A Reflection On Winners and Losers

From Despair, Inc. (http://www.despair.com/)
Used without Permission*  

I am not a competitive person.  Even when I’ve been a spectator, I’ve never completely understood the concept of “winners” and “losers” and I always empathized more with the “losers”, partly because of their defeat, but mostly because they deluded themselves into thinking that the game they just played was more important than it really was.

From Despair, Inc. (http://www.despair.com/)
Used without Permission*

From Despair, Inc. (http://www.despair.com/)
Used without Permission*

Games are one thing.  

Our US Government and the Election of its Officials is quite another.  The problem with political “winners” and “losers” is that outcomes of our political battles don’t just affect the candidates - they really are much more important than a game because they can affect all of us for years to come.

But my purpose here is not to expound on the merits or faults of one political philosophy or party or another.  I am pondering the question of why our country is so divided.  And why that division has become increasingly more pronounced over the past decades.  And why believers on both sides are becoming more and more entrenched in their positions and more willing or more desperate to close their ears, their eyes and their minds to “the other side”. 

I was thinking of how I might feel should the Republican Presidential candidate win this election and the first thing that came to mind was that I would feel angry.  First, angry that there might be people who know me who voted against my hard won rights, against my well-being and against my safety and security – against my “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness”.  Like “How could they?”

Then, angry that “we” were not able to reason with “them” and offer convincing, logical arguments that anybody could see were right and correct.  Angry that somehow “we” let this get away from “us”.  Angry that “they” somehow got more people pulling on “their” end of the rope.

Thinking about that anger – I find that beneath the anger really is fear.  Fear that not only my life and liberty, but everything I believe in would be threatened – my values, my freedoms, my independence, my rights.

And when I realized this, I thought, “That is probably how the other side is feeling about us.  Everything we stand for probably seems like a threat to their worldview, their beliefs, their very identities.

While I believe there is a qualitative, essential, phenomenological difference between the two worldviews, I don’t want to offer an analysis here – that would only serve to sidetrack the point I am trying to make.  

That point is, with two more or less equal groups feeling threatened by the other, how, oh, how, can this nation expect to survive? 

How can two groups whose distrust and suspicion for one another ever work together for the common good?

Is there a way for each side to suspend the threat that instills fear on the other side?

Is there a way for each side to chip away at the Berlin Wall that separates them?

I’m thinking that we all had better find a way to do so, sometime soon, or we will be in an ideological war, perhaps a war with real weapons, perhaps a war with real bloodshed and with no spectators and no winners.

From Despair, Inc. (http://www.despair.com/)
Used without Permission*

* FAQ: I want to put your images on my homepage without crediting you or acknowledging you in any way, so that I can do my small part to violate the copyrights of your photographers and whoever else might have a commercial interest in your intellectual property. How cool is that?

A: It is okay with us provided you promise to throw an online tantrum when we ask you politely to stop.

http://www.despair.com/