The Liberal/Conservative divide: We may be closer than we think.

Great Debates
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So I am not sure if any of you folks have noticed this, but at the moment our country is fairly divided by partisan bickering. I have just had a minor epiphany that I would love to discuss and debate. It concerns more the Liberal side of the spectrum.

Any of you folks that have read my posts and remember them will not be surprised to learn that my personal politics are more Liberal than Conservative. Generally speaking, I think that this stance boils down to the notion that the Conservative position is a position that is classically unconcerned with actual people and comes from a place of privilege.

Now before anyone has a fit, allow me to share my recent epiphany. It is now my belief that the same can be said about the classic Liberal position and that, for the most part, both sides of the spectrum are colossally unconcerned with actual people.

The way that this breakthrough in my thinking came to pass is a little convoluted, but I do hope worth the read. It is a result of a conversation that I had with my father (a classic Liberal if ever on was born) about heirloom tomatoes.

For whatever reason, until this very summer I had never heard of or tasted heirloom tomatoes. For the uninitiated, these are non-hybrid, vine ripened tomatoes that actually taste like something (as opposed to the mealy, pink, anemic fare that is the norm in most grocery stores). In any event, as is the case when one first discovers something, I am quite enthusiastic about them. They are hideously expensive, but a nice treat. I was sharing this information with my father.

And here is where the epiphany happened. As I was waxing enthusiastic my father let me know that this was not news to him and that, indeed, they purchased all of their produce through Co-ops or Farmer’s Markets. The way that he stated this was as if this was as natural as breathing, and that it was somehow strange that I actually lowered myself to buy food from any other source.

And that is when it struck me. This position is one of extreme privilege to me, and the ignorance of it’s implications astounding. To take something as basic as the food that we eat and simply assume that everyone should and can pay the grossly inflated prices of your Co-ops of Farmer’s Markets boarders on the obscene, and in practice is no more sensitive to the needs and realities of your average person than is the stance of the Conservatives.

In short, my friends, I am beginning to believe that our entire political and social discourse is dominated by people that are completely out of touch and just plain wrong. I must admit to feeling a bit shaken at the moment, but do thank you if you are still with this long post. Most of all, I am curious to hear what others have to say about this.

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So what you’re saying is that you learned that there are elitist snobs across the political specrum?

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Are you trying to say anything here, or just mock me?

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OK, that probably was a bit more harsh than I intended. The fact is that this event was a bit disconcerting to me, and I felt as if you were being reductive. Probably there are some father/son things tied up in it, but also some re-examining of my personal politics and the way that I perceive the world as working.

My point, I guess, is that I am convinced that all of the voices that we are hearing about all of the issues that face us are wrong. That, not to put to fine a point on it, our entire world is being defined for us by extremists on both ends of the spectrum that haven’t a clue about real life as it effects real people.

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I know I am the dim one around here, but I don’t get it.

If I take for granted that a bottle of Domaine Duffour is better than a bottle of ‘Ferme de Boones’, I don’t think that alone shows any disconnect between me and the unwashed masses. Some things simply are better than others, and that is regardless of a persons means to aquire them. A Bentley is a ‘better’ car than my own, even though I cannot afford a Bentley. If someone were to point that out to me, I would agree, and get along with the business of trying to be able to afford one.

But I don’t think I get your point…

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I think it’s a gentle mocking.

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Fair question, and I think that some of the answer is dependent on the context. The way in which the Tomato Incident™ was played out had a lot to do with how it was expressed. Not so much the notion that one thing is better than the other , more that by not supporting the local farmer or co-op that there is some implication of a moral failing.

Don’t get me wrong; I think that it is a fine and good thing for someone to have cultivated tastes and to know what he prefers. I guess that what struck me about this is that on the subject of something as basic as food my father, and by implication the Liberal position, is somewhat out of touch. Face it, a loaf of Wonderbread purchased at Safeway is a hell of a lot cheaper that a 12 grain loaf of bread made by hand ground wheat and baked under the light of the full moon by Pagans listening to World-Beat music.

That, more than anything, is what got to me.

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Binarydrone:

If you had spent any time in Palo Alto, you’d’ve had this epiphany a long time ago.:slight_smile:

While I agree that your thesis is partly what makes politicis what it is, you are also forgetting the lure of power. Both parties are replete with men (and women) for whom the power game trumps ideals. Some may even deceive themselves into thinking that once they get into power, they’ll return to their ideals and work for the good of the country.

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The question is not which party is unstained by the sin of elitism, it is which is stained the least. I don’t expect my party to be perfect in their concern for their fellow man, I just expect them to try harder than the alternative. I am rarely disappointed.

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Ok, maybe it was a little mocking, but, I mean, I guess I always thought it obvious that both parties do have elitists, and that Ted Kennedy doesn’t have any more of an idea of what my life is like (or care) than George Bush.

But, on the other hand, not all liberals or conservative leaders are like that, either. Both parties have leaders who do know what it’s like to be an “average guy”.

It’s like a theory I heard once, about the reason that the Great Society programs and the Civil Rights Act happened during LBJ’s presidency and not JFK’s. Both of them were concerned about civil rights and fighting poverty, but for JFK, that’s all those were…concerns. LBJ, on the other hand, saw rural poverty when he was growing up, and knew what it was like, and he saw the negative effects of segregation and racism. They weren’t just intellectual exercises for him, but real problems that affected real people…people he grew up with and knew.

And now, here’s a quote from LBJ (and I’m paraphrasing). When told about Kennedy’s advisors, and how they had all graduated from places like Harvard and Yale (“the best and the brightest”), he said something like, “I would be more confident about them if just one of them had graduated from Southwest Texas Teacher’s College” (Johnson’s alma mater)

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I think it’s a matter of priorities.

Person A might decide that the best use of her money is to buy cage-free free range eggs and all organic produce for her children.

Person B might not care too much about the plight of caged chickens, but think that paying more money for a house in the best school district is the best use of her extra money to benefit her children.

When A and B talk, each might look down her nose at the decision of the other, thinking, “She doesn’t really care about her children or she would have made the same choices as I did.”

I think this is the answer to the Left vs. Right and a lot of other issues.

Each person might be just as loving and caring as the other, but their priorities differ.

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Firstly, the liberal/conservative divide is always smaller than it seems – despite all the railing against Bill Clinton as a “radical liberal,” many of his policies could have been carried out by a Republican president without any change at all (NAFTA and the WTO come to mind). The divide only appears huge because we tend to focus on the divisive “hot button” issues.

Secondly, as Fear Itself said, it’s not like one ideology is guilty of elitism and the other is not, but rather which group is more prone to remain elitist and which group is more willing to help out their fellow man.

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[quote]
In short, my friends, I am beginning to believe that our entire political and social discourse is dominated by people that are completely out of touch and just plain wrong.
[/quote
If you buy one of those hideously expensive heirloom tomatoes, and collect the seeds, you can plant them indoors in early march. Then when the weather warms up, put them in your garden and grow yourself a whole crop of inexpensive tomatoes. I’ve been eating tasty [Black Krims]
(http://www.tomatoseeds.net/seeds/blackkrim/blackkrim.html) for about a month now. If that makes me an elitist, so be it.

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By that standard they are both my enemy, then.

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I dunno about the tomato example, either. I go to a farmer’s market because not only is the food better and healthier, it’s also comparable in price, though clearly superior in value. For example, I can get fresh organic squash for $1.60 a pound, while at my nearby Giant it goes for $1.49, but is sprayed with god-knows-what, and it’s not as fresh. I don’t see that as an elitist choice.

In terms of politics, though I’m a bit left leaning, I am more or less a centrist, and I think both wings are out of touch and operating contrary to the country’s best interests.

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Can you talk about that a bit more?

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Actually, they’re all so horribly soaked in it as to be both utterly worthless.

Liberal == conservative == totalitarian.

They have reduced everything to “moral” matters (although the liberals use other words for their “morality”–it’s equally as dogmatic). Neither admits to any possibility of compromise. Neither admits to any possibility that good people can actually disagree–one or the other must be inherently EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL to take THAT view.

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Some people are getting too hung up on the trivial details of the example. They can’t see the mindset for the tomatoes. The issue is not tomatoes. The issue is that the “great currents” of political thought in the USA are dominated by thoughtless elitism that admits no possiblity that a good person could be in circumstances that do not permit 100% dedication to all the niggling little details of “the cause”.

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Actually, I was working on a post about it, scrapped it, and ended up with just that, heh. Humans are hardly so partisan on issues we actually face, but the political schism shows a really unrealistic expectation: conservatives who think the common man has an endless suplly of time, effort, and ability with which to improve himself, and liberals who laugh at that idea but think there are groups of people with endless supplies of time, effort, and ability (and money!) with which to improve those who cannot. I am neither wholly my own creation, nor subservient to the needs of others. Both parties know what’s best for me, somehow, without ever significantly polling me or asking me or anything. The few times I sent any correspondence to them I got form replies, if anything. We clearly, IMO, have a political class with tunnel vision; how they choose to define themselves is largely irrelevant when any attempt will not bring them any closer to people not in the political system ie taxpayers.

In both cases, I think your tomato analogy is appropriate: the have a way of looking at the issues that simply make no sense when we consider the entire population, and take things for granted that are simply not true. While this is, in fact, necessary for all conceptual efforts – details must be abstracted away – a two party system or ideology certainly fails to be significantly democratic, IMO. To continue your food analogy, it reminds me of the infamous “Let them eat cake” line. Whatever group isn’t the focus of the ideology mysteriously will take care of themselves no matter what we do to them or how little we pay attention to them, if only we leave the decision-making to them.

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