Since creating an account here, I have felt very little motivation to write diaries about the community or about democratic issues in general. The problem isn't that I have nothing to say, or that I'm not an opinionated fellow. I tend to be outrageously assertive and opinionated in my day to day life, often at the detriment of my own reputation and likeability. And as much as I hate to admit, probably more confident than my knowledge and intelligence would justifiably warrant.
However, when I do think of things that I feel need to be said on Daily Kos, it almost always happens in response to an article I read a link to, or a diary. Most of the time, the appropriate venue for my comments are relegated to semi-obscurity within the diary prompting my response. But today, I feel that I can finally contribute a bit of writing on a topic that would be worthwhile to share more broadly.
Reading this diary spurred me to think about what made me interested in politics at all.
I used to be rather apolitical. I always more or less believed in a basic concept of fairness and freedom that I think many people would feel are aligned with the Democratic party, but I felt more like an independent. I feel much more interest and fascination for facts and science than I do about the details of the lives and policies of bureaucratic figures in our country.
I can't exactly know with concrete certainty when I started being more interested in such matters, but thinking on it now, it probably began when I learned that political solutions don't always have to be practical solutions. I found the concept that such could occur rather amusing in a dark sort of way. To me, it's rather strange to think that a policy can be labelled as a solution without actually being one, or perhaps actively making things worse.
I get rather annoyed when I hear an issue based on inaccurate information being promoted by any person, not just a politician. This sort of thing is a fairly persistent problem in our society, and as far as I know, always has been. Psuedoscience and outright scams have a long and detailed history, and I have always had a certain kind of reverence for skeptical figures that work hard to curtail such things. Someone like James Randi, for instance, I consider with pretty high regard.
In short, my interest in politics have mostly been driven towards a desire for science and facts over any other consideration. I had always felt that the two major parties simply had different viewpoints about what was or was not a problem. Or that they had different solutions to problems they both identified. Compromise over how to handle these concerns is the nature of our political system. For this reason, I have always had a respect for what I now think of 'old-timey' small government Republicans. Although I disagree with that brand of Republican, I think I understand their desired approach to governance, and it does have a legitimate, skeptical role to play.
In short, I thought that everyone had access to the same facts, just the implementation of how to solve problems was a niggling detail that most people had reasonable disputes with. I was willing to let everyone else figure out the best solutions because I found other domains more fascinating.
I knew this was an ideal that wasn't always the case. Intelligent design and anti-vax are both pseudosciences with a political agenda. I just thought that these things were mostly corrected by the action of scientists on politicians and political parties.
That, however, does not seem to be the case now, if it ever was. Instead of arguing policy details, political alignment determines what one believes to be true about the world. Democrats CAN be (but aren't necessarily) responsive to scientists and scientific arguments. Republicans can't. If pragmatic, real solutions are ever to occur, they will only come from one political party. The Democrats.
It's sad that a simple devotion to facts and science is a political agenda. I hope for our country's sake, that the Republican party aligns itself with a more rational philosophy, so that we may have a more inclusive political system. In the meantime, I am a Democrat. Let's focus on science, welcome skepticism, and compromise.