Politics
by Phil Fox Rose
For families divided by politics, gathering together this holiday season provides both challenges and opportunities
I worry about the holidays this year. My relatives are an eclectic bunch, pretty evenly split—to use crude and somewhat useless political labels—between the Left and Right; our religious diversity includes a Catholic (me), Mormons, evangelicals, United Church of Christ members and a few who are unaffiliated. Throw in my surrogate family (that’s a story for another time) and you add Presbyterians, Jews and Buddhists. As we gather around our family table and share letters and cards this post-election holiday season, I will be looking for opportunities to be a healing force.
My family is like millions of others in the United States who come together this time of year for the holidays and struggle to put their passionate differences aside for a few hours. This Thanksgiving will find supporters of McCain and Obama—and a fair number of Clintonites whose Obama support was begrudging—gathering to share a family meal.
Of course, every election has winners and losers and there is always disappointment for some. But this election has been different for two reasons. First, it’s a major shift—generationally and ideologically—that has left many feeling left out of the party, so to speak. Second, this has been one of the uglier presidential campaigns in modern history. There are plenty of hurt feelings all around. A lot of fear got stirred up.
In couples counseling, it’s an axiom that the most toxic thing to a relationship is not when the partners disagree, or even fight, but when they stop respecting each other. For several generations now, there has been little trust and respect in the political sphere. Both sides have demonized the other, have assumed ill motives on their opponents’ parts.
But of all relationships, the deepest and oldest, next to … Continue reading Forming A More Perfect Union
Politics
by Phil Fox Rose
The debate over labels that may be — perhaps should be — of minor importance in political and social thought has vexed me regularly. The need to define certain positions as belonging to one camp or another seems quite important to most people. Categorizing things makes people feel they have a handle on them. Maybe this is human nature, but it gets in the way, I fear, of understanding the true nature of things.
In particular, I am vexed by the plethora of labels attached to various political positions: pro-America = Right; anti-free-market = Left; pro-personal-liberties = liberal; pro-tough-laws = conservative; pro-protecting-the-environment = Left. The list could go on for paragraphs.
The danger of these labels is that people feel compelled to put themselves into one camp or another. Once this is done, people further feel compelled to fit the belief system of their adopted camp — at least publicly. Thus you have columnists and others defending positions and narrowing their understanding of issues to fit their role.
The biggest casualty of all this is that it reduces the chance of coming to a well reasoned compromise on important issues. But it also does damage at the personal level. People are confused and distressed by what they perceive as inner “conflicts” based on differences they have with their ideological camp. If they were able to accept that their personal set of beliefs was legitimate and potentially consistent, even though it didn’t match any of the available ideologies, then they would be at rest. And perhaps, much of the illogical and confrontational dialogue on shouting matches like the McLaughlin Group would subside.
People who hold beliefs or have feelings which are not appropriate for the camp they have joined often suppress them. This not only damages them personally, it also deprives the world of … Continue reading Neither Left nor Right
