Among the shows I used to watch as a child was Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.  In every episode, Fred Rogers would whisk his viewers away to “the land of make believe.”  It has been quite some time since any reader of this column has been a child.  However, insofar as we involve ourselves in any capacity in politics, we continue to visit a land of make believe.

Given that it consists largely of myths, it should come as no surprise to hear that the world of politics is as close to a land of make believe as any adult is going to visit.  In the popular imagination, it is a truism that politicians are liars.  Certainly there are politicians who fit this description; but I don’t think politicians are more prone than anyone else to lie.  Politics is for the most part like play, an activity during which truth is suspended.  Perhaps many Americans are aware of this, and it is this insight, infrequently unconscious though it is, that accounts for why politics has acquired the less than flattering reputation that it has.  But if play precludes the category of truth, it precludes as well that of falsity.  That is to say, although politicians may not speak the literal truth, this doesn’t necessarily mean that they are lying. 

There are two things of which to take note here. First, this is no defense of politicians.  Politics is like play, but because it isn’t identical with play, it is far from clear that any political actor deserves a pass for his or her suspension of the truth.  Second, it isn’t just politicians who are engaged in make believe, for it isn’t just politicians who are political actors: all of us who participate in politics are actors as well.  What this in turn means is that all of us who participate in politics are no less guilty of pretending than are politicians.  It also implies that if politicians are liars for their non-true utterances, than we are liars for ours.

Take, for example, those politicians, pundits, and voters associated with the Republican Party—i.e. “conservatives.”  Those who belong to this group claim to champion such things as “limited government,” “personal accountability,” “fiscal responsibility,” and “national security.”  Yet for as often as the party faithful iterate these “principles,” it is doubtful—impossible really—that anyone can truly believe that they represent anything meaningful. 

These bumper sticker slogans that somehow or other have succeeded in becoming the stuff of Republican pep rallies possess an elasticity that renders them all purpose devices. They are compatible with all manner of policies, both those that are characteristically advocated by Republicans as well as those advanced by Democrats.   

After all, no government can literally be unlimited in scope; there will always be areas of life that even the most powerful totalitarian governments simply won’t be able to do anything about.   And, as far as I can determine, there are no true believers in national insecurity, fiscal irresponsibility, and/or personal unaccountability. 

Only in the world of make believe that is our political reality could anyone genuinely endorse the notion—at no time more strongly underscored than during each election season—that our two national parties are engaged in a “fundamental philosophical conflict.”  Coupled with this fiction is another: nothing less than the ultimate fate of America herself hinges on the outcome of the next election.  All of this makes great drama, but none of it is true, for there is no fundamental disagreement between Republicans and Democrats, right and left: when they differ, our establishment political actors differ in degree, not kind. 

Consider any of the major issues that compose our politics.

All Democrats and most Republicans: support an income tax; present levels of legal immigration from the third world; Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security in some form or other; and “civil unions.”  There is considerable agreement between the two parties on the need for “comprehensive immigration reform”—a euphemism for de facto amnesty—vis-à-vis the millions of illegal immigrants living amongst us.  And although Abraham Lincoln achieved a “fundamental transformation” of America the likes of which Barack Obama can only dream, and although Martin Luther King was an avowed leftist, both men are regarded as virtual saints by Republican and Democrat alike. 

Republicans purport to despise political correctness, yet they repeatedly legitimize the litany of politically correct sins.  When Democrats support affirmative action and Welfare, ridicule or attack black Republicans, or reject school vouchers, Republicans attribute all of this to their “racism.”  For that matter, because a disproportionately large number of abortions involve black fetuses, Republicans have even taken to accusing Democrats’ support of abortion rights as being fueled by “racism.”

Republicans are as incensed about “sexism” as they are “racism.”  If Sarah Palin, Michele Bachman, or any other Republican woman comes under attack by their political rivals, it must be because of “sexism.”  And among the reasons that Republicans regularly submit for their outrage over the injustices that prevail in the Islamic world, one of the reasons why more American soldiers must forfeit their lives, if need be, is the “sexist” treatment of women there. 

It is true that while few political actors from either party as of yet will overtly endorse so-called “same sex marriage,” lest anyone suspect them of being “homophobic,” few will conceal their enthusiastic support for “civil unions.”  In fact, so opposed are Republicans to “homophobia” that, along with “sexism,” it is for the sake of combating this evil that they argue employing our troops to places like Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Republicans are at least as committed as Democrats to social engineering, whether the society to be managed is our own or some other.  Truthfully, because Democrats tend not to have any of the zeal for the mission to democratize the world upon which Republicans would like for us to embark, the latter have an even stronger faith in the power of Big Government than the former.

Perhaps it is time for us to separate the world of make believe for the real world.

Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.