The Politics of Dancing

I’m getting increasingly disillusioned of late with the table-tennis game we play with the political labels we use for each other, both Democrat and Republican. However, I have a solution.

Party affiliations are meant to reflect personal preferences of political leaning, highlighted in the party tendency to lean that way also - liberal versus conservative. Instead they are a whipping post, increasing used to vilify people we disagree with. If you’re a Democrat, you’re branded as a loony-liberal and by extension a dyed-in-the-wool card-carrying communist. It doesn’t seem to work the other way however but it should; Republican - conservative - armband-wearing fascist. Many of the hard-core Republicans I’ve met would have been quite at home at a Goebles afternoon tea party.

We relish - and I am referring to people on both sides of the political fence here - in each others failure or foibles based on their label alone. It’s a dance; nothing as beautiful or as complex as ballet, more of the seething aggression and randomness of a mosh-pit.

And we love to apportion blame especially where it is obviously not warranted. For example, see how Obama is getting slammed for our economy after eight years of Bush's mismanagement - because he’s a Democrat. Or Bush getting…damn-it I’m caught short on words here. You get the point. We’re like children arguing over spilled milk.

More disturbing is the backdrop of hate musak; so subtle that we are barely aware of it. Tune in to Rush ‘El Rushbo’ Limbaugh some day and listen to his virulent conveyer-belt barrage of anti-liberal, anti-Democrat rhetoric. He spews intelligent argument granted, but uses a delivery that has in the past been employed to denigrate people of various races and beliefs.

You can hear it ring true if you just add the slightest of twists to the rhetoric. Replace the word 'liberal' in his diatribe one day with the word "gays," "blacks," or "Jews" and you’ll realize that what he’s delivering is very much hate speech; it’s just that it's subtlety disguised. You can't quite put your finger on what it is that makes your blood boil.

It’s the method of delivery.

The haughty rant is the same voice that put down people of color (and Jews), delivered by the stereotypical cross burning firebrand in the fields of Alabama not too long ago; just the words differ. Fascist braggarts deliver speeches the same way, thumping their self-righteous chests like baboons.

The tone, the succinctness and clarity of his delivery; his shoveling of sheer contempt is identical; and practiced. As a result his speech rings the same bells of discomfort known among those who have been subjected to genuine hate speech in their lives. And el Rushbo is the proud voice of Republicans. Hmmm.

I am, in the course of a day, a liberal and a conservative. It depends on the issue. I do not take kindly however to being labeled one or the other by someone who insists on branding me by their perception of my thoughts or actions. Like everyone else, I sway in my beliefs depending on my emotions, understanding of an issue and how much money is in my pocket. I may also change my mind. Am I alone in this I wonder?

As stereotypically as conservatives brand liberals, I have to observe - and this is my personal observation only - that the stauncher the Republican, the more conservative the trumpeting, the more lofty the attitude, the more is hidden in that back bedroom 'moral' closet of theirs. Creak the closet door open a crack and we find that those very people, who just last week were telling us how to live our lives while they held themselves to be models of purity and honor, are in-fact everything they tell us not to be. Some, for example, are secret homosexuals (Sweet Jesus, Lord almighty), drug users (oh the humanity), drunks (words fail me), dishonest (I'm going to be sick). Anyone who listens to or watches the news knows exactly the type of hypocrisy I am referring to. It's not that Democrats don't do these things, they do. They just don't tell us not to.

Readers know of ample examples of what I‘m talking about when I mention the perpetrators of the prior short litany of deadly (conservative) sins.

Take Sen. Larry "the shoe’ Craig’s bathroom incident which could have happened - by his account - to any of us. Indeed. Or Newt "I'm outta here" Gingrich when it was found out that he was having a tryst with a young intern at the very time he was crucifying Clinton for the same offense. Jeez, what were the chances? Even El "Oxy-moron" Rushbo, is intimately familiar with being caught doing exactly what he preached was one of the deadly sins. Yet he continued his career unabashed, which says a lot about his listeners willingness to selectively tune out that which they do not want to hear. Had El Rushbo been a Democrat when he was found out to be one of those addict dregs of society he so despised, he would now be serving Lattes in hot pants to the new poor on Worth Avenue.

Good news, all is not lost. I have a solution to the problem. We need to lighten up the whole political system. Perhaps if the political parties changed their names, it would for the better for all of us.

The Brits and Aussies had it right years ago when independents joined the ranks of the electorate with frivolous party names such as the ‘Deadly Serious Party,' 'Sun Ripened Warm Tomato Party' or the 'Raving Loony Green Giant Party.’ Wouldn’t life take a different hue if the Republicans became, for example, the ‘Slightly Silly Party,’ and the Democrats the ‘Marginally Absurd Party.’ Or visa versa.

I realize immediately that the names do not reflect the seriousness of politics. However I’m sure that by adding the words "Oh so," prior to each party's name, that would rectify the matter.

I may have contributed a great service to the common man today by placing politics exactly where it belongs; in a place where we can laugh at it. Because at the end of the day, the name-calling, branding, finger-pointing and blame does nothing but give us a headache and dramatically increase our blood pressure. Indeed in Washington DC, the politicians of both parties don’t actually glower at each other like the Persians and Spartans at Thermopylae. No, at the end of the day (around 2:30 pm) they gather their files, slap each other on the back, say ‘well done," and go and get sh*t-faced together.

After all, for them it’s just a job - our rabid vilification of each other keeps them in work no matter what. For that they are eternally - if silently - grateful.