Pearls: Each side is imperfect

EDITORIAL MUG: Matt Pearl

We need to learn that the sides we are being asked to join are imperfect.

In fact, we ought to learn to stop joining sides, instead of electing to hold fast to our values.

I am growing more frustrated daily with the clustering of ideologies – the grouping of ideas that the major political parties use to separate Americans into two herds. Why two? Because Washington knows it can’t effectively handle/influence three or four parties.

So if you support gun control, you get a free membership in the pro-choice, don’t-build-walls and tax-the-rich clubs as well. If you’re a pro-life individual, then you’re automatically in good standing with the close-the-border, buy-an-AR15 and drug-test-for-welfare crowds.

That’s quite a spectrum of political and social issues there isn’t it? Does that seem like a collection of ideals that can easily be sorted into just TWO piles? There have to be a lot of people who take this idea from one camp, and another idea for the other side, right?

So what is the lesson of it all? It is neither expedient nor acceptable to the Republican and Democrats in this country for you to mix and match your ideals. You pick the Red or the Blue, then you sign on for the entire agenda: if you choose to think your own way, to depart from the party platform on any single issue, you might be tempted to vote for the other party at some point.

You want to see change in this country? Don’t vote for the other party: instead, vote for the issue that’s important to you. Who is most likely to grow upset with you if you vote without regard for party? Umm….how about the parties? They want to know which side you claim and how you’re planning to vote.

Why? When it’s time to elect a president, for example, if they know you’re a Red voter in a Red area, the candidates don’t have to campaign so hard. If you want to keep watching entire elections decided by Ohio, Florida, Virginia and sometimes Arizona or New Mexico, then just keep registering for your party and voting a straight ticket.

If you want to see candidates having to come up with actual ideas and try to court your vote, them make yourself a little less predictable. I mean, do we really all belong in one pile? Just because you feel strongly about this issue or that, should that necessarily bind you to one party for all eternity?

From what I have observed, when the voters get too predictable, our public servants get lazy. Election season comes, and rather than addressing the actual issues of the moment, our candidates just bring up guns or abortions or gas prices and fan the faithful party base of this side or that.

What about the national debt? What about improving infrastructure? What about keeping inflation better managed? What about the things that actually affect our day-to-day existence?

I’m serious. Are we ever going to force the issues? Or are we going to let the ideological composition of our votership always make our choices for us? We get a lazy talking-points Republican running against a lazy talking-points Democrat, and election goes exactly the way we knew it would. Worse yet, whoever wins has no obligation to do anything meaningful: all he or she has to do is run in the same district to get that second term. Can you blame them? When your bosses never hold you accountable, why would anyone take the chance of losing future elections by sticking his or her neck out now?

Matt Pearl owns and operates newspapers in King City, Albany and Grant City.