Left vs Right or Red vs. Blue?

I think it is pretty clear right now that our current North American political climate is extremely polarized and getting more so. In the United States of America (how ironic), there is a bitter fight continuing over taxes, social program and the legal amount of debt they can take on.

The Democrats want to raise the debt ceiling so the business of government can continue. The Republicans are arguing that the continual spending of borrowed money cannot continue. On the face of it, the actors in play are playing very different roles. The Democrats are doing everything they can to get the job done. The Republicans are doing everything they can to destroy the Democrats. Rhetoric aside, the real result is the Democrats are willing to sell out everything they believe in to make a deal while the Republicans are willing to destroy the American economy in order to ensure that the government in power is unable to to govern.

Right now, either way you look at it, victory for either side will not be good for the average person the world over. The result either way, will likely be a Pyrrhic victory of epic proportions, which could take down the worlds economy along with the spoils of war.

To me, this is a great example of why I continue to to see partisan politics as a blight of the face of the common man. What I see are the hollow remains of two competing ideologies fighting a war whose purpose has long been lost. What I see is no truly no longer a fight between left versus right, but a fight between red versus blue. The key difference is that what once was a vital discussion between two sides of the human experience has become a violent drunken argument about whose going to win the next game.

Once drained of purpose, the only reality left is that no-one is really capable of truly winning except those who have already won. For the elites in power, the only game left is to consolidate power at the loss of everyone below them.

So what was the original arguments? To me, right versus left can be boiled down into two vital truths of the human reality; all of us form both a group and an individual. For the left, the emphasis is on the group. Success for them is ensuring rights for the whole, resulting in things such as democracy, equality and social programs. For the right, the emphasis is on the individual. Success for them is ensuring rights for the individual, resulting in things such as tax relief, gun rights and law and order.

One side looks after the health and welfare of the group, the other looks after the health and welfare of the individual.

Yet in the end I think the real truth today is something different. Until the emergence of the new polarization after 2001, the politics of North America reflected another reality, the emergence of center politics. To me this was the tacit realization that the human condition needs to focus on both the individual and the group. Focus on one over the other causes sickness and a lack of health in the state of our countries and our politics. This point of view is what needed today.