Earlier this week I was talking with a friend of mine who also happens to be a Republican and he said something I found both fascinating and frightening.  Just how we got onto the subject I don’t remember, and it is not really important.  What is important is what he said.  “It’s the Democrats fault that we have Trump as President now.  If they hadn’t nominated Obama a second time Trump wouldn’t be President.”

Now just think about what he said for a minute.  What he is saying is that it is Trump got the Republican nomination and was elected President because the Democrats nominated Obama for a 2nd term, and he one.  That Trump’s election is a reaction to electing Obama.  Not Hillary Clinton being nominated, but Obama four years before! What we have here is a great example of ‘Gaslighting’ and blaming the victim.

I will tak on ‘Blaming the Victim’ first.  Just to be totally clear this is what the local bully says, when you were a little kid, says “If you’d just do what I say, I wouldn’t need to bound on you” an you have no idea what he want’s you to do/say.  It is what many a wife beater says and what many of the beaten wives too often think.  And it is so untrue it is unbeleaveable anyone would except it.

Somepeople think/accept this because they have been systematically Gaslighted by someone.  They have drunk The “Koolaid”.  This is just the thing this blog is about fighting.  My friend who send this, say he did not support Trump.  I belieave him.  But then he says something like this and I have to wonder.  Is he just casting about looking for someway to  assuage his conscience for what his political party has inflicted on this country, or what.  Fortunately for both of us, I did not, accept quietly the ‘Koolaid’ being offered.

I asked him several question about just how he got to the point that our having Trump as President was Obama’s fault, or the Democrats fault For nominating him.  After much obviscation we finally got around to the point that it was because Obama was such a bad President.  I was good and did not ask if this meant that the Republicans elected Trump just to show they could do worse.  I did point out that it could just be that, yes Trump is a response to Obama being elected.  Because many people were quite upset that their was “An uppity niger” (Yes I know it is the  offensive ‘N’ word.  It is meant to be offensive).  He, of course took exception as ‘he’ can’t possibly be ‘racist’.  I’m sorry.  I have known many racist in my life, and most of the Americans who were denied it  vehemently. They don’t get that if you act/talk/support racist people/actions/speach you just maybe racist.  I also have learned that direct confrontation is more often than not, the correct way to deal with it.  It is better just to ask a question, my favorite is “Just think about what you sound like right now?”

I have hope for my friend, he has reached the third stage of recovery, denial.  Next is acknowledgement and then change.  Hopefully it will happen before 2020.

In my post “Why Conservatives think they are loosing” I talked mostly about how the Right want’s to either keep things the same, or take things back to an idealized past.  In this post I’m going to address the other reason the Right feels they are loosing, the ‘No Comprimise’ delima.

To start off, let me be very clear that I do acknowledge that there are some things that you can not comprimise on, but these are few and far between.  To take a such a position you have to accept that you are now in a binary logic universe. (To those who know me, you can get all the giggles done now.  I do like to use bifurcation when solving problems so it often appears that I am taking a.binary view of things.  Those that really know me well know I just use bifuracation as a reasoning tool to analyze the problem.). The issue here is why does the Right take this position on comprimise.  Those things that are truely binary, they are easy to identify because only two states can exists, you are either alive or dead.  The proble arises when you have to deal with some one who is in a permanent vegetative state.

For some the “No Comprimise” position is taken for philosophical reasons and/or religious reasons.  You often hear the statement “You can’t comprimise with the Devil” or it’s derivation “You can’t comprimise with Evil”.  Others do it because they see everything as a win loose situation, like a tennis game where the game goes on till someone wins and someone looses.  That is why I’m going to be talking about Zero-Sum games.  Fortunately not all human activity is a zero sum game, most are non zero sum.  For those of you who are interested here is a link to read more about Game Theory.

The first, and most obvious, problem with “No Comprimise” is that it force you into the position of having to get everything you ask for, otherwise you have lost.  As an example say you want to build a building at a specific corner in your town.  You want it to be so many stories high and have x number of elevators.  Now lets say the zoning laws of your town say that all building of a give height must have x+1 elevators,  or worse still that the corner you want to build on is owned by someone who will not sell, but the lot across the street is available. In both cases, the “no compromise” position says you have lost if you accept either restrictions.  This is a silly case, of course, but it does demonstarte the issue.

In politics you will often have issues that have many sub-issues.  The Gun (2nd amendment) debate in this country is a classic example of this problem.  The most simplistic view of the problem decides everything into anyone can have any weapon (arms) they want and take it any where they want or no civilian can have way weapon (arms) at anytime anywhere.  The answer to the problem lies somewhere in between these two polls.  The real issue is that there are persons on both sides of the issue who feel that they can not compromise.  The problem for the Right is that, even though they have won as much as can be done in the courts (2nd is now a personal right and all law effecting it must pass the Strict Scuriny Test. But some how they feel they have not yet won the fight.  Why?  Because not only do the want their position to be accepted in law, they want everyone else to acknowledge the rightness of their position. An here Lise one of the great traps with zero-sum, asking for something that can not be granted, that the other side has to not only acknowledge your win they must also admit they are wrong.

In sports this is often called grand standing and it can have very dillatorious effects (such as ‘clearing the bench’) and is so  frowned upon by the referees.

Inclosing, the problem with “No Comprimise” is that it almost always leads to feeling that you’ve lost, even when you get everything you could reasonablely ask for.