Left, right, left, right

Now that I have a more intimate aquaintance with blogging I see why the blogosphere resembles an amateurish volleyball game. The ball (whatever issue of the day reaches critical mass) gets bounced around from team player to team player on each side (the left and the right) of the net (each side has a ball in play in this volleyball game) without ever making it across the net. It's just a lot easier this way. Everybody knows what you're talking about. Personally, I don't want to know anything about Don Imus or Anna Nichole Smith so I try to stay away from that stuff. I loathe the celebrity culture. I haven't the slightest interest in ever seeing Rosie O'Donnell's ugly mug (one benefit of not having a TV is that I have never seen her jaw actually wag) or hearing the latest pronouncement of Sean Penn. (I was relieved to find out that he really isn't Irish at all- is there any chance Ted Kennedy is lying about his ancestry? It would be a great relief to me if he was. Penn's no more Irish than he is an actor, or Madonna is a singer.)
Enough with the parentheses and on with the topic, which is: the Right and the Left, or the good guys vs the bad guys. I used to identify with the left but at certain stages of the evolution of our political culture there were more and more leftie things I didn't agree with. First came abortion. As a bastard- you know, born out of wedlock- I realized right away that the word abortion was a euphemism for killing unwanted babies. As one of those unwanted babies I took it personally. Nevertheless, I could see how others might see things differently and thought that pro abortionists would listen to my point of view just as I had listened to theirs. That was when I discovered what kind of venom the idiotically yclept pro choice faction was able to spew. I know pure hate when I see it. The next stage of my little political journey took place at a time when I somehow became friendly with a circle of Marxist-Leninist true believers. Up until that point I thought communism made a lot of sense, at least in principal. In practice, I didn't like the totalitarian nature of the communist regimes of Russia and China. My idea of communism was more utopian and communal. I liked the idea of friends cooperating for each other's mutual benefit and some of us got together to persuade the new Socialist government to let us try out our ideas on some crown land in our vicinity. Nothing happened with that. Socialism for the NDP was always more a scam to funnel public money into unions than anything else. It's a model that the econazis are trying to emulate.
The Marxist/Leninists I knew had no use at all for such utopian twaddle. The Cultural Revolution, then in full swing, was the ticket. Since I was raised to be respectful and polite and to always listen to other points of view I didn't really object but that was when I began to doubt their sanity. Did they really want lynch mobs roaming the country? Where was the upside? But what really changed me were the more philosophical discussions about, say, dialectical materialism. It takes me a little while before I can actually make any sense of those kinds of locutions. And this might have been the first time I connected such an abstract idea with its implications for the real world. Ever since I've been a committed idealist. However, I like the dialectical part.
One of these days I'll clutter up this space with my ideas about dualism in general but today I want to talk about the dualism of right and left in present day politics, and specifically why I identify with the right more than the left. Some say that this is an artificial split, and I can see reasons for saying that. For instance just because I detest the econazi movement it doesn't mean I want to destroy the planet. In fact, the reason I'm so upset with the global warming crowd is that I'm afraid that once the general public becomes aware of the deception it will turn against legitimate environmental issues, like overfishing of the seas. And there is one element of the conservative movement that I am completely at odds with on a certain issue. That issue is atheism, and some very intelligent and admirable atheists are conservatives. Two exemplars I can think of are Theodore Dalrymple and Christopher Hitchens, both of whom I admire and respect. Hitchens in particular sees with crystal clarity the danger the Islamist threat presents to his way of life as the cultured and educated British gentleman- but he doesn't seem to see at all the reason for our weakness: our rejection of 2000 years worth of religious teachings. He rejects those teachings and not only regards them as nonsense but follows Edward Gibbon's assessment that Christianity was responsible for the downfall of Classical civilization. Naturally, I completely disagree with this viewpoint and consequently I don't think Hitchens is a real conservative. But at least he has the brains to see a real and present danger when it arises.
Not so the lunatics who cluster around the Daily Cos and the Huffington Post. They are vile, disgusting and delusional. They just can't believe that there is a predatory religious group that wants nothing more than the opportunity to chop off their silly little heads. And it isn't a Christian religious group that lusts for their blood. Why does the left hate Bush so much? Is it a matter of disagreeing with his policies? No. It wouldn'tmatter what his policies were. It's enough that he's white, male, heterosexual, a good family man, and follows the moral precepts of his Christian beliefs. Oh, and he's from TexasThere is no rationality to their attitudes at all. They hate him because he has the temerity to point out the obvious: that an enemy exists which hates them, wants to kill them and wants to obliterate everything their forefathers struggled to achieve. Among those achievements; a workable representative democracy; an economic system that rewards anyone who cares to work and contribute; the abolition of slavery; freedom of religion; the right to publically debate contentious issues; an enormous expansion of scientific knowledge. I could go on. This has been driven by the American way. They can see nothing of this. If the American system has flaws, and I think it has a few, one of them would be that it seems to be fertile soil for the growth of several species of noxious weeds. The irony is that the man they hate is doing his best to make sure these noxious weeds have a safe place to grow.
However, these weeds aren't flourishing without the help of a few evil geniuses. From this worms eye view it's a little hard to see what's really going on in nephelokukugia but one of the cultivators is clearly George Soros. Without his ill-gotten gains they would probably wither and die. I have no idea why he hates America so. Another source working toward the destruction of the American experiment is lubricated with Saudi oil money. The Saudis are the ones who have systematically exported all over the world their brand of Islamic fundamentalism. My main objection to Bush is that he doesn't make it plain that these are the true enemies. Why he didn't just take the bull by the horns and deprive the Arab world of its control of the oil fields I don't know. The rest are just the footsoldiers. Without that oil money they would just dry up and blow away. There would be no war in Iraq, there would be no more bombings and beheadings all over the world. Even the Sean Penns of the world would be happy because then there would be no competition for the limelight.
It seems as if the Democratic Party, in its lust for power, has chosen to ally itself with these sworn enemies of their own country. After all, there is a lot of oil money to go around. Canada's own Maurice Strong, always a quick man with a bucket when the money spiggot is turned on, appears to be part of the cabal but his activities are usually below the surface. Whatevah, as they say. They are all a bunch of rich dudes, too. In fact the Democratic party has become kind of an alliance between really rich dudes (and cowgirls, too) who want to pontificate while they get ever richer and the lunatics who read the Huffington Post. (Is it possible Al Gore actually believes that global warming drivel? Personally, I doubt it. I know he's sort of like the village idiot- he invented the internet, y'know) but nobody with the resources he has available could be that stupid.
Even if I still thought of myself as a socialist, an agnostic, an environmentalist and agreed with all the peities of the left I would not want to be associated with any of these people. And I guess 'the Left' has become just a synonym for idiotic...or maybe something quite a bit more sinister.
I've tried to find some meaning in all this but it baffles me. There is the economic explanation, the greed factor, Freudian analysis, and they are all wanting. And the more I look the more there seems to be an upwelling of evil. Everything from the left seems to be a lie of some kind or another. I have always had more trouble believing in Satan than I have in God. Maybe the whole reason for this upwelling is to teach us that evil is real, not just as an abstract principal but as some kind of malignant being originating outside of our plane of existence. But that's way beyond the scope of this blog.
I had meant to devote an equal amount of space to the positive reasons for being conservative but that will have to wait for another time.