. © Blaine Howard
552 Words

The New Political Geography

Before our eyes the political projection has changed with nearly the drama that Mercator's replacement of flat maps must have evoked. The terms of orientation remain the same, but, thanks to certain "journalists" "pundits" and politicians, the prime meridian and lines of longitude have drastically shifted.

Previously, I thought I was well oriented on the subject. In nursery school I was introduced to laterality. The way I memorized it was that the heart is on the left and I was to pledge the flag with my opposite, right hand over my heart.

Later I learned that, politically speaking, Liberals are people who invite the extension of democracy, the more even distribution of wealth and the protection of civil liberties. Conservatives are individuals who would prefer the status quo of halcyon days, but at least, desire to preserve and maintain certain social and political traditions. Moderates, I was informed, are those who would not actively promulgate government social policies but might appreciate the logic and value of some that are already in force. Moderates constituted the prime meridian, political latitudes just to the left of them contained liberals, those just to the right, conservatives.

In the last couple of years a political whirlwind has blown the keystones of this structure radically to the left. Now, the center line is represented by Reaganite ideology. Anyone who endorses New Deal programs is a liberal, and anyone who aggressively advocates civil rights, environmental protections and discretion in the use of our military is a far-leftist, a leftist kook, a bomb thrower, and out of the proverbial "mainstream." Conversely, those who wish to roll up the carpet of civil rights and protections for the vulnerable among us but can probably be counted on to stop short of the reinstitution of slavery or child labor peonage are called mainstream conservatives.

Having enjoyed a long college career, I was fairly confident that I already knew what a far-leftist was. He or she was, I believed, for example, a humorless hawker of the Spartacus Youth League newsletter, or an espouser of anarchism. He or she was not someone who admired the founding documents and principles of this country and wanted to work to match daily life in America more nearly with them through reform, but wanted to demolish the American government in favor of some poorly conceived utopia. He was, to provide a vivid example, the fellow at an Anti-Apartheid meeting I was attending who sported a button with the acronym CPMLS.

Being, as I alluded to above a fairly canny individual, I knew that CPML stood for Communist Party Marxist-Leninist, but was stumped by the S until answering my inquiry, he spouted proudly "Why Stalinist of course". This was a far leftist, so far as to practically represent the meeting of East meets West. In light of this truth, calling Nancy Pelosi a far-leftist is a failure of classification that no 7th grade science fair winner would accede to.

I am troubled by the spectre of the extension of this phenomenon into other aspects of social life. Will the continental divide be relocated at the Pacific Ocean? Will the east now extend into the Corn Belt? Will traffic directions, with their abundance of rights and lefts continue to reliably guide a driver to a destination? Will we be left with any well-grounded sense of right---- and wrong?