Quote:
Originally Posted by Dcbrickley
I'm an equal opportunity basher. Just making the point that both sides pander. I have voted for both sides many times.
Hillary panders too.
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I haven't waded into a political argument in awhile, but...
This. All of it. I bash both parties, I think it's pretty matter of fact that politicians from both parties pander, and I have voted for many candidates from each of the two major parties and others.
But I'd also add: equal opportunity bashing should not preclude an understanding that at any given moment or for any given stretch of moments, one party might need to be bashed a hell of a lot more than the other, that one side might pander much more than the other, and that one side might be much more deserving of a vote than the other. In other words, equal opportunity bashing should never require false equivalencies.
An analogous conservative example, to make the point clearer, is that equal opportunity should never require equal outcomes. Why? Because the juncture points in life at which we as a society deem are important to provide all societal members equal opportunity (schooling, job hiring, etc.) do not preclude alternative decisions among many competing options on those same and
other relevant factors by those members over time that, when those members are considered by their racial, ethnic, sexual, gender, or other politically relevant sub-grouping, then lead to variation in outcomes across, between, and within groups on those factors which we provided as a society equal opportunity. If there were no variation in outcomes, then what would we have? Equal opportunity guaranteeing equal outcomes. Should that be the benchmark? No.
The above passage illustrates my point. Why? Because the factors that we as a society deem are important in order to judge our elected officials does not preclude alternative decisions among many competing options on those same and
other relevant factors by those officials over time that, when those officials are considered by their partisanship, then lead to variation in outcomes across, between, and within parties on those factors which we as a society deem are important in order to judge our elected officials. If there were no variation in outcomes, then what would we have? Equal opportunity bashing guaranteeing equal partisan outcomes. But does that happen in actuality? No.
In fact, causally, it would make little sense. To illustrate the real effect, consider the partisan incentive structure that tieing equal opportunity bashing to drawing false equivalencies between the parties being bashed creates. If the political parties know that the media and the voters will consider the sins of each party equally (regardless whether those sins are equal by the standards that collective of citizens had/s outlined in their written and implied social contracts), it allows one, more, or all of that country's parties leeway to move further away from the median voter, on one, many, or all politically relevant issues regardless of the actions of the other party, because whatever the actions of the other party, their actions (however extreme relative to the median voter vis-a-vis the other party) will be considered equal.
Thus, if we want to actually create equal outcomes between the parties along the dimensions that we consider important as a society is to bash those parties and their candidates with the understanding that one party might very well be more extreme than the other relative to the median voter, and thus be more deserving of bashing, and less deserving of a vote.
Of course, what I leave unsaid, is that this formulation also suggests that to achieve equal employment, residential, is that we should treat all members of society as members of their racial, sexuality, gender, etc. identity groups. However, and without regard to the principles outlined in our founding documents (which provide an entirely separate, and equal, if not better, rationale for the misguidance of this extrapolation), I will note that this is not empirically appropriate and this, and only this, is where the analogy falls apart, because of a key difference at this stage between the two: when dealing with politicians, who are members of a party and highly beholden to that label, and where the sum total of one partisan group (or more) of those members, when larger than the sum total of some combination (as electoral rules in a country outline) of the other groups, it is perfectly logical to reason that a moderate member of one party, when numerically contributing a possible majority, provides license for the more extreme members of their own party to engage in extreme behavior,
especially as in the current reality where the median member of the majority party is more ideologically extreme relative to the median voter vis-a-vis the minority party in our own country.
This stands in distinct contrast to societal outcomes, such as employment, residential equality, schooling, or whatever else. Giving someone a job, renting to them an apartment or selling to them a house, and educating them provide no license for bad behavior among other members of their race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, gender identity, or whatever. Now, consider this: whether or not we (in the aggregate*)
should treat members of these different groups differently specifically given their group status, in actuality
do we? Yes, we do. What's ironic is that while we
should not treat members of these different groups differently while we
should be treating members of parties differently, if the parties differ along some substantive dimension (I.E. other than party) which society considers relevant, specifically given their partisanship, the reality is the opposite: society tends to treat members of racial, ethnic, gender, sexuality, gender identity, religious, and other groups by their group status first only giving them individuality secondarily, whereas the common refrain "I vote for the candidate, not the party" quite succinctly illustrates that we place individuality first in candidates, and only apply their partisanship second.
That is not what the current reality demands. Candidates are not individuals, because winning candidates contribute to their party in the aggregate having their hands on the levers of power. Thus, sure, engage in equal opportunity bashing, but understand that that also requires knowing prior the parameters upon which you are to bash and applying that
standard equally, rather than just simply bashing each party the same number of times regardless of how bad their deeds actually are, and regardless of how ideologically deviant their viewpoints are.
*For this to be true, it only requires some individuals to engage in one or more of the following: racist attitudes, microaggression behavior, subconscious racialized behavior, and/or structural factors that are non-personal.
^When I talk about members of parties above, I only mean elected officials or other party officials and surrogates. General partisanship, as in the common man saying he's a Democrat, are excluded by this definition.
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