| The Police – Russians Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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While it's clearly about the Cold War, it still has a very pertinent message about extremism of any kind: There is no monopoly of common sense On either side of the political fence We share the same biology Regardless of ideology In the increasingly polarized world of politics (especially American) this is something we would all do well to remember. Not all Democrats are wannabe socialists, and not all Republicans are right-wing nut jobs. By subscribing to extremes, on either end of the political spectrum, we make compromise more and more impossible. In fact, if you eliminate 'Europe and' from the first line, and change 'Soviets' in the third line to 'Democrats' or 'Republicans'--depending on your point of view--those lines work pretty well, too. Even terrorists generally have some sort of valid concern (at least to them); they don't like non-Muslim foreign troops in Saudi Arabia, or they want their homeland back, or they simply wish they were in power instead of the current government, wherever they're at. It's in how they choose to achieve their goals that puts them outside of allowable human conduct. And if there's one thing that is truly GOOD that has happened in the past 20 years, it's that Sting's little boy, and all the other little girls and boys, are no longer in danger of nuclear annhilation, just 30 minutes away, the way so many of us grew up. While the superpowers retain their now-diminished stockpiles, and 'rogue states' like Iran and North Korea either already have nukes or soon will, the once very real possibility of our ending all life on Earth in a massive nuclear exchange is over. At the very worst you might have a limited number of nukes go off in a regional conflict--very, very, unimaginably bad if it's in your region, but it's not going to cause a years- or decades-long nuclear winter that will wipe out all of humanity. It's at least a little bit of progress. (Instead we've got global warming. But that's another subject.) |
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