Are You Mad Yet?
Given where we are today as compared to 1776, our Founders would have been shooting a long time ago.
Where’s the outrage?
It certainly isn’t like there are enough reasons to be really storming the Capitol steps in a true revolution.
A President and his family credibly accused of corruption.
A government weaponized against the people.
Untrustworthy election processes.
A two-tiered justice system that the regime in power parades in full view of the people.
A war on free speech, freedom of religion and the truth.
Promotion of unreality in the form of transgenderism and transhumanism.
Yet another foreign entanglement, bordering on a world war.
Mad yet?
Those are just a few, any one of which should have us in the streets.
But we aren’t, and that leads to a question: Has outrage finally been beaten out of Americans?
I think a large part of the complacency and apathy has to do with the people in the middle.
Bear with me a minute.
In most sociopolitical disputes, the tendency is to think in terms of right vs. left because that is how we have learned to see things over time. Most of the time, I see two relatively normal bell-shaped curves with means on opposite ends of a line. The problem in seeing this way is that the curves can skew to right or left, their means can move closer or farther apart, both curves can move left or right together (while maintaining their distance from each other), they can change in to tall and thin or short and fat, or the tails of the curves can overlap people who are in the tails of the competing curve that they start to blend together. Measuring things this way is trying to use a sliding scale where neither curve is stable over time – or even on any specific issue and that robs people of an anchor, especially the people between the two curves.
I’ve watched this over the years, anecdotally at first, statistically afterwards.
What I have seen in the analysis of polling data over the past 40 or so years is something that should be expected and can be mathematically proven. When the two curves skew so that their tails cross – a third bell curve begins to appear in between them. What I have seen is that the hard right and the hard left stay where they are, but both sides start to leak support toward the middle. I think this tends to be an emotional change due to the right wanting to quell the attacks on their compassion and the left wanting to be seen as less communist and more concerned about the Constitution.
Often, the two sides have not moved to extreme positions; it is that more people have fled to the indecisive middle, making the two sides appear more extreme.
Of course, this is a generalization because the effect varies from issue to issue, but as an aggregate observation, I believe this to be true.
What happens when people find themselves in the middle, their goal is not to resolve the issue, but to please the other side. They want to be friends, so they try to find common ground on which to agree – even if it is not there. Sometimes it is about fear, fear of being seen as “extreme”, fear of risking what they already have, fear of cancellation, or fear of not belonging or being liked.
Whatever the motivation, it makes resolution of difficult problems much more difficult and the half-measure compromises that typically result are often worse in the long term than the issue itself.
If we continue to operate in the dichotomy of the right vs. the left, there is no possibility to find effective compromise because there is no anchor point from which to negotiate – for either side. The discussions are always about want, not need.
Imagine two equally matched groups of people, engaged in a tug-of-war in loose desert sand. Neither side can gain enough purchase in the sand to gain an advantage, so after hours of sweat and pulling, the center of the rope has not moved. It just oscillates very short distances from the starting point.
The only way the rope moves is if one side gives up.
I think it is years of this kind of tugging that has robbed most Americans of their outrage.
But there is an answer, and it involves the creation of an anchor point, a clear dividing line.
I believe that our political divisions should be measured by fealty to, or rejection of, the Constitution of the United States of America. That is a pure starting point, and it gives us a measurable way to quantify our differences. It also gives us a limit on what can and cannot be done. It’s either in there or it is not.
As Justice Scalia said, “The Constitution says what it says, and it doesn’t say what it doesn’t say.”
That means there is no middle ground where the Constitution is concerned.
We no longer recognize it, but that is a gift to us from our Founders as a means to identify the enemies of liberty in our representative republic.
Micheal,
I agree with your observations as to having an anchor, namely the Constitution. But it seems both sides think they, or at least make us (generally) believe, are supporting the constitution.
So, allow me to posit…
The second amendment gives us the right to bear arms - any type of arms - as, at the time, there was no standing army, there were many groups having opposite viewpoints (thieves, robbers, Indians, British, French, Spanish, etc) and the need for self preservation was great, and a police force was rare.
Well, today, at least at one time, we do have an active police force and various groups supply security. Our second amendment also spoke to the point of having a well regulated militia. That’s you and me, ready at a ‘moments notice’ to defend our country. And I believe we still have that right, even with a standing army and LEO’s. But, I hesitate to think of entering an area where everyone is armed and all having different motives or reasons for armament.
Yes, I had better be armed in such a situation and hope that I am good enough to remain standing g should someone lose their temper or worse. And since we are more densely populated than in 1788, and with the govt wanting a well regulated militia, wouldn’t it stand to reason that, today, we need to know the type of person that is armed, whether criminal or law abiding, and that gun ownership, not type but use, should have stipulations for those having armament?
This is what needs to be negotiated; can criminals own armaments, under 18, drug addicts or drunks, in the saloon or public or critical places such as planes or trains.
What I’m trying to point out is our constitution is vulnerable to the things, as they are different today than in 1788, BUT, at the same time our constitution is designed and structured to be our anchor, immovable, except by a restrictive means of amendment. So, I believe our issue is how to maintain a balance between logic and absurdity, holding to our freedoms without being overrun by regulations that are supposed to be designed to be logical and good for all.
We have to negotiate to discover that ‘Sweet Spot’ don’t we?
Rick
PS…
The following is my first reply that kinda says what you do about the right and the left…
Michael,
Funniest thing! I was just reading an article pretty much saying there no right or left. Here’s the article:
https://www.newsweek.com/us-has-no-conservative-party-opinion-1798156
Sent from my iPhone
Rick
Spot on point, Michael!!
There is nothing in the middle of that road, but treasonous duplicity, graft, and cowardice!