Brutus1964
I suppose it depends, then, on how one defines a silly song. I think it is silly; it's a pop song, after all. That doesn't preclude it from being decent or even good, but it certainly is a simplistic look at the situation.
So many liberals do not appreciate the blessing they have.
This is an anticipated sleight: you're targeting "liberals" for a problem that is "human" within the society.
You're too condemning and presumptuous at the outset.
We live in such a care free society that people make up problems that do not exist. They make up bogy-men like "global warming" and "urban sprawl". They "know" thier ideas are right even though they have never been demonstrated to work in the real world.
Problems that do not exist: Social Security crisis, a fear-inspiring "gay agenda", WMD in Iraq. Not liberals.
Global warming? Urban sprawl? Where do you think they get those notions? Perhaps it's by paying attention to their community, what people tell them and how they're educated?
Typically, the ideas are communicated and received according to a specific necessity that is both relevant and contemporary to the issue considered. The idea of putting ideas forth without a history of success is called taking a risk. And it sure as hell beats the conservative version, which is to constantly propose ideas that are shown to be harmful, ineffective, and even offensive to human dignity. And why should they do this? Tradition. Indoctrination. Intolerance.
Most human beings look for solutions to problems that do not exist. It's part of what we do, and sometimes we even find a legitimate problem that way.
If their ideas don't work they either say it was because they were not implemented correctly or the right people were not in charge, or that some how Republicans sabotaged it. They can never admit that their reasoning was faulty to begin with.
Show me a pure test. Take a look at the failure of Communism; the history Americans learn is vastly different from recorded history. Most Americans don't realize the U.S. has invaded Russia before. Many people have this strange notion that one day a bunch of Russians woke up and decided to be Communists with the specific purpose of agitating Americans.
In the song the girl leaves her family and everything behind that should be important to her to pursue what she thinks will "fulfill" her.
Like I said: "'She left her husband and she left her family ....' It need not be so dramatic, but politics divides any family dinner."
With politics, there is a perceived moral attachment; these senses of moral obligation create conflict when family is seen to have crossed a line.
My father used to resent my excoriations of American economic priorities. He felt I was including him, even though I spoke to him in third, not second person. And then one day he learned why he shouldn't. And in there somewhere, a lesson he'd forgotten even by the time he taught his children, poked its head up. Stand up straight, carry yourself properly, behave: you represent your school, your town, your parents--you should not embarrass them with your misconduct. Enough of the fellow businessmen he counted himself among proved corrupt that he got the point. What guilt does he feel? I don't ask; I was surprised when he brought it up one day.
By your suggestion of liberalism, I should have leapt with joy. But I didn't. I was sad he had to figure it out in a way that upset him so deeply, but I have no idea how else to get from A to B in that case.
If I dwell on all the things that went wrong, or "the years we could have had", I might go crazy. There's nothing to be done to change the past, but we certainly can pause for a moment to consider the impact of politics on family.
She hooks up with others that she thinks have all the answers, but in reality they are just as lost as she is.
It goes a little bit beyond that: again you're focusing on a human problem and attributing it to liberals.
The intensity of the moral cause, though, that sense of justification that fuels the fire, can exploit changing definitions and boundaries. There comes a point when the "traditional" value of family cohesion becomes sinful and scandalous. Then again, my generation learned a certain principle of accountability, and it may well have something to do with why what happened to crooked executives around the country should trouble the small businessman's morals so greatly. The question becomes: "I have been taught that what I see is wrong; what now?"
For a liberal, there come many occasions when choosing family over principle seems to be a short-term exchange: reduce or eliminate the challenge of conscience by sublimating it to another form or delaying it to another future point.
And when you reach the point that neither solution suffices, you may well be staring in the face something Christians have misunderstood for millennia, and which Communism recognizes much to traditionalists' dismay: The nuclear family is corrupting compared to human potential optimized. In other words, sentiment toward family causes inefficiency, or, in the case of Christian principle, sin. We say a kindly-disposed parent who smokes pot is cruel and criminal, but an unkind parent obsessed with money and status is a good parent doing their job. The unkind sentiments that seem to infect social problems as liberals see them start with individuals and grow from there. Unlike their neighbors who develop conservative political consciences, the liberal doesn't just ignore this conflict. And when they put their foot down, it's time for another chapter of
Jesus, Karl, Fred, and Me.
• • •
Anecdotal: Every once in a while, I make certain pointless demonstrations in front of my family. What happens is that I make an observation, and someone says, "Well, stop talking and do". So I do. And then everybody's horrified. And I look around and shrug, as if to say, "What?"
What happens in those moments is that they're horrified by the produce of their expected conventions. They think on those occasions very conceptually, while forgetting what the concept looks like. It's a dog eat dog world, they say, but any time I bark they're simply offended. It isn't that I'm doing anything unusual: rather, they're upset whenever I throw aside pretense and act like "everybody else in the world".
There is a basic discord between expectation and reality. As a liberal, I'm painfully aware of that separation. My conservative neighbors--and perhaps they don't realize it--seem to glorify and depend on that separation. Moral assertions are great rallying points, but have no practical value to conservatives.
And if there's one thing the young have on the old, the children have on the adults, it's their ability to spot hypocrisy. People learn early on to live it or abhor it or merely tolerate it. Were we to make an unsupportable assertion about how people react to the appearance of hypocrisy, the superficial observation would be that liberals fall into the trap by blazing forward and falling into a new, unforeseen hole, while conservatives bathe in old hypocrisy like hot springs.
In the end, people make certain mistakes because they're human. I try to be forgiving about this, and even get myself in trouble sometimes by finding that there's nothing to forgive. It is the problems that are specific, unique, or even intentional that present such challenges.
But since many liberals develop their liberal values in close and instructive association with conservative values, right there we see part of the problem with conservatives. They've cried wolf and panic so many times that who knows, one day one or another conservative might accidentally have a good idea, and we'd never know it because he's not equipped to express the point.
Presumption and condemnation: no simple recognition of human nature because it's too complicated to think in that many steps; it's easier to just get angry and yell about what's wrong with liberals.
The reason liberals are pictured as elitist and conservatives as unfeeling is the result of conservative posturing. There is for most issues a level of discussion that will strike progress and compromise with liberals, but conservatives never want to have that discussion. They'd rather, as you've shown so clearly, bash on liberals and pretend they're being useful.
Conservatives complain of elitism if we won't have the stupid discussion with them, and scream, "hypocrisy!" if we do.
Through various devices, conservatives signal that they don't want to have the discussion at all, that they just want their way. Thank you, Brutus1964, for demonstrating that point.
Look, I don't think you intended to prove my point when you stuck your nose in on this one. And I do thank you for what honest consideration you've given the issue. But what am I left with? A predictable assertion, an unwillingness to get specific, and then a, "Yeah, that's what I was gonna say, but ...."
None of this is surprising. That's where it gets problematic. That's where liberals put on the contemptuous yawn and look at you as if you have rabid mice in your pants.
It's like that old joke about Republicans: they'll tell you what's wrong with government, then they'll get elected and prove it.
Republicans complain that liberals are elitist, out of touch, and unable to communicate with "middle America". Yet to actually look at the situation, we find the reality is that conservatives simply don't want to have any real discussion.
So here's a hint: If conservatives really do have the proper vision for society, they ought to try
not betraying it.
Do Republicans teach their children to exploit one another? To cry and whine until the rules are changed for them? To refuse to participate unless everyone else goes forward on an unsupportable thesis? If not, whence comes that conservative contempt for the human endeavor?
