Yeah, you. Really. The person reading this.
What I like about you is that you have good intentions. That much is obvious or you wouldn't be reading this site. You also have a healthy self interest being what drew you to this particular diary, and that is an essential component of empathy. You can't follow the Golden Rule to good effect unless you care about yourself.
No, this isn't some Ayn Randy rant in the least. This isn't really about me, either. This is about you, a person, and not some abstracted individual of any definition.
So who are you?
Well I only really know one thing about you for sure and it is that you have good intentions. The question then is what are you going to do with them?
Here is a list of options that I don't suggest choosing:
- Having faith in the goodness of whatever you opt to do with your good intentions. Parable: Sally has a fridge full of good ingredients. Sally decides that whatever she mixes together and cooks will therefore be good. Sally is very wrong. Most kitchen experiments go awry until experience and some rote knowledge shape them.
- Having faith in tested recipes. Just because people have been eating it for generations, or alternately just because it was published in the latest Ladies' Home Journal, doesn't mean it is healthy, or right for a given occasion. Or compatible with what's in the fridge.
- Most of all, don't think that because experimenting in the political kitchen seems easy, or seems like other vastly smaller pursuits you are good at, that you are good at it. At all. Parable: Sally writes some online editorial and donates some money in a political election cycle. For once, a victory for her party occurs. Sally thinks that this is because of her actions. Sally does not realize that what those freshly elected officials are doing in office now is maybe a result of who they are, and what they know how to do... Which is actually probably a more important component in what got them elected. Sally thought she was going to be Mom in the kitchen and discovers she is wearing a McDonalds uniform.
The question, Sally, is what next?
Keep cooking unhealthy meals by rote while learning nothing about real cuisine?
Take those good intentions and near-zero practical experience and try to play Mom in the kitchen some more? Presume that like Mom you have some power to make people eat it beyond its quality and their tastes? Just how much hubris have you got, Sally?
...Because like salt, you'll need just the right amount. Not lacking, so that the dish tastes unready, and not so much that it is unpalatable and every bite, if there is indeed a second, makes the taster think of the chef as too loose with an authority that she is unready for.
Now, consider the parable itself as a means of communication: Christ liked them. How well have they ensured that people got His message? Accurately? And in such a way as to act on it to the betterment of the world?
Oh they do just fine on an individual level so long as nothing is seriously awry with them, I think. (And I'm pretty atheistic.) On a macro societal level when it comes to fielding armies, crushing infidels, and caring for the wants of the less fortunate? Hmm.. Shall we crack open a history book on this one? No, let's just say that the smallness of parables is entirely lost on those things to which one is inclined to defer to Caesar. So too are bluntly prescriptive moralistic commands lost, as guides, when one is focused on one's own contribution. A plenitude of guides becomes a paucity of guidance when one chooses one's own guide for each situation... And likely is inclined to choose the one that conforms best, or leaves the most room for, what one is already inclined to do.
Politics, you see, is not really remotely like cooking in the kitchen. It isn't like being Mom, or helping Mom in the kitchen, or working at McDonald's, or making the meal you want to eat. Nothing that concerns an individual person, or any other kind of job at all, be it management, law, or even military, has much pertinence toward the really big picture, overall.
In short, nobody is any good at politics. Least of all are politicians good at politics, because they think it is about them. Who they are. What they want to accomplish. What they believe.
Politics is just too damned big. Hence, its smallness (TM Obama) in practice, so often.
Who is good at politics? Political activists aren't either, as they also think it is about them, and the goodness or rightness of any of their ideas however amorphous or well-honed.
Well, Sally, in sum I promised this would be a diary not about me but about you. And that is the means by which I escape these very concerns and nevertheless advise on politics.
Here is what I suggest to you: Get out of partisan politics. Figure out what is really important to you if you haven't already. Make a list, perhaps, and be prepared to strike from it things that you initially thought you cared about but really put there because it is a party plank. Consider those gaps strengths as they allow you to get closer to people beyond party and politics to advance the issues you do care about. Don't turn away from the politic scene, but use it as a means by which to advance those things you really care about, and the ideas you have for those things, which you are reasonably confident are competent ones.
In this way, Sally, perhaps we might end up with a politics that is more akin to representative democracy and to a republic with real bedrock principles, and that is less like a tiny-brained leviathan that disguises its simplicity and implacable course simply because it seems with every movement to be arguing with itself. In short, Sally, I think that the reason why the parties are too much alike and too poor at coping is because they, and most people in them most actively, are insistent upon a raft of differences between them.
It isn't (and here Obama is in error if he thinks that it is) about what people agree on beyond party lines. No, it is about how much better off we'd be if people worked more on what they were good at and truly interested in, while leaving the remainder aside so that those more difficult and specialized concerns could be tackled by those truly called to them. Example: The space program. If you don't see a need for one, well, you always have the option of shutting up about it altogether (That one is for you, Wanda Sykes).
Foreign policy is another big one. I'm not suggesting that only the already-powerful should weigh in. I am suggesting that it's a case where everyone who lacks specific opinions (and most who don't) feel that as a matter of form they must project some measure of belligerence toward the whole subject and any number of its players. What the experience of the initially very popular, and now very unpopular, War in Iraq, should teach us, is not that the people are right, or that the popular will is good. Nor should it teach us that because we guessed heads for whatever reason and the coin landed heads that we have a great "system" personally.
What this war and it's home-front history should teach us is that both parties are bad at prosecuting wars and at opposing wars. Maybe we ought to consider wars as something other than a political issue and listen more closely to people who really care one way or the other about them, sooner. One thing to keep an ear out for is the "why." Also the "how." But then, too, the way in which the "why" and the "how" are bridged. Because for example if someone says something like "American Interests" exactly what, who, and to what end, should be explained in full. Anytime the appellation "American" is applied to something just assume it's there to distract. You may be included in the Americans it is referencing and you may not, but either way the term is designed to conflate one set of interests with those of Americans in general. And while some things genuinely are in our collective best interests, other things are not, and so we should be especially certain that this terminology is kept unsullied for when it is really warranted. It is only warranted when there is true concern to all Americans.
Listen. Do listen. Do ask questions. Do choose sides. Do choose leaders on particular issues. Don't assume these leaders will be politicians. Politics is just too big, and politicians are stretched to thin. Some of them can be very right on certain issues. But don't assume they arrived at that rightness out of their own internal rightness. It isn't some family tragedy or the family fishing hole, or a foxhole, that forged that rightness. No, more likely it originates in agreeing with others who know what they are talking about. Be very suspicious of those you suspect are listening, instead, to you, collectively, on some really complex prescriptive issue. Because that politician is then no better than popular opinion on that issue and is no doubt weighing how important that one opinion is to that populace, among many. Be almost as suspicious of these "populists" as those who you are pretty sure are listening to "experts" whose interests are indeed contrary to your own. And that is because any given popular opinion is of worth only because it is popular, not because it is good, or correct. And against that popularity will be weighed the benefits of following those selfsame interests, or others, that are contrary to your own.