labels
There are so many labels that we're given throughout our lives, by our friends, our enemies, by ourselves. Even society has jumped on the label-assigning bandwagon, and with much more gusto than a bunch of eight-year-olds calling a kid with his first pair of glasses 'four eyes.' More gusto, but with about as much feeling. And with the same end result. You remember the kids back in school, who were always the ones to come up with the nicknames for everyone? They haven't stopped, they're just pundits and pollsters and politicians these days. And journalists.
Watching the healthcare debate unfold, as a self-labelled socialist, I've had incredibly mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, this country HAS to do something about the status quo. On the other hand, what's happened isn't what should have been done. I'm in the percentage who don't agree with the bill, but before you take that and run with it as me being against the bill, I'm against it because of the evisceration that it suffered at the hands of the GOP. I don't think it was 'liberal,' or 'progressive' enough.
But that's a blog for another day. Labels. The healthcare bill has been given these labels; 'progressive,' 'liberal,' 'socialist,' 'communist,' and possibly my personal favourite, 'apocalyptic.' They should have run with the last one, because that's the secret to winning anything these days in the media. Be the one to give the label first. For example, in the debate about abortion those who believe that abortion should be completely outlawed won an amazing coup by labelling themselves as 'pro-life.' That almost precludes any debate about the issue, doesn't it? How can anyone be against 'pro-life?' Tho other side weren't left with much, even though throughout the rest of the world it's actually access to and regulation of abortions that decreases the number of them (Link 1).
The Right has a habit of getting the good labels first. Whether they're labelling themselves or their opponents, they've done pretty well of it up until now. They called people unpatriotic when they protested against Bush, or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it's much harder to argue against an accusation than beat it in the first place. They started calling Obama and the current administration as a whole Socialist, still a dirty word in this country. If they'd have left it at that, I think they'd be doing much better than they are right now.
But the problem is, they continued to label once all the good ones were used. Yes, I have to use the label 'pro-choice,' I dare not call myself pro-life, even though I am completely in favour of life for everyone even past the point of birth. But I'll begrudgingly accept that label, which is much better than being called a tea-bagger, because all of us filthy progressives know what that meant before it was co-opted by a group of angry people who mistake opinion for fact and bullshit for news. Incidentally I've been called tea-bagger for years because I'm British. At least that's stopped with the tea parties.
And labelling didn't stop with themselves. They've pulled out every label they can possibly think of to denigrate 'the other side.' Fascist, Communist, Nazi, the three politically evil words from the past seventy years have all come out. The problem with these words as labels is that they don't fit even a little bit. They're too recent and too evil. There's no implication there, in the way that pro-life implies the other side is anti-life. Pro-life is clever. Fascist? too overt, although ironically enough check out this list and see how many of these became part of our way of life under the Bush administration (Link 2).
So. I label myself a progressive. A guy I work with heard me say that, and tried to tell me that I'm not a progressive, I'm as conservative as he is. I wouldn't say that's true, and I won't deny that I have a(n incredibly deeply buried) conservative streak, but I still stand by my salf labellation. I am a progressive, because I want progress to be made. I want stem cells to be used to expand our understanding of how we work and how to fix us (I'm still planning on living forever). I want us to progress into space, explore the universe, because I'm sure out there there's another planet just begging us to roll in and show it how to be a better place for us all. I want society to progress, because it's come quite a way but we haven't progressed enough. We never really progressed out of the middle ages with our financial systems, because a disproportionate distribution of wealth was how the landowners and lords kept control over the freedmen and serfs. Now, we're the peasants and the banking industries are the lords.
But again, that's another blog. We need to treat the labels that are being hurled about with the appropriate reactions. If you get called socialist, then take that as you agree with your tax money being used to better the country you live in by providing police, fire, health, and education services. If you're called a progressive, then you're looking and striving for a better future, free of the favourtism and distrust that exists in our society right now. You're not looking for the destruction of America, you're looking for the betterment of it. And to that end, that's why I'm trying to focus on positives rather than negatives. I think everyone should give that a go, and maybe we'll just find a way to make everything work.
Link 1: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/12/AR2010031202287.html