News & Articles

This 1798 cartoon titled “Congressional Pugilists” shows partisan chaos in the U.S. House of Representatives as Matthew Lyon, a Democratic-Republican from Vermont, holds forth against his opponent, Federalist Roger Griswold. Very much like partisan politics of today, although they really come to blows.

AM fog on the Range shows many drivers lacking North Shore skills where driving in fog or snow like inside a feather pillow gets regular practice. Like Powell landing his early floatplane on Saganagons in the fog, experience and faith come to mind.

I’m reminded of such dynamics (or more pertinently, their absence) when criticized for not standing up to recognize the real enemy. Oh gosh. What had I done? 

Made the mistake, it seems, of saying a person being knifed to death doesn’t care if the blade is Leftist, Right Wing or from the Center. Aficionados of partisanship insist upon blame. Having rationalizing faith the figures they call facts will see them through to blissful conclusion, the finger of blame does a jolly show of US versus THEM. They-them bad whereas we-us is good.

Human history, regularly ignored in the flush of being in the topical moment, does reveal a thing or more about partisanship, a concept I was once-upon-a-time more accepting of than now. Tribe, religion, language, culture, pigmentation or politics (some of the main parties) all easily become partisan with the swift capacity to turn deadly as needed. 

Why is simple, really. We-uns and us-uns being the good-uns then have the moral duty to squash the evil, bad, violent other. 

While I agree it’s fine to stand up for your “party,” the dangers of us versus them thinking are not to be casually pushed aside. No matter how just or god-given one holds their position to be, doing that is the ancient and standard prescription for endless denigration of others, too often leading to their “good riddance” slaughter.

Not being particularly theological or philosophical or doctorly credentialed, I credit what might possibly be a small insight to something which I neither created nor controlled. A male freshman in HS is more appetite than intellect, so I take nor accept any credit for ignorantly thinking the worst names in history (why bother to chant them here) believed (regardless of horrible realities) they were doing the right thing. 

Age 140 with an entire closet full of stupidities demanding my fullest attention, this minor insight was shuffled shoulder-to-shoulder with making rockets, catching a bigger crappie and arm wrestling the confounding vagaries of sex. (A subject very time consuming and upsetting to one who had yet to shave.) 

And, quite frankly, what practical use had a mid-teen for the confounding notion of well-intended mayhem? I was out of my league and knew it.
 

Recognizing one’s own ignorance is, I hazard to say, ultimately more useful than pointing out the stupidity of others, work readily available to the meanest Bozo any of us may know. 

Remaining in the land of unorthodox ignorance, what if bad people not only believed they were doing right, but did things I might agree with? What then? If Italian Fascism supported health care should I oppose it? If Germany’s National Socialists advanced non-inflationary monetary policy should I push for inflation? If Russia’s Soviet Socialists killed Ukrainian Kulaks as being responsible for food shortage should I agree? 

I didn’t have answers. Knowing I was lacking and therefore had nothing to add seemed to my lazy teen brain easier and less troubling than boldly and assertively turning partisan. Having a position is only good as its foundation. Giving credit where it was due might have to include crediting people and positions I’d prefer to hold in scorn.

Partisanship (which for those who like this sort of thing, might be compared to colonization by political practice) aside from its us-them problem also leans toward they having nothing to contribute, they don’t understand, they have no value. Partisanship aids the pretense that you’re good if you think you are. Don’t question. 

But, how many slaves do you need own to be a slave owner? One’s enough. If you don’t own, how complicit are you by selling food or tools or providing transport? The partisan web is tricky, unwilling to have its dark threads touched.

Take, as example, something bedeviling but supposedly obvious as genocide. Should be easy to tell, not so fast. If you’re a loyal Turk you might say what happened four generations past to the Armenians was a civil war. OK. 

And really, the loyalist might continue, there weren’t millions, far fewer, and they were all (one way or other) combatants marched to find their future in a desert land. OK. Fine. Agree with the partisan on all that they prefer. It’s still very bad. 

If but a fraction of the numbers gone missing is considered, the figure is high and can’t even at its barest low cannot be without a corresponding number of guards, accountants and logistics folk working in concert. The smallest number of civilian war deaths required backups. Guards can’t be on duty all day. Food and water could be minimized for prisoners, but guards and attendants couldn’t be ignored. A few hundred guards in three shifts represent a lot of meals and drinks. Do they sleep standing or on beds? Where are those sleeping places on the march? Who sets them up? Who moves them forward along with the combatant prisoners? 

It is no small matter whether prisoners number a mere thousand, ten times that or ten again. It is a major enterprise involving lots and lots of workers and helpers. Whether the prisoners were innocent civilians or war criminals, getting rid of them required effort and expense. 

Partisan sentiment like to hide such things. Sometimes the freedom fighter fights for the freedom to destroy others. (Note modern films remind us how many jobs they foster. Think, in comparison, the job potential of the most modest providing work for one’s grateful followers.)

And yet, if we go after every twig and root there’s trouble, too. After WWII the Allies were generally forgiving. More so than the Soviets. Far more than later in Cambodia. What’s better, no surrender, no compromise or attempted reconciliation? 

The partisan view is clearest. If your enemy is dead there’s no worry about their sincerity. –

Partisanship, available now and for the future. Enjoy.