Monday, October 30, 2006

Left, Hardly Ever Right, and Center

Blondesense Liz asks:

What do you think? Can we stand centrists- it's better than neocons, right?

Sliding down a railing coated with broken glass is better than neocons!

Of course we can stand centrists. Not right now, though, but I think it's where we should be.

I'll make a little analogy here. Any mechanic or electronics technician, well, the ones old enough to remember analog gauges and meters anyway, can tell you that a meter is most accurate in its mid-scale. Let's use a car's gas gauge as an example.

If you're like me, the needle spends most of its time somewhere near its center, neither all the way to the right (full of gas, like wingnuts), nor all the way to the left (runnin' on empty, like left-wing loonies). Although the needle occasionally goes all the way full-scale to the right, after a fill-up, and all the way to the left, just before an invigorating hike, usually it's somewhere between its extremes.

Do ya see where I'm goin' with this? I sometimes have issues where my stance puts me to the right of Sean Hannity, and other issues that put me far left of Michael Moore, but most of the time I'm somewhere in between.

To carry the gas gauge analogy a step further, if you have enough money that your tank is always full, you get the feeling that you can go anywhere you want, and you needn't concern yourself with the poor slob who's sitting beside the road out of money and out of gas. That your gas money might have come from that same guy, or possibly your gas was given to you by the gas station, is not of concern either: you got it, he ain't got it, and that's the way it should be.

If you're the guy sittin' by the side of the road, you see it a little differently: "Geez, I can't go anywhere". When you see the guy whizzin' by on his way to wherever without so much as a glance at you, you might think, "I gave that guy five bucks for gas, but he's on his way to where he'll get a free tankful. Why can't he stop and siphon me off a gallon?" The world is against you, and you think you'll never get anywhere.

People who've never been stuck by the side of the road outta gas and broke will never understand, but folks who have are a lot more likely to stop and help: There but for the grace of a little gas money, sit I.

It's the same in politics. On the left, you have ideals, which are sometimes unrealistic. You strive for them anyway, hoping to do someone that needs it some good. If we'll all chip in, everybody will have enough gas to get where they need to go.

On the right, you have ideology, which is sometimes unrealistic. You strive for it anyway, thinking that needy people shouldn't be that way, and if they'll just buy you all the gas you want - not need - they can get themselves where they need to go, and if they can't, well, it's their own damn fault. You'll get there, and fuck them.

I think after reading my own words, my tank is less than half full. I've been told before that I'm a little short of a full tank. That's OK, I got enough.

To end my blathering about the gas gauge, the most accurate reading lies somewhere near the center, on either side, rather than all the way either way. The needle will go right, the needle will go left, but we can generally feel good when it's in between one-quarter and three-quarters.

To get back to Liz's question, it will be a great day when our nation can be be governed from the center. Right now we're in a deathgrip from the Far Right. We'll never break that grip by compromising with them. If we're nice, or even reasonable with them, we'll die.

We have to be aware that right now we're fighting for the breath, life, and soul of our country. We can use their own rules to fight them, of which there aren't any. Remember, a good fight is one which you walk, or crawl if need be, away from and your opponent doesn't.

Once we get loose from these evil Repugs and can get a few decent breaths, then we can work on a little compromise while they're recovering from their injuries, which I hope take a long time to heal in the prison ward. It'll give 'em time to think about the harm they've done and how they might act a little more decently in future..

Until then, HAMMER! HAMMER! HAMMER!

November 7th.

This came out in one long sentence from my stream of unconsciousness. I could barely get it slowed down enough to put in some punctuation.

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