Two Sides?

This is going to be one of those kind of mashed up blogs. And there might be a point where you are wondering how they are tied, and even thinking I'm being kind of hypocritical. Just have a little patience and I swear I'll tie them together. 

So I saw one of the most ridiculous things today. Some one tried to say that the Left's hatred of Marjorie Taylor Greene was just like the Right's hatred of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Well now let's see...

They are both women in Congress. They are both in the House of Representatives. They are both women so...yeah, no. The difference is in the substance. 

The Left is having issue with Greene's anti Semitic, anti Islamic, put a bullet in the head of Democrats, harangue the Parkland survivors, the election was STOLEN, ways. 

The Right has issues with Ocasio-Cortez's feed the poor, everyone deserves healthcare, green energy should be a priority, dancing in the hallways, ways. 

Do you see the difference?

Greene is hated because she's hateful.
Ocasio-Cortez is hated because you disagree with her policies. 

I'm not saying the Right has to or ever will agree with Ocasio-Cortez on policy. They aren't. But the level of hate and disdain they push her way. The times she's reduced to less than by sexist and classist comments. Just the negative energy they spend on her is way out of proportion to policy disagreements with a junior representative from one district in New York. It's insane. 

Now, the Left will never agree with Greene either. But it's not policy. It's the aforementioned anti Semitism. The fact that she tried to chase down representatives who swore in on the Quran and tell them that they HAD to use a Bible. The mocking Parkland students. The fact that Representative Cori Bush just had to change her office space because of abusive treatment from Greene. And so many other examples. It's not policy, it's that she's insane. 

It's like the argument right now that Democrats are being so divisive. They don't really want unity. And the proof? That they are trying to get Democratic ideas and policies passed. That's not being divisive. That's what we have elections for, so the people who win them get what they wanted done, done. 

(slight shift)

I hate the two party system. It doesn't serve us well. We need to change it. Get more parties involved, get ranked choice voting. Let the marketplace of ideas choose the winners. 

In fact, I'd love it if we got rid of parties all together. I just don't know how to do that. I suffer from a lack of imagination in this regard because I've never seen it done. But I think parties just reinforce the us vs. them mentality. It makes us choose teams. 

And we as a species are primed for that behavior. It's from our earliest days. Just hardwired into us. We needed to know that our tribe was safe, and we weren't sure about other tribes. They might have been safe, they might have been coming to kill half of us, steal our resources and enslave who ever was left. It was a brutal system. So knowing your tribe was important. Identifying with your tribe was everything. 

Because we don't have tribes like that anymore, we make them up. We search them out. Look at how seriously we take our sports teams. But we've done it with politics now too. Like HARD. 

Look at how often in the past four years the Republicans accused the Democrats of just hating Trump so nothing was good. Well, yeah, I hated Trump. But I didn't hate his policies because I hated him. I hated him because of his policies. I hated what he stood for. The Central Park 5, the Birtherism, the Muslim ban, the child separation policies, the trying to keep refugees out, the lies, the sexism if you want to phrase it nicely, the multiple accusations of sexual assaults if you want to be specific, the winking and nodding to racists, he is a bad person. It wasn't some sort of out of thin air hatred. 

But because he is a Republican there were a large number of people for whom that was enough. He was on their team. 

And it definitely feels like the whole platform of the Trumpublican party is to "own the libs" and if that's by branding them as baby eating Satanists, then that's what they are going to do. And I'm sure that there are those on the Right that feel that the base of the platform for the Left is to call the Right racists and make them pay taxes. And the taxes part is true, for sure, the Left does think people should pay taxes. And well, if you are doing things that look like racism then maybe you need to be the one to relook at what you are doing instead of complaining about being called a name.

(back to tying it all in)

But how much of all of that animosity is due to the two party system? If we didn't have teams to pick would we still look at "the other side" that way? 

If we didn't have the two party system would Marjorie Taylor Greene have been elected? If there had been other viable choices than Rs and Ds would she have made it out of the pool of choices? And backing it up even further, if we didn't have Rs and Ds would there have even been a Qanon for her to follow? If we had no teams to swear allegiance to would there be a desire for that stuff? If there were no Rs and Ds would the animosity for Ocasio-Cortez go away? Would it just become, I don't like her ideas. Would she have been elected? I think she would have been, because I like her ideas, but who knows who else would have run if it were wide open?

Shouldn't we get a chance to vote for the best ideas? To stop worrying about whose team is in first? To stop thinking in teams at all? 

I think that would be great. 

As long as the ideas I like win out. 

(just kidding)

(mostly)