We all saw it happen. We’ve spent our entire adult lives watching the mass-media talking heads explain the differences between the American Left and the American Right.
We’ve been told that the Democrats tend to lean to the left and the Republicans tend to lean to the right. We’ve been told that the further you go to the left, the closer you get to communism; the further you go to the right, the closer you get to fascism.
But what I’ve come to understand that none of this is true. It’s a trick. A collective fallacy. An snowballing equivocation. The whole left-right debate, I’ve come to understand, is little more than a means by which a small group of powerful people have managed not only to take control of the Republican Party, but to remake it in their own image.
They managed to conflate two completely unrelated factions of two completely unrelated political specra, and then cross-pit one faction against the other to their own benefit.
One spectrum, or “track,” spans from liberalism on the left to conservatism on the right. The other spectrum, or “track,” spans from communism on the left to fascism on the right. We’re all familiar with both tracks, but we don’t seem to be cognizant of the fact that they don’t even intersect, let alone share left and or right tendencies.
We’ve been asked to believe that the terms left and right can be applied equally across both tracks. But in American politics, the latter track doesn’t even exist. You can’t get there from here. We debate neither communism nor fascism. Well, not until September 11, 2001. That’s when the Republican Party jumped tracks.
Let’s take, umm, TORTURE for instance. In American politics, torture has always been unacceptable, forbidden, criminal, evil. Liberals have always understood torture to be grossly antithetical to our basic standards of human decency. Conservatives have always understood torture to be grossly antithetical to their basic standards of limited government.
So how is it that almost all so-called conservatives now support torture in one form or another? Well, for one thing, they’re not really conservatives. They’re Republicans. And, for another thing, they’ve spent their entire adult lives being conditioned to support not the Constitution, but their political leaders.
It’s the same deal with SECRECY. Liberals have always understood secret government to be antithetical to our vision of Constitutional democracy. And Conservatives have always understood secret government to be antithetical to their vision of Constitutional democracy. But Republicans no longer hesitate to support secret government when they believe it serves the agenda of their leaders. Why? Because their leaders tell them to. They are authoritarians.
The extreme left, the ever-dangerous opponent of the Republican Party, doesn’t even exist. Nothing even close. Never has. There is no organized group on the American left which supports the kind of torture and secrecy which is currently being practiced on the American right. There is no organized group on the American left which supports the kind of torture and secrecy which was and is practiced on the far “left” in places like the Soviet Union and China.
The American track, the track most Democrats and all liberals still believe in, is built high atop standards of decency. The Republican track, the track most or all Republicans now support, is built according to the bidding of their leaders.
Republicans have literally been conditioned to hate the American track. They have literally been conditioned to hate America.
But how do their leaders keep them on track? Well, they convince them that their opponents are riding the other end of the same track. They’re socialists. Marxists. Commies!
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
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