Left-Right Scale

Left-Right Scale 

I’ve been, for a long time now, less afraid of criticizing modern democracy. We have to learn the difference between our righteous joy and appreciation for the benefits she provides from the mistake of being blinded to her shortcomings by her beauty. There are many phenomena, created by modern democracy, that threaten the community of the people of our world. I will attempt to write about most, but let me start with the one which is the most disgraceful and most disgusting.

In the 21st century western world, bit by bit we accepted that our whole existence can be described on a one-dimensional scale, even avoiding to put numbers onto it. You can be either far-left, left, center, right or far-right. I must point out that this approach is typical of the false “scientific” thinking. “Charts and scales can give us answers to everything.”

How did modern democracy give birth to ideas like this? Modern democracy is representative. Let’s have a thought experiment! Imagine that you are a talented, ambitious and dedicated individual who wants to take part in high politics! In this scenario you spent at least 24 years of your life in the education system and probably another 20 in a local or low level national political position under some wrinkled, old ballsack, who gave you no respect whatsoever. You are climbing the ladder, kissing asses and always saying exactly what you are supposed to. Add to the picture that in our world the worth of a person is based almost exclusively on the almighty career. A measurement well-crafted to describe how little you care about your own happiness, family, friends, how dedicated and hard working you can be for someone who respects you at best as a mule, how you can crowd everything you like, have actual interest in and enjoy into the category of a “hobby”. Now, dedicating 44 to 50 years of your life to your career develops an instinct without you noticing it. You are terrified when you look down and see that now it’s your ballsack that is wrinkled and old. So, you hang on. You must keep climbing the ladder or you will inevitably fall back. (“And there is nothing worse than that.”) Like ants led by your instincts, you and all who walk in your shoes gather into gangs. (The nicer name is parties.) But the people are complicated and somehow you have to get your gang to get at least 4 years in office in your lifetime. You learned on the way that the easiest way to win over the people is through scare tactics and team spirit. So, the biggest ally is the enemy gang. Singular! If there is a third party, who will guarantee that they don't join forces? The easiest is, and you all know this, you pesky little ants, to have two sides opposing each other in everything. So, modern democracy brought to life this quagmire by creating a system in which opportunistic idiots could figure out how to use something meant to protect the will and well-being of the people to take advantage of them instead. I can’t take credit for this thought. President George Washington pointed this out before it actually happened. (And probably felt slightly responsible.)  

But how does it ruin us? Now, as a catholic I have a radical idea of the brotherhood of the people, well summarized by the words of archbishop François Fénelon: “All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers…”. But even if you don’t share this view, it’s not hard to see what the problem would be if we don’t apply at least a minimum amount of brotherhood between compatriots. It is not right to see your fellow countrymen as enemies only because you follow elephants and they follow asses (as in donkeys), especially if there is no real third option. We are causing long term damage by ordering our whole society into two opposing trenches. 

There are already/still divisive lines regardless of the problem at hand. Think of the vast distance between the rural and urban population. You just have to look at the most recent elections in Europe and the US to see this tendency. That one is probably an older problem and is harder to avoid because of the drastically different lifestyles of the two regions. But politics using it for their benefit is like digging the already deep hole at a dangerous pace. Politicians benefit from the hostility between the two sides of society and how they know less and less about each other for that makes it easier to create the false image of one side being backwards peasants and the other one sinful snobs. It is not only a disgrace but also dangerous. A divided nation is less capable of defending itself and more vulnerable to outside influences. For example, the “left” claims that every “right wing” party in Europe, and probably Donald Trump in the US as well, are successful only because they are founded by Russia. This argument stands on unstable legs, especially because the same people also claim that Russia is dysfunctional and broke. But no matter what, by their claim 41.45% of France, 20.8% of Germany and 52.52% of Hungary voted for someone remote controlled by Putin. Guess what the problem is! They actually quite like declaring half of their own nation a foreign enemy. No one with the right mind can see this as anything but the political plague of the 21st century.

Putting the whole world onto a political swing is also crazy dangerous. Since the end of the cold war the west has no external enemy. The bloodthirst and war rhetoric had to be channeled elsewhere.  The perfect solution is to make a violent football match out of politics. But without external enemies, the only thing the two sides agreed on is that there is no reason to keep things controlled. It is free for all now. There is clear radicalization. 

There is no place for compromise or acceptance of the other option either. Let’s take for example someone who thinks that children shouldn’t be brutally murdered. In that case you are cooked. Your choices are: You can say that you don’t want students to get shot in their schools, but then you also have to accept that babies can be torn to pieces in their mothers’ womb. Or you can choose to say that a human is a human even in their mother’s womb but then you have to accept that accidents happen, like the 992 children dying on average in a year in the US of firearm homicide. It’s an extreme example but just as true. You have to blindfold yourself, otherwise you notice the lack of logical continuity. It can be best described by the shopping cart metaphor. There are “pre-made packages” of political standards and we are just putting them into our “shopping cart of personality”. So, when the lawnmower comes with a pack of cheap beer and the bookshelf with fine wine, then you have to accept that you will have a bitter mouth if you want your lawn to look proper. Obviously, it is more than well crafted. I mean, who sips fine wine while doing manual labor? I have no idea how people are not furious about this. (I surely am.) It makes just enough sense to be easier to go with it than to actually oppose it. I suppose.

There is an aspect of this faulty system that threatens us with something similar in method to a runaway nuclear reactor. Let's imagine that the “left” is the uranium, the change in the world is the energy produced and the “right” is the graphite that keeps the system controlled. If you let the uranium do its thing without control, you have a meltdown. If you add too much graphite to the mix the energy production slows or stops completely. It's not clear if we are on a submarine or in a land power plant. Do we absolutely need energy to generate oxygen or is it safer to let the reactor fully stop in a disaster situation and restart it when safe. No matter which one is true we don't really notice the whole picture, so we probably do the worst. We are letting the uranium run wild and then to save us from disaster we add too much graphite. But because it slows the energy production too much, we let the fission go wild again and even more, then more graphite… so on and so forth. You can guess that this leads to a big f***ing bang eventually. The further left we go the harder the right will hit back and the same happens the other way around.

This left-right thing being a one-dimensional scale means that the sad reality is that people on it have a less than one-dimensional point of view to our whole existence. Their lives are dots on the scale. Because, yes, everything is politics. The statement: “I don’t care about politics.” means that you don’t care what your, your children’s and your grandchildren’s future might be like. Politics go from your bedroom through your workplace even to the church you go to. Is it a good thing? Hell no! But this is the reality of our situation. Watching from a point on the scale means that you will have a radical idea of everyone else. No one with the right mind would say: “I am wrong, but I stick with it.” So, everyone thinks that they are right and by default everyone else must be wrong. Politicians from both sides tell us that they are the ones who would love to have serious dialogue, because that's what democracy is all about, but the other side is impossible to have a conversation with because they can’t see reason, just their beliefs. A pyramid looks like a triangle from one side and from another can look like a square. One will say it's a triangle, the other that it's a square. But it is a f***ing pyramid. Not one nor the other.

The next point I only mention briefly. People like this s***. I mean it. Look at the joy on the face of a blue haired college student when they march on the street or glue themself to something. Or the smug “conservative” bastard who “destroyed” them in a “debate” with “logic”. I don’t know if there is anything that disgusts me more than seeing someone find their comfortable place in this abomination. But they do. This is what the so-called populists figured out. (My definition of populists is a bit different than the standard one. I can notice them on both sides, not just on the right. The left loves to use the term to describe right-wing politicians who are also in power, because they can’t wrap their head around the fact that people might find the right truer.)

What happens with the people who are less brain dead? Well, you can try. But let me warn you! You can't win. You can join a side, if you have the stomach for that, but then the other half of the world will hate you for it. Being center is like standing in no-man's land during the battle by choice (and it’s false anyway). You shouldn’t even try to jump back and forth. Both sides will hate you and even more than those in the centre, because of the whole betrayal thing. They see center people as cowards or lunatics but if you were on their side in any question but with the “enemy” side in another, then you are a traitor in their eyes, my friend. Even if anyone would be interested in our problem of not being able to join this simple-minded thinking they would probably just kindly suggest: “Keep your mouth shut!”

The funny thing is that, with the wise words of the great Admiral Gial Ackbar: "It's a trap!" You can’t really leave the scale either. No matter what you say, do or probably even think they will be categorized on the scale somewhere. A method crafted to bring down politics to the masses was so successful that they actually adopted it as the basis of their whole thinking process. A cartoon, song, hairstyle or food is judged the same way as your approach to freedom of speech or social policies. So, you can be the biggest diplomat in the world and maneuver successfully between the two but if you eat steak one too many times, boom you became a right-wing, chauvinist, earth-killing hillbilly overnight. Works the other way around too. Looks to me like to some people it is okay or even good to keep up a soft civil war at all times.

But, who are the people who benefit from this? Probably you can sense already, if you had the patience to read my waffle, who I think could be the people benefiting from this mess.

If you want to be a politician, there was no time better for that. It used to be a hard job getting prepared for a political career. Today you don't have to know the world and its issues as deeply. If you get the memo of your chosen political side, you know what to support and what to oppose. There is a recipe to the perfect left- or right-wing politician. Is there anything you can’t agree with on your own side? Don’t be afraid! There are enough people on the other side working against you. And as a disarmingly generous gesture you can offer to give in at the negotiation table in every question in which you agree with them anyway. The left can exist because there is a right and vice versa. So, it is good for everyone who wants power without serious beliefs or everyone who wants a monthly paycheck from the state and a state-owned car with a private driver. (Or as Géza Hofi, the greatest Hungarian comedian said: So many private persons with private bodyguards but state cars.) If you are less easily angered by the destruction of Europe or by apocalyptic stupidity, then you will have the time of your life watching an example of this. Just search “European Parliament debate” on YouTube! Tears are guaranteed, either of laughing or crying.

There are also the fairytale creatures. I don’t only mean the woke armies of Mordor, but also the idiots claiming in the name of tradition and morality that there is a traditional female role, forgetting that the one they talk about did not exist 300 years ago. (I have to be honest. Medieval history is not the strongest subject to anyone these days. F***ing Victorians) If you love to hate people because they or their ideas are different, if you love feeling superior to others morally or otherwise or if your insecurities make you unable to feel valuable without the recognition of a well-established group of people, than (probably you are not reading this, but) you are also the perfect target audience of this horse s***.

Not even talking about the people making money on it. Look at Mercedes on Instagram during “pride month” or the billionaires sitting behind Trump at his inauguration! It's good for business too.

But not for us. What's to do then? Well, we are highly outnumbered, but that was never enough reason for surrender to those who want to see the world turn at least a bit in the direction of the truth. The first step has to be that we resist the temptation of joining this false narrative and doing it courageously and openly. Don’t be afraid to be the person in a conversation who is attacked by all sides! But remember that you are not against everyone but with them all. The enemy is not one, the other, or both sides, but the disposition itself. We don't want to challenge or attack the people on the scale but the scale itself. I do believe (granted, I am a bit of an idealist) that most people sitting on the scale are tricked or trained to be there. They did not choose it freely. Only open eyes, minds, conversation and arms can lead to the discovery of the truth. But remember, there is no such thing as your truth and my truth, there is only The Truth. The goal should be to look for it and base our stand on what we find. Thomas Aquinas says that: “The greatest kindness one can render to any man consists in leading him from error to truth.” That is what we want to achieve. You have to know that it might hurt them and even if that is hard to avoid - because it is caused by facing the truth and not by intention to hurt - we should at least offer comfort. The world today doesn’t remember any other strength but the one of destruction and dominance over others. The strongest people have dominance over themself. The policeman is stronger than the criminal. Chivalry does exist and it usually indicates more strength not less. What modern people don’t realize is what Francis de Sales describes as: “Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.” So, we must take on this challenge, but we should do it gently. 

Kyrie Eleison!