I'm not one of them. I'm not sure who "they" are. It's the playground coming out in people, you have a gang of friends as a child and the other groups are them. We're always us, even if we're them to someone else. Thing is this is basically how our politicians are currently talking. You have to be with us, or you're against us, and one of them. Them being either evil, stupid, or just someone we don't agree with who needs to be demonised or removed from visibility.
The Labour party have been doing this pretty much since they went into opposition. They're saying if you don't agree with these cuts the government are making you have to support us. If you don't support us you're with them and you're wrong. This seems to be the only argument, as I haven't heard exactly what they'd do differently, although I may have missed something, but it's basically what our politics have descended into, you're With us or Against us, don't ask us to elaborate. Playground arguments between elements of what is becoming a political class, worryingly similar to the Hydra in that you could cut off a head and another would appear almost the same. They are all similar enough to each other that the them and us thing makes no sense when used by political parties.
When you make everyone who disagrees with you "them", you're trying to ostracise them from the mainstream. From here extremism comes, for if you refuse to listen to what people are saying, and condemn them as stupid or ignore their views and say they have to agree with you and you alone then you push them to the margins. If you don't address peoples fears and explain, or leave them nowhere to go and say that they are "them", who no-one wants to be then people kick back. Sometimes this is targeted in violence, sometimes in protest, but if you push people into a group you just think of as "Them", to be ignored then you damage the democracy you claim to hold dear. You disenfranchise groups of people, who have no-one to support with a good conscience. What do you think starts to happen then?
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