It is always hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. In the first place no one is completely good, no one completely bad. In the second place the unintended consequence of a bad guy's effort might turn out to be a good thing, while the unintended consequence of the good guy's best effort might turn out to be a disaster. As an example take Hitler's rocket technology, developed to drop explosives on Britain, it grew to put the satellites into space that under gird much of the world's economy. On the other hand most of our society's efforts to eliminate poverty look to be a miserable failure. Uncounted billions of dollars spent, more and more people are poor.
And then, sometimes, good people just do bad things; and, sometimes, bad people do good things. So sorting them out and deciding who to support and stand with isn't very easy. Adding to the confusion is the difficulty in simply getting any real information. To hear tell (depending on which media outlet one chooses) President Obama has never done a good thing in his life, nor Mitt Romeny a bad thing. (FOX) Or, the President is the best thing since sliced bread (whole wheat of course) while Mr. Romeny is the epitamy of an evil corporate and social devil. (MSNBC) It is, of course, in the economic interests of both these outlets to keep the left-right, conservative-liberal, capitalist-socialist diatribe running at full throttle; outlets and pundents both make a good living selling ring-side tickets. Would anyone actually bother with Mr. O'Reilly or Mr. Schultz were they not bomb-throwing cheerleaders for their respective political squads?
(American politics seems like just another big sports franchise. Teams square off against each other to win or lose, but the most important thing is that they provide entertainment for the fans. Ultimately the "teams" are all on the same side, seeking to please the same sponsors, and desperate to keep the public thinking that what they do is actually important in any meaningful way in the real world. Clearly, if football, (American or EU style) basketball, baseball and NASCAR all faded from view next week, most of the people on this planet wouldn't notice. I suspect the same can be said of America's current "two-party" political fantasy. The system has ground mostly to a stop when it comes to actually representing or providing leadership. Most Americans want out of Afghanistan, long ago understanding the war to be a complete failure and waste of lives and resources. Obama just signed a "strategic agreement" that keeps us in the middle of the Muslim civil war for at least another DECADE. Most Americans are not homophobic and don't see any reason to fear gay marriage - hell, many Americans have given up on the institution of marriage all together. Has that altered the political debate at all? Virtually every American tax payer knows that the tax code is a joke. The political parties talk about the failure to lead, but they don't actually do anything to address it. The tax code benefits the political, military and corporate elite - it isn't likely they will allow it to be changed much. Can any society, where the public will on war, taxes, and basic civil rights is being routinely ignored by the political leadership, really call itself a "democracy"?)
So, how to tell the good guys from the bad guys? I've gotten to here...
If the talk is of "Law and Order" that is a bad guy. The law and order types inevitably mean they want to write the laws and give the orders. (A lot of them imagine they hear the voice of god in their heads, and it is his [never her] orders being passed along.) The good guys talk of a fair and just society.
If the talk is of "personal responsibility" that is a bad guy. What is usually meant is they do not want to be held responsible for fucking you silly. They have the police on their side. They write the laws, jiggle the tax code, dictate what regulations are applied, then blame you for not being able to "beat the house." The poor are responsible for being poor, though they lack access to health care, and quality education, and even find that transportation is hard to find even should anyone hire them. The homeless aren't largely physically or mentally handicapped, they are just lazy and reaping god's punishment for not being good workers and consumers. Good guys talk about civil societies and level playing fields.
"Gun control?" That is a good guy. "Gun control" does not equal "taking every one's gun away so the government can bust down your front door and put a homosexual in your bed". (Okay, that is a stretch, but not much of one in the paranoid world of the NRA.) "Second Amendment rights?" That is a bad guy. He wants the right to hide a weapon on his person that he can use to kill you. Mind you, in spite of what the NRA might want to have us believe, (or see as a reality) that vast majority of us don't see a need to carry a gun with us everywhere we go. (There is that whole "democracy" thing again. Virtually every person I talk with, including gun lovers, see a need for enforcing responsible gun laws. A reality that has no impact on a government bought and paid for by NRA and gun manufacturer dollars.)
"The Ten Commandments..." There is a religious fanatic and most likely a bad guy. His Ten Commandments take president over anything you think your god might have written. They take president over anything enlightened people in a free society might have decided for themselves. This guy will use his Ten Commandments to judge you in a civil court in a society where religion and government are supposed to be separated. Oddly enough, those who champion the Ten Commandments the loudest love war and the death penalty (in spite of #6). They do seem to have a lot of mistresses or boy friends (in spite of #7). Number 8 apparently doesn't apply to the natural resources of another nation or a workers wages. They are completely immune to #9 when it comes to people of other religions, beliefs, or political views. As for #10, violating it is the basis for a god-inspired, capitalist society. Religious good guys shy away from invoking the Ten Commandments...though maybe that is due mostly to the hypocrisy of their fundamentalist brothers.
"Deregulation." That is a bad guy. There are a lot of silly regulations loose in our society, but the anti-regulation crowd never seem to be talking of those. The regulations they hate are the ones that cost corporate profits but save worker's lives and protect their health, protect the environment for the next generation, and prevent those in power from abusing the rest of us. The good guys are pretty sure a first world society is built on thoughtful regulations equally applied to all.
Not an exhuastive list of course, and not 100% accurate. But it seems a pretty good kind of "every-day" guide to who is a good guy and who is a bad guy.
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