Every once in a while, roughly twenty times a day, I will hear a passionate and concerned citizen of these Unites States voice the following sentiment: The political party that does not share my views is corrupt and dangerous, while the political party with whom I agree and identify is honest, noble, and unfairly targeted by a biased media.
This is an astounding coincidence, particularly considering how many of America
Though the choices made by these crusaders, (choices made as consumers, as neighbors and as citizens,) rarely reflect the compassion piously proclaimed in their snide commentary, the delusion that this compassion is the exclusive product of their ideological group drives many of our friends to appalling depths of arrogance and intellectual dishonesty, depths mistaken for heights, traversed only through the official triumph of those champions who represent the side of goodness, decency and correct fiscal policy.
The Democratic Party and The Republican Party thrive when their servants (voting-age citizens desperate to feel connected to something powerful, desperate to lash out against enemies imagined or otherwise, and desperate to feel informed, intelligent and infallibly righteous) are opiated by the operatic deception of political theater.
Christian theologians have often used paradoxes to express complex ideas (Jesus is the Lamb and also the Shepherd; "Washed in the Blood" etc.) and since so many opportunist politicians have attached themselves with avarice to that oft-hijacked tradition, making it the de facto reference-point for the pious moralizing required by our complicated system of tricking people into joining our political cults, I offer the following paradox: Our masters are on the one hand slaves to ideology and on the other hand utter nihilists.
Our masters, truly, are not those with mere influence, such as corporations, unions, churches and whatever passes for journalists now. Our masters are Democrats and Republicans.* Nothing can be done without the approval of one of these parties, and in their eager zeal to exclude any third-party competition (powerful rhetoric is so much easier to compose when aimed at one terrible, evil opponent rather than designed to elucidate a comprehensive platform**) they restrict the moral and political imaginations of Americans to a narrow spectrum that monopolizes positively everything. Any work of art, any social action, and any literature that falls outside of this spectrum is promptly labeled "extremist" and summarily vilified or dismissed.
It would be tedious to rehash the various errors and crimes committed under its banner, so I’ll just say that the foreign policy of the United States Government (aptly described by that old chestnut "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"), is something to which I and many like me object on moral grounds, and it is determined by not only by the bullying of one party or another, but also by the unprincipled capitulation of one party to another. No evidence exists that our masters have concern or compassion for the well-being of humanity. They serve the gods of nation, state, dollar and gun.
These political parties are manipulative, deceitful covens whose ideologies (both those they profess as well as those they actually practice, if they practice any) are vain superstitions, unsubstantiated by empirical evidence. (No claim that THIS policy will have THIS result is grounded in anything other than speculation, no matter how rooted in past precedent. THAT situation is not identical to THIS situation. “Political science” is not science.)
While Democrats and Republicans play their favorite games - including "Let’s All Pretend to Be Christians!" and "Which Group of Brown People Can We Kill Next?" - I choose to tune them out while I focus on that which is within my sphere of influence. Unfortunately, the structure of my chosen profession, one in which I believe passionately, will occasionally draw me into the Ass and Elephant Mutual Extinction Game.
I do not subscribe to some holistic political or economic dogma that tells me that unions are inherently good, nor do I subscribe to one that tells me unions are inherently bad. I believe each situation is unique. Giving fellow educators the benefit of the doubt, I am willing to assume that the union into which I have been conscripted exists to serve the students whose well-being is something to which I have devoted my life.
I will stand in solidarity with my colleagues as long as their priorities place the needs of students and the community above all other concerns. What I will not do is play an active part in the decision-making process.
This act of restraint is for the benefit of my beloved colleagues. If I were to attend a union meeting and discover that the union dues I pay are being used to support the Democrats or Republicans*** I would be so appalled that the ensuing stink, (raised by a man with no shortage of bottled up rage, as this document should make clear) would likely reduce the functionality of all subsequent meetings to the whimpering impotence of a party-planning committee.
I would gladly sacrifice all of my heath benefits if it means I may live with a conscience unencumbered by the knowledge that I have worked to support these political parties that have all but publicly declared moral bankruptcy.
Perhaps if I am the teacher I aspire to be, my students will develop the critical interpretive skills necessary to avoid the sad sinkhole into which their hapless parents have been so naively sucked: a life of slavish intellectual deadness, spent slobbering on the shriveled genitals of whichever political party most promptly exploited their prejudice. If I lack tact and civility, let it be said I at least posses hope.
*I use the phrase "Democrats and Republicans" so often it makes me pine for an umbrella term that includes both. Might I suggest "deluded hypocrites"?
**Yes, I do possess the self-awareness to realize that this document employs an equivalent strategy.
***Remember, friends, if you don’t tell me, I can pretend not to know
