Partisan Politics, Left/Right dichotomies & Useless generalizations.

I cringe while watching cable news without a filter like Jon Stewart. Pure absurdity. Blind nationalism. Nothing but religiosity. Once in a while someone asks a good question, but overall, its just horrid. This applies to both Canadian and American cable news.

Why?
I could get into a long list, but for now I am going to focus on a particular aspect that is not only found in the news, but in everyday political conversation. Engaging in political dialogue without a theoretical underpinning is absolutely meaningless.

In short, it could be labeled as 'pigeonholing' - "If you are not with us, you are with them"

Here are a few examples:

Gay Marriage Example:
If I were to say, 'I am against the gay marriage bill that recently passed in NYC,' I would immediately be labeled as a traditionalist conservative blah blah republican. Usually I start off with something provocative just to see the response. Then I would need to explain that marriage is entangled within a heteropatriachal understanding of society and should be abolished.. and also, what might be even more provocative.. this bill only ensnares the gay population within this paradigm and ultimately helps to uphold it.

Unions Example:
A couple months back there were teachers unions striking in Wisconsin against the withholding of collective bargaining rights. Right now we are seeing the spread of that loss throughout the US of A.

To put it simply, the modern union is just a player within the political economic game, like corporations and governments. [Most] Unions have lost their potential for being a revolutionary tool and have become merely liberal, reformist entities which help to uphold the status quo. Especially teachers unions.

I will speak more about this in a later web log.

Even the idea of 'having a right' needs to be critically examined.. but this is another huge topic which will need its own limelight as well.

And finally, Net Neutrality:


The point is this:
The options left to us are either governmental rule or corporate rule; with critical thinking, we realize that there are underlying options which are not presented to us because of systematic constrains.

As simple as it may seem, it is very difficult to realize that playing the political-economic game undermines revolutionary efforts. Left/Right dichotomies, unions vs corporations, democrats vs republicans, etc., all these are examples of the idiocy known as partisan politics.

With the absence of critical thinking, comes the absence of options available to us which are not entangled to 'the game.'