“May those who love us, love us.
And those who don’t love us,
May God turn their hearts;
And if he doesn’t turn their hearts,
May he turn their ankles
So we’ll know them by their limping.”
— An old Celtic saying
This column might anger someone, but I’ve reached the age where I don’t really care! Emulating Grandpa’s ivory monkeys, See-No-Evil, Hear-No-Evil and Speak-No-Evil isn’t easy in today’s political climate. This essay is absolutely not a criticism of any candidate. Call me naïve, but I believe that most people who seek public office want what’s best for America, even though I strongly disagree with some of them and would never vote for them.
I was raised to be interested in politics. I shall always vote even if I can find only one acceptable candidate for whom to vote, or if they have to cart me into the polling place on a stretcher. Voting is a privilege and a responsibility that people in some countries have died for. If we don’t use it, we may lose it.
But enough already! One day I turned on the television at 7:00 a.m. to listen to the news. I clicked around the channels — CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, Fox, CBS, NBC, and ABC. Every single one of them was simultaneously trumpeting the same name! Another day, it might be a different name. In addition, candidates are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising. More than one person has said to me, “Thank God for the Olympics so we don’t have hear about politics all the time.”
Another said, “We act as if there’s no one else in the world.” Amen to that! I like to think that I’m a citizen of the world who knows what’s happening, but it’s difficult to find serious, unbiased news on television, and many newspapers are dwindling away or are biased.
Most of the so-called news consists of rehashes of what the candidates say and opinions ad nauseum by media puffinguts. PBS is better, but has too many “soft” pieces. Al Jazeera gave the best coverage of world events and also had excellent documentaries such as a program about elderly Russians who sneaked back to their homes in Chernobyl even though it’s contaminated because of a nuclear meltdown. Alas, it didn’t have enough viewership and shut down.
We have become a nation of self-righteous political bigots — both liberal and conservative — who believe that their way is the only way and who proclaim their intention of taking back America. I am becoming more and more a centrist who sees all sides of issues, and — by God! — this is my country, too!
True believers and candidates’ supporters have become so hateful when others disagree with them that people hesitate to voice an opinion or tell even the mildest joke about politics. They even unfriend those on Facebook who dare send something with which they disagree. Demonstrators spit on people attending speeches. The haters favor freedom of speech only if it meets their litmus test of political correctness.
Many people are fed up with the old politics-as-usual status quo and say that our system is broken. It isn’t the system that is broken. We’re in a state of gridlock where so little is being accomplished because of the tunnel-visioned ideologues of every ilk who refuse even to consider the ideas of others, try to find consensus and hammer out compromises. Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton, a Democrat who was greatly respected by people of both parties and appointed to the 9/11 Commission by President Bush, retired because he said that there was no longer a spirit of collegiality in Congress.
We should contemplate the words of a far better person than most of us shall ever be: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.” — Abraham Lincoln
wclarke@comcast.net