What’s Normal, Mommy…
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Who am I supposed to love?
Our politics are turning us into disgraceful hypocrites
Our country is going through the equivalent of an adolescent testing their boundaries…by wedging their parents into pretzels over moral and ethical considerations — and forcing each other into extreme positions as a means of getting politically even.
There is no reason we can’t formulate and support common sense laws around abortion, LBGTQ+ rights, gay marriage, guns, and any number of issues that lend themselves fairly well to middle-ground solutions.
Unfortunately, middle-ground solutions are not sexy and don’t raise endorphin levels like someone like Trump does on the electorate. Trump was (is?) such a deviously brilliant provocateur, infused with just enough bullying entertainment value as to make us feel like politics can be fun like professional wrestling or boxing.
But lurking just beneath all those whoops and laughs, and seemingly joyous family moments saturating us on social media is a fierce, barely-contained, anger manifesting and insinuating itself into our politics and laws.
Put simply, we got a taste of “reality politics,” and we like it. But it’s a dangerous game. The cavalier way we talk about “locking people up” these days does nothing but weaken the rule of law.
Our country is being whip-sawed back and forth with one side continually punishing the other with laws that wedge them into a corner.
A classic example is Representative Glen Thompson, R-Pa, who voted against same-sex marriage, then, 3 days later, proceeded to attend his son’s gay wedding and welcome his new son-in-law into his family. Rep. Thompson justified this hypocrisy by claiming the same-sex vote in congress was a democrat political stunt that he’d have nothing to do with it (Marco Rubio and a few other republican senators used the same talking point.)
That was the democrat’s way of forcing republicans to own their own hypocrisy, but it is not a healthy way to govern. Any more than a slingshot, from-the-gut, strategy surrounding guns, abortion, and religion, are healthy. It divides us and forces us into extreme positions we ordinarily wouldn’t embrace.
