Caught Between Two Speedboats

"I tend to think both parties are speedboats with open throttles, piloted by dogs."

by Phil Vischer

Watching a political convention is an odd experience when you feel at home in neither party. You notice the inspiring rhetoric. And the false and misleading statements. You notice the knuckleheads outside the convention center. You wonder how one party came to be so fanatically committed to unfettered access to assault weapons. And the other to unfettered access to abortion.

If you’re old enough, you remember that this was not always the case, and that both parties adopted their current positions primarily as a reaction to... the other party. And so at one convention they’re raffling off assault rifles, a weapon designed to take a human life, as political theater. And at the other convention they’re giving away free abortions, a medical procedure designed to take a human life, as political theater.

On TwiXter you see one bunch of Christians praise a speech as the best thing they’ve ever heard, while another bunch decries it as words straight from the pit of Hell. Some say one party is the party of progress and the other the party of regress. Or one is the party of God and the other of Satan.

I tend to think both parties are speedboats with open throttles, piloted by dogs. Of course you realize, by finding yourself comfortable in neither dog-piloted speedboat, people will accuse you of “both-sides-ism” and underplaying the unadulterated evil of the “other” party, and you’ll probably wind up in Meg Basham’s next book, linked on a bulletin board with red yarn to either a Jewish banker or Satan himself. And you think to yourself, tribalism is a heckuva drug.

So you change the channel and find a documentary about the making of “Galaxy Quest.” And you enjoy the rest of your evening.