To live and work successfully with others requires more than faithfulness to one's concrete aims. It requires an intellectual commitment to a type of order in which, even on issues which to one are fundamental, others are allowed to pursue different ends.
Excellent theory! But then there’s the GOP….
Thanks to the reporting of Robert Draper and others, we’ve known for some time that Republican leaders were not forced into obstruction by any principled objections to Obama’s policies. To the contrary, they adopted obstruction as a conscious strategy before they had seen a single legislative proposal from his administration.
Isn’t that special? Curious that the loudest voices about American exceptionalism are the ones working hardest to make that a standing joke. Reliance on low-information voters too agitated and frightened to pay enough attention to reality is certainly convenient for these GOP and right-wing media “leaders,” isn’t it?
If only those of us on the progressive/left side of the divide, along with about 99% of conservative voters, weren’t impacted by GOP inanities….
Stubborn resistance and knee-jerk “No” have built-in limitations. In a world where the march into the future will of necessity have to acknowledge and then incorporate modern-day realities into the broad scope of changes affecting us all, blind denial and resistance to those changes will prove even less effective. Working overtime to resist and deny despite those inevitabilities is a choice, and might even continue to bear some short-term satisfactions for the few.
What thought process suggests that those in opposition to the right-wing ideology of “deny and obstruct” will eventually just give up and give in? Hope those GOP optimists aren’t hangin’ around waiting….
The more complex the problems and the more numerous the participants ignoring the problems and challenges of modern-day society, the less likely it is that progressives will concede so much as an inch. At the same time, willful refusal to adapt to needed changes, to negotiate and compromise so we all move at least one step forward, and to deny others opportunities to voice their perspectives guarantees one thing only: more conflict. How much more should we be expected to tolerate? What happens when the pot spills over?
Continued resistance to progress will only leave those in opposition that much farther behind the rest of us who intend to march forward notwithstanding the nonsensical arguments in opposition. Has that been contemplated even occasionally? What happens when the opposition stands its ground in a world which has moved well beyond their narrow-minded beliefs and misguided principles of limited or no government and into a future society where every man for himself is exactly the worst possible strategy available?
The conservative dilemma, omnipresent in the past, looms over conservatism's future. It can reveal its true face and consign itself to oblivion or it can govern without conviction and produce unending incompetence.
Hell of a choice….
For all the bluster and nonsense about getting the federal government off our backs, what happens when climate change become obvious to even the most intensely delusional? Or when our energy supply challenges pose serious problems to all of us because we’ve failed to address the problems when they might have been manageable? How much more economic inequality will the 99% tolerate? How much more power will citizens cede to the wealthy and their distinctly different agenda?
The great theater will be what happens to the GOP leaders and media personalities when their diligent efforts to mask their self-serving agendas have run their course, and phony promises and manufactured fears fail to show up?
Are we willing to allow millions of different voices to make decisions based on their own understandably narrower concerns and hope that everyone is coming to the same conclusions so as to maximize the efficacy of these choices, or can we recognize that a nation speaking with one voice in the face of these daunting challenges is indeed our best hope? When the goal of smaller government [if any] is reached, What Happens Then?
The challenges, the problems, and the complexities of 21st Century life will not dissipate, nor will they halt their own forward movement because a determined faction maintains a strategy of stubborn opposition, resistance, and denial. At some point, time will run out for those who appear to behave as if they can buy just enough time—one more day—to avoid the unavoidable.
Nice if you can pull it off, but reality more than likely has different plans in mind.
Adapted from a recent blog post of mine
That’s a wrap for 2016. Happy Holidays! I’ll be back in mid-January