Paper Tigers for All
From Zanecorpwiki
Many commentators have bemoaned the character of the current health care debate, rightly pointing out that there is in fact very little debate and a lot of often pointless and mis-leading propaganda. Furthermore, while the Left has inflated, dismissed, and picked their own assertions, it's fair to say that the lion's share of the most egregious offenses--the bald lies and cynical propaganda--have been committed by those on the Right.
There is furthermore a growing understanding that the Right has on this--and as a general rule--whole-heartedly adopted a "paper tigers" approach to the world. This grew out of a possibly overblown, but still very much rooted in reality, reaction to 9-11. "There is a terrible enemy out there..." is essentially how all their narratives begin.
At first, real enemies were exaggerated. Their strength and influence extended beyond actual fact. After awhile, the existence of any enemy at all became optional. The standard play book is now to simply imagine the worst possible, most easily maligned and inflammatory foe possible and then act as if that foe is real.
This perception has led some on the left to conclude the Right has been entirely captured by ratings-driven TV talk show hosts and hate mongers, that "the base" has entirely retreated from reality and the GOP now functions as a cult. Bill Maher recently quipped, “The Democrats have moved to the right, and the Republicans have moved to a mental hospital.”
It's quite tempting for the Left to nod their heads and say, "Yes, yes, they've gone quite off the rails, haven't they! Nothing but a bunch of fear-mongering lunatics left on the other side." In fact, I found myself doing exactly that while reading the first two paragraphs of this article.
But then when I got to the part that "Since Obama’s rise, the US right has been skipping frantically from one fantasy to another, like a person in the throes of a mental breakdown," I thought to myself, "Isn't this the same thing?" In imagining that the entire "other" side of the debate is populated entirely by lunatics, isn't the Left itself guilty of the exact same thing?
Paper tigers for all!
How did we get here? First, as mentioned, I think we have to look at recent history. It would be fair to say that the Right, under the Neocons "started" it all by extending their pre-war propaganda strategies to any and all topics. "We have to invade Iraq because that's where the terrorists are" uses the same tactic as "we have to kill health care because that's where the communists/nazis are". "Must do X to stop (evil) Y."
Not that this kind of tactic hasn't been used before by those of all political persuasions, but in speaking of the recent resurgence and utter dominance of the strategy to the near exclusion of all others, we have to trace that particular presentation back to 9-11 and the Afghan and Iraq wars.
So why have the Democrats and Left in general now adopted the same tactics?
One of the hallmarks of this tactic is non-engagement. You cannot engage with the other side because they are an enemy. They are, by definition, completely wrong and themselves operating in a different reality, so the only thing you can do is fight. This tactic denies debate.
Since it takes two to debate, then the Left is left no avenue to respond. The Right, in framing the issue as one of manifest "good vs. evil" denies the possibility of engagement. Essentially, the Left is left with nothing but it's own unilateral, response in kind. With no face-to-face possible, both sides--whether they wanted it or not--are left to simply hurl blind attacks at the other.
In the larger sense, though, we cannot simply lay this at the Neocon's feet. No one group "ruined it for everyone else." If it hadn't been the Neocons, some branch of the Democrats would have eventually done it themselves.
The problem is that our political system is subtlety, but powerfully biased towards a strict two-part division. The roots are in the way we cast and count votes with a winner-take-all structure and direct election. Other nations, using different systems, can support many parties and viewpoints.
If one looks at the history of politics in America, you can see that in the early days of parties--themselves an unforeseen and unwanted aspect of political life--things quickly drive to two stable parties. The only way a third party can operate (especially on the national stage) is to cannibalize one (or both) of the existing parties. The end result is that you always and must end up with two parties.
Multiply this reality through the ages, and we come to a point in time where the vast majority of the population blithely assumes that "there are two sides to every story" as a universal truism. It's how our government works, it's how the media expresses their narrative, so it's no surprise that it's how we think.
The fact is that it's far more common for there to be many, and perhaps even infinite sides to most interesting questions. But we know (mostly sub-consciously) that sophisticated, nuanced characterization is impossible when there are only two stable platforms from which to effect change. This forces rational actors to congregate around the "two sides".
In most things, this leads to effective equivalence. In a linear political landscape, on wins elections by "capturing the middle voter". All things being equal, this drives both parties to the center.
But that would be a very boring world, and the nature of individuals on either side of the very real--albeit entirely artificial--divides means that political actors are heavily incentivized to focus on and create polarization where ever possible.
We are thus left with a situation where Obama is well to the right of the majority of first-world political leaders, yet he is still derided as the arch-socialist. Obama and McCain's policies would put both of them in the center right of the majority of the world's political parties, and yet we peddle these lightning rod issues that exploit the few, often exaggerated and invariably naive disagreements.
It's as if the lack of substantial debate on the vast majority of critical issues forces us to amp up the volume on the few issues with real disagreement to 11. In the resulting cacophony, no one's message can possible reach the other side and even the most sophisticated commentators and watchers run the risk of getting trapped in the vast echo-chamber of artificially hyped invective and intentionally skewed world views.
