The political "divide"
We hear alot about the political divide in this country. It is usually peppered with discussions of the "left" and "right" as well as a fare amount of "center". There are a whole host of names thrown around to slice and dice the "divide" into smaller and smaller groups.
But I think there is a distortion to these divisions. Especially when you see what is going on today, and that much of the "right" has abandoned every position they've ever taken on everything from trade and deficits to moral issues.
The real division is less about policy, and far more about "tactics". Regardless of who is in the majority, one sees the conflict between those who want a measured approach, with incremental changes, versus those wanting "revolution". These are closely associated with those who want consensus across the political spectrum, as opposed to those who want to take the "elections have consequences" approach. Right now we have a majority whose primary tactic is doing whatever bothers the opposition the most. The vast majority of their accomplishments have been undoing the accomplishments of the previous majority.
We go through phases where the majority seeks massive consensus and looks for large majorities in passing legislation. We haven't really been in one of those phases in a while. We see phases where the preferred tactic is to "corner" the opposition with legislation that holds just enough of what they do want to pass what they don't want. But whatever the phase, really the divide ends up being about the tactics that are being used.
The problem with this of course is that in reality, more people are upset than happy. The resistors don't think the minority resists enough. The revolutionaries don't think the majority is revolutionary enough. The consensus group always seeks a larger and larger consensus where there may be none. And the tacticians that want to corner the opposition end up feeling the opposition got too much in a deal.
And the funny part is all of us can be part of any of these groups at any time depending upon the issue. The more important an issue, the more revolutionary we want to be, or the harder we want to resist. When we see an issue as an obstacle to other things, we can be in favor of the consensus so that we can "move on". And we can be tactical when we see a chance to trade something we really want, for something unimportant to us.
Problem is that this makes it hard to unite us. Because at any particular time some of us don't want to be united. So the reality is that it becomes an issue of timing. To be the revolutionary, just before an election when the majority wants one, or to achieve consensus when they have tired of revolution. Right now it appears they want the resistors to be out there. If this wave comes to pass, I suspect the resistors may switch to revolutionaries, which will then probably generate a cycle of the consensus builders suddenly appearing.
