I hate partisanship. I hate fandom, vicarious glory, brand loyalty. It's useless. Worse, it's distracting. I love principles, especially first principles. I love the things that unite us almost as much as I hate the things that divide us. Partisanship divides us; principles unite us.
Markos said we can't agitate for a third party. That's a banning offense. Okay. I had no intention of doing so. This is a Democratic site, loyal to the brand and intent upon electing more and better. I understand the better part, but more? Bill Nelson, Charlie Rangel, Bill Clinton, Max Baucus, the rogues gallery of shitsacks who happen to wear the D team logo on their letterman's jacket really should give one pause, party affiliation be damned. I know it makes me wonder.
Or how about the one guy in Congress who totally and unabashedly represents how I look at the world? Bernie Sanders is an Independent. What's he in this sports metaphor, the ref? How did an I get to the left of the Ds? I thought the structure went R on the right, D on the left, and I in the middle. But we have a committed socialist, and a good one, who isn't interested in joining the Democratic Party, who does a better job of articulating the defense of FDR's legacy than any single Dem in modern politics. I find Senator Sanders oratory both exhilarating and disheartening for the same reason: someone powerless like me is saying what I'm thinking.
First principles, the fundamentals of a philosophy, are not derived from party affiliation or team boosterism. First principles, like all principles, transcend divisiveness. They are, at heart, the fundament upon which the American character is based, politics aside. And it's only when we forget our principles, first or otherwise, that the cheats and the manipulators who divvy up our treasure can keep us agitated over small things while they slip the big stuff by us in our distracted state. Anthony Weiner's weiner! Obama uses paperclips! Guardasil causes retardation!
When I watch the media and the blogosphere, and yes, this site, get caught up in petty scandals and infinitesimally inconsequential minutiae, it's like watching a bunch of bored kids fighting over a toy none of them would ever play with anyways. You don't care that John Boehner doesn't like the President. You don't. And the fact that Steve Doocy is up in arms over whatever? Come on.
It. Doesn't. Matter.
Here are the first principles, the territory that I believe almost all Americans would claim as their own if they weren't so thoroughly distracted by Fox News and Frank Luntz and James Carville and David Plouffe. These are the things I think that all but the fringiest of the fringe believe are true and endorse as crucial to maintaning any free society.
1. Bad things happen to everyone; we're all in this together
When we're not being distracted by alienating lies and the mythology of political rhetoric, we all believe that society is supposed to help the helpless and lift up the downtrodden. Even when the hard righties in the Republican Party are at their worst, they still think that people like them who've fallen on hard times should get a hand up and a good dusting off. It's when the language draws out characteristics of difference, when poor whites can be convinced that there's only so much help to be had, when numbers can be fudged to show that illegal aliens are getting free medical help that Americans can't get, this is when the most basic of all human instincts can be flipped over on its head and love turned into hate. Without the rhetoric of difference, we're all concerned with the least among us.
2. To each, from each
Believe it or not, your average Republican citizen doesn't much care for rich people either. In fact, when asked without prep what the division of wealth should be in America, the overwhelming majority of those polled, left, right, and center, said that that wealth distribution in America was patently unfair. Yeah, even the righties think Warren Buffett is right, that is until The Weekly Standard and the Heritage Foundation remind them which side they're supposed to be playing for by demonizing poor people. But yeah, pretty much everyone in America is a big ol' communist.
3. Family first, country second
I don't think I'd want to know the man who put country before kin. Fortunately, most people don't. And I can tell you from experience, men who serve in combat do not "die for their country," they die for the guy next to them. Those who've served understand this best, as the notion of so huge an abstraction as the entire nation simply cannot be contained in the motivations of a kid just past puberty. It's family that puts kids just out of high school on the front lines, believe that. This is a common theme I encountered in men and women from all over the country who volunteered to serve. They came from everywhere and the couldn't have been more different in education or background, but every one of them was thinking their parents, their friends back home, their sweeties. None of them were all that much concerned with Old Glory and Uncle Sam. And I've found that this trend isn't reserved to soldiers, sailors, and airmen. All Americans, or at least all the ones I know, put the interests and needs of their loved ones above all other considerations.
4. Don't ask more from me than you give to me
This is the big one, the principle that lends itself most to manipulation by conmen like Luntz and Murdoch. Folks don't mind giving up some of their earnings to keep the school open or the roads repaired, they'll give time to sit on a jury, they'd even buy War Bonds and accept sacrifices if it would further the effort in the Middle East, but what they won't do is suffer and sacrifice if they think it's only them. Americans like fairness. They have no problem with the government providing aid to areas stricken by disaster, just as long as they know they can count on the same in their time of need. They like it that the elderly are taken care of, just as long as they have that same assurance in their sunset years. Treat them equally, and they'll endure quite a lot in return. Jigger the system to favor some over others, however, and then it becomes quite easy to corrupt the image of government until people start wondering if we couldn't scale it all the way back to the Stone Age and let's all fend for ourselves.
These are the things that unite us. No matter the party identification or background or ideological makeup, almost all people in this country look kindly on charity, think those who've benefitted the most should cover most of the bill, put their family first, and will shoulder just about any burden as long as they're equally yoked. Adhere to these principles and conversation can occur, differences can be overcome, and shit can get done. Ignore them, fail to recognize when they've been manipulated by charlatans, or violate them in any way, and you get recurring Summers of Rage and ridiculous pendulum swings of vote the bums out hysteria that neither advances the interests of the country or checks the power of the real enemy of humanity, corporate power.
