Political Party Discrimination
I will be out of the country next week so I voted today. As usual I voted for a mix of Republicans and Democrats using my normal rule of voting against the incumbent in almost all cases. As I was filling out my ballot someone at work noticed and said ‘I hope you aren’t voting for any Republicans.’ In my head something clicked then and I realized that politics is where acceptable simple discrimination has moved into. That sounds weird, but stay with me here.
I know racism is still around in pockets and as an economic issue, but most people I know could care less about someones race and the the few hard core racists still around mostly keep to themselves as they know that they are way off the mainstream. This is relatively new, until recently racial discrimination was acceptable and common. Now racial discrimination is unacceptable in polite society, at least in the society I keep.
Politics on the other hand are open game. A third of my friends would be perfectly happy if I ran around saying ‘Republican’s are hypocritical con men’ and a third of my friends wouldn’t blink at ‘Democrats are deluded libertines’ but both statements are crap. Republican or Democrat in either of the above is just a cheap substitute for ‘the other’, the statements above reflect the same mental shortcuts that are used in racism or anti-semitism and it is nonsense. It is a politically correct shorthand in a world where fewer and fewer of these sort of mental shortcuts are accepted and so it thrives on both sides of the line. Partyism is perfectly acceptable in a world where racism is held up as an example of clear stupidity. When I here someone say ‘I won’t date a Democrat’ or ‘I hate Republican’s’ I have really started to wince, I can hear echoes of other ‘others’ in their words. Not much can be done here, this seems to be mostly a game of equals for the moment unlike more traditional ‘ism’s, but I have to admit it leaves me pretty cold. Just another reason for me to dislike political parties I guess.
November 2nd, 2006 at 11:41 pm
You know, we were just watching the animated version of “The Sneetches” at our neighbors house. Do you think we could get machines that made everyone sorta purple?
November 3rd, 2006 at 3:20 am
There’s a bumper sticker up on a cubicle here at work. It reads “Under Republicans, it’s man versus man; under the Democrats, it’s the reverse.” That sums up my political views.
When I was in Rwanda (about 1 million killed in a month long massacre along tribal and political lines in April 1994, I was there in August), the main question on my mind was could something like that happen here? There are cultural divides and if it were in the interest of those with the means, propaganda messages could reinforce those differences. I consoled myself that it would take too massive an expenditure of time and money to get people worked up enough to kill each other. The people in Rwanda were no different than people here, but the population was considerably smaller and the cultural differences were more at the surface and hence easier to manipulate.
My answer is no, it couldn’t happen here, not as things stand today. Still, I’m with you when I hear the rhetoric that is used to divide people along party lines. It shouldn’t be disregarded and accepted.
November 3rd, 2006 at 10:26 am
But… But… sputter sputter
I wonder what it would be like to vote for single issues, instead of people who have a different combination of interests, and maybe they will change their mind later when it comes to policies, yadda yadda.
Also I wonder if the political party opinions are more prevalent in the DC area, and perhaps not so much in other parts of the US?