Political Obsession

I believe that most people in America are reasonable and deal with life in a more or less moderate way. Each of us sure have their unreasonable moments every once in a while, but in general most of us don’t get fixated on one or few particular issues and keep complaining about and/or discussing them endlessly without any specific objective in mind.

The extremities of our political life, however, are populated by people who have their fixation on certain issues. No matter what happens in or to the country or the world, they can’t get out of their fixation and they keep talking and arguing, mostly among themselves, about issues the reasonable Center usually discarded or settled long time ago and are no longer a pressing issue of concern or debate for them.The USA may be in the midst of a foggy struggle with undefined, but real and dangerous, enemy (or enemies) and the USA may be facing an economic downturn and serious credit crunch but each group of the people on the extremities are obsessed with its own issue whether it is Political Correctness, Going Green, Communism, Socialism, Taxing the rich, Smoking, Affirmative Action or ... etc they cant stop talking about it and have no reasonable limits on what they want to achieve. No smoking anywhere even in your home, no taxes on the rich because they hire people, change the way you make French fries because people get fat and heart attacks, no government involvement in setting reasonable policies for major issues, total government control of every aspect of people’s life … etc.

Most people don’t mind using words like "Christmas", "Disabled", and they don’t care much for a government that doesn’t care about the well-being of its citizens but the people on the far left and the far right argue about that endlessly. Most people don’t like communism or socialism, never have and never will, and both systems collapsed long time ago but the extremities' occupants keep trying to scare people from them in order to justify their efforts to undermine any government involvement in dealing with society's problems and to eliminate progressive tax policies. Most people don’t smoke where they are not supposed to but you still find some group trying to prevent people from smoking in their cars or in their homes as if they were appointed by God to safe-guard the health of others. The reasons and logic behind Affirmative Action have been settled and accepted by the majority long time ago but the Obsession with discussing it still flaring in the extremities. Most people realize that there is a problem with CO2 emissions but someone is trying to outlaw BQ’s (and lawn mowers!!!) as if that is the only thing they can think of to help the environment.

The odd thing is that the people occupying the extremities have no consistent logic at all in discussing these issues. They use whatever suits their objective at the moment. If they have to switch positions next day to defend their position they have no problem doing that. One day the Rule of the Majority is sacred, the next day it is the tyranny of the majority. One day Corporations are Public Enemy No.1, the next day they must stop moving their businesses overseas.

It is becoming annoying..... I wish the people of the extremities get a grip and think reasonably every once in a while. An election year is a good time to be less obsessive about certain issues and less extreme in our positions and concentrate on the more pressing issues facing our Nation and address them with reasonable policies.