Learn From It

Today I read that I hate. Yes, folks. I hate. I read it on the internet, so it must be true. And it gets better: it's not just me who hates, but everyone who pins his/her tail on the donkey instead of the elephant.

Haters all, aparently.

Much worse is the implication in the contrapositive: all conservatives are lovers. Now, while I've suspected for a while, the sullied goings-on behind closed doors among the me-thinks-the-ladies-doth-protest-too-much-about-all-things-same-sex crowd, it's not only gross to think about (hey, you try rocking yourself to sleep after thinking of him slammin' hams with him), but it's off topic here.

"Conservatives don't hate". This is what they all want everyone to believe. But let's face it, even they can't keep from wincing at least a little bit when they say it. A poker face, the likes of which has never been seen, would be required. So instead of building themselves up, they tear down the opposition—remember when "they" used to be just opposition and not "the enemy"? No, they can't come right out with such a guileless statement of self-love. To love, to care, to worry, to do for others...that's all the domain of the bleeding heart. And we know which side's hearts bleed, don't we?

It's manly, it's strong, it's righteous to build a fort out of furtive hotel pillows and the American flag, then screed from that place where real people can't touch you and where you don't have to see the negative effects of your whistle- and horn-blowing and Chicken-Littling.

There, you appeal to the baser animal instincts while decrying evolution theory. You use injurious words against those who are developed enough to understand speech, while singing the sanctity of life in the womb. You hold up disagreement as traitorous. Your world collapses to a single Absolute patch of land upon the so-called moral highground, from which you extend your purview into every nook, cranny and bedroom of everyone who doesn't subscribe to your real estate moral values.

There is a difference between morals and ethics, in practice if not by Webster. Morals look backward to what has worked in the past. What worked in the past establishes itself first as a Good Idea, then, even though times change, that static good idea gets carried, unchanged, on the backs of the unthinking (or unwilling to think), and carried forward into the present, having created a long-suffering group of blind followers along the way. Followers who, having believed they've paid their dues in suffering, can do nothing but try to insure the continued intactness of their moral cause.

Ethics, on the other hand, are forward-looking and abstract enough to carry forward, relatively unchanged. They are so abstract, however, that thought and feeling and empathy are required to apply them into something concrete, something for today, for right now, for this particular situation.

A body of ethics shines a general light on a particular scenario, inviting the decision-maker to participate in good will, in decency, in mutual respect. A given morality, on the other hand, will frighten you with the darkness, convincing you to run to someone else's light, even if you must abandon the others in the darkness, even if decency, respect and good will suffer: someone outside the closed system will provide salvation.

In running away towards a promised salvation, in insisting that everyone come along on the approved journey, tension is created, stress builds, wars begin. Opposition becomes Enemy. Right becomes little more than Not Wrong. Blood soaks into the Moral Highground while profiteers go Happy Camping on much drier soil.

If I still had a sense of humor about Conservatives, I'd liken them to a sibling who hits a sibling and then screams from the next room, "Mom! He's hitting me!" What's the brother to do in that situation? Deny having hit his sister to the Mom who can't be bothered to investigate the truth? Scream out that, in fact, it was the sister doing the hitting (because, by that point, Mom has been inured by the simple volume of the screaming)? Mom is going to accept it at face value, or she's going to play at laissez-faire politics and simply choose not to choose, decide not to participate.

All well and good, you might say, because the children figure out the intra-family politics and eventually grow up. That's fine when you're an 8 year old girl, not when you're Leader of the Free World. People don't die, homes and lives don't get ruined because a child behaves badly and lies about it.

Off we go, the Conservatives learning that lies told loudly, repeated often, and spoken from an entrenched pulpit become indisguishable from noise, if not from truth, and so they continue on this path. There is only one Outcome.

Brinkmanship.

This is what the Conservatives at Large are doing. Nothing more. It's what Ronald Reagan did with the USSR. There was no moral highground there, no ethically sound position. Webster defines brinkmanship thus: n : the policy of pushing a dangerous situation to the brink of disaster (to the limits of safety).

Liberals are called Traitors...no, wait..."Liberal" becomes tantamount to "Traitor". Those who oppose are stepped on or cut out, or simply disappear. Dissension is not allowed. Disagreement becomes the Only Deadly Sin.

The Big Tent was traded for the Pillow Fort, and there's simply no room for anything other than Sameness. References don't need to be checked because Right is Right, right?

"They Hate Our Freedom". Forgive me if I have forgotten who said that, and about whom.