I’m all for coming together and resolving our differences, making peace, acknowledging our similarities. But, lately, things are getting very weird around PoliticoCity.
Actually, they’ve been weird for the past five years. A seismic shift seemed to occur much like the sinking of the Titanic. Suddenly, both sides went far to the left or to the right quicker than in a David Bowie lyric.
Over the past five years, we’ve all seen politicians’ fortunes take a turn depending on many issues: sexual scandals, embezzlement, poor quality of leadership, elections. I used to think that at least one side of the discussion showed a bit more civility than the other. Not lately.
Lately, the invective I’ve seen from both sides is frightening. And I blame it on that seismic shift. It really pushed people into their respective corners, to the point where, to deviate even one iota from the established party platform is considered grounds for dismissal.
From where I’m sitting, this has very Orwellian overtones. His books were cautionary tales, based on what he saw just over the horizon. Nowadays, it seems, nobody even sees the horizon!
In a recent incident, both sides were cheering just as loudly when a political figure got his tie caught in the revolving door of social change. One post I read stated: “Now, take the other guy down!”
As if it were a game of dominoes we’re playing and not our democracy we’re talking about? As if one guy getting “shot down” is just cause to “shoot them all and let God sort them out later”?
Really? Is THIS who we are? Because, I think we’re better.
Bill Maher is a comedian in the social satire vein, who currently hosts a show on HBO entitled “Real Time.” He once had a show called “Politically Incorrect” on ABC that he was booted off of for stating that, say what you want about flying planes into buildings, those men weren’t cowards. The argument could be made that they were also not quite in their right minds.
Bill often speaks scornfully about “the purity police,” a group of people that inhabit Twitter, Facebook and the like and bring down people based on those peoples’ scurrilous pasts.
Example: a young woman was about to be given the editorship of Teen Vogue when her past tweets were deemed racist. She wrote the tweets when she was 17.
You remember 17, don’t you? Or do you? For many, those years are a blank. For some, the painful lessons learned in those years stuck. One of my favorite musicians, Ms. Janis Ian, wrote a best selling song about it, “At 17.”
Do you think your current self would have a word or two of caution for your teenage self, understanding that youth is the time to make mistakes, learn from them and grow into a more mature version of yourself?
I bet. I was four years into learning guitar and my focus was basically split between that and the Drama Club at my high school. Did I have any idea I would be writing this column at the age of 71? Aside for the inversion, those two ages have very little in common.
I once thought that about the “political sides” I see people take. Now, I think they’re pretty much two sides of the same very damaged coin.
I told somebody once that there is no “they,” “them” or “you people.” There’s only us. We are “us” on this Island. We’re all the same.
As much as I would like to think that that thought pertains only to our ability to feel, be moved by certain things and to love, I’m afraid it also applies to our ability to hate.
But, when two supposedly conflicting sides agree to hate the same thing, doesn’t that also make them the same?
Have horrendous things been said and done in the last five years? Hell, yes. Have we been beaten almost senseless by a virus that refuses to go away and that many feel is being used for political reasons? Yep. Does this give us the right to hate and hurl invectives at those who don’t agree with us?
No. Pure and simple. “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” It was right when Gandhi said it and it’s still correct.
No one here gets out alive. Why are we using the time we have to hate instead of to love, to comfort, to console, to support, to heal?
I hear you saying “But, some things are too horrible to forgive.”
Jesus told his disciples to forgive seven times seven times seven. Nobody is really counting. But, maybe, even if we don’t believe in Jesus, or G-d or divinity or a book or a place of worship, we should, at this crucial point, give it a try.
What have we got to lose?
Only everything.
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