"Partyism Now Trumps Racism" - Cass Sunstein, Harvard Law Professor

Posted: Apr 11, 2015

Here's the URL for the article at Bloomberg, for those who have trouble with the direct link below; "Partyism now trumps racisim." http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-09-22/partyism-now-trumps-racism The following is my personal commentary on the subject of how and why I became an independent (other than local political corruption exposure on both sides). Feel free to skip it if not your cup of tea:) _______________________________________________ Finally, someone else validates what I've been trying to say! Thank you Cass Sunstein! However, the article speculates the attribution for "partyism" goes exclusively to modern political campaigns and their media. Though I agree, I think we can trace even this back to something more specific - I think the perfect conditions for "building the perfect political beasts" can actually be traced back directly to 9/11. I've said this many times on here and I still believe it - the most lasting damage the terrorists ever inflicted upon us, with 9/11, was divide us further from each other - but this damage of this sort is only is self-limited and we can "unchoose" it. On exactly September 17, 2001, we returned to work. The office was, of course, naturally abuzz with vehement emotion and political opinion. Though previously, people rarely spoke about politics in the workplace (and people rolled their eyes at them if they did), it was now being openly discussed, and would later even be fought over in the workplace. I tried to just keep doing as my grandmother taught me, never discuss religion, politics or sex in polite company or the workplace, plus I was in a sort of mourning and shock, still, over the entire event. Others were understandably scared and angry, wanting to vent, and began blaming this or that, so I just shook my head and overlooked them, realizing we all grieve in different ways. Finally someone turned to me and said, "You're awfully quiet today, what did YOU think of the president's speech yesterday? Wasn't it great?" Well, the question caught me out, and I guess we were all a bit emotionally raw. So for some stupid reason I said: "I think President Bush is doing a great job of reassuring the American people, absolutely. However, am I the only one that thought his use of the biblical word "evildoer" was a bit over the top and more than a little strange?" *crickets* My best-buddy coworker looked at me and said, "Now that you mention it, but what are you thinking?" I said, "You - you don't want to know lol." She said, "What? Now you're freaking me out, what about his speech?" I said, "Well, I hate to even think this at a time like this, but something makes me wonder WHY he would say it like that, at a time like this, punish the "evildoers"? I mean it was almost manipulative when he doesn't need to be right now, we're all supporting him. So why IS he saying it like that?" "Which makes me wonder what's coming. For some reason I can't quite put my finger on - and I hate to even think this but - I have this pit-of-my-stomach feeling that manipulative speech is laying some groundwork for something. I mean - you don't think he's gonna use this to take us back to Iraq, do you? You don't think they'd stoop that low, right? Use this situation to go to war in Iraq again? Osama bin Laden is in Afghanistan, all intelligence is telling us that." Well, you would've thought the entire "War on Terrorism" started in that room, at first, the room exploded. People who just last week who'd been my friends, started saying how horrible I was for even doubting our president right now. Arguing erupted in general and former best work friends who never even knew each others' politics before that day were now at each others' throats, telling the manager on them, and I sat there, part of me wishing I could take it back and feeling terrible about even suspecting such a thing at such a time, but the other part couldn't seem shake the nagging feeling -'what if I'm right?' Finally, the poor, only male in the room, who happened to also be ROTC and in the national guard, said: "Okay, I know everybody's scared, sad and angry, but turning it on each other isn't going to help. C, it's an interesting theory but I think it's just a hunch. It'd make a great subject for your writing material, though, but let's hope for my sake it's fiction!" "And if I'm totally honest, I thought it was odd he kept saying "evildoer" too, kind of unprecedented, like propaganda stuff. It does probably mean he's trying to gain support for something coming, just probably not what you think it is, C, I know we're all in a paranoid place right now, but let's not try to think the worst. I personally back his politics and I'm a soldier, so if he tells us where the threat is, we go there, we have to trust he knows things we don't as the president." "Everybody else, I don't share her political opinions, but she has the right to say them in this country, especially when asked, and we don't have to agree, that's what makes this country great and one of the rights I'm willing to fight over to keep." "Now let's all do what the president said and go back to work. We were all friends just days ago before this, so let's go back to that and work as a team. That's what Americans do when times are tough, we pull together. We all can be heroes just by keeping on, keeping on, so...let's roll:)" Never forget that day, almost as much as 9/11 itself. Well, we did put our personal feelings down and ended up working together, but I wish I could say that this sort of bipartisan cooperation had continued in our society in general - but it didn't. I also wish I could say I had been wrong about Iraq :( But there is no pleasure in being able to say "I told you so" and be right about such things, is there? Or at least there shouldn't be. However, that has essentially what our nation has become about. It's become more important to us who's "right" than celebrating the fact that we even HAVE a right to free speech and share opinions in this country and that many people died fighting for the right to do that! So though I agree with the Bloomberg article, I'll go further with attribution, in that I believe the most lasting damage the terrorists ever inflicted upon us with 9/11 was to further divide us from each other, and political parties and the media have just used us, working us like clay on a potter's wheel for their own benefit. However, sometime over the last 3 years, I realized something after seeing some things in my own party I didn't like, which were the same things we'd criticized about Bush in some ways. I also noticed that people tended to turn the other way when someone in their own party was doing something truly awful rather than recognizing it was the exact same thing the other side had just done. So I started wonder if perhaps I was perhaps a better off before helping to build that perfect beast political party. Before 9/11, though I HAD a political party, I often voted based on the issue or the person rather than by what the party told me I should think and vote for. I realized that I was becoming the worst stereotype for my party rather than less, and that perhaps I was better off just being that unmolded lump of clay, rather than a finely-crafted political vase, that although sometimes carries fresh flowers, mostly just just sits on a shelf that the rest of the world never sees or hears from anyway, just family and friends, like most of us are ;) So I decided to go back to just being a lump of clay, letting my conscience and my faith be my potter - and there's nothing wrong with that, despite the party guilt trips. I'm not perfect in doing so, by any means, but I actually feel more in control of my votes and they are more genuine this way, party guilt be gone! And I do hope others will realize the value in just going back to being a political lump of clay someday, allowing their own conscience to be the potter, too:) Thanks for reading, Independent Thinker Here's that URL link again: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-09-22/partyism-now-trumps-racism;