Posts Tagged ‘stupid human tricks’

“There are two sides to every story.”  A lot of us grew up hearing this.  And most of us were taught that the statement meant both sides should be considered earnestly to work for the best outcome.  When did this little bit of common sense become so very uncommon?

Because it seems to have fallen completely away in most aspects of life.  Republicans and Democrats who used to refer to each other in Congress as “the Loyal Opposition” now sling titles like “traitor” “fascist” and worse at each other.  Even on the average street, friendships have ruptured because neither side can agree to any middle ground.

Politics is not the only place where extremes of the pendulum swing reign.  The argument over childhood vaccination rages with hostility on both sides.  My mother had polio as a child, as did two of her cousins.  One cousin died, one lived the rest of her life wheelchair bound and my mother’s arm was withered and weak for life.  I could not imagine refusing the vaccine for my children.   My sister, like the rest of us in the family, had measles.  Her fever burned hot enough that she lost most of her hair.  Yes, years later, my own children were most sick from the MMR vaccinations—-but knowing our family is prone to pyromanic fever responses, I got every shot for them on time.  I understand the fear of autism and the doubts that plague parents about vaccine safety.  But I have to wonder how many of them are so young as to never have seen the ravages these “common” childhood illnesses can inflict?  One childhood friend was deaf from birth—her mother had measels in pregnancy.  A neighbor was sterile after contracting mumps as an adult, his wife ended the marriage when she realized she could never have children with him.  But there is no dialogue—-only polarized screaming from both sides.

And religion?  Oh my!  The all or nothing reactions astonish.  The athiests deride everyone as self-deluding ninnies.  The fundamental Christians happily damn everyone who doesn’t worship at the altar of the Holy Fetus.  Fred Phelps damns EVERYone not in his “church” to hell right along with the “fags.”  The Catholics are beginning to revert slowly to the pre-Vatican II stand that all Protestants are heretics.  The Jews get called names and compared to Israel even when they are not in agreement with the Jewish nation.  Islam tosses the word “infidel” around entirely too much.  Everyone calls pagans like me “devil worshippers” without bothering to note that most neo-pagans do not even believe in a satanic figure at all.  Everyone in America screams about the past theocracy of Europe in the Middle Ages and the theocracy of modern Islamic states, but they don’t seem to notice the threads of it forming in their own nation.  They think it fine to put the ten commandments on the courthouse lawn, or sing Christian songs in public school music class, and to tell the Wiccan girl to hide her pentacle.

Even environmentalists climb up on a high horse and it becomes about orthodoxy of greeness.  And the reaction to even mild suggestions to ‘turn out the lights’ makes one wonder if it will take a massive electromagnetic pulse punch to make people rachet back their addiction to power gobbling gadgets?

And as money grows tight, charities suffer.  Everyone in this oh-so-Christian nation seems awfully close-pocketed. It is doubted that “deserving” poor exist and the homeless are banned even from churchyards.  Laws are promulgated to forbid feeding the homeless, apparently operating on the idea that it is like feeding stray cats—-they will stay!  It is perfectly acceptable now to talk about religion (YOURS is wrong!), sex (YOU do what?!), and politics (TRAITOR!); but don’t mention money!  Or giving it away.

The concept that everyone doing their own little bit seems to have fallen by the wayside.  Perhaps I am as quaintly old-fashioned as the Bush Administration thought the Geneva Conventions were—-but if everyone gave only a couple percent of income to help someone else,  or some issue that mattered to them, if eveyone gave up just a few pleasures so that someone on the other side of the planet could enjoy the most basic needs of life, what changes would be possible?

But no, lines are drawn and everyone crowds at the bitter, extreme ends of the spectrum to point at each other and refuse conversation.  The middle ground of compromise is looked at as some bizarre sell-out.  It is winner-take-all and to hell-with-losers; even if the loser is someone just like you.  Polarization is the new very not neutral.  It might be good if someone could point out that the word comes from “polar” which can refer to the North and South poles of the planet.  Nothing lives there, except penguins and polar bears and they are both losing the battle of survival presently.  Extremes foster life only one the very fragile and crumbling edge of existence.  And yet that is where everyone is choosing to stand.