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One of the commonalities between politics and religion
is the rigidity with which we hold on to our beliefs.
They color how we see the world, how we interpret
information and how we view and judge others. My
experience has been primarily on the “left”
and with the individuals and organizations from
that side of the political spectrum. But from the
limited experience I have personally had with the
political right-wing, as well as the many examples
we can gleam from the news media, the same inflexibility
and narrowness of mind prevail there as well. My
own slant tends to make me believe that the right-wing
is even more biased and inflexible, but that would
just mire me in the kind of thinking that we need
to move away from.
My political experience comes from the left wing
that came of age after Vietnam and before the fall
of the Soviet Union. By the time my political views
were formed the war in Vietnam was winding down.
The future and the promise of the Soviet Union,
the People’s Republic of China and Cuba had
long been discredited in the minds of most of the
people I came into contact with. We had to look
for hope elsewhere. So we looked to Vietnam and
Cambodia, and when those regimes provided to be
dictatorial, even genocidal, we had to turn elsewhere.
At the time there were uprisings against military
dictatorships in El Salvador and Nicaragua, so our
attention shifted there along with our hopes and
aspirations. Given that in all movements and governments
on both the right and left there are abuses and
corruption, these hopes and aspirations were shattered
to be followed by disappointment and anger.
What followed over the next two decades were uprisings
in Eastern Europe and China, the rise of populist
leaders in Venezuela and Brazil, and so many other
political changes and upheavals. None of these events
fell within the familiar categories of right and
left that we were comfortable with. With the events
of the last few years, the rise in the awareness
of global terrorism, the failure of so many governments
on so many continents, all the old certainties become
challenged daily. So how do we respond, what are
our options?
One choice is to hold even more dearly to beliefs
when they are challenged, to continue to let them
shape how we envision and respond to the world,
and to not let any complexity, or doubt shade our
perceptions. What of those who abandoned these beliefs,
who once held the faith but no longer did so? Why
they were fallen, somehow lesser because they didn’t
have the courage to keep true to those principles
that we all once shared.
The other choice would be to reject these challenged
beliefs once we found that they were faulty, once
the heroes proved to be villains. While we may have
kept the faith, it was those misguided and misconceived
ideas and those who advocated them that have failed
us. What of those ex-comrades who still cling to
these outdated ideas? The tendency would be to see
them as narrow-minded and blind to what has become
so obvious to us. We have seen through the lies
and falsehoods, so why can’t they. Our mission
becomes to open the eyes of those few brave enough
to begin to see things as clearly as we now do.
What results is similar to those who when disenchanted
or even embittered by the revolutionary movements
of the 1960s, embraced the dogma of the neo-conservative
movements. Who in the end turned out to be simply
exchanging one extremism for another.
There is another choice. Not a middle ground between
extremes, but a third way that recognizes the nuances
and complexity that characterizes what goes on around
us in the world. For those of us on the left in
the 1970s and 1980s, the Sandanistas of Nicaragua
who we may have once viewed as the vanguard of the
future, proved to be as corrupt and dictatorial
as those they replaced. But this realization should
never have thrown in doubt the initial goals of
the revolutionary movement or the struggles and
sacrifices of so many, nor justify the oppressive
methods of the earlier regime. Just because those
on the “left” have used their principles
to justify criminal acts doesn’t mean the
“right” had it together all along.
No political issue is so simple that it can be
seen in black and white. What is needed instead
is to use a certain amount of imagination to see
the other side especially of those issues we believe
in so strongly. The goal being not to find a mutual
solution, though that might be the best option under
certain situations, but to open the door for new
possibilities and solutions. Our certainties limit
us; our desire to be correct or to be right often
prevents us from being open to others who could
guide us to those possibilities and solutions. This
is a point that I know that I have made time and
time again for those who are familiar with my earlier
columns, but it is one that keeps on needing to
be made.
The politics of these present times are among the
most strident that I have known in my lifetime.
My first experience with such stridency came with
debates I observed or took part in during my earlier
activities in the world of left wing politics. It
often seemed that many of us were more interested
in being right, than in advancing the causes and
movements we believed in. As the politics of the
past twenty-five or more years have shown, this
condescending, arrogant approach toward politics
is not exclusive to either side of the political
spectrum.
What is needed instead is an aggressive, strong
willed approach to politics under which when fighting
for what we believe we do not demonize or belittle.
It is a plea not for moderation, for there is nothing
wrong with taking an extreme position when it is
called for, but for tolerance and the willingness
to be challenged and having our most precious ideas
and beliefs questioned at every turn.
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