Shortcuts

Here’s a recap of a conversation I had with a dear friend in the not-too-distant past. We were discussing a government policy that I belief disproportionally impacts low-income people, when (and this was my problem) similar issues affecting wealthier people are off the table. (Hint: the issue at hand rhymes with “faxes.”)

Finally, my friend threw up his hands and said, “I guess I just hate poor people, huh?”

And I thought… No. No, I don’t think you do. And the reason I think that is because I know that you yourself have struggled financially at different points in your life, and that no one handed you anything. I also know that you were fortunate enough to be able-bodied and have a lot of family and friends to help with a job or a place to crash for a few days when you needed it. I know that you volunteer with your church and your community. When it comes to individual poor people, you have compassion. Just not for low-income people in general, when it comes to public policy. And when you think about those individuals, sometimes you rethink things.

That’s how we solve problems in our country. It’s so easy to fall back on terms or words that have become codes that signal “this person is on my side.” Sometimes shortcuts are useful, and sometimes they just let us off the hook when it comes to looking at an issue critically.

It’s tough. It’s so easy for that blogger to point out that someone’s employed by the Koch Brothers or George Soros, as if that’s all you need to know, as opposed to useful information for you to use in figuring out what you think.

Sometimes I think I’m lucky to be a diehard liberal Democrat who grew up in the rural South with half my family having served in the military. I worked at a nonprofit with a major donor who was a card-carrying tobacco company executive, and he remains one of my favorite people ever. I know an ardently feminist Army officer whom I cherish, even though he’s a Dolphins fan. I cross a lot of categories, and so I’m well suited to speak up and say, “Actually, you’re kind of full of it.” (Which, as you could probably tell, is something I enjoy doing.) My favorite family members to be around happen to be the ones with whom I disagree the most politically. People who’ve always been surrounded by people who are like them in every way are just missing out. I don’t see how they ever learn anything.

A few days ago, I wrote a post about Rep. Ron Paul’s comments on FEMA and the 1900 Galveston hurricane. The notion that the deadliest hurricane in U.S. history should be something to aspire to raised my eyebrows. But what really got me was reading that Paul voted against an $18 billion aid package for his own district following a hurricane.

And I thought, how easy.

Plenty of politicians get elected promising they’ll always or never do X, but most of them are savvy enough to know that they have to compromise sometimes. But there are those few – in both parties – that are consistent in a certain principle, always, no matter what. They’ll always vote against federal disaster aid, even for their own neighbors. They’ll always vote against military operations, even immediately following a terrorist attack.

Principled? You could say that. But how valuable are principles that are never challenged, revisited and affirmed?

Sometimes – frequently – one’s principles will come into conflict with one another. Adults make decisions anyway. They do the hard work of figuring out if this thing that’s important weighs heavier than this other thing that’s important. It’s hard work, and it should be. We elect people to gather information and make these tough choices, and someone who reflexively shoves his fingers in his ears and sings LA LA LALALALALALA isn’t doing that hard work, and is setting a pretty poor example.

Maybe I’m just getting old, but I have less and less patience for people (elected or not) that coast on shortcuts. The arrogance it takes to insist that you don’t need to hear from anyone who doesn’t meet all the items on your mental checklist. How do you function? And how do you expect our country to function?

We throw around so many words – “welfare queen,” “baby-killer,” etc. – that it’s easy to forget the people around us who may fall into those categories. But I don’t mean you, we say when confronted. Maybe we should think about those varied, actual and dearly beloved people BEFORE we start throwing around over-simplified code words.