Imagine a game of tug-of-war. You and your team are facing up against another team. You get a good grip on the rope. If you look at the rope, at all the different fibers composing it, there’s life and joy and opportunity and wealth and family and conviction and beauty all braided together. The rope is everything! You can NOT lose this game.
The struggle begins. You pull with all your might. The rope doesn’t move. The other side is an even match. You pull and strain and glare at the other team.
But then you notice something. The other team is pulling toward a cliff! You can see it as clear as day, if that team wins, everyone goes over the cliff. And the rope of everything will be lost.
So you start yelling at the other team, warning them of the danger. Most of them think it’s a trick and just keep pulling, but one person believes you and moves over to your team. That changes things! You take a step backward. And another. You’re winning! But then you hear someone on the other team. They say that YOU are backing directly toward a cliff.
You stop moving backward. They have to be lying, don’t they? How could there be a cliff behind both teams? But then two people switch sides. And that team starts moving back toward their cliff. No time to worry if your side is backing toward a cliff, they are for sure. Pull! Pull with everything you have or you lose it all!
Now take yourself out of that situation and take an objective look at this game. There is a cliff behind their team. But they weren’t lying: there’s a cliff behind your team too. As long as both sides are pulling equally, everything is fine. But balance is such a hard thing to maintain. You see people switching sides, back and forth. One side starts to have the upper hand, then the other. From an outside perspective, it’s so clear, either side winning means everyone loses.
I have talked before about finding balance within oneself, “between virtue and vice” as I put it, but balance is needed in everything, including politics. I find this tug-of-war metaphor sums up my feelings about the struggle between conservatism and liberalism, the struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie, the struggle between any two political forces.
The French liberals pulled France right off the cliff into the Reign of Terror. Then the proletariat pulled the Russians off the cliff into Soviet dictatorship. Most of South America is far too good at tug-of-war. Argentina likes to fall off the cliff on the Left, get dragged back to balance by the Right, then the moment the right starts to get the upper hand, they go straight off the Left cliff again. Chile tumbled off the cliff into Rightwing dictatorship in the ‘70s and has been pulled back into balance, though the Left is currently pulling hard as they near their own cliff.
We need the tension. We need the fight. Either side would happily pull everyone over the cliff, so neither side can afford to stop pulling. But we, the noble flip-flopper fence-sitters, must do our part to make sure neither side wins.
