Both Sides of Power

Both Sides of Power

 

When I was a teenager, I was arguing with my Dad, for we both loved to argue. At one point he said dismissively, “Ahhhh, you’ll become a conservative in your old age!” Stung to the quick, I retorted, “If so, then it’ll be on my own terms!” Looking back a half century, I see that both of our predictions came true.

          For now that I am 66 years old, I see that I have indeed become a Conservative; but on my own terms, for I am a Left Conservative. I like conserving various lefty things; the middle class, civil rights, women’s rights, worker’s rights, democracy, the environment, rule of law, and basic human decency. This is in contrast to the, quote, ‘Conservative’, unquote, movement on the Right, which is against conserving any of those things. Right-wing ‘conservatism’ is CINO: conservative in name only. Left conservatism, such as mine, is the only non-Orwellian conservatism left.

I do not know when the flip happened. Perhaps it was the 2000 election; for that was when the Democratic party was assigned the color blue, and the Republicans got the color red. It had been the other way around before. I was not consulted on this change; I merely found it all over the media one day.

I acquiesced, for it made sense. Blue is serene, cool and distant; it’s the color of sky and sea. Red is hot, passionate and violent; it’s the color of blood. This matches the temperments of the parties.

The swap of temperments is part of the circulation of aristocracies. And with the Right as the radical faction and the Left as the conservative faction, that means the factions swap the usual virtues and flaws of both radicalism and conservatism. Radicalism’s passion and energy, and also stupidity and fanaticism. Conservatism’s calm and experience, and also smugness and inflexibility.

Einstein said, “To punish me for my contempt for authority, Fate made me into one.”

          Or, to paraphrase “Both Sides Now”, by Joni Mitchell:

I’ve looked at power from both sides now

From in and out, and still somehow

It’s power’s illusions I recall

I really don’t know power at all.