CONFESSION OF A CONSERVATIVE

I really don’t know very much about Obamacare, but I know I don’t like it because my “people” don’t like it.

I have found that it makes life simpler if you don’t have to know everything about everything. I don’t know everything about how the human body works, or the inner workings of the stock exchange or how electricity comes out of nowhere and into my Victrola, so we surround ourselves with people who know what we don’t know. If what they say seems to make sense, or even if it doesn’t make sense, for some reason we trust them. We will hand over that portion of our lives to them. We then have “people.” We have our medical people, our financial people, electrical people, etc.

When it comes to politics, most of us also have our “people.” There is no way we can really understand the financial workings of the government and, unless we are certified climate scientists we cannot (should not) intelligently comment on global warming. A 7 foot high stack of health care regulations I’m betting is also beyond our intellectual reach and yet we all have opinions. Where did we get those opinions?

If someone doesn’t tell me the ins and outs, the details, of political stuff, how would I know what to think? The problem is since there is a left and right in politics, and they both have an opposite view with supporting facts on almost everything, who do I read or listen to? It seems every talking head on TV/radio today is an ideologue. Any article or book I would choose to read was written by somebody with an agenda. Unless I know that agenda, how do I know I’m not being led down the garden path?

Since going outside of ourselves and relying solely on others is a risky way to evaluate what we think and why we think it, let’s go inside. I wrote a paragraph that summed up my life. This was an interesting experience, and would suggest you try it.  It made me take a look at the major influences in my life, they were: Religion, Sports, Military, Police, Corporations and Family. Putting them all together they equal-- me. I got something positive and ingrained out of each aspect of my life which today makes up my politics, my “world view.”

Given these “pillars” of my life when a political subject comes up, I run it through my experiences, my map, the way I’ve seen the world work, and what makes sense to me and immediately arrive at a visceral level conclusion which may or may not, in the long run, be accurate. My initial beliefs are:

Religion trumps atheism

Winning trumps everybody getting a trophy

Military trumps suspected terrorist

Police trumps demonstrators

Corporations trump government

Family trumps a random passel of people doing what ever makes them feel good.

As an example when Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was stopped and questioned by Cambridge, Massachusetts police in 2009, President  Obama immediately came out at a press conference questioning the police motives. I immediately came to the conclusion that Gates was stubborn and obnoxious. Neither the President nor I really had any “facts,” but we come to a conclusion based on gut feelings, on what our experiences have shown  life to be for us.  When you hear that the police and the Occupy movement have clashed, whose side do you instinctively line up on? My father and role model was a policeman for over 30 years; facts were not immediately important to me in either example.

I believe our life experiences generate our conservative or liberal views, those views then direct us to the people we feel we can trust to tell us the “truth.” So, when it comes to whom we select as our “people,” those folks who can best give us the skinny on what’s really going on, we tend to go to those “experts” who best represent our world view. As a Conservative I go to Rush, Hannity, Beck, and I watch Fox news. They explain the world as I know it. When I listen to Matthews, Maddow, Reverend Al and watch MSNBC, I believe I have intercepted a broadcast from Mars. I’m sure a Liberal would reverse that.

As a life-created Conservative I have my views on Obamacare, Abortion, Gun Control, Energy, Immigration, Minimum Wage, Trickle Up/Down Economics, Global Warming, etc. I know what I know based on my experiences and I use selected members of the media to provide me with factual and emotional backup. Liberals do exactly the same thing. We all run around talking as if we really know what’s going on, but we really just parrot the people we trust. 

If the other side drives you nuts, shoot for understanding rather than convincing, and with understanding, maybe it’s best, as Pogo said, to start with ourselves. Why, with minimal facts to back us up, do we feel so strongly in the way we feel and believe so strongly in what we believe? Write that autobiographical paragraph. I think it will explain a lot.