“We’ve got spirit — yes, we do! We’ve got spirit! How ‘bout you?!”
Then went the other side…
“We’ve got spirit — yes, we do! We’ve got spirit! How ‘bout you?!”
And after a few more back-and-forths of the familiar, middle school cheer, one side would boldly break into…
“We’ve got more! We’ve got more!”
To which the opponent would equally, brashly retort…
“That’s what they all say!”
Forgive me. We were only 12. Maybe 13, 14… 15 at best. While we cheered in zest for our Falcons and Stars, there typically wasn’t that much animosity. Emphasis on “that much.”
The implication, no less, was that “we” — aka “me” or “my team” — had definitively more spirit than the opposition. In fact, sometimes — especially if we played those perceived vicious Cardinals (sorry, remember our frontal lobes weren’t fully formed yet) — the implication was not just that we had more, but that we were the only ones who had it. In our support, loyalty, fandom or whatever you want to call it, we simply assumed in our passion that because spirit was important to us — we had it, felt it, and ardently believed in it — that there was no possible way it could manifest itself in our opposition. This wasn’t even a debate, friends. At the very least, we had more.
Sometimes I feel as if middle school has somehow magically transported itself to current culture… only now we have more money and use bigger words. Because we feel something strongly, we assume our perceived vicious opposition doesn’t have what we have… there’s no way it could manifest itself differently…
Note the following…
Republicans dispute Democrats’ belief in patriotism; we heard it much during the candidacy and tenure of Pres. Obama. Democrats dispute Republicans’ belief in democracy; we hear it now in promotion of their desired legislative agenda.
Please.
I mean no disrespect. I simply refuse to believe the Democrats or Republicans as a whole don’t belief in either patriotism or democracy; certainly there are some outliers in each party; certainly, too, a biased media cannot be trusted to promote accurate representations of what each party/party member believes. Hence, who/what we listen to matters. So why then do multiple leaders of each party continue to attempt to convince us that the opposition is either unpatriotic or undemocratic?
I’ll take a brief stab…
Because patriotism — defined as a devotion to and support of our country — is a good thing… Because democracy — defined as a system of government in which everyone is treated equally — is a good thing… And if one party can convince us that the opposition is null and void of such a good thing, then maybe, just maybe they can convince us to only support and vote for them — to put/keep them in power. Maybe we’ll be so disturbed, enraged, or fill-in-the-negative-adjective-here, that we’ll never take the time to notice the lack of integrity in the accusing party.
That’s key to the current voting rights question. In this country, two things are true: one, every eligible voter should have access to vote, and two, no ineligible vote should be cast; both work in conjunction with one another in order to ensure the “consent of the governed” occurs.
The competing challenge, however, is that party victory is often prioritized more than the above “one” or “two.” Hence, rather than wrestling honestly with one party’s own incongruity, inconsistency and undeniable contradictions pending their position when in or out of power, it’s often easier to instead valiantly work to get others to perceive the opposition as vicious…
… acting like they have none of those good things… acting like we’ve got more… and acting as if we’re all back in middle school again.
Respectfully… and wanting what’s better and best…
AR