3/12/2007

The hawk and the dove

I.
One heck of a puzzling question:
Why the hell the public opinion tends to view left wing-leaning people as passionate and cool, and right wing-leaning people as nothing but complete jerks?

And please do note the keyword leaning here; I do solely mean people whose political beliefs merely veer more toward either side. I don’t mean extremists, zealots or fanatics.
Also by left I don’t mean necessarily “liberal”, okay? I’m thinking more of this neo-populist trend all of a sudden on the rise once again especially in poor Latin America countries. I think what I really mean by left is populism, essentially… and by right, pragmatism.


II.
Before you get all militant on me I want to… no, scratch that. Here:
There is this bit from a Michael Cunningham novel and I’m thinking either A home at the end of the world or The hours in which one of the characters who’s sort of a… a… you know… “militant”… turns to this other character who’s more of a…a… okay this is a bit awkward so let’s stick to the basics: This character who’s more of a “in your face” kind of a liberal turns to this other one who’s more of a conservative and says something like, “When they’re rounding up the freaks and the deviants, you think they aren’t coming for you?”

I do understand that being unusual even at the slightest sort of puts you (and myself, up to an extent) there against the line of fire so here’s what I’m driving at- The whole “right-wing leaning” thing only considering economics and maybe politics.

In reality this is just to show you that since right-wing leaning people can quote from famous gay writers maybe they are human beings too… Hehh.


III.
I have just looked up the definition to “demagogue” in the dictionary, anyhow (out of pure spite!) and it says both emotive dictator and popular leader in ancient times.
I do tend do disagree with its chronological placing, though.


IV.
The sheer beauty of worldwide politics applied to the Kali Yuga: Spoiled rich College kids fed on Diet Coke and Kellogg’s sporting Che Guevara T-shirts to go with their Nikes marching against international Free-Trade agreements, globalization and carbon gas emissions, then driving home in daddy’s Japanese model-of-the-year.

This is probably what would’ve happened (too) if Karl Marx had been ghost-written by Douglas Adams on the Communist Manifesto…