Politicians love to accuse each other of being divisive demagogues — making such claims helps them be unifying demagogues. Obama is one of the most amazing cases I’ve yet seen of someone who manages to say, in effect, “Let us stop fighting and come together (behind me), so that partisan bickering can end (and a thoroughly left-wing agenda can triumph).” It’s a measure of how exhausted Americans are by the usual right-left fighting that they’re willing to suspend disbelief and let either side triumph as long as it claims this will end the fighting.
Nothing unifies like a common enemy, though, and the left would like that designated foe in the public’s mind to be the right, while the right would like that common foe to be the left. And so we continue.
I, of course, have The Real Answer, which is to wake up and recognize the entire class of politicians — and all government — as the common enemy, to be dispensed with once and for all, like monarchy and slave ownership. To achieve that beautiful dream (together!), we should focus on examples of government being so damn stupid — yet ideologically ambiguous — that no thinks upon hearing the examples “More treachery by the other ideological side in the right-left dialectical struggle!” but rather “Government has gone full retard once again!”
Here’s an example from New Zealand I think most decent Americans of all ideological stripes can agree to find revolting: telling people what they can and cannot name their children. I wonder if they’d let people name their kids Voltaire and Groucho, as I’ve repeatedly urged friends to do, to no avail?
No comments:
Post a Comment