Whose Side Are You On?

There are two sides to every story. Certainly that ancient bit of wisdom seems stronger today than ever before, and before goes way back, at least to the ancient Greeks. *

We have figured out hundreds of ways to divide life's choices into two groups, and make endless divisions within those groups, and even more endless sub-divisions within those divisions.

Are you in or out? Are you with me or against me? You may be with me, but do you support everything I say? Or not?

Are you a Republican or a Democrat? Are you a conservative Republican or a strict Constitutionalist?  Are you a liberal Democrat, and what are your credentials as an environmentalist?

Do you like the Yankees or the Mets? Do you think football or baseball is America's greatest game? Are you rich or poor?Do you own a house or rent?

And it's not just Americans. European Union - in or out? Global Warming - who should pay to solve the problem? You say "all of us" and I ask"what's my share?" Then you ask "what's fair?'

Christians or Jews?Yin or Yang? Industrialized nations or third world? And, where does Puert9o Rico fit in?

While all of those divisions are endlessly subtle, modern western culture and our media seen to have boiled them down to a simple choice - yes or no.

                                                  So, Who Do We Blame?

Now I give the media a lot of blame for this cultural oversimplification, but - to be fair - what can you expect from a dedicated news agency that has to tell a really complex story in just two minutes or in 600 words?

Want the whole picture on global warming? There's a nice six-part series on the National Geographic channel- two hours per show - that I can recommend. For starters.

No matter where you look, there are problems with oversimplification, a lesson that our elected leaders and our passionate voters never seem to learn.

Lets vote to leave the European Union. It's our right. And it was. But, as in any divorce, a hundred problems come up that have to be dealt with that were never a part of Great Britain's original discussion.

Let's get out of Syria. Simple idea - the old question of whether you are in or out. But what happens when you get out? Gee, that wasn't discussed much, was it?

So, here we are with most of our government shut down, with 800,000 federal workers not being paid, and a lot more people suffering because of it. And, the conflict has turned into a fight between the two sides.

Certainly, that is how it appears each day in stories in lots of newspapers and reports on the network news and the cable channels. **

But, those reports seem to be missing something. They don't tell us who is on those two sides.

It's easy to say Democrats and Republicans, because that's how we look at anything political. You could also say Congress and the President, but with Mitch McConnell saying he won't allow a vote on anything the President won't agree to sign, that's really just going back to Republicans and Democrats again.

Of course, you cans that's just too superficial. It's really the dreamers and people who support immigration against the people who want strong borders and protection who would come to this country illegally. Or rich against the poor, or the powerful against the powerless. Subtle, I agree, but think the amazing subtlety in that symbol for yin and yang. Black and white in a circle, true, but the black flows into the white just as the white flows into the black. They intertwine, and there is a dot of white in the heart of the black, and it is matched by a dot of black in the heart of the white.

Two sides? Dozens of meanings?

While you think on that, let me suggest what the two sides in this. national mess really are.

                                                        Here's How I See Things

One side wants to shut down the government - at least a lot of it - and had the power to do it, and wants to keep it shut until the President gets more than $5 billion to build a wall. Or not. Maybe he just wants to buy land to build the wall, or orbit drones around the wall, or something else entirely. He's been rather vague on exactly what he wants. That side also feels that something is an emergency because the President says it is.

If you doubt it, just show me where the wall is going to be built, or how long it would take, or what the actual cost would be...you know, bids from contractors.

The other side thinks this President should never get what he wants, doesn't trust him to follow through - they keep talking about new secret missile sites in North Korea and tunnels under our existing border wall - and that his saying this is an emergency doesn't make it so.

Now, they may be right.But the way to find out is to hash it all out before the Supreme Court.

And, here there truly are two sides to the story. One side wants to keep the government shut down, and the other does not. Oh yes, there is a third side on the sidelines. Those are the policy wonks who are wringing their hands and worrying about what the definition of "emergency" is, and what the court might say it should be.

Just like the good old day when Bill Clinton told a grand jury he hand's lied about those charges, it just depended on what the meaning of "is" is. Don't you love it when history repeats?

In the long run, it won't make much difference. Except, of course, to the people who. have to quit their jobs and find some other kind of work, or the people who will lose their homes because they couldn't pay the extra charges that come with not paying the mortgage. Lets hope no one dies because they couldn't get the proper health care or medicine, or because some safety inspection wasn't done because of the shut down.

So, here our nation sits, with no room to sit the fence. Forget the seemingly endless and misleading efforts to change the subject. Time to choose.

Which side are you on?

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* An old saying "there's always a different point of view, which is entitled to be heard" can be traced back to Revolutionary times in the United States, and the same idea goes back to the ancient Greeks.
Protagoras said there were two sides to every question, and Euripides said that when two sides disagree you should never judge until you hear both sides.

** Yes, I said lots of newspapers, but don't ask me how many. I don't read every daily and weekly paper in the country. Nobody does. There are about 1,200 dailies and more than 7,000 weeklies and other publications classified as non-daily papers.