Polychrome politics …

I got to thinking about rainbows the other day – probably because it had been alternately raining and shining since sun-up – and that led me into a consideration of prisms and wavelengths and such. Pulling down my First Edition, bound with the tanned hide of an 18th century Tory, copy of Newton’s Opticks, I soon found myself immersed in the physics of refraction and diffusion (OK – I made up that part about “First Edition” … and “tanned Tory hide” … in fact, I made it all up … it’s called creative license, Mel). But I did Yahoo (I have renounced and cast off the evils of Google) up a layman’s treatise on the subject, and, thanks to a sometimes worrisome penchant for non-linear thinking, soon found myself speculating (pun intended) on the spectrum of visible light, and how, in terms of the wavelengths of its constitutent colors, it is eerily evocative of the current political spectrum.

Know how? Tellya how …..

Most schoolchildren know (at least most Asian schoolchildren – them danged high-falutin’ non-occidental show-offs still include basic science in their curricula) that if you direct a beam of visible light through a prism it will break up into a series of colors, ranging from bluish to reddish as the wavelength increases from around 380 to 750 nanometers (the approximate wavelength range of visible light). Note that the blue end of the spectrum lies to the left (lower wavelengths), while the red lies to the right. Do you begin to see where I’m going with this?

Let’s get opto-political – here’s a not-very-professionally-done but reasonably accurate graphic of the visible light spectrum:

Most references agree that the wavelength of the “blue” section of the visible light spectrum runs from 450 to 495 nanometers, with the lower wavelengths consigned to “violet” … but here’s where it gets interesting. The “red” range covers a slice from 620 to 750 nm – a range of nearly three times that of the “blue”. Hmmm …. Hang on to that notion – we’ll get back to it.

At this point, allow me a small digression: there are a number of ways to label the pervasive dichotomy of political persuasions in this great republic. Democrat vs republican, blue vs red, progressive vs traditional, liberal vs conservative – pick whichever one blows your skirt up. Personally, I prefer good old Left vs Right; these terms are clear and relatively innocuous, and operate efficiently on a well-understood behavioral continuum, by which I mean only the willfully obtuse will confuse them. Having thus chosen our terms we can now characterize each according to generally accepted conventional criteria. Note that no judgment, pro or con, is made as to the preferability of either position.

Lefties will, on average, be younger, more affluent, more educated in terms of total years of advanced schooling, more ideologically driven (as opposed to issue-driven), and often “cycle” politically, i.e., their political activities are more effusive during election campaigns, then wane markedly. Further, those on the left seem to almost compulsively cluster tightly around certain well-defined “liberal” positions, such as ‘ more government, not less‘, ‘humans are ultimately perfectible through governmental action‘, and ‘wealth re-distribution is a laudable goal‘. In consequence of this ideological compactness, voters on the left have a fungible quality, i.e., unvarying, indistinguishable – essentially interchangeable – and are much less likely to stray significantly from party dogma, or to vote anything but a straight party ballot. These are the electors that gladden the hearts of cigar-chomping apparatchiks in smoke-filled backrooms everywhere.

On the other hand (and isn’t there always an ‘other hand‘?), righties will, again on average, be older, less well off, have fewer years of formal education, be more issue-oriented, and exhibit an almost monotonous stability in the level and tenor of their political exertions. Moreover, unlike their counterparts on the left, they often embrace a veritable panoply of political and social issues, ranging from the marginally dissimilar to the wildly antithetical. These folks are big on things like personal liberty and unfettered independence. To them, the opportunity for self-determination is not just expected, it is sacerdotal – a sacred right. They do not like – in fact, will not abide – being told what or how to think. Remember – these are people who will engage in a fist-fight over whether or not beans can or should be added to chili. They are, then, the bane of political bosses – cranky, unpredictable, ticket-splitting nightmares whose politico-philosophic terrain is significantly more expansive than that of their left-leaning brethren.

OK – I said all that to say this: while rational people can contest (with some justification) the validity of the 1:3 proportion mentioned above, it does seem that there is a clear parallel between the positions and relative degrees of space taken up by the “reds” and the “blues” in both the spectrum of light and that of politics. Who says life doesn’t imitate art (or, in this case, science)?

We could have a bit more fun trying to fit Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney into the “green” sections of the scale, or possibly putting Howlin’ Howard Dean down in the “ultraviolet” range … but I confess I am not sure what to do with Bob Barr and Ron Paul … I s’pose they go in the “infrared” zone?

Be Well.