The eCrozier

“For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.” – Galatians 5:14-15

What are we modeling for our children and grandchildren? Media is full of seemingly full-grown adults hurling vulgarities at one another and regurgitating rude, derisive expletives toward other people. And these grown adults are in the White House, in Congress, on TV Award shows, and on local school boards and city councils. Read the news each day and we’re exposed to yet again someone who can’t refrain from being a “potty-mouth” whose sole (soul?) purpose seems to be the demeaning of another person in order to “score” points for their side. Astonishingly, people are actually applauding, even defending, this behavior (as long as it comes from someone who’s in their political “tribe”). If I had the power, I’d send them all to their rooms for a long “time out.” We’re supposed to be the adults. When are we going to start acting like it?

Our country is losing our collective mind with this behavior. It’s not just politicians and celebrities that are modeling this vulgar behavior. It’s people just like you and me, ordinary Americans, who are engaging in public outbursts that less than a generation ago we would’ve seen as unacceptable behavior. So, here’s how it seems to go these days: Someone explodes with some sort of insult or mean-spirited attack and then those on the other side who are offended throw a fit over it and say: “Look, look, what he (she) just did!” But, of course, when the shoe is on the other foot, such an attack is defended as being made necessary by the previous awful behavior of the other side. To quote an old “Cold War” term: This is “Mutual Assured Destruction” known by its acronym MAD.

I know. I know. Someone will no doubt write me after reading this and say: “They started this!” “They” being anyone who isn’t aligned with the political-social tribe of that particular reader. I get plenty of those emails weekly. Each inevitably begins with: “What about (fill in the blank with the latest outrage from the side they’re not on)?” I don’t even need to read those emails. I can write them myself. Do you know what that sounds like to me? It sounds like when I had to break up a fight between my two boys when they were young. Inevitably, the excuse would come out of one of their mouths: “he (meaning his brother) started it.” It’s pointless to try to determine who started our current pattern of vulgar outrage. It really doesn’t matter. What matters is our continued participation in this tit for tat childishness.

To be sure, all sides of our political-social tribal affiliations have grievances and old scores to settle, all of which they see as legitimate (and some no doubt are). So did the Hatfields and McCoys. Hamlet of Shakespeare fame also thought he had “legitimate grievances” and at the end of the play, as you’ll recall, most everyone was left for dead on the stage. But holding on to old resentments, mounting grievances, and then sharpening our knives for score-settling will only lead to further collective emotional bloodshed and the death of our democracy. And it will ruin any chance we have to work for the common good, which always requires compromise and not getting all we want. That’s what we were supposed to have learned by the time we reached adulthood.

So, I say now what I said to my two boys years ago: “For Christ’s sake, just stop it!”

+Scott