Nowadays, compromise is out of fashion – shrillness, finger-pointing and finding who to blame for our troubles is, alas, the way to go.
I just read a great, reasoned, ‘middle ground’ posting on the still-burning timber/wildfire issue.
I hold such postings precious, because it shows a mind is at work, rather than reflexes (yes, I’d use the term knee-jerk, but calling people ‘jerks’ just goes back to the name-calling, finger-pointing that gets so very old).
President Jimmy Carter was branded as a “waffler” because he refused to take a stand and hold to it, no matter what new facts came into view. That is sad.
President Obama no doubt is getting intense heat already for backing the proposal for a mosque – an education center, really – near, not at Ground Zero.
A former, fired Bend city manager told me once – before he was fired by the council, I recall – that ‘friends come and go, but enemies attract.’ And when you’re the Leader of the Free World, that’s more true than for anyone else on the planet. Everyone can find something a president does to make them mad. Put it all together, and it’s … politics as usual.
We have too few discussions and far too many arguments these days — situations where the debate becomes so shrill, everyone is talking or waiting to talk (or interrupt) and usually so busy getting in their talking points, listening to the other side doesn’t seem to be happening.
Imagine such a discussion going much slower, calmer, the one not talking REALLY listening and even occasionally saying — gasp — “you have a good point, there — I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
I know, I know: Dream on.
Immigration is the grand example of the Blame Society at its zenith. We were the ‘good immigrants’ who followed the laws (bet there were a lot fewer of them those days, too). These are the “bad immigrants,” who are all (there’s the flaw) breaking the law, taking jobs from hard-working Americans, filling our schools and hospitals and refusing to learn English and and and….
Sigh.
Yes, put up a better wall. (How about an electric fence, machine-gun turrets and a moat with gators?) But don’t blame them for our lack of one. And don’t think the images of mass deportation, families torn asunder, etc. wouldn’t hurt our country – not just its reputation, but its belief in what we’re here for, how we’re a bright, shining beacon to the oppressed. Now some want to change the rule that says if you’re born here, you’re a citizen. Is anyone thinking through what that really means, other than that we’re, as usual, “mad as hell and we’re not going to take it any more”?)
Acting out of pure emotion is a slippery slope to … well, we just might find out one of these days, much to our regret.
Leave it to Barney 