Put 300-plus miles on my motorcycle Saturday, riding mountain roads and stopping only for gas and to view the beauty of a country that I love, have served, and now appear doomed to mourn.
On my Harley, I'm removed from the mind-numbing tsunami of political propaganda of cable TV, Internet chatter and radio rancor.
While traversing winding roads through the Blue Ridge, I have neither the time nor the desire to deal with the mediocrity of partisanship and ponder why too many have lost the ability to display an outmoded concept of independent thought and rational political discourse.
At one time, I actually hoped we as a nation could rise above the partisan blather and put a nation's soul ahead of political demagoguery. I had hoped we could place the interests of society ahead of narrow-focus political pandering.
Alas, I tilted at another windmill. Perhaps the average citizen, numb from a constant barrage of propaganda from both sides of the philosophical spectrum can no longer overcome the single-minded hypnotic state of partisan political posturing. Perhaps open-minded, rational debate is no longer possible in a nation controlled by anger and intolerance for differing viewpoints.
Political dogma demands one-sided, blind acceptance that one side must always be superior to the other. To the left, anything conservative is evil and a lie. To the right, the left lies and wants to ruin the country. Of course, neither extreme is true. To those who accept the broadcast half-truths of Glenn Beck on the right or Keith Olbermann on the left, there cannot be two sides to an issue.
In a world of political spin, truth becomes irrelevant, even arcane. In a partisan political world, compromise is a sign of weakness and coalitions cannot exist.
I've been a player in this game for more than four decades -- both as a journalist and as a political operative. In those 40 years, I've watched America become more divided, more partisan and less willing to put love of country above petty political interests. I've watched rich special interests become the ruling class because they, and they alone, have the money, resources and power to control our elected officials.
I've learned that a society that places unearned importance on party labels and identification is a society headed for destruction. America today is not progressive, but regressive, retreating into fears and stereotypes of the past that, unfortunately, will drive the anger and intolerance of the future.
I stopped at an overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway and chatted with a couple from New Zealand who are nearing the end four months of touring our country on a BMW 1200 RS bike.
"You know, yours is a nation of passionate beliefs and each of you wants that belief to be dominant and controlling," said Alex Case. "We learned early on in our tour not to disagree."
He looked at a small sticker on the back of my helmet. It says: "I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican. I'm an American. There is a difference."
"Didn't meet many who would agree with that sticker," he said.
Deidre Case said they ran into a lot of people over the past four months who proudly and passionately told she and her husband that they were a Democrat or a Republican but very, very few who displayed any similar passion as simply an American.
As they rode off, I looked out over the panoramic beauty of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, a pastoral scene that seems so calm and serene from 3,000 plus feet.
As I fired up the Harley and headed down the mountain and back into the reality of America, I found myself humming the tune of an old Joni Mitchell song, Big Yellow Taxi:
They took all the trees
Put 'em in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see 'em
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
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Okay Doug you've finally managed to piss me off. You're still riding in November? On winding mountain roads? Damn you Doug Thompson!
Your blog reminds me of a conversation I overheard outside the bar the other night. A middle-aged man of about 50 was explaining the difference between Democrats and Republicans to a lady he was clearly trying to impress. It was all I could do not to scream, "don't listen to that a@&hole!"
It seems that politics is no different than football or baseball. Personal empowerment is found only by being associated with the winning team, not by any intelligent assessment of facts or reality.
Independence and intellect are frowned upon, considered alien and outlandish. You certainly can't have a game with three or more teams, you must support one or the other. We need to keep things simple and tribal.
Unga-Bunga! Me Democrat! Me Republican! Mmmm. Feel good, be stupid. Me like being sheep! Eeeaaazzzyyy.
American? We don't even know what that means anymore. We just do what we're told.
"Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them." - Joseph Story
"Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the spot of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck." - Thomas Jefferson
"Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue." - John Witherspoon
Doug you are so right. In my job(regulatory) I call on convenience stores in 5 counties in NC. In my estimations I would say that over 75% of the privately owned stores are owned by foreigners. They range from Koreans, Vietnamese, Chinese, East Indians, South Africans, Egyptians, Morrocoans, Congolese, Salvadoran, Mexican, British, Canadians,
Ghanaian, and Americans. Before Obama was elected my father-in-law told me that the muslims and foreigners were going to take us over and that I had better watch out. I explained that the foreigners were more courteous and appreciated the fact that I was there than some Americans. He then said "They are being nice cause they are gonna get you". Talking with these people have given me a new prespestive on the world. Most people in the USA have never been out of the country let alone talk with a foreigner and they think the world revolves around us. I come in contact with Canadians each winter as they come and go to Florida. I have yet to find one that did not like their health care, but to hear some people at church talk they don't like it even though if you ask if they have talked with anyone from Canada they say no. All I can say we as a nation are much more ignorant about the world than what the rest of the world knows about us and we are much less tolerant.
I spent a month in Bahrain a few years back. I found the Arabs to be friendly, courteous and with great senses of humor. All I met were very very nice people. And, how odd, many spoke English. How else could I have talked with them? I, like 99.999999% of other U.S. citizens don't speak a word of Arabic. Hmmmm...
Kent Shaw
Nice Rant, Doug. I spent 3 days with 700 Americans at a Conference in Seattle where politics was not the subject of any discussion. It was refreshing to me to not have to explain whether anyone was a conservative or liberal. Our discussions were based on "Reason" over "Obedience" of any government position. I got home last night late and decided to ignore my unread emails and head back to CHB. Thank you
I get called a Republican or Conservative when a Democrat is President and Democrat or Liberal when a Republican is President. Seems I don't often agree with what the President does or says regardless of party and folks rarely look to my reasoning and only see that I don't like what their boy is doing and go on the attack.
Truth be told I consider myself a Jeffersonian Liberal but I guess today that is considered Conservative. Of course this means I'm Independent as no party really represents Jefferson's views any longer.
Obamans have become the new Bushies. No surprise there.:-))
Unfortunately, if one holds to the same position while the sister parties and their Useful Gullibles temporarilly exchange seats, one continues to remain the odd man out. Kinda tells ya something about the two sisters.;-)
Yours,
Issodhos
I think your sisters are better described as Siamese twins. Joined at the purse. :)
Begging the question, what is "a real America".:-)
Yours,
Issodhos
Oh I wish I was in the land of cotton...
I really wouldn't say that Americans are bombarded with propaganda 'from both sides of the spectrum'. Bombarded with propaganda, they are. From both sides of 'the spectrum', no.
American mainstream thought, fruit from both from the Democrat and Republican trees, is actually pretty narrow in scope and in some ways rather backward compared to other industrialised western nations. There is no broad spectrum there, but a narrow band.
That one could even call it a 'spectrum' indicates how successful that propaganda has actually been.
The Natural State of things is that there are opposing forces. Newton said that for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. The Taoists recognized this much earlier. ☯ The American translation is Yin and Yang. Everything in nature is in opposition and yet in harmony at the same time.
And so it is with politics. Where there is political power there is a̲l̲w̲a̲y̲s̲ opposition. The greater the power, the greater the opposition. In the U.S. the increasing degree of polarity may be attributable to the rise of the Imperial Presidency. More power, more opposition. A greater action begets a greater reaction, to paraphrase Newton.
But, look how political opposition is manifested in other places. In totalitarian regimes it is forced completely underground (former USSR, China), but it is still there. See what we are reminded of on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall in Germany. In other places political opposition is expressed with guns and bullets between warring factions (Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, ...). Luckily we're not at these extremes, at least not yet.
Accept that political opposition is natural. To the extent that the polarization seems too great for our sensibilities then the thing to do is reduce the power being controlled. To paraphrase Newton again, a lesser action will beget a lesser reaction.
—W—