Watching the grandchildren can be so educational. Our granddaughter, Hana, is five years old. Her brother is eight. It’s been great to watch their evolution. They make up games and declare themselves winners or losers. One wonders whether the presence of an adult makes a difference in the way that they act or, as the psychologists say, “act out.” So let’s just posit that there are two eight-year-olds and an 81-year-old sitting around the table. It’s interesting to observe the differences and similarities in the ways that we think. The kids, of course, have learned much of what they do and say from us.
A young person often understands that there are differences between their world and that of the older people. Once you get a little older, you may look for shortcuts and other ways of keeping things simple. Take politics, for example. We know that we have a Congress, a President, and a Supreme Court, often with the same divisions on the state level. That’s the theory of checks and balances. Each of these institutions is supposed to keep the others honest. The problem, of course, is that all too often, the checks and balances system doesn’t really work. George Washington knew that political parties, or what were called “factions,” were problematic. Once you had Democrats and Republicans, you had two groups that would spend a good deal of their time attacking one another, sometimes for no good reason.
The way that it is set up now, there is an institutional (sometimes economic) interest in each of the two parties attacking each other. Theoretically, the Democrats are thought to be to the left of the Republicans, and because that is the way that it’s supposed to be, intelligent compromise is often scarce when it comes to contemporary politics. We seem to have arrived at a place wherein Republicans represent that share of the American way of life in which the acquisition of economic resources is at the top of the priority list. Democrats, again theoretically, are more outspoken when it comes to a more equal distribution of societal resources. Some of us, however, don’t really believe that the difference between Democrats and Republicans can be that easily defined.
Cynics believe that both political parties offer the greedy the opportunity to get even more greedy. We know that it is nonsense to think that Democrats, compared to Republicans, always show up on the poorer side of the ledger. Marx used a phrase, “false consciousness,” which contemporary theoreticians hide behind to indicate that those of a more liberal persuasion will be Democrats and the richest will be Republicans. In fact, contemporary theory seems to tell us that there are and will probably always be rich folks on both sides. In fact, Republicans get a lot of votes from unhappy people who have the least, but who have been suckered into thinking that they are the most screwed in our society.
It turns out that the supposed divide between Democrats and Republicans is really a fairytale. Some of the richer people in the country are Democrats for reasons that could only be called “convenience,” while some people associate themselves with the Republican Party for reasons that sometimes defy logic.
Other countries also boast political parties that stand for economic or political principles of one kind or another. In this country, we tend to fool ourselves into believing that there are major differences between Democrats and Republicans. While that sometimes can be true, quite often it’s just a matter of “who got somewhere first.”
We have greedy Democrats and greedy Republicans. If these individuals are running things, they may call themselves by different names, but all too often in both cases, self-enhancement is the name of the game.
