![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
My mom sends me political things which annoys me because I don't agree with her politically and I identify as an Independent so I don't tend to agree with either sides politically polarized stuff. This last email in particular irritated me though. It's called The Fence Test and I just has to send her a rebuttal. I thought some of you might like it as well.
A Rebuttal to the Fence Test
From a Progressive Independent
When a Conservative says:
If a Republican doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one.
If a Democrat doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.
The Progressive actually:
Saw or heard about a bunch of people being killed with military-grade weapons in the
hands of someone who shouldn't have and probably didn't pass a background check and say, "You can keep your handguns and shotguns and such, but can we please get the AK-47's off the civilian market? And stop letting crazy people having access to guns? And please stop saying we want 'all guns outlawed'. We already said you could keep your home-protection and hunting equipment."
When a Conservative says:
If a Republican is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat.
If a Democrat is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned or regulated for everyone.
The Progressive actually:
Wonders if the speaker has ever read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, because meat product regulation for everyone started when that guy went undercover and pointed out people who fell into the lard vat and died just got sold to us as regular lard the next day, amongst many other horrifying practices. Regulation exists because lots of people died when it didn't exist, and that goes for lots of things beyond meat regulation. As for wanting meat products banned, most vegetarians get that their lifestyle isn't for everyone and just want something they can eat without feeling the need to make everyone eat the same thing. The few that do want meat banned are overzealous and give vegetarians a bad name much the same way Fred Phelps gives Christians a bad name.
When a Conservative says:
If a Republican is homosexual, he leads his life.
If a Democrat is homosexual, he demands legislated respect.
The Progressive actually:
Has seen, heard, or even witnessed first-hand a gay person denied visitation rights to their loved one when in the hospital because they're technically not family because they can't get married nor the rights of a married person. Or unable to get said partner life-saving procedures or medicine because the one dying is too sick to work, they can't afford health insurance, and the partner who does work isn't allowed to put them on a shared policy because they're not married or have the same rights as a married couple, even if they've been together for decades. Or finding out after their partner is dead, their kids are going to go into foster care instead of staying with their only living parent because the survivor didn't provide the genetic material that created said kids. Adoption? Why would society let them adopt the kids they've been raising since said kids were born? They're gay.
It's not about respect. It's about wanting to be treated like a human being.
When a Conservative says:
If a Republican is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.
If a Democrat is down and out, he wonders who is going to take care of him.
The Progressive actually:
Tends to make better money on average than their conservative counterpart and doesn't think that's fair. The Christians follow Jesus' teaching of helping the weak and poor and the non-Christians have their beliefs that the poor should be helped and protected and atheists have lots of reports that prove income-equality is actually better for everyone. It gets institutionalized because there are plenty of rich, greedy people out there who won't help the poor unless they're forced or shamed into doing so and unless everyone works together, very little gets done.
When a Conservative says:
If a Republican doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels.
if a Democrat doesn't like a talk show host, he demands that he/she be taken off the air.
The Progressive actually:
In some cases, has proof said talk show host is, at the very least, spreading false, inaccurate information and, at worst, probably deserves being slapped with a slander suit. There's also a sense of justice in taking down someone who has said something hateful about us or someone we care about. That's not to say it's right, just that it's human nature. Although most intelligent people know getting your news from talk show hosts is the worst way to get accurate, unbiased information. It doesn't help that human nature also causes an interesting conundrum where if both sides get equal air-time and even manage to be mostly civil, both sides watching think the other side got more time and was more inflammatory than their side thus by trying to make everyone happy, no one is happy. We humans are only happy when we don't hear the opposite viewpoint at all or hear it twisted so that it demonizes the other. It's the us vs. them mentality and it makes even really smart people do really stupid things. Unfortunately, it makes civil conversations and getting anything done in the best interests of everyone very, very hard to do.
When a Conservative says:
If a Republican is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church.
If a Democrat is a non-believer, he wants any mention of God and religion silenced.
The Progressive actually:
Knows most people, no matter what their religious background, don't care if they're wished a 'Merry Christmas' in the US. They're more worried about people claiming the country is a Christian country, despite the fact many of the Founding Fathers were lambasted in their day by their peers for being non-religious or believing in the 'wrong' religion. In fact, many non-believers are afraid believers will make this country a Christian country and in doing so deny them their constitutional rights to freedom of religious expression, not to mention oligarchies have a bad habit of doing things like jihads, crusades, and other religious wars against people who don't share the same religion. This fear can sometimes take them a bit far in the opposite direction, especially if they're put on the defensive, much for the same reason fighting tends to get worse. You say what you believe and someone lambasts you about it, it's not about what you believe anymore; it's about protecting yourself and we've all said things we don't mean when we're trying to protect ourselves or someone else.
When a Conservative says:
If a Republican needs health care, he shops for it, or finds a job that provides it.
If a Democrat needs health care, he demands that the rest of us provide it.
The Progressive actually:
Knows the US is one of two First World countries that doesn't provide universal health care and as a result, we spend a lot more on health care per person than pretty much any other major world player. We also know people like Stephen Hawking would never have lasted long under the old system because of a lovely thing called discrimination. You see, there's this thing the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) attempts to eliminate called 'pre-existing condition'. If you have a pre-existing condition you either had to pay a lot more than most people can afford for health care or do without. This meant if you suddenly came down with cancer, which was considered a pre-existing condition, you were suddenly responsible for affording all of your cancer treatments out of pocket. What's more, some insurances redacted it and made you pay for the tests that found the cancer, even if they would have paid in full for it if the doctors hadn't found anything.
Know what else is considered a pre-existing condition? Being a woman. Another pre-existing condition is a being a victim of domestic violence. Side-by-side comparisons proved women paid more for the same insurance plan as men did, simply because they were women and thus more like to 1) see a doctor if they're sick (or being beaten on a regular basis) and 2) capable of getting pregnant. Oh, yeah, being pregnant was a pre-existing condition as well. And if you got a C-section, it was a pre-existing condition that didn't end once you gave birth. That means there's horror stories of new parents finding out their insurance doesn't cover maternity care, doctors finding out insurance won't cover a patient's emergency C-section, new mothers unable to get health insurance despite being perfectly healthy, etc. that are all absolutely true. Basically, if you're a woman or in a relationship with a woman, you're affected. Which means means everyone except gay men with no female kids who have been disowned by their families. And the insurance companies have entirely different ways to discriminate against the few people who fit in that category.
The reason most people aren't aware of this is the fact workplace anti-discrimination laws prevent the employers from passing it along to their employees, so your employer bites the difference. This affects business practices in various ways. If you have a choice between hiring two equally qualified people and the only difference is one is a man and the other is a woman, chances are the man is the one going to get hired for various reasons, up to and including it's cheaper to insure him. Unless the company is unscrupulous enough to think it can get away with paying the woman less in order to defray the cost of insuring her... And that's big companies. Small companies, especially ones made up primarily of women, find it next to impossible to insure their employees without bankrupting themselves. Said employees and people who work in jobs that don't provide that kind of stability (ie, actors, artists, writers, temp. workers, and increasingly most professional jobs in the US) find themselves trying to shop for insurance outside of our place of work and finding out exactly how expensive it is to get decent, not all that good coverage without our employer helping to defray the cost. And the kinds of people in that sort of situation (creative sorts, small business owners, start-up employees, etc.) don't tend to be conservative. If they were, they're probably not now.
Finally, we know the new system isn't perfect, or even all that great. But it does fix a lot of those things I just finished describing to you. The Affordable Care Act is primarily concerned with getting the cost health care down (hence the Affordable part) and has steps in place to make it happen at a gradual pace so it doesn't tank the economy. It helps people with pre-existing conditions and offers tax-credits to small businesses so they can insure their employees and to people whose job takes them from employer to employer and thus leaves them to insure themselves. There's things that could be a lot better about it but when opponents of it try to dismantle it at every turn, human nature makes those of us who think it's a better system than the old one rabidly defend it. Basically, we're saying you can replace the old ragged rug under our feet with a much nicer one once we're certain you're not just going to yank it out from under us and leave us with cold, hard concrete.
When a Conservative says:
If a Republican reads this, he'll forward it so his friends can reflect on it.
If a Democrat gets it, he will delete it because he's "offended".
The Progressive actually:
Took advantage of the fact I'm not a Democrat or a Republican and wrote a rebuttal to the whole thing, because the original list? Is a perfect example of us vs them mentality and demonizing the other. There's no facts to the original. Just what one Republican thinks his opponent is thinking and then forwarding it on to like-minded people. And most Democrats are probably "offended" because they don't think the way Republicans think they do. The thing is, there's a lot more overlap than most people realize. Politics makes itself exciting by setting themselves up as the winning team and making the other team seem less than human when most voters are actually somewhere in the middle of the political spectrum. And if someone doesn't agree with you? Doesn't mean they automatically believe the opposite of you. Chances are they just don't agree on a single detail rather than with the whole picture, and quite frankly that's like demonizing a person who likes the same band as you do for the same reasons but chose a different song as their favorite. Instead, try being open-minded and figuring out both sides of the story. And then for the fun of it, do something like take the quiz at votesmart.org. You might find out that by toeing the party line, you might actually be tossing your vote in with someone you don't agree with at all.
A Rebuttal to the Fence Test
From a Progressive Independent
When a Conservative says:
If a Republican doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one.
If a Democrat doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.
The Progressive actually:
Saw or heard about a bunch of people being killed with military-grade weapons in the
hands of someone who shouldn't have and probably didn't pass a background check and say, "You can keep your handguns and shotguns and such, but can we please get the AK-47's off the civilian market? And stop letting crazy people having access to guns? And please stop saying we want 'all guns outlawed'. We already said you could keep your home-protection and hunting equipment."
When a Conservative says:
If a Republican is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat.
If a Democrat is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned or regulated for everyone.
The Progressive actually:
Wonders if the speaker has ever read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, because meat product regulation for everyone started when that guy went undercover and pointed out people who fell into the lard vat and died just got sold to us as regular lard the next day, amongst many other horrifying practices. Regulation exists because lots of people died when it didn't exist, and that goes for lots of things beyond meat regulation. As for wanting meat products banned, most vegetarians get that their lifestyle isn't for everyone and just want something they can eat without feeling the need to make everyone eat the same thing. The few that do want meat banned are overzealous and give vegetarians a bad name much the same way Fred Phelps gives Christians a bad name.
When a Conservative says:
If a Republican is homosexual, he leads his life.
If a Democrat is homosexual, he demands legislated respect.
The Progressive actually:
Has seen, heard, or even witnessed first-hand a gay person denied visitation rights to their loved one when in the hospital because they're technically not family because they can't get married nor the rights of a married person. Or unable to get said partner life-saving procedures or medicine because the one dying is too sick to work, they can't afford health insurance, and the partner who does work isn't allowed to put them on a shared policy because they're not married or have the same rights as a married couple, even if they've been together for decades. Or finding out after their partner is dead, their kids are going to go into foster care instead of staying with their only living parent because the survivor didn't provide the genetic material that created said kids. Adoption? Why would society let them adopt the kids they've been raising since said kids were born? They're gay.
It's not about respect. It's about wanting to be treated like a human being.
When a Conservative says:
If a Republican is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.
If a Democrat is down and out, he wonders who is going to take care of him.
The Progressive actually:
Tends to make better money on average than their conservative counterpart and doesn't think that's fair. The Christians follow Jesus' teaching of helping the weak and poor and the non-Christians have their beliefs that the poor should be helped and protected and atheists have lots of reports that prove income-equality is actually better for everyone. It gets institutionalized because there are plenty of rich, greedy people out there who won't help the poor unless they're forced or shamed into doing so and unless everyone works together, very little gets done.
When a Conservative says:
If a Republican doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels.
if a Democrat doesn't like a talk show host, he demands that he/she be taken off the air.
The Progressive actually:
In some cases, has proof said talk show host is, at the very least, spreading false, inaccurate information and, at worst, probably deserves being slapped with a slander suit. There's also a sense of justice in taking down someone who has said something hateful about us or someone we care about. That's not to say it's right, just that it's human nature. Although most intelligent people know getting your news from talk show hosts is the worst way to get accurate, unbiased information. It doesn't help that human nature also causes an interesting conundrum where if both sides get equal air-time and even manage to be mostly civil, both sides watching think the other side got more time and was more inflammatory than their side thus by trying to make everyone happy, no one is happy. We humans are only happy when we don't hear the opposite viewpoint at all or hear it twisted so that it demonizes the other. It's the us vs. them mentality and it makes even really smart people do really stupid things. Unfortunately, it makes civil conversations and getting anything done in the best interests of everyone very, very hard to do.
When a Conservative says:
If a Republican is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church.
If a Democrat is a non-believer, he wants any mention of God and religion silenced.
The Progressive actually:
Knows most people, no matter what their religious background, don't care if they're wished a 'Merry Christmas' in the US. They're more worried about people claiming the country is a Christian country, despite the fact many of the Founding Fathers were lambasted in their day by their peers for being non-religious or believing in the 'wrong' religion. In fact, many non-believers are afraid believers will make this country a Christian country and in doing so deny them their constitutional rights to freedom of religious expression, not to mention oligarchies have a bad habit of doing things like jihads, crusades, and other religious wars against people who don't share the same religion. This fear can sometimes take them a bit far in the opposite direction, especially if they're put on the defensive, much for the same reason fighting tends to get worse. You say what you believe and someone lambasts you about it, it's not about what you believe anymore; it's about protecting yourself and we've all said things we don't mean when we're trying to protect ourselves or someone else.
When a Conservative says:
If a Republican needs health care, he shops for it, or finds a job that provides it.
If a Democrat needs health care, he demands that the rest of us provide it.
The Progressive actually:
Knows the US is one of two First World countries that doesn't provide universal health care and as a result, we spend a lot more on health care per person than pretty much any other major world player. We also know people like Stephen Hawking would never have lasted long under the old system because of a lovely thing called discrimination. You see, there's this thing the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) attempts to eliminate called 'pre-existing condition'. If you have a pre-existing condition you either had to pay a lot more than most people can afford for health care or do without. This meant if you suddenly came down with cancer, which was considered a pre-existing condition, you were suddenly responsible for affording all of your cancer treatments out of pocket. What's more, some insurances redacted it and made you pay for the tests that found the cancer, even if they would have paid in full for it if the doctors hadn't found anything.
Know what else is considered a pre-existing condition? Being a woman. Another pre-existing condition is a being a victim of domestic violence. Side-by-side comparisons proved women paid more for the same insurance plan as men did, simply because they were women and thus more like to 1) see a doctor if they're sick (or being beaten on a regular basis) and 2) capable of getting pregnant. Oh, yeah, being pregnant was a pre-existing condition as well. And if you got a C-section, it was a pre-existing condition that didn't end once you gave birth. That means there's horror stories of new parents finding out their insurance doesn't cover maternity care, doctors finding out insurance won't cover a patient's emergency C-section, new mothers unable to get health insurance despite being perfectly healthy, etc. that are all absolutely true. Basically, if you're a woman or in a relationship with a woman, you're affected. Which means means everyone except gay men with no female kids who have been disowned by their families. And the insurance companies have entirely different ways to discriminate against the few people who fit in that category.
The reason most people aren't aware of this is the fact workplace anti-discrimination laws prevent the employers from passing it along to their employees, so your employer bites the difference. This affects business practices in various ways. If you have a choice between hiring two equally qualified people and the only difference is one is a man and the other is a woman, chances are the man is the one going to get hired for various reasons, up to and including it's cheaper to insure him. Unless the company is unscrupulous enough to think it can get away with paying the woman less in order to defray the cost of insuring her... And that's big companies. Small companies, especially ones made up primarily of women, find it next to impossible to insure their employees without bankrupting themselves. Said employees and people who work in jobs that don't provide that kind of stability (ie, actors, artists, writers, temp. workers, and increasingly most professional jobs in the US) find themselves trying to shop for insurance outside of our place of work and finding out exactly how expensive it is to get decent, not all that good coverage without our employer helping to defray the cost. And the kinds of people in that sort of situation (creative sorts, small business owners, start-up employees, etc.) don't tend to be conservative. If they were, they're probably not now.
Finally, we know the new system isn't perfect, or even all that great. But it does fix a lot of those things I just finished describing to you. The Affordable Care Act is primarily concerned with getting the cost health care down (hence the Affordable part) and has steps in place to make it happen at a gradual pace so it doesn't tank the economy. It helps people with pre-existing conditions and offers tax-credits to small businesses so they can insure their employees and to people whose job takes them from employer to employer and thus leaves them to insure themselves. There's things that could be a lot better about it but when opponents of it try to dismantle it at every turn, human nature makes those of us who think it's a better system than the old one rabidly defend it. Basically, we're saying you can replace the old ragged rug under our feet with a much nicer one once we're certain you're not just going to yank it out from under us and leave us with cold, hard concrete.
When a Conservative says:
If a Republican reads this, he'll forward it so his friends can reflect on it.
If a Democrat gets it, he will delete it because he's "offended".
The Progressive actually:
Took advantage of the fact I'm not a Democrat or a Republican and wrote a rebuttal to the whole thing, because the original list? Is a perfect example of us vs them mentality and demonizing the other. There's no facts to the original. Just what one Republican thinks his opponent is thinking and then forwarding it on to like-minded people. And most Democrats are probably "offended" because they don't think the way Republicans think they do. The thing is, there's a lot more overlap than most people realize. Politics makes itself exciting by setting themselves up as the winning team and making the other team seem less than human when most voters are actually somewhere in the middle of the political spectrum. And if someone doesn't agree with you? Doesn't mean they automatically believe the opposite of you. Chances are they just don't agree on a single detail rather than with the whole picture, and quite frankly that's like demonizing a person who likes the same band as you do for the same reasons but chose a different song as their favorite. Instead, try being open-minded and figuring out both sides of the story. And then for the fun of it, do something like take the quiz at votesmart.org. You might find out that by toeing the party line, you might actually be tossing your vote in with someone you don't agree with at all.
