is divided". No, the whole country is varying shades of purple… and even that assessment ignores people like me who aren’t either "red" or "blue".)

The different views assigned to the two "sides" don’t even have to make any coherent sense.  Just so long as everyone knows what part of each issue the two sides have claimed.  Who says tribalism is dead?

I don’t claim to be entirely immune to all this, mind you.  Just mostly. 😉  I’ve been a registered Independent since I turned 18, and I anticipate dying in the same category, if they don’t take the option away from me.  There are no political parties out there that speak for me.  I’ve looked.  I’m willing to be pleasantly surprised, but I hold out no great hopes.

I already knew all this, but it hadn’t really sunk in.  What caused it to sink in, you ask?  I shall tell you. And a tragicomic story it is indeed!

I found a slickly designed website quiz offering to assign you to a position on the "political square".  Rather than an oversimplistic "right" and "left", it had an "up" and a "down" as well. 🙂  The four extreme positions were Liberal (left), Conservative (right), Libertarian (up), and Totalitarian (down).  Well, thought I to myself thought I, at least it’s an improvement.  Let’s try it.

I ended up close to the exact center, but tending toward Totalitarian and slightly toward Liberal.  "WHAT?!" I cried.  "This is a complete joke!"  I doubt whether anybody who listens to me talk about politics would seriously consider me Totalitarian in the slightest… and of the two traditional "sides", I tend to have more sympathy for the "conservatives" than the "liberals".

I fulminated at the computer screen in righteous outrage for some time, until I noticed the one little thing that made it all make sense.  And I laughed and laughed until I all but cried.

Further down the page it put various faces of famous people on the chart to show you who you’re most like.  Right smack dab on the same spot I was, to my immense delight, was…  Pope John Paul II.

Not even the "political square" can manage to pigeonhole Catholic orthodoxy – to say nothing of ordinary common sense.  Yes, you really can love the poor and unborn babies at the same time!  Yes, you really can condemn Communism while not wholeheartedly embracing capitalism!  And so also on a hundred other issues.

If I had the personality to make a good politician (shudder) I might try making my own "Common Sense" party.  But I suspect it wouldn’t have much appeal. 😉  (I’d call it the "Natural Law" party, except that name’s taken by a buncha loons.)

But a politician I am not.  Thank God.  Of course, having said that, I suppose I’ll find myself a Congressman in ten years. 🙂  Life is what happens while you’re making other plans…  God loves to surprise us.