The People's Cube - Political Satire

I like to read, comrades. Yes, I like to read and from time to time I will stumble upon a few words spoken by a courageous soul that tickles my fancy -- and when I say "fancy", I am of course talking about my Inner-Comrade who delights in seeing some people understanding the bigger picture.

This little tidbit, comrades -- this healthy government-mandated food for safe, pragmatic thought -- comes from a bearded gay man named Andrew Sullivan: a bearded gay man who likes to remind us all of his beardedness, gayness, and his (snickers) "conservatism". Well, actually, this tidbit really comes from one of his readers who, I would assume, is also bearded, gay, and hawks his "conservatism":

Andrew Sullivan's reader wrote wrote:
You've defined conservatism many times over the years as a "disposition." The clip that you featured yesterday of Ted Olson on Fox News, defending his strong pro position on same-sex marriage, seems – to my mind – to be about as good an example of the true conservative disposition as one could hope for: principled, humane, calm, smart, broad-minded, pragmatic, courteous, inclusive and reality-based.

But the same could be said for David Boies, Olson's liberal co-counsel partner and – since their days as opposing counsels in Bush v Gore – good personal friend. So where exactly does the difference in "disposition" lie, in this case? It's not in their positions on the issue, which are remarkable similar, if not identical. It's not in their qualities of character, which are both exemplary. Is it possible that, at this level – the principled, humane, calm, smart, broad-minded, pragmatic, courteous, inclusive, reality-based level – there really is no difference between conservative and liberal? That once having ascended the peak to actual, functional intellectual, emotional and spiritual adulthood -- to human maturity -- the paths of liberal and conservative meet, as they say all spiritual paths do?

Maybe we are all both conservative and liberal all along. Ask yourself: if you won a new car on some game show, but could only have one of the following two options, which would you choose – brakes, or an accelerator? The answer, of course, is every car needs both, just as every person, and every polity, needs both brakes (conservatism) and accelerator (liberalism) – and hopefully, both in good working order.

So the seemingly endless fight between conservative and liberal in this country is endless because it's a false choice, a fake war, ginned up by those who profit by that war. The real issue is not left or right. The real issue is maturity versus immaturity, selflessness versus selfishness, country versus party, disinterested truth versus power at any price. These are not left or right issues. These are developmental issues, issues of up or down, maturity or immaturity -- as both Olson and Boies so clearly prove by example.

Yes, Andrew's reader: we really are all progressive (we don't use the derogatory liberal anymore.) Once a human being reaches a certain stage of enlightenment -- or "human maturity", as you call it -- they come to see that our pragmatic approach to government is the right approach to government. We progressives are the accelerator and the conservatives -- those who have yet to reach "human maturity" -- are indeed the brakes, as the reader so eloquently states. We move forward, we progress, by pushing forward our agenda mile by mile in a rapid, gradual pace. Mile by mile we inch closer, and closer, and closer to our final destination: The Progressive World of Next Tuesday ™, which is little more than a fancy euphemism for a classless, fair, and totally awesome post-capitalist society where Marx's dream is finally realized.

With that said, we do have passengers in our little car of state that, from time to time, like to hit the brakes on our trip. Yes, they hit the brakes and wag the finger at us as they scold that we are driving too fast, that we are not obeying the rules of the road -- rules, they claim, set in place by some law and accompanying document which they remind us wrongly that it is not living and totally not reinterpretable when read by a different set of eyes. What hurr durr durr knuckle-dragging NASCAR retards these conservatives are with their brakes and their rules!

You see, we progressives, in the interest of fairness and dialogue, acknowledge the conservative concern, slow down, and proceed to keep driving at a reasonable pace -- all the while knowing that someday soon we will eventually reach our destination. We know we will reach our destination because we never stop moving forward and we never put the car in reverse -- we won't allow for it. We also know that our conservative passengers, at least some of them, will become enlightened along the way, and in their new found "human maturity" they will compromise so that we may once more slam our foot back down on the accelerator -- still moving forward, ever faster, ever bolder, and never going backwards.



So yes, we are compatible and both conservatives and progressives can get along. We both get along because one of us is in the driver seat and the other is in the back seat periodically slamming the brakes. Slam all you want, we will eventually get you to compromise and we will keep rollin' along.

The reader concludes very correctly: it is a false choice between to false fronts. For progressives there is only moving forward and never backwards. There is no rollback or moving backwards because eventually there are enough false "conservatives" to convince enough of his fellow passengers to ease up on the brakes and compromise to get the car rolling -- rolling in our planned direction, of course, because we are in the driver's seat. There was once a man standing athwart of our car of state and the road yelling stop. I can't recall whatever happened to him but I know we passed him at least thirty or so miles back.

I think Obama summed it up in a speech he gave yesterday. He was grinning and chuckling so much he could barely get the words out "There's a reason why you put the shift selector on D when you want to go forward and R when you want to go backward, I'm just sayin' it's not a coincidence."

Profound, no? And then he went on to say that having driven the car into a ditch, the Republicans want the keys back. That was so funny I damn near wet myself. Of course now that the car is in a ditch, the only way out is to put it in reverse, but we won't mention that since it doesn't fit the meme.

Comrade Whoopie wrote:I think Obama summed it up in a speech he gave yesterday. He was grinning and chuckling so much he could barely get the words out "There's a reason why you put the shift selector on D when you want to go forward and R when you want to go backward, I'm just sayin' it's not a coincidence."

Profound, no? And then he went on to say that having driven the car into a ditch, the Republicans want the keys back. That was so funny I damn near wet myself. Of course now that the car is in a ditch, the only way out is to put it in reverse, but we won't mention that since it doesn't fit the meme.

We can drive our way out of a ditch. To put the car in reverse would only signal weakness. Republicans are the ideologues and putting the car in reverse is... is... is just being a partisan ideologue, dammit!

The car of State. I like that.

Before Obama took the wheel in '08 I had a recurring nightmare in which I'd get in my limo in the morning and once we started I'd notice that the car wasn't being driven on the usual route. In fact it was a very bizarre route going down roads that led to nowhere - going directly into brick walls, over over-passes that simply ended in the air and take roads that would simply go round and round in circles. Sort of like driving the Winchester Mansion of roads. The dream would always come to an abrupt end when my chauffeur would head toward a cliff and finally after all my screaming and yelling to stop the chauffeur would turn around and I'd see at last that it wasn't my chauffeur at all that was driving like a maniac on that weird twisted roadway but was actually Thelma and Louise in the front seat and they were laughing at me and singing some damn song about Obama and "yes, we can."

And it was then I realized, as we went over the cliff at a-hundred plus miles, that their purpose in commandeering "the car of State" as you put it, wasn't to get to any place - they aren't going anywhere - it is to use the car as a weapon to kill people like me.

Maybe we are all both conservative and liberal all along. Ask yourself: if you won a new car on some game show, but could only have one of the following two options, which would you choose – brakes, or an accelerator? The answer, of course, is every car needs both, just as every person, and every polity, needs both brakes (conservatism) and accelerator (liberalism) – and hopefully, both in good working order.

First and foremost before we even think about brakes and accelerators is (being that it was won on a game show): WHO PAYS THE TAXES ON THIS RIDE? The next question is: SHOW ME THE INSURANCE CARD! And we all know you can't drive without: LICENSE PLATES AND A VALID DRIVER'S LICENSE! Then there are the trivial things like: THE CAR WON'T RUN WITHOUT GAS, which begs the question: WHO'S BUYIN'?


Sciolists love to prattle on with their atmospheric metaphors about 'accelerators' and 'brakes', but there are more important aspects to a Car of State™. Such aspects as the 'engine'; the 'transmission'; the 'differential'. No matter how good your accelerator or brakes are (or the lofty metaphors in describing them) they are of no use if you don't have the 3 most important components: THE DRIVE TRAIN (not to be confused with the Gulag Train to Siberia).