Tidy house, messy mind
The cleaning ladies come today, so I’ve been putting the finishing touches on tidying the house, so that they can do the heavy-lifting part of cleaning. The house l0oks very nice, albeit fuzzy, crumby and dusty. When the gals leave, I will have, for one brief, shining moment, a clean house. I love that moment.
If only it was as simple to sort out my brain. Things seems to slop all over the place. When it comes to what Poiret called “the little gray cells,” I can’t compartmentalize the housekeeping, and the carpooling, and the legal work, and the blogging. They keep jostling for space at the forefront of my brain and getting ridiculously muddled. No tidying here, followed by a good cleaning. I’m just staying one step ahead of the mudslide of my own thoughts.
The one thought that keeps pushing its way to the forefront of my mental mess today is triggered by suek’s interesting question, which is whether the Left planted sleepers on the Right, which would explain the steady stream of idiocy emanating from the Republican party. It might be easy to laugh this idea off if it weren’t for the fact that the end of the Cold War and the opening of the KGB files revealed that a lot of “wacko” theories about Communists (the KGB fomented the anti-war movement, the KGB pushed drugs on America’s youth, etc.) were absolutely true. That is, during the 1960s and 1970s, the mainstream castigated these claims (claims my parents made) as paranoid conspiracy theories — and then history proved that, in fact, these assaults on our society were an exceptionally smart move by an enemy in a Cold War to destabilize our system. It was only by grace of the fact that the American system is fundamentally solid and the Communist system fundamentally weak that we won.
So it’s perfectly possible to believe that committed Leftists — not people in thrall to a foreign government, but simply people in thrall to a Leftist agenda — could set themselves up as ineffectual Republicans in the hope of destabilizing the “other” party in a two-party system. Except I don’t believe it because, in keeping with the principle of Occam’s razor (opt for a simple solution over a complicated one), I think the problem lies with a certain class of Republican. He (or she, but I’ll stick to he), is a good-looking, friendly guy, who believes in broad terms in the American dream. He thinks we live in a wonderful country and really likes the idea of freedom. He’s not too impressed with the world abroad, although he appreciates that the Europeans boast better art and architecture than we do. He is likeable and — and this is the important one — he wants to be liked.
This guy gets elected to public office because he is personable and an obvious patriot. And off he goes to D.C., outside of his small conservative community, and meets two things for the first time: (1) genuine liberals and (2) the media. With both, two of his traits come to the fore: his less than stellar grasp of the conservative principles that he intuitively appreciates, but doesn’t really understand; and his desperate desire to be a likeable, good-guy. He’s not a screaming right-wing maniac. He’s a reasonable guy who will buy a reasonable compromise — except that, like the deluded Israelis who negotiated for so long with the Palestinians, he hasn’t figured out that his negotiating partners aren’t reasonable at all. They’re binary, and they want his destruction.
That’s the scenario I think we see played out over and over again, whether we’re talking about George Bush, Michael Steele, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, or Olympia Snowe. These politicians don’t quite understand their own principles, they want to be liked, and they cave, over and over again, in perpetual search of the perfect compromise with an implacable opponent.
So, while I think suek had a great and interesting idea, I’m currently thinking the fault truly lies with us, and cannot be ascribed to them.
