In Monday’s Dallas
Morning News there was an article about the severe state of combativeness
that social media has exposed in this year’s election. One in ten people
reported to a Pew Foundation research project that they have either been
dropped as friends on Facebook or Twitter or they have dropped friends
themselves due to political disagreement. One young lady even related a story
of she and her brother-in-law not speaking anymore because of posts she wrote
on her Facebook site. Family versus family, reminds one of the Civil War days.
I asked some old timers (I myself an touching 60, so these
people were at least 61) if it had always been this contentious. The answer is
yes and no.
Yes, people have
always been devoutly for or against a candidate. Especially around the
re-election of Richard Nixon. (George McGovern just died this past weekend and
his memory brought about some hard feelings between two of my friends over the
anti-Vietnam protests. That war has been over for almost 40 years; yet, some
people can’t let go of the fact that there were many Americans who thought we
were wrong for being in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Of course McGovern’s
campaign, which at best was like a wounded duck, was scandalized by the Nixon
Plumbers in a little fiasco called Watergate. And the whole country went round
and round over that one.) And even before Nixon, there were the Kennedy attacks
in the local newspaper as he came to Dallas in November 1963 – attacks calling
the President of the United States a traitor. Pretty strong language from a pretty
stupid minority of narrow-minded folk – not unlike a lot of the attacks today.
But as hateful as those times were and as strong as the
attacks on the candidates, there were not the personal attacks as have been assembled
on people of different beliefs. (I, for example, have never had my car keyed
because of a bumper sticker before. That just shows the childish and immaturity
of the radical idiots on the other side. As soon as one of them reads those
words, a new battle – a new skirmish – will break out on the web. And so it
goes. Perhaps the media is the reason we have such vitriolic display of loss of
civility. Too much access too instantly.) And that leads us to the ‘No’ answer.
According to many, the sheer power of social media has made
the instant jabbing, the political bobbing and weaving part of the prizefight
of today’s politics. It is akin to a man dropping a lighted Molotov cocktail
into a crowd and then quickly crossing the street to watch the ensuing chaos.
People have always had yard signs stolen. High school pranks
no doubt, but several homes in Dallas and other areas have been painted with
racial slurs for families supporting Obama. (If you haven’t noticed or been
watching for the past four years, Obama is a black man upsetting an inflamed
white minority’s world.) But again, the rise of these sharp and uncivil
political responses is somewhat new and unsettling in America.
We have always thought of ourselves as a land of free
speech. A land where you and I could differ and still be friends. A land where
political differences are settled at the election poll not with spray cans of
red paint or keys scratched across the surface of expensive private property.
There will always be idiots amongst us. But even very close
friends of mine, people who I considered educated and very open-minded have
become sullen and antagonistic in this election season.
I just go back to the week before the last inauguration,
when a friend of our family’s told me, he was ashamed of America sending a “nigger to the White House.” I use the
pejorative in this case that he uttered to make a point. People are very, very
upset at this time in our history. And many hate the man running for
re-election. And they have hated him, even before he took a single step into
the oval office. So their hatred could not be based on his policies. He had not
enacted any. His cabinet was a cross section of Republicans and Democrats. So
their vile could not have been his staffing of a cabinet. It was aimed at the
color of his skin.
Yes, this election is the most contentious I’ve ever seen. I
hope we can get back to politics as usual. Democrats hating Republicans and
vice versa, just for general good of the country. And I hope we can get rid of
the racial under current, which has lingered since November 4, 2008. It is too
divisive for a country such as ours. It has no place in our society.
None.
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