Let’s say you’re in school, and you’re assigned a lab partner and told the requirements of your project and that you need to compromise both individual’s ideas to make it happen.
Every time you try to make a suggestion, they immediately say no and suggest something that isn’t even graded for the project, and refuses to budge until you compromise. When you don’t compromise, they threaten to tell the teacher that you’re not compromising. As you try to hold your ground trying to get a good grade for both of you, they just keep doing whatever they want and making more threats to you: they’ll take your lunch money, they’ll beat you up after school, they’ll pop your bike tires, etc.
When you tell the teacher, they tell you to stop overreacting and you need to learn to work with others. After school, your science partner punches you and says you better agree to XYZ tomorrow. You tell the teacher they hit you, and you’re told you need to stop exaggerating and learn to compromise and work together. Every day that week, your science partner makes good on each threat after school, and every day you tell your teacher, they tell you to stop exaggerating and learn to play nice.
On the last day, you punch the kid back, really hit him, break his nose kind of punch. And you’re punished: the teacher says you shouldn’t have resorted to violence, your partner says they were the true victim in the project arrangement, you get a failing grade because everything you compromised on didn’t meet the requirements, but your science partner still got an A and wasn’t punished for anything he did all week because “the rules don’t apply to them the same way, they’re troubled/have a lot going on at home/whatever excuse.”
That’s the current state of US politics: Republicans are justified in any and everything they do because they’re “special,” but Democrats have to follow all of the rules, all of the time, even when the other side of the aisle refuses to even listen to them or the centuries/decades of legal precedent. And they, the Republicans, still win because that’s just how the fucking system works.
Let’s say you’re in school, and you’re assigned a lab partner and told the requirements of your project and that you need to compromise both individual’s ideas to make it happen.
Every time you try to make a suggestion, they immediately say no and suggest something that isn’t even graded for the project, and refuses to budge until you compromise. When you don’t compromise, they threaten to tell the teacher that you’re not compromising. As you try to hold your ground trying to get a good grade for both of you, they just keep doing whatever they want and making more threats to you: they’ll take your lunch money, they’ll beat you up after school, they’ll pop your bike tires, etc.
When you tell the teacher, they tell you to stop overreacting and you need to learn to work with others. After school, your science partner punches you and says you better agree to XYZ tomorrow. You tell the teacher they hit you, and you’re told you need to stop exaggerating and learn to compromise and work together. Every day that week, your science partner makes good on each threat after school, and every day you tell your teacher, they tell you to stop exaggerating and learn to play nice.
On the last day, you punch the kid back, really hit him, break his nose kind of punch. And you’re punished: the teacher says you shouldn’t have resorted to violence, your partner says they were the true victim in the project arrangement, you get a failing grade because everything you compromised on didn’t meet the requirements, but your science partner still got an A and wasn’t punished for anything he did all week because “the rules don’t apply to them the same way, they’re troubled/have a lot going on at home/whatever excuse.”
That’s the current state of US politics: Republicans are justified in any and everything they do because they’re “special,” but Democrats have to follow all of the rules, all of the time, even when the other side of the aisle refuses to even listen to them or the centuries/decades of legal precedent. And they, the Republicans, still win because that’s just how the fucking system works.