Left And Right And Good And Evil

I like moments of clarity and definition. Sometimes a book, an essay, a television interview, a poem, or a discussion with a friend can give you a moment of clarity and definition. Hopefully the moment will endure in your memory; because you have been given words and thoughts that clearly express something that was hazy and foggy before. It is strange to read someone that you think is totally wrong in their thinking and have it lead to a moment of clarity and definition. That’s what happened to me yesterday. (For the curious it was this and this that I read.)

The end result of all of this is a theory, or perhaps it is simply an observation. There is a fundamental difference between those who lean to the left politically from those who lean to the right politically. The difference is defined by the word potential. The difference is defined by the words good and evil.

Pick a topic of contention between the left and the right. The left sees the potential for good, the right sees evil to be feared. Let’s use welfare as an example. The left sees the welfare recipient as a potentially good person down on their luck, someone who needs a helping hand, someone who is a contributing member of society in their own right, someone who may potentially contribute even more to society in the future. The right sees a bad person, a leech sucking at the government teat taking away all of their money.

Let’s try another one. There is always “the big scary other.” For the right this is a seemingly never ending category. It could be the scary black man, the scary Mexicans, the scary “terrorist”, the scary atheist, the scary person out to steal their jobs, the scary gay person… and on and on. Once again, the person on the left sees potential and the possibility or actuality of good people. The person on the right sees evil people. (The person on the right even sees an “axis of evil.”) The person on the left thinks that prisons and drug treatment centers should rehabilitate, that our neighbors are our brothers, and that diversity is a good thing. The person on the left is willing to talk to the “other” even if some label him a “terrorist.” (“One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter.”) The person on the left believes in freedom of and from religion, and the separation of church and state. The person on the left believes that we all deserve the chance to work to support ourselves and our families. The person on the left sees good people no matter what the color of their skin, no matter what their creed, no matter what their sexual orientation. The person on the right sees people out to get them. The person on the right thinks that diversity is a bad thing and is afraid of those who are different. The “big scary other” will someday kill them, rape them, take their job, torture them and then kill them again, take Christmas from them, force them to stop believing in Jesus, take marriage away from them, and the biggest fear of all: take away some, perhaps all, of their money. (Even taking away a little bit seems to be intolerable to the person on the right, hence the reason why they will vote for tax breaks above all else.)

Let’s try another. Abortion. The left sees a woman who will agonize to make the decision that is right for her and her fetus. The right sees an evil murderer.

One last example. William Ayers. The left sees someone who made mistakes in the past, someone who has always been passionate in his beliefs, someone who is currently doing many good things. The right sees a terrorist who should be destroyed, someone to be used for their own political gain.

The left wants to give people other than themselves a chance to make something of themselves, to contribute to a better society. They see that in the long run this will benefit us all. The right sees people who should be left out on the street to fend for themselves, or put in prison to fend for themselves, or be killed. (Or in the words of Arlo Guthrie “…all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly 'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things…”) The right cannot imagine how improving the lives of those with less could possibly be of any benefit to them. The left tends to put the welfare and reputations of other people ahead of its own political gain. The right tends to destroy the welfare and reputations of other people for its own political gain.

The left imagines good and sees potential, the right imagines evil and wants to kill potential. When the left imagines others looking at the left, it sees what it would want others to see. When the right imagines others looking at the right, it sees only itself, and is afraid of what it sees.

I choose potential and hope over fear and killing. I choose to see good before I see evil.

All of this helps to explain why I detest people like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, and Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. They have used the fear of “the big scary other” for their own personal material advancement. They view other people as either commodities to be used for their own gain, or as enemies that must be defeated. They don’t see fellow human beings. Worst of all, they have convinced millions of others to believe as they do. Even though I said that I choose to see good before I see evil, in the cesspool of Bush/Cheney/Limbaugh/Coulter and their ilk, I only see evil.