Welcome to the uncomfortable truth. I know it seems like I often rip on the left, but the right has its problem. I think the biggest problem with politics in the world is the tribalism of human beings.
What do I mean by that? Well, I mean that the political left in America thinks that the Republicans are to blame for everything, and the political right thinks the Democrats are to blame for everything.
It also extends to the fact that the political left contends that the Democrats can do no wrong and vice versa with the political right and the Republicans.
Now as an outsider, while I generally rag on the Democrats, the Republicans of modern years seem to be either no better or worse in many regards (like the Bushes, both senior and jnr).
But what is the biggest problem of this tribalism? It divides human beings.
The human species needs to understand that it is in our inherent interest to protect the planet and each other, and our cooperation will lead us into a bright future.
This doesn’t mean that everybody needs to agree on whether or not God (or Gods) exist, but we do need to decide on certain things.
Individuals have rights, and we have no right to violate those rights unless they violate other people’s rights.
The founding fathers set a pretty good standard of a value system that could be accepted by those of all faiths and atheists that people could unite on.
But today, the political landscape is more fragmented than ever. The political left is demonising white people and blaming them for the current problems facing minorities, especially African-Americans, while turning a blind eye to the issues facing those communities, like the number of children being born out of wedlock.
In fact, not only do they turn a blind eye to those problems, but they blame those problems on the police and institutional racism while planning to ban AR-15, which will do nothing to stop the vast majority of mass shootings which are gang-related violence.
Then we have the political right who, while they have roots in opposing slavery (yes, the Republicans for against slavery from their very inception while the Democrats defended it) but have gone so far from the founding fathers that they no longer represent traditional conservatives.
They may defend the rights of Americans to have guns. Still, starting with Bush Jnr and the fascist patriot act, they had extended the security apparatus and started spying on Americans when there was no need in the first place.
Dick Cheney used Bush Jnr’s presidency to expand the security apparatus, so when conservatives say that Bush Jnr and conservatives believe in small government. In contrast, the left believes in big government are undoubtedly confused about Bush Jnr’s presidency.
How can you advocate for the small government while expanding on the security apparatus?
The fact that conservatives today still defend Bush Jnr’s invasion of Iraq is mind-boggling to me when it was clear that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.
Now this is where I would criticise Trump. Still, I have to say that while the man certainly has flaws, he managed to get the unemployment rate to the lowest it had ever been in half a century, and instead of democrats being happy about this, they were seething.
This is the biggest problem with this tribalism which is that we are all one race, and we have to work together; otherwise, we will destroy each other, and we have the weapons to do that. At this point, it is more critical that we unite together on what’s important instead of demonising each other. War has to become a thing of the past. As Einstein said, “I don’t know what weapons World War 3 will be fought with, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones”.
