We're told over and over again that America is becoming more and more polarized. Well, duhh. Politics is all about arguing. As Leviathan grows to envelop more and more things in our lives, we naturally take political sides and argue with each other about it.
It's not that we're becoming more polarized, it's that there are ever new dimensions upon which we can fracture.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu came out recently and said we need more electric cars. Why? Who asked him what we need to drive? The dude has backed one green energy toad after another and has a practically unblemished record of failure, yet he sees the need to rush about telling us all what kind of cars to buy. Thanks to Steve, our collective car purchasing habits are now in the domain of politics.
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius, noting how Catholic grade school teachers at our kids' school had a three-day gun battle with goons hired by the Diocese where 10 whole blocks of San Diego were laid waste over the lack of birth control coverage in their insurance plans, decided the government had to put an end to the Church's War on Women and jam contraceptives down our throats*. Consequently, people who would never have had a reason to be nasty with each other are re-enacting the 30 Years War on line.
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| The ruins of San Diego after the Catholic Condom Riots of 2012. |
If we want more civility and less polarization in our lives, we need less politics.
* - How's that for a mental image?
"We're told over and over again that America is becoming more and more polarized."
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, I don't even think that this is true. I think we have *always* been polarized. It's just that, in the old days, you didn't find out about the people in other parts of the country (or even on the other side of town) who are completely opposed to everything you say or do.
The news service and general communication being what it wasn't, political fights in California weren't even on the radar in, say, upstate New York. There could be local or even state elections culminating in running gun battles without news of it getting to the rest of the country as much more than a vague rumor.
But now, you can't so much as mutter angrily online about kicking your neighbor's damned dog when you caught him digging up your garden, without somebody on the other side of the country screaming at you for being an animal abuser.
It seems that there were civil wars at a couple points in America's history. That would seem to be polarizing. I don't think the loyalists or the southerners felt very loved. I wonder what the world would be like if the media had been on their side.
ReplyDeleteI think it comes across more because of the anonymity of the internet. People think that just because they think someone is a jerk, they can tell them such without reprocussions. The people who want to do what is "Right and Good" (ie liberals) tell us what dirtbags we are for thinking people need to earn what they get.
ReplyDeleteIn the old days we would have to told them to shut the "F" up and go away. If they didn't we would have made sure they didn't bother us again with a swift foot in their butt. Now days, they chase us on twitter, facebook and blogs.
All three of you brought up things I hadn't thought of. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteThe idea for this post came to me as I sat through the planning stages of The Children's Crusade. Here was a bunch of most little old ladies and little old men who were under attack by their government who had criminalized something we had been doing for hundreds of years. These people would have been out doing charity work only the government had politicized yet one more thing and there we were, preparing to argue with people who didn't agree with us.
Increased anger in exchange for nothing at all.