Positioning, Oppositioning, Gender & Political Statements. Part 3

By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative director, etc. / LMMiami.com

• Rule number one of good manners: never discuss politics or religion at the dinner table.
• Then again, this is not the dinner table.
• This is a marketing & advertising publication.
• Politics has never been so deeply permeated by marketing & advertising as we’re witnessing these days.
• So here we go again.
• By the way, as I disclaimed last week, whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, you might want to stop reading here.
• You might feel offended if you read on.
• Consider yourself warned.
• Admit it: you are a Democrat because your dad was a Democrat.
• Or vice versa, you are a Democrat because your dad was a Republican.
• Or maybe you chose your party because you want to fit in among your neighbors.*
• Either way, you needed “identity affirmation” and hence you picked sides.
• Oppositioning.
• We tend to choose our political affiliation the same way we choose our sports teams allegiances.
• It is far from a rational decision.
• Duh.
• Proof is political doctrine is rife with contradictions.
• What kind of odd moral compass pushes liberals to be simultaneously in favor of abortion AND against the death penalty?
• Conversely, how can conservatives be pro-life AND pro death penalty with a straight face?
• Why do Democratic prochoicers support the interruption of life in the womb yet they oppose the interruption of the life of a dangerous criminal whose room & board costs thousands of tax payer dollars a year?
• I am pro choice myself, should you want to know, yet I can’t help but notice the blatant contradiction of other prochoicers.
• Of course, a lot Republicans are staunch pro-lifers until their own teenage daughter becomes pregnant, in which case they quietly visit an abortion mill.
• And don’t throw in the euthanasia issue into the equation because your mind will suffer a bad case of confusion.
• Aka known as assisted suicide or the right to die with dignity or some such (depending on which camp you are on).
• Same sex marriage?
• Republicans oppose it staunchly!
• Unless a member of their own family comes out as LGBTQ, of course.
• In which case… go ask Dick Cheney or Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.
• By the same logic, Liberals abhor Wall Street greed.
• Unless Goldman Sachs pays her six figures to give a speech.**
• Aren’t conservatives so keen on the individualist, competitive spirit of the free market economy?
• How come they are so scared of China, Mexico & Mexicans as of late?
• Keep the government out of the way!
• Unless the government wants to build a wall to protect my scared ass from a bunch of poor people who come to this country to mow the lawn, baby sit our kids and cook our meals, off the books and for less than the minimum wage.
• Whom I’m only too happy to hire because, hey, I pay them peanuts under the table.
• On the defense front, Democrats are supposed to be the doves to the Republican hawks, yet America got itself into more wars during the last century under Democratic presidencies than under GOP ones.
• How come?
• On the fiscal side, Republicans staunchly oppose the squandering of taxpayers dollars.
• Because, y’know, the government is so inept and inefficient it can’t even deliver the mail.
• Unless the taxpayers dollars go what President Eisenhower called “the military-industrial complex”.
• Wait a minute, the government CANNOT be trusted with the mail or healthcare, but it CAN be trusted with nuclear weapons?
• Really?
• If the GOP is so protective of the budget and wary of bureaucrats, why does it loooooove to throw money at the Pentagon, the largest government organization in the world**.
• Don’t get me wrong, I fully support the men and women in uniform and I totally believe they deserve all the funding required to do their job and retire with dignity, I’m just pointing out the blatant contradiction in the conservative train of thought.
• Speaking of which, is it me or the obsession with guns is a clear and overt sign of disrespect to men and woman in uniform?
• Why are some many conservatives obsessed with maintaining “a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms…” as described in the 2nd amendement?
• Are they implying that our armed forces and law enforcement are inept or not to be trusted?
• Are they implying that our men and women in uniform will blindly obey a tyrant commander-in-chief?
• On the other hand, why is Bernie Sanders, a self-admitted socialist, on the so-called pro-gun side of the spectrum?
• Democrats were supposed to be against the whole gun thing?
• Hint, Bernie lives in a state where people love their guns so he obviously can’t stay in office without their support.
• Try this: go ask the NRA and the RNC why they advocate for armed guards at schools and concealed carrying on college campuses yet they strictly ban firearms at the NRA gatherings or at the Republic National Convention.
• They are so full of it is laughable.
• By the way, I do NOT have a problem with guns or gun ownership.
• I have never held a gun in my life, let alone shot one.
• I don’t understand why someone should carry a gun in their glove compartment.
• However, there’s no denying that guns are an integral part of the American DNA, whether you like it or not.
• If you don’t like guns or the people who carry them, you came to -or were born in- the wrong country.
• Asking Americans to let go of their guns would be like expecting asking Brazilians to let go of soccer: it simply won’t happen.
• Contradictions, contradictions, contradictions.
• Oppositioning, oppositioning, oppositioning.
• So-called liberals claim that the interruption of a pregnancy is a decision reserved exclusively to the woman and her doctor.
• “No judge or government official should interfere in a personal decision.”
• Ain’t that the tenet of conservatism?
• So why do conservatives oppose the right of a woman to choose?
• I always believed that lot of conservatives would be fairly pro-choice but they stay put in the pro-life camp because they’d hate to lump themselves up with the bitter, dirty-haired feminists who seem to be the most vocal advocates of the so-called right to choose.
• The contradiction also applies to liberals though: how come vegans, vegetarians and animal lovers in general chastise people who eat stuff that “has a face, eyes, or could have children” yet they believe crushing the skull of a human fetus with eyes, hands and heartbeat is ok?
• I tell ya, Republicans would become prochoice if one day the Democratic Party decided to support overturning Roe v Wade.
• And viceversa.
• Identity politics.
• Oppositioning.
• The “party line”
• Self-righteousness.
• Politics and politicians.
• How d’ya know if a politician is a’lyin’?
• If his/her mouth is open.
• In any case, if you work in marketing or advertising and have witnessed hundreds of focus groups like yours truly, you already know that NOTHING that comes out of a human being’s mouth should be fully believed.
• Politicians, and the folks who love and follow them, are a consequence of the society that begot them.
• They didn’t land in a spaceship.
• So.
• Since we’re at it, I’ll reluctantly endorse Mrs. Clinton.
• Let me rephrase, I hope she wins the race.
• She’s far from the ideal candidate.
• Déjà vu all over again.
• The dems could’ve done way better.
• But, hey, what politician doesn’t have lots of skeletons in his/her closet?
• At the very least, Mrs. Clinton is a fairly pragmatist moderate liberal with a long experience in the political meat grinder and a muscular team of weathered officials surrounding her.
• Hillary is sort of a Dick Cheney, only female & left-of-center: you can agree with them or not, you can like them or not, but you simply cannot deny their experience, their preparation, their grasp of policy and their knowledge of the issues.
• The ideal scenario, if you ask me, would be for Mrs. Clinton to win by a comfortable margin -although not by a landslide- only to occupy the White House -again- with solid opposition in Congress.
• Déjà vu.
• Checks and balances.
• Am I voting for her?
• Well, no.
• My vote will go to Libertarian Gary Johnson.
• Simply because I would never ever vote for someone like Donald Trump: a totally unprepared and uninformed bumbling opportunist, a c-list hustler, a clownish boorish huckster with zero experience in government whose political platform is built on bigotry, wishful thinking, outright bullshit and a handful of empty slogans, and whose entourage is limited to his surreal family, some policy lightweights and an ever-shorter list of fawning dimwits.
• Yeah, I know, Gary Johnson is uncurious and provincial.
• Tru dat.
• But he has a great advantage over both the big candidates: he is not a bully.
• To be sure, Libertarians are regarded as a mashup of fringe elements and nutjobs with no rhyme or reason.
• A cacophony that insecure people driven by oppositioning and identity politics simply cannot tolerate.

*Gerrymandering exists for a reason.
**Hopefully, the Clinton camp will release the transcripts of her speeches at Goldman Sachs and her deleted emails. When the Trump camp releases his tax returns, of course.
***By the size of its HQ and its payroll, the Pentagon is indeed the largest government organization on the planet. A Conservative dream, isn’t it?