When did the US become so political that we stopped caring about people as humans?
I wrote that line days before the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife. Before the cold, selfish, and uncaring reaction of our president. I don’t care about political parties. Don’t stop reading this because I don’t like Trump. I don’t like Biden either. Both sides of the fence are seriously flawed. But if someone is brutally murdered by their own child and the only reaction the leader of our nation has is to talk about himself, then we have a real problem. And we do have a real problem.
Human decency has left the building. It seems that if you have a difference of opinion, there is something wrong with you, or you are stupid, or bad at your job, or whatever ridiculous insult of the day is thrown at someone by the president or the White House staff. We have fallen dramatically from the day when the leader of a war torn country was ridiculed for not dressing properly to meet the US president. It was a petty and embarrassing moment for our nation. We should have been offering support and condolences for the lives lost in a war they did not start rather than criticizing his sweater.
I squarely place the blame for the right wing assault on the shoulders of the liberal left that went too far in the previous administration. All systems look for a way to self correct. If they get too far out of alignment, they will swing the other direction until they are so far out of alignment that they are forced back again. That is what the very liberal left did for us. They forced us out of alignment with policies that created so much unease that people pushed back, and now we have the very far right pushing back. And pushing back in a very dangerous way. In my opinion, we risk not only the foundations of democracy but the foundations of humanity every day.
Disappointed. Disillusioned.
Whatever you want to call it, I have it. I feel it. Everywhere I look, I see people doing hateful things to others. Or even worse, doing those things and then trying to justify their behavior. I know this happens everywhere and within every generation, but this feels like a shift that is unparalleled to anything we have seen before.
Politically, how can two sides be so far apart? How can the truth be viewed so differently by people? That is because there are not two sides. There are many sides. There is no one truth. No absolutes. There are perspectives. There are acts that are more acceptable. There are acts that are cruel. There are acts that are immoral. There are acts that are illegal. We are seeing all of these every day. We are seeing them justified. And we are seeing them celebrated. Imagine what we are not seeing.
This isn’t a political rant. This is a rant about the sad shape of the world. This is about the lack of simple human decency. There was a time when you could have a difference of opinion, even an extreme difference in values, and still be cordial or even friendly. I have close family members I adamantly disagree with, but I love them dearly. This doesn’t change our relationship. We simply don’t discuss politics or these other issues.
Today, it seems people are pitted against each other. It is no longer shocking to see mass shootings on the news each week. To see our government enacting policies that strip people of constitutionally protected liberties, or even their lives.
Anyone want to go for a sail in the Caribbean?