S
stpurl
Guest
We aren’t really all that different at the heart. We all, Democrats and Republicans, want to help other people and to live ‘good lives’.
It started out with simple differences. Do we help people more when we give to them their needs when they cannot help themselves? That seems reasonable, right?
But then what if they could help themselves but choose not to? Do we still help? And do we try to help them to help themselves because they are responsible for, say, children? How? Can this cause problems? What do we do about those?
So you see out of honest and reasonable desires one group, more Democrat, wished to help and it became more all sorts of social groups as there were more and more splinters of those who could not work because they did not have skills, or did not have child care, or had physical or mental issues, and then as the systems were overcome tried to come up with more and more, to the point where they were so overwhelmed they lost sight of the big picture of WHY they were helping people —originally, to help themselves—and just became focused on “helping people to have whatever they want’. That’s how abortion got into the picture.
And with the Republicans, helping people was more, “getting them on their own two feet to work”, which meant ‘creating more jobs’. And with that in mind, the creation of jobs became a major focus, and less attention was paid to the jobs themselves and to careful use of the land and the factories and the industries and pollution, and instead of helping a person who could not work for legitimate reasons such as child care or lack of skills or physical issues, the focus was, “We have the jobs HERE and if a person isn’t taking them, he or she is lazy. Instead of giving them money, we should take it away until they work.”
Now the thing is, there are some people who ‘abuse the system’. Under Democrats, they are coasting along. Under the Republicans, they’d be tossed out.
But there are people who truly NEED a great deal of care. Under Democrats, they are helped. Under the Republicans, they would be tossed out.
We don’t have a one-size fits all society and we never will.
But we have become so polarised to think that Democrats are all either “Protectors” or “Enablers” depending on our own worldview, and that Republicans are either “Responsible” or “Punishers” depending on our worldview. We are extolling “our groups’ to the skies and ignoring any possible areas where we might be overboard or lacking, and we are demonising ‘the other’ groups and ignoring where THEY might be doing well, or twisting their ‘lacks’ into deliberate malice.
It started out with simple differences. Do we help people more when we give to them their needs when they cannot help themselves? That seems reasonable, right?
But then what if they could help themselves but choose not to? Do we still help? And do we try to help them to help themselves because they are responsible for, say, children? How? Can this cause problems? What do we do about those?
So you see out of honest and reasonable desires one group, more Democrat, wished to help and it became more all sorts of social groups as there were more and more splinters of those who could not work because they did not have skills, or did not have child care, or had physical or mental issues, and then as the systems were overcome tried to come up with more and more, to the point where they were so overwhelmed they lost sight of the big picture of WHY they were helping people —originally, to help themselves—and just became focused on “helping people to have whatever they want’. That’s how abortion got into the picture.
And with the Republicans, helping people was more, “getting them on their own two feet to work”, which meant ‘creating more jobs’. And with that in mind, the creation of jobs became a major focus, and less attention was paid to the jobs themselves and to careful use of the land and the factories and the industries and pollution, and instead of helping a person who could not work for legitimate reasons such as child care or lack of skills or physical issues, the focus was, “We have the jobs HERE and if a person isn’t taking them, he or she is lazy. Instead of giving them money, we should take it away until they work.”
Now the thing is, there are some people who ‘abuse the system’. Under Democrats, they are coasting along. Under the Republicans, they’d be tossed out.
But there are people who truly NEED a great deal of care. Under Democrats, they are helped. Under the Republicans, they would be tossed out.
We don’t have a one-size fits all society and we never will.
But we have become so polarised to think that Democrats are all either “Protectors” or “Enablers” depending on our own worldview, and that Republicans are either “Responsible” or “Punishers” depending on our worldview. We are extolling “our groups’ to the skies and ignoring any possible areas where we might be overboard or lacking, and we are demonising ‘the other’ groups and ignoring where THEY might be doing well, or twisting their ‘lacks’ into deliberate malice.