It is Possible for One Side to be Wrong

It is time to face the facts in this country. We are dangerously divided. You can’t sugarcoat it by saying it’s always been this way between people and groups. You can’t dismiss it as just life in contemporary society. You can’t pretend there is any middle ground any longer.

The evolutionary biologist and author, Richard Dawkins, has said, “When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.”

How true. It’s not that the Democrats are a little right and the Republicans are, too. It’s no longer true that both sides share basically the same political ideals. They don’t. Maybe once, but not anymore. Democrats are not without their own hypocrisies, blunders, irritating passiveness, and cheap compromises. But there are clear differences in the crafting of traditional, well meaning, good for all of society political legislation, which they are still committed to, and what Republican and Tea Party leaders are doing. Big differences there!

It is time to say the Republican and Tea Party leaders in Congress and many of them across the country are simply wrong. Here’s what they are wrong about:

The endless, cynical political obstructionism is wrong

The shaming, belittling of women is wrong

The defunding of Planned Parenthood clinics resulting in many of them closing their necessary services to women is wrong

The distrust of and hateful resistance to Latino immigrants is wrong

The contempt for public education is wrong

The aggressive and hostile and everlasting mocking of the president is wrong

The old, small minded, fear obsessed prejudices against African Americans is wrong

The sneering disdain and refusal to accept gays and forever fighting equal rights for them is wrong

The bowing down to and worship of money and power is wrong

The total approval of creating a society of the haves and the have nots is wrong

The refusal to accept the Affordable Care Act which is now legally sanctioned is wrong

The phony use of religion to get votes is wrong

The excusing of and laughing at bigotry is wrong

The manipulation of the gullible with lies and false threats and getting pleasure in stirring up their anger and promoting hate in them is wrong

The list is not exhaustive, but it highlights many of the actions of Republican and Tea Party leaders whose flawed ideology is breaking down the political and social structures of our society. Nothing gets done in Congress. Instead of giving us a model of cooperation, intelligently working together, guiding the nation in healthy and valuable ways, it displays the worst kind of cynical bickering and discord and utter selfishness.

Just once it would be refreshing to see Republican leaders openly say they are going to work with the President and the Democrats and then follow through with reasonable, useful legislation that reflects what the majority of Americans want and not what the rich and powerful elite and the rigid religious right wing fundamentalists want.

This is not a careless slam against Republicans. And it is not a blanket approval of Democrats. It’s simply an observation that the differences between the two parties could not be any clearer. And though Democrats are not without fault—in my opinion, Republicans are, in everything they are now doing politically and otherwise in this country, simply wrong.

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