Is there any political issue upon which all Americans agree? If there is, it’s certainly not defense spending, social programs, taxation, campaign finance, healthcare, or abortion, nor is it energy, trade, marriage, foreign policy, guns, illegal immigration, unionization, or the national debt, the economy, the environment, education, civil rights, crime, or drugs . . . hell, we can’t even all agree on jobs and infrastructure!

Unanimous agreement on any of these issues is extremely rare, even on a historical scale. World War II may have brought us to statistical unanimity on defense spending, and back in 1789, there were few voices of dissent offered against the general provisions of the Second Amendment. Yes, true consensus seldom occurs, but the degree of division found today is equally uncommon.

Last year’s debate surrounding healthcare is an excellent example of not only how wide the chasm between liberal and conservative voter opinion, but also of the nature of the divide. From the onset, Republicans spared no effort to cast the healthcare bill in the most negative light possible; labeled “Obamacare,” it was a “government takeover” of healthcare; it was being “forced down the throats” of voters and would result in bringing “death panels” to destroy the “best healthcare system in the world.”

The result of this unrelenting slander campaign was to completely pollute public opinion amongst conservatives. Voters rallied against the bill, believing the hyperbole to be fact, and stood in stringent opposition. Conservative opinion became so stacked, that the repeal of “Obamacare” became a vital element of the Republican election campaign of 2010.

But then, as the din of election rhetoric started to subside, the campaign dust began to settle, and another dynamic soon emerged. Preposterous claims of “death panels” were replaced by a slow seeping of factual information regarding what the healthcare bill actually contained. This soon led to liberals and conservatives alike arriving at more well-developed positions, and public opinion on repeal quickly began to tilt.

Once the equation changed from “do you want to repeal the government takeover of healthcare” to “do you believe that insurance companies should be able to refuse coverage because of preexisting conditions,” people were suddenly empowered with real knowledge of the issues, and were soon to adopt a position that actually reflected their personal values.

Many voters previously in favor of repeal found that they actually supported certain aspects of the bill, like allowances to help Medicare recipients cover out-of-pocket prescription costs, parents being able to include children up to age 26 on their plans, and the prohibition on denial for preexisting conditions. Once armed with facts in place of manipulative hyperbole, support for complete repeal dropped to only one in four voters.

If this were an isolated story, it may be dismissible as an aberration in an otherwise healthy political process. But the sad truth is that this sort of deception and manipulation is the rule, not the exception, and the process in question is not only unhealthy but exceedingly destructive.

The real story about healthcare or jobs or the deficit, or whatever specific issue you choose, is that the Republican spin machine has become so expert at political theater that no matter what the underlying facts, they’re able to develop a script for each issue that portrays the conservative position as pro-American and patriotic. They’ve actually become so adept at this manipulation that conservative voters accept their contrived plots, and willingly suspend reality, without question, most often to their own demise.

Regardless of political views, any observer of this dynamic has to be in awe of its power. The spinmeister’s craft is dedicated to beguiling the unwitting victim by playing on emotions of fear, pride, and fairness. By evoking the emotional response, the skilled spinmeister obscures the facts, avoids troubling questions about substance and effectively uses distraction to open his victims to exploitation.

Who isn’t against “government takeovers” — of any kind? The government is supposed to represent the people, not rule over them. And “death panels” or having anything “rammed down your throat?” What American wouldn’t be repulsed by such imagery?

The truth is that these characterizations have nothing to do with the underlying issues. They’re offered for the sole purpose of poisoning the well in order to drive opinion without any real evaluation of substance.

In reality, when all the extraneous bullshit is stripped away, all Americans care about the same things: about the wellbeing of their family and friends, and about the values upon which they base their lives. These core values may vary from person to person in terms of what they might hold as most important in a given situation, but they are, at the same time, universal. All people care about fairness and reciprocity, and they also care about protecting others from harm, about loyalty and respect and the sanctity of life. These values form the moral foundation of our culture.

Sadly, the Republican spin machine has succeeded in co-opting this basic set of American values, casting them as unique unto itself, and has in the process managed to artificially split the nation. They’ve created an alternate reality where they alone are held to believe in hard work, where fairness is dictated by the market (instead of by people), and where corporations are entitled to more rights than the citizens of our nation. Amazing? Absolutely, but the truly inconceivable part is that something approaching half of all Americans buy into this nonsense.

The truth of the matter is that what divides Americans is much less about a split in values and much more about the split in valuables. If left to discuss and debate our values without self-serving provocation by manipulative elites, the vast majority of Americans would be able to find common ground on which to build consensus and develop workable solutions. But such interaction would not serve the goals of those who seek to keep us divided, so they do everything they can to drive the wedge as deep and often as possible.

We’ve allowed the politicians and media to cast the debate as “big government” versus “small government,” when we all know that what we really need is “effective government.” We argue over raising or cutting taxes without first discussing the services We the People deem appropriate and how best to fund them. We accept that we’re divided over energy and defense and abortion and all manner of social and economic issues, but instead of engaging in dialogue and attempting to find real solutions, we just accept the winner-take-all, zero sum game of American politics that’s been defined for us.

This is not the way our democracy was intended to work. The Founding Fathers established a republic designed to ensure that the interests of all citizens would be taken into account. But in spite of their sage efforts, our representative government increasingly represents only the interests of a very small, very wealthy, and very powerful minority.

The real division in America has nothing to do with left and right. This is an artificial construct designed to keep the masses in perpetual tension — to keep us divided. Today’s public is presented with one fraudulent dichotomy after another, all stemming from complex political positions built on heaping assumptions with questionable logic. It is this complexity that prevents solution, because it ensures that the public never engages in meaningful discourse at a level low enough to find our common ground — the level of our core values.

There is no issue on the social landscape upon which a majority of Americans cannot find a suitable compromise. All that’s needed is an earnest discussion at the most basic level. Americans are decent people with a true sense of fairness, who have proven time and again that they’re capable of working together for the common good. All they need is leadership willing to speak the truth and stop beating the drums of division long enough to foster real dialogue.

Unfortunately, politicians want us all to believe that our differences are irreconcilable, that the other side is the enemy, unpatriotic and incapable of coming together and agreeing upon workable solutions. This is a fallacy, but it’s kept alive by constantly reintroducing issues that are recirculated and debated over and again, whenever The People threaten to expose the truth — that the only real divide in America is top and bottom, between the haves and have-nots, and that divide is widening with every passing year.

It is up to We the People to reject yet another season of the Kabuki Theater that is left/right politics in America. We must demand an end to the deceptive practices of both major parties, equally to Republican fear-mongering and Democratic lip-service, for it is their dance that’s taken us to the edge of destruction. We must come together as a people and insist on a real conversation, or else continue to be exploited by our nation’s economic elite and their servants in public office.

The People only win when we unite.

If interested in a look at how your personal values fit with your politics, pay a visit to Your Morals.org.

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This is a different type of blog post for me. It’s born of the frustration encountered at Huffington Post when trying to get a comment approved by their censors. When my posts are blocked, I typically scour the text in search of anything objectionable, make edits to anything that could possibly give cause to censorship, and repost. But in spite of this effort, I’ve had many times in the past when I could not for the life of me determine what their issue was with my post. Today is one such occurrence.

The topic of the article is the new Whitehouse position stated by David Axelrod yesterday regarding the extension of the Bush tax cuts. This was a very popular topic with a huge number of comments of which I posted several.  One particular comment was in response to an individual who posted asking the question, “Why do Democrats act as if the government is the owner of the citizens’ income and can hold a blank check on our earnings?” My response was to assert that we live in a democracy, that the government belongs to us all, and that it’s our only means to “address excesses and exploitation by the upper class.”

A response to my post was given by the person to whom I had commented. That response conveyed certain assertions with which I did not agree and, in my opinion, was based on assumptions that I find to be erroneous. The text of that comment is as follows:

The equality that will happen for ALL AMERICANS under the plan the left has is equal poverty and equal misery.

You cannot reward failure and punish success and increase innovation and the quality of life. It has never worked and will not work if you change the name to “progressive.”

Of course there are differences in intelligence, skills, knowledge, abilities, attitude, willingness to work and other factors. Each and every one of those creates differences in contribution.

In a fair society, you are compensated for your contribution. The liberal idea of equal wealth distribution ignores the differences in contributions and is doomed to fail.

The mistaken belief that government can create equal outcomes is foolish. The result of liberal’s attempts is to bring civilization down to the lowest common denominator. It happens every time you try and create social justice. The only way for liberals to succeed is to punish success and human nature then creates poverty and misery.

I attempted to respond in a respectful way, but even after a series of earnest attempts at editing was unable to get the Huffington censors to accept my post. The following is the text of my last attempt:

“reward failure and punish success” Success and failure at what? To make money? Now, there’s an appropriate metric with which to measure the worth of a person. It’s actually the core flaw in conservative thinking and the source of much suffering in the world.

“increase innovation” That’s just patent falsehood. Our ruling class system retards innovation in order to sustain the status quo. Just look at energy consumption and infrastructure in the U.S.. We’re still married to fossil fuels at the cost of the people and planet because it serves the needs of those stuffing their pockets with oil money. Innovation is in green technologies and alternatives, which are suppressed because of the threat of competition.

“In a fair society, you are compensated for your contribution” So CEOs really contribute 300 times more than average workers? By what measure? It’s the conservative idea of distribution of wealth that ignores all factors of contribution except monetary. Is that moral?

“The result of liberal’s attempts is to bring civilization down to the lowest common denominator.” Quite to the contrary – it’s the conservative ideals that are base, that focus on the worst characteristics of humanity.

For conservatives to succeed, the majority of people, as well as the planet itself must pay the price. John Kenneth Galbraith best summed up the conservative ethic: “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

I ask for your critique and honest feedback. Is this comment disrespectful? Is it inappropriate as a response to the comment that preceded it? Does it warrant being censored? Is it appropriate for Huffington Post to censor without feedback as to cause?

And on substance: what are your thoughts on the debate?

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Article first published as The Republicans Rail and The Democrats Tuck Tail on Technorati.

The Republicans are winning again. Motivated by hate, fear and ignorance, Americans are flocking to bring back into power the party of plight for all but the wealthy.

Yesterday, the Republicans revealed their new “Pledge,” with John Boehner stating that “We’re not going to be any different than we’ve been.” They’re actually promising a return to the policies that created the Great Recession and people are still applauding instead of throwing rotten fruit at them.

Thinking people need to be concerned. The political landscape in America is no longer about principles and policies; it’s about the creation and recycling of talking points that trigger emotional responses. The Republicans have truly mastered the “art” of political theatre. Their satirical mockery of democratic government would be funny if it weren’t such a tragedy, if it didn’t hurt so many for the benefit of so few.

Americans should be mad as hell about our broken government. But getting mad at Republicans for distortion, hyperbole and lies is like getting mad at a bird for crapping on your windshield; it’s just what they do. You might as well shake your fist at the wind.

But the Democrats are another story. While the Republicans were sharing their “Pledge to [Rape] America,” yesterday, Senate Majority Leader, Harry, the Cowering Wimp, Reid was announcing that there would be no vote on extending the Bush tax cuts to the middle class until after the election. Yep, the Democrats are once again rallying behind their track-proven strategy of tuck-and-cover. Once again, they’re rolling up in the fetal position and hoping for the best.

Bravo!

For those Democrats who believe President Obama hasn’t gone far enough, a brief pause to consider the team he’s had in the Senate might be in order. If Michael Jordan were to take the court with four high-schoolers, they’re not going to threaten even the worst NBA five. The fact that Obama was able to get anything through a Senate that was effectively controlled by the minority is actually quite remarkable.

Like the old adage says, “you can lead a horse to water . . .” The President came out swinging in Cleveland. He gave the Democrats the line in the sand they needed to define themselves. He took on the Republicans for their continual pretence of support for small business, their feigned concern about jobs, and their hypocrisy regarding the deficit. But while the Republicans were out power posturing yesterday, the Democrats were showing what cowards they truly are; they decided to turn and hide.

Democratic voters should be incensed, and their rage should be squarely directed at all the gutless Democrats who continue to allow the Republican bullies to rule the congressional schoolyard. In statements yesterday, they voiced their concerns that the Republicans would spin Democratic support of tax cuts for the middle class in a negative light — as if not voting on them will prevent the attacks.

The conclusion is inescapable: the Democrats never learned that the way you beat bullies is to stand up to them. Republicans aren’t going to win the election in November because they had the better policies — because they have none. They’re not even going to win because they have the better talking points. They’re going to win because no matter how egregious their distortions of the truth, no matter how hate-filled their rant, no matter how fictional their arguments — they’re the only ones talking.

Democratic policies support 98% of the population. They uphold the right ideals and have all of the facts, both theoretic and historical on their side, yet they’re losing. Perhaps someday they’ll come to understand that when people are fed a daily diet of fact-free propaganda, unless the opposition is refuting the claims with the same strength of conviction, the people are going to swallow.

Until that day, the Republicans will continue to keep their followers seeing red, and Democratic voters will be left feeling blue.

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