Considered Opinions

The Political Parties

In the introduction to the Politics section, I mentioned a short summary of the differences between the parties. It was written decades ago by Charlie Freedman of KSCO. Charlie has a degree in Political History or political something-or-other from U.C. Santa Cruz, but somehow he managed to survive that to become a staunch Republican in that sea of “Lib-rallism” we call Santa Cruz. I can sum up Charlie’s essay as follows.

In other words, shall we view government as a “surrogate third parent” or as a “necessary nuisance” – good arguments can be made on both sides.^[i]Personally, it would be hard for me to forget everything I have learned through engineering school, business school,  a half-century of industry experience, and 80 years of observing how the World works to give Marxism another try, after so many consecutive failures over the past couple hundred years.

On the other hand, that is an option that respectable people like Bernie Sanders and others are wedded to, and I can respect that point of view. However, much of the difficulty preventing the Parties from finding reasonable compromise is not in the underlying theories but in the manner in which the theories are argued.

A few years ago, while waiting for colleagues who had been delayed in traffic, I could not avoid overhearing the conversation at the next table. One person was citing examples of how certain ideas had worked and others had failed for governments in the past; and how, in her view, some of those ideas should be either tried or avoided today. The other was countering with examples of how some people don’t pay their “fair share” of taxes and how CEOs of evil corporations earned 100 times what “workers” were paid. It became clear that the Conservative lady was focused on good vs bad ideas, and the “Lib-rall” ^[ii]As the lexis of language evolves, sometimes words come to be interpreted as the opposite of their original meaning, inviting a need for new words.  lady was focused on good vs bad people. To be more precise, one was advocating ideas to make the Country more prosperous with efforts over time with the “rising tide lifts all boats” theory, while the other preferred having the right to share the wealth of the Country equally – and RIGHT NOW.

I remember thinking at the time that this indeed is why neither of them could ever win their debate – they were each completely missing each other’s points. It is clear to me that the principal reason the two Parties cannot agree on anything goes to the roots of their philosophical differences. As Charles Krauthammer put it, Conservatives see “Lib-ralls” as having “bad ideas” and “Lib-ralls” see Conservatives as being “bad people” ^[iii]This long-standing but rarely articulated concept was made legendary by the infamous Hillary Clinton “deplorables” quote of 2016.. Allow me a couple of examples.

So to quote Eric Berne , in both examples, an “Adult” addresses another “presumed Adult” with a set of rational arguments – not that they are necessarily all applicable, but they are all valid and derived from factual information. In both examples, the second person responds as “Parent” to “Child” – the “Adult” addresses the problem and a “Parent” addresses the person.

So what is missing here, simply stated is; “winning over an adversary starting with an understanding of the opposing point of view, then attacking the ideas, is more effective than attacking the person”, not unlike the concept popularized by the aforementioned Berne, in the 1950s, called Transactional Analysis . His words, “I’m Ok – You’re Ok”, have stood the test of time for a half-century.

Considering these fundamental differences can help bridge the gap.

By: Jim
Written: May 2021
Published: May 2021
Revised: July 2021
Reader feedback always appreciated^[iv]… thoughtful commentary perhaps more so than shallow thoughts