When I was a child there was a book titled Fun with Dick and Jane. It was a reading primer and as recalled by my admittedly warped-by-time brain a sort of introduction to behavior and interaction. Well, fast forward to February 4th, 2020, and we have our new version starring Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi. Their behavior, each of them, prior to and during the State of the Union speech shouldn’t make anyone proud, yet take to the airwaves today and clearly it did. But I am not here to dissect bad behavior, at least that displayed by our politicians, I am instead writing about us and it’s not a flattering picture.
With each passing day, culminating with last night’s idiocy, I am alternately saddened, angered, appalled and disgusted by the behavior of my fellow citizens. They take to social media in droves decrying “them” while smugly celebrating the superiority of “us”. They belittle, insult, humiliate and unfriend those disagreeing even though last week they were ‘bonding’ over a great jumping round at the Desert circuit.
And it all takes a predictable turn no matter the issue du jour; opinions are stated, said opinion disagreed with, outrage at stupidity of those disagreeing, bad behavior judged on a sliding scale of what is worse (totally subjective of course). This degrades to vicious personal comments, lamentations that the sky is surely falling and when all else fails, public ‘outing’ of bad spelling. I can only assume the latter is designed to prove to the remaining readers some concrete proof of the stupidity of the dissenter.
My question is why any of us are allowing the behavior of those out of touch people in the executive and legislative branches that care far more about their own agendas and advancement than they care about any of us to bring us to this pathetic place. Don’t tell me it’s them; look at yourselves, look at the complete lack of civility and manners on display every day. Has this helped? Rudeness is decried by more rudeness, hatred and divisiveness is admonished by additional hatred. Why can’t we see it? Why can’t we stop it? And can one person answer that without blaming a person, a group of people or a platform?
Are any of you proud of any of this? God, I hope not. I recently saw a comment by someone that said while others were looking to find a bigger house or more room for entertaining all she planned for her home renovation was a crocodile and a moat. I feel today is the day to rent the backhoe and start shopping for that crocodile.