Feeling Or Fear?

Let’s be clear. Joe Biden suspended his campaign; he didn’t resign or quit. There is a convention to be had from August 19–22. Kamala is the presumptive nominee for president, and she'll name a running mate. Joe will be heavily involved in all that, just as he has been heavily involved in our nation's trajectory for over half of his life. We Democrats like a little drama in our politics, so this is a small bump in the road on the way to victory in November.

The media has been abuzz about J.D. Vance, and now they’ll burn up the bits, bytes, packets, or whatever brings us the news with speculation about Kamala's VP choice. Whoever that poor soul is will be filleted like a carp, and the media will dissect everything down to the color of their underwear.

But elections aren't about people; they are about ideas. The people in the news are simply the messengers and the people who forecast the future. We have two major parties. I know some folks would like more, but if you look at the clusterfuck that is the French and British political processes, both nations have more political parties than McDonald's has burger specials.

My point is that our elections are messy enough with our two major parties and four other parties that hang out on the fringe. There are many more parties that most of us have never heard of. If you're curious, you can Google that.

Back to ideas, not politicians or celebrities. People come and go in politics. Ideas, presumably, stick around. Our founders gave us the original idea for our democracy, and we have been building on that for almost a quarter of a millennium. As voters, we need to focus on those ideas, not on the petty bickering and name-calling that some would have you believe are policy statements or ideas.

The two political ideas can generally be summed up in two words: feeling and fear. 

One party, the Democrats, tends to be concerned about feelings. We believe the majority of people are good people. Yes, some people will violate the law, and we have to deal with that, but we want to focus our resources where the majority of people reside, on the side of personal freedoms. Ours is a more positive approach.

We want people to feel good about themselves, their economy, their lot in life, their personal choices in a partner, their religion, whether to have children and their belief in their government. 

We want to design a government process that allows as much personal freedom and choice as possible without those choices infringing on other people's rights or endangering others. All people have the same rights and the option to choose; it's not forced on them. It doesn’t mean they have to agree with everything each of us chooses. We all have opinions about many topics, but opinions are not government policy and shouldn't be.

We want people to feel confident that their elected government is trying its damnedest to deliver on that personal happiness and address the major issues of the day, whether climate change, wealth inequality, healthcare, countries invading other countries, or the entire suite of difficult issues any government faces.

Decisions pertaining to commerce, trade, and regulation should all be made with the welfare of the people in mind while enabling businesses to be profitable.

Democrats are about people, freedom, trust, and feelings.

The opposition, the Republicans, tend not to trust people. They seem to think most people are dishonest or crooked, trying to beat the system, and need to be restrained and contained. They want to limit choices, not because they are unlawful, but because those choices don’t align with their personal, social, or religious views.

There appears to be a general suspicion about others' motives. Conservatives want Draconian laws to limit freedoms they personally disagree with, not because it violates the Constitution or any laws on the books, but because it makes them personally uncomfortable. 

They want to control the information people can access to control what, in their opinion, is embarrassing or makes them uncomfortable, like the history of race relations in our nation. They resist what they don't understand, like sexual preferences and gender identification. They resist social progress like religion has resisted new biological and psychological knowledge of the human species.

The conservative approach to governing is to control, contain, and obstruct learning and progress if it questions or threatens their personal moral standards or religion. It’s not majority rule; it’s closer to theocratic rule. It's not freedom but restriction.

Republicans are about restricting freedoms, dictating policies, and returning to the past.

In November, we all need to vote for the overall ideas of our political parties, not just one or two issues that are bugging us. The decisions our government makes typically impact our lives for decades. What world do you want for your children? One that restricts their learning and freedoms, or one that lets them be all they can be?