It's temptingly easy to attempt to characterize this election - and the American political landscape in general - as a battle between good and evil. Of course the Democrats are good; of course the Republicans are evil, and we're trying to save the country from their destructive, greedy rule.
Whenever I catch myself thinking like this, I try to reconsider. Of course the situation is never so morally unambiguous. The world is not that simple; even in the most terrible wars, there are people on both sides believing they are doing the right thing. I have always tried to remember that the people on the other side of our great political argument believe that their policies are best for the American people, even if I disagree.
But I'm starting to consider the possibility that such a simple characterization could actually be correct.
That moral unambiguity - casting one side as Good, and the other as Evil - has always seemed the stuff of fantasy. The Lord of the Rings is a classic tale of the struggle between literal forces of evil and the good people trying to hold them back, and Tolkien has been criticized for his relatively naive approach to morality.
Dungeons and Dragons adopts a similarly naive "alignment" system to simplify gameplay. The characters are judged (in part) on acting in accordance with their alignments; if a creature is Evil, then killing that creature (or harming it in any other way) is a Good act. Good and Evil (and the middle ground of "Neutral") are defined and enforced at a divine level, and that's that. But it's just a game, and we meet anyone who thinks the world really works that way with derision.
Case in point: we have repeatedly and validly criticized and mocked George Bush for his attempts to cast the War on Terror (and the one in Iraq) as a battle between good and evil. It shows the simplicity and shallowness of his understanding of the conflict, and it is an attempt to deceive the public as to the motivations and reality of the wars - to say nothing of glossing over the fact that we're killing actual human beings in these wars. Purely evil humans are as rare as purely good ones (hopefully more so!) and the idea that every "enemy combatant" we've killed or captured is irredeemably evil is as ridiculous an idea as thinking that every single American soldier is a paragon of virtue.
Similarly, I do not believe that the Democratic Party and its leadership is incontrovertibly good. But I'm still struggling with the idea that the Republican Party - or at least its leadership - is literally evil. And I'm starting to be convinced.
(Part of the problem is getting a handle on what "evil" actually means. It's very hard to provide a reasonably concise and accurate definition - no act can be judged in that way without understanding its context - so I'm afraid I'll have to fall back on the old "you'll know it when you see it" approach. So let's have a look at what the Republicans have been up to, and we'll see if it fits the bill.)
It's getting harder and harder every day to believe that the Republican leadership actually has our best interests at heart. It doesn't even seem plausible that they are merely ignorant of the damage that Republican policies cause to the vast majority of the American people. I am forced to conclude that the current leaders of the Republican party - John McCain, Sarah Palin, George Bush, and Dick Cheney - are at best indifferent to the harm that Republican leadership and "conservative" policies has done to the American people in the last several years. At worst, that harm was fully intentional.
As a reminder, we call the people that comprise our government "public servants" for a reason. Especially in the case of the President and other senior leadership, our government has a responsibility to ensure the welfare of the American people, and the authority to make decisions to carry out that responsibility.
But here we have leaders that have reneged on that responsibility, choosing instead to use that authority to enrich themselves and their friends well beyond any threshold of basic needs, and in the process causing millions of Americans to lose their homes or jobs or lives. They have threatened the welfare of 99% of the American people for the benefit of those in their inner circles. And if they have not been actively seeking that harm, they have at least been indifferent to it.
The Iraq War enables oil companies to reap record profits and provides opportunities for war profiteers and defense contractors to take vast quantities of the taxpayers' money, while sending thousands of brave young Americans to their deaths. The Republican leadership's social conservatism and Christian leanings are mere ploys to earn votes. Their idea of "trickle-down economics" is a flat-out lie crafted to lull the rest of the country into going along with their plan to transfer as much wealth to the top as possible. This economic kneecapping of the American people lies at the basis of essentially everything the Republican Party has done in the last few decades.
And I have a hard time believing that "evil" is not an appropriate word for it.