An OpEd by President Obama in the Wall Street Journal has, once again, thrown into stark relief the purist ideological misconceptions regarding corporations. Predictably, on the right, any inkling to regulate business in the slightest is “job-killing.” Meanwhile, from the left, Obama’s willingness to cozy up to corporations as opposed to  nationalizing everything makes him, effectively, a Republican. You honestly don’t even have to read the articles any more; conservatives believe regulating corporations is evil, while liberals believe that just the corporations are evil.

And, of course, this pervades. Skim the comments on any partisan blog, read enough OpEds, and you come quickly to grips that there are two visions in this country. These two images couldn’t possibly be more diametrically opposed, just as these two images couldn’t be more grotesquely distorted and utterly wrong. As a country, we all suffer from these polarized realities because they muddy the debate, and make it next to impossible to understand and operate our economy with any semblance of rationality. Meanwhile, the American Left suffers politically as the more purist faction of the ideology alienates many while at the same time tapping into perhaps a greater neurosis this country will likely hold for generations to come.

To look at a business or a corporation from the American Right is to behold a beautiful, nearly magical, thing. It spreads freedom and opportunity and prosperity, and it even mystically is able to regulate itself so that nothing bad ever happens as a result of private industry ever. Looking through the other lens, though, shows us something that is diabolical in scope and intent. Corporations are giant, monolithic, entities that feed the very few on the broken backs of the downtrodden and the poor. Corporations should not only be heavily regulated if not dissolved entirely, but also made to pay. During the health care debate in particular, we saw just how important it was for the corporations to actually suffer in order for the American Left to give their approval.

The truth is, corporations are neither of these things. They are neither moral or immoral, but instead amoral. I feel it is necessary that, if you are to have a meaningful conversation of the economy and American life, and the role in both that corporations play, then you should have a clear and objective understanding of what they are. They aren’t good or evil, they simply are. More specifically, they are social heirarchies built of many people not necessarily united by any other traits beyond the employee, employer relationship. The prime motivator of the corporation species is, of course, profit.

And this becomes the sticking point for a lot of liberals because a lot comes at the expense of profit, especially when you put the ideals of social justice over monetary gain. But to malign such a system would be to not fully understand what it is. Think of corporations as natural predators and their ecosystem is the economy. Just as a lion’s goal is to eat that zebra across the watering hole, so to is the corporation’s goal to increase its profits. The lion doesn’t maliciously go after the zebras out of some sort of personal vendetta, it simply wants to survive. Same thing with corporations, and those corporations that are better at chasing profit are the ones that get to survive. Meanwhile, in the background, you have this web of factors that are constantly shifting the fate of the players involved. For lions, it might be age, or unfamiliar terrain, or a zebra that had more speed in it than was accounted for. For businesses it could be a down market, or bad PR from poor business practices.

This would be the free market, and it’s where conservatives tend to get hung up just as their liberal counterparts get hung up on the whole profit thing. In conservative economic circles, the last idea in the paragraph above goes by different names; invisible hand, self correcting, you get the idea. The most steadfast belief of those who have put all their faith in the free market is that it takes care of itself. Bad business practices are punished with bad business. Anything that a business doesn’t do right is rewarded with a drop in profits.

So the logic goes as such. Imagine you have a small town with two drug stores. Let’s say that one day, news leaks out that the manager of one of the drug stores physically beats his employees if they don’t show up on time. Mortified, the people of this small town boycott this drug store in favor of the other until the employee beating practice is brought to an end, and probably until that manager is fired and replaced. The invisible, self correcting, hand of the free market at work.

Only, we know that not everything works like that. If we were to continue with our biological analogy, corporations have become so highly evolved they are changing the rules of nature itself. Let’s take a real world example with Kellog, Brown, and Root, and the employee Jamie Leigh Jones. Ms. Jones, at the age of 20, was moved to Iraq to become a clerical worker for KBR. Once there, she was allegedly gang raped and held in a container against her will. Despite all circumstances, Jones is not even allowed to sue KBR in court, and after five years this story continues to be one of the single most under reported stories out there. The fact is, KBR was, and is, just too good at defending itself against its own failures. Going back to our drug store analogy, this would be the equivalent of silencing the local paper and denying the employees any rights whatsoever.

The fact is, there is an invisible hand and a self correcting nature to the free market, but what conservatives fail to see is that these are inadequate. Moreover, corporations have gotten to the point where they have developed very powerful defenses against these self correcting traits. Lawyers en masse, PR firms, etc. have been erected around corporations all designed to make sure they are not actually held accountable for their own actions.

So where does this leave us? With, hopefully, a better understanding of what a corporation is. It’s not inherently good or evil, it just wants profit. It wants profit all the time and will do anything to get it. This never ending desire is ostensibly held in check by a free market which applies a number of forces in a variety of ways which encourage or impede growth as necessary. Corporations, though, have ultimately evolved to a point where it can find end arounds to the impeding forces of the free market, and for that reason and others, require regulation in order to maintain a healthy economy, and a healthy society.

Ultra conservatives believe that everything should be deregulated, but the result would be what Naomi Klein illustrated in her book, Shock Doctrine; effectively a stratification of society between the very rich, and the dirt poor. Ultra liberals tend to want to enforce heavy regulations if not nationalize everything outright, the dreaded Socialism we keep hearing paraded about like some sort of bogeyman.

Socialism, like every other economic or governmental system, is doomed to fail, all for pretty much the same reason; it has to be run by people. People are overcome with greed, avarice, and corruption. You might start off with the right people running the show, and everyone getting their fair share, but eventually you’ll get the wrong sort of person. And, because corruption loves company, they’ll bring in other wrong sorts until the whole thing is rife with corruption.

In this way, capitalism is kind of neat because instead of being undone by mankind’s worst tendancies, it is fueled by it. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s also doomed to failure as well in its purist form, for pretty much the same reason. But it at least comes at the problem from a totally different angle. More importantly, it gives us a glimpse at what actually does work; a combination of both capitalism and socialism which has been what we’ve been using in America all along. It’s just a matter of getting the mixture right.

It’s also at the heart of President Obama’s very reasonable approach to our economy.

And yet, because the President wants to work with corporations as opposed to punish them, he is lambasted from his left yet again. I’m quite used to this, and further am used to the seemingly unappeasable sensibilities of the purist American Left. I’m even used to the entire anti-corporatist schtick.

But it is on the vehement anti-corporatism that I feel needs to be addressed. I think that for as long as liberals maintain this hardline stance, they will continue to do themselves a disservice both intellectually, and politically. The all-or-nothing stance against corporations shows a disturbing lack of insight into the average person, and is a very large brick in the wall that keeps liberalism from connecting with mainstream America.

The thing is, yes, corporations do only go after profit, but in so doing they provide so much in return. That’s at the very heart of capitalism, and that’s why corporations and businesses of all sizes are even allowed to chase profit in the first place. Because every corporation that is in the hunt for the all mighty dollar provides in return goods and services that we want and need. I can’t help but notice the irony that every blog post written about how evil corporations are was written on a computer built by a corporation. And on top of that, corporations provide jobs, and depending on the corporation, even a way of life.

I’ve known people who have worked for large businesses and have been proud of what they produce. Whether it’s manufacturing cars or bottling soda, people are grateful for the work, and proud to say they were part of bringing something to the market.

Until the left learns to temper their opinions with this understanding of how corporations and businesses positively impact lives, it will continue to suffer in the national debate for it.

In a saner world, not all of these topics would be discussed in the same article. According to this profile written in Mother Jones on Jared Loughner, aided greatly by one of Loughner’s better friends, the young man now officially accused of the deadly assassination attempt on Saturday had been, for some time, losing a grip on reality in its entirety, willfully preferring a dream-like state to the one we all share. His anti-government angst was less in keeping with that of your garden variety libertarian or Tea Party conservative, but was instead far more vague and sinister.

Indeed, Loughner’s YouTube channel bears a handful of videos whose scripts seem more at home in a Cactus Milk game* than they do in some serious ideological terrorist’s manifesto. The bottom line here is that Loughner’s motives were political only in the strangest, most fringe respect. Loughner, as we understand it, actually saw the government as this monolithic entity, one that wasn’t on the slippery slope to IngSoc and Big Brother, but had already been there, visited, taken notes, and improved upon the formula. If the Mother Jones profile is correct, Loughner’s nearly fatal grudge against Giffords was set off by circumstances far more precarious and ludicrous than those one would imagine would trigger even the most wide-eyed ideologue of any stripe. To say he was crazy is an insult to those who suffer from an entire spectrum of mental illness, but the fact is he was neither a militant communist liberal, nor was he a tried and true card carrying member of the Tea Party.

What occurred in Arizona was terrible. Many were injured. Some, including a young child, a staffer, and a federal judge, lost their lives. And there is a very real political discussion that needs to be had that is specifically and directly tied to the horrific events of that day. Much like here in Virginia in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings, we need to ask ourselves how to effectively prevent the ownership of guns from people those who are not stable enough to do so responsibly without infringing upon people’s Second Amendment rights. Gun control proponents may balk a little at how I selected the language there, but it is what it is. There is a highwire that needs to be walked, one that dangles dangerously between trampling on the rights to own weapons, and not taking the necessary steps to help prevent the recurrence of tragedies such as this one. In the weeks and months ahead, one can only hope that Governor Brewer, the Arizona legislature, and the U.S. Congress can all come together as calm and measured adults to provide some sort of solution that is acceptable to most parties. I don’t hold much hope for this, but sometimes one can be surprised.

But outside of the microcosm of specificity regarding this terrible day, an ideological firestorm has been let loose, and to be honest, it is one that I think should have been started some time ago. There’ve been no shortage of voices decrying the “blame game” and I dismiss them. I dismiss the idea that you should never look for someone to blame because doing so suggests never holding people accountable for their actions. By all means don’t stop fighting the fire to find the arson that started it, but once the flames have been doused you should look for the culprit. In this instance what has come under heavy scrutiny has been the very nature of our political discourse, and the aggressive, belligerent, even violent tone of political rhetoric.

As Chuck Todd noted in a discussion with Rep. Giffords in the spring of 2010, war-like political language has been the norm for years. But as any right thinking individual might be able to counter, just because you’ve been doing something doesn’t necessarily make that the right thing. Yes, we use amazingly war like language in even the most innocuous contexts when it comes to politics. You can’t go hardly a day in politics without reading half a dozen headlines to the effect of “Pundit A EVISCERATES Pundit B on …” or, “Politician C BLASTS Politician D regarding some generic topic.” And those are just the headline writers. It gets insane when you start looking at the opinion commentors who, to use another war metaphor, are dug in the trenches on a daily basis.

Why do we use such decidedly aggressive language? I think it’s a combination of passion and salesmanship. There’s a great number of people who are passionate about their politics, and they express that passion through hyperbolic language. In a partisan society where people don’t just have another way, but instead a way that is the exact opposite of your way, it’s not hard to see how such passionate people could so easily turn their passionate thoughts into war like words. Which is funny because to the layman a lot of the things these people are so passionate about are actually, well, kind of boring.

Take one of the most hotly debated pieces of legislation in recent years; the Affordable Care Act. Unless you are a policy wonk, you’re not making it through one of its 2,000 pages without falling right to sleep. Even then, you have to be an extreme policy wonk to make it past a dozen or so pages without being in severe need of coffee and some very loud heavy metal music. Unless it’s your job or your passion to understand this stuff, most of what goes on in politics is about as exciting as watching paint watch other paint dry. Top it off with the fact that this already very dry material is debated ad nauseum by a bunch of old white men in dull suits and you have a never fail formula for apathy and dullness. Which is where the salesmanship comes in. No one wants to read about how Senator McCain and Senator Kerry debated about the end of life counseling clause in the Affordable Care Act, but they’ll pick up a paper to read about the same very men, “going toe to toe over death panels in Obamacare.” Journalists do it to sell papers or ad space on line, politicians and political operatives do it to gin up excitement and enthusiasm among their base or to convince people on the fence over to their side.

I actually don’t think a lot of these people really believe half the stuff that comes out of their mouths. I don’t think Sarah Palin ever really believed that there would be “Death Panels.” I don’t. But they say those things because it impresses “the rubes.” Because the people listening to this stuff will believe it and become very energized and mobilized political allies.

And in the immediate wake of the Assassination attempt of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, much of the American Left looked directly at the American Right. And not, I should point out, for no reason at all.

First, let me make this very clear. Conservative commentators, from Palin to Limbaugh to Beck, did not pull the trigger. Nor, as some of my more enthusiastic friends on the left have said, were they equally culpable. As I took great pains to point out at the beginning of this piece, the evidence we have at the moment suggests that Loughner acted independently of any specific ideological movement. There is no evidence to suggest that he was a disciple of rightwing talk radio.

But I do think it is important to point out that, indeed, this was the assassination attempt of a political official. Politicizing it is not only appropriate, but inevitable. Second, the reaction of the Left is also important. I think it is incredibly important that as this whole tragedy unfolded, the ideological battle lines were already being drawn, and not without good reason, either.

Rightwing rhetoric has become, frankly, frightening, especially as of late, and if you are a liberal living in this country, it’s not hard to get the feeling that there is a large chunk of the ideological spectrum that doesn’t just disagree with you, but wants to go to physical war with you. Like when Michele Bachmann explained she wanted her constituents “armed and dangerous” and explained that a revolution might be necessary. Or when a Republican candidate explains that if the ballot box doesn’t work, you go to the bullet box. Or Sharon Angle’s “Second Amendment solutions.” Or even when former governor and Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin puts this graphic up on her website around the same time she tweets, “Don’t retreat, reload.”

The point is that many on the left have been expecting something like this to happen for some time now. And by some time I do mean since the election of President Obama. It’s hard to just pass this stuff off as enthusiastic expressions of political free speech. Not when you see signs at rallies such as this one:

Let’s put aside the inherent un-American, un-Democratic thought to the side. The idea that the minority can impose its ideals of government on the majority through the use of weapons and violence is the providence of despot nations, not of the US. But put that aside, and simply imagine that to an outsider looking at all of this, the message delivered is a simple one; these people are ready to go to war with us. And for some time on Saturday in Arizona, it was really hard not to imagine that the war had already begun.

The inherent danger in a political atmosphere such as this should not be lost on anybody. Not only is one ideological side irrevocably tied to imagery of weapons and violence, but the only logical conclusion is that eventually its ideological opposite will in some way feel the need to act and defend itself. And let’s eschew false equivalencies, and let’s do this now. Yes, the far left has its extremists, but let’s also not kid ourselves; the American Left doesn’t employ the same weaponized rhetoric. The truth of the matter is, most of us simply don’t like guns enough to really get into using gun speak in politics. Nor are we usually in the habit of calling for death or revolution. Arrest and imprisonment, yes. I’ve heard many liberal commentators demand certain people be put behind bars, but this is far from using threats of violence. Indeed, given that liberals also tend to favor a prison system that focuses more on rehabilitation as opposed to punishment, the whole imprisonment threat really isn’t all that bad after all.

I will not deny that liberals say stupid things. If you look, you’ll find militant liberals. Look hard enough, and I’m sure you’ll find a ton of stupid and beligerent things I’ve said. But I can’t help but think that for the modern American conservative movement, the vitriolic rhetoric is systemic, and worse, not just the province of a few “lone nutjobs” but instead fanned and fed by its most prominent leaders.

Perhaps the most notable of these would be Sarah Palin who has come under very heavy fire for the bullseye graphic shown above. I’ll say this again, she didn’t pull the trigger, nor is she indirectly responsible for the attack on Rep. Giffords. And this will be the case unless new evidence surfaces to suggest otherwise. I think it’s also important to note that she’s not even the worst. Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Mike Savage have been around for longer, and say things that are far more reprehensible.

But Sarah Palin is perhaps the brightest star of the group right now, and she is one of the big names being discussed as a presidential hopeful in 2012. And there is something particularly powerful and creepy about that map which targets Rep. Giffords directly. Moreover, while she is in no way culpable for the shooting, she most definitely is very much responsible for the tone of the political discourse as it exists today. She thrives on the animosity between left and right, and from the moment she stepped onto the national stage, she has honed her rhetoric to attack the left, and please the right in a kind of gladiatorial kind of way.

But the moment that really settles everything for me happened later on Saturday. At about the same time her facebook condolences started making their way through the usual media channels, the bullseye map disappeared without comment. The condolences were brief but respectful, but the disappearance, though unqualified, spoke volumes.

A good leader learns from their mistakes. A great leader can use their mistakes to teach and improve those they lead. Sarah Palin did neither. She knew the map was wrong, otherwise, there was no reason to have it removed. She knew there would be an uproar, and as a result she did what little damage control she could to minimize the impact (it gets worse as one of her aides reportedly tried to explain the bullseye’s away as surveyor marks). But if Sarah Palin were truly the leader she and her most devout followers think she is, the image would not have gone away without comment. A true leader would have used it as a teachable moment, to explain how sometimes we let politics get out of hand, and maybe how sometimes we all have to learn to be a little more respectful of each other. There were so many ways that Sarah Palin could have used that unfortunate map to make this country, if only a little bit, a better, safer, and more respectful place. Instead, she saw only a political liability, and went immediately into what campaigns often call damage control.

It’s always sad to see such opportunities go to waste.

I’ll conclude with this thought. As I walked out of a store just a few moments ago, there was a stack of papers with the Arizona tragedy plastered on the front page. A young man walked by and in a mocking voice mimed the headline, “Oooh, Agony in Arizona…” I didn’t hear what came after that. I suppose I should be angry, but apathy is our ground state after all. It’s a pity, really, because it’s not just another news story. People died; a federal judge, a gorgeous little girl whose life was bookended by tragedy, a dedicated staffer, and two elderly folks who deserved better than to have their golden years ended so abruptly in bloodshed. For these people their own personal universes have been switched permanently off while everyone that loved them must continue on in a world far less bright.

And at the same time there was this brief moment where the light was shown on who we really are as a United people; all of the vitriol and mistrust and hate surging to the surface in a sickly foam. From this point forward I imagine this country will get a little better, or a little worse; it’s hard to imagine things staying the same. But maybe they will. Maybe, like the young man I crossed in the store, everyone will get bored and apathetic and go back to normal. This would be a pity because we really could use to learn the right lessons from all of this. We really could learn to tone down the rhetoric and start talking about politics in the nuts and bolts of fact instead of the metaphor of war. Interestingly, I think not only would doing this provide a safer, more respectful atmosphere, but we’d also get a better, more effective government all around.

*This is not meant as a criticism or attack on Cactus Milk games. I’ve long been a fan and hope to continue to enjoy Cactus’ strange offerings in the future. I am simply drawing a parallel between the surreality of both the videos and the games. They kinship is, in my eye, fascinatingly uncanny.