F*&% Compromise...

So I found out that my mom reads this blog.  And apparently she's not a big fan of all the f-bombs in my posts.   So in the spirit of compromise I will attempt to make this an f-bomb free post.  No promises, mom...but I will do my best.

But anyway I opened up Fox News this morning because hockey hadn't started yet, and I see an article where President Obama is bitching that the Republicans wont compromise on gun control.  Apparently he seems to think that Democrats are willing to compromise but Republicans are not, which of course is total bullshit.  Nobody wants to compromise, and that's why nothing ever gets done.

Compromising is un-American.  We don't compromise with our enemies, we bomb the living shit out of them until they succumb to our desires.  We don't even compromise with our allies, we tell them what we're gonna do then we go out and do it.  And if our leaders do try to compromise with allies or enemies they catch a bunch of shit from We the People...because we don't compromise dammit!


We hate compromise because we hate to lose and we hate ties even worse.  It's our competitive nature.  Look at sports.  We used to have ties in sports.  There were all kinds of ties in hockey, the NFL didn't even have overtime until the 70's, and college football didn't until the 80's or 90's.  We used to be fine with ties, but somewhere along the line we said fuc....err...we said the heck with that, we need a winner.  Now ties never happen in college football or the NHL and rarely happen in the NFL.  Baseball commissioner Bud Selig had to apologize once for "a very regrettable situation".  If you're guessing it was about a lockout, or about steroids, or gambling or cheating or some horrible off-field incident you're wrong.  No, he was sorry that the fu....the darned all-star game ended in a tie.  We hate ties because we hate compromise.

The rest of the world isn't like that.  Soccer is the most popular sport in the world outside America, and every single game ends 1-1 and nobody gives a shit.  They're perfectly happy with ties.  Of course maybe that's because if one team wins then the losing team's  fans will burn the stadium down and trample everyone to death, but whatever it is they don't mind ties at all.  They love to compromise, hell the Europeans all even agreed to use the same kind of money.

We used to compromise in politics.  Back before the internet and youtube and pointless blogs like this one, there weren't too many outlets to use to try to sway public opinion in your favor so you could bludgeon your opponent over the head with it.  So we compromised, our leaders actually sat down and discussed issues with each other.  Of course the compromising usually meant we got tax cuts and spending increases and now we have 100 bajillion dollars of debt, but hey, we were all happy.

We hate compromising and now we don't have to.  We can go bitch on the internet instead!  (it's fun, you should try it sometime).

So maybe we can learn a little something from the rest of the world.  Not in sports of course, screw that I hate ties in sports.  But maybe we can set aside our competitiveness a little bit when it comes to politics.  I really think politicians (and us in general) argue so passionately about issues not so much because of how much we believe in them, but because we fffuuuuuu...we really hate to lose.  That fiery competitiveness is what got us to where we are now...an economic and military powerhouse and a complete shit sandwich when it comes to government.