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Polar bear with carrot

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Meet in the middle

I worry about you earthlings. I really do. Left or right, you seem to be taking your stupid pills, that's for sure. Can't get along, hurtling towards a major global conflagration, with deadlier and deadlier armaments in your quiver.

And the battle, at least in this country, is not really even ideological. You can see this because the two sides have been known to completely switch positions on a dime and not even pause for a breath in their rancor. Take Russia for instance. Coulter, Paul, Spencer and the Alt Right now pleading for nonintervention and John Kerry and Tom Donnelly applauding the Trump administration for its Syria strike. One week Putin is best pal, next thing you know relations are as cold as a Volga winter.

Hard to keep it all straight. Almost seems like our problems are more tribal and genetic than having to do with any real ideology. Or Jungian. And it is a verifiable fact that we tend to adopt the religious convictions and politics of our parents, who inherited the convictions and politics of their parents, whose parents did the same, back back back to our simian like ancestors fighting over that last bunch of bananas. Perhaps we are encoded to fight our ancestor's wars until the end of time.

People don't really tend to change too much or to want to break the chain of their conditioning. Rarely happens and extremely difficult thing to do.

I disagree with most every position of this administration, most vehemently on their environmental bent and their position concerning science. Not real keen on privatizing medicare or dismembering the safety net, or giving the rich a really fat tax cut. Worked so well in Kansas.

But even a broken clock is right twice a day. And I think that Tillerson may turn out to be a pretty good Secretary of State in the long run. I found a lot of fault with Rice and Rhodes and the Obama administration's timidity and cruel calculus in certain areas. I would like to stick it in the nutty North Korean's eye, a regime that seems to only exist because of its constant petulant threats.

The problem with Trump is that his positions change with the day or hour and without a consistent vision we are forced to get the vision of his underlings, whether they are Sessions, Haley, Pruitt, Mulvaney or Pence. I don't think the President has thought about these sorts of things altogether too much. Nato was obsolete last week, today it's not. Obama was crazy to bomb Syria, now we have to bomb Syria. Makes you wish for a James Baker or George Schultz, somebody steady at the helm to steer the ship. Somebody who actually knows what they are doing.

We need to meet in the middle but I just don't see it happening.  Neither side has a stranglehold on truth or righteousness. Both sides need to shut up and listen to the opposition without demonization. Entitlements are increasing faster than our ability to fund them. Obamacare could certainly use a tweaking. Some regulations are ridiculous and unnecessarily burdensome to business. But our congressional districts are so gentrified that we have to elect extreme candidates on either side just to win a primary. And politics today is strictly slash and burn.

Now, more than ever in my lifetime, there is no middle. I hope that we are able to fix that one day.

I would like to wish all my christian friends a happy easter and my jewish friends a happy passover. My zen friends a happy nothing which they can share with the atheists and Unitarians if they so desire.

Lets try to right the ship, no matter what our belief system or political affiliation might or might not be.

Peace out.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Any wishes for the muslims?

Blue Heron said...

Sure, why not?