I get this all of the time . . .
“You’re too extreme. Too inflexible. Democracy is about compromise. It’s about give and take.”
Well, I hate to break it to these weak, waffling ambassadors of abdication: Wake up! There are things which are not up for negotiation. Things which are so valued, compromise is never an option, values we don’t devalue and mark down at a discount.
An armed thug breaks into your house. He ties you up and has your wife and 13-year old daughter at gunpoint. The thug intends to rape them. You get to watch.
So . . .
You say to him: “Listen, I’m opposed to your plans but let’s try to work something out. How about . . .?”
You talk it over and come to an agreement on some acceptable amount of rape.
Sound ridiculous? That’s because it is.
What’s my point?
My point is that there are some things about which we don’t negotiate. There are some situations that are too abusive to the human spirit, too sick to contemplate, simply too offensive and just plain wrong, such that compromises — any adjustments of degree or intensity — are not and should never be on the table. There are policies, value systems, beliefs, individual acts, priorities, tactics, strategies, world views, which are so insidious, trying to find some ‘middle ground’ is not even a possibility. What exactly is an acceptable level of child molesting? Or slavery? How much torture is just about right? Or to bring up a current horrifying example, how much beheading nails the sweet-spot happy-medium for public beheading?
You get the idea.
Yet a lot of heinous acts, criminality, even outright sociopathic and psychopathic behavior, gets a pass these days, if not the implied imprimatur of our allegedly ineluctable, shared complicity. It’s a pandemic of wink-and-a-nod fatalism, succumbing to being “practical”, surrendering to the “realities” of our complex times, or conceding the inevitabilities of human nature and the practical limits of politics and social organization.
Talk about a cop-out!
Talk about intellectual laziness!
Talk about moral failure on a national scale!
Talk about failing our society, ourselves and our children!
Who decided that the best possible education for our children was no longer available?
Who decided that the best health care for American citizens was a privilege for the few, rather than a universal right — as in the constitutional mandate to “promote the general welfare”?
Who decided that healthy drinkable water was not a basic human need, that we’d have to pay for such a “luxury”?
How did America become a nation which imprisons .5% of its population — the highest incarceration rate in the world — mostly the poor and people of color?
When did it become acceptable for the wealthy to be above the law and beyond being prosecuted for their crimes?
How did we become a nation which violates the Geneva Conventions, which tortures?
When did America become nation which starves hundreds of thousands of innocent children to make some incomprehensible political point?
When did it become okay for America to be run entirely by corporate oligarchs and ultra-wealthy profiteers?
When did America, allegedly a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people, decide its people should be kept in the dark about what its government is doing?
How did we become a nation which promotes chaos and fear across the globe?
How did we go from democracy to plutocracy in just a few short decades?
When did we as the citizens of the richest country in the world become unwilling to draw a non-negotiable line in the sand on these and other critical issues?
When did we decide that fighting for a decent life for ourselves and future generations was impractical or too much trouble?
The quick answer is that we made little compromises along the way — bent a bit here, maybe a bit more there, made some “necessary adjustments”, showed flexibility, and all too often caved in outright when we knew damn well we shouldn’t.
The point is we shouldn’t have compromised at all.
Some things should not have been and still are not negotiable.
We need to learn from this pathetic record of equivocation and glib surrender . . .
Enough is enough!
We can’t redo the past.
But we can redo our country for the future.
No more than you negotiate with a rapist, you don’t negotiate and compromise with those who have proven to be deceptive, self-serving, sometimes malevolent fools who serve the selfish greed of the 1% at the expense of the vast majority of American people.
Most of us know what’s right and what needs to be done.
We need to stand our ground.
No apologies.
No excuses.
No fear.
Negotiating With A Rapist
“You’re too extreme. Too inflexible. Democracy is about compromise. It’s about give and take.”
Well, I hate to break it to these weak, waffling ambassadors of abdication: Wake up! There are things which are not up for negotiation. Things which are so valued, compromise is never an option, values we don’t devalue and mark down at a discount.
An armed thug breaks into your house. He ties you up and has your wife and 13-year old daughter at gunpoint. The thug intends to rape them. You get to watch.
So . . .
You say to him: “Listen, I’m opposed to your plans but let’s try to work something out. How about . . .?”
You talk it over and come to an agreement on some acceptable amount of rape.
Sound ridiculous? That’s because it is.
What’s my point?
My point is that there are some things about which we don’t negotiate. There are some situations that are too abusive to the human spirit, too sick to contemplate, simply too offensive and just plain wrong, such that compromises — any adjustments of degree or intensity — are not and should never be on the table. There are policies, value systems, beliefs, individual acts, priorities, tactics, strategies, world views, which are so insidious, trying to find some ‘middle ground’ is not even a possibility. What exactly is an acceptable level of child molesting? Or slavery? How much torture is just about right? Or to bring up a current horrifying example, how much beheading nails the sweet-spot happy-medium for public beheading?
You get the idea.
Yet a lot of heinous acts, criminality, even outright sociopathic and psychopathic behavior, gets a pass these days, if not the implied imprimatur of our allegedly ineluctable, shared complicity. It’s a pandemic of wink-and-a-nod fatalism, succumbing to being “practical”, surrendering to the “realities” of our complex times, or conceding the inevitabilities of human nature and the practical limits of politics and social organization.
Talk about a cop-out!
Talk about intellectual laziness!
Talk about moral failure on a national scale!
Talk about failing our society, ourselves and our children!
Who decided that the best possible education for our children was no longer available?
Who decided that the best health care for American citizens was a privilege for the few, rather than a universal right — as in the constitutional mandate to “promote the general welfare”?
Who decided that healthy drinkable water was not a basic human need, that we’d have to pay for such a “luxury”?
How did America become a nation which imprisons .5% of its population — the highest incarceration rate in the world — mostly the poor and people of color?
When did it become acceptable for the wealthy to be above the law and beyond being prosecuted for their crimes?
How did we become a nation which violates the Geneva Conventions, which tortures?
When did America become nation which starves hundreds of thousands of innocent children to make some incomprehensible political point?
When did it become okay for America to be run entirely by corporate oligarchs and ultra-wealthy profiteers?
When did America, allegedly a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people, decide its people should be kept in the dark about what its government is doing?
How did we become a nation which promotes chaos and fear across the globe?
How did we go from democracy to plutocracy in just a few short decades?
When did we as the citizens of the richest country in the world become unwilling to draw a non-negotiable line in the sand on these and other critical issues?
When did we decide that fighting for a decent life for ourselves and future generations was impractical or too much trouble?
The quick answer is that we made little compromises along the way — bent a bit here, maybe a bit more there, made some “necessary adjustments”, showed flexibility, and all too often caved in outright when we knew damn well we shouldn’t.
The point is we shouldn’t have compromised at all.
Some things should not have been and still are not negotiable.
We need to learn from this pathetic record of equivocation and glib surrender . . .
Enough is enough!
We can’t redo the past.
But we can redo our country for the future.
No more than you negotiate with a rapist, you don’t negotiate and compromise with those who have proven to be deceptive, self-serving, sometimes malevolent fools who serve the selfish greed of the 1% at the expense of the vast majority of American people.
Most of us know what’s right and what needs to be done.
We need to stand our ground.
No apologies.
No excuses.
No fear.