Good People On Both Sides?

"Good People On Both Sides?"

Rant #7(Opinion)

Originally March 8, 2020

To whom it may concern, I get where you're coming from with this chart. It makes me cringe to say it like this, but "there are good people on both sides" who want the same endgame, that being a surviving and thriving America--their road maps just differ. At one point in time, I was a staunchly conservative person--a position which has since largely flipped. I was never a racist in my heart and soul when I felt that way, back in the Bush era. The vast majority of those who disagree with you have good intentions, just misaligned ideas on how things do and should work. Give those people the benefit of the doubt, until they say something that reveals any purely hateful sentiment (e.g. genuine racism). There do exist a large number of simply awful others, yet they make up the minority. Ignorance abounds in the rest. Remembering that is vital to maintaining the seems that keep our country weaved together. While we all can get bogged down in vicious Twitter skirmishes and Facebook fights, Americans largely do need to chill a bit because if we come together we can tackle any problem, big and small.

Yet there lies the issue: coming together and rallying behind what?

So with all that said, it needs mentioning that a huge difference exists between liberal vs. conservative and true vs. false. While many Republicans are themselves unaware of the true nature of what they endorse, the GOP itself has gone off the rails from reality. Backing a racist or otherwise unjust system out of ignorance still props up an unjust system...it's like, if you get into a car with a drunk driver who crashes, whether or not you knew and accepted that the driver blew a 0.23, the car still crashes; your friend still dies. 

Hypothetically I agree with all those talking points that for some reason got put in the left column but represent the right...in practice, Republicans use those as talking points to scare and coerce Americans into voting for them. Their arguments frame things in a way that justifies policies which fail to meet the criteria of liberty and justice for all. Its manifestation looks more like the Constitution on Animal Farm: "all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." Whether or not to change the tax code has many dimensions to argue over; whether or not it is right to give one person preferential treatment or not shouldn't actually even be a debate in 2020. Like how haven't we come to a consensus on that? The climate change debate as well is not really a viable debate, as our mainstream media's "both sidesism" would have you believe...Republicans don't back a certain way of handling that issue, they reject its validity entirely, willfully ignoring facts and science so that corporations can destroy the environment to make a little money. How can anyone defend that kind of unbelievably reckless behavior? Actions that will inevitably wreck horrible havoc to the planet, and billions of people on it. Unless you own an oil company or are a politician for whom lobbyists buy a beach house in the Caribbean, no individual has anything to gain from backing the GOP! 

At some point, people have to realize that the political disputes of today in fact frequently don't have to do with anything less than the question of do we, as America, allow a select few to control our massive wealth and wield its tremendous power to essentially harm the rest of humanity, including millions of our own, and allow the levers of power to be pulled by hypocrisy, the rejection of truth and logic and a wannabe dictator; or, do we move in a different direction than that? Obviously, I hold certain political views and many issues will always matter when weighing which candidate will best represent what I want and believe in. In another sense though, something hugely important is at stake: this upcoming election has to do with our collective civility, integrity, faith in facts, acceptance of reality, and keeping America great by proving the merits of democracy: by voting out an idiot.