Posted by Box Daddy

Let me submit this:

Voting Republican is akin to voting to breathe helium.

Voting Democrat is akin to voting to breathe oxygen.

Now, from a certain point of view, as a dedicated, 100% proponent of the party that advocates breathing oxygen -- some might say that I am "a knee jerk advocate of oxygen breathing." To this charge, I would plead guilty.

Similarly, one might indict San Franciscans and other ultra blue Blue State folks as self-righteous, knee jerk liberals. My opinion will always be the same: if someone is an unthinking, unquestioning, knee jerk advocate of oxygen breathing -- someone who will not even listen to people who want us to try to breathe helium -- that's a-okay with me.

In an analogous sense, if someone is a kneejerk anti-fascist. That's a good thing. If someone is an unthinking advocate of gay rights, that's a good thing. The inability to relate to fascists and homophobes is a good thing, not a character flaw.

These days, it seems to me, much righwing propaganda is dedicated to saying: let's hear "both" opinions and give "both sides" fair consideration.

This is absurd on two counts:

1. It presupposes that nutty, regressive rightwing ideology presents one of the "two" available roads that one might travel

2. It presupposes that there is exactly one countering, leftwing point of view and that point of view is invariably a moderate one

My point: the least convincing thing that you can say today is that someone's political opinion is doctrinaire -- that someone's thinking is too politically consistent on one side of the ideological spectrum. This criticism confuses politics with fashion.

In contemporary American culture, one is encouraged to advocate opinions that are eclectic, wide-ranging and individualistic. God forbid that one move in lockstep with a lot of other people. One is encouraged to say: "I think that both sides have their unthinking extremists."

For example, if everyone else in one's office is liberal -- one is inclined to be unique, "to be an individual" by questioning the liberal herd, by "thinking for one's self," etc.

This is completely misguided.

Politics is not fashion. Of course, if everyone in my office wore orange pants every day -- yes, I would definitely be tempted to wear blue pants just to screw with the system.

That is not the case with politics. Being leftwing is like a human choosing to breathe oxygen -- there is no other option for a healthy and self-sustaining global society besides following a leftist path -- therefore, I have no particular interest in giving "equal time" to helium breathing and its deluded adherents.

And if this means that I agree 100% of the time with Berkeley hippie burn outs. That's fine with me.

One cannot fall into "bourgeois subjectivism," as the Party might say.