Politics is winner take all Tug of War

“When the truth pops up in the middle you are made aware.” anon.

Both kids and adults like to play Tug of War.  There are even professional Tug of War teams.  In our country the worst of these professional teams are our political parties. The attitude of conservative and progressive parties alike is to treat politics as an all out war, not just a healthy debate, not just a healthy Tug of War.

Honest debate and Tug of War have this in common: When both sides do their best to win, the truth will pop up somewhere in between and we spectators are only challenged to understand and accept the result.

In physical Tug of War truth is the ribbon dangling from the middle of the rope.  In political Tug of war truth should be found in the resulting laws our Congress passes.

Unfortunately in politics it’s never a straightforward game.

Some teams refuse to play, lying down instead, in the middle of the aisle kicking and screaming because they can’t have that sugarlicious box of ChocoPuffyLoops decorated with brightly colored sprites or bridges to nowhere.

Some teams tie the end of their rope to a tree then stand around whinging and whining saying they won’t play unless they are guaranteed to win.

Rarely do both teams just do their best, then accept the truth for what it is.

It is a major disservice to us when the folks we elect decide, instead of representing us and our opinions and trying to reach consensus (the truth), to hold fast to ideological dictum; choosing only between winning or not playing.

Politics should be an honest Tug of War, not an extreme sport where one team wins and the other must die.  In a true democracy all voices are heard, allowing the truth to emerge with the only challenge being that we accept the result.

In a sense we are as guilty as our politicians: they don’t always try to find the truth and we don’t always accept it when they do.  And the longer we, as a country, keep acting like this, the more our democracy weakens.

We don’t need teams of deaf-eared ideologues spewing dictum ad nauseam.   We need politicians who will fight for the truth then stand behind it once the issue is resolved; the ribbon dangling from the rope won’t always end up on the same side, but it should end up where the truth is.  Not in some predetermined place.

Immigration Issues Confabulate

All the brouhaha over illegal aliens is simply confabulated.  To me, immigration is part and parcel of good government and capitalism.


Pshaw, you say?  Well, consider this:

• Our government’s budget never gets any smaller
• Unfettered capitalism is just a legalized semi-benign pyramid scheme

Both rely on growing membership roles:

• Government requires an ever increasing number taxpayers to fund its budget
• Industry requires an ever increasing number of consumers to grow and expand

So, how are government and industry connected to immigration?  It’s simple: when a country’s birth rate isn’t sufficient to support its government or grow business, the only other place new taxpayers and consumers come from is immigration.  Full stop.

Therefore the real question should be: How do we manage immigration to everyone’s benefit, not how do we stampede the buggers outa Dodge cuz they’re stealing our jobs.

The alternative to immigration is more babies.  And, in case you don’t see the irony, would you then run your own kids outa Dodge cuz they were stealing your jobs?

If you’ve been keeping up with the news you already know that 41 cents of every dollar our government spends is borrowed.  If we keep on reducing taxes and running immigrants outa Dodge that number could get so large that no one will feel comfortable lending the US money.  Then our government’s only recourse will be to print more dollars or raise taxes, and printing more dollars is just another form of taxation, except it’s called inflation.

So, I think we need to rethink our immigration policies before it’s too late.   We also need to elect people who are actually intelligent, not just rubber-stamping robots who follow a strict ideological party line.  If you believe in free will then you have to wonder why we would use it just to get better at monkey-see-monkey-do.  We need politicians that have the prairie oysters necessary to get the job done not politicians whose only concerns are avoiding cow patties and getting reelected, or whose only claim to fame is the amount of methane gas they’ve added to the atmosphere.

I learned about brush hogging from that.

We bought the farm, so to speak, 20 odd years ago when land was still cheap; and when you consider all the  chiggers and ticks and poison ivy we got for our money, we got a very good deal indeed.

Before you can improve property you first have to clear it.  In my case clearing involved  a lot of brush hogging, which meant cutting down everything from weeds to small saplings.

On its face brush hogging seems pretty straight forward: attach the brush hog to your tractor, pop the clutch, and tear into whatever you want to clean up.  I’ve actually done it that way.  Usually it works.  Occasionally, though, brush hogging is a tad more challenging.

For example: One time I was cruising along at 2500 RPM, happy as the tree hugging turtle I just passed, when all of a sudden the front wheels are way off the ground.  I still marvel at my quick reflexes.  I managed to stop the tractor just before any more forward progress would have required a crane to extricate it from straddling a stump.  The real take away here is that tractors have cast iron oil pans for a very good reason.

Oh, you might want to fill your pocket with linch pins before you head out into the brush and weeds.  Mother nature has an affinity for them.