The Twin Brothers Of Intolerance, Bigotry and Ignorance

Please allow me the opportunity to borrow a cartoon from the late great editorial cartoonist Thomas Nast as the basis for my observations.  Take away the label "Black" and "White" and replace them with the antics that are seen on the extreme polar opposites between Conservative-Fundamentalists and Progressive-Fundamentalists.   In doing so you will see that they make use of the very same tactics, merely customizing them for their unique perspective. They are actually interdependent as they need each other to form the "antagonist" who they are threatened by and struggle against.

In my observations of the current events at hand in our nation "The Coalitions Of The Ignorant" show their face at every transactional point of contention in our society.

The Right Wing "Remember Those Glory Days" Buff

As he recently celebrated his accomplishment in having seceded from the oppressive United States of America to form their own "Confederate States Of America" they decided to honor the great deeds of their ancestors without giving the full complement of their deeds.  Having recently watched the documentary "How The States Got Their Shapes" I am familiar with all of the "great works" that their ancestors have done to form the boundaries in America that we know them today.

They appear loathed to acknowledge the great labor force that was amassed which did the landscaping and tended to the cash crops which brought the owners great profit.  Their ancestors did not do all of this work alone and yet it seems that if they did in fact enumerate the large but faceless band of individuals who were imported to assist - their celebration might have to be opened up to welcome the descendants of those who did the labor AND the "work rules" that they worked under.  Though they were not invited to the festivities they came anyway, as protesters outside of the event.

It is far easier for them to tip toe through the 'uncomfortable' parts of their ancestor's existence than it is for them to be tell a transparent tale which more accurately represents history.

At minimum this type of "historian" should acknowledge the wrongs of the past and commit to a future in which this will never happen again.

He shows that "race" is not his only hold up.  He also made large strands of "his own people" as wage slaves, stuck in the urban ghettos of the industrial North, prior to the movement which brought forth more balance between "ownership" and "labor".

Indeed this is a great nation as this faction will attest to.  The "visionary brilliance" of the Founding Fathers were not without some serious flaws felt by those who had the misfortune of being:

• The wrong race
• The wrong national origin
• The wrong gender
• The wrong economic class

The Left Wing "Always Selling A Glorious Future By Disassembling The Constructs From The Past" Operative

Not to be outdone by his right wing friend on the seesaw is the Progressive-Fundamentalist, armed with a tattered copy of "The People's History Of The United States", he goes about seeking to add his own modern day "brilliance" to reinspect the "cultural and judicial precedents" that were cast by "dead men" who were 

• Capitalists
• Religocrats
• Racists
• Misogynists 
• Homophobes

Today's "Progressive-Fundamentalists" are smarter than those highly flawed men of the past.  They used oppressive and constrictive forces to erect a cultural dogma which suppressed the freedom and individuality for the homogeneity of the whole.  In the process of doing so they painted the great expanse that is grey into the colors of black or white.

Our progressive-fundamentalist is proudest of his ability to articulate the vast shades of grey on every subject as a testament to his "high intellectualism and inclusiveness": ash, ashen, cinereal, clouded, dappled, dingy, dove, drab, dusky, dusty, grey, heather, iron, lead, leaden, livid, mousy, neutral, oyster, pearly, peppery

As he unravels the cornerstones of culture that brought our society to where it stands today he looks out and sees oppression and imbalance in the domain of his focus.  He is unable to see that the broader world has far more imbalance.  Of this imbalance in the larger world that he does see - he is convinced that the system that he has the fortune to live within caused the great imbalance in the rest of the world.  He obtains a cathartic experience as he condemns the system that he lives in and shames it into undoing the damage that it wrought elsewhere.  He is unable to see any "organic" damage that was initiated elsewhere purely by the greed and underhandedness that took place among those people.

In the places where his ideology is now "the last man standing" and thus people are free to live as they please the sign of continued dysfunction is quite disconcerting to him.  As the people live as they please run into certain "unanticipated consequences" from their actions our friend turns back to the system that he has diluted (ie: the church) and accuses it of being so marinated in their own hatred and bigotry that they refuse to apply adequate assistance to those who are now in need.  These, the very people who the institutions were asked to "mind their own business", this is 2010 and not 100 BC when their dogma was created.

We know from observations that this progressive-fundamentalist will be at all "ribbon cuttings" which show case the new "liberties" that have been permitted among the masses as certain chains of social and cultural norms are sawed off.

Unfortunately he is no where to be found when circumstances show that what was thought to be a "chain" of bondage was actually a guide rail which worked to channel productive human behavior through a straight and narrow for more productive and functional ends to be expressed.   The modern day progressive-fundamanentalist is loathed to believe that the societies from 2000 years ago ALSO struggled with the same "human and societal" issues that we are dealing with today.  In as much as we are 100% genetically similar and that MAN DOES NOT CHANGE, only his technology changes - the process of disassembling the fabric of cultural dogma only to experience a different set of problems - but problems just the same - shows that his agenda was not "correction" but instead it was to position himself as "smarter than his ancestors".  His hand is now burned from the same stove that they tried to warn him about.