How did this happen?
How did we get to this ugly place of crazed animosity?
How did we arrive at a point in our history where gangs of hecklers chase politicians from restaurants, where senate hearings have lost all decorum, where family members and friends part ways over politics?
How did we get to this ugly place of crazed animosity?
How did we arrive at a point in our history where gangs of hecklers chase politicians from restaurants, where senate hearings have lost all decorum, where family members and friends part ways over politics?
Every day brings new examples of incivility and violence. An example: in the last twenty-four hours, I have casually browsed several sites online. Here was a professor advocating castration for white Republicans; celebrities mocking a black singer for praising the President; strangers leaving death threats on the phones of politicians, judges, and their families; anonymous callers phoning in false accusations of rape; some wicked soul mailing the poison ricin to a Republican senator and to officials at the Pentagon.
Only a quarter of a century ago this ongoing malevolence would have shocked most Americans. Sure, conservatives and liberals attacked each other, but those disagreements resemble a dialogue in Plato’s Academy compared to the howls and antics we find in 2018.
Why is this?
I think I have some answers.
1. Advances in technology are changing our culture even more than we have acknowledged.
Twenty-five years ago, the Internet and cell phones were in their infancy. Twitter was a noise made by sparrows in the yard. These devices are wonderful, but can cause great damage by allowing every bozo with an opinion—I include myself—to shoot that opinion into cyberspace instantaneously and often anonymously. From school bullying to the recent explosions regarding the Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination, our technology gives us the power to destroy a fellow human being with threats and insults.
2. We are reaping the whirlwind of our universities.
Remember when many people, liberals and conservatives alike, poked fun at political correctness on campus? Well, those smiles are gone. PC remains rampant in our educational institutions, only now graduates of Harvard, Duke, Stanford, and a few hundred other colleges have injected PC into the world of business and government. In our public universities we have long funded professors calling for radical changes to American society. The agents of this transformation are now sitting in boardrooms and on government committees.
3. Many Americans are ignorant about the history of their country and its contributions to liberty and justice in the world.
Google “Americans ignorant about history.” Magazines as different as The Atlantic, American Heritage, and National Review feature articles lamenting this lack of knowledge about our past. In 2011, for example, a majority of adults didn’t know that the Constitution was the supreme law of the land. Others can’t identify the Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address, or the reason for celebrating Independence Day. George Santayana famously remarked, “Those who don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Given the dumbing down of our citizenry regarding history, he may be wrong. Instead of repeating history, we may instead descend into a dystopia we can’t even imagine. Fifty years of steering away from courses in basic civics and denigrating American achievements have produced a bumper crop of malice.
4. Politics has become a religion.
Many Americans have take politics for their religion, fanatical as any Reformation Calvinists or Catholics. We make gods of our politicians and demons of our opponents and their leaders. We are on the side of the angels and they conspire with devils.
5. Washington D.C. and the surrounding areas are a blight upon our country.
“Follow the money” is a journalistic axiom. Okay. Let’s follow some money. Of the 25 richest counties in the United States, 11 are located in the area surrounding DC. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/richest-counties-in-the-united-states.html. Here are located the administrators and employees of government, think tanks, lobbying groups, and private enterprise businesses involved in federal endeavors. Here is the scorpion bottle of our animosities and dislikes for one another—not in Boise, Idaho, not in Austin, Texas, not in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Ask yourself a question: Do you hate your neighbors if they put a Dump Trump in the front yard? Do you hate them if they wear a MAGA hat? Much of the divide in our country comes out of Washington.
These and more are reasons for our division, what some have called a “cold civil war.” I can’t offer any grand solutions. But I can think of a small one. If we would just talk to one another and ask each other questions, person-to-person, without all the cacophony of the mainstream media and the politicians, if we could agree to disagree and then vote, then maybe we could find our way back to a country we can love.
Only a quarter of a century ago this ongoing malevolence would have shocked most Americans. Sure, conservatives and liberals attacked each other, but those disagreements resemble a dialogue in Plato’s Academy compared to the howls and antics we find in 2018.
Why is this?
I think I have some answers.
1. Advances in technology are changing our culture even more than we have acknowledged.
Twenty-five years ago, the Internet and cell phones were in their infancy. Twitter was a noise made by sparrows in the yard. These devices are wonderful, but can cause great damage by allowing every bozo with an opinion—I include myself—to shoot that opinion into cyberspace instantaneously and often anonymously. From school bullying to the recent explosions regarding the Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination, our technology gives us the power to destroy a fellow human being with threats and insults.
2. We are reaping the whirlwind of our universities.
Remember when many people, liberals and conservatives alike, poked fun at political correctness on campus? Well, those smiles are gone. PC remains rampant in our educational institutions, only now graduates of Harvard, Duke, Stanford, and a few hundred other colleges have injected PC into the world of business and government. In our public universities we have long funded professors calling for radical changes to American society. The agents of this transformation are now sitting in boardrooms and on government committees.
3. Many Americans are ignorant about the history of their country and its contributions to liberty and justice in the world.
Google “Americans ignorant about history.” Magazines as different as The Atlantic, American Heritage, and National Review feature articles lamenting this lack of knowledge about our past. In 2011, for example, a majority of adults didn’t know that the Constitution was the supreme law of the land. Others can’t identify the Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address, or the reason for celebrating Independence Day. George Santayana famously remarked, “Those who don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Given the dumbing down of our citizenry regarding history, he may be wrong. Instead of repeating history, we may instead descend into a dystopia we can’t even imagine. Fifty years of steering away from courses in basic civics and denigrating American achievements have produced a bumper crop of malice.
4. Politics has become a religion.
Many Americans have take politics for their religion, fanatical as any Reformation Calvinists or Catholics. We make gods of our politicians and demons of our opponents and their leaders. We are on the side of the angels and they conspire with devils.
5. Washington D.C. and the surrounding areas are a blight upon our country.
“Follow the money” is a journalistic axiom. Okay. Let’s follow some money. Of the 25 richest counties in the United States, 11 are located in the area surrounding DC. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/richest-counties-in-the-united-states.html. Here are located the administrators and employees of government, think tanks, lobbying groups, and private enterprise businesses involved in federal endeavors. Here is the scorpion bottle of our animosities and dislikes for one another—not in Boise, Idaho, not in Austin, Texas, not in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Ask yourself a question: Do you hate your neighbors if they put a Dump Trump in the front yard? Do you hate them if they wear a MAGA hat? Much of the divide in our country comes out of Washington.
These and more are reasons for our division, what some have called a “cold civil war.” I can’t offer any grand solutions. But I can think of a small one. If we would just talk to one another and ask each other questions, person-to-person, without all the cacophony of the mainstream media and the politicians, if we could agree to disagree and then vote, then maybe we could find our way back to a country we can love.
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