There is another diary already in the spotlight about those fun conversations with republicans. (Link button not working right now, so here: http://www.dailykos.com/...). I wanted to add my two cents.
I am from "there," but live "here" now. Many of you will know exactly what I mean without further explanation/ But for those missing the fun, I grew up red and turned blue after a lot of soul-searching when I was older. I still often talk to my old peeps from back then, and sometimes that necessitates political discussion. We always try to be respectful but don't always succeed. Anyway, here is a way I talked about OWS recently that made some sense to an old conservative chum:
The argument has been made that OWS has not accomplished much, but I feel they have. If nothing else, they have provided a counterpoint to this ridiculous rush for austerity and shifted ever so slightly the window of the debate, which frankly, has been framed by the rightwing narrative for years if not decades. Should we live within our means? Of course. But on a macro-economic level, that is a lot more complicated an issue than simply saying, “If poor people can’t afford a tv, they shouldn’t buy a tv.” That kind of bumper-sticker sloganeering FEELS good but it doesn’t really accomplish anything. Given the incredibly complex issues we are facing right now, we need to be looking at the issues in a deep and meaningful way. Is the time of 9% unemployment, social unrest, two wars, and looming ecological catastrophe really the time to just say deregulate businesses, lower wages, cut taxes, shred the social safety net, and say every person for himself? Well, maybe, but I doubt it. That isn’t what my reading and research has led me to believe.
Those kinds of fixes, typically codified as “austerity measures,” don’t seem to be working anywhere they are tried. If you have not been following Ireland’s attempts at austerity, don’t worry, you might get to experience it firsthand soon. I will spare you all an impassioned liberal plea about the benefit of social programs and how they are cheaper in the long run, about how I would really like for my son to grow up in a country where the water isn’t toxic and the food not carcinogenic. Because even if I wrote the best defense ever, logically backed, meticulously researched, emotionally compelling—it would not change anyone’s mind. There are reasons for that.
I am a liberal right now, and proudly so, but that isn’t the whole of it. The survival and betterment of the human race depends on different qualities at different times. That’s encoded in us genetically. Sometimes we need a headstrong individual who will go out and get shit done on his own. Other times we need all of us working together to overcome an obstacle that one person alone could not. It is more heroic to be—and indeed, society admires and heaps adulation upon—the lone gun. But one person in his garage with a home PC and a good idea is not going to put a man on the moon. Biology knows that…or learned that over the course of millions of years. So now we have competing biological imperatives for the survival of the species, and that’s great. Long live the humans!
But it causes some really uncomfortable conversations because these differences get amped up through all sorts of marketing, meme-spreading, hate-speech, name-calling, and so on. (I recommend the book WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS to everyone as an excellent analysis of this phenomenon and more. Poor people can be made to vote against their own economic self-interests because it feels good just to mythologize the notion of rugged individualism.) It’s like biological process run through the meat-grinder of regional or cultural bias. It gets ugly. But I am a liberal at this point in my life because I haven’t seen the right accomplish much in my lifetime besides making it easier for rich people to get richer and poor people to get poorer. Obviously, whatever they have been pushing the last 50 years has not really helped American society. The median middle class wage since 1960 has not kept up with inflation. The middle class is shrinking. Bankers turn the stock market into a casino and drive us off the cliff, we bail them out, and then if we try to set up rules so they can’t do it again, they call it socialism. And people believe them! So I ask, has what we have been doing for the last 30 years really worked? Maybe for some, but not for most, and certainly not for all. I say bring on government oversight, bring on all of us working together to create healthcare for all of us, bring on some sensible environmental regulations and oversight so we don’t have to eat shrimp coated in crude oil or fish that will give us mercury poisoning. And then, when liberalism gets out of hand and starts being bad for society, I will say bring on the lone heroes! Let’s get some shit done. So in short, I am a liberal now because that seems to be the course that is best for the betterment of society in these times. When we get everything under control, don’t be surprised if I switch teams.
This explanation got some agreement and consideration where other approaches had not. She responded that she had to agree with some of what I said, especially about the scope of the problem and about the environment. She followed by saying that we won't accomplish anything until both sides learn to work together. Ordinarily the response is that we are willing to compromise and ahve shown it...why not them? But I skipped that because that leaves us still talking on the level of proxies. There is no Democratic party or Republican party at this point. There is only the will be bribed or the won't be bribed candidate. So I cut through all that stuff and just got to this:
The real problem is that the people in Washington have not been in control of Washington for quite some time. They are more or less just the conduit for business interests to control us through a proxy government. The population is happier when they think they have some say over who rules them, but if our politicians need to raise $50,000,000 just to ENTER the field and look "electable," that in and of itself is going to weed out anyone who does not have serious corporate backing. And I am not saying that corporations are bad, just that they have a long history of serving only their own interests. By the time you amplify that self-interest through the stock market, where people make millions by decimating a company's workforce or by using campaign contributions to hold up environmental regulations in order to keep cheaply dumping poison into Lake Michigan, well, you get the point.
She concedes that this is true and that most people agree on the need for solutions but disagree on how to enact them. I always say that the Tea Party and OWS are both teachable moments. So then I try to bring us back to common ground:
I am glad that we agree on more than we disagree on...and that is usually what I find when people actually take time to get beyond sloganeering and into discussion.
there is a long history of rich people dividing us against one another so that they can stay in power. They fear what happens when suddenly, all of us look up and say, "Hey, life sucks for everyone except those guys who live in the castle." If Wall St thinks we are bad now, they should have lived during the French Revolution. All things considered, I'd say we're being pretty polite these days.
Anyway, regarding the fact that we have more in common with each other than perhaps you thought, here is a useful venn diagram