Is All The Anger Messing with Our National Culture

I would say a big YEP! This is what deception, in the form of misinformation and over-stating, and fear-mongering does to a community and, if on a large enough scale, an entire nation.

Apparently anger has become the crucible upon which our national culture is to be forged - - an acceptable means of expression on the campaign trail, at town-hall meetings and in Congress. The lunatic fringe engages in the interchange of opinions without factual underpinnings or respect for rational debate. And since especially politicians on the right fail to condemn outrageous statements by political opportunists in their ranks the lunatic fringe moves ever closer to defining conservatives and the Republican Party.

There doesn’t seem to be any sense of honor among fanatics, just irresponsible partisan rage from politicians and media hucksters who say, with a straight face, that they are true patriots. Those Republicans in Congress who refuse to state unequivocally that they believe President Obama to be a natural-born citizen provide cover for ‘birthers’, the latest of whom is Lt. Col. Terry Lakin, who says he won’t follow orders issued by the president unless he sees his birth certificate. Will the Army actually put up with this, issue an order to cease and desist or go straight to a court martial proceeding?

Somehow we have reached a point in our history where civil disobedience has become synonymous with armed resistance and a total misreading of what our early forbears fought against in the early days of British dominance on our shores. “No taxation without representation” and the flinging of tea into Boston Harbor has morphed into a false analogy that even what an elected majority of our own citizens proposes is unacceptable, as if there were no such thing as free elections and legislative initiatives. Accompanied by blissfully incoherent rhetoric, supporters cling to irrational premises to feed their angst encouraged by irresponsible pols who turn logic on its head.

The recent arrest of homegrown insurgents who believed they could start an insurrection by attacking law enforcement personnel followed by armed assaults at their funerals is a disturbing extension of the violence and anti-government sentiment that has begun to permeate our world. When the initial shock wears off among the information-challenged rank-and-file voting public the inflammatory violence to decent discourse will no doubt continue unabated. Instigators are unlikely to acknowledge that words can have serious consequences and that their verbal assaults often bear bitter fruit.

It seems to amuse listeners when Sarah Palin tells them to stop motorists who have Obama stickers on their cars and ask them “how’s that hopey, changey thing workn’ out for ya?” Either she is unaware or doesn’t care that a driver in Tennessee was forced off the road by an angry partisan for just that reason. Neither does it concern her that her November electoral map highlights Democratic candidates in the cross-hairs that all gun handlers will recognize. In fact conservatives in general dismiss any connection between their overblown rhetoric and the behavior of would be government removalists.

And it isn’t just among the obvious disrupters in the political world where violence and incivility occurs. Anyone who has attended a child’s sporting event will probably have experienced a parent yelling at an official or even physically attacking a coach. At one game when my own eleven-year-old son was pitching I could hear “meatball, meatball” from the bleachers across the field and remarked that the coach shouldn’t allow his team to behave that way, only to be told it wasn’t the kids but the parents of the opposing team.

Sadly the lack of respect and deeply disturbing behavior of both adults and young people in our midst played out in the tragic suicide of a young female student at South Hadley High School last week. No adequate explanation has yet been made as to why members of the faculty and other students who knew of the bullying and harassment of the girl took no action or why such behavior is often tolerated nationwide. Is it a sign of our times that violent words and actions are simply accepted as part of growing up? And is it only after some dreadful incident that a knee-jerk response is generated in the community and guilt-ridden overreaction confounds the original transgression? A local resident told me that a friend has stopped going to meetings in South Hadley because there is such disruptive shouting and screaming on the part of attendees. Sound familiar?

Whatever disagreements continue to exist in the political world and in our communities it is well past time that we took a critical look at the environment we have created and for partisans to acknowledge that radical elements in the media and among supporters do great damage to our way of life.

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