Why We Hate Each Other So Much

Maybe some of those other things that people KEEP TELLING US ARE SO DAMNED IMPORTANT are just things meant to keep us from the truth.
by G. Duff
 
I got an interesting email today from a reader.  The terms “revisionist” and “pinko” were used.  The concepts as expressed were honest disagreements with how I seem to see things.  I am definitely one of those “cup half empty” people.  It is obvious; I had a bad upbringing, some at the hands of the United States Marine Corps.
 
Of late American’s are agreeing more and more.  Things have gotten that bad. Most Americans agree that many of the things that have happened are somebody else’s fault, generally people blame President Bush. 
 
As a “half empty guy,” I am often the first to admit that we seem powerless to change things and that the current war, runaway immigration, crime, gas prices and the lack of decent jobs is beyond our capacity to change.
 
Our only response is to accuse each other and generally repeat things we read in magazines, hear on “propaganda radio” or parrot something from a half remembered sound bite from a politician (read "unemployed lawyer")…     

What we seem to have lost is:

1. The ability to think for ourselves, ask hard questions and demand that we get facts and not “interpreted” (read FOX) news.
2. The ability to confront each other, finding where we DO agree and figuring out what we DON’T agree on and WHY.

I think I understand politics pretty well.  Admitting this is pretty much like admitting that you shouldn’t let your kids be around me.  I grew up in an “autoworker” Democratic family.  Later on, I worked for the Republican Party and was a lobbyist for defense contractors. 
 
I grew up admiring leaders like John Kennedy but to earn a living, learned to work with the Republican leadership also. 
 
My biggest problem is that while I have Republican political leaders as friends, I have a very hard time getting along with fellow vets or even my neighbors who are Republicans. I see Republicans as people who will believe anything, no matter how stupid, and Democrats as everyone else.
 
To me, it is like both sides, Republican and Democrat, try to do the same thing.  Everyone wants to be Ross Perot, the hero who almost saved us by taking apart the huge government, making everyone work hard and live on earned and not borrowed money.
 
Ross Perot is gone. His ideas may live but "aliens" brought his campaign to a halt with their abduction threats.  I hope we learn the truth about this some day.
 
Still, we do have CONCENSUS. Everyone seems to have the same idea but nobody ever really gets things started. Every time someone wants to do something good, another ELECTION comes up and money is needed so candidates can be re-elected and majorities won or maintained.
 
To get the money needed to win, everything good has to be sacrificed.  Polluters have to be “let off the hook,” pension funds left unprotected, our borders left open to supply endless cheap labor and on and on.
 
Democrats will support anything the Trial Lawyers ask for and the teachers groups are seldom refused anything.  There are states where teachers with sex crime convictions against children are protected by these groups and keep their jobs.  I know of one in particular who finally lost his job when his most recent student molestation charge got him 30 years in prison.  We can only hope it will be his last such offense, but we can’t be sure.
 
What politicians tell us is that if we stop having elections, they won't need to be bribed anymore and we can have a free and democratic government run by the people. 
 
OK, let me try this again.
 
No more elections.  No more bribes.  Have we, perhaps considered NO MORE POLITICIANS?
 
Politicians all say they want us strong and safe with a little tiny government and no debt. Why are we up to our elbows in both war and huge government while drowning in unimaginable debt then?
 
Are politicians really that stupid?
 
Could YES actually be an answer ALL OF US CAN ACCEPT, FINALLY?
 
Let’s have an imaginary meeting somewhere, but we have to figure out who WE are to meet.  I meet with vets all the time and we don’t seem to have many disagreements on anything, not serious ones anyway. I am a "Ford" guy and have a Jap motorcycle. This can make you enemies anywhere. 

Maybe we could get some oil company people or someone who works for a drug or cigarette company.  Can we assume they are different people than the rest of us? 
 
What do we talk about first, the economy or “war on terror?" Newspapers and TV love to talk and talk about the war but the real enemy is one all of us know all too well.
 
The enemy is the “kid in the basement” with no job.  Sometimes it is the divorced daughter with or without child or the kid/vet fresh back from Afghanistan or Germany or worse.  For more of us than we care to admit, it may be the kid out of jail or rehab. 
 
For those of us in the grandparent category, it is all about the kids and grandkids.  The things that come home to haunt us are their jobs, marriages, mortgages or continual reassignments to Iraq.  We want our kids to live in a world where they can have what we had and more but we seem to be giving them four dollar gasoline and six dollar jobs.
 
Compared to depressed and dispirited children, the war on terror seems awfully distant.
 
When we talk Politics, we seldom talk about whose ideas are going to give a better life for our kids. Mind you the same kids who are out fighting and dying to keep their parents and grandparents safe.
 
Instead, we only talk about “liberals” and “neo-cons” and keeping brain dead corpses full of air or whether schools should teach science or “religious mystery.”
 
Our government now spends ten times more listening in to our phone calls and reading our mail than it does turning veterans into healthy, educated members of our communities.
 
We have spent most of the last few years at war with a country that never attacked us, building them up again after we ourselves destroyed them, only to have them keep blowing up their own country again and killing more of us in the process.  Is it possible that they need anti-psychotic drugs more than they need weapons?
 
Let’s say we talk about this.  Some will say, “Stick it out” and some will say “cut and run.”  Both are opinions.  Both may be right.  None of us really know.  IN TRUTH, FEW OF US REALLY CARE THAT MUCH.  THIS IS JUST ANOTHER EXCUSE TO MAKE NOISE.
 
Frankly, none of it matters.  We are stuck and can’t get out anyway.  All we know for sure is that, before we finally leave, we will be sorry as hell we didn’t just let them kill each other off.  This is how it has always been and few of us expect anything else.
 
The rest is just talk.
 
Other issues we could come to blows on would be constitutional rights.  I think things are going wrong and the government has too much power.  Others feel a need for government protection.
 
I feel a need for protection “from government.”
 
I am a conservative.  We think like this. 
 
Making it easy for a government to tap your phone, read your mail or, for instance, giving a Canadian border guard computer access to your credit rating and medical records based on your car license number, as they have now, seems a tad totalitarian to me.
 
Some people might want the Canadians to know their blood sugar or when they paid their Visa bill. 
 
The more I know about things people will allow to make them “feel safe,” the less safe I feel.
 
Problem is… we don’t talk about these things in an honest and rational way.  We only get sound bites about how Al Gore is imagining Global Warming or how Democrats are urging terrorists to murder us in our beds.
 
I want to ask our government how they managed to lose 190,000 AK47 rifles and would suggest that some of these “lost” rifles might be used to murder us in our beds also.  WHO IS DOING THE "BRADY CHECK" ON ALL OF THESE MISSING WEAPONS?
 
I want to ask our government what happens when they lose a billion dollars here or nine billion dollars there.  Who gets the money?  What do they do with it?  Do only “good people” steal from our government or are they “bad people?"
 
When our government tells me they want to listen in to my phone calls but think it is not worth looking into when they accidentally give “bad people” billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of weapons I suspect my government is “nuts.”
 
Let’s sit down in a room, real or imaginary.  Let’s go over these things.  Let’s see if, maybe, we don’t just tend to think about some of the same things and that some of those other things that people KEEP TELLING US ARE SO DAMNED IMPORTANT aren’t just things meant to keep us from the truth.

Gordon Duff is a Detroit native who served
with the Marine Corps in Vietnam and currently
lives in Maumee, OH.  He is a specialist on
military history, international banking and is an
avid chef and wine enthusiast.  Gordon travels
extensively and spends much of his time in
Europe.

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