Recently, someone I respect and with whom I enjoy conversing on many topics called me a "republican". I'm pretty sure she meant it as an insult, kind of like calling me a snake, and I'm pretty sure there was a capital "r" on her accusation since historically speaking it would be a compliment with lower case "r". Three things particularly bother me about this paintbrush. One is that I think it's a shame that we think of the two parties as "good guys" and "bad guys" (depending on the speaker). Another is that I wish people could think and talk about a wide range of topics, even political ones, without worrying about being labelled a good guy or a bad guy (depending on the listener). What wonderful discussions we could have, how much we might learn from each other. The third is that it feels to me as if we're acting like teenagers who have discovered the big world outside the family home in that, as we learn about and come to understand other cultures (excellent and good impulses) we have become intolerant of our own; we say we believe in diversity, tolerance and freedom but too often curtail, or seem to curtail, us. For example, we used to scorn what was unusual and/or different (organic food, for example) and only accept what we knew; now we adopt what's different (my store finally carries organic bananas and they're awesome, by the way) and scorn or outright reject what we know. It's understandable societally just as it is in a family, but it's unfortunate.

Anyway, historically it's hard to characterize the current two political parties according to points of view. Current party lines in America are inaccurate for many people and the nastiness with which they converse (if you can call it that) has reached an extraordinary level. And "good" and "bad" are inaccurate appellations anyway, since things change so much. During the Civil War, then-Republicans supported abolition; for nearly a century thereafter, southern Democrats supported segregation. In general, totalitarians and dictators are referred to as fascists and tagged as right-wing (a/k/a conservative, a/k/a on the same side as Republicans) but abolition is not conservative any more than starting a whole new country. Communism is labelled as left-wing (a/k/a liberal, a/k/a on the same side as Democrats) and yet its trail of political murder and repression is indistinguishable from Nazi Germany's. Does communism's verbalized goals of fairness and equality ameliorate its brutality? Okay, these are extremes. But it's helpful to sharpen our thoughts on extremes because then we can bring out more clearly the nuances in our own less extreme heads. In the end, my hope/preference would be to ignore party labels (until there's one called the "live and let live" party). The social contract is so complicated and there are so darn many people milling about this world of ours nowadays and nearly every one of them (us) has a point of view about nearly everything. What we really need are more parties and fewer paintbrushes.

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