Political binaries

Political Binaries

The other day, I had a conversation with a party-line liberal who in response to my shtick about how much we need each other, including, especially?, blue needing red, said the liberal things liberals say, about how 70 million people voted for him though! And, what do you mean we need them, they’re so racist! And etc. etc. etc.

And I dramatically, because why not be dramatic? put my hand on their arm and looked them deep in the eyes and said, No no no no no we don’t start with racism. We start with, I need you. I need you so much. And you need me. What are we gonna do about how much we need each other?

I don’t have answers to everything on the whole long list of questions and quandaries and things resembling total impossibilities about what to do about where we are. Call this past week’s inauguration a devastation, a big big problem, an over-the-top hilarious spectacle, I’ll say amen.

I’m absolutely sure about a few things and this is one of them - binaries are a dead end road. Every single time. And we are stuck in a binary in this country, because we’ve been funneled into one for a long time, and now we’re stuck in one in our personal political consciousness.

Blue and red think the problem is how different they are from each other, while at the core being so so similar. Both of them think they’re right, they both think the problem is the other side.

This is binary consciousness and it’s a dead end road.

There’s no way to know what’s lifegiving and what’s harmful without each other. You’re deprived of them, they’re deprived of you and everyone’s missing some really important information.

I can’t tell you how many times, living in the neoliberal blue bubble I live in, I’ve heard some liberal say, wellll but that part of the state’s really red though so... Or, that would be a nice place to visit or live except for how red it is. And on and on about, those red states though.

And when it makes sense to chime in, I always say, you know where I’d move tomorrow if I was in a situation of needing more hands on care than I currently do? Like something terrible happened and my life really fell apart? A red state. Because even though you neoliberals are really sure you’re right about everything, it’s not even going to occur to you to show up at my door with a casserole.

We desperately need liberation from binaries. And what I know happens when we exit binaries is that a whole tidal wave of creativity and inspiration flows onto the scene. It’s like the expanse of the world opens up. A whole entire landscape of options is suddenly visible because we stopped believing it had to either be this or that.

Which include opening our imaginations back up about how to be a whole people. Finding out what happens when we let go of being right. It doesn’t mean you’re not right, it’s just that being right isn’t a path forward. Be right, have at it, while also being some other things too.

So in therapy there’s this thing that gets talked about called the “not-me” self. It’s the version of us that comes out under duress, or a specific context, or under circumstances that aren’t our norm, and it’s not what we consider to be our best self. So we manage that embarrassment and/or shame and/or humiliation by saying things like, I don’t know what happened, that’s so not me.

There’s the version of us we’d like to be and there’s the (whole) version of us we are.

When I talk about binary political consciousness, this is what I’m talking about. I’m talking about being oriented to this country, the United States of America, as though we aren’t really all one people.

Binary consciousness says, Blue is the us I want us to be, Red is the not-us I reject, and vice versa.

Here’s how this goes in the individual human psyche. The me we’ve said with horror and/or shock and/or embarrassment and/or shame isn’t me, carries on living inside the same system as the me we think we are or want to be. But that rejected me lives separated off from our primary identity, deprived of our care, attention, examination, love and awareness, resulting in all the kinds of things that have us going to therapy. Self-harm, mood disruption, problems relating to others, addiction, compulsivity of so many flavors, etc. etc.

Blue has decided Red isn’t under its purview of care. Red has decided Blue isn’t under its purview of care.

And this has gone on long enough that the powers that be - politicians backed up by mainstream media - have been able to sell an entirely separate reality to each of the colors.

Every election cycle the two colors duke it out trying to get their person to be in charge, and whichever side has their guy win feels relieved about having won, but worried in the back of their minds about what happens in the next round, and the side who's guy lost feels terrible and goes around for years saying how could they and plotting their strategy for winning the next one.

Binary consciousness.

It’s really really really not working.

I know the blue states are really mad at the red states for voting in such a horrible person for president, TWICE.

And what I’m saying with all this me/not-me psychology is that the blue states also made that happen. Blue not-me’d an entire half of the country, religiously, devotedly, enduringly for a long fuckin time. This kind of splitting always, always results in something catastrophic for the system that is housing both the loved AND the hated parts.

And here we are.

You all, I am so so weary of listening to liberals bitch about conservatives. Not the system, not the fuckin politicians, the actual conservative PEOPLE. They are not other. They are part of us. We are all part of the we. And we are not even close to acting like it.

My family of origin is conservative and even though in summer of 2020 we called a really effective truce on talking about things no one was one bit interested in changing their minds about - I know, a no-no in some liberal circles - the hum under the surface when I talked to my mom this past week for her 70th birthday was woah. Intense. (Yes that means she had me when she was 20 years old. Good lord.)

Please carry on making whatever space you need from the bullshit of your conservative family.

The lens I’m looking at political binaries through is a systems one. And binaries are a sign of indoctrination. There’s rigidity on the scene. Binaries are the death of creativity. Of pivoting. Of flexibility. Of staying in autonomy around choice.

Liberal binary consciousness is an indoctrination used for the purpose of control. You might have noticed it being wielded with all those “lesser of two evils” election appeals.

Effective indoctrination creates lots of funnels and channels back to itself. It gives its core principles lots of masks to wear. It plays on our desire to not just survive but be good and not just good, our best versions of ourselves. And then it plays a little bit more on our desire to survive.

Liberal indoctrination funnels us back into the destructive setup of the binary by saying -

-- If you are now not sure you want to read this list because maybe you’re doing one of these things, me too! Seriously! Don’t worry, embarrassment is the new cool. ;) I feel it regularly, we can do this. --

Things like -

💠 “You can’t use your privilege to look away, you have to stay with the trouble.” Definitely stay with the trouble, but reading the version of reality the New York Times is serving up ain’t the way to do it.

💠 I’ve seen this a million times on the internet - “If your beliefs deny my humanity, question my identity, or disregard my rights, then my reaction is not the problem.” I’m sorry but yes, hateful, disdainful, and mocking reactions are an enormous problem, as are the break ups/ice outs/mic drops around differences of BELIEF. Because they’re all a one-way ticket to the binary in which both conservatives AND liberals elected Trump as president.

💠 It being totally justified to stop with “I just can’t believe anyone would vote for him” without any actual curiosity and/or investigation into the real, true reasons people voted for him. I.e. Real engagement of empathy for what’s going on, for about half of the we that we are.

💠 And then the neoliberal move of having a Black Lives Matter sign in your yard without examination of the collusion with power that comes from economic status. Do antiracist work, absolutely, AND ALSO your class consciousness work. No, comparing yourself to your richer neighbor is not class consciousness work.

And maybe this is Seattle specific, I don’t know, but like NEVER taking a casserole to your neighbor or anyone you know when they need one. I.e. An absence of actual, real care.

You all, being indoctrinated is no one’s fault, it happens without us knowing it happened and it’s sneaky and super fuckin difficult to get out of us.

It’s just that - I’m gonna sneak one more liberal position in here - if you’re using a liberal spiritual lens on all of this that results in calling the other side “lower consciousness” while you then I guess? are running a “higher consciousness,” then let’s dig in together and find another way that stops leaning on hierarchies and superiority and do the actual “higher consciousness” thing.

Which is running real, Alive radical love and creativity.

I of course have ideas about that. And I don’t have nearly enough ideas about it, and thankfully! it’s not my job to have all the ideas about it. We do that together, we do it more together and then more together. And pretty soon liberals have learned how to show up with the fucking casserole from the dreaded red state people who are so often way better at actual hands on care and who of course need a massive ideology and attitude adjustment, as do we, as do they, as we all do and will as we get humble and for real turn to each other and work it the fuck out.