Do we Americans really peg the meter from
either apathy or polarization?
Yes, we have often been rather apolitical, but
when exactly did we become so extreme? The
perception of so many is similar to the woman in Nebraska who wrote to her
newspaper that “public good” is something that “begins in the womb (not to
mention marriage between one man and one woman)…(and that) the Health and Human
Services mandate that forces coverage of the intrinsic evil of sterilization and
birth control is an abomination.
Therefore, we may come to civil war of a sort, because many of us would
rather die in jail than burn in hell.”
I won’t begin to dissect the insinuations and assumptions
in all that. Yet it’s demonstrative of
the pressure cooker society where problems escalate and things change—many perhaps
not for the better—and views become “my way or no way.”
Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald said on 11/8/12,
it’s the anger, the irrational, extreme, blinding anger: “A platform of
fear-mongering, xenophobia, demagoguery, and inchoate anger so extreme as to
make Ronald Reagan seem almost a hippie in comparison. It has embraced the politics of pitchforks
and bomb-throwing wherein candidates must compete with one another to see who
can say the most bizarre and outrageous thing—and where moderation is a sin
against orthodoxy....(an orthodoxy) that demonizes the rest of us to appeal to
a very few.” And as Robert Reich said on
11/11/12, many white males, especially those over 40, have become “a tinderbox
of frustration and anger, eagerly ignited by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and other
peddlers of petulance, including an increasing number of Republicans who have
gained political power by fanning the flames.
That hate-mongering and attendant scapegoating—of immigrants, blacks,
gays, women seeking abortions, our government itself” diverts us from seeing
that we “depend on each other in order to survive.”
There is lots of barely hidden racism and prejudice of all sorts. From those watching change and not liking it. Watching color and ethnic and other “domination”
start to slip away (their perception, instead of an alternate perception of
becoming “more diverse”).
There is also a gender gap.
The wives aren’t going to let hubby know what’s going on. And if you think they are going to tell the
truth to some phone pollster while hubby is in the next room, well…
All of which makes those white males even angrier, as none of
what is happening or results “makes sense.”
Never mind, of course, that “red” states
receive, on average, far more federal government money than they pay in federal
taxes, and yet traditionally have poor government services. The situation is opposite in the “blue”
states. There’s two counter-intuitives
for us to mull over. Makes all that talk
of “takers” and “moochers” seem a little silly.
As Dana Milbank of the Washington Post put it on 11/15/12: “Those who
are most ardent about cutting government spending tend to come from parts of
the country that most rely on it.”
As more
than one commentator has put it, secession might be a good thing for the rest
of the country after those seceding would go.
But such talk, while perhaps natural to feel, merely allows extremists to feed off each other in symbiosis
and codependency. And we let them.
Sitting back apathetically and HOPING some vague “it” will be
taken care of, is delusion. We must stay
engaged.
And we must all feel, when talking with or thinking about our
fellow Americans: “If you are truly a patriotic American, I care about what
happens to you even if you hate my guts.”
Discerning that is incredibly difficult in this climate,
however, for so much seems like marked, almost criminal selfishness and willful
blindness. The kind of blind zealotry
that burns all to the ground in its zealousness.
This is going to be a tough period, no doubt about it.
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