Hatfields and McCoys

From Sea to Shining Sea

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Washington Post animated cartoonist Telnaes can be good and she enjoys a large following.  Her post today -- "From Sea to Shining Sea" depicts the fear of the NRA, and it is doubtful she consulted with the group to discover if this was an accurate portrayal of their position.

Her vision is not RangerAgainstWar's view of a healthy society, and we bemoan the image Telnaes presents for us.  But the doleful image outstrips the animation.  The image which she unwittingly conveys is an "Us'ns agin' them'ins" -- a Hatfields and McCoys, ad infinitum.  No sensible middle ground is allowed.

"Kids are getting murdered!" they cry. The "Other Side" says, "Curtailing gun rights is a slippery slope towards fascism!"  Both are unfortunate realities we have been facing for a while now.  In the same edition Tom Toles echoed our problem:

How do we grow past our fierce sectarianism? One thing is for sure: Not talking about problems -- saying, "He is an idiot", solves nothing.

The New Redcoats

The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound
When the wave broke over the railing
And every man knew, as the captain did too
'Twas the witch of November come stealin'
--The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, 
Gordon Lightfoot
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Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich expresses my feelings in his post yesterday, "We the People, and the New American Civil War". The piece concludes,

"So we come to the end of a bitter election feeling as if we're two nations rather than one. The challenge - not only for our president and representatives in Washington but for all of us - is to rediscover the public good."

As mentioned in an earlier post, it is a pity tragedies like Storm Sandy must roll by to provide us perspective and remind us that we all suffer the same fate in the hands of a disinterested natural world. The slings and arrows of fate strike us all, regardless of color or wealth, a fact we would do well to remember when considering national programs aimed at keeping us afloat during the rough periods.  Along with this awareness some find it a bitter pill to realize that the demographic complexion of our nation is inexorably shifting, but it is a fact nonetheless.

The question is, will the majority of us embrace the mission set out for us as a nation 250 years ago and find the needs of the commonweal to be a higher calling than our own vested interests, or will we continue down the mean and petty road of "No, I won't", and "More for me"?

To Spite Their Face

Our own beloved country . . . is now afflicted
with faction and civil war 
--Abraham Lincoln
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Your Agony Aunt has been away, and we trust you've had good counsel in the interim.  But no matter how good yer counselor is, surely there is more ... so, what's on your mind this weekend?

We will start you off with an impersonal topic, but you are encouraged to take it anywhere you will: 

How and why have we arrived at such political gridlock, such rough partisanship and factionalism that the disagreement and inability to mediate is seen as a good?  Perhaps it began with Republican Karl Rove: Spin and win at any cost, call deception a good, call compromise for the sake of the nation, a compromise of morals.  The nation must lose for the sake of remaining in one's sacrosanct ideological enclave.

It is the child's game: If I can't have it no one can.  And yet, the nation must have been receptive to this sort of message in order for those who played that game to get into position.

Why are people so recalcitrant and fractious?