Up Wing Politics

Up Wing Politics

I have strong beliefs—like most people—though I do try to hold them as loosely as is feasible, while still being able to leverage them to help me make decisions, build my moral framework (while also adjusting them to align with my moral framework, in return), and vote appropriately.

That said, I also tend to have a pragmatic streak, in that I believe we’re leaving a lot of low-hanging social fruit to rot on the vine; things we agree on, could collaborate on, should work together to achieve, but don’t, mostly because it’s easy to score political points by dunking on your ideological rivals in public, and in some cases because it’s become a perceived moral stain to ever reach across the ideological aisle for any purpose, ever.

This limits us, increases extreme tribal hate, and is a great way to permanently divide nations of people into warring sub-groups.

It’s also a good way to make sure big, important things seldom happen (or at least not at the scale and cadence they could happen, with more collaboration with those we’re told we’re supposed to hate because they’re different from us).

Here’s a piece I read on this topic recently: https://www.aei.org/articles/forget-about-left-wing-and-right-wing-how-about-an-up-wing-america/

This essay is flawed (“Up Wing”? Yeesh), and I’m not sure this is the perceptual shift that would nudge us back toward collaborating where there’s room for collaboration.

But I do think we need to figure out a way to defuse the crazed fringes of our animosity-driven politics, rebrand it as a positive to figure out ways to work with those with whom we disagree, and generally find more common ground (like, as this piece suggests, innovation, building infrastructure, and generally reinforcing the structure of society with progress of all kinds).

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