It is Time to Choose Gray!

    Unlike the over simplified version of persuasive editorials that we face in blogs, newspapers and speeches of interest group advocates, most political issues concerning public policy are not black and white.  How one labels another person socialist, racist, conservative, extremist or communist? Most of the times these labels are created by the opposition for oversimplification and fast delivery of a message. Sadly, often society in a way that they overshadow the facts and true nature of an argument adopts these labels. As I mentioned in the previous post, a “political culture” that is conducive toward endurance of a functioning democracy includes certain important traits.

      In my opinion, one of these important traits is sending the right signals to our elected officials asserting the point: us as citizens are more sophisticated and matured than what PR advisors and consulting firms have noted in their reports. This involves in reading and investigating the legislative proposals in a more coherent and deep manner while keeping in mined that most issues don’t fall on the extremes of a horizontal line. Political Issues are not specifically about extremes; should we regulate or should we not regulate a certain sector, should we assist the poor or should we not, should we provide the citizens with universal health care or should we leave that to the free market economy? To the mind of a modern and engaged citizen these questions are rather obsolete and old news. The truth is that there are rarely any forms of political systems that lack regulations. There are rarely any political systems that lack needy-assistance programs and hardly any governmental entities that don’t provide their citizens with some sort of universal health care.

    Thus, the questions that our policy makers face everyday are not as oversimplified as most advocacy groups strive to portray. Modern democracies with such intricate socio-economical structures deal with much more sophisticated questions. Rather than should or shouldn’t, our policy makers usually deal with the extent, jurisdictions, time and means of governmental involvement in social and economical programs. In other words, they deal with the gray area not the extremes! Since there are not any form of government entities without regulations, it is important for the citizens to become more deeply involved studying the policies and programs that strive to regulate or intervene in any sector concerning our lives. In this regard, instead of adapting to shallow approaches that involves in taking an extreme side of any debates, we should get to the knots and bolts of proposed policies better studying their implementation outcomes and their sole purpose of emergence. 
    Of course some policy plans might be advertised with fancy titles claiming to introduce humanitarian policies, while some might be demonized and portrayed in the most negative way. But, the truth is that most demonized policies are not as bad as they sound and many of the fancy titled ones are too good to be true, hence their content will eminently fall on the gray area. Remember, the science of marketing and advertising has became much more developed and sophisticated throughout the last half century, and the political adds are designed to tickle with our extremist urges to make decisions on policies in a rather simplified and shallow manner. In the next post I will suggest how one could more efficiently approach governmental policies in a way to provide the best policy outcome.

Cheers,
Admin