First I was a leftwinger. Then I was a rightwinger. There was a time I preferred calling myself either Liberal or Conservative. There was even a period where I thought Neoconservativism might be the thing for me. Every time I found a team to be a part of, it felt good. I looked at the other side and called them names, like genocidal maniacs or ignorant racists. Something about that demonizing made me feel weird, though. I wanted to be right, but all I heard from my fellow team mates is that the other side is terrible and gay. Just because someone else is wrong doesn’t make me right.
In the latest elections in my country, the campagnes were an embarassment. I had no idea who to vote for. All they could do is sling mud at each other. I looked at the propaganda films and was shocked. Is that how adults behave? Are the leaders of our country trying to convince me using silly jokes instead of talking about the issues?
The problem was never the Liberals or Conservatives. The problem was in this division.
My first arguement was that neither Leftwing nor Rightwing presents a coherent ideology/philosophy. That was a silly statement. There is no Communist Manifesto for any of them, but the Communist Manifesto doesn’t easily sum up Communism. No school of thought is uniform. Capitalism, Existensialism, Buddhism, Antinatalism, Feminism – these are big, complex ideas that take various forms. Some have more variety than others. Antinatalism, for example, is a very simple idea to grasp. Still, expecting a word to easily sum up an idea is foolish.
So that’s not what was wrong with this axis. What was wrong was how it created sport teams.
It causes a divison into sport teams. There are Leftists, and there are Rightists. They’re fighting for power in the government. This means that the main concern of each side is not improving the country but gaining power and defeating the Other.
Left and Right are presented as a dichotomy. You’re either Democratic or Republican. You have to choose a team. Once you choose a team, you have to stay loyal to your team. That means never, ever agreeing with the opposite team.
How people react whe encountering different opinions
Once a team takes hold of an opinion, the other team must not agree with it. Gay Rights is often attributed to the Left. That’s why I see Rightwingers here being hesitant to support it. Instead of trying to promote Gay Rights, many of them talk about how the Left uses it to ‘gain power’. There is some truth to that. The Left uses it to paint the Right as narrow-minded, homophobic and evil.
Another example is how people on the Right will rarely criticize the Ultra-Orthodox Jews. Despite all their supprt for the army, they won’t criticize a group who refuses to help defend the country. If you so believe in defending the country, you should be just as harsh on those who refuse to serve because they’re reading a book. Because the Ultra-Orthodox are on the Right side though on subjects such as security (I’m pretty sure most of them object to a Palestinian state), people on the Right remain silent on their parasitic behavior.
These teams have stopped promoting issues. Neither the Right nor Left is doing anything with Gay Rights. All they’re doing is using it to pain the opposite team badly.
In truth, there are no opposite teams. It’s all Spaceship Earth. All people should have an interest in What Is Best for the Country. Of course people will disagree on What Is Best because everyone comes from different backgrounds. Yet how will we know what is best, how will we improve our country if we don’t try to improve our understanding?
Both the Left and the Right want to live in a secure country. The Arabs want it, too. Unless someone is suicidal, no one really wants to live with rockets flying over their head all the time. The question is, how we make the country more secure? Sadly, the Right and the Left are too attatched to their answers. The Right is too afraid of the Arabs. The Left is too afraid to acknowledge there is racism, homophobia and hatred outside our walls. These people don’t want to find the right answer. They want the answer they already have to be right, no matter what.
So long as we want our answers to be right rather than to find the right answers, we’re looking for enemies to beat down instead of learning.
I’m not a Rightwinger nor Leftwinger. There are some ideas I consider myself a part of, but even then my version of them is my own. Do not ask what box to put me in. Ask what’s in my box instead.
Further reading: Policy Debates Should Not Appear One-Sided
Weapons 