Political and Social argument

 



Subject: Political and social argument



One of the difficulties having a political argument is that the argument,  on both sides, is often full of factual mistruths filled with emotional holes, amplified by half truths. It’s the nature of an argument that it often runs away with itself and like a fast flowing river, carries away the solid sediment on which you had based your original proposition. It’s not a temper tantrum rather it’s the lack of substance in any political argument. The nature of politics, unlike scientific achievement  is at best contentious, the facts we quote to sustain our point of view are mostly anecdotal and even when not, often have a strong prejudicial bias.

Prejudice is a normal human trait, its part of our basic subculture, often formulated within the social substrata from which we are born and grow our opinions, it’s often the reason we believe ourselves to be the person we think we are, even if it conflicts with reality. Politics in fact equates to mysticism how else would we form opinions on such complex notions such as racism, the need for equality, the rights and wrongs of our social structure and so much more.
The complexity of a ‘Trans’ persons rights are but one of a growing awareness of the huge variety and variation in the human psychic and the more we dig into the fractured assumption of what we call normality the more we become unsteady in those beliefs which formed our opinions in the past.
Our sense of fair play and the righteous position we often take regarding ‘human rights’, rights is based on the search for equality and certain religious ideas which sadly often exclude the ‘the other persons rights’ in a “zero sum game” where rights and wrongs are not balanced out by an outcome which often does not  take into consideration the individual who does not benefit or is damaged by an action. The mass movement of poor people who argue they have to move for fear of their lives through conflict is closely tied to the economic migrant who wishes to remove his family from the travail of poverty and decides to move to another country looking for a better life. A perfectly reasonable proposition until one begins to consider the effect of the economic  displacement on the citizens who are suddenly faced with the consequences of a whole range of cause and effect when substantial  numbers of people seek a new home in a new country.
International commitments, made in the last 50 years were made with good will on the assumption that one’s own citizens would not forfeit their way of life or economic security and to argue that the commitments made when the national economic situation was very different and should not be set in stone . There is no historical president where a nation deliberately constrains its own people, to penury in observance of a previous commitment but we might just be embarking on such  road if migration is allowed to follow the course it appears to be on at the moment.
The impoverished nations of this world have always been geographically identifiable and it’s from those very countries that the bulk of this new immigration comes. Arguments about the evils of colonisation 300 years ago, that reparations are due to their relatives must therefore hold for every nation and since all of history is  full of rights and wrongs, their dependents must stand in line to be compensated.

If each ancestral condition is to be compensated then, if it can be shown there was any  betterment for a nation, or a tribe, perhaps the compensation should be discounted as being also part of their natural justice.  You never know these nations may end up owing us.

If the sins of mankind were indeed committed at a time when no such assumption would have crossed the minds of the colonists how should reparation become a legal duty when judged by the assumptions of today. Do treaty obligations, that wealthier nations have a responsibility to the worlds poor not have to take into account the skill that wealth creation and education brings with it.  Does the immigrant, if and when they make it to our shores not be obligated to make their own way or are we obligated to provide and provision them when sadly, over a similar period of time we make such a poor job of providing for our own. 
With the news that so many councils and municipalities are going bankrupt and they are having to face the fact that they can’t provide services to the existing electorate, what then. Not being able to supply basic services any more, does our obligation to people from the other side of the world become problematical. When the choice comes between family or those outside the family we normally choose family until that word entitlement crops up which then begs the question, are any of us entitled. Our entitlement, if it does exist, certainly should come with the caveat of a ‘family obligation’ not simply the mystical existence of a humanitarian responsibility.