Reasons to be depressed

The shocking shootings in Arizona and their aftermath crystallized a perspective. I’m hardly original in stating it: The country is more divided than at any time since the Vietnam war.

I can’t see a way out.

It is true, the FBI is not now routinely spying on its citizens and 50,000 Americans are not now being killed abroad in a war without rational linkage to American security. But in a certain way, now is worse than the Vietnam era. Back then, in theory at least, there was a way to bring the country together: end the Vietnam war.

Needless to say, after the war ended the wounds of division lasted for a generation. Still, there was an identifiable way at least to stop the internal divisions from escalating. Now, I see no such solution.

Who is to blame for the Arizona shootings? Whatever the answer, the question is asked universally.

This itself is reason to be depressed. Here is sadness piled on top of sadness — a respected judge, dead; a beautiful nine-year-old, dead; a Congressperson, radically disabled, at the very least, for months; the other victims, dead or wounded — why an instinct to place blame at all? Why not an immediate instinct just to mourn?

As for who is to blame, the answer seems clear to everyone: the other side. Either the liberals are blind for not seeing that it was a nut case, and only a nut case, who pulled the trigger. Or the conservatives are blind for not seeing that the way they communicate creates an atmosphere conducive to violence.

As if there could not be  truth in each side. As if a nut case is only partially responsible for his violence — surely not true, for he alone is responsible for his acts, no one else. And as if an atmosphere could not make it easier for a nut case to act — also true, yet rather self-righteous for the one side to attribute the degradation of our political discourse only to the other side.

It seems reflexive for each side to blame the other side for the presumption of bad faith that saturates our politics. It is not obvious that one should be able to favor Obama’s health care reform without being accused of wanting to ruin the country, and also obvious that one should be able to oppose Obama’s reform without being labeled a racist? Apparently not.

Both the unpatriotic label and the racist label are thrown around with abandon on talk radio.

I listen to a lot of talk radio, on both sides. I routinely hear President Obama called a “liar” and other such names, and routinely hear President George W. Bush called a “midget,” and other such names. The presumption of bad faith predominates.

I routinely hear Democrats called unpatriotic and Tea Party members called haters.

Sometimes, I am able to make a game of this. I switch the radio dial back and forth between the liberal and the conservative talk shows, just to see how long I need to wait to hear one side cast the other in the worst possible light. I usually don’t need to wait more than 30 seconds.

Each side demonizes the other, and each is unwilling or unable to engage in self-scrutiny. Liberals are lily white, if one is a liberal; and conservatives are lily white, if one is a conservative.

OK, the whole world is not talk radio and, I affirm, there is an admittedly small segment of talk radio that does not demonize. On the conservative side, I would name, for example, Dennis Prager. On the liberal side, I would name, for example, Jesse Jackson. On the whole, however, talk radio is for people who do not sustain critical thinking. Self-awareness of the mirror image of the liberal take on conservatives, and vice-versa, is utterly lacking.

It’s as if our country is now two different countries.

It is hardly on the radio alone where the internal divisions manifest themselves.

Fewer and fewer people are reading. They gather their news, such as it is, from opinion-based media that cater to their biases to begin with. Moreover, there is less responsible news to read. Newsweek, once a credible and indeed a distinguished source of news, is now a shadow of its former self. The Rocky Mountain News is gone.

Snippets — sound bites on TV, flashes on the Internet, often wrong — inform people. And when those snippets, usually oversimplified, are repeated again and again, people do come to see those with whom they differ in caricature.

Threading its way through all this is a streak of paranoia. To many liberals, the country is beset with a “massive conservative media” that chokes its voice. To many conservatives, it is the other way around: the “mainstream liberal media” smothers the conservative voice.

If Obama’s health plan is upheld or not, if security for Congresspeople is changed or not, if the economy rebounds or not, I see no solution.

Say there is an improved economy. The reaction is predictable. It will be charged, with the same vitriol now prevalent, that if only [fill in your side] had been listened to sooner, the economic rebound would have happened sooner; or, if only [fill in the other side] had been defeated sooner, the rebound would have happened sooner. Success will not dampen this divide.

My hope is mystical. Somehow, despite slavery, despite a civil war, despite a vast growth in the gap between the rich and the poor, despite two world wars and a depression, despite Vietnam, and despite culture wars, the US has somehow stayed together. I pray that we are not in the midst of what some historians see as the inevitable rise — and fall — of every great power.

Meanwhile, let’s just mourn.

Copyright © 2011 by the Intermountain Jewish News