Compromise and Contradiction

I have conservative friends who despise the Republican Presidential candidate^ but could never stomach voting for any Democratic Presidential nominee because it would contradict their conservative ideals.

I have liberal friends who also—no surprise—despise the Republican Presidential candidate and also could not stomach voting for the Democratic Presidential nominee because it would violate their progressive ideals.

I've also got friends who don't vote at all because it violates their Christian conscience. I know folks who "donate" their votes to immigrants and felons.

Voting means different things to different folks. For some, it is just one of many levers a citizen can pull to exert influence on the political system. For others, it is a form of pledging a type of allegiance. Depending on your view, a vote for a candidate you have fundamental disagreements with is just a necessary part of living in a flawed democracy. For others, it can be an unconscionable act of betrayal.

I, for one, am not much for centrism, middle paths, compromise solutions, or mediating positions. I strongly believe that Jesus takes sides, centrism hurts those who have the most to lose, and middle paths usually exist to support white, straight, cis, able-bodied comfort. There should be no compromise on human rights and dignity.

I am also aware that progressivism can be prone to a type of self-defeating purity culture. No doubt, this exists within conservatism as well. However, the GOP seems much more willing to close ranks and deeply (deeply) compromise to conserve power and appear as a single monolith. In contrast, the Democrats' greatest strength is their diversity. Simultaneously, this greatest strength can easily turn into rancor and ideological silos. When everyone believes that their position is the One True Position, even small differences can appear to be threats.

(Side note: I think one of the most significant things I've learned since moving out of conservative rural Iowa and into deeply progressive DC is that there is such a large spectrum of ideas within the world of progressive politics. The Right would love for you to believe that the Left is one big monolithic threat to freedom. The reality is that I have discovered much more complexity and diversity within Progressive political thought than within Conservative. I don't deny both have spectrums of ideas within each side. But the Right seems to be almost embarrassed by that fact, while the Left champions it).

While I find moderate centrism odious, I'm also a big believer that perfection should not be the enemy of progress. Realpolitik demands dealing with reality as it is, messy and dirty and riddled with compromise. But what price is too high for progress? What position or idea is so far short of perfection that it's not even worth pursuing? When does compromise turn into outright contradiction?

The United States should not be in the business of selling weapons, and certainly not selling weapons to a country committed to horrific violence against children and a displaced people. It's evil, baptized in a fountain of martial profit. But not once have I ever had the opportunity to vote for a major-party Presidential candidate who's agreed with me. I doubt I ever will. Is that grounds to never vote for any major-party Presidential candidate? Does my conscience demand that I opt-out of all Presidential elections? If I compromise on voting for a Presidential candidate who supports genocide, have I ventured out of compromise and into contradiction with the rest of my supposedly progressive viewpoints?

It's worth noting that if you do know someone who answers "Yes" to those above questions (and I do know folks like that), I don't believe that's the same as someone "handing the election to the bad guys." Voting for the President (or not) is just one of the many levers available to American citizens. While it's important, I'm not convinced it's the most important or even the most effective lever to pull for a just civilization.

That said, my conscience tells me that voting within our gawd-awful two-party system is a necessary thing for me to do to (possibly, maybe, geez, I hope so) move us towards some kind of progress and protect people I love from an administration bent on bigotry and hatred. My vote does not equal a full-throated endorsement of every policy a candidate espouses. The right thing to do is to vote and speak out against bad policy and advocate for good policy and live in such a way that my behavior aligns with my policy positions.

In writing the above paragraph, I am reminded that I have to begrudgingly admit that someone who votes for the Republican candidate is not necessarily giving a full-throated endorsement of every policy that that candidate espouses. Generally, I believe that using who someone voted for President as a direct corollary to someone's entire political worldview is as illogical as using someone's pants size to determine if they are "healthy" or not. There are simply better, more direct questions to ask. "Oh you voted for Biden, I bet you support Israel's attack on Gaza," is not a necessary conclusion. If you want to know someone's position on Israel, ask that. Similarly, "Oh you voted for Trump, I bet you support a ban on abortion," is also not a necessary conclusion.

As the show The Good Place taught us, we're in a broken world filled with broken systems offered a series of bad choices. There is no such thing as a no-compromise life. That cannot be used as excuse to therefore do whatever the hell we want. Instead, we must acknowledge that what my conscience deems an acceptable compromise may be deemed unacceptable by another person's conscience. And, knowing that, I have fewer things to be angry about. And we all have enough to be angry about these days.

^I purposely avoided naming the nominees of each party because I really don't want or need the associated web traffic when people Google those names.