Washington Had The Right Idea
Nov. 3rd, 2016 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloAilz does online quizzes. Yesterday she got asked which political party George Washington belonged to- and she didn't know. Neither did I.
The answer is he didn't belong to any- because he hated them.
I don't have a settled opinion of Washington- man of principle, slave-owner, courageous but incompetent general- but that snippet of information makes him go up in my estimation.
Political parties are dreadful things. They divide us and then intensify the divisions. They quickly become tribal. They stop us talking to one another. Worse- they stop us listening to one another.
I have a friend who is a convinced supporter of a US political party. She is very committed. She sees everything bad that the other lot do and nothing bad that her side does. I express doubts about her party's candidate and she roars at me- and tells me how great they are and how dreadful the opponent is- in considerable detail- and I don't even have a vote in the election. It's getting so it threatens our friendship- and that's awful.
The answer is he didn't belong to any- because he hated them.
I don't have a settled opinion of Washington- man of principle, slave-owner, courageous but incompetent general- but that snippet of information makes him go up in my estimation.
Political parties are dreadful things. They divide us and then intensify the divisions. They quickly become tribal. They stop us talking to one another. Worse- they stop us listening to one another.
I have a friend who is a convinced supporter of a US political party. She is very committed. She sees everything bad that the other lot do and nothing bad that her side does. I express doubts about her party's candidate and she roars at me- and tells me how great they are and how dreadful the opponent is- in considerable detail- and I don't even have a vote in the election. It's getting so it threatens our friendship- and that's awful.
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no subject
Date: 2016-11-04 02:22 pm (UTC)I feel more and more like a remnant from the 1970's... Which is perhaps what I am. My parents did loads of things wrong, but they did give me that cosy, comfortable hippie-attitude that we should all be able to speak together and not call each other names.
Sad, though, that one begins to think that pre-school pedagogy needs to be applied to politics.