The Two Truths

Sorry, I've been a little late in posting. but my typing fingers have been handicapped after a terrible accident involving a hot bowl of clam chowder.

My grandfather came of age in the Great Depression, and worked his way from basically nothing to the top of the corporate ladder. He was an extremely intelligent man, who was quick to promote and defend his beliefs. And they were pretty conservative- one of my earliest memories is a photograph in his kitchen, of him shaking hands with Ronald Reagan.

He died a few years ago, and I was reading his memoirs in September, in which he describes how his son (my uncle Bob) loved to debate him when it came to politics. I thought about how I'd never argue with my dad about policy, but then again, my dad is almost as liberal as I am. Also, my uncle likes adventurous activities, such as delivering babies, racing sports cars and jumping into icy lakes.

However much my uncle Bob likes to live on the edge, I don't think that was why he would butt heads with my grandfather. Some kids change their political affiliations just to get their parent's proverbial goat, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't my uncle. He was going to Princeton in the late 1960s, and that environment had to be pretty liberal.

Regardless of where your political views are formed, or how they're formed, the political lines in this country are becoming tougher and tougher to cross. Elections are won by appealing to the hard-line base voters, and no longer by aiming for the moderate swing voters. Texas Democrat Jim Hightower once said, "The middle of the road is for yellow lines and dead armadillos." The problem is that he's right.

I hate the thought of compromising with a hard-line Republican. It makes me want to throw up on my keyboard. There is almost nothing I can agree with them on, short of the sky being blue. And even then, we'd disagree; I'd tell them that blue light is refracted through the atmosphere from solar radiation, and they'd say God made the sky blue. But at this point, the country's reached a point of such polarization that Canada has set up a website (www.canadianalternative.com) for liberals fleeing the nation. You can tell how much I love that idea.

While the talk of "moral values" has apparently made the Democrats scramble to court the religious, rural poor, I wouldn't be fooled. Both sides were taking aim at each other's constituencies throughout the race, and it worked a lot better for the Democrats than the Republicans. The Republicans worked pretty hard to sway Jewish voters, and on Election Day, there were 200,000 more gay Republican voters than Jewish ones. (Yeah, I didn't believe it either, but the Washington Post doesn't lie.) So much for that appealing-to-moderates idea.

This makes me really sad because it spells the end of meaningful political debate. The right and the left in America don't argue about ideas anymore. They can't even agree on what the issues are in the first place. This started with the terms "pro-life" and "pro-choice." Neither side was against anything. They were supporting an amorphous concept that nobody could argue with.

This has continued all the way through the Presidential debates. Bush accused Kerry of voting against the troops, against $87 billion to give them body armor and special equipment and such. Technically, this is true; however, Kerry would simply avoid the attack, instead of refuting it by saying that he'd voted against an enormous, pork-laden Republican largesse that included no plans for long-term Iraqi stabilization.

The "voted for/voted against" tactic has become the main weapon in the America political arsenal. Every article of legislation allocates money or resources to some entities at the expense of others. Therefore, it's child's play to assign a positive or negative spin to this. I think Kerry voted against that bill because it was a massive waste and he supported a different, better bill. Republicans think he voted for it because Kerry hates America. So I can say, "Bush passed a bill that's bad for you and America." They can say, "Kerry voted against the troops because he hates America."

The fact is that Kerry voted against a bill. Assign whatever value you want to the bill. Maybe it took money away from a social program for veterans. Suddenly Kerry doesn't support our veterans! Or maybe it gave money to a scholarship program for fluffy bunnies. Kerry's the only pro-fluffy-bunny candidate! Bush doesn't support fluffy bunnies!

At the end of the day, it becomes politically expedient not to debate ideas, but to frame every issue into a leading question. The candidate will only make a statement that's politically unassailable; Bush was "resolute and determined," and who would argue with resolution or determination? Kerry "had a plan," and why wouldn't we want our President to have a plan? The only way to argue with a politician (or their supporters) is to claim their facts are wrong or the candidate is lying.

So the only way a candidate can take on an issue, is to frame it in a context where their actions can't be argued with. This creates two "truths." The basic facts of a situation can't be argued with, but the policymakers put their actions- and those of their candidates- in a "frame," or a spin-motivated context that fits so tightly that (if you listen only to them) it's impossible to separate the frame from the facts.

At this point, our prior political affiliations, whether we learn them from our parents or our friends or the general sentiment of our community, dictate which truth we choose. Learning about the other side's point of view, from the general American perspective, seems to be an exercise in futility. A Republican and a Democrat have about as much to learn from each other as a Red Sox fan and a Yankee fan. The other guy is just wrong, and that's that. (This isn't helped by the Christian right's involvement in politics. Not only is the other guy wrong, he's going to hell, too!)

The fact is that political affiliations are drawn along different lines by the people who get elected. It's a chicken-and-egg conundrum (which came first, the issues or the candidate?) because parties delineate their core issues based mainly upon what will get their candidates into office. (I think the Republicans lack a core political philosophy, but they'd say that about the Democrats, so we're back where we started.) If the political battle lines in this country were just re-drawn, people in New England and Texas might be able to agree on a lot more, but right now, the two halves of the country are ignoring each other on a fairly arbitrary basis.

Every major politician publicly proclaims their affinity for "straight talk," and "telling the truth to the American people." And, if the American people agree with them, they're doing the right thing. But just about 50% of the population disagrees, and therefore tunes the opposition out. The standard political M.O. today requires that your supporters completely ignore everything the other side is saying- or pay close attention to it, and destroy it.

I actually pay pretty close attention to the "other side." I read the National Review Online as well as the Weekly Standard, and sometimes even the Washington Times (if I'm not reading on a full stomach.) I try to understand what's motivating them, and I can see where some of them are coming from. But the guys who write for intellectual, conservative publications are probably not the same guys who are voting in Alabama and listing "moral values" as their top priority.

But I'm a liberal. Not a surprise. So my view on conservative opinions might be just as colored as their views on mine. That's the problem; the New York Times Op-Ed section isn't exactly flying off the shelves in Kansas, and nobody's making any money selling the Weekly Standard in Boston. People want to hear their political beliefs reinforced by leaders of public opinion, and aren't interested in listening to someone tell them they're wrong.

So I lament the national inability to debate ideas. I'd like to watch a debate in which the neoconservative vision of America goes up against the progressive vision, and they're discussed simply as political ideas; without frames, without spins, without pre-calculated answers. "I think this approach is best, and here's why," vs. "I think that approach is best, and here's why."

I try to understand the conservative viewpoint, and in doing so, I'm continually reminded of why I choose not to join them. But the new language in which political ideas are communicated seems to obscure the original intent. Politicians simply want to rally their pre-existing supporters. The elections seem pretty heavily based upon sentiment- and not even creating new feeling, but simply stirring up notions that the electorate had held beforehand.

I'd try to come up with a good conclusion here, but this vision of two halves of America alternately talking past, and ignoring, each other, has me too depressed. Yet even with this in mind, I know that the Democratic Party, in its depressed and haphazard way, is still trying to do what's right for the people of this country. And the Republican Party is trying, in a supremely organized fashion, to get the people of the country to do what's right for their politicians.

P.S. My November resolution is to post more often.