Emotional Politics and the Real Political Enemy of Everyday Americans

Once upon a time, when the United States was in its most nascent form, it was largely reason, not emotion, that dominated American politics. The greatest illustration of this political exercise was indeed the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which established the current U.S. Constitution, where delegates and leaders convened from across the country for one predominant reason, amongst others: the Articles of Confederation was simply not working and a grossly ineffective form of government for the United States.

I want to note something before I go any further -- when I say governing by reason, I mean this as governing with critical thinking and making decisions due a conclusion brought on by critical thought, as opposed to a pure emotional reactionary form of governing. "Emotional governing", as what I call it (though someone may have already beat me to the punch with that terminology) is needless to say, dangerous. More on this shortly.

It's actually galvanizing what governance based on reason, not emotion could actually accomplish. Another example -- which this time I am going to go outside of the United States -- would be Canada's debt crisis of the early 1990s, which was the ultimate result of government expenditure was disproportionate to not only what the Canadian government could afford, but what the national tax base and what the provinces could truly flip the bill for. Chretien's Liberal Party adopted what was then a revolutionary concept of Canada's stalwart left-leaning party: fiscal conservatism. This approach was based on reason, not emotion -- the ruling party was willing to put aside ideology for the greater good for an entire country. If the Democratic Party and the Republican Party did the exact same thing (oh, you know "compromise"), then I think there would be widespread wagers across the country on mutually assured, doomsday destruction.

Fine, fine, maybe that was a little bit too much of hyperbole. Yet, one thing that concerns me, and I'm seeing this on both sides of the ideological divide, that emotional gratification, with using political ideology as a front, has been the driving force of American politics for the past century plus. 

Now, some good has come out of emotional governance. Declared wars -- such as the First and Second World Wars (especially the latter with Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941) -- were emotional statements. Government moves during the Civil Rights Era was a product of an emotional crusade (amongst other things, notoriously), because the more antagonistic state governments were making their own emotional stand. Conversely, however, there are scores of other examples where bad has emerged from emotional governance -- Jim Crow laws, gay marriage bans, undeclared wars -- just to name a few.

However, don't get me wrong, this is not intended to be a history lesson. This is intended to be a contemporary lesson. Here we are, with another election being tagged "the most important election of our generation", with just about every single political faction in this country looking to make an emotional statement on things such as economic inequality, social inequality, nationalism, "American values", and other issues, real and purported.  So here we are, with tenured politicians from the left and right expressing themselves to voters as "saviors", "rescuers", and "enlightened individuals". This is disgusting and disturbing politics. Sure, there may be some good of it, such as pushing us to critically think about some issues, however, we're steered into an emotional response, instead of a response derived from reason. Let's look at it:

• There's the end of American unilateralism. We don't critically address it, but we panic over it -- all the while at the same time cry that other countries must strive for greater self-sufficiency and follow "America's example". Uh...
• There's the fact that financial system collapsed in 2008, and yet while I am in favor of Keynesian principles, it's fairly clear that both the Bush administration and the Obama administration acted on emotion and emotion alone.
• The health care bill might just be the biggest emotional statement of the past 25 years politically -- on both sides of the aisle.
• Leaders be damned if they would even critically look at the fact that the deficit is more of an issue with revenue than it is with spending, brought to us in part by clusterfuck tax code.
• There's no legitimate, secular reason from banning gay marriage. Gay marriage bans, and legalization, may be the greatest social emotional statements of the 21st century.
• The Republican presidential nomination race has degraded into a caricature of post-truth politics (Romney), outright demagoguery (Santorum), elitism (Paul), and hypocrisy (Gingrich).
• The Democratic Party, for the past four decades the alleged defenders of individual rights, stood by idly with NDAA.
• The Republican Party and Democratic Party do more to obstruct each other than to find solutions to alleged problems.

Need I really say more?

However, the biggest political enemy that everyday Americans have is not the politicians...it's everyday Americans. How, you ask?

By playing right along with emotional driven politics too many times of the time.