bipartisan politics

Black and white. Good or bad. Yin, yang, high, low, republican, democrat, male, female, yadda yadda yadda. Human beings are pattern seekers, and as such we find a means to categorize in order to wrap our minds around ideas. But our hearts don’t think categorically. I believe that politics are a matter of the heart, that they touch our lives where relationships meet. Political decisions affect how I choose to live with myself, how I stretch and grow with my family, and how I reach into or withdraw from my community. The trick is to get harmony into our categorical divisions.

I was asked recently where I stand on a political issue, and was unable to respond intelligently. I didn’t know the latest reports of who said what and what research was showing to be true. I was able to give a gut-level response as to how I feel about the issue in question, but I couldn’t recite dates and people. My questioner sat, mouth agape, flattened by the idea that I dared to be so ignorant. I maintained a calm exterior, but within myself I was more conflicted than I let on.

The other person started laying out his position with clarity and well-formed sequences of events. It was clear that he wished me to be the judge for myself, which was very gracious. My conflict, however, came from my understanding that the words and ideas he presented for me to judge came from somewhere else, someone else. I would not like to be represented by someone else, and yet we do that to people in decision-making positions without realizing that it’s basically a form of gossip. I still don’t know what the speaker felt, intuitively, about all of it.

I have listened to many versions of the communication style that utilizes second-hand reports (he said that she said, or, the paper said that he said), but am continually amazed that people rely on this method to form their opinions. Though a highly cumbersome method, I would rather interact directly with a person before I form an opinion about him or her, including anyone for whom I rally in politics.

Only, there is a big problem with that idea. I think that if we were able to speak one on one or have a day with our law-makers, we’d find that it becomes increasingly difficult to label them as all one thing and not another. I fear that we might find many to be both republican and democrat in their ideas. We might see our hero’s bad side, and the bad guy’s good side. It would get very confusing, and come election time, we wouldn’t know with whom to side. Unless, of course, we remember that even hearing a position statement from the person’s mouth doesn’t assure us of her or his true position. How is a person to be informed? Enter my metaphysical position that we can know intuitively the direction our country, laws, and decisions are taking. Then what do we do with that knowledge? Another radical idea might be that we make subsequent personal decisions with our knowledge in mind. I’m thinking of Nazi Germany. Many people “sensed” or somehow knew that things were going awry. Others, many benefitting from the twists or at least not losing anything by facing a hard truth, refused to listen to their gut. While that’s an extreme example, my point is that we might do well to stretch our gut-muscles and take them for a walk before we need them on a survival level.

So, maybe our problem is inherent in the system of bipartisan politics. By choosing up sides, we create a social schizophrenia that catalyzes differences rather than helps people to pull alongside one another. Take, for example, a benign event such as moving a fallen log from the road. It doesn’t matter what each person believes to be true about forests, roads, or other people for them to be able to lift together, move the log, and be on their individual ways. Of course, one of them would surely need to call the planning office and see why the trees hadn’t been maintained appropriately along the roadside, and another might think that they all should have carpooled in the first place.

The answer, of course, is another political party. It would be the one party under which we can all unify: mine. We can call ourselves the Schmoozers. We’ll make it a policy to not take a clear stand on one thing over another and wait a long time to make a decision. If you’re thinking, “That’s not me!” you can bet there’s someone else out there saying, “Yes, I’d join that party.”