Why the right make me shudder
I have some right wing friends. Really I do. But I generally don’t like their friends. Right wing people tend to have potty mouths. Even when they have developed smooths and smarts, their general dislike of people shines through.
It’s funny. They claim to be worldly. The truth is that they have a overweening need to feel superior. They like races because someone loses.
Is competition so bad?
The trouble is that the right are such sore losers themselves.
I accept their equally scathing view of the left. They think we are too idle to be competitive. It’s true that we sometimes won’t have races in case someone loses. It is not a slander. We do believe that we can’t have losers when we our people can’t stand losing.
If we are to have races, then we must love losers. We have to be grateful to them. If we have a basic need to dislike people, then we have trouble with this basic requirement of sportsmanship.
We can’t have competitive systems for people who are bad losers
Uh-uh. Giving races to people who don’t like people is like putting a free bar in front of someone with a track record of drink driving. It’s daft. Remove the temptation. Serve a good soft drink first. Serve food. At least charge cash for the second drink.
Am I being nanny-ish?
I don’t think so. I am being worldly.
I was once told by someone living in France that you cannot serve alcohol there without a meal within a defined distance of a motorway. Of course, the customer might not eat the food. But they have to pay for it. And so they might as well eat it. It’s French food after all.
I like the Australian habit of tracking down the person who sold alcohol to the drunk driver. Yes. Take responsibility for your actions.
We can’t give races to people who are addicted to racing yet don’t know how to lose. We can’t vote for the right because far too many people on that side just don’t like people.
We can’t vote for the right because they don’t take responsibility for the effect of their races on the losers.
When might I vote for the right?
We’ll vote for you when your policies tell us what you will do rather than what you will do to us. I want to hear how your policies limit you not me.
Of course, you say that about the left too. It is true that the authoritarian left likes being in charge. We must be careful only to put in charge those people who bring a substantive vision and administrative competence
But will I vote for someone with substantive vision, administrative competence and an need for 95% of the population to lose so they can win. No. How can I?
I need a substantive vision, administrative competence and a set of races where losers and winners are different every day and are all part of the after race party.
I need all three attributes in a politician but the first two can never outweigh the third. Whoever designs the race must take responsibility for the effect on the losers.
Right now in Britain though we are going to go broke if we don’t find fair leaders who have vision and administrative competence. And so we must ask the question.
How are we holding the conversation to produce such an purposeless election? How can we be contemplating a government who doesn’t even feel responsible for all the people of Britain and the effect of its decisions on people who had no control on the design of the race?
I think that perhaps the context of cultures might make for a huge distinction in your observations. In my culture, I’m right wing, but exhibit very few of the attributes you describe.
And yet, how is it that the more we do this stuff, and the smarter we appear to get (far more populous getting higher educations), the more we face off equally along polarities? The US elections get closer and closer to an outright standoff. We might as well flip a coin, the results would be the same and cost a whole lot less (we could pay for an entire year of the education budget with the diverted funds).
Hello, Rotkapchen
From the US? I think the US system has a certain genius to it and I like “hung” outcomes. That’s because I am not looking for a winner. I am looking for a series of conversations that helps us understand what is going on, how we are committed to each other, and what we are going to do next, together.
We may be committed to very little but that is useful information.
I think the US went up in the esteem of the world when you elected Obama – not because you chose him but because you produced him. I have no illusions, for example, that he will treat my part of the world harshly. But my answer is that we should take it upon ourselves to run a system that produces people of his quality regularly. Add Hillary’s performance on the world stage and people have their mouths open. They really do.
The British genius is to muddle. I haven’t mastered it yet but to watch a country decide to hang a parliament and then to do it, is mind blowing. No one could orchestrate such an outcome because it depends on many little decisions made one person at a time.
I like it when something like that happens and you see the essence and genius of a system and a people. It’s good even if the outcome doesn’t go our way.